Initial commit

8 files changed, 30555 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d7b82bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+*.txt text eol=lf
+*.htm text eol=lf
+*.html text eol=lf
+*.md text eol=lf
diff --git a/6683-0.txt b/6683-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bd5104
--- /dev/null
+++ b/6683-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9919 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 6683 ***
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE NUGGET
+
+
+
+By P. G. Wodehouse
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Part One
+
+
+In which the Little Nugget is introduced to the reader, and plans
+are made for his future by several interested parties. In which,
+also, the future Mr Peter Burns is touched upon. The whole concluding
+with a momentous telephone-call.
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE NUGGET
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+If the management of the Hotel Guelph, that London landmark, could
+have been present at three o'clock one afternoon in early January
+in the sitting-room of the suite which they had assigned to Mrs
+Elmer Ford, late of New York, they might well have felt a little
+aggrieved. Philosophers among them would possibly have meditated
+on the limitations of human effort; for they had done their best
+for Mrs Ford. They had housed her well. They had fed her well.
+They had caused inspired servants to anticipate her every need.
+Yet here she was, in the midst of all these aids to a contented
+mind, exhibiting a restlessness and impatience of her surroundings
+that would have been noticeable in a caged tigress or a prisoner
+of the Bastille. She paced the room. She sat down, picked up a
+novel, dropped it, and, rising, resumed her patrol. The clock
+striking, she compared it with her watch, which she had consulted
+two minutes before. She opened the locket that hung by a gold
+chain from her neck, looked at its contents, and sighed. Finally,
+going quickly into the bedroom, she took from a suit-case a framed
+oil-painting, and returning with it to the sitting-room, placed it
+on a chair, and stepped back, gazing at it hungrily. Her large
+brown eyes, normally hard and imperious, were strangely softened.
+Her mouth quivered.
+
+'Ogden!' she whispered.
+
+The picture which had inspired this exhibition of feeling would
+probably not have affected the casual spectator to quite the same
+degree. He would have seen merely a very faulty and amateurish
+portrait of a singularly repellent little boy of about eleven, who
+stared out from the canvas with an expression half stolid, half
+querulous; a bulgy, overfed little boy; a little boy who looked
+exactly what he was, the spoiled child of parents who had far more
+money than was good for them.
+
+As Mrs Ford gazed at the picture, and the picture stared back at
+her, the telephone bell rang. She ran to it eagerly. It was the
+office of the hotel, announcing a caller.
+
+'Yes? Yes? Who?' Her voice fell, as if the name was not the one
+she had expected. 'Oh, yes,' she said. 'Yes, ask Lord Mountry to
+come to me here, please.'
+
+She returned to the portrait. The look of impatience, which had
+left her face as the bell sounded, was back now. She suppressed it
+with an effort as her visitor entered.
+
+Lord Mountry was a blond, pink-faced, fair-moustached young man of
+about twenty-eight--a thick-set, solemn young man. He winced as he
+caught sight of the picture, which fixed him with a stony eye
+immediately on his entry, and quickly looked away.
+
+'I say, it's all right, Mrs Ford.' He was of the type which wastes
+no time on preliminary greetings. 'I've got him.'
+
+'Got him!'
+
+Mrs Ford's voice was startled.
+
+'Stanborough, you know.'
+
+'Oh! I--I was thinking of something else. Won't you sit down?'
+
+Lord Mountry sat down.
+
+'The artist, you know. You remember you said at lunch the other
+day you wanted your little boy's portrait painted, as you only had
+one of him, aged eleven--'
+
+'This is Ogden, Lord Mountry. I painted this myself.'
+
+His lordship, who had selected a chair that enabled him to present
+a shoulder to the painting, and was wearing a slightly dogged look
+suggestive of one who 'turns no more his head, because he knows a
+frightful fiend doth close behind him tread', forced himself
+round, and met his gaze with as much nonchalance as he could
+summon up.
+
+'Er, yes,' he said.
+
+He paused.
+
+'Fine manly little fellow--what?' he continued.
+
+'Yes, isn't he?'
+
+His lordship stealthily resumed his former position.
+
+'I recommended this fellow, Stanborough, if you remember. He's a
+great pal of mine, and I'd like to give him a leg up if I could.
+They tell me he's a topping artist. Don't know much about it
+myself. You told me to bring him round here this afternoon, you
+remember, to talk things over. He's waiting downstairs.'
+
+'Oh yes, yes. Of course, I've not forgotten. Thank you so much,
+Lord Mountry.'
+
+'Rather a good scheme occurred to me, that is, if you haven't
+thought over the idea of that trip on my yacht and decided it
+would bore you to death. You still feel like making one of the
+party--what?'
+
+Mrs Ford shot a swift glance at the clock.
+
+'I'm looking forward to it,' she said.
+
+'Well, then, why shouldn't we kill two birds with one stone?
+Combine the voyage and the portrait, don't you know. You could
+bring your little boy along--he'd love the trip--and I'd bring
+Stanborough--what?'
+
+This offer was not the outcome of a sudden spasm of warm-heartedness
+on his lordship's part. He had pondered the matter deeply, and had
+come to the conclusion that, though it had flaws, it was the best
+plan. He was alive to the fact that a small boy was not an absolute
+essential to the success of a yachting trip, and, since seeing
+Ogden's portrait, he had realized still more clearly that the
+scheme had draw-backs. But he badly wanted Stanborough to make
+one of the party. Whatever Ogden might be, there was no doubt that
+Billy Stanborough, that fellow of infinite jest, was the ideal
+companion for a voyage. It would make just all the difference having
+him. The trouble was that Stanborough flatly refused to take an
+indefinite holiday, on the plea that he could not afford the time.
+Upon which his lordship, seldom blessed with great ideas, had surprised
+himself by producing the scheme he had just sketched out to Mrs Ford.
+
+He looked at her expectantly, as he finished speaking, and was
+surprised to see a swift cloud of distress pass over her face. He
+rapidly reviewed his last speech. No, nothing to upset anyone in
+that. He was puzzled.
+
+She looked past him at the portrait. There was pain in her eyes.
+
+'I'm afraid you don't quite understand the position of affairs,'
+she said. Her voice was harsh and strained.
+
+'Eh?'
+
+'You see--I have not--' She stopped. 'My little boy is not--Ogden
+is not living with me just now.'
+
+'At school, eh?'
+
+'No, not at school. Let me tell you the whole position. Mr Ford
+and I did not get on very well together, and a year ago we were
+divorced in Washington, on the ground of incompatibility,
+and--and--'
+
+She choked. His lordship, a young man with a shrinking horror of
+the deeper emotions, whether exhibited in woman or man, writhed
+silently. That was the worst of these Americans! Always getting
+divorced and causing unpleasantness. How was a fellow to know? Why
+hadn't whoever it was who first introduced them--he couldn't
+remember who the dickens it was--told him about this? He had
+supposed she was just the ordinary American woman doing Europe
+with an affectionate dollar-dispensing husband in the background
+somewhere.
+
+'Er--' he said. It was all he could find to say.
+
+'And--and the court,' said Mrs Ford, between her teeth, 'gave him
+the custody of Ogden.'
+
+Lord Mountry, pink with embarrassment, gurgled sympathetically.
+
+'Since then I have not seen Ogden. That was why I was interested
+when you mentioned your friend Mr Stanborough. It struck me that
+Mr Ford could hardly object to my having a portrait of my son
+painted at my own expense. Nor do I suppose that he will, when--if
+the matter is put to him. But, well, you see it would be premature
+to make any arrangements at present for having the picture painted
+on our yacht trip.'
+
+'I'm afraid it knocks that scheme on the head,' said Lord Mountry
+mournfully.
+
+'Not necessarily.'
+
+'Eh?'
+
+'I don't want to make plans yet, but--it is possible that Ogden
+may be with us after all. Something may be--arranged.'
+
+'You think you may be able to bring him along on the yacht after
+all?'
+
+'I am hoping so.'
+
+Lord Mountry, however willing to emit sympathetic gurgles, was too
+plain and straightforward a young man to approve of wilful
+blindness to obvious facts.
+
+'I don't see how you are going to override the decision of the
+court. It holds good in England, I suppose?'
+
+'I am hoping something may be--arranged.'
+
+'Oh, same here, same here. Certainly.' Having done his duty by not
+allowing plain facts to be ignored, his lordship was ready to
+become sympathetic again. 'By the way, where is Ogden?'
+
+'He is down at Mr Ford's house in the country. But--'
+
+She was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone bell. She was
+out of her seat and across the room at the receiver with what
+appeared to Lord Mountry's startled gaze one bound. As she put the
+instrument to her ear a wave of joy swept over her face. She gave
+a little cry of delight and excitement.
+
+'Send them right up at once,' she said, and turned to Lord Mountry
+transformed.
+
+'Lord Mountry,' she said quickly, 'please don't think me
+impossibly rude if I turn you out. Some--some people are coming to
+see me. I must--'
+
+His lordship rose hurriedly.
+
+'Of course. Of course. Certainly. Where did I put my--ah, here.'
+He seized his hat, and by way of economizing effort, knocked his
+stick on to the floor with the same movement. Mrs Ford watched his
+bendings and gropings with growing impatience, till finally he
+rose, a little flushed but with a full hand--stick, gloves, and
+hat, all present and correct.
+
+'Good-bye, then, Mrs Ford, for the present. You'll let me know if
+your little boy will be able to make one of our party on the
+yacht?'
+
+'Yes, yes. Thank you ever so much. Good-bye.'
+
+'Good-bye.'
+
+He reached the door and opened it.
+
+'By Jove,' he said, springing round--'Stanborough! What about
+Stanborough? Shall I tell him to wait? He's down below, you know!'
+
+'Yes, yes. Tell Mr Stanborough I'm dreadfully sorry to have to
+keep him waiting, and ask him if he won't stay for a few minutes
+in the Palm Room.'
+
+Inspiration came to Lord Mountry.
+
+'I'll give him a drink,' he said.
+
+'Yes, yes, anything. Lord Mountry, you really must go. I know I'm
+rude. I don't know what I'm saying. But--my boy is returning to
+me.'
+
+The accumulated chivalry of generations of chivalrous ancestors
+acted like a spur on his lordship. He understood but dimly, yet
+enough to enable him to realize that a scene was about to take
+place in which he was most emphatically not 'on'. A mother's
+meeting with her long-lost child, this is a sacred thing. This was
+quite clear to him, so, turning like a flash, he bounded through
+the doorway, and, as somebody happened to be coming in at the same
+time, there was a collision, which left him breathing apologies in
+his familiar attitude of stooping to pick up his hat.
+
+The new-comers were a tall, strikingly handsome girl, with a
+rather hard and cynical cast of countenance. She was leading by
+the hand a small, fat boy of about fourteen years of age, whose
+likeness to the portrait on the chair proclaimed his identity. He
+had escaped the collision, but seemed offended by it; for, eyeing
+the bending peer with cold distaste, he summed up his opinion of
+him in the one word 'Chump!'
+
+Lord Mountry rose.
+
+'I beg your pardon,' he said for perhaps the seventh time. He was
+thoroughly unstrung. Always excessively shy, he was embarrassed
+now by quite a variety of causes. The world was full of eyes--Mrs
+Ford's saying 'Go!' Ogden's saying 'Fool!' the portrait saying
+'Idiot!' and, finally, the eyes of this wonderfully handsome girl,
+large, grey, cool, amused, and contemptuous saying--so it seemed
+to him in that feverish moment--'Who is this curious pink person
+who cumbers the ground before me?'
+
+'I--I beg your pardon.' he repeated.
+
+'Ought to look where you're going,' said Ogden severely.
+
+'Not at all,' said the girl. 'Won't you introduce me, Nesta?'
+
+'Lord Mountry--Miss Drassilis,' said Mrs Ford.
+
+'I'm afraid we're driving Lord Mountry away,' said the girl. Her
+eyes seemed to his lordship larger, greyer, cooler, more amused,
+and more contemptuous than ever. He floundered in them like an
+unskilful swimmer in deep waters.
+
+'No, no,' he stammered. 'Give you my word. Just going. Good-bye.
+You won't forget to let me know about the yacht, Mrs Ford--what?
+It'll be an awfully jolly party. Good-bye, good-bye, Miss
+Drassilis.'
+
+He looked at Ogden for an instant, as if undecided whether to take
+the liberty of addressing him too, and then, his heart apparently
+failing him, turned and bolted. From down the corridor came the
+clatter of a dropped stick.
+
+Cynthia Drassilis closed the door and smiled.
+
+'A nervous young person!' she said. 'What was he saying about a
+yacht, Nesta?'
+
+Mrs Ford roused herself from her fascinated contemplation of
+Ogden.
+
+'Oh, nothing. Some of us are going to the south of France in his
+yacht next week.'
+
+'What a delightful idea!'
+
+There was a certain pensive note in Cynthia's voice.
+
+'A splendid idea!' she murmured.
+
+Mrs Ford swooped. She descended on Ogden in a swirl and rustle of
+expensive millinery, and clasped him to her.
+
+'My boy!'
+
+It is not given to everybody to glide neatly into a scene of tense
+emotion. Ogden failed to do so. He wriggled roughly from the
+embrace.
+
+'Got a cigarette?' he said.
+
+He was an extraordinarily unpleasant little boy. Physically the
+portrait standing on the chair did him more than justice. Painted
+by a mother's loving hand, it flattered him. It was bulgy. He was
+more bulgy. It was sullen. He scowled. And, art having its
+limitations, particularly amateur art, the portrait gave no hint
+of his very repellent manner. He was an intensely sophisticated
+child. He had the air of one who has seen all life has to offer,
+and is now permanently bored. His speech and bearing were those of
+a young man, and a distinctly unlovable young man.
+
+Even Mrs Ford was momentarily chilled. She laughed shakily.
+
+'How very matter-of-fact you are, darling!' she said.
+
+Cynthia was regarding the heir to the Ford millions with her usual
+steady, half-contemptuous gaze.
+
+'He has been that all day,' she said. 'You have no notion what a
+help it was to me.'
+
+Mrs Ford turned to her effusively.
+
+'Oh, Cynthia, dear, I haven't thanked you.'
+
+'No,' interpolated the girl dryly.
+
+'You're a wonder, darling. You really are. I've been repeating
+that ever since I got your telegram from Eastnor.' She broke off.
+'Ogden, come near me, my little son.'
+
+He lurched towards her sullenly.
+
+'Don't muss a fellow now,' he stipulated, before allowing himself
+to be enfolded in the outstretched arms.
+
+'Tell me, Cynthia,' resumed Mrs Ford, 'how did you do it? I was
+telling Lord Mountry that I _hoped_ I might see my Ogden again
+soon, but I never really hoped. It seemed too impossible that you
+should succeed.'
+
+'This Lord Mountry of yours,' said Cynthia. 'How did you get to
+know him? Why have I not seen him before?'
+
+'I met him in Paris in the fall. He has been out of London for a
+long time, looking after his father, who was ill.'
+
+'I see.'
+
+'He has been most kind, making arrangements about getting Ogden's
+portrait painted. But, bother Lord Mountry. How did we get
+sidetracked on to him? Tell me how you got Ogden away.'
+
+Cynthia yawned.
+
+'It was extraordinarily easy, as it turned out, you see.'
+
+'Ogden, darling,' observed Mrs Ford, 'don't go away. I want you
+near me.'
+
+'Oh, all right.'
+
+'Then stay by me, angel-face.'
+
+'Oh, slush!' muttered angel-face beneath his breath. 'Say, I'm
+darned hungry,' he added.
+
+It was if an electric shock had been applied to Mrs Ford. She
+sprang to her feet.
+
+'My poor child! Of course you must have some lunch. Ring the bell,
+Cynthia. I'll have them send up some here.'
+
+'I'll have _mine_ here,' said Cynthia.
+
+'Oh, you've had no lunch either! I was forgetting that.'
+
+'I thought you were.'
+
+'You must both lunch here.'
+
+'Really,' said Cynthia, 'I think it would be better if Ogden had
+his downstairs in the restaurant.'
+
+'Want to talk scandal, eh?'
+
+'Ogden, _dearest!_' said Mrs Ford. 'Very well, Cynthia. Go,
+Ogden. You will order yourself something substantial, marvel-child?'
+
+'Bet your life,' said the son and heir tersely.
+
+There was a brief silence as the door closed. Cynthia gazed at her
+friend with a peculiar expression.
+
+'Well, I did it, dear,' she said.
+
+'Yes. It's splendid. You're a wonder, darling.'
+
+'Yes,' said Cynthia.
+
+There was another silence.
+
+'By the way,' said Mrs Ford, 'didn't you say there was a little
+thing, a small bill, that was worrying you?'
+
+'Did I mention it? Yes, there is. It's rather pressing. In fact,
+it's taking up most of the horizon at present. Here it is.'
+
+'Is it a large sum?' Mrs Ford took the slip of paper and gave a slight
+gasp. Then, coming to the bureau, she took out her cheque-book.
+
+'It's very kind of you, Nesta,' said Cynthia. 'They were beginning
+to show quite a vindictive spirit about it.'
+
+She folded the cheque calmly and put it in her purse.
+
+'And now tell me how you did it,' said Mrs Ford.
+
+She dropped into a chair and leaned back, her hands behind her
+head. For the first time, she seemed to enjoy perfect peace of
+mind. Her eyes half closed, as if she had been making ready to
+listen to some favourite music.
+
+'Tell me from the very beginning,' she said softly.
+
+Cynthia checked a yawn.
+
+'Very well, dear,' she said. 'I caught the 10.20 to Eastnor, which
+isn't a bad train, if you ever want to go down there. I arrived at
+a quarter past twelve, and went straight up to the house--you've
+never seen the house, of course? It's quite charming--and told the
+butler that I wanted to see Mr Ford on business. I had taken the
+precaution to find out that he was not there. He is at Droitwich.'
+
+'Rheumatism,' murmured Mrs Ford. 'He has it sometimes.'
+
+'The man told me he was away, and then he seemed to think that I
+ought to go. I stuck like a limpet. I sent him to fetch Ogden's
+tutor. His name is Broster--Reggie Broster. He is a very nice
+young man. Big, broad shoulders, and such a kind face.'
+
+'Yes, dear, yes?'
+
+'I told him I was doing a series of drawings for a magazine of the
+interiors of well-known country houses.'
+
+'He believed you?'
+
+'He believed everything. He's that kind of man. He believed me
+when I told him that my editor particularly wanted me to sketch
+the staircase. They had told me about the staircase at the inn. I
+forget what it is exactly, but it's something rather special in
+staircases.'
+
+'So you got in?'
+
+'So I got in.'
+
+'And saw Ogden?'
+
+'Only for a moment--then Reggie--'
+
+'Who?'
+
+'Mr Broster. I always think of him as Reggie. He's one of Nature's
+Reggies. _Such_ a kind, honest face. Well, as I was saying,
+Reggie discovered that it was time for lessons, and sent Ogden
+upstairs.'
+
+'By himself?'
+
+'By himself! Reggie and I chatted for a while.'
+
+Mrs Ford's eyes opened, brown and bright and hard.
+
+'Mr Broster is not a proper tutor for my boy,' she said coldly.
+
+'I suppose it was wrong of Reggie,' said Cynthia. 'But--I was
+wearing this hat.'
+
+'Go on.'
+
+'Well, after a time, I said I must be starting my work. He wanted
+me to start with the room we were in. I said no, I was going out
+into the grounds to sketch the house from the EAST. I chose the
+EAST because it happens to be nearest the railway station. I added
+that I supposed he sometimes took Ogden for a little walk in the
+grounds. He said yes, he did, and it was just about due. He said
+possibly he might come round my way. He said Ogden would be
+interested in my sketch. He seemed to think a lot of Ogden's
+fondness for art.'
+
+'Mr Broster is _not_ a proper tutor for my boy.'
+
+'Well, he isn't your boy's tutor now, is he, dear?'
+
+'What happened then?'
+
+'I strolled off with my sketching things. After a while Reggie and
+Ogden came up. I said I hadn't been able to work because I had
+been frightened by a bull.'
+
+'Did he believe _that_?'
+
+'_Certainly_ he believed it. He was most kind and sympathetic.
+We had a nice chat. He told me all about himself. He used to be
+very good at football. He doesn't play now, but he often thinks of
+the past.'
+
+'But he must have seen that you couldn't sketch. Then what became
+of your magazine commission story?'
+
+'Well, somehow the sketch seemed to get shelved. I didn't even
+have to start it. We were having our chat, you see. Reggie was
+telling me how good he had been at football when he was at Oxford,
+and he wanted me to see a newspaper clipping of a Varsity match he
+had played in. I said I'd love to see it. He said it was in his
+suit-case in the house. So I promised to look after Ogden while he
+fetched it. I sent him off to get it just in time for us to catch
+the train. Off he went, and here we are. And now, won't you order
+that lunch you mentioned? I'm starving.'
+
+Mrs Ford rose. Half-way to the telephone she stopped suddenly.
+
+'My dear child! It has only just struck me! We must leave here at
+once. He will have followed you. He will guess that Ogden has been
+kidnapped.'
+
+Cynthia smiled.
+
+'Believe me, it takes Reggie quite a long time to guess anything.
+Besides, there are no trains for hours. We are quite safe.'
+
+'Are you sure?'
+
+'Absolutely. I made certain of that before I left.'
+
+Mrs Ford kissed her impulsively.
+
+'Oh, Cynthia, you really are wonderful!'
+
+She started back with a cry as the bell rang sharply.
+
+'For goodness' sake, Nesta,' said Cynthia, with irritation, 'do
+keep control of yourself. There's nothing to be frightened about.
+I tell you Mr Broster can't possibly have got here in the time,
+even if he knew where to go to, which I don't see how he could.
+It's probably Ogden.'
+
+The colour came back into Mrs Ford's cheeks.
+
+'Why, of course.'
+
+Cynthia opened the door.
+
+'Come in, darling,' said Mrs Ford fondly. And a wiry little man
+with grey hair and spectacles entered.
+
+'Good afternoon, Mrs Ford,' he said. 'I have come to take Ogden
+back.'
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+There are some situations in life so unexpected, so trying, that,
+as far as concerns our opinion of those subjected to them, we
+agree, as it were, not to count them; we refuse to allow the
+victim's behaviour in circumstances so exacting to weigh with us
+in our estimate of his or her character. We permit the great
+general, confronted suddenly with a mad bull, to turn and run,
+without forfeiting his reputation for courage. The bishop who,
+stepping on a concealed slide in winter, entertains passers-by
+with momentary rag-time steps, loses none of his dignity once the
+performance is concluded.
+
+In the same way we must condone the behaviour of Cynthia Drassilis
+on opening the door of Mrs Ford's sitting-room and admitting, not
+Ogden, but this total stranger, who accompanied his entry with the
+remarkable speech recorded at the close of the last section.
+
+She was a girl who prided herself on her carefully blase' and
+supercilious attitude towards life; but this changeling was too
+much for her. She released the handle, tottered back, and, having
+uttered a discordant squeak of amazement, stood staring, eyes and
+mouth wide open.
+
+On Mrs Ford the apparition had a different effect. The rather
+foolish smile of welcome vanished from her face as if wiped away
+with a sponge. Her eyes, fixed and frightened like those of a
+trapped animal, glared at the intruder. She took a step forward,
+choking.
+
+'What--what do you mean by daring to enter my room?' she cried.
+
+The man held his ground, unmoved. His bearing was a curious blend
+of diffidence and aggressiveness. He was determined, but
+apologetic. A hired assassin of the Middle Ages, resolved to do
+his job loyally, yet conscious of causing inconvenience to his
+victim, might have looked the same.
+
+'I am sorry,' he said, 'but I must ask you to let me have the boy,
+Mrs Ford.'
+
+Cynthia was herself again now. She raked the intruder with the
+cool stare which had so disconcerted Lord Mountry.
+
+'Who is this gentleman?' she asked languidly.
+
+The intruder was made of tougher stuff than his lordship. He met
+her eye with quiet firmness.
+
+'My name is Mennick,' he said. 'I am Mr Elmer Ford's private
+secretary.'
+
+'What do you want?' said Mrs Ford.
+
+'I have already explained what I want, Mrs Ford. I want Ogden.'
+
+Cynthia raised her eyebrows.
+
+'What _does_ he mean, Nesta? Ogden is not here.'
+
+Mr Mennick produced from his breast-pocket a telegraph form, and
+in his quiet, business-like way proceeded to straighten it out.
+
+'I have here,' he said, 'a telegram from Mr Broster, Ogden's
+tutor. It was one of the conditions of his engagement that if ever
+he was not certain of Ogden's whereabouts he should let me know at
+once. He tells me that early this afternoon he left Ogden in the
+company of a strange young lady'--Mr Mennick's spectacles flashed
+for a moment at Cynthia--'and that, when he returned, both of them
+had disappeared. He made inquiries and discovered that this young
+lady caught the 1.15 express to London, Ogden with her. On receipt
+of this information I at once wired to Mr Ford for instructions. I
+have his reply'--he fished for and produced a second telegram--'here.'
+
+'I still fail to see what brings you here,' said Mrs Ford. 'Owing
+to the gross carelessness of his father's employees, my son
+appears to have been kidnapped. That is no reason--'
+
+'I will read Mr Ford's telegram,' proceeded Mr Mennick unmoved.
+'It is rather long. I think Mr Ford is somewhat annoyed. "The boy
+has obviously been stolen by some hireling of his mother's." I am
+reading Mr Ford's actual words,' he said, addressing Cynthia with
+that touch of diffidence which had marked his manner since his
+entrance.
+
+'Don't apologize,' said Cynthia, with a short laugh. 'You're not
+responsible for Mr Ford's rudeness.'
+
+Mr Mennick bowed.
+
+'He continued: "Remove him from her illegal restraint. If
+necessary call in police and employ force."'
+
+'Charming!' said Mrs Ford.
+
+'Practical,' said Mr Mennick. 'There is more. "Before doing
+anything else sack that fool of a tutor, then go to Agency and
+have them recommend good private school for boy. On no account
+engage another tutor. They make me tired. Fix all this today. Send
+Ogden back to Eastnor with Mrs Sheridan. She will stay there with
+him till further notice." That is Mr Ford's message.'
+
+Mr Mennick folded both documents carefully and replaced them in
+his pocket.
+
+Mrs Ford looked at the clock.
+
+'And now, would you mind going, Mr Mennick?'
+
+'I am sorry to appear discourteous, Mrs Ford, but I cannot go
+without Ogden.'
+
+'I shall telephone to the office to send up a porter to remove
+you.'
+
+'I shall take advantage of his presence to ask him to fetch a
+policeman.'
+
+In the excitement of combat the veneer of apologetic diffidence
+was beginning to wear off Mr Mennick. He spoke irritably. Cynthia
+appealed to his reason with the air of a bored princess descending
+to argument with a groom.
+
+'Can't you see for yourself that he's not here?' she said. 'Do you
+think we are hiding him?'
+
+'Perhaps you would like to search my bedroom?' said Mrs Ford,
+flinging the door open.
+
+Mr Mennick remained uncrushed.
+
+'Quite unnecessary, Mrs Ford. I take it, from the fact that he
+does not appear to be in this suite, that he is downstairs making
+a late luncheon in the restaurant.'
+
+'I shall telephone--'
+
+'And tell them to send him up. Believe me, Mrs Ford, it is the
+only thing to do. You have my deepest sympathy, but I am employed
+by Mr Ford and must act solely in his interests. The law is on my
+side. I am here to fetch Ogden away, and I am going to have him.'
+
+'You shan't!'
+
+'I may add that, when I came up here, I left Mrs Sheridan--she is
+a fellow-secretary of mine. You may remember Mr Ford mentioning
+her in his telegram--I left her to search the restaurant and
+grill-room, with instructions to bring Ogden, if found, to me in
+this room.'
+
+The door-bell rang. He went to the door and opened it.
+
+'Come in, Mrs Sheridan. Ah!'
+
+A girl in a plain, neat blue dress entered the room. She was a
+small, graceful girl of about twenty-five, pretty and brisk, with
+the air of one accustomed to look after herself in a difficult
+world. Her eyes were clear and steady, her mouth sensitive but
+firm, her chin the chin of one who has met trouble and faced it
+bravely. A little soldier.
+
+She was shepherding Ogden before her, a gorged but still sullen
+Ogden. He sighted Mr Mennick and stopped.
+
+'Hello!' he said. 'What have you blown in for?'
+
+'He was just in the middle of his lunch,' said the girl. 'I
+thought you wouldn't mind if I let him finish.'
+
+'Say, what's it all about, anyway?' demanded Ogden crossly. 'Can't
+a fellow have a bit of grub in peace? You give me a pain.'
+
+Mr Mennick explained.
+
+'Your father wishes you to return to Eastnor, Ogden.'
+
+'Oh, all right. I guess I'd better go, then. Good-bye, ma.'
+
+Mrs Ford choked.
+
+'Kiss me, Ogden.'
+
+Ogden submitted to the embrace in sulky silence. The others
+comported themselves each after his or her own fashion. Mr Mennick
+fingered his chin uncomfortably. Cynthia turned to the table and
+picked up an illustrated paper. Mrs Sheridan's eyes filled with
+tears. She took a half-step towards Mrs Ford, as if about to
+speak, then drew back.
+
+'Come, Ogden,' said Mr Mennick gruffly. Necessary, this Hired
+Assassin work, but painful--devilish painful. He breathed a sigh
+of relief as he passed into the corridor with his prize.
+
+At the door Mrs Sheridan hesitated, stopped, and turned.
+
+'I'm sorry,' she said impulsively.
+
+Mrs Ford turned away without speaking, and went into the bedroom.
+
+Cynthia laid down her paper.
+
+'One moment, Mrs Sheridan.'
+
+The girl had turned to go. She stopped.
+
+'Can you give me a minute? Come in and shut the door. Won't you
+sit down? Very well. You seemed sorry for Mrs Ford just now.'
+
+'I am very sorry for Mrs Ford. Very sorry. I hate to see her
+suffering. I wish Mr Mennick had not brought me into this.'
+
+'Nesta's mad about that boy,' said Cynthia. 'Heaven knows why.
+_I_ never saw such a repulsive child in my life. However,
+there it is. I am sorry for you. I gathered from what Mr Mennick
+said that you were to have a good deal of Ogden's society for some
+time to come. How do you feel about it?'
+
+Mrs Sheridan moved towards the door.
+
+'I must be going,' she said. 'Mr Mennick will be waiting for me.'
+
+'One moment. Tell me, don't you think, after what you saw just
+now, that Mrs Ford is the proper person to have charge of Ogden?
+You see how devoted she is to him?'
+
+'May I be quite frank with you?'
+
+'Please.'
+
+'Well, then, I think that Mrs Ford's influence is the worst
+possible for Ogden. I am sorry for her, but that does not alter my
+opinion. It is entirely owing to Mrs Ford that Ogden is what he
+is. She spoiled him, indulged him in every way, never checked
+him--till he has become--well, what you yourself called him,
+repulsive.'
+
+Cynthia laughed.
+
+'Oh well,' she said, 'I only talked that mother's love stuff
+because you looked the sort of girl who would like it. We can drop
+all that now, and come down to business.'
+
+'I don't understand you.'
+
+'You will. I don't know if you think that I kidnapped Ogden from
+sheer affection for Mrs Ford. I like Nesta, but not as much as
+that. No. I'm one of the Get-Rich-Quick-Wallingfords, and I'm
+looking out for myself all the time. There's no one else to do it
+for me. I've a beastly home. My father's dead. My mother's a cat.
+So--'
+
+'Please stop,' said Mrs Sheridan. I don't know why you are telling
+me all this.'
+
+'Yes, you do. I don't know what salary Mr Ford pays you, but I
+don't suppose it's anything princely. Why don't you come over to
+us? Mrs Ford would give you the earth if you smuggled Ogden back
+to her.'
+
+'You seem to be trying to bribe me,' said Mrs Sheridan.
+
+'In this case,' said Cynthia, 'appearances aren't deceptive. I
+am.'
+
+'Good afternoon.'
+
+'Don't be a little fool.'
+
+The door slammed.
+
+'Come back!' cried Cynthia. She took a step as if to follow, but
+gave up the idea with a laugh. She sat down and began to read her
+illustrated paper again. Presently the bedroom door opened. Mrs
+Ford came in. She touched her eyes with a handkerchief as she
+entered. Cynthia looked up.
+
+'I'm very sorry, Nesta,' she said.
+
+Mrs Ford went to the window and looked out.
+
+'I'm not going to break down, if that's what you mean,' she said.
+'I don't care. And, anyhow, it shows that it _can_ be done.'
+
+Cynthia turned a page of her paper.
+
+'I've just been trying my hand at bribery and corruption.'
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+'Oh, I promised and vowed many things in your name to that
+secretary person, the female one--not Mennick--if she would help
+us. Nothing doing. I told her to let us have Ogden as soon as
+possible, C.O.D., and she withered me with a glance and went.'
+
+Mrs Ford shrugged her shoulders impatiently.
+
+'Oh, let her go. I'm sick of amateurs.'
+
+'Thank you, dear,' said Cynthia.
+
+'Oh, I know you did your best. For an amateur you did wonderfully
+well. But amateurs never really succeed. There were a dozen little
+easy precautions which we neglected to take. What we want is a
+professional; a man whose business is kidnapping; the sort of man
+who kidnaps as a matter of course; someone like Smooth Sam
+Fisher.'
+
+'My dear Nesta! Who? I don't think I know the gentleman.'
+
+'He tried to kidnap Ogden in 1906, when we were in New York. At
+least, the police put it down to him, though they could prove
+nothing. Then there was a horrible man, the police said he was
+called Buck MacGinnis. He tried in 1907. That was in Chicago.'
+
+'Good gracious! Kidnapping Ogden seems to be as popular as
+football. And I thought I was a pioneer!'
+
+Something approaching pride came into Mrs Ford's voice.
+
+'I don't suppose there's a child in America,' she said, 'who has
+had to be so carefully guarded. Why, the kidnappers had a special
+name for him--they called him "The Little Nugget". For years we
+never allowed him out of our sight without a detective to watch
+him.'
+
+'Well, Mr Ford seems to have changed all that now. I saw no
+detectives. I suppose he thinks they aren't necessary in England.
+Or perhaps he relied on Mr Broster. Poor Reggie!'
+
+'It was criminally careless of him. This will be a lesson to him.
+He will be more careful in future how he leaves Ogden at the mercy
+of anybody who cares to come along and snap him up.'
+
+'Which, incidentally, does not make your chance of getting him
+away any lighter.'
+
+'Oh, I've given up hope now,' said Mrs Ford resignedly.
+
+'_I_ haven't,' said Cynthia.
+
+There was something in her voice which made her companion turn
+sharply and look at her. Mrs Ford might affect to be resigned, but
+she was a woman of determination, and if the recent reverse had
+left her bruised, it had by no means crushed her.
+
+'Cynthia! What do you mean? What are you hinting?'
+
+'You despise amateurs, Nesta, but, for all that, it seems that
+your professionals who kidnap as a matter of course and all the
+rest of it have not been a bit more successful. It was not my want
+of experience that made me fail. It was my sex. This is man's
+work. If I had been a man, I should at least have had brute force
+to fall back upon when Mr Mennick arrived.'
+
+Mrs Ford nodded.
+
+'Yes, but--'
+
+'And,' continued Cynthia, 'as all these Smooth Sam Fishers of
+yours have failed too, it is obvious that the only way to kidnap
+Ogden is from within. We must have some man working for us in the
+enemy's camp.'
+
+'Which is impossible,' said Mrs Ford dejectedly.
+
+'Not at all.'
+
+'You know a man?'
+
+'I know _the_ man.'
+
+'Cynthia! What do you mean? Who is he?'
+
+'His name is Peter Burns.'
+
+Mrs Ford shook her head.
+
+'I don't know him.'
+
+'I'll introduce you. You'll like him.'
+
+'But, Cynthia, how do you know he would be willing to help us?'
+
+'He would do it for me,' Cynthia paused. 'You see,' she went on,
+'we are engaged to be married.'
+
+'My dear Cynthia! Why did you not tell me? When did it happen?'
+
+'Last night at the Fletchers' dance.'
+
+Mrs Ford's eyes opened.
+
+'Last night! Were you at a dance last night? And two railway
+journeys today! You must be tired to death.'
+
+'Oh, I'm all right, thanks. I suppose I shall be a wreck and not
+fit to be seen tomorrow, but just at present I feel as if nothing
+could tire me. It's the effect of being engaged, perhaps.'
+
+'Tell me about him.'
+
+'Well, he's rich, and good-looking, and amiable'--Cynthia ticked
+off these qualities on her fingers--'and I think he's brave, and
+he's certainly not so stupid as Mr Broster.'
+
+'And you're very much in love with him?'
+
+'I like him. There's no harm in Peter.'
+
+'You certainly aren't wildly enthusiastic!'
+
+'Oh, we shall hit it off quite well together. I needn't pose to
+_you_, Nesta, thank goodness! That's one reason why I'm fond
+of you. You know how I am situated. I've got to marry some one
+rich, and Peter's quite the nicest rich man I've ever met. He's
+really wonderfully unselfish. I can't understand it. With his
+money, you would expect him to be a perfect horror.'
+
+A thought seemed to strike Mrs Ford.
+
+'But, if he's so rich--' she began. 'I forget what I was going to
+say,' she broke off.
+
+'Dear Nesta, I know what you were going to say. If he's so rich,
+why should he be marrying me, when he could take his pick of half
+London? Well, I'll tell you. He's marrying me for one reason,
+because he's sorry for me: for another, because I had the sense to
+make him. He didn't think he was going to marry anyone. A few
+years ago he had a disappointment. A girl jilted him. She must
+have been a fool. He thought he was going to live the rest of his
+life alone with his broken heart. I didn't mean to allow that.
+It's taken a long time--over two years, from start to finish--but
+I've done it. He's a sentimentalist. I worked on his sympathy, and
+last night I made him propose to me at the Fletchers' dance.'
+
+Mrs Ford had not listened to these confidences unmoved. Several
+times she had tried to interrupt, but had been brushed aside. Now
+she spoke sharply.
+
+'You know I was not going to say anything of the kind. And I don't
+think you should speak in this horrible, cynical way of--of--'
+
+She stopped, flushing. There were moments when she hated Cynthia.
+These occurred for the most part when the latter, as now, stirred
+her to an exhibition of honest feeling which she looked on as
+rather unbecoming. Mrs Ford had spent twenty years trying to
+forget that her husband had married her from behind the counter of
+a general store in an Illinois village, and these lapses into the
+uncultivated genuineness of her girlhood made her uncomfortable.
+
+'I wasn't going to say anything of the kind,' she repeated.
+
+Cynthia was all smiling good-humour.
+
+'I know. I was only teasing you. "Stringing", they call it in your
+country, don't they?'
+
+Mrs Ford was mollified.
+
+'I'm sorry, Cynthia. I didn't mean to snap at you. All the
+same ...' She hesitated. What she wanted to ask smacked so
+dreadfully of Mechanicsville, Illinois. Yet she put the question
+bravely, for she was somehow feeling quite troubled about this
+unknown Mr Burns. 'Aren't you really fond of him at all, Cynthia?'
+
+Cynthia beamed.
+
+'Of course I am! He's a dear. Nothing would make me give him up.
+I'm devoted to old Peter. I only told you all that about him
+because it shows you how kind-hearted he is. He'll do anything for
+me. Well, shall I sound him about Ogden?'
+
+The magic word took Mrs Ford's mind off the matrimonial future of
+Mr Burns, and brought him into prominence in his capacity of
+knight-errant. She laughed happily. The contemplation of Mr Burns
+as knight-errant healed the sting of defeat. The affair of Mr
+Mennick began to appear in the light of a mere skirmish.
+
+'You take my breath away!' she said. 'How do you propose that Mr
+Burns shall help us?'
+
+'It's perfectly simple. You heard Mr Mennick read that telegram.
+Ogden is to be sent to a private school. Peter shall go there
+too.'
+
+'But how? I don't understand. We don't know which school Mr
+Mennick will choose.'
+
+'We can very soon find out.'
+
+'But how can Mr Burns go there?'
+
+'Nothing easier. He will be a young man who has been left a little
+money and wants to start a school of his own. He goes to Ogden's
+man and suggests that he pay a small premium to come to him for a
+term as an extra-assistant-master, to learn the business. Mr Man
+will jump at him. He will be getting the bargain of his life.
+Peter didn't get much of a degree at Oxford, but I believe he was
+wonderful at games. From a private-school point of view he's a
+treasure.'
+
+'But--would he do it?'
+
+'I think I can persuade him.'
+
+Mrs Ford kissed her with an enthusiasm which hitherto she had
+reserved for Ogden.
+
+'My darling girl,' she cried, 'if you knew how happy you have made
+me!'
+
+'I do,' said Cynthia definitely. 'And now you can do the same for
+me.'
+
+'Anything, anything! You must have some more hats.'
+
+'I don't want any more hats. I want to go with you on Lord
+Mountry's yacht to the Riviera.'
+
+'Of course,' said Mrs Ford after a slight pause, 'it isn't my
+party, you know, dear.'
+
+'No. But you can work me in, darling.'
+
+'It's quite a small party. Very quiet.'
+
+'Crowds bore me. I enjoy quiet.'
+
+Mrs Ford capitulated.
+
+'I fancy you are doing me a very good turn,' she said. 'You must
+certainly come on the yacht.'
+
+'I'll tell Peter to come straight round here now,' said Cynthia
+simply. She went to the telephone.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Part Two
+
+
+In which other interested parties, notably one Buck MacGinnis and
+a trade rival, Smooth Sam Fisher, make other plans for the Nugget's
+future. Of stirring times at a private school for young gentlemen.
+Of stratagems, spoils, and alarms by night. Of journeys ending in
+lovers' meetings. The whole related by Mr Peter Burns, gentleman
+of leisure, who forfeits that leisure in a good cause.
+
+
+
+Peter Burns's Narrative
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 1
+
+
+I
+
+I am strongly of the opinion that, after the age of twenty-one, a
+man ought not to be out of bed and awake at four in the morning.
+The hour breeds thought. At twenty-one, life being all future, it
+may be examined with impunity. But, at thirty, having become an
+uncomfortable mixture of future and past, it is a thing to be
+looked at only when the sun is high and the world full of warmth
+and optimism.
+
+This thought came to me as I returned to my rooms after the
+Fletchers' ball. The dawn was breaking as I let myself in. The air
+was heavy with the peculiar desolation of a London winter morning.
+The houses looked dead and untenanted. A cart rumbled past, and
+across the grey street a dingy black cat, moving furtively along
+the pavement, gave an additional touch of forlornness to the
+scene.
+
+I shivered. I was tired and hungry, and the reaction after the
+emotions of the night had left me dispirited.
+
+I was engaged to be married. An hour back I had proposed to
+Cynthia Drassilis. And I can honestly say that it had come as a
+great surprise to me.
+
+Why had I done it? Did I love her? It was so difficult to analyse
+love: and perhaps the mere fact that I was attempting the task was
+an answer to the question. Certainly I had never tried to do so
+five years ago when I had loved Audrey Blake. I had let myself be
+carried on from day to day in a sort of trance, content to be
+utterly happy, without dissecting my happiness. But I was five
+years younger then, and Audrey was--Audrey.
+
+I must explain Audrey, for she in her turn explains Cynthia.
+
+I have no illusions regarding my character when I first met Audrey
+Blake. Nature had given me the soul of a pig, and circumstances
+had conspired to carry on Nature's work. I loved comfort, and I
+could afford to have it. From the moment I came of age and
+relieved my trustees of the care of my money, I wrapped myself in
+comfort as in a garment. I wallowed in egoism. In fact, if,
+between my twenty-first and my twenty-fifth birthdays, I had one
+unselfish thought, or did one genuinely unselfish action, my
+memory is a blank on the point.
+
+It was at the height of this period that I became engaged to
+Audrey. Now that I can understand her better and see myself,
+impartially, as I was in those days, I can realize how indescribably
+offensive I must have been. My love was real, but that did not
+prevent its patronizing complacency being an insult. I was King
+Cophetua. If I did not actually say in so many words, 'This
+beggar-maid shall be my queen', I said it plainly and often in my
+manner. She was the daughter of a dissolute, evil-tempered artist
+whom I had met at a Bohemian club. He made a living by painting
+an occasional picture, illustrating an occasional magazine-story,
+but mainly by doing advertisement work. A proprietor of a patent
+Infants' Food, not satisfied with the bare statement that Baby
+Cried For It, would feel it necessary to push the fact home to the
+public through the medium of Art, and Mr Blake would be commissioned
+to draw the picture. A good many specimens of his work in this vein
+were to be found in the back pages of the magazines.
+
+A man may make a living by these means, but it is one that
+inclines him to jump at a wealthy son-in-law. Mr Blake jumped at
+me. It was one of his last acts on this earth. A week after he
+had--as I now suspect--bullied Audrey into accepting me, he died
+of pneumonia.
+
+His death had several results. It postponed the wedding: it
+stirred me to a very crescendo of patronage, for with the removal
+of the bread-winner the only flaw in my Cophetua pose had
+vanished: and it gave Audrey a great deal more scope than she had
+hitherto been granted for the exercise of free will in the choice
+of a husband.
+
+This last aspect of the matter was speedily brought to my notice,
+which till then it had escaped, by a letter from her, handed to me
+one night at the club, where I was sipping coffee and musing on
+the excellence of life in this best of all possible worlds.
+
+It was brief and to the point. She had been married that morning.
+
+To say that that moment was a turning point in my life would be to
+use a ridiculously inadequate phrase. It dynamited my life. In a
+sense it killed me. The man I had been died that night, regretted,
+I imagine, by few. Whatever I am today, I am certainly not the
+complacent spectator of life that I had been before that night.
+
+I crushed the letter in my hand, and sat staring at it, my pigsty
+in ruins about my ears, face to face with the fact that, even in a
+best of all possible worlds, money will not buy everything.
+
+I remember, as I sat there, a man, a club acquaintance, a bore
+from whom I had fled many a time, came and settled down beside me
+and began to talk. He was a small man, but he possessed a voice to
+which one had to listen. He talked and talked and talked. How I
+loathed him, as I sat trying to think through his stream of words.
+I see now that he saved me. He forced me out of myself. But at the
+time he oppressed me. I was raw and bleeding. I was struggling to
+grasp the incredible. I had taken Audrey's unalterable affection
+for granted. She was the natural complement to my scheme of
+comfort. I wanted her; I had chosen and was satisfied with her,
+therefore all was well. And now I had to adjust my mind to the
+impossible fact that I had lost her.
+
+Her letter was a mirror in which I saw myself. She said little,
+but I understood, and my self-satisfaction was in ribbons--and
+something deeper than self-satisfaction. I saw now that I loved
+her as I had not dreamed myself capable of loving.
+
+And all the while this man talked and talked.
+
+I have a theory that speech, persevered in, is more efficacious in
+times of trouble than silent sympathy. Up to a certain point it
+maddens almost beyond endurance; but, that point past, it soothes.
+At least, it was so in my case. Gradually I found myself hating
+him less. Soon I began to listen, then to answer. Before I left
+the club that night, the first mad frenzy, in which I could have
+been capable of anything, had gone from me, and I walked home,
+feeling curiously weak and helpless, but calm, to begin the new
+life.
+
+Three years passed before I met Cynthia. I spent those years
+wandering in many countries. At last, as one is apt to do, I
+drifted back to London, and settled down again to a life which,
+superficially, was much the same as the one I had led in the days
+before I knew Audrey. My old circle in London had been wide, and I
+found it easy to pick up dropped threads. I made new friends,
+among them Cynthia Drassilis.
+
+I liked Cynthia, and I was sorry for her. I think that, about that
+time I met her, I was sorry for most people. The shock of Audrey's
+departure had had that effect upon me. It is always the bad nigger
+who gets religion most strongly at the camp-meeting, and in my
+case 'getting religion' had taken the form of suppression of self.
+I never have been able to do things by halves, or even with a
+decent moderation. As an egoist I had been thorough in my egoism;
+and now, fate having bludgeoned that vice out of me, I found
+myself possessed of an almost morbid sympathy with the troubles of
+other people.
+
+I was extremely sorry for Cynthia Drassilis. Meeting her mother
+frequently, I could hardly fail to be. Mrs Drassilis was a
+representative of a type I disliked. She was a widow, who had been
+left with what she considered insufficient means, and her outlook
+on life was a compound of greed and querulousness. Sloane Square
+and South Kensington are full of women in her situation. Their
+position resembles that of the Ancient Mariner. 'Water, water
+everywhere, and not a drop to drink.' For 'water' in their case
+substitute 'money'. Mrs Drassilis was connected with money on all
+sides, but could only obtain it in rare and minute quantities. Any
+one of a dozen relations-in-law could, if they had wished, have
+trebled her annual income without feeling it. But they did not so
+wish. They disapproved of Mrs Drassilis. In their opinion the Hon.
+Hugo Drassilis had married beneath him--not so far beneath him as
+to make the thing a horror to be avoided in conversation and
+thought, but far enough to render them coldly polite to his wife
+during his lifetime and almost icy to his widow after his death.
+Hugo's eldest brother, the Earl of Westbourne, had never liked the
+obviously beautiful, but equally obviously second-rate, daughter
+of a provincial solicitor whom Hugo had suddenly presented to the
+family one memorable summer as his bride. He considered that, by
+doubling the income derived from Hugo's life-insurance and
+inviting Cynthia to the family seat once a year during her
+childhood, he had done all that could be expected of him in the
+matter.
+
+He had not. Mrs Drassilis expected a great deal more of him, the
+non-receipt of which had spoiled her temper, her looks, and the
+peace of mind of all who had anything much to do with her.
+
+It used to irritate me when I overheard people, as I occasionally
+have done, speak of Cynthia as hard. I never found her so myself,
+though heaven knows she had enough to make her so, to me she was
+always a sympathetic, charming friend.
+
+Ours was a friendship almost untouched by sex. Our minds fitted so
+smoothly into one another that I had no inclination to fall in
+love. I knew her too well. I had no discoveries to make about her.
+Her honest, simple soul had always been open to me to read. There
+was none of that curiosity, that sense of something beyond that
+makes for love. We had reached a point of comradeship beyond which
+neither of us desired to pass.
+
+Yet at the Fletchers' ball I asked Cynthia to marry me, and she
+consented.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Looking back, I can see that, though the determining cause was Mr
+Tankerville Gifford, it was Audrey who was responsible. She had
+made me human, capable of sympathy, and it was sympathy,
+primarily, that led me to say what I said that night.
+
+But the immediate cause was certainly young Mr Gifford.
+
+I arrived at Marlow Square, where I was to pick up Cynthia and her
+mother, a little late, and found Mrs Drassilis, florid and
+overdressed, in the drawing-room with a sleek-haired, pale young
+man known to me as Tankerville Gifford--to his intimates, of whom
+I was not one, and in the personal paragraphs of the coloured
+sporting weeklies, as 'Tanky'. I had seen him frequently at
+restaurants. Once, at the Empire, somebody had introduced me to
+him; but, as he had not been sober at the moment, he had missed
+any intellectual pleasure my acquaintanceship might have afforded
+him. Like everybody else who moves about in London, I knew all
+about him. To sum him up, he was a most unspeakable little cad,
+and, if the drawing-room had not been Mrs Drassilis's, I should
+have wondered at finding him in it.
+
+Mrs Drassilis introduced us.
+
+'I think we have already met,' I said.
+
+He stared glassily.
+
+'Don't remember.'
+
+I was not surprised.
+
+At this moment Cynthia came in. Out of the corner of my eye I
+observed a look of fuddled displeasure come into Tanky's face at
+her frank pleasure at seeing me.
+
+I had never seen her looking better. She is a tall girl, who
+carries herself magnificently. The simplicity of her dress gained
+an added dignity from comparison with the rank glitter of her
+mother's. She wore unrelieved black, a colour which set off to
+wonderful advantage the clear white of her skin and her pale-gold
+hair.
+
+'You're late, Peter,' she said, looking at the clock.
+
+'I know. I'm sorry.'
+
+'Better be pushing, what?' suggested Tanky.
+
+'My cab's waiting.'
+
+'Will you ring the bell, Mr Gifford?' said Mrs Drassilis. 'I will
+tell Parker to whistle for another.'
+
+'Take me in yours,' I heard a voice whisper in my ear.
+
+I looked at Cynthia. Her expression had not changed. Then I looked
+at Tanky Gifford, and I understood. I had seen that stuffed-fish
+look on his face before--on the occasion when I had been
+introduced to him at the Empire.
+
+'If you and Mr Gifford will take my cab,' I said to Mrs Drassilis,
+'we will follow.'
+
+Mrs Drassilis blocked the motion. I imagine that the sharp note in
+her voice was lost on Tanky, but it rang out like a clarion to me.
+
+'I am in no hurry,' she said. 'Mr Gifford, will you take Cynthia?
+I will follow with Mr Burns. You will meet Parker on the stairs.
+Tell him to call another cab.'
+
+As the door closed behind them, she turned on me like a many-coloured
+snake.
+
+'How can you be so extraordinarily tactless, Peter?' she cried.
+'You're a perfect fool. Have you no eyes?'
+
+'I'm sorry,' I said.
+
+'He's devoted to her.'
+
+'I'm sorry.'
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+'Sorry for her.'
+
+She seemed to draw herself together inside her dress. Her eyes
+glittered. My mouth felt very dry, and my heart was beginning to
+thump. We were both furiously angry. It was a moment that had been
+coming for years, and we both knew it. For my part I was glad that
+it had come. On subjects on which one feels deeply it is a relief
+to speak one's mind.
+
+'Oh!' she said at last. Her voice quivered. She was clutching at
+her self-control as it slipped from her. 'Oh! And what is my
+daughter to you, Mr Burns!'
+
+'A great friend.'
+
+'And I suppose you think it friendly to try to spoil her chances?'
+
+'If Mr Gifford is a sample of them--yes.'
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+She choked.
+
+'I see. I understand. I am going to put a stop to this once and
+for all. Do you hear? I have noticed it for a long time. Because I
+have given you the run of the house, and allowed you to come in
+and out as you pleased, like a tame cat, you presume--'
+
+'Presume--' I prompted.
+
+'You come here and stand in Cynthia's way. You trade on the fact
+that you have known us all this time to monopolize her attention.
+You spoil her chances. You--'
+
+The invaluable Parker entered to say that the cab was at the door.
+
+We drove to the Fletchers' house in silence. The spell had been
+broken. Neither of us could recapture that first, fine, careless
+rapture which had carried us through the opening stages of the
+conflict, and discussion of the subject on a less exalted plane
+was impossible. It was that blessed period of calm, the rest
+between rounds, and we observed it to the full.
+
+When I reached the ballroom a waltz was just finishing. Cynthia, a
+statue in black, was dancing with Tanky Gifford. They were
+opposite me when the music stopped, and she caught sight of me
+over his shoulder.
+
+She disengaged herself and moved quickly towards me.
+
+'Take me away,' she said under her breath. 'Anywhere. Quick.'
+
+It was no time to consider the etiquette of the ballroom. Tanky,
+startled at his sudden loneliness, seemed by his expression to be
+endeavouring to bring his mind to bear on the matter. A couple
+making for the door cut us off from him, and following them, we
+passed out.
+
+Neither of us spoke till we had reached the little room where I
+had meditated.
+
+She sat down. She was looking pale and tired.
+
+'Oh, dear!' she said.
+
+I understood. I seemed to see that journey in the cab, those
+dances, those terrible between-dances ...
+
+It was very sudden.
+
+I took her hand. She turned to me with a tired smile. There were
+tears in her eyes ...
+
+I heard myself speaking ...
+
+She was looking at me, her eyes shining. All the weariness seemed
+to have gone out of them.
+
+I looked at her.
+
+There was something missing. I had felt it when I was speaking. To
+me my voice had had no ring of conviction. And then I saw what it
+was. There was no mystery. We knew each other too well. Friendship
+kills love.
+
+She put my thought into words.
+
+'We have always been brother and sister,' she said doubtfully.
+
+'Till tonight.'
+
+'You have changed tonight? You really want me?'
+
+Did I? I tried to put the question to myself and answer it
+honestly. Yes, in a sense, I had changed tonight. There was an
+added appreciation of her fineness, a quickening of that blend of
+admiration and pity which I had always felt for her. I wanted with
+all my heart to help her, to take her away from her dreadful
+surroundings, to make her happy. But did I want her in the sense
+in which she had used the word? Did I want her as I had wanted
+Audrey Blake? I winced away from the question. Audrey belonged to
+the dead past, but it hurt to think of her.
+
+Was it merely because I was five years older now than when I had
+wanted Audrey that the fire had gone out of me?
+
+I shut my mind against my doubts.
+
+'I have changed tonight,' I said.
+
+And I bent down and kissed her.
+
+I was conscious of being defiant against somebody. And then I knew
+that the somebody was myself.
+
+I poured myself out a cup of hot coffee from the flask which
+Smith, my man, had filled against my return. It put life into me.
+The oppression lifted.
+
+And yet there remained something that made for uneasiness, a sort
+of foreboding at the back of my mind.
+
+I had taken a step in the dark, and I was afraid for Cynthia. I
+had undertaken to give her happiness. Was I certain that I could
+succeed? The glow of chivalry had left me, and I began to doubt.
+
+Audrey had taken from me something that I could not recover--poetry
+was as near as I could get to a definition of it. Yes, poetry.
+With Cynthia my feet would always be on the solid earth. To the
+end of the chapter we should be friends and nothing more.
+
+I found myself pitying Cynthia intensely. I saw her future a
+series of years of intolerable dullness. She was too good to be
+tied for life to a battered hulk like myself.
+
+I drank more coffee and my mood changed. Even in the grey of a
+winter morning a man of thirty, in excellent health, cannot pose
+to himself for long as a piece of human junk, especially if he
+comforts himself with hot coffee.
+
+My mind resumed its balance. I laughed at myself as a sentimental
+fraud. Of course I could make her happy. No man and woman had ever
+been more admirably suited to each other. As for that first
+disaster, which I had been magnifying into a life-tragedy, what of
+it? An incident of my boyhood. A ridiculous episode which--I rose
+with the intention of doing so at once--I should now proceed to
+eliminate from my life.
+
+I went quickly to my desk, unlocked it, and took out a photograph.
+
+And then--undoubtedly four o'clock in the morning is no time for a
+man to try to be single-minded and decisive--I wavered. I had
+intended to tear the thing in pieces without a glance, and fling
+it into the wastepaper-basket. But I took the glance and I
+hesitated.
+
+The girl in the photograph was small and slight, and she looked
+straight out of the picture with large eyes that met and
+challenged mine. How well I remembered them, those Irish-blue eyes
+under their expressive, rather heavy brows. How exactly the
+photographer had caught that half-wistful, half-impudent look, the
+chin tilted, the mouth curving into a smile.
+
+In a wave all my doubts had surged back upon me. Was this mere
+sentimentalism, a four-in-the-morning tribute to the pathos of the
+flying years, or did she really fill my soul and stand guard over
+it so that no successor could enter in and usurp her place?
+
+I had no answer, unless the fact that I replaced the photograph in
+its drawer was one. I felt that this thing could not be decided
+now. It was more difficult than I had thought.
+
+All my gloom had returned by the time I was in bed. Hours seemed
+to pass while I tossed restlessly aching for sleep.
+
+When I woke my last coherent thought was still clear in my mind.
+It was a passionate vow that, come what might, if those Irish eyes
+were to haunt me till my death, I would play the game loyally with
+Cynthia.
+
+
+II
+
+The telephone bell rang just as I was getting ready to call at
+Marlow Square and inform Mrs Drassilis of the position of affairs.
+Cynthia, I imagined, would have broken the news already, which
+would mitigate the embarrassment of the interview to some extent;
+but the recollection of my last night's encounter with Mrs
+Drassilis prevented me from looking forward with any joy to the
+prospect of meeting her again.
+
+Cynthia's voice greeted me as I unhooked the receiver.
+
+'Hullo, Peter! Is that you? I want you to come round here at
+once.'
+
+'I was just starting,' I said.
+
+'I don't mean Marlow Square. I'm not there. I'm at the Guelph. Ask
+for Mrs Ford's suite. It's very important. I'll tell you all about
+it when you get here. Come as soon as you can.'
+
+My rooms were conveniently situated for visits to the Hotel
+Guelph. A walk of a couple of minutes took me there. Mrs Ford's
+suite was on the third floor. I rang the bell and Cynthia opened
+the door to me.
+
+'Come in,' she said. 'You're a dear to be so quick.'
+
+'My rooms are only just round the corner.' She shut the door, and
+for the first time we looked at one another. I could not say that
+I was nervous, but there was certainly, to me, a something strange
+in the atmosphere. Last night seemed a long way off and somehow a
+little unreal. I suppose I must have shown this in my manner, for
+she suddenly broke what had amounted to a distinct pause by giving
+a little laugh. 'Peter,' she said, 'you're embarrassed.' I denied
+the charge warmly, but without real conviction. I was embarrassed.
+'Then you ought to be,' she said. 'Last night, when I was looking
+my very best in a lovely dress, you asked me to marry you. Now you
+see me again in cold blood, and you're wondering how you can back
+out of it without hurting my feelings.'
+
+I smiled. She did not. I ceased to smile. She was looking at me in
+a very peculiar manner.
+
+'Peter,' she said, 'are you sure?'
+
+'My dear old Cynthia,' I said, 'what's the matter with you?'
+
+'You are sure?' she persisted.
+
+'Absolutely, entirely sure.' I had a vision of two large eyes
+looking at me out of a photograph. It came and went in a flash.
+
+I kissed Cynthia.
+
+'What quantities of hair you have,' I said. 'It's a shame to cover
+it up.' She was not responsive. 'You're in a very queer mood
+today, Cynthia,' I went on. 'What's the matter?'
+
+'I've been thinking.'
+
+'Out with it. Something has gone wrong.' An idea flashed upon me.
+'Er--has your mother--is your mother very angry about--'
+
+'Mother's delighted. She always liked you, Peter.'
+
+I had the self-restraint to check a grin.
+
+'Then what is it?' I said. 'Tired after the dance?'
+
+'Nothing as simple as that.'
+
+'Tell me.'
+
+'It's so difficult to put it into words.'
+
+'Try.'
+
+She was playing with the papers on the table, her face turned
+away. For a moment she did not speak.
+
+'I've been worrying myself, Peter,' she said at last. 'You are so
+chivalrous and unselfish. You're quixotic. It's that that is
+troubling me. Are you marrying me just because you're sorry for
+me? Don't speak. I can tell you now if you will just let me say
+straight out what's in my mind. We have known each other for two
+years now. You know all about me. You know how--how unhappy I am
+at home. Are you marrying me just because you pity me and want to
+take me out of all that?'
+
+'My dear girl!'
+
+'You haven't answered my question.'
+
+'I answered it two minutes ago when you asked me if--'
+
+'You do love me?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+All this time she had been keeping her face averted, but now she
+turned and looked into my eyes with an abrupt intensity which, I
+confess, startled me. Her words startled me more.
+
+'Peter, do you love me as much as you loved Audrey Blake?'
+
+In the instant which divided her words from my reply my mind flew
+hither and thither, trying to recall an occasion when I could have
+mentioned Audrey to her. I was convinced that I had not done so. I
+never mentioned Audrey to anyone.
+
+There is a grain of superstition in the most level-headed man. I
+am not particularly level-headed, and I have more than a grain in
+me. I was shaken. Ever since I had asked Cynthia to marry me, it
+seemed as if the ghost of Audrey had come back into my life.
+
+'Good Lord!' I cried. 'What do you know of Audrey Blake?'
+
+She turned her face away again.
+
+'Her name seems to affect you very strongly,' she said quietly.
+
+I recovered myself.
+
+'If you ask an old soldier,' I said, 'he will tell you that a
+wound, long after it has healed, is apt to give you an occasional
+twinge.'
+
+'Not if it has really healed.'
+
+'Yes, when it has really healed--when you can hardly remember how
+you were fool enough to get it.'
+
+She said nothing.
+
+'How did you hear about--it?' I asked.
+
+'When I first met you, or soon after, a friend of yours--we
+happened to be talking about you--told me that you had been engaged
+to be married to a girl named Audrey Blake. He was to have been
+your best man, he said, but one day you wrote and told him there
+would be no wedding, and then you disappeared; and nobody saw you
+again for three years.'
+
+'Yes,' I said: 'that is all quite true.'
+
+'It seems to have been a serious affair, Peter. I mean--the sort
+of thing a man would find it hard to forget.'
+
+I tried to smile, but I knew that I was not doing it well. It was
+hurting me extraordinarily, this discussion of Audrey.
+
+'A man would find it almost impossible,' I said, 'unless he had a
+remarkably poor memory.'
+
+'I didn't mean that. You know what I mean by forget.'
+
+'Yes,' I said, 'I do.'
+
+She came quickly to me and took me by the shoulders, looking into
+my face.
+
+'Peter, can you honestly say you have forgotten her--in the sense
+I mean?'
+
+'Yes,' I said.
+
+Again that feeling swept over me--that curious sensation of being
+defiant against myself.
+
+'She does not stand between us?'
+
+'No,' I said.
+
+I could feel the effort behind the word. It was as if some
+subconscious part of me were working to keep it back.
+
+'Peter!'
+
+There was a soft smile on her face; as she raised it to mine I put
+my arms around her.
+
+She drew away with a little laugh. Her whole manner had changed.
+She was a different being from the girl who had looked so gravely
+into my eyes a moment before.
+
+'Oh, my dear boy, how terribly muscular you are! You've crushed
+me. I expect you used to be splendid at football, like Mr
+Broster.'
+
+I did not reply at once. I cannot wrap up the deeper emotions and
+put them back on their shelf directly I have no further immediate
+use for them. I slowly adjusted myself to the new key of the
+conversation.
+
+'Who's Broster?' I asked at length.
+
+'He used to be tutor to'--she turned me round and pointed--'to
+_that_.'
+
+I had seen a picture standing on one of the chairs when I entered
+the room but had taken no particular notice of it. I now gave it a
+closer glance. It was a portrait, very crudely done, of a
+singularly repulsive child of about ten or eleven years old.
+
+_Was_ he, poor chap! Well, we all have our troubles, don't
+we! Who _is_ this young thug! Not a friend of yours, I hope?'
+
+'That is Ogden, Mrs Ford's son. It's a tragedy--'
+
+'Perhaps it doesn't do him justice. Does he really squint like
+that, or is it just the artist's imagination?'
+
+'Don't make fun of it. It's the loss of that boy that is breaking
+Nesta's heart.'
+
+I was shocked.
+
+'Is he dead? I'm awfully sorry. I wouldn't for the world--'
+
+'No, no. He is alive and well. But he is dead to her. The court
+gave him into the custody of his father.'
+
+'The court?'
+
+'Mrs Ford was the wife of Elmer Ford, the American millionaire.
+They were divorced a year ago.'
+
+'I see.'
+
+Cynthia was gazing at the portrait.
+
+'This boy is quite a celebrity in his way,' she said. 'They call
+him "The Little Nugget" in America.'
+
+'Oh! Why is that?'
+
+'It's a nickname the kidnappers have for him. Ever so many
+attempts have been made to steal him.'
+
+She stopped and looked at me oddly.
+
+'I made one today, Peter,' she said. I went down to the country,
+where the boy was, and kidnapped him.'
+
+'Cynthia! What on earth do you mean?'
+
+'Don't you understand? I did it for Nesta's sake. She was breaking
+her heart about not being able to see him, so I slipped down and
+stole him away, and brought him back here.'
+
+I do not know if I was looking as amazed as I felt. I hope not,
+for I felt as if my brain were giving way. The perfect calmness
+with which she spoke of this extraordinary freak added to my
+confusion.
+
+'You're joking!'
+
+'No; I stole him.'
+
+'But, good heavens! The law! It's a penal offence, you know!'
+
+'Well, I did it. Men like Elmer Ford aren't fit to have charge of
+a child. You don't know him, but he's just an unscrupulous
+financier, without a thought above money. To think of a boy
+growing up in that tainted atmosphere--at his most impressionable
+age. It means death to any good there is in him.'
+
+My mind was still grappling feebly with the legal aspect of the
+affair.
+
+'But, Cynthia, kidnapping's kidnapping, you know! The law doesn't
+take any notice of motives. If you're caught--'
+
+She cut through my babble.
+
+'Would you have been afraid to do it, Peter?'
+
+'Well--' I began. I had not considered the point before.
+
+'I don't believe you would. If I asked you to do it for my sake--'
+
+'But, Cynthia, kidnapping, you know! It's such an infernally low-down
+game.'
+
+'I played it. Do you despise _me_?'
+
+I perspired. I could think of no other reply.
+
+'Peter,' she said, 'I understand your scruples. I know exactly how
+you feel. But can't you see that this is quite different from the
+sort of kidnapping you naturally look on as horrible? It's just
+taking a boy away from surroundings that must harm him, back to
+his mother, who worships him. It's not wrong. It's splendid.'
+
+She paused.
+
+'You _will_ do it for me, Peter?' she said.
+
+'I don't understand,' I said feebly. 'It's done. You've kidnapped
+him yourself.'
+
+'They tracked him and took him back. And now I want _you_ to
+try.' She came closer to me. 'Peter, don't you see what it will
+mean to me if you agree to try? I'm only human, I can't help, at
+the bottom of my heart, still being a little jealous of this
+Audrey Blake. No, don't say anything. Words can't cure me; but if
+you do this thing for me, I shall be satisfied. I shall _know_.'
+
+She was close beside me, holding my arm and looking into my face.
+That sense of the unreality of things which had haunted me since
+that moment at the dance came over me with renewed intensity. Life
+had ceased to be a rather grey, orderly business in which day
+succeeded day calmly and without event. Its steady stream had
+broken up into rapids, and I was being whirled away on them.
+
+'Will you do it, Peter? Say you will.'
+
+A voice, presumably mine, answered 'Yes'.
+
+'My dear old boy!'
+
+She pushed me into a chair, and, sitting on the arm of it, laid
+her hand on mine and became of a sudden wondrously business-like.
+
+'Listen,' she said, 'I'll tell you what we have arranged.'
+
+It was borne in upon me, as she began to do so, that she appeared
+from the very beginning to have been extremely confident that that
+essential part of her plans, my consent to the scheme, could be
+relied upon as something of a certainty. Women have these
+intuitions.
+
+
+III
+
+Looking back, I think I can fix the point at which this insane
+venture I had undertaken ceased to be a distorted dream, from
+which I vaguely hoped that I might shortly waken, and took shape
+as a reality of the immediate future. That moment came when I met
+Mr Arnold Abney by appointment at his club.
+
+Till then the whole enterprise had been visionary. I gathered from
+Cynthia that the boy Ogden was shortly to be sent to a preparatory
+school, and that I was to insinuate myself into this school and,
+watching my opportunity, to remove him; but it seemed to me that
+the obstacles to this comparatively lucid scheme were insuperable.
+In the first place, how were we to discover which of England's
+million preparatory schools Mr Ford, or Mr Mennick for him, would
+choose? Secondly, the plot which was to carry me triumphantly into
+this school when--or if--found, struck me as extremely thin. I
+was to pose, Cynthia told me, as a young man of private means,
+anxious to learn the business, with a view to setting up a school
+of his own. The objection to that was, I held, that I obviously
+did not want to do anything of the sort. I had not the appearance
+of a man with such an ambition. I had none of the conversation of
+such a man.
+
+I put it to Cynthia.
+
+'They would find me out in a day,' I assured her. 'A man who wants
+to set up a school has got to be a pretty brainy sort of fellow. I
+don't know anything.'
+
+'You got your degree.'
+
+'A degree. At any rate, I've forgotten all I knew.'
+
+'That doesn't matter. You have the money. Anybody with money can
+start a school, even if he doesn't know a thing. Nobody would
+think it strange.'
+
+It struck me as a monstrous slur on our educational system, but
+reflection told me it was true. The proprietor of a preparatory
+school, if he is a man of wealth, need not be able to teach, any
+more than an impresario need be able to write plays.
+
+'Well, we'll pass that for the moment,' I said. 'Here's the real
+difficulty. How are you going to find out the school Mr Ford has
+chosen?'
+
+'I have found it out already--or Nesta has. She set a detective to
+work. It was perfectly easy. Ogden's going to Mr Abney's. Sanstead
+House is the name of the place. It's in Hampshire somewhere. Quite
+a small school, but full of little dukes and earls and things.
+Lord Mountry's younger brother, Augustus Beckford, is there.'
+
+I had known Lord Mountry and his family well some years ago. I
+remembered Augustus dimly.
+
+'Mountry? Do you know him? He was up at Oxford with me.'
+
+She seemed interested.
+
+'What kind of a man is he?' she asked.
+
+'Oh, quite a good sort. Rather an ass. I haven't seen him for
+years.'
+
+'He's a friend of Nesta's. I've only met him once. He is going to
+be your reference.'
+
+'My what?'
+
+'You will need a reference. At least, I suppose you will. And,
+anyhow, if you say you know Lord Mountry it will make it simpler
+for you with Mr Abney, the brother being at the school.'
+
+'Does Mountry know about this business? Have you told him why I
+want to go to Abney's?'
+
+'Nesta told him. He thought it was very sporting of you. He will
+tell Mr Abney anything we like. By the way, Peter, you will have
+to pay a premium or something, I suppose. But Nesta will look
+after all expenses, of course.'
+
+On this point I made my only stand of the afternoon.
+
+'No,' I said; 'it's very kind of her, but this is going to be
+entirely an amateur performance. I'm doing this for you, and I'll
+stand the racket. Good heavens! Fancy taking money for a job of
+this kind!'
+
+She looked at me rather oddly.
+
+'That is very sweet of you, Peter,' she said, after a slight
+pause. 'Now let's get to work.'
+
+And together we composed the letter which led to my sitting, two
+days later, in stately conference at his club with Mr Arnold
+Abney, M.A., of Sanstead House, Hampshire.
+
+Mr Abney proved to be a long, suave, benevolent man with an Oxford
+manner, a high forehead, thin white hands, a cooing intonation,
+and a general air of hushed importance, as of one in constant
+communication with the Great. There was in his bearing something
+of the family solicitor in whom dukes confide, and something of
+the private chaplain at the Castle.
+
+He gave me the key-note to his character in the first minute of
+our acquaintanceship. We had seated ourselves at a table in the
+smoking-room when an elderly gentleman shuffled past, giving a nod
+in transit. My companion sprang to his feet almost convulsively,
+returned the salutation, and subsided slowly into his chair again.
+
+'The Duke of Devizes,' he said in an undertone. 'A most able man.
+Most able. His nephew, Lord Ronald Stokeshaye, was one of my
+pupils. A charming boy.'
+
+I gathered that the old feudal spirit still glowed to some extent
+in Mr Abney's bosom.
+
+We came to business.
+
+'So you wish to be one of us, Mr Burns, to enter the scholastic
+profession?'
+
+I tried to look as if I did.
+
+'Well, in certain circumstances, the circumstances in which
+I--ah--myself, I may say, am situated, there is no more delightful
+occupation. The work is interesting. There is the constant
+fascination of seeing these fresh young lives develop--and of
+helping them to develop--under one's eyes; in any case, I may say,
+there is the exceptional interest of being in a position to mould
+the growing minds of lads who will some day take their place among
+the country's hereditary legislators, that little knot of devoted
+men who, despite the vulgar attacks of loudmouthed demagogues,
+still do their share, and more, in the guidance of England's
+fortunes. Yes.'
+
+He paused. I said I thought so, too.
+
+'You are an Oxford man, Mr Burns, I think you told me? Ah, I have
+your letter here. Just so. You were at--ah, yes. A fine college.
+The Dean is a lifelong friend of mine. Perhaps you knew my late
+pupil, Lord Rollo?--no, he would have been since your time. A
+delightful boy. Quite delightful ... And you took your degree?
+Exactly. _And_ represented the university at both cricket and
+Rugby football? Excellent. _Mens sana in_--ah--_corpore_, in fact,
+_sano_, yes!'
+
+He folded the letter carefully and replaced it in his pocket.
+
+'Your primary object in coming to me, Mr Burns, is, I gather, to
+learn the--ah--the ropes, the business? You have had little or no
+previous experience of school-mastering?'
+
+'None whatever.'
+
+'Then your best plan would undoubtedly be to consider yourself and
+work for a time simply as an ordinary assistant-master. You would
+thus get a sound knowledge of the intricacies of the profession
+which would stand you in good stead when you decide to set up your
+own school. School-mastering is a profession, which cannot be
+taught adequately except in practice. "Only those who--ah--brave
+its dangers comprehend its mystery." Yes, I would certainly
+recommend you to begin at the foot of the ladder and go, at least
+for a time, through the mill.'
+
+'Certainly,' I said. 'Of course.'
+
+My ready acquiescence pleased him. I could see that he was
+relieved. I think he had expected me to jib at the prospect of
+actual work.
+
+'As it happens,' he said, 'my classical master left me at the end
+of last term. I was about to go to the Agency for a successor when
+your letter arrived. Would you consider--'
+
+I had to think this over. Feeling kindly disposed towards Mr
+Arnold Abney, I wished to do him as little harm as possible. I was
+going to rob him of a boy, who, while no moulding of his growing
+mind could make him into a hereditary legislator, did undoubtedly
+represent a portion of Mr Abney's annual income; and I did not
+want to increase my offence by being a useless assistant-master.
+Then I reflected that, if I was no Jowett, at least I knew enough
+Latin and Greek to teach the rudiments of those languages to small
+boys. My conscience was satisfied.
+
+'I should be delighted,' I said.
+
+'Excellent. Then let us consider that as--ah--settled,' said Mr
+Abney.
+
+There was a pause. My companion began to fiddle a little
+uncomfortably with an ash-tray. I wondered what was the matter,
+and then it came to me. We were about to become sordid. The
+discussion of terms was upon us.
+
+And as I realized this, I saw simultaneously how I could throw one
+more sop to my exigent conscience. After all, the whole thing was
+really a question of hard cash. By kidnapping Ogden I should be
+taking money from Mr Abney. By paying my premium I should be
+giving it back to him.
+
+I considered the circumstances. Ogden was now about thirteen years
+old. The preparatory-school age limit may be estimated roughly at
+fourteen. That is to say, in any event Sanstead House could only
+harbour him for one year. Mr Abney's fees I had to guess at. To be
+on the safe side, I fixed my premium at an outside figure, and,
+getting to the point at once, I named it.
+
+It was entirely satisfactory. My mental arithmetic had done me
+credit. Mr Abney beamed upon me. Over tea and muffins we became
+very friendly. In half an hour I heard more of the theory of
+school-mastering than I had dreamed existed.
+
+We said good-bye at the club front door. He smiled down at me
+benevolently from the top of the steps.
+
+'Good-bye, Mr Burns, good-bye,' he said. 'We shall meet
+at--ah--Philippi.'
+
+When I reached my rooms, I rang for Smith.
+
+'Smith,' I said, 'I want you to get some books for me first thing
+tomorrow. You had better take a note of them.'
+
+He moistened his pencil.
+
+'A Latin Grammar.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'A Greek Grammar.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Brodley Arnold's Easy Prose Sentences.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'And Caesar's Gallic Wars.'
+
+'What name, sir?'
+
+'Caesar.'
+
+'Thank you, sir. Anything else, sir?'
+
+'No, that will be all.'
+
+'Very good, sir.'
+
+He shimmered from the room.
+
+Thank goodness, Smith always has thought me mad, and is consequently
+never surprised at anything I ask him to do.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 2
+
+
+Sanstead House was an imposing building in the Georgian style. It
+stood, foursquare, in the midst of about nine acres of land. For
+the greater part of its existence, I learned later, it had been
+the private home of a family of the name of Boone, and in its
+early days the estate had been considerable. But the progress of
+the years had brought changes to the Boones. Money losses had
+necessitated the sale of land. New roads had come into being,
+cutting off portions of the estate from their centre. New
+facilities for travel had drawn members of the family away from
+home. The old fixed life of the country had changed, and in the
+end the latest Boone had come to the conclusion that to keep up so
+large and expensive a house was not worth his while.
+
+That the place should have become a school was the natural process
+of evolution. It was too large for the ordinary purchaser, and the
+estate had been so whittled down in the course of time that it was
+inadequate for the wealthy. Colonel Boone had been glad to let it
+to Mr Abney, and the school had started its career.
+
+It had all the necessary qualifications for a school. It was
+isolated. The village was two miles from its gates. It was near
+the sea. There were fields for cricket and football, and inside
+the house a number of rooms of every size, suitable for classrooms
+and dormitories.
+
+The household, when I arrived, consisted, besides Mr Abney, myself,
+another master named Glossop, and the matron, of twenty-four boys,
+the butler, the cook, the odd-job-man, two housemaids, a scullery-maid,
+and a parlour-maid. It was a little colony, cut off from the outer
+world.
+
+With the exception of Mr Abney and Glossop, a dismal man of nerves
+and mannerisms, the only person with whom I exchanged speech on my
+first evening was White, the butler. There are some men one likes
+at sight. White was one of them. Even for a butler he was a man of
+remarkably smooth manners, but he lacked that quality of austere
+aloofness which I have noticed in other butlers.
+
+He helped me unpack my box, and we chatted during the process. He
+was a man of medium height, square and muscular, with something,
+some quality of springiness, as it were, that seemed unusual in a
+butler. From one or two things he said, I gathered that he had
+travelled a good deal. Altogether he interested me. He had humour,
+and the half-hour which I had spent with Glossop made me set a
+premium on humour. I found that he, like myself, was a new-comer.
+His predecessor had left at short notice during the holidays, and
+he had secured the vacancy at about the same time that I was
+securing mine. We agreed that it was a pretty place. White, I
+gathered, regarded its isolation as a merit. He was not fond of
+village society.
+
+On the following morning, at eight o'clock, my work began.
+
+My first day had the effect of entirely revolutionizing what ideas
+I possessed of the lot of the private-school assistant-master.
+
+My view, till then, had been that the assistant-master had an easy
+time. I had only studied him from the outside. My opinion was
+based on observations made as a boy at my own private school, when
+masters were an enviable race who went to bed when they liked, had
+no preparation to do, and couldn't be caned. It seemed to me then
+that those three facts, especially the last, formed a pretty good
+basis on which to build up the Perfect Life.
+
+I had not been at Sanstead House two days before doubts began to
+creep in on this point. What the boy, observing the assistant-master
+standing about in apparently magnificent idleness, does not realize
+is that the unfortunate is really putting in a spell of exceedingly
+hard work. He is 'taking duty'. And 'taking duty' is a thing to be
+remembered, especially by a man who, like myself, has lived a life
+of fatted ease, protected from all the minor annoyances of life by
+a substantial income.
+
+Sanstead House educated me. It startled me. It showed me a hundred
+ways in which I had allowed myself to become soft and inefficient,
+without being aware of it. There may be other professions which
+call for a fiercer display of energy, but for the man with a
+private income who has loitered through life at his own pace, a
+little school-mastering is brisk enough to be a wonderful tonic.
+
+I needed it, and I got it.
+
+It was almost as if Mr Abney had realized intuitively how excellent
+the discipline of work was for my soul, for the kindly man allowed
+me to do not only my own, but most of his as well. I have talked
+with assistant-masters since, and I have gathered from them that
+headmasters of private schools are divided into two classes: the
+workers and the runners-up-to-London. Mr Abney belonged to the
+latter class. Indeed, I doubt if a finer representative of the
+class could have been found in the length and breadth of southern
+England. London drew him like a magnet.
+
+After breakfast he would take me aside. The formula was always the
+same.
+
+'Ah--Mr Burns.'
+
+Myself (apprehensively, scenting disaster, 'like some wild
+creature caught within a trap, who sees the trapper coming through
+the wood'). 'Yes? Er--yes?'
+
+'I am afraid I shall be obliged to run up to London today. I have
+received an important letter from--' And then he would name some
+parent or some prospective parent. (By 'prospective' I mean one
+who was thinking of sending his son to Sanstead House. You may
+have twenty children, but unless you send them to his school, a
+schoolmaster will refuse to dignify you with the name of parent.)
+
+Then, 'He wishes--ah--to see me,' or, in the case of titled
+parents, 'He wishes--ah--to talk things over with me.' The
+distinction is subtle, but he always made it.
+
+And presently the cab would roll away down the long drive, and my
+work would begin, and with it that soul-discipline to which I have
+alluded.
+
+'Taking duty' makes certain definite calls upon a man. He has to
+answer questions; break up fights; stop big boys bullying small
+boys; prevent small boys bullying smaller boys; check stone-throwing,
+going-on-the-wet-grass, worrying-the-cook, teasing-the-dog,
+making-too-much-noise, and, in particular, discourage all forms
+of _hara-kiri_ such as tree-climbing, water-spout-scaling,
+leaning-too-far-out-of-the-window, sliding-down-the-banisters,
+pencil-swallowing, and ink-drinking-because-somebody-dared-me-to.
+
+At intervals throughout the day there are further feats to
+perform. Carving the joint, helping the pudding, playing football,
+reading prayers, teaching, herding stragglers in for meals, and
+going round the dormitories to see that the lights are out, are a
+few of them.
+
+I wanted to oblige Cynthia, if I could, but there were moments
+during the first day or so when I wondered how on earth I was
+going to snatch the necessary time to combine kidnapping with my
+other duties. Of all the learned professions it seemed to me that
+that of the kidnapper most urgently demanded certain intervals for
+leisured thought, in which schemes and plots might be matured.
+
+Schools vary. Sanstead House belonged to the more difficult class.
+Mr Abney's constant flittings did much to add to the burdens of
+his assistants, and his peculiar reverence for the aristocracy did
+even more. His endeavour to make Sanstead House a place where the
+delicately nurtured scions of the governing class might feel as
+little as possible the temporary loss of titled mothers led him
+into a benevolent tolerance which would have unsettled angels.
+
+Success or failure for an assistant-master is, I consider, very
+much a matter of luck. My colleague, Glossop, had most of the
+qualities that make for success, but no luck. Properly backed up
+by Mr Abney, he might have kept order. As it was, his class-room
+was a bear-garden, and, when he took duty, chaos reigned.
+
+I, on the other hand, had luck. For some reason the boys agreed to
+accept me. Quite early in my sojourn I enjoyed that sweetest triumph
+of the assistant-master's life, the spectacle of one boy smacking
+another boy's head because the latter persisted in making a noise
+after I had told him to stop. I doubt if a man can experience so
+keenly in any other way that thrill which comes from the knowledge
+that the populace is his friend. Political orators must have the
+same sort of feeling when their audience clamours for the ejection
+of a heckler, but it cannot be so keen. One is so helpless with boys,
+unless they decide that they like one.
+
+It was a week from the beginning of the term before I made the
+acquaintance of the Little Nugget.
+
+I had kept my eyes open for him from the beginning, and when I
+discovered that he was not at school, I had felt alarmed. Had
+Cynthia sent me down here, to work as I had never worked before,
+on a wild-goose chase?
+
+Then, one morning, Mr Abney drew me aside after breakfast.
+
+'Ah--Mr Burns.'
+
+It was the first time that I had heard those soon-to-be-familiar
+words.
+
+'I fear I shall be compelled to run up to London today. I have an
+important appointment with the father of a boy who is coming to
+the school. He wishes--ah--to see me.'
+
+This might be the Little Nugget at last.
+
+I was right. During the interval before school, Augustus Beckford
+approached me. Lord Mountry's brother was a stolid boy with
+freckles. He had two claims to popular fame. He could hold his
+breath longer than any other boy in the school, and he always got
+hold of any piece of gossip first.
+
+'There's a new kid coming tonight, sir,' he said--'an American
+kid. I heard him talking about it to the matron. The kid's name's
+Ford, I believe the kid's father's awfully rich. Would you like to
+be rich, sir? I wish I was rich. If I was rich, I'd buy all sorts
+of things. I believe I'm going to be rich when I grow up. I heard
+father talking to a lawyer about it. There's a new parlour-maid
+coming soon, sir. I heard cook telling Emily. I'm blowed if I'd
+like to be a parlour-maid, would you, sir? I'd much rather be a
+cook.'
+
+He pondered the point for a moment. When he spoke again, it was to
+touch on a still more profound problem.
+
+'If you wanted a halfpenny to make up twopence to buy a lizard,
+what would you do, sir?'
+
+He got it.
+
+Ogden Ford, the El Dorado of the kidnapping industry, entered
+Sanstead House at a quarter past nine that evening. He was
+preceded by a Worried Look, Mr Arnold Abney, a cabman bearing a
+large box, and the odd-job man carrying two suitcases. I have
+given precedence to the Worried Look because it was a thing by
+itself. To say that Mr Abney wore it would be to create a wrong
+impression. Mr Abney simply followed in its wake. He was concealed
+behind it much as Macbeth's army was concealed behind the woods of
+Dunsinane.
+
+I only caught a glimpse of Ogden as Mr Abney showed him into his
+study. He seemed a self-possessed boy, very like but, if anything,
+uglier than the portrait of him which I had seen at the Hotel
+Guelph.
+
+A moment later the door opened, and my employer came out. He
+appeared relieved at seeing me.
+
+'Ah, Mr Burns, I was about to go in search of you. Can you spare
+me a moment? Let us go into the dining-room.'
+
+'That is a boy called Ford, Mr Burns,' he said, when he had closed
+the door. 'A rather--er--remarkable boy. He is an American, the
+son of a Mr Elmer Ford. As he will be to a great extent in your
+charge, I should like to prepare you for his--ah--peculiarities.'
+
+'Is he peculiar?'
+
+A faint spasm disturbed Mr Abney's face. He applied a silk
+handkerchief to his forehead before he replied.
+
+'In many ways, judged by the standard of the lads who have passed
+through my hands--boys, of course, who, it is only fair to add,
+have enjoyed the advantages of a singularly refined home-life--he
+may be said to be--ah--somewhat peculiar. While I have no doubt
+that _au fond ... au fond_ he is a charming boy, quite charming,
+at present he is--shall I say?--peculiar. I am disposed to imagine
+that he has been, from childhood up, systematically indulged.
+There has been in his life, I suspect, little or no discipline.
+The result has been to make him curiously unboylike. There is a
+complete absence of that diffidence, that childish capacity for
+surprise, which I for one find so charming in our English boys.
+Little Ford appears to be completely blase'. He has tastes and ideas
+which are precocious, and--unusual in a boy of his age.... He
+expresses himself in a curious manner sometimes.... He seems to have
+little or no reverence for--ah--constituted authority.'
+
+He paused while he passed his handkerchief once more over his
+forehead.
+
+'Mr Ford, the boy's father, who struck me as a man of great
+ability, a typical American merchant prince, was singularly frank
+with me about his domestic affairs as they concerned his son. I
+cannot recall his exact words, but the gist of what he said was
+that, until now, Mrs Ford had had sole charge of the boy's
+upbringing, and--Mr Ford was singularly outspoken--was too
+indulgent, in fact--ah--spoilt him. Indeed--you will, of course,
+respect my confidence--that was the real reason for the divorce
+which--ah--has unhappily come about. Mr Ford regards this school
+as in a measure--shall I say?--an antidote. He wishes there to be
+no lack of wholesome discipline. So that I shall expect you, Mr
+Burns, to check firmly, though, of course, kindly, such habits of
+his as--ah--cigarette-smoking. On our journey down he smoked
+incessantly. I found it impossible--without physical violence--to
+induce him to stop. But, of course, now that he is actually at the
+school, and subject to the discipline of the school ...'
+
+'Exactly,' I said.
+
+'That was all I wished to say. Perhaps it would be as well if you
+saw him now, Mr Burns. You will find him in the study.'
+
+He drifted away, and I went to the study to introduce myself.
+
+A cloud of tobacco-smoke rising above the back of an easy-chair
+greeted me as I opened the door. Moving into the room, I perceived
+a pair of boots resting on the grate. I stepped to the light, and
+the remainder of the Little Nugget came into view.
+
+He was lying almost at full length in the chair, his eyes fixed in
+dreamy abstraction upon the ceiling. As I came towards him, he
+drew at the cigarette between his fingers, glanced at me, looked
+away again, and expelled another mouthful of smoke. He was not
+interested in me.
+
+Perhaps this indifference piqued me, and I saw him with prejudiced
+eyes. At any rate, he seemed to me a singularly unprepossessing
+youth. That portrait had flattered him. He had a stout body and a
+round, unwholesome face. His eyes were dull, and his mouth dropped
+discontentedly. He had the air of one who is surfeited with life.
+
+I am disposed to imagine, as Mr Abney would have said, that my
+manner in addressing him was brisker and more incisive than Mr
+Abney's own. I was irritated by his supercilious detachment.
+
+'Throw away that cigarette,' I said.
+
+To my amazement, he did, promptly. I was beginning to wonder
+whether I had not been too abrupt--he gave me a curious sensation
+of being a man of my own age--when he produced a silver case from
+his pocket and opened it. I saw that the cigarette in the fender
+was a stump.
+
+I took the case from his hand and threw it on to a table. For the
+first time he seemed really to notice my existence.
+
+'You've got a hell of a nerve,' he said.
+
+He was certainly exhibiting his various gifts in rapid order,
+This, I took it, was what Mr Abney had called 'expressing himself
+in a curious manner'.
+
+'And don't swear,' I said.
+
+We eyed each other narrowly for the space of some seconds.
+
+'Who are you?' he demanded.
+
+I introduced myself.
+
+'What do you want to come butting in for?'
+
+'I am paid to butt in. It's the main duty of an assistant-master.'
+
+'Oh, you're the assistant-master, are you?'
+
+'One of them. And, in passing--it's a small technical point--you're
+supposed to call me "sir" during these invigorating little chats
+of ours.'
+
+'Call you what? Up an alley!'
+
+'I beg your pardon?'
+
+'Fade away. Take a walk.'
+
+I gathered that he was meaning to convey that he had considered my
+proposition, but regretted his inability to entertain it.
+
+'Didn't you call your tutor "sir" when you were at home?'
+
+'Me? Don't make me laugh. I've got a cracked lip.'
+
+'I gather you haven't an overwhelming respect for those set in
+authority over you.'
+
+'If you mean my tutors, I should say nix.'
+
+'You use the plural. Had you a tutor before Mr Broster?'
+
+He laughed.
+
+'Had I? Only about ten million.'
+
+'Poor devils!' I said.
+
+'Who's swearing now?'
+
+The point was well taken. I corrected myself.
+
+'Poor brutes! What happened to them? Did they commit suicide?'
+
+'Oh, they quit. And I don't blame them. I'm a pretty tough
+proposition, and you don't want to forget it.'
+
+He reached out for the cigarette-case. I pocketed it.
+
+'You make me tired,' he said.
+
+'The sensation's mutual.'
+
+'Do you think you can swell around, stopping me doing things?'
+
+'You've defined my job exactly.'
+
+'Guess again. I know all about this joint. The hot-air merchant
+was telling me about it on the train.'
+
+I took the allusion to be to Mr Arnold Abney, and thought it
+rather a happy one.
+
+'He's the boss, and nobody but him is allowed to hit the fellows.
+If you tried it, you'd lose your job. And he ain't going to,
+because the Dad's paying double fees, and he's scared stiff he'll
+lose me if there's any trouble.'
+
+'You seem to have a grasp of the position.'
+
+'Bet your life I have.'
+
+I looked at him as he sprawled in the chair.
+
+'You're a funny kid,' I said.
+
+He stiffened, outraged. His little eyes gleamed.
+
+'Say, it looks to me as if you wanted making a head shorter.
+You're a darned sight too fresh. Who do you think you are,
+anyway?'
+
+'I'm your guardian angel,' I replied. 'I'm the fellow who's going
+to take you in hand and make you a little ray of sunshine about
+the home. I know your type backwards. I've been in America and
+studied it on its native asphalt. You superfatted millionaire kids
+are all the same. If Dad doesn't jerk you into the office before
+you're out of knickerbockers, you just run to seed. You get to
+think you're the only thing on earth, and you go on thinking it
+till one day somebody comes along and shows you you're not, and
+then you get what's coming to you--good and hard.'
+
+He began to speak, but I was on my favourite theme, one I had
+studied and brooded upon since the evening when I had received a
+certain letter at my club.
+
+'I knew a man,' I said, 'who started out just like you. He always
+had all the money he wanted: never worked: grew to think himself a
+sort of young prince. What happened?'
+
+He yawned.
+
+'I'm afraid I'm boring you,' I said.
+
+'Go on. Enjoy yourself,' said the Little Nugget.
+
+'Well, it's a long story, so I'll spare you it. But the moral of
+it was that a boy who is going to have money needs to be taken in
+hand and taught sense while he's young.'
+
+He stretched himself.
+
+'You talk a lot. What do you reckon you're going to do?'
+
+I eyed him thoughtfully.
+
+'Well, everything's got to have a beginning,' I said. 'What you
+seem to me to want most is exercise. I'll take you for a run every
+day. You won't know yourself at the end of a week.'
+
+'Say, if you think you're going to get _me_ to run--'
+
+'When I grab your little hand, and start running, you'll find
+you'll soon be running too. And, years hence, when you win the
+Marathon at the Olympic Games, you'll come to me with tears in
+your eyes, and you'll say--'
+
+'Oh, slush!'
+
+'I shouldn't wonder.' I looked at my watch. 'Meanwhile, you had
+better go to bed. It's past your proper time.'
+
+He stared at me in open-eyed amazement.
+
+'Bed!'
+
+'Bed.'
+
+He seemed more amused than annoyed.
+
+'Say, what time do you think I usually go to bed?'
+
+'I know what time you go here. Nine o'clock.'
+
+As if to support my words, the door opened, and Mrs Attwell, the
+matron, entered.
+
+'I think it's time he came to bed, Mr Burns.'
+
+'Just what I was saying, Mrs Attwell.'
+
+'You're crazy,' observed the Little Nugget. 'Bed nothing!'
+
+Mrs Attwell looked at me despairingly.
+
+'I never saw such a boy!'
+
+The whole machinery of the school was being held up by this legal
+infant. Any vacillation now, and Authority would suffer a set-back
+from which it would be hard put to it to recover. It seemed to me
+a situation that called for action.
+
+I bent down, scooped the Little Nugget out of his chair like an
+oyster, and made for the door. Outside he screamed incessantly. He
+kicked me in the stomach and then on the knee. He continued to
+scream. He screamed all the way upstairs. He was screaming when we
+reached his room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Half an hour later I sat in the study, smoking thoughtfully.
+Reports from the seat of war told of a sullen and probably only
+temporary acquiescence with Fate on the part of the enemy. He was
+in bed, and seemed to have made up his mind to submit to the
+position. An air of restrained jubilation prevailed among the
+elder members of the establishment. Mr Abney was friendly and Mrs
+Attwell openly congratulatory. I was something like the hero of
+the hour.
+
+But was I jubilant? No, I was inclined to moodiness. Unforeseen
+difficulties had arisen in my path. Till now, I had regarded this
+kidnapping as something abstract. Personality had not entered into
+the matter. If I had had any picture in my mind's eye, it was of
+myself stealing away softly into the night with a docile child,
+his little hand laid trustfully in mine. From what I had seen and
+heard of Ogden Ford in moments of emotion, it seemed to me that
+whoever wanted to kidnap him with any approach to stealth would
+need to use chloroform.
+
+Things were getting very complex.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 3
+
+
+I have never kept a diary, and I have found it, in consequence,
+somewhat difficult, in telling this narrative, to arrange the
+minor incidents of my story in their proper sequence. I am writing
+by the light of an imperfect memory; and the work is complicated
+by the fact that the early days of my sojourn at Sanstead House
+are a blur, a confused welter like a Futurist picture, from which
+emerge haphazard the figures of boys--boys working, boys eating,
+boys playing football, boys whispering, shouting, asking
+questions, banging doors, jumping on beds, and clattering upstairs
+and along passages, the whole picture faintly scented with a
+composite aroma consisting of roast beef, ink, chalk, and that
+curious classroom smell which is like nothing else on earth.
+
+I cannot arrange the incidents. I can see Mr Abney, furrowed as to
+the brow and drooping at the jaw, trying to separate Ogden Ford
+from a half-smoked cigar-stump. I can hear Glossop, feverishly
+angry, bellowing at an amused class. A dozen other pictures come
+back to me, but I cannot place them in their order; and perhaps,
+after all, their sequence is unimportant. This story deals with
+affairs which were outside the ordinary school life.
+
+With the war between the Little Nugget and Authority, for
+instance, the narrative has little to do. It is a subject for an
+epic, but it lies apart from the main channel of the story, and
+must be avoided. To tell of his gradual taming, of the chaos his
+advent caused until we became able to cope with him, would be to
+turn this story into a treatise on education. It is enough to say
+that the process of moulding his character and exorcising the
+devil which seemed to possess him was slow.
+
+It was Ogden who introduced tobacco-chewing into the school, with
+fearful effects one Saturday night on the aristocratic interiors
+of Lords Gartridge and Windhall and Honourables Edwin Bellamy and
+Hildebrand Kyne. It was the ingenious gambling-game imported by
+Ogden which was rapidly undermining the moral sense of twenty-four
+innocent English boys when it was pounced upon by Glossop. It was
+Ogden who, on the one occasion when Mr Abney reluctantly resorted
+to the cane, and administered four mild taps with it, relieved his
+feelings by going upstairs and breaking all the windows in all the
+bedrooms.
+
+We had some difficult young charges at Sanstead House. Abney's
+policy of benevolent toleration ensured that. But Ogden Ford stood
+alone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have said that it is difficult for me to place the lesser events
+of my narrative in their proper order. I except three, however
+which I will call the Affair of the Strange American, the Adventure
+of the Sprinting Butler, and the Episode of the Genial Visitor.
+
+I will describe them singly, as they happened.
+
+It was the custom at Sanstead House for each of the assistant
+masters to take half of one day in every week as a holiday. The
+allowance was not liberal, and in most schools, I believe, it is
+increased; but Mr Abney was a man with peculiar views on other
+people's holidays, and Glossop and I were accordingly restricted.
+
+My day was Wednesday; and on the Wednesday of which I write I
+strolled towards the village. I had in my mind a game of billiards
+at the local inn. Sanstead House and its neighbourhood were
+lacking in the fiercer metropolitan excitements, and billiards at
+the 'Feathers' constituted for the pleasure-seeker the beginning
+and end of the Gay Whirl.
+
+There was a local etiquette governing the game of billiards at the
+'Feathers'. You played the marker a hundred up, then you took him
+into the bar-parlour and bought him refreshment. He raised his
+glass, said, 'To you, sir', and drained it at a gulp. After that
+you could, if you wished, play another game, or go home, as your
+fancy dictated.
+
+There was only one other occupant of the bar-parlour when we
+adjourned thither, and a glance at him told me that he was not
+ostentatiously sober. He was lying back in a chair, with his feet
+on the side-table, and crooning slowly, in a melancholy voice, the
+following words:
+
+  _'I don't care--if he wears--a crown,
+  He--can't--keep kicking my--dawg aroun'.'_
+
+He was a tough, clean-shaven man, with a broken nose, over which
+was tilted a soft felt hat. His wiry limbs were clad in what I put
+down as a mail-order suit. I could have placed him by his
+appearance, if I had not already done so by his voice, as an
+East-side New Yorker. And what an East-side New Yorker could be
+doing in Sanstead it was beyond me to explain.
+
+We had hardly seated ourselves when he rose and lurched out. I saw
+him pass the window, and his assertion that no crowned head should
+molest his dog came faintly to my ears as he went down the street.
+
+'American!' said Miss Benjafield, the stately barmaid, with strong
+disapproval. 'They're all alike.'
+
+I never contradict Miss Benjafield--one would as soon contradict
+the Statue of Liberty--so I merely breathed sympathetically.
+
+'What's he here for I'd like to know?'
+
+It occurred to me that I also should like to know. In another
+thirty hours I was to find out.
+
+I shall lay myself open to a charge of denseness such as even
+Doctor Watson would have scorned when I say that, though I thought
+of the matter a good deal on my way back to the school, I did not
+arrive at the obvious solution. Much teaching and taking of duty
+had dulled my wits, and the presence at Sanstead House of the
+Little Nugget did not even occur to me as a reason why strange
+Americans should be prowling in the village.
+
+We now come to the remarkable activity of White, the butler.
+
+It happened that same evening.
+
+It was not late when I started on my way back to the house, but the
+short January day was over, and it was very dark as I turned in at
+the big gate of the school and made my way up the drive. The drive
+at Sanstead House was a fine curving stretch of gravel, about two
+hundred yards in length, flanked on either side by fir trees and
+rhododendrons. I stepped out briskly, for it had begun to freeze.
+Just as I caught sight through the trees of the lights of the
+windows, there came to me the sound of running feet.
+
+I stopped. The noise grew louder. There seemed to be two runners,
+one moving with short, quick steps, the other, the one in front,
+taking a longer stride.
+
+I drew aside instinctively. In another moment, making a great
+clatter on the frozen gravel, the first of the pair passed me; and
+as he did so, there was a sharp crack, and something sang through
+the darkness like a large mosquito.
+
+The effect of the sound on the man who had been running was
+immediate. He stopped in his stride and dived into the bushes. His
+footsteps thudded faintly on the turf.
+
+The whole incident had lasted only a few seconds, and I was still
+standing there when I was aware of the other man approaching. He
+had apparently given up the pursuit, for he was walking quite
+slowly. He stopped within a few feet of me and I heard him
+swearing softly to himself.
+
+'Who's that?' I cried sharply. The crack of the pistol had given a
+flick to my nerves. Mine had been a sheltered life, into which
+hitherto revolver-shots had not entered, and I was resenting this
+abrupt introduction of them. I felt jumpy and irritated.
+
+It gave me a malicious pleasure to see that I had startled the
+unknown dispenser of shocks quite as much as he had startled me.
+The movement he made as he faced towards my direction was almost a
+leap; and it suddenly flashed upon me that I had better at once
+establish my identity as a non-combatant. I appeared to have
+wandered inadvertently into the midst of a private quarrel, one
+party to which--the one standing a couple of yards from me with a
+loaded revolver in his hand--was evidently a man of impulse, the
+sort of man who would shoot first and inquire afterwards.
+
+'I'm Mr Burns,' I said. 'I'm one of the assistant-masters. Who are
+you?'
+
+'Mr Burns?'
+
+Surely that rich voice was familiar.
+
+'White?' I said.
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'What on earth do you think you're doing? Have you gone mad? Who
+was that man?'
+
+'I wish I could tell you, sir. A very doubtful character. I found
+him prowling at the back of the house very suspiciously. He took
+to his heels and I followed him.'
+
+'But'--I spoke querulously, my orderly nature was shocked--'you
+can't go shooting at people like that just because you find them
+at the back of the house. He might have been a tradesman.'
+
+'I think not, sir.'
+
+'Well, so do I, if it comes to that. He didn't behave like one. But
+all the same--'
+
+'I take your point, sir. But I was merely intending to frighten
+him.'
+
+'You succeeded all right. He went through those bushes like a
+cannon-ball.'
+
+I heard him chuckle.
+
+'I think I may have scared him a little, sir.'
+
+'We must phone to the police-station. Could you describe the man?'
+
+'I think not, sir. It was very dark. And, if I may make the
+suggestion, it would be better not to inform the police. I have a
+very poor opinion of these country constables.'
+
+'But we can't have men prowling--'
+
+'If you will permit me, sir. I say--let them prowl. It's the only
+way to catch them.'
+
+'If you think this sort of thing is likely to happen again I must
+tell Mr Abney.'
+
+'Pardon me, sir, I think it would be better not. He impresses me
+as a somewhat nervous gentleman, and it would only disturb him.'
+
+At this moment it suddenly struck me that, in my interest in the
+mysterious fugitive, I had omitted to notice what was really the
+most remarkable point in the whole affair. How did White happen to
+have a revolver at all? I have met many butlers who behaved
+unexpectedly in their spare time. One I knew played the fiddle;
+another preached Socialism in Hyde Park. But I had never yet come
+across a butler who fired pistols.
+
+'What were you doing with a revolver?' I asked.
+
+He hesitated.
+
+'May I ask you to keep it to yourself, sir, if I tell you
+something?' he said at last.
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+'I'm a detective.'
+
+'What!'
+
+'A Pinkerton's man, Mr Burns.'
+
+I felt like one who sees the 'danger' board over thin ice. But for
+this information, who knew what rash move I might not have made,
+under the assumption that the Little Nugget was unguarded? At the
+same time, I could not help reflecting that, if things had been
+complex before, they had become far more so in the light of this
+discovery. To spirit Ogden away had never struck me, since his
+arrival at the school, as an easy task. It seemed more difficult
+now than ever.
+
+I had the sense to affect astonishment. I made my imitation of an
+innocent assistant-master astounded by the news that the butler is
+a detective in disguise as realistic as I was able. It appeared to
+be satisfactory, for he began to explain.
+
+'I am employed by Mr Elmer Ford to guard his son. There are
+several parties after that boy, Mr Burns. Naturally he is a
+considerable prize. Mr Ford would pay a large sum to get back his
+only son if he were kidnapped. So it stands to reason he takes
+precautions.'
+
+'Does Mr Abney know what you are?'
+
+'No, sir. Mr Abney thinks I am an ordinary butler. You are the
+only person who knows, and I have only told you because you have
+happened to catch me in a rather queer position for a butler to be
+in. You will keep it to yourself, sir? It doesn't do for it to get
+about. These things have to be done quietly. It would be bad for
+the school if my presence here were advertised. The other parents
+wouldn't like it. They would think that their sons were in danger,
+you see. It would be disturbing for them. So if you will just
+forget what I've been telling you, Mr Burns--'
+
+I assured him that I would. But I was very far from meaning it. If
+there was one thing which I intended to bear in mind, it was the
+fact that watchful eyes besides mine were upon that Little Nugget.
+
+The third and last of this chain of occurrences, the Episode of
+the Genial Visitor, took place on the following day, and may be
+passed over briefly. All that happened was that a well-dressed
+man, who gave his name as Arthur Gordon, of Philadelphia, dropped
+in unexpectedly to inspect the school. He apologized for not
+having written to make an appointment, but explained that he was
+leaving England almost immediately. He was looking for a school
+for his sister's son, and, happening to meet his business
+acquaintance, Mr Elmer Ford, in London, he had been recommended to
+Mr Abney. He made himself exceedingly pleasant. He was a breezy,
+genial man, who joked with Mr Abney, chaffed the boys, prodded the
+Little Nugget in the ribs, to that overfed youth's discomfort,
+made a rollicking tour of the house, in the course of which he
+inspected Ogden's bedroom--in order, he told Mr Abney, to be able
+to report conscientiously to his friend Ford that the son and heir
+was not being pampered too much, and departed in a whirl of
+good-humour, leaving every one enthusiastic over his charming
+personality. His last words were that everything was thoroughly
+satisfactory, and that he had learned all he wanted to know.
+
+Which, as was proved that same night, was the simple truth.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 4
+
+
+I
+
+I owed it to my colleague Glossop that I was in the centre of the
+surprising things that occurred that night. By sheer weight of
+boredom, Glossop drove me from the house, so that it came about
+that, at half past nine, the time at which the affair began, I was
+patrolling the gravel in front of the porch.
+
+It was the practice of the staff of Sanstead House School to
+assemble after dinner in Mr Abney's study for coffee. The room was
+called the study, but it was really more of a master's common
+room. Mr Abney had a smaller sanctum of his own, reserved
+exclusively for himself.
+
+On this particular night he went there early, leaving me alone
+with Glossop. It is one of the drawbacks of the desert-island
+atmosphere of a private school that everybody is always meeting
+everybody else. To avoid a man for long is impossible. I had been
+avoiding Glossop as long as I could, for I knew that he wanted to
+corner me with a view to a heart-to-heart talk on Life Insurance.
+
+These amateur Life Insurance agents are a curious band. The world
+is full of them. I have met them at country-houses, at seaside
+hotels, on ships, everywhere; and it has always amazed me that
+they should find the game worth the candle. What they add to their
+incomes I do not know, but it cannot be very much, and the trouble
+they have to take is colossal. Nobody loves them, and they must
+see it; yet they persevere. Glossop, for instance, had been trying
+to buttonhole me every time there was a five minutes' break in the
+day's work.
+
+He had his chance now, and he did not mean to waste it. Mr Abney
+had scarcely left the room when he began to exude pamphlets and
+booklets at every pocket.
+
+I eyed him sourly, as he droned on about 'reactionable endowment',
+'surrender-value', and 'interest accumulating on the tontine
+policy', and tried, as I did so, to analyse the loathing I felt
+for him. I came to the conclusion that it was partly due to his
+pose of doing the whole thing from purely altruistic motives,
+entirely for my good, and partly because he forced me to face the
+fact that I was not always going to be young. In an abstract
+fashion I had already realized that I should in time cease to be
+thirty, but the way in which Glossop spoke of my sixty-fifth
+birthday made me feel as if it was due tomorrow. He was a man with
+a manner suggestive of a funeral mute suffering from suppressed
+jaundice, and I had never before been so weighed down with a sense
+of the inevitability of decay and the remorseless passage of time.
+I could feel my hair whitening.
+
+A need for solitude became imperative; and, murmuring something
+about thinking it over, I escaped from the room.
+
+Except for my bedroom, whither he was quite capable of following
+me, I had no refuge but the grounds. I unbolted the front door and
+went out.
+
+It was still freezing, and, though the stars shone, the trees grew
+so closely about the house that it was too dark for me to see more
+than a few feet in front of me.
+
+I began to stroll up and down. The night was wonderfully still. I
+could hear somebody walking up the drive--one of the maids, I
+supposed, returning from her evening out. I could even hear a bird
+rustling in the ivy on the walls of the stables.
+
+I fell into a train of thought. I think my mind must still have
+been under Glossop's gloom-breeding spell, for I was filled with a
+sense of the infinite pathos of Life. What was the good of it all?
+Why was a man given chances of happiness without the sense to
+realize and use them? If Nature had made me so self-satisfied that
+I had lost Audrey because of my self-satisfaction why had she not
+made me so self-satisfied that I could lose her without a pang?
+Audrey! It annoyed me that, whenever I was free for a moment from
+active work, my thoughts should keep turning to her. It frightened
+me, too. Engaged to Cynthia, I had no right to have such thoughts.
+
+Perhaps it was the mystery which hung about her that kept her in
+my mind. I did not know where she was. I did not know how she
+fared. I did not know what sort of a man it was whom she had
+preferred to me. That, it struck me, was the crux of the matter.
+She had vanished absolutely with another man whom I had never seen
+and whose very name I did not know. I had been beaten by an unseen
+foe.
+
+I was deep in a very slough of despond when suddenly things began
+to happen. I might have known that Sanstead House would never
+permit solitary brooding on Life for long. It was a place of
+incident, not of abstract speculation.
+
+I had reached the end of my 'beat', and had stopped to relight my
+pipe, when drama broke loose with the swift unexpectedness which
+was characteristic of the place. The stillness of the night was
+split by a sound which I could have heard in a gale and recognized
+among a hundred conflicting noises. It was a scream, a shrill,
+piercing squeal that did not rise to a crescendo, but started at
+its maximum and held the note; a squeal which could only proceed
+from one throat: the deafening war-cry of the Little Nugget.
+
+I had grown accustomed, since my arrival at Sanstead House, to a
+certain quickening of the pace of life, but tonight events
+succeeded one another with a rapidity which surprised me. A whole
+cinematograph-drama was enacted during the space of time it takes
+for a wooden match to burn.
+
+At the moment when the Little Nugget gave tongue, I had just
+struck one, and I stood, startled into rigidity, holding it in the
+air as if I had decided to constitute myself a sort of limelight
+man to the performance.
+
+It cannot have been more than a few seconds later before some
+person unknown nearly destroyed me.
+
+I was standing, holding my match and listening to the sounds of
+confusion indoors, when this person, rounding the angle of the
+house in a desperate hurry, emerged from the bushes and rammed me
+squarely.
+
+He was a short man, or he must have crouched as he ran, for his
+shoulder--a hard, bony shoulder--was precisely the same distance
+from the ground as my solar plexus. In the brief impact which
+ensued between the two, the shoulder had the advantage of being in
+motion, while the solar plexus was stationary, and there was no
+room for any shadow of doubt as to which had the worst of it.
+
+That the mysterious unknown was not unshaken by the encounter was
+made clear by a sharp yelp of surprise and pain. He staggered.
+What happened to him after that was not a matter of interest to
+me. I gather that he escaped into the night. But I was too
+occupied with my own affairs to follow his movements.
+
+Of all cures for melancholy introspection a violent blow in the
+solar plexus is the most immediate. If Mr Corbett had any abstract
+worries that day at Carson City, I fancy they ceased to occupy his
+mind from the moment when Mr Fitzsimmons administered that historic
+left jab. In my case the cure was instantaneous. I can remember
+reeling across the gravel and falling in a heap and trying to
+breathe and knowing that I should never again be able to, and
+then for some minutes all interest in the affairs of this world
+left me.
+
+How long it was before my breath returned, hesitatingly, like some
+timid Prodigal Son trying to muster up courage to enter the old
+home, I do not know; but it cannot have been many minutes, for the
+house was only just beginning to disgorge its occupants as I sat
+up. Disconnected cries and questions filled the air. Dim forms
+moved about in the darkness.
+
+I had started to struggle to my feet, feeling very sick and
+boneless, when it was borne in upon me that the sensations of this
+remarkable night were not yet over. As I reached a sitting
+position, and paused before adventuring further, to allow a wave
+of nausea to pass, a hand was placed on my shoulder and a voice
+behind me said, 'Don't move!'
+
+
+II
+
+I was not in a condition to argue. Beyond a fleeting feeling that
+a liberty was being taken with me and that I was being treated
+unjustly, I do not remember resenting the command. I had no notion
+who the speaker might be, and no curiosity. Breathing just then
+had all the glamour of a difficult feat cleverly performed. I
+concentrated my whole attention upon it. I was pleased, and
+surprised, to find myself getting on so well. I remember having
+much the same sensation when I first learned to ride a bicycle--a
+kind of dazed feeling that I seemed to be doing it, but Heaven
+alone knew how.
+
+A minute or so later, when I had leisure to observe outside
+matters, I perceived that among the other actors in the drama
+confusion still reigned. There was much scuttering about and much
+meaningless shouting. Mr Abney's reedy tenor voice was issuing
+directions, each of which reached a dizzier height of futility
+than the last. Glossop was repeating over and over again the
+words, 'Shall I telephone for the police?' to which nobody
+appeared to pay the least attention. One or two boys were darting
+about like rabbits and squealing unintelligibly. A female voice--I
+think Mrs Attwell's--was saying, 'Can you see him?'
+
+Up to this point, my match, long since extinguished, had been the
+only illumination the affair had received; but now somebody, who
+proved to be White, the butler, came from the direction of the
+stable-yard with a carriage-lamp. Every one seemed calmer and
+happier for it. The boys stopped squealing, Mrs Attwell and
+Glossop subsided, and Mr Abney said 'Ah!' in a self-satisfied
+voice, as if he had directed this move and was congratulating
+himself on the success with which it had been carried out.
+
+The whole strength of the company gathered round the light.
+
+'Thank you, White,' said Mr Abney. 'Excellent. I fear the
+scoundrel has escaped.'
+
+'I suspect so, sir.'
+
+'This is a very remarkable occurrence, White.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'The man was actually in Master Ford's bedroom.'
+
+'Indeed, sir?'
+
+A shrill voice spoke. I recognized it as that of Augustus
+Beckford, always to be counted upon to be in the centre of things
+gathering information.
+
+'Sir, please, sir, what was up? Who was it, sir? Sir, was it a
+burglar, sir? Have you ever met a burglar, sir? My father took me
+to see Raffles in the holidays, sir. Do you think this chap was
+like Raffles, sir? Sir--'
+
+'It was undoubtedly--' Mr Abney was beginning, when the identity
+of the questioner dawned upon him, and for the first time he
+realized that the drive was full of boys actively engaged in
+catching their deaths of cold. His all-friends-here-let-us-
+discuss-this-interesting-episode-fully manner changed. He became
+the outraged schoolmaster. Never before had I heard him speak so
+sharply to boys, many of whom, though breaking rules, were still
+titled.
+
+'What are you boys doing out of bed? Go back to bed instantly. I
+shall punish you most severely. I--'
+
+'Shall I telephone for the police?' asked Glossop. Disregarded.
+
+'I will not have this conduct. You will catch cold. This is
+disgraceful. Ten bad marks! I shall punish you most severely if
+you do not instantly--'
+
+A calm voice interrupted him.
+
+'Say!'
+
+The Little Nugget strolled easily into the circle of light. He was
+wearing a dressing-gown, and in his hand was a smouldering
+cigarette, from which he proceeded, before continuing his remarks,
+to blow a cloud of smoke.
+
+'Say, I guess you're wrong. That wasn't any ordinary porch-climber.'
+
+The spectacle of his _bete noire_ wreathed in smoke, coming
+on top of the emotions of the night, was almost too much for Mr
+Abney. He gesticulated for a moment in impassioned silence, his
+arms throwing grotesque shadows on the gravel.
+
+'How _dare_ you smoke, boy! How _dare_ you smoke that cigarette!'
+
+'It's the only one I've got,' responded the Little Nugget amiably.
+
+'I have spoken to you--I have warned you--Ten bad marks!--I will
+not have--Fifteen bad marks!'
+
+The Little Nugget ignored the painful scene. He was smiling
+quietly.
+
+'If you ask _me_,' he said, 'that guy was after something better
+than plated spoons. Yes, sir! If you want my opinion, it was Buck
+MacGinnis, or Chicago Ed., or one of those guys, and what he was
+trailing was me. They're always at it. Buck had a try for me in the
+fall of '07, and Ed.--'
+
+'Do you hear me? Will you return instantly--'
+
+'If you don't believe me I can show you the piece there was about
+it in the papers. I've got a press-clipping album in my box.
+Whenever there's a piece about me in the papers, I cut it out and
+paste it into my album. If you'll come right along, I'll show you
+the story about Buck now. It happened in Chicago, and he'd have
+got away with me if it hadn't been--'
+
+'Twenty bad marks!'
+
+'Mr Abney!'
+
+It was the person standing behind me who spoke. Till now he or she
+had remained a silent spectator, waiting, I suppose, for a lull in
+the conversation.
+
+They jumped, all together, like a well-trained chorus.
+
+'Who is that?' cried Mr Abney. I could tell by the sound of his
+voice that his nerves were on wires. 'Who was that who spoke?'
+
+'Shall I telephone for the police?' asked Glossop. Ignored.
+
+'I am Mrs Sheridan, Mr Abney. You were expecting me to-night.'
+
+'Mrs Sheridan? Mrs Sher--I expected you in a cab. I expected you
+in--ah--in fact, a cab.'
+
+'I walked.'
+
+I had a curious sensation of having heard the voice before. When
+she had told me not to move, she had spoken in a whisper--or, to
+me, in my dazed state, it had sounded like a whisper--but now she
+was raising her voice, and there was a note in it that seemed
+familiar. It stirred some chord in my memory, and I waited to hear
+it again.
+
+When it came it brought the same sensation, but nothing more
+definite. It left me groping for the clue.
+
+'Here is one of the men, Mr Abney.'
+
+There was a profound sensation. Boys who had ceased to squeal,
+squealed with fresh vigour. Glossop made his suggestion about the
+telephone with a new ring of hope in his voice. Mrs Attwell
+shrieked. They made for us in a body, boys and all, White leading
+with the lantern. I was almost sorry for being compelled to
+provide an anticlimax.
+
+Augustus Beckford was the first to recognize me, and I expect he
+was about to ask me if I liked sitting on the gravel on a frosty
+night, or what gravel was made of, when Mr Abney spoke.
+
+'Mr Burns! What--dear me!--_what_ are you doing there?'
+
+'Perhaps Mr Burns can give us some information as to where the man
+went, sir,' suggested White.
+
+'On everything except that,' I said, 'I'm a mine of information. I
+haven't the least idea where he went. All I know about him is that
+he has a shoulder like the ram of a battleship, and that he
+charged me with it.'
+
+As I was speaking, I thought I heard a little gasp behind me. I
+turned. I wanted to see this woman who stirred my memory with her
+voice. But the rays of the lantern did not fall on her, and she
+was a shapeless blur in the darkness. Somehow I felt that she was
+looking intently at me.
+
+I resumed my narrative.
+
+'I was lighting my pipe when I heard a scream--' A chuckle came
+from the group behind the lantern.
+
+'I screamed,' said the Little Nugget. 'You bet I screamed! What
+would _you_ do if you woke up in the dark and found a strong-armed
+roughneck prising you out of bed as if you were a clam? He tried to
+get his hand over my mouth, but he only connected with my forehead,
+and I'd got going before he could switch. I guess I threw a scare
+into that gink!'
+
+He chuckled again, reminiscently, and drew at his cigarette.
+
+'How dare you smoke! Throw away that cigarette!' cried Mr Abney,
+roused afresh by the red glow.
+
+'Forget it!' advised the Little Nugget tersely.
+
+'And then,' I said, 'somebody whizzed out from nowhere and hit me.
+And after that I didn't seem to care much about him or anything
+else.' I spoke in the direction of my captor. She was still
+standing outside the circle of light. 'I expect you can tell us
+what happened, Mrs Sheridan?'
+
+I did not think that her information was likely to be of any
+practical use, but I wanted to make her speak again.
+
+Her first words were enough. I wondered how I could ever have been
+in doubt. I knew the voice now. It was one which I had not heard
+for five years, but one which I could never forget if I lived for
+ever.
+
+'Somebody ran past me.' I hardly heard her. My heart was pounding,
+and a curious dizziness had come over me. I was grappling with the
+incredible. 'I think he went into the bushes.'
+
+I heard Glossop speak, and gathered from Mr Abney's reply; that he
+had made his suggestion about the telephone once more.
+
+'I think that will be--ah--unnecessary, Mr Glossop. The man has
+undoubtedly--ah--made good his escape. I think we had all better
+return to the house.' He turned to the dim figure beside me. 'Ah,
+Mrs Sheridan, you must be tired after your journey and the--ah unusual
+excitement. Mrs Attwell will show you where you--in fact, your room.'
+
+In the general movement White must have raised the lamp or stepped
+forward, for the rays shifted. The figure beside me was no longer
+dim, but stood out sharp and clear in the yellow light.
+
+I was aware of two large eyes looking into mine as, in the grey
+London morning two weeks before, they had looked from a faded
+photograph.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 5
+
+
+Of all the emotions which kept me awake that night, a vague
+discomfort and a feeling of resentment against Fate more than
+against any individual, were the two that remained with me next
+morning. Astonishment does not last. The fact of Audrey and myself
+being under the same roof after all these years had ceased to
+amaze me. It was a minor point, and my mind shelved it in order to
+deal with the one thing that really mattered, the fact that she
+had come back into my life just when I had definitely, as I
+thought, put her out of it.
+
+My resentment deepened. Fate had played me a wanton trick. Cynthia
+trusted me. If I were weak, I should not be the only one to
+suffer. And something told me that I should be weak. How could I
+hope to be strong, tortured by the thousand memories which the
+sight of her would bring back to me?
+
+But I would fight, I told myself. I would not yield easily. I
+promised that to my self-respect, and was rewarded with a certain
+glow of excitement. I felt defiant. I wanted to test myself at
+once.
+
+My opportunity came after breakfast. She was standing on the
+gravel in front of the house, almost, in fact, on the spot where
+we had met the night before. She looked up as she heard my step,
+and I saw that her chin had that determined tilt which, in the
+days of our engagement, I had noticed often without attaching any
+particular significance to it. Heavens, what a ghastly lump of
+complacency I must have been in those days! A child, I thought, if
+he were not wrapped up in the contemplation of his own magnificence,
+could read its meaning.
+
+It meant war, and I was glad of it. I wanted war.
+
+'Good morning,' I said.
+
+'Good morning.'
+
+There was a pause. I took the opportunity to collect my thoughts.
+
+I looked at her curiously. Five years had left their mark on her,
+but entirely for the good. She had an air of quiet strength which
+I had never noticed in her before. It may have been there in the
+old days, but I did not think so. It was, I felt certain, a later
+development. She gave the impression of having been through much
+and of being sure of herself.
+
+In appearance she had changed amazingly little. She looked as
+small and slight and trim as ever she had done. She was a little
+paler, I thought, and the Irish eyes were older and a shade
+harder; but that was all.
+
+I awoke with a start to the fact that I was staring at her. A
+slight flush had crept into her pale cheeks.
+
+'Don't!' she said suddenly, with a little gesture of irritation.
+
+The word and the gesture killed, as if they had been a blow, a
+kind of sentimental tenderness which had been stealing over me.
+
+'What are you doing here?' I asked.
+
+She was silent.
+
+'Please don't think I want to pry into your affairs,' I said
+viciously. 'I was only interested in the coincidence that we
+should meet here like this.'
+
+She turned to me impulsively. Her face had lost its hard look.
+
+'Oh, Peter,' she said, 'I'm sorry. I _am_ sorry.'
+
+It was my chance, and I snatched at it with a lack of chivalry
+which I regretted almost immediately. But I was feeling bitter,
+and bitterness makes a man do cheap things.
+
+'Sorry?' I said, politely puzzled. 'Why?'
+
+She looked taken aback, as I hoped she would.
+
+'For--for what happened.'
+
+'My dear Audrey! Anybody would have made the same mistake. I don't
+wonder you took me for a burglar.'
+
+'I didn't mean that. I meant--five years ago.'
+
+I laughed. I was not feeling like laughter at the moment, but I
+did my best, and had the satisfaction of seeing that it jarred
+upon her.
+
+'Surely you're not worrying yourself about that?' I said. I
+laughed again. Very jovial and debonair I was that winter morning.
+
+The brief moment in which we might have softened towards each
+other was over. There was a glitter in her blue eyes which told me
+that it was once more war between us.
+
+'I thought you would get over it,' she said.
+
+'Well,' I said, 'I was only twenty-five. One's heart doesn't break
+at twenty-five.'
+
+'I don't think yours would ever be likely to break, Peter.'
+
+'Is that a compliment, or otherwise?'
+
+'You would probably think it a compliment. I meant that you were
+not human enough to be heart-broken.'
+
+'So that's your idea of a compliment!'
+
+'I said I thought it was probably yours.'
+
+'I must have been a curious sort of man five years ago, if I gave
+you that impression.'
+
+'You were.'
+
+She spoke in a meditative voice, as if, across the years, she were
+idly inspecting some strange species of insect. The attitude
+annoyed me. I could look, myself, with a detached eye at the man I
+had once been, but I still retained a sort of affection for him,
+and I felt piqued.
+
+'I suppose you looked on me as a kind of ogre in those days?' I
+said.
+
+'I suppose I did.'
+
+There was a pause.
+
+'I didn't mean to hurt your feelings,' she said. And that was the
+most galling part of it. Mine was an attitude of studied
+offensiveness. I did want to hurt her feelings. But hers, it
+seemed to me, was no pose. She really had had--and, I suppose,
+still retained--a genuine horror of me. The struggle was unequal.
+
+'You were very kind,' she went on, 'sometimes--when you happened
+to think of it.'
+
+Considered as the best she could find to say of me, it was not an
+eulogy.
+
+'Well,' I said, 'we needn't discuss what I was or did five years
+ago. Whatever I was or did, you escaped. Let's think of the
+present. What are we going to do about this?'
+
+'You think the situation's embarrassing?'
+
+'I do.'
+
+'One of us ought to go, I suppose,' she said doubtfully.
+
+'Exactly.'
+
+'Well, I can't go.'
+
+'Nor can I.'
+
+'I have business here.'
+
+'Obviously, so have I.'
+
+'It's absolutely necessary that I should be here.'
+
+'And that I should.'
+
+She considered me for a moment.
+
+'Mrs Attwell told me that you were one of the assistant-masters
+at the school.'
+
+'I am acting as assistant-master. I am supposed to be learning the
+business.'
+
+She hesitated.
+
+'Why?' she said.
+
+'Why not?'
+
+'But--but--you used to be very well off.'
+
+'I'm better off now. I'm working.'
+
+She was silent for a moment.
+
+'Of course it's impossible for you to leave. You couldn't, could
+you?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'I can't either.'
+
+'Then I suppose we must face the embarrassment.'
+
+'But why must it be embarrassing? You said yourself you had--got
+over it.'
+
+'Absolutely. I am engaged to be married.'
+
+She gave a little start. She drew a pattern on the gravel with her
+foot before she spoke.
+
+'I congratulate you,' she said at last.
+
+'Thank you.'
+
+'I hope you will be very happy.'
+
+'I'm sure I shall.'
+
+She relapsed into silence. It occurred to me that, having posted
+her thoroughly in my affairs, I was entitled to ask about hers.
+
+'How in the world did you come to be here?' I said.
+
+'It's rather a long story. After my husband died--'
+
+'Oh!' I exclaimed, startled.
+
+'Yes; he died three years ago.'
+
+She spoke in a level voice, with a ring of hardness in it, for
+which I was to learn the true reason later. At the time it seemed
+to me due to resentment at having to speak of the man she had
+loved to me, whom she disliked, and my bitterness increased.
+
+'I have been looking after myself for a long time.'
+
+'In England?'
+
+'In America. We went to New York directly we--directly I had
+written to you. I have been in America ever since. I only returned
+to England a few weeks ago.'
+
+'But what brought you to Sanstead?'
+
+'Some years ago I got to know Mr Ford, the father of the little
+boy who is at the school. He recommended me to Mr Abney, who
+wanted somebody to help with the school.'
+
+'And you are dependent on your work? I mean--forgive me if I am
+personal--Mr Sheridan did not--'
+
+'He left no money at all.'
+
+'Who was he?' I burst out. I felt that the subject of the dead man
+was one which it was painful for her to talk about, at any rate to
+me; but the Sheridan mystery had vexed me for five years, and I
+thirsted to know something of this man who had dynamited my life
+without ever appearing in it.
+
+'He was an artist, a friend of my father.'
+
+I wanted to hear more. I wanted to know what he looked like, how
+he spoke, how he compared with me in a thousand ways; but it was
+plain that she would not willingly be communicative about him;
+and, with a feeling of resentment, I gave her her way and
+suppressed my curiosity.
+
+'So your work here is all you have?' I said.
+
+'Absolutely all. And, if it's the same with you, well, here we
+are!'
+
+'Here we are!' I echoed. 'Exactly.'
+
+'We must try and make it as easy for each other as we can,' she
+said.
+
+'Of course.'
+
+She looked at me in that curious, wide-eyed way of hers.
+
+'You have got thinner, Peter,' she said.
+
+'Have I?' I said. 'Suffering, I suppose, or exercise.'
+
+Her eyes left my face. I saw her bite her lip.
+
+'You hate me,' she said abruptly. 'You've been hating me all these
+years. Well, I don't wonder.'
+
+She turned and began to walk slowly away, and as she did so a
+sense of the littleness of the part I was playing came over me.
+Ever since our talk had begun I had been trying to hurt her,
+trying to take a petty revenge on her--for what? All that had
+happened five years ago had been my fault. I could not let her go
+like this. I felt unutterably mean.
+
+'Audrey!' I called.
+
+She stopped. I went to her.
+
+'Audrey!' I said, 'you're wrong. If there's anybody I hate, it's
+myself. I just want to tell you I understand.'
+
+Her lips parted, but she did not speak.
+
+'I understand just what made you do it,' I went on. 'I can see now
+the sort of man I was in those days.'
+
+'You're saying that to--to help me,' she said in a low voice.
+
+'No. I have felt like that about it for years.'
+
+'I treated you shamefully.'
+
+'Nothing of the kind. There's a certain sort of man who badly
+needs a--jolt, and he has to get it sooner or later. It happened
+that you gave me mine, but that wasn't your fault. I was bound to
+get it--somehow.' I laughed. 'Fate was waiting for me round the
+corner. Fate wanted something to hit me with. You happened to be
+the nearest thing handy.'
+
+'I'm sorry, Peter.'
+
+'Nonsense. You knocked some sense into me. That's all you did.
+Every man needs education. Most men get theirs in small doses, so
+that they hardly know they are getting it at all. My money kept me
+from getting mine that way. By the time I met you there was a
+great heap of back education due to me, and I got it in a lump.
+That's all.'
+
+'You're generous.'
+
+'Nothing of the kind. It's only that I see things clearer than I
+did. I was a pig in those days.'
+
+'You weren't!'
+
+'I was. Well, we won't quarrel about it.'
+
+Inside the house the bell rang for breakfast. We turned. As I drew
+back to let her go in, she stopped.
+
+'Peter,' she said.
+
+She began to speak quickly.
+
+'Peter, let's be sensible. Why should we let this embarrass us,
+this being together here? Can't we just pretend that we're two old
+friends who parted through a misunderstanding, and have come
+together again, with all the misunderstanding cleared away--friends
+again? Shall we?'
+
+She held out her hand. She was smiling, but her eyes were grave.
+
+'Old friends, Peter?'
+
+I took her hand.
+
+'Old friends,' I said.
+
+And we went in to breakfast. On the table, beside my plate, was
+lying a letter from Cynthia.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 6
+
+
+I
+
+I give the letter in full. It was written from the s.y. _Mermaid_,
+lying in Monaco Harbour.
+
+MY DEAR PETER, Where is Ogden? We have been expecting him every
+day. Mrs Ford is worrying herself to death. She keeps asking me if
+I have any news, and it is very tiresome to have to keep telling
+her that I have not heard from you. Surely, with the opportunities
+you must get every day, you can manage to kidnap him. Do be quick.
+We are relying on you.--In haste,
+                                  CYNTHIA.
+
+I read this brief and business-like communication several times
+during the day; and after dinner that night, in order to meditate
+upon it in solitude, I left the house and wandered off in the
+direction of the village.
+
+I was midway between house and village when I became aware that I
+was being followed. The night was dark, and the wind moving in the
+tree-tops emphasized the loneliness of the country road. Both time
+and place were such as made it peculiarly unpleasant to hear
+stealthy footsteps on the road behind me.
+
+Uncertainty in such cases is the unnerving thing. I turned
+sharply, and began to walk back on tiptoe in the direction from
+which I had come.
+
+I had not been mistaken. A moment later a dark figure loomed up
+out of the darkness, and the exclamation which greeted me, as I
+made my presence known, showed that I had taken him by surprise.
+
+There was a momentary pause. I expected the man, whoever he might
+be, to run, but he held his ground. Indeed, he edged forward.
+
+'Get back!' I said, and allowed my stick to rasp suggestively on
+the road before raising it in readiness for any sudden development.
+It was as well that he should know it was there.
+
+The hint seemed to wound rather than frighten him.
+
+'Aw, cut out the rough stuff, bo,' he said reproachfully in a
+cautious, husky undertone. 'I ain't goin' to start anything.'
+
+I had an impression that I had heard the voice before, but I could
+not place it.
+
+'What are you following me for?' I demanded. 'Who are you?'
+
+'Say, I want a talk wit youse. I took a slant at youse under de
+lamp-post back dere, an' I seen it was you, so I tagged along.
+Say, I'm wise to your game, sport.'
+
+I had identified him by this time. Unless there were two men in
+the neighbourhood of Sanstead who hailed from the Bowery, this
+must be the man I had seen at the 'Feathers' who had incurred the
+disapproval of Miss Benjafield.
+
+'I haven't the faintest idea what you mean,' I said. 'What is my
+game?'
+
+His voice became reproachful again.
+
+'Ah chee!' he protested. 'Quit yer kiddin'! What was youse
+rubberin' around de house for last night if you wasn't trailin' de
+kid?'
+
+'Was it you who ran into me last night?' I asked.
+
+'Gee! I fought it was a tree. I came near takin' de count.'
+
+'I did take it. You seemed in a great hurry.'
+
+'Hell!' said the man simply, and expectorated.
+
+'Say,' he resumed, having delivered this criticism on that
+stirring episode, dat's a great kid, dat Nugget. I fought it was a
+Black Hand soup explosion when he cut loose. But, say, let's don't
+waste time. We gotta get together about dat kid.'
+
+'Certainly, if you wish it. What do you happen to mean?'
+
+'Aw, quit yer kiddin'!' He expectorated again. He seemed to be a
+man who could express the whole gamut of emotions by this simple
+means. 'I know you!'
+
+'Then you have the advantage of me, though I believe I remember
+seeing you before. Weren't you at the "Feathers" one Wednesday
+evening, singing something about a dog?'
+
+'Sure. Dat was me.'
+
+'What do you mean by saying that you know me?'
+
+'Aw, quit yer kiddin', Sam!'
+
+There was, it seemed to me, a reluctantly admiring note in his
+voice.
+
+'Tell me, who do you think I am?' I asked patiently.
+
+'Ahr ghee! You can't string me, sport. Smooth Sam Fisher, is who
+you are, bo. I know you.'
+
+I was too surprised to speak. Verily, some have greatness thrust
+upon them.
+
+'I hain't never seen youse, Sam,' he continued, 'but I know it's
+you. And I'll tell youse how I doped it out. To begin with, there
+ain't but you and your bunch and me and my bunch dat knows de
+Little Nugget's on dis side at all. Dey sneaked him out of New
+York mighty slick. And I heard that you had come here after him.
+So when I runs into a guy dat's trailin' de kid down here, well,
+who's it going to be if it ain't youse? And when dat guy talks
+like a dude, like they all say you do, well, who's it going to be
+if it ain't youse? So quit yer kiddin', Sam, and let's get down to
+business.'
+
+'Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr Buck MacGinnis?' I said. I
+felt convinced that this could be no other than that celebrity.
+
+'Dat's right. Dere's no need to keep up anyt'ing wit me, Sam.
+We're bote on de same trail, so let's get down to it.'
+
+'One moment,' I said. 'Would it surprise you to hear that my name
+is Burns, and that I am a master at the school?'
+
+He expectorated admirably.
+
+'Hell, no!' he said. 'Gee, it's just what you would be, Sam. I
+always heard youse had been one of dese rah-rah boys oncest. Say,
+it's mighty smart of youse to be a perfessor. You're right in on
+de ground floor.'
+
+His voice became appealing.
+
+'Say, Sam, don't be a hawg. Let's go fifty-fifty in dis deal. My
+bunch and me has come a hell of a number of miles on dis
+proposition, and dere ain't no need for us to fall scrappin' over
+it. Dere's plenty for all of us. Old man Ford'll cough up enough
+for every one, and dere won't be any fuss. Let's sit in togedder
+on dis nuggett'ing. It ain't like as if it was an ornery two-by-four
+deal. I wouldn't ask youse if it wasn't big enough fir de whole
+bunch of us.'
+
+As I said nothing, he proceeded.
+
+'It ain't square, Sam, to take advantage of your having education.
+If it was a square fight, and us bote wit de same chance, I
+wouldn't say; but you bein' a dude perfessor and gettin' right
+into de place like dat ain't right. Say, don't be a hawg, Sam.
+Don't swipe it all. Fifty-fifty! Does dat go?'
+
+'I don't know,' I said. 'You had better ask the real Sam. Good
+night.'
+
+I walked past him and made for the school gates at my best pace.
+He trotted after me, pleading.
+
+'Sam, give us a quarter, then.'
+
+I walked on.
+
+'Sam, don't be a hawg!'
+
+He broke into a run.
+
+'Sam!' His voice lost its pleading tone and rasped menacingly.
+
+'Gee, if I had me canister, youse wouldn't be so flip! Listen
+here, you big cheese! You t'ink youse is de only t'ing in sight,
+huh? Well, we ain't done yet. You'll see yet. We'll fix you! Youse
+had best watch out.'
+
+I stopped and turned on him. 'Look here, you fool,' I cried. 'I
+tell you I am not Sam Fisher. Can't you understand that you have
+got hold of the wrong man? My name is Burns--_Burns_.'
+
+He expectorated--scornfully this time. He was a man slow by nature
+to receive ideas, but slower to rid himself of one that had
+contrived to force its way into what he probably called his brain.
+He had decided on the evidence that I was Smooth Sam Fisher, and
+no denials on my part were going to shake his belief. He looked on
+them merely as so many unsportsmanlike quibbles prompted by greed.
+
+'Tell it to Sweeney!' was the form in which he crystallized his
+scepticism.
+
+'May be you'll say youse ain't trailin' de Nugget, huh?'
+
+It was a home-thrust. If truth-telling has become a habit, one
+gets slowly off the mark when the moment arrives for the prudent
+lie. Quite against my will, I hesitated. Observant Mr MacGinnis
+perceived my hesitation and expectorated triumphantly.
+
+'Ah ghee!' he remarked. And then with a sudden return to ferocity,
+'All right, you Sam, you wait! We'll fix you, and fix you good!
+See? Dat goes. You t'ink youse kin put it across us, huh? All
+right, you'll get yours. You wait!'
+
+And with these words he slid off into the night. From somewhere in
+the murky middle distance came a scornful 'Hawg!' and he was gone,
+leaving me with a settled conviction that, while I had frequently
+had occasion, since my expedition to Sanstead began, to describe
+affairs as complex, their complexity had now reached its height.
+With a watchful Pinkerton's man within, and a vengeful gang of
+rivals without, Sanstead House seemed likely to become an
+unrestful place for a young kidnapper with no previous experience.
+
+The need for swift action had become imperative.
+
+
+II
+
+White, the butler, looking singularly unlike a detective--which, I
+suppose, is how a detective wants to look--was taking the air on
+the football field when I left the house next morning for a
+before-breakfast stroll. The sight of him filled me with a desire
+for first-hand information on the subject of the man Mr MacGinnis
+supposed me to be and also of Mr MacGinnis himself. I wanted to be
+assured that my friend Buck, despite appearances, was a placid
+person whose bark was worse than his bite.
+
+White's manner, at our first conversational exchanges, was
+entirely that of the butler. From what I came to know of him
+later, I think he took an artistic pride in throwing himself into
+whatever role he had to assume.
+
+At the mention of Smooth Sam Fisher, however, his manner peeled
+off him like a skin, and he began to talk as himself, a racy and
+vigorous self vastly different from the episcopal person he
+thought it necessary to be when on duty.
+
+'White,' I said, 'do you know anything of Smooth Sam Fisher?'
+
+He stared at me. I suppose the question, led up to by no previous
+remark, was unusual.
+
+'I met a gentleman of the name of Buck MacGinnis--he was our
+visitor that night, by the way--and he was full of Sam. Do you
+know him?'
+
+'Buck?'
+
+'Either of them.'
+
+'Well, I've never seen Buck, but I know all about him. There's
+pepper to Buck.'
+
+'So I should imagine. And Sam?'
+
+'You may take it from me that there's more pepper to Sam's little
+finger than there is to Buck's whole body. Sam could make Buck
+look like the last run of shad, if it came to a showdown. Buck's
+just a common roughneck. Sam's an educated man. He's got brains.'
+
+'So I gathered. Well, I'm glad to hear you speak so well of him,
+because that's who I'm supposed to be.'
+
+'How's that?'
+
+'Buck MacGinnis insists that I am Smooth Sam Fisher. Nothing I can
+say will shift him.'
+
+White stared. He had very bright humorous brown eyes. Then he
+began to laugh.
+
+'Well, what do you know about that?' he exclaimed. 'Wouldn't that
+jar you!'
+
+'It would. I may say it did. He called me a hog for wanting to
+keep the Little Nugget to myself, and left threatening to "fix
+me". What would you say the verb "to fix" signified in Mr
+MacGinnis's vocabulary?'
+
+White was still chuckling quietly to himself.
+
+'He's a wonder!' he observed. 'Can you beat it? Taking you for
+Smooth Sam!'
+
+'He said he had never seen Smooth Sam. Have you?'
+
+'Lord, yes.'
+
+'Does he look like me?'
+
+'Not a bit.'
+
+'Do you think he's over here in England?'
+
+'Sam? I know he is.'
+
+'Then Buck MacGinnis was right?'
+
+'Dead right, as far as Sam being on the trail goes. Sam's after
+the Nugget to get him this time. He's tried often enough before,
+but we've been too smart for him. This time he allows he's going
+to bring it off.'
+
+'Then why haven't we seen anything of him? Buck MacGinnis seems to
+be monopolizing the kidnapping industry in these parts.'
+
+'Oh, Sam'll show up when he feels good and ready. You can take it
+from me that Sam knows what he is doing. Sam's a special pet of
+mine. I don't give a flip for Buck MacGinnis.'
+
+'I wish I had your cheery disposition! To me Buck MacGinnis seems
+a pretty important citizen. I wonder what he meant by "fix"?'
+
+White, however, declined to leave the subject of Buck's more
+gifted rival.
+
+'Sam's a college man, you know. That gives him a pull. He has
+brains, and can use them.'
+
+'That was one of the points on which Buck MacGinnis reproached me.
+He said it was not fair to use my superior education.'
+
+He laughed.
+
+'Buck's got no sense. That's why you find him carrying on like a
+porch-climber. It's his only notion of how to behave when he wants
+to do a job. And that's why there's only one man to keep your eye
+on in this thing of the Little Nugget, and that's Sam. I wish you
+could get to know Sam. You'd like him.'
+
+'You seem to look on him as a personal friend. I certainly don't
+like Buck.'
+
+'Oh, Buck!' said White scornfully.
+
+We turned towards the house as the sound of the bell came to us
+across the field.
+
+'Then you think we may count on Sam's arrival, sooner or later, as
+a certainty?' I said.
+
+'Surest thing you know.'
+
+'You will have a busy time.'
+
+'All in the day's work.'
+
+'I suppose I ought to look at it in that way. But I do wish I knew
+exactly what Buck meant by "fix".'
+
+White at last condescended to give his mind to the trivial point.
+
+'I guess he'll try to put one over on you with a sand-bag,' he
+said carelessly. He seemed to face the prospect with calm.
+
+'A sand-bag, eh?' I said. 'It sounds exciting.'
+
+'And feels it. I know. I've had some.'
+
+I parted from him at the door. As a comforter he had failed to
+qualify. He had not eased my mind to the slightest extent.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 7
+
+
+Looking at it now I can see that the days which followed Audrey's
+arrival at Sanstead marked the true beginning of our acquaintanceship.
+Before, during our engagement, we had been strangers, artificially
+tied together, and she had struggled against the chain. But now,
+for the first time, we were beginning to know each other, and were
+discovering that, after all, we had much in common.
+
+It did not alarm me, this growing feeling of comradeship. Keenly
+on the alert as I was for the least sign that would show that I
+was in danger of weakening in my loyalty to Cynthia, I did not
+detect one in my friendliness for Audrey. On the contrary, I was
+hugely relieved, for it seemed to me that the danger was past. I
+had not imagined it possible that I could ever experience towards
+her such a tranquil emotion as this easy friendliness. For the
+last five years my imagination had been playing round her memory,
+until I suppose I had built up in my mind some almost superhuman
+image, some goddess. What I was passing through now, of course,
+though I was unaware of it, was the natural reaction from that
+state of mind. Instead of the goddess, I had found a companionable
+human being, and I imagined that I had effected the change myself,
+and by sheer force of will brought Audrey into a reasonable
+relation to the scheme of things.
+
+I suppose a not too intelligent moth has much the same views with
+regard to the lamp. His last thought, as he enters the flame, is
+probably one of self-congratulation that he has arranged his
+dealings with it on such a satisfactory commonsense basis.
+
+And then, when I was feeling particularly safe and complacent,
+disaster came.
+
+The day was Wednesday, and my 'afternoon off', but the rain was
+driving against the windows, and the attractions of billiards with
+the marker at the 'Feathers' had not proved sufficient to make me
+face the two-mile walk in the storm. I had settled myself in the
+study. There was a noble fire burning in the grate, and the
+darkness lit by the glow of the coals, the dripping of the rain,
+the good behaviour of my pipe, and the reflection that, as I sat
+there, Glossop was engaged downstairs in wrestling with my class,
+combined to steep me in a meditative peace. Audrey was playing the
+piano in the drawing-room. The sound came to me faintly through
+the closed doors. I recognized what she was playing. I wondered if
+the melody had the same associations for her that it had for me.
+
+The music stopped. I heard the drawing-room door open. She came
+into the study.
+
+'I didn't know there was anyone here,' she said. 'I'm frozen. The
+drawing-room fire's out.'
+
+'Come and sit down,' I said. 'You don't mind the smoke?'
+
+I drew a chair up to the fire for her, feeling, as I did so, a
+certain pride. Here I was, alone with her in the firelight, and my
+pulse was regular and my brain cool. I had a momentary vision of
+myself as the Strong Man, the strong, quiet man with the iron grip
+on his emotions. I was pleased with myself.
+
+She sat for some minutes, gazing into the fire. Little spurts of
+flame whistled comfortably in the heart of the black-red coals.
+Outside the storm shrieked faintly, and flurries of rain dashed
+themselves against the window.
+
+'It's very nice in here,' she said at last.
+
+'Peaceful.'
+
+I filled my pipe and re-lit it. Her eyes, seen for an instant in
+the light of the match, looked dreamy.
+
+'I've been sitting here listening to you,' I said. 'I liked that
+last thing you played.'
+
+'You always did.'
+
+'You remember that? Do you remember one evening--no, you
+wouldn't.'
+
+'Which evening?'
+
+'Oh, you wouldn't remember. It's only one particular evening when
+you played that thing. It sticks in my mind. It was at your
+father's studio.'
+
+She looked up quickly.
+
+'We went out afterwards and sat in the park.'
+
+I sat up thrilled.
+
+'A man came by with a dog,' I said.
+
+'Two dogs.'
+
+'One surely!'
+
+'Two. A bull-dog and a fox-terrier.'
+
+'I remember the bull-dog, but--by Jove, you're right. A fox-terrier
+with a black patch over his left eye.'
+
+'Right eye.'
+
+'Right eye. They came up to us, and you--'
+
+'Gave them chocolates.'
+
+I sank back slowly in my chair.
+
+'You've got a wonderful memory,' I said.
+
+She bent over the fire without speaking. The rain rattled on the
+window.
+
+'So you still like my playing, Peter?'
+
+'I like it better than ever; there's something in it now that I
+don't believe there used to be. I can't describe it--something--'
+
+'I think it's knowledge, Peter,' she said quietly. 'Experience.
+I'm five years older than I was when I used to play to you before,
+and I've seen a good deal in those five years. It may not be
+altogether pleasant seeing life, but--well, it makes you play the
+piano better. Experience goes in at the heart and comes out at the
+finger-tips.'
+
+It seemed to me that she spoke a little bitterly.
+
+'Have you had a bad time, Audrey, these last years?' I said.
+
+'Pretty bad.'
+
+'I'm sorry.'
+
+'I'm not--altogether. I've learned a lot.'
+
+She was silent again, her eyes fixed on the fire.
+
+'What are you thinking about?' I said.
+
+'Oh, a great many things.'
+
+'Pleasant?'
+
+'Mixed. The last thing I thought about was pleasant. That was,
+that I am very lucky to be doing the work I am doing now. Compared
+with some of the things I have done--'
+
+She shivered.
+
+'I wish you would tell me about those years, Audrey,' I said.
+'What were some of the things you did?'
+
+She leaned back in her chair and shaded her face from the fire
+with a newspaper. Her eyes were in the shadow.
+
+'Well, let me see. I was a nurse for some time at the Lafayette
+Hospital in New York.'
+
+'That's hard work?'
+
+'Horribly hard. I had to give it up after a while. But--it teaches
+you.... You learn.... You learn--all sorts of things. Realities.
+How much of your own trouble is imagination. You get real trouble
+in a hospital. You get it thrown at you.'
+
+I said nothing. I was feeling--I don't know why--a little
+uncomfortable, a little at a disadvantage, as one feels in the
+presence of some one bigger than oneself.
+
+'Then I was a waitress.'
+
+'A waitress?'
+
+'I tell you I did everything. I was a waitress, and a very bad
+one. I broke plates. I muddled orders. Finally I was very rude to
+a customer and I went on to try something else. I forget what came
+next. I think it was the stage. I travelled for a year with a
+touring company. That was hard work, too, but I liked it. After
+that came dressmaking, which was harder and which I hated. And
+then I had my first stroke of real luck.'
+
+'What was that?'
+
+'I met Mr Ford.'
+
+'How did that happen?'
+
+'You wouldn't remember a Miss Vanderley, an American girl who was
+over in London five or six years ago? My father taught her
+painting. She was very rich, but she was wild at that time to be
+Bohemian. I think that's why she chose Father as a teacher. Well,
+she was always at the studio, and we became great friends, and one
+day, after all these things I have been telling you of, I thought
+I would write to her, and see if she could not find me something
+to do. She was a _dear_.' Her voice trembled, and she lowered
+the newspaper till her whole face was hidden. 'She wanted me to
+come to their home and live on her for ever, but I couldn't have
+that. I told her I must work. So she sent me to Mr Ford, whom the
+Vanderleys knew very well, and I became Ogden's governess.'
+
+'Great Scott!' I cried. 'What!'
+
+She laughed rather shakily.
+
+'I don't think I was a very good governess. I knew next to
+nothing. I ought to have been having a governess myself. But I
+managed somehow.'
+
+'But Ogden?' I said. 'That little fiend, didn't he worry the life
+out of you?'
+
+'Oh, I had luck there again. He happened to take a mild liking to
+me, and he was as good as gold--for him; that's to say, if I
+didn't interfere with him too much, and I didn't. I was horribly
+weak; he let me alone. It was the happiest time I had had for
+ages.'
+
+'And when he came here, you came too, as a sort of ex-governess,
+to continue exerting your moral influence over him?'
+
+She laughed.
+
+'More or less that.'
+
+We sat in silence for a while, and then she put into words the
+thought which was in both our minds.
+
+'How odd it seems, you and I sitting together chatting like this,
+Peter, after all--all these years.'
+
+'Like a dream!'
+
+'Just like a dream ... I'm so glad.... You don't know how I've
+hated myself sometimes for--for--'
+
+'Audrey! You mustn't talk like that. Don't let's think of it.
+Besides, it was my fault.'
+
+She shook her head.
+
+'Well, put it that we didn't understand one another.'
+
+She nodded slowly.
+
+'No, we didn't understand one another.'
+
+'But we do now,' I said. 'We're friends, Audrey.'
+
+She did not answer. For a long time we sat in silence. And then the
+newspaper must have moved--a gleam from the fire fell upon her face,
+lighting up her eyes; and at the sight something in me began to
+throb, like a drum warning a city against danger. The next moment
+the shadow had covered them again.
+
+I sat there, tense, gripping the arms of my chair. I was tingling.
+Something was happening to me. I had a curious sensation of being
+on the threshold of something wonderful and perilous.
+
+From downstairs there came the sound of boys' voices. Work was
+over, and with it this talk by the firelight. In a few minutes
+somebody, Glossop, or Mr Abney, would be breaking in on our
+retreat.
+
+We both rose, and then--it happened. She must have tripped in the
+darkness. She stumbled forward, her hand caught at my coat, and
+she was in my arms.
+
+It was a thing of an instant. She recovered herself, moved to the
+door, and was gone.
+
+But I stood where I was, motionless, aghast at the revelation
+which had come to me in that brief moment. It was the physical
+contact, the feel of her, warm and alive, that had shattered for
+ever that flimsy structure of friendship which I had fancied so
+strong. I had said to Love, 'Thus far, and no farther', and Love
+had swept over me, the more powerful for being checked. The time
+of self-deception was over. I knew myself.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 8
+
+
+I
+
+That Buck MacGinnis was not the man to let the grass grow under
+his feet in a situation like the present one, I would have
+gathered from White's remarks if I had not already done so from
+personal observation. The world is divided into dreamers and men
+of action. From what little I had seen of him I placed Buck
+MacGinnis in the latter class. Every day I expected him to act,
+and was agreeably surprised as each twenty-four hours passed and
+left me still unfixed. But I knew the hour would come, and it did.
+
+I looked for frontal attack from Buck, not subtlety; but, when the
+attack came, it was so excessively frontal that my chief emotion
+was a sort of paralysed amazement. It seemed incredible that such
+peculiarly Wild Western events could happen in peaceful England,
+even in so isolated a spot as Sanstead House.
+
+It had been one of those interminable days which occur only at
+schools. A school, more than any other institution, is dependent
+on the weather. Every small boy rises from his bed of a morning
+charged with a definite quantity of devilry; and this, if he is to
+sleep the sound sleep of health, he has got to work off somehow
+before bedtime. That is why the summer term is the one a master
+longs for, when the intervals between classes can be spent in the
+open. There is no pleasanter sight for an assistant-master at a
+private school than that of a number of boys expending their venom
+harmlessly in the sunshine.
+
+On this particular day, snow had begun to fall early in the
+morning, and, while his pupils would have been only too delighted
+to go out and roll in it by the hour, they were prevented from
+doing so by Mr Abney's strict orders. No schoolmaster enjoys
+seeing his pupils running risks of catching cold, and just then Mr
+Abney was especially definite on the subject. The Saturnalia which
+had followed Mr MacGinnis' nocturnal visit to the school had had
+the effect of giving violent colds to three lords, a baronet, and
+the younger son of an honourable. And, in addition to that, Mr
+Abney himself, his penetrating tenor changed to a guttural croak,
+was in his bed looking on the world with watering eyes. His views,
+therefore, on playing in the snow as an occupation for boys were
+naturally prejudiced.
+
+The result was that Glossop and I had to try and keep order among
+a mob of small boys, none of whom had had any chance of working
+off his superfluous energy. How Glossop fared I can only imagine.
+Judging by the fact that I, who usually kept fair order without
+excessive effort, was almost overwhelmed, I should fancy he fared
+badly. His classroom was on the opposite side of the hall from
+mine, and at frequent intervals his voice would penetrate my door,
+raised to a frenzied fortissimo.
+
+Little by little, however, we had won through the day, and the
+boys had subsided into comparative quiet over their evening
+preparation, when from outside the front door there sounded the
+purring of the engine of a large automobile. The bell rang.
+
+I did not, I remember, pay much attention to this at the moment. I
+supposed that somebody from one of the big houses in the
+neighbourhood had called, or, taking the lateness of the hour into
+consideration, that a motoring party had come, as they did
+sometimes--Sanstead House standing some miles from anywhere in the
+middle of an intricate system of by-roads--to inquire the way to
+Portsmouth or London. If my class had allowed me, I would have
+ignored the sound. But for them it supplied just that break in the
+monotony of things which they had needed. They welcomed it
+vociferously.
+
+A voice: 'Sir, please, sir, there's a motor outside.'
+
+Myself (austerely): I know there's a motor outside. Get on with
+your work.'
+
+Various voices: 'Sir, have you ever ridden in a motor?'
+
+'Sir, my father let me help drive our motor last Easter, sir.'
+
+'Sir, who do you think it is?'
+
+An isolated genius (imitating the engine): 'Pr-prr! Pr-prr! Pr-prr!'
+
+I was on the point of distributing bad marks (the schoolmaster's
+stand-by) broadcast, when a curious sound checked me. It followed
+directly upon the opening of the front door. I heard White's
+footsteps crossing the hall, then the click of the latch, and
+then--a sound that I could not define. The closed door of the
+classroom deadened it, but for all that it was audible. It
+resembled the thud of a falling body, but I knew it could not be
+that, for in peaceful England butlers opening front doors did not
+fall with thuds.
+
+My class, eager listeners, found fresh material in the sound for
+friendly conversation.
+
+'Sir, what was that, sir?'
+
+'Did you hear that, sir?'
+
+'What do you think's happened, sir?'
+
+'Be quiet,' I shouted. 'Will you be--'
+
+There was a quick footstep outside, the door flew open, and on the
+threshold stood a short, sturdy man in a motoring coat and cap.
+The upper part of his face was covered by a strip of white linen,
+with holes for the eyes, and there was a Browning pistol in his
+hand.
+
+It is my belief that, if assistant-masters were allowed to wear
+white masks and carry automatic pistols, keeping order in a school
+would become child's play. A silence such as no threat of bad
+marks had ever been able to produce fell instantaneously upon the
+classroom. Out of the corner of my eye, as I turned to face our
+visitor, I could see small boys goggling rapturously at this
+miraculous realization of all the dreams induced by juvenile
+adventure fiction. As far as I could ascertain, on subsequent
+inquiry, not one of them felt a tremor of fear. It was all too
+tremendously exciting for that. For their exclusive benefit an
+illustration from a weekly paper for boys had come to life, and
+they had no time to waste in being frightened.
+
+As for me, I was dazed. Motor bandits may terrorize France, and
+desperadoes hold up trains in America, but this was peaceful
+England. The fact that Buck MacGinnis was at large in the
+neighbourhood did not make the thing any the less incredible. I
+had looked on my affair with Buck as a thing of the open air and
+the darkness. I had figured him lying in wait in lonely roads,
+possibly, even, lurking about the grounds; but in my most
+apprehensive moments I had not imagined him calling at the front
+door and holding me up with a revolver in my own classroom.
+
+And yet it was the simple, even the obvious, thing for him to do.
+Given an automobile, success was certain. Sanstead House stood
+absolutely alone. There was not even a cottage within half a mile.
+A train broken down in the middle of the Bad Lands was not more
+cut off.
+
+Consider, too, the peculiar helplessness of a school in such a
+case. A school lives on the confidence of parents, a nebulous
+foundation which the slightest breath can destroy. Everything
+connected with it must be done with exaggerated discretion. I do
+not suppose Mr MacGinnis had thought the thing out in all its
+bearings, but he could not have made a sounder move if he had been
+a Napoleon. Where the owner of an ordinary country-house raided by
+masked men can raise the countryside in pursuit, a schoolmaster
+must do precisely the opposite. From his point of view, the fewer
+people that know of the affair the better. Parents are a jumpy
+race. A man may be the ideal schoolmaster, yet will a connection
+with melodrama damn him in the eyes of parents. They do not
+inquire. They are too panic-stricken for that. Golden-haired
+Willie may be receiving the finest education conceivable, yet if
+men with Browning pistols are familiar objects at his shrine of
+learning they will remove him. Fortunately for schoolmasters it is
+seldom that such visitors call upon them. Indeed, I imagine Mr
+MacGinnis's effort to have been the first of its kind.
+
+I do not, as I say, suppose that Buck, whose forte was action
+rather than brain-work, had thought all this out. He had trusted
+to luck, and luck had stood by him. There would be no raising of
+the countryside in his case. On the contrary, I could see Mr Abney
+becoming one of the busiest persons on record in his endeavour to
+hush the thing up and prevent it getting into the papers. The man
+with the pistol spoke. He sighted me--I was standing with my back
+to the mantelpiece, parallel with the door--made a sharp turn, and
+raised his weapon.
+
+'Put 'em up, sport,' he said.
+
+It was not the voice of Buck MacGinnis. I put my hands up.
+
+'Say, which of dese is de Nugget?'
+
+He half turned his head to the class.
+
+'Which of youse kids is Ogden Ford?'
+
+The class was beyond speech. The silence continued.
+
+'Ogden Ford is not here,' I said.
+
+Our visitor had not that simple faith which is so much better than
+Norman blood. He did not believe me. Without moving his head he
+gave a long whistle. Steps sounded outside. Another, short, sturdy
+form, entered the room.
+
+'He ain't in de odder room,' observed the newcomer. 'I been
+rubberin'!'
+
+This was friend Buck beyond question. I could have recognized his
+voice anywhere!
+
+'Well dis guy,' said the man with the pistol, indicating me, 'says
+he ain't here. What's de answer?'
+
+'Why, it's Sam!' said Buck. 'Howdy, Sam? Pleased to see us, huh?
+We're in on de ground floor, too, dis time, all right, all right.'
+
+His words had a marked effect on his colleague.
+
+'Is dat Sam? Hell! Let me blow de head off'n him!' he said, with
+simple fervour; and, advancing a step nearer, he waved his
+disengaged fist truculently. In my role of Sam I had plainly made
+myself very unpopular. I have never heard so much emotion packed
+into a few words.
+
+Buck, to my relief, opposed the motion. I thought this decent of
+Buck.
+
+'Cheese it,' he said curtly.
+
+The other cheesed it. The operation took the form of lowering the
+fist. The pistol he kept in position.
+
+Mr MacGinnis resumed the conduct of affairs.
+
+'Now den, Sam,' he said, 'come across! Where's de Nugget?'
+
+'My name is not Sam,' I said. 'May I put my hands down?'
+
+'Yep, if you want the top of your damn head blown off.'
+
+Such was not my desire. I kept them up.
+
+'Now den, you Sam,' said Mr MacGinnis again, 'we ain't got time to
+burn. Out with it. Where's dat Nugget?'
+
+Some reply was obviously required. It was useless to keep
+protesting that I was not Sam.
+
+'At this time in the evening he is generally working with Mr
+Glossop.'
+
+'Who's Glossop? Dat dough-faced dub in de room over dere?'
+
+'Exactly. You have described him perfectly.'
+
+'Well, he ain't dere. I bin rubberin.' Aw, quit yer foolin', Sam,
+where is he?'
+
+'I couldn't tell you just where he is at the present moment,' I
+said precisely.
+
+'Ahr chee! Let me swot him one!' begged the man with the pistol; a
+most unlovable person. I could never have made a friend of him.
+
+'Cheese it, you!' said Mr MacGinnis.
+
+The other cheesed it once more, regretfully.
+
+'You got him hidden away somewheres, Sam,' said Mr MacGinnis. 'You
+can't fool me. I'm com' t'roo dis joint wit a fine-tooth comb till
+I find him.'
+
+'By all means,' I said. 'Don't let me stop you.'
+
+'You? You're coming wit me.'
+
+'If you wish it. I shall be delighted.'
+
+'An' cut out dat dam' sissy way of talking, you rummy,' bellowed
+Buck, with a sudden lapse into ferocity. 'Spiel like a regular
+guy! Standin' dere, pullin' dat dude stuff on me! Cut it out!'
+
+'Say, why _mayn't_ I hand him one?' demanded the pistol-bearer
+pathetically. 'What's your kick against pushin' his face in?'
+
+I thought the question in poor taste. Buck ignored it.
+
+'Gimme dat canister,' he said, taking the Browning pistol from
+him. 'Now den, Sam, are youse goin' to be good, and come across,
+or ain't you--which?'
+
+'I'd be delighted to do anything you wished, Mr MacGinnis,' I
+said, 'but--'
+
+'Aw, hire a hall!' said Buck disgustedly. 'Step lively, den, an'
+we'll go t'roo de joint. I t'ought youse 'ud have had more sense,
+Sam, dan to play dis fool game when you know you're beat. You--'
+
+Shooting pains in my shoulders caused me to interrupt him.
+
+'One moment,' I said. 'I'm going to put my hands down. I'm getting
+cramp.'
+
+'I'll blow a hole in you if you do!'
+
+'Just as you please. But I'm not armed.'
+
+'Lefty,' he said to the other man, 'feel around to see if he's
+carryin' anyt'ing.'
+
+Lefty advanced and began to tap me scientifically in the
+neighbourhood of my pockets. He grunted morosely the while. I
+suppose, at this close range, the temptation to 'hand me one' was
+almost more than he could bear.
+
+'He ain't got no gun,' he announced gloomily.
+
+'Den youse can put 'em down,' said Mr MacGinnis.
+
+'Thanks,' I said.
+
+'Lefty, youse stay here and look after dese kids. Get a move on,
+Sam.'
+
+We left the room, a little procession of two, myself leading, Buck
+in my immediate rear administering occasional cautionary prods
+with the faithful 'canister'.
+
+
+II
+
+The first thing that met my eyes as we entered the hall was the
+body of a man lying by the front door. The light of the lamp fell
+on his face and I saw that it was White. His hands and feet were
+tied. As I looked at him, he moved, as if straining against his
+bonds, and I was conscious of a feeling of relief. That sound that
+had reached me in the classroom, that thud of a falling body, had
+become, in the light of what had happened later, very sinister. It
+was good to know that he was still alive. I gathered--correctly,
+as I discovered subsequently--that in his case the sand-bag had
+been utilized. He had been struck down and stunned the instant he
+opened the door.
+
+There was a masked man leaning against the wall by Glossop's
+classroom. He was short and sturdy. The Buck MacGinnis gang seemed
+to have been turned out on a pattern. Externally, they might all
+have been twins. This man, to give him a semblance of individuality,
+had a ragged red moustache. He was smoking a cigar with the air of
+the warrior taking his rest.
+
+'Hello!' he said, as we appeared. He jerked a thumb towards the
+classroom. 'I've locked dem in. What's doin', Buck?' he asked,
+indicating me with a languid nod.
+
+'We're going t'roo de joint,' explained Mr MacGinnis. 'De kid
+ain't in dere. Hump yourself, Sam!'
+
+His colleague's languor disappeared with magic swiftness.
+
+'Sam! Is dat Sam? Here, let me beat de block off'n him!'
+
+Few points in this episode struck me as more remarkable than the
+similarity of taste which prevailed, as concerned myself, among
+the members of Mr MacGinnis's gang. Men, doubtless of varying
+opinions on other subjects, on this one point they were unanimous.
+They all wanted to assault me.
+
+Buck, however, had other uses for me. For the present, I was
+necessary as a guide, and my value as such would be impaired were
+the block to be beaten off me. Though feeling no friendlier
+towards me than did his assistants, he declined to allow sentiment
+to interfere with business. He concentrated his attention on the
+upward journey with all the earnestness of the young gentleman who
+carried the banner with the strange device in the poem.
+
+Briefly requesting his ally to cheese it--which he did--he urged
+me on with the nozzle of the pistol. The red-moustached man sank
+back against the wall again with an air of dejection, sucking his
+cigar now like one who has had disappointments in life, while we
+passed on up the stairs and began to draw the rooms on the first
+floor.
+
+These consisted of Mr Abney's study and two dormitories. The study
+was empty, and the only occupants of the dormitories were the
+three boys who had been stricken down with colds on the occasion
+of Mr MacGinnis's last visit. They squeaked with surprise at the
+sight of the assistant-master in such questionable company.
+
+Buck eyed them disappointedly. I waited with something of the
+feelings of a drummer taking a buyer round the sample room.
+
+'Get on,' said Buck.
+
+'Won't one of those do?'
+
+'Hump yourself, Sam.'
+
+'Call me Sammy,' I urged. 'We're old friends now.'
+
+'Don't get fresh,' he said austerely. And we moved on.
+
+The top floor was even more deserted than the first. There was no
+one in the dormitories. The only other room was Mr Abney's; and,
+as we came opposite it, a sneeze from within told of the
+sufferings of its occupant.
+
+The sound stirred Buck to his depths. He 'pointed' at the door
+like a smell-dog.
+
+'Who's in dere?' he demanded.
+
+'Only Mr Abney. Better not disturb him. He has a bad cold.'
+
+He placed a wrong construction on my solicitude for my employer.
+His manner became excited.
+
+'Open dat door, you,' he cried.
+
+'It'll give him a nasty shock.'
+
+'G'wan! Open it!'
+
+No one who is digging a Browning pistol into the small of my back
+will ever find me disobliging. I opened the door--knocking first,
+as a mild concession to the conventions--and the procession passed
+in.
+
+My stricken employer was lying on his back, staring at the
+ceiling, and our entrance did not at first cause him to change
+this position.
+
+'Yes?' he said thickly, and disappeared beneath a huge
+pocket-handkerchief. Muffled sounds, as of distant explosions of
+dynamite, together with earthquake shudderings of the bedclothes,
+told of another sneezing-fit.
+
+'I'm sorry to disturb you,' I began, when Buck, ever the man of
+action, with a scorn of palaver, strode past me, and, having
+prodded with the pistol that part of the bedclothes beneath which
+a rough calculation suggested that Mr Abney's lower ribs were
+concealed, uttered the one word, 'Sa-a-ay!'
+
+Mr Abney sat up like a Jack-in-the-box. One might almost say that
+he shot up. And then he saw Buck.
+
+I cannot even faintly imagine what were Mr Abney's emotions at
+that moment. He was a man who, from boyhood up, had led a quiet
+and regular life. Things like Buck had appeared to him hitherto,
+if they appeared at all, only in dreams after injudicious suppers.
+Even in the ordinary costume of the Bowery gentleman, without such
+adventitious extras as masks and pistols, Buck was no beauty. With
+that hideous strip of dingy white linen on his face, he was a
+walking nightmare.
+
+Mr Abney's eyebrows had risen and his jaw had fallen to their
+uttermost limits. His hair, disturbed by contact with the pillow,
+gave the impression of standing on end. His eyes seemed to bulge
+like a snail's. He stared at Buck, fascinated.
+
+'Say, you, quit rubberin'. Youse ain't in a dime museum. Where's
+dat Ford kid, huh?'
+
+I have set down all Mr MacGinnis's remarks as if they had been
+uttered in a bell-like voice with a clear and crisp enunciation;
+but, in doing so, I have flattered him. In reality, his mode of
+speech suggested that he had something large and unwieldy
+permanently stuck in his mouth; and it was not easy for a stranger
+to follow him. Mr Abney signally failed to do so. He continued to
+gape helplessly till the tension was broken by a sneeze.
+
+One cannot interrogate a sneezing man with any satisfaction to
+oneself. Buck stood by the bedside in moody silence, waiting for
+the paroxysm to spend itself.
+
+I, meanwhile, had remained where I stood, close to the door. And,
+as I waited for Mr Abney to finish sneezing, for the first time
+since Buck's colleague Lefty had entered the classroom the idea of
+action occurred to me. Until this moment, I suppose, the
+strangeness and unexpectedness of these happenings had numbed my
+brain. To precede Buck meekly upstairs and to wait with equal
+meekness while he interviewed Mr Abney had seemed the only course
+open to me. To one whose life has lain apart from such things, the
+hypnotic influence of a Browning pistol is irresistible.
+
+But now, freed temporarily from this influence, I began to think;
+and, my mind making up for its previous inaction by working with
+unwonted swiftness, I formed a plan of action at once.
+
+It was simple, but I had an idea that it would be effective. My
+strength lay in my acquaintance with the geography of Sanstead
+House and Buck's ignorance of it. Let me but get an adequate
+start, and he might find pursuit vain. It was this start which I
+saw my way to achieving.
+
+To Buck it had not yet occurred that it was a tactical error to
+leave me between the door and himself. I supposed he relied too
+implicitly on the mesmeric pistol. He was not even looking at me.
+
+The next moment my fingers were on the switch of the electric
+light, and the room was in darkness.
+
+There was a chair by the door. I seized it and swung it into the
+space between us. Then, springing back, I banged the door and ran.
+
+I did not run without a goal in view. My objective was the study.
+This, as I have explained, was on the first floor. Its window
+looked out on to a strip of lawn at the side of the house ending
+in a shrubbery. The drop would not be pleasant, but I seemed to
+remember a waterspout that ran up the wall close to the window,
+and, in any case, I was not in a position to be deterred by the
+prospect of a bruise or two. I had not failed to realize that my
+position was one of extreme peril. When Buck, concluding the tour
+of the house, found that the Little Nugget was not there--as I had
+reason to know that he would--there was no room for doubt that he
+would withdraw the protection which he had extended to me up to
+the present in my capacity of guide. On me the disappointed fury
+of the raiders would fall. No prudent consideration for their own
+safety would restrain them. If ever the future was revealed to
+man, I saw mine. My only chance was to get out into the grounds,
+where the darkness would make pursuit an impossibility.
+
+It was an affair which must be settled one way or the other in a
+few seconds, and I calculated that it would take Buck just those
+few seconds to win his way past the chair and find the door-handle.
+
+I was right. Just as I reached the study, the door of the bedroom
+flew open, and the house rang with shouts and the noise of feet on
+the uncarpeted landing. From the hall below came answering shouts,
+but with an interrogatory note in them. The assistants were
+willing, but puzzled. They did not like to leave their posts
+without specific instructions, and Buck, shouting as he clattered
+over the bare boards, was unintelligible.
+
+I was in the study, the door locked behind me, before they could
+arrive at an understanding. I sprang to the window.
+
+The handle rattled. Voices shouted. A panel splintered beneath a
+kick, and the door shook on its hinges.
+
+And then, for the first time, I think, in my life, panic gripped
+me, the sheer, blind fear which destroys the reason. It swept over
+me in a wave, that numbing terror which comes to one in dreams.
+Indeed, the thing had become dream-like. I seemed to be standing
+outside myself, looking on at myself, watching myself heave and
+strain with bruised fingers at a window that would not open.
+
+
+III
+
+The arm-chair critic, reviewing a situation calmly and at his
+ease, is apt to make too small allowances for the effect of hurry
+and excitement on the human mind. He is cool and detached. He sees
+exactly what ought to have been done, and by what simple means
+catastrophe might have been averted.
+
+He would have made short work of my present difficulty, I feel
+certain. It was ridiculously simple. But I had lost my head, and
+had ceased for the moment to be a reasoning creature. In the end,
+indeed, it was no presence of mind but pure good luck which saved
+me. Just as the door, which had held out gallantly, gave way
+beneath the attack from outside, my fingers, slipping, struck
+against the catch of the window, and I understood why I had failed
+to raise it.
+
+I snapped the catch back, and flung up the sash. An icy wind swept
+into the room, bearing particles of snow. I scrambled on to the
+window-sill, and a crash from behind me told of the falling of the
+door.
+
+The packed snow on the sill was drenching my knees as I worked my
+way out and prepared to drop. There was a deafening explosion
+inside the room, and simultaneously something seared my shoulder
+like a hot iron. I cried out with the pain of it, and, losing my
+balance, fell from the sill.
+
+There was, fortunately for me, a laurel bush immediately below the
+window, or I should have been undone. I fell into it, all arms and
+legs, in a way which would have meant broken bones if I had struck
+the hard turf. I was on my feet in an instant, shaken and
+scratched and, incidentally, in a worse temper than ever in my
+life before. The idea of flight, which had obsessed me a moment
+before, to the exclusion of all other mundane affairs, had
+vanished absolutely. I was full of fight, I might say overflowing
+with it. I remember standing there, with the snow trickling in
+chilly rivulets down my face and neck, and shaking my fist at the
+window. Two of my pursuers were leaning out of it, while a third
+dodged behind them, like a small man on the outskirts of a crowd.
+So far from being thankful for my escape, I was conscious only of
+a feeling of regret that there was no immediate way of getting at
+them.
+
+They made no move towards travelling the quick but trying route
+which had commended itself to me. They seemed to be waiting for
+something to happen. It was not long before I was made aware of
+what this something was. From the direction of the front door came
+the sound of one running. A sudden diminution of the noise of his
+feet told me that he had left the gravel and was on the turf. I
+drew back a pace or two and waited.
+
+It was pitch dark, and I had no fear that I should be seen. I was
+standing well outside the light from the window.
+
+The man stopped just in front of me. A short parley followed.
+
+'Can'tja see him?'
+
+The voice was not Buck's. It was Buck who answered. And when I
+realized that this man in front of me, within easy reach, on whose
+back I was shortly about to spring, and whose neck I proposed,
+under Providence, to twist into the shape of a corkscrew, was no
+mere underling, but Mr MacGinnis himself, I was filled with a joy
+which I found it hard to contain in silence.
+
+Looking back, I am a little sorry for Mr MacGinnis. He was not a
+good man. His mode of speech was not pleasant, and his manners
+were worse than his speech. But, though he undoubtedly deserved
+all that was coming to him, it was nevertheless bad luck for him
+to be standing just there at just that moment. The reactions after
+my panic, added to the pain of my shoulder, the scratches on my
+face, and the general misery of being wet and cold, had given me a
+reckless fury and a determination to do somebody, whoever happened
+to come along, grievous bodily hurt, such as seldom invades the
+bosoms of the normally peaceful. To put it crisply, I was fighting
+mad, and I looked on Buck as something sent by Heaven.
+
+He had got as far, in his reply, as 'Naw, I can't--' when I
+sprang.
+
+I have read of the spring of the jaguar, and I have seen some very
+creditable flying-tackles made on the football field. My leap
+combined the outstanding qualities of both. I connected with Mr
+MacGinnis in the region of the waist, and the howl he gave as we
+crashed to the ground was music to my ears.
+
+But how true is the old Roman saying, _'Surgit amari aliquid'_.
+Our pleasures are never perfect. There is always something. In the
+programme which I had hastily mapped out, the upsetting of Mr
+MacGinnis was but a small item, a mere preliminary. There were a
+number of things which I had wished to do to him, once upset. But
+it was not to be. Even as I reached for his throat I perceived that
+the light of the window was undergoing an eclipse. A compact form
+had wriggled out on to the sill, as I had done, and I heard the
+grating of his shoes on the wall as he lowered himself for the drop.
+
+There is a moment when the pleasantest functions must come to
+an end. I was loath to part from Mr MacGinnis just when I was
+beginning, as it were, to do myself justice; but it was unavoidable.
+In another moment his ally would descend upon us, like some Homeric
+god swooping from a cloud, and I was not prepared to continue the
+battle against odds.
+
+I disengaged myself--Mr MacGinnis strangely quiescent during the
+process--and was on my feet in the safety of the darkness just as
+the reinforcement touched earth. This time I did not wait. My
+hunger for fight had been appeased to some extent by my brush with
+Buck, and I was satisfied to have achieved safety with honour.
+
+Making a wide detour I crossed the drive and worked my way through
+the bushes to within a few yards of where the automobile stood,
+filling the night with the soft purring of its engines. I was
+interested to see what would be the enemy's next move. It was
+improbable that they would attempt to draw the grounds in search
+of me. I imagined that they would recognize failure and retire
+whence they had come.
+
+I was right. I had not been watching long, before a little group
+advanced into the light of the automobile's lamps. There were four
+of them. Three were walking, the fourth, cursing with the vigour
+and breadth that marks the expert, lying on their arms, of which
+they had made something resembling a stretcher.
+
+The driver of the car, who had been sitting woodenly in his seat,
+turned at the sound.
+
+'Ja get him?' he inquired.
+
+'Get nothing!' replied one of the three moodily. 'De Nugget ain't
+dere, an' we was chasin' Sam to fix him, an' he laid for us, an'
+what he did to Buck was plenty.'
+
+They placed their valuable burden in the tonneau, where he lay
+repeating himself, and two of them climbed in after him. The third
+seated himself beside the driver.
+
+'Buck's leg's broke,' he announced.
+
+'Hell!' said the chauffeur.
+
+No young actor, receiving his first round of applause, could have
+felt a keener thrill of gratification than I did at those words.
+Life may have nobler triumphs than the breaking of a kidnapper's
+leg, but I did not think so then. It was with an effort that I
+stopped myself from cheering.
+
+'Let her go,' said the man in the front seat.
+
+The purring rose to a roar. The car turned and began to move with
+increasing speed down the drive. Its drone grew fainter, and
+ceased. I brushed the snow from my coat and walked to the front
+door.
+
+My first act on entering the house, was to release White. He was
+still lying where I had seen him last. He appeared to have made no
+headway with the cords on his wrists and ankles. I came to his
+help with a rather blunt pocket-knife, and he rose stiffly and
+began to chafe the injured arms in silence.
+
+'They've gone,' I said.
+
+He nodded.
+
+'Did they hit you with a sand-bag?'
+
+He nodded again.
+
+'I broke Buck's leg,' I said, with modest pride.
+
+He looked up incredulously. I related my experiences as briefly
+as possible, and when I came to the part where I made my flying
+tackle, the gloom was swept from his face by a joyful smile. Buck's
+injury may have given its recipient pain, but it was certainly the
+cause of pleasure to others. White's manner was one of the utmost
+enthusiasm as I described the scene.
+
+'That'll hold Buck for a while,' was his comment. 'I guess we
+shan't hear from _him_ for a week or two. That's the best cure
+for the headache I've ever struck.'
+
+He rubbed the lump that just showed beneath his hair. I did not
+wonder at his emotion. Whoever had wielded the sand-bag had done
+his work well, in a manner to cause hard feelings on the part of
+the victim.
+
+I had been vaguely conscious during this conversation of an
+intermittent noise like distant thunder. I now perceived that it
+came from Glossop's classroom, and was caused by the beating of
+hands on the door-panels. I remembered that the red-moustached man
+had locked Glossop and his young charges in. It seemed to me that
+he had done well. There would be plenty of confusion without their
+assistance.
+
+I was turning towards my own classroom when I saw Audrey on the
+stairs and went to meet her.
+
+'It's all right,' I said. 'They've gone.'
+
+'Who was it? What did they want?'
+
+'It was a gentleman named MacGinnis and some friends. They came
+after Ogden Ford, but they didn't get him.'
+
+'Where is he? Where is Ogden?'
+
+Before I could reply, babel broke loose. While we had been
+talking, White had injudiciously turned the key of Glossop's
+classroom which now disgorged its occupants, headed by my
+colleague, in a turbulent stream. At the same moment my own
+classroom began to empty itself. The hall was packed with boys,
+and the din became deafening. Every one had something to say, and
+they all said it at once.
+
+Glossop was at my side, semaphoring violently.
+
+'We must telephone,' he bellowed in my ear, 'for the police.'
+
+Somebody tugged at my arm. It was Audrey. She was saying something
+which was drowned in the uproar. I drew her towards the stairs,
+and we found comparative quiet on the first landing.
+
+'What were you saying?' I asked.
+
+'He isn't there.'
+
+'Who?'
+
+'Ogden Ford. Where is he? He is not in his room. They must have
+taken him.'
+
+Glossop came up at a gallop, springing from stair to stair like
+the chamois of the Alps.
+
+'We must telephone for the police!' he cried.
+
+'I have telephoned,' said Audrey, 'ten minutes ago. They are
+sending some men at once. Mr Glossop, was Ogden Ford in your
+classroom?'
+
+'No, Mrs Sheridan. I thought he was with you, Burns.'
+
+I shook my head.
+
+'Those men came to kidnap him, Mr Glossop,' said Audrey.
+
+'Undoubtedly the gang of scoundrels to which that man the other
+night belonged! This is preposterous. My nerves will not stand
+these repeated outrages. We must have police protection. The
+villains must be brought to justice. I never heard of such a
+thing! In an English school!'
+
+Glossop's eyes gleamed agitatedly behind their spectacles.
+Macbeth's deportment when confronted with Banquo's ghost was
+stolid by comparison. There was no doubt that Buck's visit had
+upset the smooth peace of our happy little community to quite a
+considerable extent.
+
+The noise in the hall had increased rather than subsided. A
+belated sense of professional duty returned to Glossop and myself.
+We descended the stairs and began to do our best, in our
+respective styles, to produce order. It was not an easy task.
+Small boys are always prone to make a noise, even without
+provocation. When they get a genuine excuse like the incursion of
+men in white masks, who prod assistant-masters in the small of the
+back with Browning pistols, they tend to eclipse themselves. I
+doubt whether we should ever have quieted them, had it not been
+that the hour of Buck's visit had chanced to fall within a short
+time of that set apart for the boys' tea, and that the kitchen had
+lain outside the sphere of our visitors' operations. As in many
+English country houses, the kitchen at Sanstead House was at the
+end of a long corridor, shut off by doors through which even
+pistol-shots penetrated but faintly. Our excellent cook had,
+moreover, the misfortune to be somewhat deaf, with the result
+that, throughout all the storm and stress in our part of the
+house, she, like the lady in Goethe's poem, had gone on cutting
+bread and butter; till now, when it seemed that nothing could
+quell the uproar, there rose above it the ringing of the bell.
+
+If there is anything exciting enough to keep the Englishman or the
+English boy from his tea, it has yet to be discovered. The
+shouting ceased on the instant. The general feeling seemed to be
+that inquiries could be postponed till a more suitable occasion,
+but not tea. There was a general movement in the direction of the
+dining-room.
+
+Glossop had already gone with the crowd, and I was about to
+follow, when there was another ring at the front-door bell.
+
+I gathered that this must be the police, and waited. In the
+impending inquiry I was by way of being a star witness. If any one
+had been in the thick of things from the beginning it was myself.
+
+White opened the door. I caught a glimpse of blue uniforms, and
+came forward to do the honours.
+
+There were two of them, no more. In response to our urgent appeal
+for assistance against armed bandits, the Majesty of the Law had
+materialized itself in the shape of a stout inspector and a long,
+lean constable. I thought, as I came to meet them, that they were
+fortunate to have arrived late. I could see Lefty and the
+red-moustached man, thwarted in their designs on me, making
+dreadful havoc among the official force, as here represented.
+
+White, the simple butler once more, introduced us.
+
+'This is Mr Burns, one of the masters at the school,' he said, and
+removed himself from the scene. There never was a man like White
+for knowing his place when he played the butler.
+
+The inspector looked at me sharply. The constable gazed into
+space.
+
+'H'm!' said the inspector.
+
+Mentally I had named them Bones and Johnson. I do not know why,
+except that they seemed to deserve it.
+
+'You telephoned for us,' said Bones accusingly.
+
+'We did.'
+
+'What's the trouble? What--got your notebook?--has been
+happening?'
+
+Johnson removed his gaze from the middle distance and produced a
+notebook.
+
+'At about half past five--' I began.
+
+Johnson moistened his pencil.
+
+'At about half past five an automobile drove up to the front door.
+In it were five masked men with revolvers.'
+
+I interested them. There was no doubt of that. Bones's healthy
+colour deepened, and his eyes grew round. Johnson's pencil raced
+over the page, wobbling with emotion.
+
+'Masked men?' echoed Bones.
+
+'With revolvers,' I said. 'Now aren't you glad you didn't go to
+the circus? They rang the front-door bell; when White opened it,
+they stunned him with a sand-bag. Then--'
+
+Bones held up a large hand.
+
+'Wait!'
+
+I waited.
+
+'Who is White?'
+
+'The butler.'
+
+'I will take his statement. Fetch the butler.'
+
+Johnson trotted off obediently.
+
+Left alone with me, Bones became friendlier and less official.
+
+'This is as queer a start as ever I heard of, Mr Burns,' he said.
+'Twenty years I've been in the force, and nothing like this has
+transpired. It beats cock-fighting. What in the world do you
+suppose men with masks and revolvers was after? First idea I had
+was that you were making fun of me.'
+
+I was shocked at the idea. I hastened to give further details.
+
+'They were a gang of American crooks who had come over to kidnap
+Mr Elmer Ford's son, who is a pupil at the school. You have heard
+of Mr Ford? He is an American millionaire, and there have been
+several attempts during the past few years to kidnap Ogden.'
+
+At this point Johnson returned with White. White told his story
+briefly, exhibited his bruise, showed the marks of the cords on his
+wrists, and was dismissed. I suggested that further conversation
+had better take place in the presence of Mr Abney, who, I imagined,
+would have something to say on the subject of hushing the thing up.
+
+We went upstairs. The broken door of the study delayed us a while
+and led to a fresh spasm of activity on the part of Johnson's
+pencil. Having disposed of this, we proceeded to Mr Abney's room.
+
+Bones's authoritative rap upon the door produced an agitated
+'Who's that?' from the occupant. I explained the nature of the
+visitation through the keyhole and there came from within the
+sound of moving furniture. His one brief interview with Buck had
+evidently caused my employer to ensure against a second by
+barricading himself in with everything he could find suitable for
+the purpose. It was some moments before the way was clear for our
+entrance.
+
+'Cub id,' said a voice at last.
+
+Mr Abney was sitting up in bed, the blankets wrapped tightly about
+him. His appearance was still disordered. The furniture of the
+room was in great confusion, and a poker on the floor by the
+dressing-table showed that he had been prepared to sell his life
+dearly.
+
+'I ab glad to see you, Idspector,' he said. 'Bister Burds, what is
+the expladation of this extraordinary affair?'
+
+It took some time to explain matters to Mr Abney, and more to
+convince Bones and his colleague that, so far from wanting a hue
+and cry raised over the countryside and columns about the affair
+in the papers, publicity was the thing we were anxious to avoid.
+They were visibly disappointed when they grasped the position of
+affairs. The thing, properly advertised, would have been the
+biggest that had ever happened to the neighbourhood, and their
+eager eyes could see glory within easy reach. Mention of a cold
+snack and a drop of beer, however, to be found in the kitchen,
+served to cast a gleam of brightness on their gloom, and they
+vanished in search of it with something approaching cheeriness,
+Johnson taking notes to the last.
+
+They had hardly gone when Glossop whirled into the room in a state
+of effervescing agitation.
+
+'Mr Abney, Ogden Ford is nowhere to be found!'
+
+Mr Abney greeted the information with a prodigious sneeze.
+
+'What do you bead?' he demanded, when the paroxysm was over. He
+turned to me. 'Bister Burds, I understood you to--ah--say that
+the scou'drels took their departure without the boy Ford.'
+
+'They certainly did. I watched them go.'
+
+'I have searched the house thoroughly,' said Glossop, 'and there
+are no signs of him. And not only that, the Boy Beckford cannot be
+found.'
+
+Mr Abney clasped his head in his hands. Poor man, he was in no
+condition to bear up with easy fortitude against this succession
+of shocks. He was like one who, having survived an earthquake, is
+hit by an automobile. He had partly adjusted his mind to the quiet
+contemplation of Mr MacGinnis and friends when he was called upon
+to face this fresh disaster. And he had a cold in the head, which
+unmans the stoutest. Napoleon would have won Waterloo if
+Wellington had had a cold in the head.
+
+'Augustus Beckford caddot be fou'd?' he echoed feebly.
+
+'They must have run away together,' said Glossop.
+
+Mr Abney sat up, galvanized.
+
+'Such a thing has never happened id the school before!' he cried.
+'It has aldways beed my--ah--codstant endeavour to make my boys
+look upod Sadstead House as a happy hobe. I have systebatically
+edcouraged a spirit of cheerful codtedment. I caddot seriously
+credit the fact that Augustus Beckford, one of the bost charbig
+boys it has ever beed by good fortude to have id by charge, has
+deliberately rud away.'
+
+'He must have been persuaded by that boy Ford,' said Glossop,
+'who,' he added morosely, 'I believe, is the devil in disguise.'
+
+Mr Abney did not rebuke the strength of his language. Probably the
+theory struck him as eminently sound. To me there certainly seemed
+something in it.
+
+'Subbthig bust be done at once!' Mr Abney exclaimed. 'It
+is--ah--ibperative that we take ibbediate steps. They bust
+have gone to Londod. Bister Burds, you bust go to Londod by the
+next traid. I caddot go byself with this cold.'
+
+It was the irony of fate that, on the one occasion when duty
+really summoned that champion popper-up-to-London to the
+Metropolis, he should be unable to answer the call.
+
+'Very well,' I said. 'I'll go and look out a train.'
+
+'Bister Glossop, you will be in charge of the school. Perhaps you
+had better go back to the boys dow.'
+
+White was in the hall when I got there.
+
+'White,' I said, 'do you know anything about the trains to
+London?'
+
+'Are you going to London?' he asked, in his more conversational
+manner. I thought he looked at me curiously as he spoke.
+
+'Yes. Ogden Ford and Lord Beckford cannot be found. Mr Abney
+thinks they must have run away to London.'
+
+'I shouldn't wonder,' said White dryly, it seemed to me. There was
+something distinctly odd in his manner. 'And you're going after
+them.'
+
+'Yes. I must look up a train.'
+
+'There is a fast train in an hour. You will have plenty of time.'
+
+'Will you tell Mr Abney that, while I go and pack my bag? And
+telephone for a cab.'
+
+'Sure,' said White, nodding.
+
+I went up to my room and began to put a few things together in a
+suit-case. I felt happy, for several reasons. A visit to London,
+after my arduous weeks at Sanstead, was in the nature of an
+unexpected treat. My tastes are metropolitan, and the vision of an
+hour at a music-hall--I should be too late for the theatres--with
+supper to follow in some restaurant where there was an orchestra,
+appealed to me.
+
+When I returned to the hall, carrying my bag, I found Audrey
+there.
+
+'I'm being sent to London,' I announced.
+
+'I know. White told me. Peter, bring him back.'
+
+'That's why I'm being sent.'
+
+'It means everything to me.'
+
+I looked at her in surprise. There was a strained, anxious
+expression on her face, for which I could not account. I declined
+to believe that anybody could care what happened to the Little
+Nugget purely for that amiable youth's own sake. Besides, as he
+had gone to London willingly, the assumption was that he was
+enjoying himself.
+
+'I don't understand,' I said. 'What do you mean?'
+
+'I'll tell you. Mr Ford sent me here to be near Ogden, to guard
+him. He knew that there was always a danger of attempts being made
+to kidnap him, even though he was brought over to England very
+quietly. That is how I come to be here. I go wherever Ogden goes.
+I am responsible for him. And I have failed. If Ogden is not
+brought back, Mr Ford will have nothing more to do with me. He
+never forgives failures. It will mean going back to the old work
+again--the dressmaking, or the waiting, or whatever I can manage
+to find.' She gave a little shiver. 'Peter, I can't. All the pluck
+has gone out of me. I'm afraid. I couldn't face all that again.
+Bring him back. You must. You will. Say you will.'
+
+I did not answer. I could find nothing to say; for it was I who
+was responsible for all her trouble. I had planned everything. I
+had given Ogden Ford the money that had taken him to London. And
+soon, unless I could reach London before it happened, and prevent
+him, he, with my valet Smith, would be in the Dover boat-train on
+his way to Monaco.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 9
+
+
+I
+
+It was only after many hours of thought that it had flashed upon
+me that the simplest and safest way of removing the Little Nugget
+was to induce him to remove himself. Once the idea had come, the
+rest was simple. The negotiations which had taken place that
+morning in the stable-yard had been brief. I suppose a boy in
+Ogden's position, with his record of narrow escapes from the
+kidnapper, comes to take things as a matter of course which would
+startle the ordinary boy. He assumed, I imagine, that I was the
+accredited agent of his mother, and that the money which I gave
+him for travelling expenses came from her. Perhaps he had been
+expecting something of the sort. At any rate, he grasped the
+essential points of the scheme with amazing promptitude. His
+little hand was extended to receive the cash almost before I had
+finished speaking.
+
+The main outline of my plan was that he should slip away to
+London, during the afternoon, go to my rooms, where he would find
+Smith, and with Smith travel to his mother at Monaco. I had
+written to Smith, bidding him be in readiness for the expedition.
+There was no flaw in the scheme as I had mapped it out, and though
+Ogden had complicated it a little by gratuitously luring away
+Augustus Beckford to bear him company, he had not endangered its
+success.
+
+But now an utterly unforeseen complication had arisen. My one
+desire now was to undo everything for which I had been plotting.
+
+I stood there, looking at her dumbly, hating myself for being the
+cause of the anxiety in her eyes. If I had struck her, I could not
+have felt more despicable. In my misery I cursed Cynthia for
+leading me into this tangle.
+
+I heard my name spoken, and turned to find White at my elbow.
+
+'Mr Abney would like to see you, sir.'
+
+I went upstairs, glad to escape. The tension of the situation had
+begun to tear at my nerves.
+
+'Cub id, Bister Burds,' said my employer, swallowing a lozenge.
+His aspect was more dazed than ever. 'White has just bade
+an--ah--extraordinary cobbudicatiod to me. It seebs he is in
+reality a detective, an employee of Pidkertod's Agedcy, of which
+you have, of course--ah--heard.'
+
+So White had revealed himself. On the whole, I was not surprised.
+Certainly his motive for concealment, the fear of making Mr Abney
+nervous, was removed. An inrush of Red Indians with tomahawks
+could hardly have added greatly to Mr Abney's nervousness at the
+present juncture.
+
+'Sent here by Mr Ford, I suppose?' I said. I had to say something.
+
+'Exactly. Ah--precisely.' He sneezed. 'Bister Ford, without
+codsulting me--I do not cobbedt on the good taste or wisdob of his
+actiod--dispatched White to apply for the post of butler at
+this--ah--house, his predecessor having left at a bobedt's dotice,
+bribed to do so, I strodgly suspect, by Bister Ford himself. I bay
+be wrodging Bister Ford, but do dot thig so.'
+
+I thought the reasoning sound.
+
+'All thad, however,' resumed Mr Abney, removing his face from a
+jug of menthol at which he had been sniffing with the tense
+concentration of a dog at a rabbit-hole, 'is beside the poidt. I
+berely bedtiod it to explaid why White will accompady you to
+London.'
+
+'What!'
+
+The exclamation was forced from me by my dismay. This was
+appalling. If this infernal detective was to accompany me, my
+chance of bringing Ogden back was gone. It had been my intention
+to go straight to my rooms, in the hope of finding him not yet
+departed. But how was I to explain his presence there to White?
+
+'I don't think it's necessary, Mr Abney,' I protested. 'I am sure
+I can manage this affair by myself.'
+
+'Two heads are better thad wud,' said the invalid sententiously,
+burying his features in the jug once more.
+
+'Too many cooks spoil the broth,' I replied. If the conversation
+was to consist of copybook maxims, I could match him as long as he
+pleased.
+
+He did not keep up the intellectual level of the discussion.
+
+'Dodseds!' he snapped, with the irritation of a man whose proverb
+has been capped by another. I had seldom heard him speak so
+sharply. White's revelation had evidently impressed him. He had
+all the ordinary peaceful man's reverence for the professional
+detective.
+
+'White will accompany you, Bister Burds,' he said doggedly.
+
+'Very well,' I said.
+
+After all, it might be that I should get an opportunity of giving
+him the slip. London is a large city.
+
+A few minutes later the cab arrived, and White and I set forth on
+our mission.
+
+We did not talk much in the cab. I was too busy with my thoughts
+to volunteer remarks, and White, apparently, had meditations of
+his own to occupy him.
+
+It was when we had settled ourselves in an empty compartment and
+the train had started that he found speech. I had provided myself
+with a book as a barrier against conversation, and began at once
+to make a pretence of reading, but he broke through my defences.
+
+'Interesting book, Mr Burns?'
+
+'Very,' I said.
+
+'Life's more interesting than books.'
+
+I made no comment on this profound observation. He was not
+discouraged.
+
+'Mr Burns,' he said, after the silence had lasted a few moments.
+
+'Yes?'
+
+'Let's talk for a spell. These train-journeys are pretty slow.'
+
+Again I seemed to detect that curious undercurrent of meaning in
+his voice which I had noticed in the course of our brief exchange
+of remarks in the hall. I glanced up and met his eye. He was
+looking at me in a way that struck me as curious. There was
+something in those bright brown eyes of his which had the effect
+of making me vaguely uneasy. Something seemed to tell me that he
+had a definite motive in forcing his conversation on me.
+
+'I guess I can interest you a heap more than that book, even if
+it's the darndest best seller that was ever hatched.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+He lit a cigarette.
+
+'You didn't want me around on this trip, did you?'
+
+'It seemed rather unnecessary for both of us to go,' I said
+indifferently. 'Still, perhaps two heads are better than one, as
+Mr Abney remarked. What do you propose to do when you get to
+London?'
+
+He bent forward and tapped me on the knee.
+
+'I propose to stick to you like a label on a bottle, sonny,' he
+said. 'That's what I propose to do.'
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+I was finding it difficult, such is the effect of a guilty
+conscience, to meet his eye, and the fact irritated me.
+
+'I want to find out that address you gave the Ford kid this
+morning out in the stable-yard.'
+
+It is strange how really literal figurative expressions are. I had
+read stories in which some astonished character's heart leaped
+into his mouth. For an instant I could have supposed that mine had
+actually done so. The illusion of some solid object blocking up my
+throat was extraordinarily vivid, and there certainly seemed to be
+a vacuum in the spot where my heart should have been. Not for a
+substantial reward could I have uttered a word at that moment. I
+could not even breathe. The horrible unexpectedness of the blow
+had paralysed me.
+
+White, however, was apparently prepared to continue the chat
+without my assistance.
+
+'I guess you didn't know I was around, or you wouldn't have talked
+that way. Well, I was, and I heard every word you said. Here was
+the money, you said, and he was to take it and break for London,
+and go to the address on this card, and your pal Smith would look
+after him. I guess there had been some talk before that, but I
+didn't arrive in time to hear it. But I heard all I wanted, except
+that address. And that's what I'm going to find out when we get to
+London.'
+
+He gave out this appalling information in a rich and soothing
+voice, as if it were some ordinary commonplace. To me it seemed to
+end everything. I imagined I was already as good as under arrest.
+What a fool I had been to discuss such a matter in a place like a
+stable yard, however apparently empty. I might have known that at
+a school there are no empty places.
+
+'I must say it jarred me when I heard you pulling that stuff,'
+continued White. 'I haven't what you might call a childlike faith
+in my fellow-man as a rule, but it had never occurred to me for a
+moment that you could be playing that game. It only shows,' he
+added philosophically, 'that you've got to suspect everybody when
+it comes to a gilt-edged proposition like the Little Nugget.'
+
+The train rattled on. I tried to reduce my mind to working order,
+to formulate some plan, but could not.
+
+Beyond the realization that I was in the tightest corner of my
+life, I seemed to have lost the power of thought.
+
+White resumed his monologue.
+
+'You had me guessing,' he admitted. 'I couldn't figure you out.
+First thing, of course, I thought you must be working in with Buck
+MacGinnis and his crowd. Then all that happened tonight, and I saw
+that, whoever you might be working in with, it wasn't Buck. And
+now I've placed you. You're not in with any one. You're just
+playing it by yourself. I shouldn't mind betting this was your
+first job, and that you saw your chance of making a pile by
+holding up old man Ford, and thought it was better than
+schoolmastering, and grabbed it.'
+
+He leaned forward and tapped me on the knee again. There was
+something indescribably irritating in the action. As one who has
+had experience, I can state that, while to be arrested at all is
+bad, to be arrested by a detective with a fatherly manner is
+maddening.
+
+'See here,' he said, 'we must get together over this business.'
+
+I suppose it was the recollection of the same words in the mouth
+of Buck MacGinnis that made me sit up with a jerk and stare at
+him.
+
+'We'll make a great team,' he said, still in that same cosy voice.
+'If ever there was a case of fifty-fifty, this is it. You've got
+the kid, and I've got you. I can't get away with him without your
+help, and you can't get away with him unless you square me. It's a
+stand-off. The only thing is to sit in at the game together and
+share out. Does it go?'
+
+He beamed kindly on my bewilderment during the space of time it
+takes to select a cigarette and light a match. Then, blowing a
+contented puff of smoke, he crossed his legs and leaned back.
+
+'When I told you I was a Pinkerton's man, sonny,' he said, 'I
+missed the cold truth by about a mile. But you caught me shooting
+off guns in the grounds, and it was up to me to say something.'
+
+He blew a smoke-ring and watched it dreamily till it melted in the
+draught from the ventilator.
+
+'I'm Smooth Sam Fisher,' he said.
+
+
+II
+
+When two emotions clash, the weaker goes to the wall. Any surprise
+I might have felt was swallowed up in my relief. If I had been at
+liberty to be astonished, my companion's information would no
+doubt have astonished me. But I was not. I was so relieved that he
+was not a Pinkerton's man that I did not really care what else he
+might be.
+
+'It's always been a habit of mine, in these little matters,' he
+went on, 'to let other folks do the rough work, and chip in myself
+when they've cleared the way. It saves trouble and expense. I
+don't travel with a gang, like that bone-headed Buck. What's the
+use of a gang? They only get tumbling over each other and spoiling
+everything. Look at Buck! Where is he? Down and out. While I--'
+
+He smiled complacently. His manner annoyed me. I objected to being
+looked upon as a humble cat's paw by this bland scoundrel.
+
+'While you--what?' I said.
+
+He looked at me in mild surprise.
+
+'Why, I come in with you, sonny, and take my share like a
+gentleman.'
+
+'Do you!'
+
+'Well, don't I?'
+
+He looked at me in the half-reproachful half-affectionate manner
+of the kind old uncle who reasons with a headstrong nephew.
+
+'Young man,' he said, 'you surely aren't thinking you can put one
+over on me in this business? Tell me, you don't take me for that
+sort of ivory-skulled boob? Do you imagine for one instant, sonny,
+that I'm not next to every move in this game? Are you deluding
+yourself with the idea that this thing isn't a perfect cinch for
+me? Let's hear what's troubling you. You seem to have gotten some
+foolish ideas in your head. Let's talk it over quietly.'
+
+'If you have no objection,' I said, 'no. I don't want to talk to
+you, Mr Fisher. I don't like you, and I don't like your way of
+earning your living. Buck MacGinnis was bad enough, but at least
+he was a straightforward tough. There's no excuse for you.'
+
+'Surely we are unusually righteous this p.m., are we not?' said
+Sam suavely.
+
+I did not answer.
+
+'Is this not mere professional jealousy?'
+
+This was too much for me.
+
+'Do you imagine for a moment that I'm doing this for money?'
+
+'I did have that impression. Was I wrong? Do you kidnap the sons
+of millionaires for your health?'
+
+'I promised that I would get this boy back to his mother. That is
+why I gave him the money to go to London. And that is why my valet
+was to have taken him to--to where Mrs Ford is.'
+
+He did not reply in words, but if ever eyebrows spoke, his said,
+'My dear sir, really!' I could not remain silent under their
+patent disbelief.
+
+'That's the simple truth,' I said.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, as who would say, 'Have it your own
+way. Let us change the subject.'
+
+'You say "was to have taken". Have you changed your plans?'
+
+'Yes, I'm going to take the boy back to the school.'
+
+He laughed--a rich, rolling laugh. His double chin shook
+comfortably.
+
+'It won't do,' he said, shaking his head with humorous reproach.
+'It won't do.'
+
+'You don't believe me?'
+
+'Frankly, I do not.'
+
+'Very well,' I said, and began to read my book.
+
+'If you want to give me the slip,' he chuckled, 'you must do
+better than that. I can see you bringing the Nugget back to the
+school.'
+
+'You will, if you wait,' I said.
+
+'I wonder what that address was that you gave him,' he mused.
+'Well, I shall soon know.'
+
+He lapsed into silence. The train rolled on. I looked at my watch.
+London was not far off now.
+
+'The present arrangement of equal division,' said Sam, breaking a
+long silence, 'holds good, of course, only in the event of your
+quitting this fool game and doing the square thing by me. Let me
+put it plainly. We are either partners or competitors. It is for
+you to decide. If you will be sensible and tell me that address, I
+will pledge my word--'
+
+'Your word!' I said scornfully.
+
+'Honour among thieves!' replied Sam, with unruffled geniality. 'I
+wouldn't double-cross you for worlds. If, however, you think you
+can manage without my assistance, it will then be my melancholy
+duty to beat you to the kid, and collect him and the money
+entirely on my own account. Am I to take it,' he said, as I was
+silent, 'that you prefer war to an alliance?'
+
+I turned a page of my book and went on reading.
+
+'If Youth but knew!' he sighed. 'Young man, I am nearly twice your
+age, and I have, at a modest estimate, about ten times as much
+sense. Yet, in your overweening self-confidence, with your
+ungovernable gall, you fancy you can hand me a lemon. _Me!_ I
+should smile!'
+
+'Do,' I said. 'Do, while you can.'
+
+He shook his head reprovingly.
+
+'You will not be so fresh, sonny, in a few hours. You will be
+biting pieces out of yourself, I fear. And later on, when my
+automobile splashes you with mud in Piccadilly, you will taste the
+full bitterness of remorse. Well, Youth must buy its experience, I
+suppose!'
+
+I looked across at him as he sat, plump and rosy and complacent,
+puffing at his cigarette, and my heart warmed to the old ruffian.
+It was impossible to maintain an attitude of righteous iciness
+with him. I might loathe his mode of life, and hate him as a
+representative--and a leading representative--of one of the most
+contemptible trades on earth, but there was a sunny charm about
+the man himself which made it hard to feel hostile to him as an
+individual.
+
+I closed my book with a bang and burst out laughing.
+
+'You're a wonder!' I said.
+
+He beamed at what he took to be evidence that I was coming round
+to the friendly and sensible view of the matter.
+
+'Then you think, on consideration--' he said. 'Excellent! Now, my
+dear young man, all joking aside, you will take me with you to
+that address, will you not? You observe that I do not ask you to
+give it to me. Let there be not so much as the faintest odour of
+the double-cross about this business. All I ask is that you allow
+me to accompany you to where the Nugget is hidden, and then rely
+on my wider experience of this sort of game to get him safely away
+and open negotiations with the dad.'
+
+'I suppose your experience has been wide?' I said.
+
+'Quite tolerably--quite tolerably.'
+
+'Doesn't it ever worry you the anxiety and misery you cause?'
+
+'Purely temporary, both. And then, look at it in another way.
+Think of the joy and relief of the bereaved parents when sonny
+comes toddling home again! Surely it is worth some temporary
+distress to taste that supreme happiness? In a sense, you might
+call me a human benefactor. I teach parents to appreciate their
+children. You know what parents are. Father gets caught short in
+steel rails one morning. When he reaches home, what does he do? He
+eases his mind by snapping at little Willie. Mrs Van First-Family
+forgets to invite mother to her freak-dinner. What happens? Mother
+takes it out of William. They love him, maybe, but they are too
+used to him. They do not realize all he is to them. And then, one
+afternoon, he disappears. The agony! The remorse! "How could I
+ever have told our lost angel to stop his darned noise!" moans
+father. "I struck him!" sobs mother. "With this jewelled hand I
+spanked our vanished darling!" "We were not worthy to have him,"
+they wail together. "But oh, if we could but get him back!" Well
+they do. They get him back as soon as ever they care to come
+across in unmarked hundred-dollar bills. And after that they think
+twice before working off their grouches on the poor kid. So I
+bring universal happiness into the home. I don't say father
+doesn't get a twinge every now and then when he catches sight of
+the hole in his bank balance, but, darn it, what's money for if
+it's not to spend?'
+
+He snorted with altruistic fervour.
+
+'What makes you so set on kidnapping Ogden Ford?' I asked. 'I know
+he is valuable, but you must have made your pile by this time. I
+gather that you have been practising your particular brand of
+philanthropy for a good many years. Why don't you retire?'
+
+He sighed.
+
+'It is the dream of my life to retire, young man. You may not
+believe me, but my instincts are thoroughly domestic. When I have
+the leisure to weave day-dreams, they centre around a cosy little
+home with a nice porch and stationary washtubs.'
+
+He regarded me closely, as if to decide whether I was worthy of
+these confidences. There was something wistful in his brown eyes.
+I suppose the inspection must have been favourable, or he was in a
+mood when a man must unbosom himself to someone, for he proceeded
+to open his heart to me. A man in his particular line of business,
+I imagine, finds few confidants, and the strain probably becomes
+intolerable at times.
+
+'Have you ever experienced the love of a good woman, sonny? It's a
+wonderful thing.' He brooded sentimentally for a moment, then
+continued, and--to my mind--somewhat spoiled the impressiveness of
+his opening words. 'The love of a good woman,' he said, 'is about
+the darnedest wonderful lay-out that ever came down the pike. I
+know. I've had some.'
+
+A spark from his cigarette fell on his hand. He swore a startled
+oath.
+
+'We came from the same old town,' he resumed, having recovered
+from this interlude. 'Used to be kids at the same school ...
+Walked to school together ... me carrying her luncheon-basket and
+helping her over the fences ... Ah! ... Just the same when we grew
+up. Still pals. And that was twenty years ago ... The arrangement
+was that I should go out and make the money to buy the home, and
+then come back and marry her.'
+
+'Then why the devil haven't you done it?' I said severely.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+'If you know anything about crooks, young man,' he said, 'you'll
+know that outside of their own line they are the easiest marks that
+ever happened. They fall for anything. At least, it's always been
+that way with me. No sooner did I get together a sort of pile and
+start out for the old town, when some smooth stranger would come
+along and steer me up against some skin-game, and back I'd have to
+go to work. That happened a few times, and when I did manage at
+last to get home with the dough I found she had married another
+guy. It's hard on women, you see,' he explained chivalrously. 'They
+get lonesome and Roving Rupert doesn't show up, so they have to
+marry Stay-at-Home Henry just to keep from getting the horrors.'
+
+'So she's Mrs Stay-at-Home Henry now?' I said sympathetically.
+
+'She was till a year ago. She's a widow now. Deceased had a
+misunderstanding with a hydrophobia skunk, so I'm informed. I
+believe he was a good man. Outside of licking him at school I
+didn't know him well. I saw her just before I left to come here.
+She's as fond of me as ever. It's all settled, if only I can
+connect with the mazuma. And she don't want much, either. Just
+enough to keep the home together.'
+
+'I wish you happiness,' I said.
+
+'You can do better than that. You can take me with you to that
+address.'
+
+I avoided the subject.
+
+'What does she say to your way of making money?' I asked.
+
+'She doesn't know, and she ain't going to know. I don't see why a
+man has got to tell his wife every little thing in his past. She
+thinks I'm a drummer, travelling in England for a dry-goods firm.
+She wouldn't stand for the other thing, not for a minute. She's
+very particular. Always was. That's why I'm going to quit after
+I've won out over this thing of the Little Nugget.' He looked at
+me hopefully. 'So you _will_ take me along, sonny, won't you?'
+
+I shook my head.
+
+'You won't?'
+
+'I'm sorry to spoil a romance, but I can't. You must look around
+for some other home into which to bring happiness. The Fords' is
+barred.'
+
+'You are very obstinate, young man,' he said, sadly, but without
+any apparent ill-feeling. 'I can't persuade you?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Ah, well! So we are to be rivals, not allies. You will regret
+this, sonny. I may say you will regret it very bitterly. When you
+see me in my automo--'
+
+'You mentioned your automobile before.'
+
+'Ah! So I did.'
+
+The train had stopped, as trains always do on English railways
+before entering a terminus. Presently it began to move forward
+hesitatingly, as if saying to itself, 'Now, am I really wanted
+here? Shall I be welcome?' Eventually, after a second halt, it
+glided slowly alongside the platform.
+
+I sprang out and ran to the cab-rank. I was aboard a taxi, bowling
+out of the station before the train had stopped.
+
+Peeping out of the window at the back, I was unable to see Sam. My
+adroit move, I took it, had baffled him. I had left him standing.
+
+It was a quarter of an hour's drive to my rooms, but to me, in my
+anxiety, it seemed more. This was going to be a close thing, and
+success or failure a matter of minutes. If he followed my
+instructions Smith would be starting for the Continental boat-train
+tonight with his companion; and, working out the distances,
+I saw that, by the time I could arrive, he might already have left
+my rooms. Sam's supervision at Sanstead Station had made it
+impossible for me to send a telegram. I had had to trust to
+chance. Fortunately my train, by a miracle, had been up to time,
+and at my present rate of progress I ought to catch Smith a few
+minutes before he left the building.
+
+The cab pulled up. I ran up the stairs and opened the door of my
+apartment.
+
+'Smith!' I called.
+
+A chair scraped along the floor and a door opened at the end of
+the passage. Smith came out.
+
+'Thank goodness you have not started. I thought I should miss you.
+Where is the boy?'
+
+'The boy, sir?'
+
+'The boy I wrote to you about.'
+
+'He has not arrived, sir.'
+
+'Not arrived?'
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+I stared at him blankly.
+
+'How long have you been here?'
+
+'All day, sir.'
+
+'You have not been out?'
+
+'Not since the hour of two, sir.'
+
+'I can't understand it,' I said.
+
+'Perhaps the young gentleman changed his mind and never started,
+sir?'
+
+'I know he started.'
+
+Smith had no further suggestion to offer.
+
+'Pending the young gentleman's arrival, sir, I remain in London?'
+
+A fruity voice spoke at the door behind me.
+
+'What! Hasn't he arrived?'
+
+I turned. There, beaming and benevolent, stood Mr Fisher.
+
+'It occurred to me to look your name out in the telephone
+directory,' he explained. 'I might have thought of that before.'
+
+'Come in here,' I said, opening the door of the sitting-room. I
+did not want to discuss the thing with him before Smith.
+
+He looked about the room admiringly.
+
+'So these are your quarters,' he said. 'You do yourself pretty
+well, young man. So I understand that the Nugget has gone wrong in
+transit. He has altered his plans on the way?'
+
+'I can't understand it.'
+
+'I can! You gave him a certain amount of money?'
+
+'Yes. Enough to get him to--where he was going.'
+
+'Then, knowing the boy, I should say that he has found other uses
+for it. He's whooping it up in London, and, I should fancy, having
+the time of his young life.'
+
+He got up.
+
+'This of course,' he said, 'alters considerably any understanding
+we may have come to, sonny. All idea of a partnership is now out
+of the question. I wish you well, but I have no further use for
+you. Somewhere in this great city the Little Nugget is hiding, and
+I mean to find him--entirely on my own account. This is where our
+paths divide, Mr Burns. Good night.'
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 10
+
+
+When Sam had left, which he did rather in the manner of a heavy
+father in melodrama, shaking the dust of an erring son's threshold
+off his feet, I mixed myself a high-ball, and sat down to consider
+the position of affairs. It did not take me long to see that the
+infernal boy had double-crossed me with a smooth effectiveness
+which Mr Fisher himself might have envied. Somewhere in this great
+city, as Sam had observed, he was hiding. But where? London is a
+vague address.
+
+I wondered what steps Sam was taking. Was there some underground
+secret service bureau to which persons of his profession had
+access? I doubted it. I imagined that he, as I proposed to do, was
+drawing the city at a venture in the hope of flushing the quarry
+by accident. Yet such was the impression he had made upon me as a
+man of resource and sagacity, that I did not relish the idea of
+his getting a start on me, even in a venture so uncertain as this.
+My imagination began to picture him miraculously inspired in the
+search, and such was the vividness of the vision that I jumped up
+from my chair, resolved to get on the trail at once. It was
+hopelessly late, however, and I did not anticipate that I should
+meet with any success.
+
+Nor did I. For two hours and a half I tramped the streets, my
+spirits sinking more and more under the influence of failure and a
+blend of snow and sleet which had begun to fall; and then, tired
+out, I went back to my rooms, and climbed sorrowfully into bed.
+
+It was odd to wake up and realize that I was in London. Years
+seemed to have passed since I had left it. Time is a thing of
+emotions, not of hours and minutes, and I had certainly packed a
+considerable number of emotional moments into my stay at Sanstead
+House. I lay in bed, reviewing the past, while Smith, with a
+cheerful clatter of crockery, prepared my breakfast in the next
+room.
+
+A curious lethargy had succeeded the feverish energy of the
+previous night. More than ever the impossibility of finding the
+needle in this human bundle of hay oppressed me. No one is
+optimistic before breakfast, and I regarded the future with dull
+resignation, turning my thoughts from it after a while to the
+past. But the past meant Audrey, and to think of Audrey hurt.
+
+It seemed curious to me that in a life of thirty years I should
+have been able to find, among the hundreds of women I had met,
+only one capable of creating in me that disquieting welter of
+emotions which is called love, and hard that that one should
+reciprocate my feeling only to the extent of the mild liking which
+Audrey entertained for me.
+
+I tried to analyse her qualifications for the place she held in my
+heart. I had known women who had attracted me more physically, and
+women who had attracted me more mentally. I had known wiser women,
+handsomer women, more amiable women, but none of them had affected
+me like Audrey. The problem was inexplicable. Any idea that we
+might be affinities, soul-mates destined for each other from the
+beginning of time, was disposed of by the fact that my attraction
+for her was apparently in inverse ratio to hers for me. For
+possibly the millionth time in the past five years I tried to
+picture in my mind the man Sheridan, that shadowy wooer to whom
+she had yielded so readily. What quality had he possessed that I
+did not? Wherein lay the magnetism that had brought about his
+triumph?
+
+These were unprofitable speculations. I laid them aside until the
+next occasion when I should feel disposed for self-torture, and
+got out of bed. A bath and breakfast braced me up, and I left the
+house in a reasonably cheerful frame of mind.
+
+To search at random for an individual unit among London's millions
+lends an undeniable attraction to a day in town. In a desultory
+way I pursued my investigations through the morning and afternoon,
+but neither of Ogden nor of his young friend Lord Beckford was I
+vouchsafed a glimpse. My consolation was that Smooth Sam was
+probably being equally unsuccessful.
+
+Towards the evening there arose the question of return to
+Sanstead. I had not gathered whether Mr Abney had intended to set
+any time-limit on my wanderings, or whether I was not supposed to
+come back except with the deserters. I decided that I had better
+remain in London, at any rate for another night, and went to the
+nearest post office to send Mr Abney a telegram to that effect.
+
+As I was writing it, the problem which had baffled me for twenty-four
+hours, solved itself in under a minute. Whether my powers of
+inductive reasoning had been under a cloud since I left Sanstead,
+or whether they were normally beneath contempt, I do not know. But
+the fact remains, that I had completely overlooked the obvious
+solution of my difficulty. I think I must have been thinking so
+exclusively of the Little Nugget that I had entirely forgotten the
+existence of Augustus Beckford. It occurred to me now that, by
+making inquiries at the latter's house, I should learn something
+to my advantage. A boy of the Augustus type does not run away from
+school without a reason. Probably some party was taking place
+tonight at the ancestral home, at which, tempted by the lawless
+Nugget, he had decided that his presence was necessary.
+
+I knew the house well. There had been a time, when Lord Mountry
+and I were at Oxford, when I had spent frequent week-ends there.
+Since then, owing to being abroad, I had seen little of the
+family. Now was the moment to reintroduce myself. I hailed a cab.
+
+Inductive reasoning had not played me false. There was a red
+carpet outside the house, and from within came the sounds of
+music.
+
+Lady Wroxham, the mother of Mountry and the vanishing Augustus,
+was one of those women who take things as they come. She did not
+seem surprised at seeing me.
+
+'How nice of you to come and see us,' she said. 'Somebody told me
+you were abroad. Ted is in the south of France in the yacht.
+Augustus is here. Mr Abney, his schoolmaster, let him come up for
+the night.'
+
+I perceived that Augustus had been playing a bold game. I saw the
+coaching of Ogden behind these dashing falsehoods.
+
+'You will hardly remember Sybil. She was quite a baby when you
+were here last. She is having her birthday-party this evening.'
+
+'May I go in and help?' I said.
+
+'I wish you would. They would love it.'
+
+I doubted it, but went in. A dance had just finished. Strolling
+towards me in his tightest Eton suit, his face shining with honest
+joy, was the errant Augustus, and close behind him, wearing the
+blase' air of one for whom custom has staled the pleasures of life,
+was the Little Nugget.
+
+I think they both saw me at the same moment. The effect of my
+appearance on them was illustrative of their respective characters.
+Augustus turned a deep shade of purple and fixed me with a
+horrified stare. The Nugget winked. Augustus halted and shuffled
+his feet. The Nugget strolled up and accosted me like an old
+friend.
+
+'Hello!' he said. 'How did you get here? Say, I was going to try
+and get you on the phone some old time and explain things. I've
+been pretty much on the jump since I hit London.'
+
+'You little brute!'
+
+My gleaming eye, travelling past him, met that of the Hon.
+Augustus Beckford, causing that youth to jump guiltily. The Nugget
+looked over his shoulder.
+
+'I guess we don't want him around if we're to talk business,' he
+said. 'I'll go and tell him to beat it.'
+
+'You'll do nothing of the kind. I don't propose to lose sight of
+either of you.'
+
+'Oh, he's all right. You don't have to worry about him. He was
+going back to the school anyway tomorrow. He only ran away to go
+to this party. Why not let him enjoy himself while he's here? I'll
+go and make a date for you to meet at the end of the show.'
+
+He approached his friend, and a short colloquy ensued, which ended
+in the latter shuffling off in the direction of the other
+revellers. Such is the buoyancy of youth that a moment later he
+was dancing a two-step with every appearance of careless enjoyment.
+The future, with its storms, seemed to have slipped from his mind.
+
+'That's all right,' said the Nugget, returning to me. 'He's
+promised he won't duck away. You'll find him somewhere around
+whenever you care to look for him. Now we can talk.'
+
+'I hardly like to trespass on your valuable time,' I said. The
+airy way in which this demon boy handled what should have been--to
+him--an embarrassing situation irritated me. For all the authority
+I seemed to have over him I might have been the potted palm
+against which he was leaning.
+
+'That's all right.' Everything appeared to be all right with him.
+'This sort of thing does not appeal to me. Don't be afraid of
+spoiling my evening. I only came because Becky was so set on it.
+Dancing bores me pallid, so let's get somewhere where we can sit
+down and talk.'
+
+I was beginning to feel that a children's party was the right
+place for me. Sam Fisher had treated me as a child, and so did the
+Little Nugget. That I was a responsible person, well on in my
+thirty-first year, with a narrow escape from death and a hopeless
+love-affair on my record, seemed to strike neither of them. I
+followed my companion to a secluded recess with the utmost
+meekness.
+
+He leaned back and crossed his legs.
+
+'Got a cigarette?'
+
+'I have not got a cigarette, and, if I had, I wouldn't give it to
+you.'
+
+He regarded me tolerantly.
+
+'Got a grouch tonight, haven't you? You seem all flittered up
+about something. What's the trouble? Sore about my not showing up
+at your apartment? I'll explain that all right.'
+
+'I shall be glad to listen.'
+
+'It's like this. It suddenly occurred to me that a day or two one
+way or the other wasn't going to affect our deal and that, while I
+was about it, I might just as well see a bit of London before I
+left. I suggested it to Becky, and the idea made the biggest kind
+of a hit with him. I found he had only been in an automobile once
+in his life. Can you beat it? I've had one of my own ever since
+I was a kid. Well, naturally, it was up to me to blow him to a
+joy-ride, and that's where the money went.'
+
+'Where the money went?'
+
+'Sure. I've got two dollars left, and that's all. It wasn't
+altogether the automobiling. It was the meals that got away with
+my roll. Say, that kid Beckford is one swell feeder. He's wrapping
+himself around the eats all the time. I guess it's not smoking
+that does it. I haven't the appetite I used to have. Well, that's
+how it was, you see. But I'm through now. Cough up the fare and
+I'll make the trip tomorrow. Mother'll be tickled to death to see
+me.'
+
+'She won't see you. We're going back to the school tomorrow.'
+
+He looked at me incredulously.
+
+'What's that? Going back to school?'
+
+'I've altered my plans.'
+
+'I'm not going back to any old school. You daren't take me.
+Where'll you be if I tell the hot-air merchant about our deal and
+you slipping me the money and all that?'
+
+'Tell him what you like. He won't believe it.'
+
+He thought this over, and its truth came home to him. The
+complacent expression left his face.
+
+'What's the matter with you? Are you dippy, or what? You get me
+away up to London, and the first thing that happens when I'm here
+is that you want to take me back. You make me tired.'
+
+It was borne in upon me that there was something in his point of
+view. My sudden change of mind must have seemed inexplicable to
+him. And, having by a miracle succeeded in finding him, I was in a
+mood to be generous. I unbent.
+
+'Ogden, old sport,' I said cordially, I think we've both had all
+we want of this children's party. You're bored and if I stop on
+another half hour I may be called on to entertain these infants
+with comic songs. We men of the world are above this sort of
+thing. Get your hat and coat and I'll take you to a show. We can
+discuss business later over a bit of supper.'
+
+The gloom of his countenance melted into a pleased smile.
+
+'You said something that time!' he observed joyfully; and we slunk
+away to get our hats, the best of friends. A note for Augustus
+Beckford, requesting his presence at Waterloo Station at ten
+minutes past twelve on the following morning, I left with the
+butler. There was a certain informality about my methods which I
+doubt if Mr Abney would have approved, but I felt that I could
+rely on Augustus.
+
+Much may be done by kindness. By the time the curtain fell on the
+musical comedy which we had attended all was peace between the
+Nugget and myself. Supper cemented our friendship, and we drove
+back to my rooms on excellent terms with one another. Half an hour
+later he was snoring in the spare room, while I smoked contentedly
+before the fire in the sitting-room.
+
+I had not been there five minutes when the bell rang. Smith was in
+bed, so I went to the door myself and found Mr Fisher on the mat.
+
+My feeling of benevolence towards all created things, the result
+of my successful handling of the Little Nugget, embraced Sam. I
+invited him in.
+
+'Well,' I said, when I had given him a cigar and filled his glass,
+'and how have you been getting on, Mr Fisher? Any luck?'
+
+He shook his head at me reproachfully.
+
+'Young man, you're deep. I've got to hand it to you. I
+underestimated you. You're very deep.'
+
+'Approbation from Smooth Sam Fisher is praise indeed. But why
+these stately compliments?'
+
+'You took me in, young man. I don't mind owning it. When you told
+me the Nugget had gone astray, I lapped it up like a babe. And all
+the time you were putting one over on me. Well, well!'
+
+'But he had gone astray, Mr Fisher.'
+
+He knocked the ash off his cigar. He wore a pained look.
+
+'You needn't keep it up, sonny. I happened to be standing within
+three yards of you when you got into a cab with him in Shaftesbury
+Avenue.'
+
+I laughed.
+
+'Well, if that's the case, let there be no secrets between us.
+He's asleep in the next room.'
+
+Sam leaned forward earnestly and tapped me on the knee.
+
+'Young man, this is a critical moment. This is where, if you
+aren't careful, you may undo all the good work you have done by
+getting chesty and thinking that, because you've won out so far,
+you're the whole show. Believe me, the difficult part is to come,
+and it's right here that you need an experienced man to work in
+with you. Let me in on this and leave the negotiations with old
+man Ford to me. You would only make a mess of them. I've handled
+this kind of thing a dozen times, and I know just how to act. You
+won't regret taking me on as a partner. You won't lose a cent by
+it. I can work him for just double what you would get, even
+supposing you didn't make a mess of the deal and get nothing.'
+
+'It's very good of you, but there won't be any negotiations with
+Mr Ford. I am taking the boy back to Sanstead, as I told you.' I
+caught his pained eye. 'I'm afraid you don't believe me.'
+
+He drew at his cigar without replying.
+
+It is a human weakness to wish to convince those who doubt us,
+even if their opinion is not intrinsically valuable. I remembered
+that I had Cynthia's letter in my pocket. I produced it as exhibit
+A in my evidence and read it to him.
+
+Sam listened carefully.
+
+'I see,' he said. 'Who wrote that?'
+
+'Never mind. A friend of mine.'
+
+I returned the letter to my pocket.
+
+'I was going to have sent him over to Monaco, but I altered my
+plans. Something interfered.'
+
+'What?'
+
+'I might call it coincidence, if you know what that means.'
+
+'And you are really going to take him back to the school?'
+
+'I am.'
+
+'We shall travel back together,' he said. 'I had hoped I had seen
+the last of the place. The English countryside may be delightful
+in the summer, but for winter give me London. However,' he sighed
+resignedly, and rose from his chair, 'I will say good-bye till
+tomorrow. What train do you catch?'
+
+'Do you mean to say,' I demanded, 'that you have the nerve to come
+back to Sanstead after what you have told me about yourself?'
+
+'You entertain some idea of exposing me to Mr Abney? Forget it,
+young man. We are both in glass houses. Don't let us throw stones.
+Besides, would he believe it? What proof have you?'
+
+I had thought this argument tolerably sound when I had used it on
+the Nugget. Now that it was used on myself I realized its
+soundness even more thoroughly. My hands were tied.
+
+'Yes,' said Sam, 'tomorrow, after our little jaunt to London, we
+shall all resume the quiet, rural life once more.'
+
+He beamed expansively upon me from the doorway.
+
+'However, even the quiet, rural life has its interest. I guess we
+shan't be dull!' he said.
+
+I believed him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 11
+
+
+Considering the various handicaps under which he laboured--notably
+a cold in the head, a fear of the Little Nugget, and a reverence
+for the aristocracy--Mr Abney's handling of the situation, when
+the runaways returned to school, bordered on the masterly. Any sort
+of physical punishment being out of the question--especially in the
+case of the Nugget, who would certainly have retaliated with a bout
+of window-breaking--he had to fall back on oratory, and he did this
+to such effect that, when he had finished, Augustus wept openly and
+was so subdued that he did not ask a single question for nearly three
+days.
+
+One result of the adventure was that Ogden's bed was moved to a
+sort of cubby-hole adjoining my room. In the house, as originally
+planned, this had evidently been a dressing-room. Under Mr Abney's
+rule it had come to be used as a general repository for lumber. My
+boxes were there, and a portmanteau of Glossop's. It was an
+excellent place in which to bestow a boy in quest of whom
+kidnappers might break in by night. The window was too small to
+allow a man to pass through, and the only means of entrance was by
+way of my room. By night, at any rate, the Nugget's safety seemed
+to be assured.
+
+The curiosity of the small boy, fortunately, is not lasting. His
+active mind lives mainly in the present. It was not many days,
+therefore, before the excitement caused by Buck's raid and the
+Nugget's disappearance began to subside. Within a week both
+episodes had been shelved as subjects of conversation, and the
+school had settled down to its normal humdrum life.
+
+To me, however, there had come a period of mental unrest more
+acute than I had ever experienced. My life, for the past five
+years, had run in so smooth a stream that, now that I found myself
+tossed about in the rapids, I was bewildered. It was a peculiar
+aggravation of the difficulty of my position that in my world, the
+little world of Sanstead House, there should be but one woman, and
+she the very one whom, if I wished to recover my peace of mind, it
+was necessary for me to avoid.
+
+My feelings towards Cynthia at this time defied my powers of
+analysis. There were moments when I clung to the memory of her,
+when she seemed the only thing solid and safe in a world of chaos,
+and moments, again, when she was a burden crushing me. There were
+days when I would give up the struggle and let myself drift, and
+days when I would fight myself inch by inch. But every day found
+my position more hopeless than the last.
+
+At night sometimes, as I lay awake, I would tell myself that if
+only I could see her or even hear from her the struggle would be
+easier. It was her total disappearance from my life that made it
+so hard for me. I had nothing to help me to fight.
+
+And then, one morning, as if in answer to my thoughts her letter
+came.
+
+The letter startled me. It was as if there had been some
+telepathic communion between us.
+
+It was very short, almost formal:
+
+'MY DEAR PETER--I want to ask you a question. I can put it quite
+shortly. It is this. Are your feelings towards me still the same?
+I don't tell you why I ask this. I simply ask it. Whatever your
+answer is, it cannot affect our friendship, so be quite candid.
+CYNTHIA.'
+
+I sat down there and then to write my reply. The letter, coming
+when it did and saying what it said, had affected me profoundly.
+It was like an unexpected reinforcement in a losing battle. It
+filled me with a glow of self-confidence. I felt strong again,
+able to fight and win. My mood bore me away, and I poured out my
+whole heart to her. I told her that my feelings had not altered,
+that I loved her and nobody but her. It was a letter, I can see,
+looking back, born of fretted nerves; but at the time I had no
+such criticism to make. It seemed to me a true expression of my
+real feelings.
+
+That the fight was not over because in my moment of exaltation I
+had imagined that I had conquered myself was made uncomfortably
+plain to me by the thrill that ran through me when, returning from
+posting my letter, I met Audrey. The sight of her reminded me that
+a reinforcement is only a reinforcement, a help towards victory,
+not victory itself.
+
+For the first time I found myself feeling resentful towards her.
+There was no reason in my resentment. It would not have borne
+examination. But it was there, and its presence gave me support. I
+found myself combating the thrill the sight of her had caused, and
+looking at her with a critical and hostile eye. Who was she that
+she should enslave a man against his will? Fascination exists only
+in the imagination of the fascinated. If he have the strength to
+deny the fascination and convince himself that it does not exist,
+he is saved. It is purely a matter of willpower and calm
+reasonableness. There must have been sturdy, level-headed Egyptian
+citizens who could not understand what people saw to admire in
+Cleopatra.
+
+Thus reasoning, I raised my hat, uttered a crisp 'Good morning',
+and passed on, the very picture of the brisk man of affairs.
+
+'Peter!'
+
+Even the brisk man of affairs must stop when spoken to. Otherwise,
+apart from any question of politeness, it looks as if he were
+running away.
+
+Her face was still wearing the faint look of surprise which my
+manner had called forth.
+
+'You're in a great hurry.'
+
+I had no answer. She did not appear to expect one.
+
+We moved towards the house in silence, to me oppressive silence.
+The force of her personality was beginning to beat against my
+defences, concerning the stability of which, under pressure, a
+certain uneasiness troubled my mind.
+
+'Are you worried about anything, Peter?' she said at last.
+
+'No,' I said. 'Why?'
+
+'I was afraid you might be.'
+
+I felt angry with myself. I was mismanaging this thing in the most
+idiotic way. Instead of this bovine silence, gay small-talk, the
+easy eloquence, in fact, of the brisk man of affairs should have
+been my policy. No wonder Smooth Sam Fisher treated me as a child.
+My whole bearing was that of a sulky school-boy.
+
+The silence became more oppressive.
+
+We reached the house. In the hall we parted, she to upper regions,
+I to my classroom. She did not look at me. Her face was cold and
+offended.
+
+One is curiously inconsistent. Having created what in the
+circumstances was a most desirable coldness between Audrey and
+myself, I ought to have been satisfied. Reason told me that this
+was the best thing that could have happened. Yet joy was one of
+the few emotions which I did not feel during the days which
+followed. My brief moment of clear-headedness had passed, and with
+it the exhilaration that had produced the letter to Cynthia and
+the resentment which had helped me to reason calmly with myself on
+the intrinsic nature of fascination in woman. Once more Audrey
+became the centre of my world. But our friendship, that elusive
+thing which had contrived to exist side by side with my love, had
+vanished. There was a breach between us which widened daily. Soon
+we hardly spoke.
+
+Nothing, in short, could have been more eminently satisfactory,
+and the fact that I regretted it is only a proof of the essential
+weakness of my character.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 12
+
+
+I
+
+In those grey days there was one thought, of the many that
+occupied my mind, which brought with it a certain measure of
+consolation. It was the reflection that this state of affairs
+could not last for ever. The school term was drawing to a close.
+Soon I should be free from the propinquity which paralysed my
+efforts to fight. I was resolved that the last day of term should
+end for ever my connection with Sanstead House and all that was in
+it. Mrs Ford must find some other minion. If her happiness
+depended on the recovery of the Little Nugget, she must learn to
+do without happiness, like the rest of the inhabitants of this
+horrible world.
+
+Meanwhile, however, I held myself to be still on duty. By what
+tortuous processes of thought I had arrived at the conclusion I do
+not know, but I considered myself responsible to Audrey for the
+safeguarding of the Little Nugget, and no altered relations
+between us could affect my position. Perhaps mixed up with this
+attitude of mind, was the less altruistic wish to foil Smooth Sam.
+His continued presence at the school was a challenge to me.
+
+Sam's behaviour puzzled me. I do not know exactly what I expected
+him to do, but I certainly did not expect him to do nothing. Yet
+day followed day, and still he made no move. He was the very model
+of a butler. But our dealings with one another in London had left
+me vigilant, and his inaction did not disarm me. It sprang from
+patience, not from any weakening of purpose or despair of success.
+Sooner or later I knew he would act, swiftly and suddenly, with a
+plan perfected in every detail.
+
+But when he made his attack it was the very simplicity of his
+methods that tricked me, and only pure chance defeated him.
+
+I have said that it was the custom of the staff of masters at
+Sanstead House School--in other words, of every male adult in the
+house except Mr Fisher himself--to assemble in Mr Abney's study
+after dinner of an evening to drink coffee. It was a ceremony,
+like most of the ceremonies at an establishment such as a school,
+where things are run on a schedule, which knew of no variation.
+Sometimes Mr Abney would leave us immediately after the ceremony,
+but he never omitted to take his part in it first.
+
+On this particular evening, for the first time since the beginning
+of the term, I was seized with a prejudice against coffee. I had
+been sleeping badly for several nights, and I decided that
+abstention from coffee might remedy this.
+
+I waited, for form's sake, till Glossop and Mr Abney had filled
+their cups, then went to my room, where I lay down in the dark to
+wrestle with a more than usually pronounced fit of depression
+which had descended upon me. Solitude and darkness struck me as
+the suitable setting for my thoughts.
+
+At this moment Smooth Sam Fisher had no place in my meditations.
+My mind was not occupied with him at all. When, therefore, the
+door, which had been ajar, began to open slowly, I did not become
+instantly on the alert. Perhaps it was some sound, barely audible,
+that aroused me from my torpor and set my blood tingling with
+anticipation. Perhaps it was the way the door was opening. An
+honest draught does not move a door furtively, in jerks.
+
+I sat up noiseless, tense, and alert. And then, very quietly,
+somebody entered the room.
+
+There was only one person in Sanstead House who would enter a room
+like that. I was amused. The impudence of the thing tickled me. It
+seemed so foreign to Mr Fisher's usual cautious methods. This
+strolling in and helping oneself was certainly kidnapping _de
+luxe_. In the small hours I could have understood it; but at
+nine o'clock at night, with Glossop, Mr Abney and myself awake and
+liable to be met at any moment on the stairs, it was absurd. I
+marvelled at Smooth Sam's effrontery.
+
+I lay still. I imagined that, being in, he would switch on the
+electric light. He did, and I greeted him pleasantly.
+
+'And what can I do for _you_, Mr Fisher?'
+
+For a man who had learned to control himself in difficult
+situations he took the shock badly. He uttered a startled
+exclamation and spun round, open-mouthed.
+
+I could not help admiring the quickness with which he recovered
+himself. Almost immediately he was the suave, chatty Sam Fisher
+who had unbosomed his theories and dreams to me in the train to
+London.
+
+'I quit,' he said pleasantly. 'The episode is closed. I am a man
+of peace, and I take it that you would not keep on lying quietly
+on that bed while I went into the other room and abstracted our
+young friend? Unless you have changed your mind again, would a
+fifty-fifty offer tempt you?'
+
+'Not an inch.'
+
+'Just so. I merely asked.'
+
+'And how about Mr Abney, in any case? Suppose we met him on the
+stairs?'
+
+'We should not meet him on the stairs,' said Sam confidently. 'You
+did not take coffee tonight, I gather?'
+
+'I didn't--no. Why?'
+
+He jerked his head resignedly.
+
+'Can you beat it! I ask you, young man, could I have foreseen
+that, after drinking coffee every night regularly for two months,
+you would pass it up tonight of all nights? You certainly are my
+jinx, sonny. You have hung the Indian sign on me all right.'
+
+His words had brought light to me.
+
+'Did you drug the coffee?'
+
+'Did I! I fixed it so that one sip would have an insomnia patient
+in dreamland before he had time to say "Good night". That stuff
+Rip Van Winkle drank had nothing on my coffee. And all wasted!
+Well, well!'
+
+He turned towards the door.
+
+'Shall I leave the light on, or would you prefer it off?'
+
+'On please. I might fall asleep in the dark.'
+
+'Not you! And, if you did, you would dream that I was there, and
+wake up. There are moments, young man, when you bring me pretty
+near to quitting and taking to honest work.'
+
+He paused.
+
+'But not altogether. I have still a shot or two in my locker. We
+shall see what we shall see. I am not dead yet. Wait!'
+
+'I will, and some day, when I am walking along Piccadilly, a
+passing automobile will splash me with mud. A heavily furred
+plutocrat will stare haughtily at me from the tonneau, and with a
+start of surprise I shall recognize--'
+
+'Stranger things have happened. Be flip while you can, sonny. You
+win so far, but this hoodoo of mine can't last for ever.'
+
+He passed from the room with a certain sad dignity. A moment later
+he reappeared.
+
+'A thought strikes me,' he said. 'The fifty-fifty proposition does
+not impress you. Would it make things easier if I were to offer my
+cooperation for a mere quarter of the profit?'
+
+'Not in the least.'
+
+'It's a handsome offer.'
+
+'Wonderfully. I'm afraid I'm not dealing on any terms.'
+
+He left the room, only to return once more. His head appeared,
+staring at me round the door, in a disembodied way, like the
+Cheshire Cat.
+
+'You won't say later on I didn't give you your chance?' he said
+anxiously.
+
+He vanished again, permanently this time. I heard his steps
+passing down the stairs.
+
+
+II
+
+We had now arrived at the last week of term, at the last days of
+the last week. The holiday spirit was abroad in the school. Among
+the boys it took the form of increased disorderliness. Boys who
+had hitherto only made Glossop bellow now made him perspire and
+tear his hair as well. Boys who had merely spilt ink now broke
+windows. The Little Nugget abandoned cigarettes in favour of an
+old clay pipe which he had found in the stables.
+
+As for me, I felt like a spent swimmer who sees the shore almost
+within his reach. Audrey avoided me when she could, and was
+frigidly polite when we met. But I suffered less now. A few more
+days, and I should have done with this phase of my life for ever,
+and Audrey would once more become a memory.
+
+Complete quiescence marked the deportment of Mr Fisher during
+these days. He did not attempt to repeat his last effort. The
+coffee came to the study unmixed with alien drugs. Sam, like
+lightning, did not strike twice in the same place. He had the
+artist's soul, and disliked patching up bungled work. If he made
+another move, it would, I knew, be on entirely fresh lines.
+
+Ignoring the fact that I had had all the luck, I was inclined to
+be self-satisfied when I thought of Sam. I had pitted my wits
+against his, and I had won. It was a praiseworthy performance for
+a man who had done hitherto nothing particular in his life.
+
+If all the copybook maxims which had been drilled into me in my
+childhood and my early disaster with Audrey had not been
+sufficient, I ought to have been warned by Sam's advice not to
+take victory for granted till the fight was over. As Sam had said,
+his luck would turn sooner or later.
+
+One realizes these truths in theory, but the practical application
+of them seldom fails to come as a shock. I received mine on the
+last morning but one of the term.
+
+Shortly after breakfast a message was brought to me that Mr Abney
+would like to see me in his study. I went without any sense of
+disaster to come. Most of the business of the school was discussed
+in the study after breakfast, and I imagined that the matter had
+to do with some detail of the morrow's exodus.
+
+I found Mr Abney pacing the room, a look of annoyance on his face.
+At the desk, her back to me, Audrey was writing. It was part of
+her work to take charge of the business correspondence of the
+establishment. She did not look round when I came in, nor when Mr
+Abney spoke my name, but went on writing as if I did not exist.
+
+There was a touch of embarrassment in Mr Abney's manner, for which
+I could not at first account. He was stately, but with the rather
+defensive stateliness which marked his announcements that he was
+about to pop up to London and leave me to do his work. He coughed
+once or twice before proceeding to the business of the moment.
+
+'Ah, Mr Burns,' he said at length, 'might I ask if your plans for
+the holidays, the--ah--earlier part of the holidays are settled?
+No? ah--excellent.'
+
+He produced a letter from the heap of papers on the desk.
+
+'Ah--excellent. That simplifies matters considerably. I have no
+right to ask what I am about to--ah--in fact ask. I have no claim
+on your time in the holidays. But, in the circumstances, perhaps
+you may see your way to doing me a considerable service. I have
+received a letter from Mr Elmer Ford which puts me in a position
+of some difficulty. It is not my wish--indeed, it is foreign to my
+policy--to disoblige the parents of the boys who are entrusted to
+my--ah--care, and I should like, if possible, to do what Mr Ford
+asks. It appears that certain business matters call him to the
+north of England for a few days, this rendering it impossible for
+him to receive little Ogden tomorrow. It is not my custom to
+criticize parents who have paid me the compliment of placing their
+sons at the most malleable and important period of their lives, in
+my--ah--charge, but I must say that a little longer notice would
+have been a--in fact, a convenience. But Mr Ford, like so many of
+his countrymen, is what I believe is called a hustler. He does it
+now, as the expression is. In short, he wishes to leave little
+Ogden at the school for the first few days of the holidays, and I
+should be extremely obliged, Mr Burns, if you should find it
+possible to stay here and--ah--look after him.'
+
+Audrey stopped writing and turned in her chair, the first
+intimation she had given that she had heard Mr Abney's remarks.
+
+'It really won't be necessary to trouble Mr Burns,' she said,
+without looking at me. 'I can take care of Ogden very well by
+myself.'
+
+'In the case of an--ah--ordinary boy, Mrs Sheridan, I should not
+hesitate to leave you in sole charge as you have very kindly
+offered to stay and help me in this matter. But we must recollect
+not only--I speak frankly--not only the peculiar--ah--disposition
+of this particular lad, but also the fact that those ruffians who
+visited the house that night may possibly seize the opportunity to
+make a fresh attack. I should not feel--ah--justified in
+thrusting so heavy a responsibility upon you.'
+
+There was reason in what he said. Audrey made no reply. I heard
+her pen tapping on the desk and deduced her feelings. I, myself,
+felt like a prisoner who, having filed through the bars of his
+cell, is removed to another on the eve of escape. I had so braced
+myself up to endure till the end of term and no longer that this
+postponement of the day of release had a crushing effect.
+
+Mr Abney coughed and lowered his voice confidentially.
+
+'I would stay myself, but the fact is, I am called to London on
+very urgent business, and shall be unable to return for a day or
+so. My late pupil, the--ah--the Earl of Buxton, has been--I can
+rely on your discretion, Mr Burns--has been in trouble with the
+authorities at Eton, and his guardian, an old college friend of
+mine--the--in fact, the Duke of Bessborough, who, rightly or wrongly,
+places--er--considerable reliance on my advice, is anxious to consult
+me on the matter. I shall return as soon as possible, but you will
+readily understand that, in the circumstances, my time will not be my
+own. I must place myself unreservedly at--ah--Bessborough's disposal.'
+
+He pressed the bell.
+
+'In the event of your observing any suspicious characters in
+the neighbourhood, you have the telephone and can instantly
+communicate with the police. And you will have the assistance of--'
+
+The door opened and Smooth Sam Fisher entered.
+
+'You rang, sir?'
+
+'Ah! Come in, White, and close the door. I have something to say
+to you. I have just been informing Mr Burns that Mr Ford has
+written asking me to allow his son to stay on at the school for
+the first few days of the vacation.'
+
+He turned to Audrey.
+
+'You will doubtless be surprised, Mrs Sheridan, and
+possibly--ah--somewhat startled, to learn the peculiar nature of
+White's position at Sanstead House. You have no objection to my
+informing Mrs Sheridan, White, in consideration of the fact that you
+will be working together in this matter? Just so. White is a detective
+in the employment of Pinkerton's Agency. Mr Ford'--a slight frown
+appeared on his lofty brow--'Mr Ford obtained his present situation
+for him in order that he might protect his son in the event
+of--ah--in fact, any attempt to remove him.'
+
+I saw Audrey start. A quick flush came into her face. She uttered
+a little exclamation of astonishment.
+
+'Just so,' said Mr Abney, by way of comment on this. 'You are
+naturally surprised. The whole arrangement is excessively unusual,
+and, I may say--ah--disturbing. However, you have your duty to
+fulfil to your employer, White, and you will, of course, remain
+here with the boy.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+I found myself looking into a bright brown eye that gleamed with
+genial triumph. The other was closed. In the exuberance of the
+moment, Smooth Sam had had the bad taste to wink at me.
+
+'You will have Mr Burns to help you, White. He has kindly
+consented to postpone his departure during the short period in
+which I shall be compelled to be absent.'
+
+I had no recollection of having given any kind consent, but I was
+very willing to have it assumed, and I was glad to see that Mr
+Fisher, though Mr Abney did not observe it, was visibly taken
+aback by this piece of information. But he made one of his swift
+recoveries.
+
+'It is very kind of Mr Burns,' he said in his fruitiest voice,
+'but I hardly think it will be necessary to put him to the
+inconvenience of altering his plans. I am sure that Mr Ford would
+prefer the entire charge of the affair to be in my hands.'
+
+He had not chosen a happy moment for the introduction of the
+millionaire's name. Mr Abney was a man of method, who hated any
+dislocation of the fixed routine of life; and Mr Ford's letter had
+upset him. The Ford family, father and son, were just then
+extremely unpopular with him.
+
+He crushed Sam.
+
+'What Mr Ford would or would not prefer is, in this particular
+matter, beside the point. The responsibility for the boy, while he
+remains on the school premises, is--ah--mine, and I shall take
+such precautions as seem fit and adequate to--him--myself,
+irrespective of those which, in your opinion, might suggest
+themselves to Mr Ford. As I cannot be here myself, owing
+to--ah--urgent business in London, I shall certainly take
+advantage of Mr Burns's kind offer to remain as my deputy.'
+
+He paused and blew his nose, his invariable custom after these
+occasional outbursts of his. Sam had not wilted beneath the storm.
+He waited, unmoved, till all was over:
+
+'I am afraid I shall have to be more explicit,' he said: 'I had
+hoped to avoid scandal and unpleasantness, but I see it is
+impossible.'
+
+Mr Abney's astonished face emerged slowly from behind his
+handkerchief.
+
+'I quite agree with you, sir, that somebody should be here to help
+me look after the boy, but not Mr Burns. I am sorry to have to say
+it, but I do not trust Mr Burns.'
+
+Mr Abney's look of astonishment deepened. I, too, was surprised.
+It was so unlike Sam to fling away his chances on a blundering
+attack like this.
+
+'What do you mean?' demanded Mr Abney.
+
+'Mr Burns is after the boy himself. He came to kidnap him.'
+
+Mr Abney, as he had every excuse for doing, grunted with
+amazement. I achieved the ringing laugh of amused innocence. It
+was beyond me to fathom Sam's mind. He could not suppose that any
+credence would be given to his wild assertion. It seemed to me
+that disappointment had caused him momentarily to lose his head.
+
+'Are you mad, White?'
+
+'No, sir. I can prove what I say. If I had not gone to London with
+him that last time, he'd have got away with the boy then, for
+certain.'
+
+For an instant an uneasy thought came to me that he might have
+something in reserve, something unknown to me, which had
+encouraged him to this direct attack. I dismissed the notion.
+There could be nothing.
+
+Mr Abney had turned to me with a look of hopeless bewilderment. I
+raised my eyebrows.
+
+'Ridiculous,' I said.
+
+That this was the only comment seemed to be Mr Abney's view. He
+turned on Sam with the pettish anger of the mild man.
+
+'What do you _mean_, White, by coming to me with such a
+preposterous story?'
+
+'I don't say Mr Burns wished to kidnap the boy in the ordinary
+way,' said Sam imperturbably, 'like those men who came that night.
+He had a special reason. Mr and Mrs Ford, as of course you know,
+sir, are divorced. Mr Burns was trying to get the boy away and
+take him back to his mother.'
+
+I heard Audrey give a little gasp. Mr Abney's anger became
+modified by a touch of doubt. I could see that these words, by
+lifting the accusation from the wholly absurd to the somewhat
+plausible, had impressed him. Once again I was gripped by the
+uneasy feeling that Sam had an unsuspected card to play. This
+might be bluff, but it had a sinister ring.
+
+'You might say,' went on Sam smoothly, 'that this was creditable
+to Mr Burns's heart. But, from my employer's viewpoint and yours,
+too, it was a chivalrous impulse that needed to be checked. Will
+you please read this, sir?'
+
+He handed a letter to Mr Abney, who adjusted his glasses and began
+to read--at first in a detached, judicial way, then with startled
+eagerness.
+
+'I felt it necessary to search among Mr Burns's papers, sir, in
+the hope of finding--'
+
+And then I knew what he had found. From the first the blue-grey
+notepaper had had a familiar look. I recognized it now. It was
+Cynthia's letter, that damning document which I had been mad
+enough to read to him in London. His prediction that the luck
+would change had come amazingly true.
+
+I caught Sam's eye. For the second time he was unfeeling enough to
+wink. It was a rich, comprehensive wink, as expressive and joyous
+as a college yell.
+
+Mr Abney had absorbed the letter and was struggling for speech. I
+could appreciate his emotion. If he had not actually been
+nurturing a viper in his bosom, he had come, from his point of
+view, very near it. Of all men, a schoolmaster necessarily looks
+with the heartiest dislike on the would-be kidnapper.
+
+As for me, my mind was in a whirl. I was entirely without a plan,
+without the very beginnings of a plan, to help me cope with this
+appalling situation. I was crushed by a sense of the utter
+helplessness of my position. To denounce Sam was impossible; to
+explain my comparative innocence was equally out of the question.
+The suddenness of the onslaught had deprived me of the power of
+coherent thought. I was routed.
+
+Mr Abney was speaking.
+
+'Is your name Peter, Mr Burns?'
+
+I nodded. Speech was beyond me.
+
+'This letter is written by--ah--by a lady. It asks you in set
+terms to--ah--hasten to kidnap Ogden Ford. Do you wish me to read
+it to you? Or do you confess to knowing its contents?'
+
+He waited for a reply. I had none to make.
+
+'You do not deny that you came to Sanstead House for the
+deliberate purpose of kidnapping Ogden Ford?'
+
+I had nothing to say. I caught a glimpse of Audrey's face, cold
+and hard, and shifted my eyes quickly. Mr Abney gulped. His face
+wore the reproachful expression of a cod-fish when jerked out of
+the water on the end of a line. He stared at me with pained
+repulsion. That scoundrelly old buccaneer Sam did the same. He
+looked like a shocked bishop.
+
+'I--ah--trusted you implicitly,' said Mr Abney.
+
+Sam wagged his head at me reproachfully. With a flicker of spirit
+I glared at him. He only wagged the more.
+
+It was, I think, the blackest moment of my life. A wild desire for
+escape on any terms surged over me. That look on Audrey's face was
+biting into my brain like an acid.
+
+'I will go and pack,' I said.
+
+'This is the end of all things,' I said to myself.
+
+I had suspended my packing in order to sit on my bed and brood. I
+was utterly depressed. There are crises in a man's life when
+Reason fails to bring the slightest consolation. In vain I tried
+to tell myself that what had happened was, in essence, precisely
+what, twenty-four hours ago, I was so eager to bring about. It
+amounted to this, that now, at last, Audrey had definitely gone
+out of my life. From now on I could have no relations with her of
+any sort. Was not this exactly what, twenty-four hours ago, I had
+wished? Twenty-four hours ago had I not said to myself that I
+would go away and never see her again? Undoubtedly. Nevertheless,
+I sat there and groaned in spirit.
+
+It was the end of all things.
+
+A mild voice interrupted my meditations.
+
+'Can I help?'
+
+Sam was standing in the doorway, beaming on me with invincible
+good-humour.
+
+'You are handling them wrong. Allow me. A moment more and you
+would have ruined the crease.'
+
+I became aware of a pair of trousers hanging limply in my grasp.
+He took them from me, and, folding them neatly, placed them in my
+trunk.
+
+'Don't get all worked up about it, sonny,' he said. 'It's the
+fortune of war. Besides, what does it matter to you? Judging by
+that very snug apartment in London, you have quite enough money
+for a young man. Losing your job here won't break you. And, if
+you're worrying about Mrs Ford and her feelings, don't! I guess
+she's probably forgotten all about the Nugget by this time. So
+cheer up. _You're_ all right!'
+
+He stretched out a hand to pat me on the shoulder, then thought
+better of it and drew it back.
+
+'Think of _my_ happiness, if you want something to make you
+feel good. Believe me, young man, it's _some_. I could sing!
+Gee, when I think that it's all plain sailing now and no more
+troubles, I could dance! You don't know what it means to me,
+putting through this deal. I wish you knew Mary! That's her name.
+You must come and visit us, sonny, when we're fixed up in the
+home. There'll always be a knife and fork for _you_. We'll
+make you one of the family! Lord! I can see the place as plain as
+I can see you. Nice frame house with a good porch.... Me in a
+rocker in my shirt-sleeves, smoking a cigar and reading the
+baseball news; Mary in another rocker, mending my socks and
+nursing the cat! We'll sure have a cat. Two cats. I like cats. And
+a goat in the front garden. Say, it'll be _great!_'
+
+And on the word, emotion overcoming prudence, he brought his fat
+hand down with a resounding smack on my bowed shoulders.
+
+There is a limit. I bounded to my feet.
+
+'Get out!' I yelped. 'Get out of here!'
+
+'Sure,' he replied agreeably. He rose without haste and regarded
+me compassionately. 'Cheer up, son! Be a sport!'
+
+There are moments when the best of men become melodramatic. I
+offer this as excuse for my next observation.
+
+Clenching my fists and glaring at him, I cried, 'I'll foil you
+yet, you hound!'
+
+Some people have no soul for the dramatic. He smiled tolerantly.
+
+'Sure,' he said. 'Anything you like, Desperate Desmond. Enjoy
+yourself!'
+
+And he left me.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 13
+
+
+I evacuated Sanstead House unostentatiously, setting off on foot
+down the long drive. My luggage, I gathered, was to follow me to
+the station in a cart. I was thankful to Providence for the small
+mercy that the boys were in their classrooms and consequently
+unable to ask me questions. Augustus Beckford alone would have
+handled the subject of my premature exit in a manner calculated to
+bleach my hair.
+
+It was a wonderful morning. The sky was an unclouded blue, and a
+fresh breeze was blowing in from the sea. I think that something
+of the exhilaration of approaching spring must have stirred me,
+for quite suddenly the dull depression with which I had started my
+walk left me, and I found myself alert and full of schemes.
+
+Why should I feebly withdraw from the struggle? Why should I give
+in to Smooth Sam in this tame way? The memory of that wink came
+back to me with a tonic effect. I would show him that I was still
+a factor in the game. If the house was closed to me, was there not
+the 'Feathers'? I could lie in hiding there, and observe his
+movements unseen.
+
+I stopped on reaching the inn, and was on the point of entering
+and taking up my position at once, when it occurred to me that
+this would be a false move. It was possible that Sam would not
+take my departure for granted so readily as I assumed. It was
+Sam's way to do a thing thoroughly, and the probability was that,
+if he did not actually come to see me off, he would at least make
+inquiries at the station to find out if I had gone. I walked on.
+
+He was not at the station. Nor did he arrive in the cart with my
+trunk. But I was resolved to risk nothing. I bought a ticket for
+London, and boarded the London train. It had been my intention to
+leave it at Guildford and catch an afternoon train back to
+Stanstead; but it seemed to me, on reflection, that this was
+unnecessary. There was no likelihood of Sam making any move in the
+matter of the Nugget until the following day. I could take my time
+about returning.
+
+I spent the night in London, and arrived at Sanstead by an early
+morning train with a suit-case containing, among other things, a
+Browning pistol. I was a little ashamed of this purchase. To the
+Buck MacGinnis type of man, I suppose, a pistol is as commonplace
+a possession as a pair of shoes, but I blushed as I entered the
+gun-shop. If it had been Buck with whom I was about to deal, I
+should have felt less self-conscious. But there was something
+about Sam which made pistols ridiculous.
+
+My first act, after engaging a room at the inn and leaving my
+suit-case, was to walk to the school. Before doing anything else,
+I felt I must see Audrey and tell her the facts in the case of
+Smooth Sam. If she were on her guard, my assistance might not be
+needed. But her present state of trust in him was fatal.
+
+A school, when the boys are away, is a lonely place. The deserted
+air of the grounds, as I slipped cautiously through the trees, was
+almost eerie. A stillness brooded over everything, as if the place
+had been laid under a spell. Never before had I been so impressed
+with the isolation of Sanstead House. Anything might happen in
+this lonely spot, and the world would go on its way in ignorance.
+It was with quite distinct relief that, as I drew nearer the
+house, I caught sight of the wire of the telephone among the trees
+above my head. It had a practical, comforting look.
+
+A tradesman's cart rattled up the drive and disappeared round the
+side of the house. This reminder, also, of the outside world was
+pleasant. But I could not rid myself of the feeling that the
+atmosphere of the place was sinister. I attributed it to the fact
+that I was a spy in an enemy's country. I had to see without being
+seen. I did not imagine that Johnson, grocer, who had just passed
+in his cart, found anything wrong with the atmosphere. It was
+created for me by my own furtive attitude.
+
+Of Audrey and Ogden there were no signs. That they were out
+somewhere in the grounds this mellow spring morning I took for
+granted; but I could not make an extended search. Already I had
+come nearer to the house than was prudent.
+
+My eye caught the telephone wire again and an idea came to me. I
+would call her up from the inn and ask her to meet me. There was
+the risk that the call would be answered by Smooth Sam, but it was
+not great. Sam, unless he had thrown off his role of butler
+completely--which would be unlike the artist that he was--would be
+in the housekeeper's room, and the ringing of the telephone, which
+was in the study, would not penetrate to him.
+
+I chose a moment when dinner was likely to be over and Audrey
+might be expected to be in the drawing-room.
+
+I had deduced her movements correctly. It was her voice that
+answered the call.
+
+'This is Peter Burns speaking.'
+
+There was a perceptible pause before she replied. When she did,
+her voice was cold.
+
+'Yes?'
+
+'I want to speak to you on a matter of urgent importance.'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'I can't do it through the telephone. Will you meet me in half an
+hour's time at the gate?'
+
+'Where are you speaking from?'
+
+'The "Feathers". I am staying there.'
+
+'I thought you were in London.'
+
+'I came back. Will you meet me?'
+
+She hesitated.
+
+'Why?'
+
+'Because I have something important to say to you--important to
+you.'
+
+There was another pause.
+
+'Very well.'
+
+'In half an hour, then. Is Ogden Ford in bed?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Is his door locked?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Then lock it and bring the key with you.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'I will tell you when we meet.'
+
+'I will bring it.'
+
+'Thank you. Good-bye.'
+
+I hung up the receiver and set out at once for the school.
+
+She was waiting in the road, a small, indistinct figure in the
+darkness.
+
+'Is that you--Peter?'
+
+Her voice had hesitated at the name, as if at some obstacle. It
+was a trivial thing, but, in my present mood, it stung me.
+
+'I'm afraid I'm late. I won't keep you long. Shall we walk down
+the road? You may not have been followed, but it is as well to be
+on the safe side.'
+
+'Followed? I don't understand.'
+
+We walked a few paces and halted.
+
+'Who would follow me?'
+
+'A very eminent person of the name of Smooth Sam Fisher.'
+
+'Smooth Sam Fisher?'
+
+'Better known to you as White.'
+
+'I don't understand.'
+
+'I should be surprised if you did. I asked you to meet me here so
+that I could make you understand. The man who poses as a
+Pinkerton's detective, and is staying in the house to help you
+take care of Ogden Ford, is Smooth Sam Fisher, a professional
+kidnapper.'
+
+'But--but--'
+
+'But what proof have I? Was that what you were going to say? None.
+But I had the information from the man himself. He told me in the
+train that night going to London.'
+
+She spoke quickly. I knew from her tone that she thought she had
+detected a flaw in my story.
+
+'Why did he tell you?'
+
+'Because he needed me as an accomplice. He wanted my help. It was
+I who got Ogden away that day. Sam overheard me giving money and
+directions to him, telling him how to get away from the school and
+where to go, and he gathered--correctly--that I was in the same
+line of business as himself. He suggested a partnership which I
+was unable to accept.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'Our objects were different. My motive in kidnapping Ogden was not
+to extract a ransom.'
+
+She blazed out at me in an absolutely unexpected manner. Till now
+she had listened so calmly and asked her questions with such a
+notable absence of emotion that the outburst overwhelmed me.
+
+'Oh, I know what your motive was. There is no need to explain
+that. Isn't there any depth to which a man who thinks himself in
+love won't stoop? I suppose you told yourself you were doing
+something noble and chivalrous? A woman of her sort can trick a
+man into whatever meanness she pleases, and, just because she asks
+him, he thinks himself a kind of knight-errant. I suppose she
+told you that he had ill-treated her and didn't appreciate her
+higher self, and all that sort of thing? She looked at you with
+those big brown eyes of hers--I can see her--and drooped, and
+cried, till you were ready to do anything she asked you.'
+
+'Whom do you mean?'
+
+'Mrs Ford, of course. The woman who sent you here to steal Ogden.
+The woman who wrote you that letter.'
+
+'She did not write that letter. But never mind that. The reason
+why I wanted you to come here was to warn you against Sam Fisher.
+That was all. If there is any way in which I can help you, send
+for me. If you like, I will come and stay at the house till Mr
+Abney returns.'
+
+Before the words were out of my mouth, I saw that I had made a
+mistake. The balance of her mind was poised between suspicion and
+belief, and my offer turned the scale.
+
+'No, thank you,' she said curtly.
+
+'You don't trust me?'
+
+'Why should I? White may or may not be Sam Fisher. I shall be on
+my guard, and I thank you for telling me. But why should I trust
+you? It all hangs together. You told me you were engaged to be
+married. You come here on an errand which no man would undertake
+except for a woman, and a woman with whom he was very much in
+love. There is that letter, imploring you to steal the boy. I know
+what a man will do for a woman he is fond of. Why should I trust
+you?'
+
+'There is this. You forget that I had the opportunity to steal
+Ogden if I had wanted to. I had got him away to London. But I
+brought him back. I did it because you had told me what it meant
+to you.'
+
+She hesitated, but only for an instant. Suspicion was too strong
+for her.
+
+'I don't believe you. You brought him back because this man whom
+you call Fisher got to know of your plans. Why should you have
+done it because of me? Why should you have put my interests before
+Mrs Ford's? I am nothing to you.'
+
+For a moment a mad impulse seized me to cast away all restraint,
+to pour out the unspoken words that danced like imps in my brain,
+to make her understand, whatever the cost, my feelings towards
+her. But the thought of my letter to Cynthia checked me. That
+letter had been the irrevocable step. If I was to preserve a shred
+of self-respect I must be silent.
+
+'Very well,' I said, 'good night.' And I turned to go.
+
+'Peter!'
+
+There was something in her voice which whirled me round,
+thrilling, despite my resolution.
+
+'Are you going?'
+
+Weakness would now be my undoing. I steadied myself and answered
+abruptly.
+
+'I have said all I came to say. Good night.'
+
+I turned once more and walked quickly off towards the village. I
+came near to running. I was in the mood when flight alone can save
+a man. She did not speak again, and soon I was out of danger,
+hurrying on through the friendly darkness, beyond the reach of her
+voice.
+
+The bright light from the doorway of the 'Feathers', was the only
+illumination that relieved the blackness of the Market Square. As
+I approached, a man came out and stopped in the entrance to light
+a cigar. His back was turned towards me as he crouched to protect
+the match from the breeze, but something in his appearance seemed
+familiar.
+
+I had only a glimpse of him as he straightened himself and walked
+out of the pool of light into the Square, but it was enough.
+
+It was my much-enduring acquaintance, Mr Buck MacGinnis.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 14
+
+
+I
+
+At the receipt of custom behind the bar sat Miss Benjafield,
+stately as ever, relaxing her massive mind over a penny novelette.
+
+'Who was the man who just left, Miss Benjafield?' I asked.
+
+She marked the place with a shapely thumb and looked up.
+
+'The man? Oh, _him_! He's--why, weren't you in here, Mr Burns,
+one evening in January when--'
+
+'That American?'
+
+'That's him. What he's doing here I don't know. He disappeared
+quite a while back, and I haven't seen him since. _Nor_ want.
+Tonight up he turns again like a bad ha'penny. I'd like to know
+what he's after. No good, if you ask _me_.'
+
+Miss Benjafield's prejudices did not easily dissolve. She prided
+herself, as she frequently observed, on knowing her own mind.
+
+'Is he staying here?'
+
+'Not at the "Feathers". We're particular who we have here.'
+
+I thanked her for the implied compliment, ordered beer for the
+good of the house, and, lighting a pipe, sat down to meditate on
+this new development.
+
+The vultures were gathered together with a vengeance. Sam within,
+Buck without, it was quite like old times, with the difference
+that now, I, too, was on the wrong side of the school door.
+
+It was not hard to account for Buck's reappearance. He would, of
+course, have made it his business to get early information of Mr
+Ford's movements. It would be easy for him to discover that the
+millionaire had been called away to the north and that the Nugget
+was still an inmate of Sanstead House. And here he was preparing
+for the grand attack.
+
+I had been premature in removing Buck's name from the list of
+active combatants. Broken legs mend. I ought to have remembered
+that.
+
+His presence on the scene made, I perceived, a vast difference to
+my plan of campaign. It was at this point that my purchase of the
+Browning pistol lost its absurdity and appeared in the light of an
+acute strategic move. With Sam the only menace, I had been
+prepared to play a purely waiting game, watching proceedings from
+afar, ready to give my help if necessary. To check Buck, more
+strenuous methods were called for.
+
+My mind was made up. With Buck, that stout disciple of the frontal
+attack, in the field, there was only one place for me. I must get
+into Sanstead House and stay there on guard.
+
+Did he intend to make an offensive movement tonight? That was the
+question which occupied my mind. From the point of view of an
+opponent, there was this merit about Mr MacGinnis, that he was
+not subtle. He could be counted on with fair certainty to do
+the direct thing. Sooner or later he would make another of his
+vigorous frontal attacks upon the stronghold. The only point to be
+decided was whether he would make it that night. Would professional
+zeal cause him to omit his beauty sleep?
+
+I did not relish the idea of spending the night patrolling the
+grounds, but it was imperative that the house be protected. Then
+it occurred to me that the man for the vigil was Smooth Sam. If
+the arrival of Mr MacGinnis had complicated matters in one way, it
+had simplified them in another, for there was no more need for the
+secrecy which had been, till now, the basis of my plan of action.
+Buck's arrival made it possible for me to come out and fight in
+the open, instead of brooding over Sanstead House from afar like a
+Providence. Tomorrow I proposed to turn Sam out. Tonight I would use
+him. The thing had resolved itself into a triangular tournament,
+and Sam and Buck should play the first game.
+
+Once more I called up the house on the telephone. There was a long
+delay before a reply came. It was Mr Fisher's voice that spoke.
+Audrey, apparently, had not returned to the house immediately
+after leaving me.
+
+'Hullo!' said Sam.
+
+'Good evening, Mr Fisher.'
+
+'Gee! Is that you, young fellow-me-lad? Are you speaking from
+London?'
+
+'No. I am at the "Feathers".'
+
+He chuckled richly.
+
+'Can't tear yourself away? Hat still in the ring? Say, what's the
+use? Why not turn it up, sonny? You're only wasting your time.'
+
+'Do you sleep lightly, Mr Fisher?'
+
+'I don't get you.'
+
+'You had better do so tonight. Buck MacGinnis is back again.'
+
+There was silence at the other end of the wire. Then I heard him
+swear softly. The significance of the information had not been
+lost on Mr Fisher.
+
+'Is that straight?'
+
+'It is.'
+
+'You're not stringing me?'
+
+'Certainly not.'
+
+'You're sure it was Buck?'
+
+'Is Buck's the sort of face one forgets?'
+
+He swore again.
+
+'You seem disturbed,' I said.
+
+'Where did you see him?' asked Sam.
+
+'Coming out of the "Feathers", looking very fierce and determined.
+The Berserk blood of the MacGinnises is up. He's going to do or
+die. I'm afraid this means an all-night sitting for you, Mr
+Fisher.'
+
+'I thought you had put him out of business!'
+
+There was a somewhat querulous note in his voice.
+
+'Only temporarily. I did my best, but he wasn't even limping when
+I saw him.'
+
+He did not speak for a moment. I gathered that he was pondering
+over the new development.
+
+'Thanks for tipping me off, sonny. It's a thing worth knowing. Why
+did you do it?'
+
+'Because I love you, Samuel. Good night.'
+
+I rose late and breakfasted at my leisure. The peace of the
+English country inn enveloped me as I tilted back my chair and
+smoked the first pipe of the morning. It was a day to hearten a
+man for great deeds, one of those days of premature summer which
+comes sometimes to help us bear the chill winds of early spring.
+The sun streamed in through the open window. In the yard below
+fowls made their soothing music. The thought of violence seemed
+very alien to such a morning.
+
+I strolled out into the Square. I was in no hurry to end this
+interlude of peace and embark on what, for all practical purposes,
+would be a siege.
+
+After lunch, I decided, would be time enough to begin active
+campaigning.
+
+The clock on the church tower was striking two as I set forth,
+carrying my suit-case, on my way to the school. The light-heartedness
+of the morning still lingered with me. I was amused at the thought
+of the surprise I was about to give Mr Fisher. That wink still
+rankled.
+
+As I made my way through the grounds I saw Audrey in the distance,
+walking with the Nugget. I avoided them and went on into the
+house.
+
+About the house there was the same air of enchanted quiet which
+pervaded the grounds. Perhaps the stillness indoors was even more
+insistent. I had grown so accustomed to the never-ending noise and
+bustle of the boys' quarters that, as I crossed the silent hall, I
+had an almost guilty sense of intrusion. I felt like a burglar.
+
+Sam, the object of my visit, would, I imagined, if he were in the
+house at all, be in the housekeeper's room, a cosy little apartment
+off the passage leading to the kitchen. I decided to draw that
+first, and was rewarded, on pushing open the half-closed door, by
+the sight of a pair of black-trousered legs stretched out before me
+from the depths of a wicker-work armchair. His portly middle
+section, rising beyond like a small hill, heaved rhythmically. His
+face was covered with a silk handkerchief, from beneath which came,
+in even succession, faint and comfortable snores. It was a peaceful
+picture--the good man taking his rest; and for me it had an added
+attractiveness in that it suggested that Sam was doing by day what
+my information had prevented him from doing in the night. It had
+been some small consolation to me, as I lay trying to compose my
+anxious mind for sleep on the previous night, that Mr Fisher also
+was keeping his vigil.
+
+Pleasing as Sam was as a study in still life, pressure of business
+compelled me to stir him into activity. I prodded him gently in
+the centre of the rising territory beyond the black trousers. He
+grunted discontentedly and sat up. The handkerchief fell from his
+face, and he blinked at me, first with the dazed glassiness of the
+newly awakened, then with a 'Soul's Awakening' expression, which
+spread over his face until it melted into a friendly smile.
+
+'Hello, young man!'
+
+'Good afternoon. You seem tired.'
+
+He yawned cavernously.
+
+'Lord! What a night!'
+
+'Did Buck drop in?'
+
+'No, but I thought he had every time I heard a board creak. I
+didn't dare close my eyes for a minute. Have you ever stayed awake
+all night, waiting for the goblins that get you if you don't watch
+out? Well, take it from me it's no picnic.'
+
+His face split in another mammoth yawn. He threw his heart into
+it, as if life held no other tasks for him. Only in alligators
+have I ever seen its equal.
+
+I waited till the seismic upheaval had spent itself. Then I came
+to business.
+
+'I'm sorry you had a disturbed night, Mr Fisher. You must make up
+for it this afternoon. You will find the beds very comfortable.'
+
+'How's that?'
+
+'At the "Feathers". I should go there, if I were you. The charges
+are quite reasonable, and the food is good. You will like the
+"Feathers".'
+
+'I don't get you, sonny.'
+
+'I was trying to break it gently to you that you are about to move
+from this house. Now. At once. Take your last glimpse of the old
+home, Sam, and out into the hard world.'
+
+He looked at me inquiringly.
+
+'You seem to be talking, young man; words appear to be fluttering
+from you; but your meaning, if any, escapes me.'
+
+'My meaning is that I am about to turn you out. I am coming back
+here, and there is not room for both of us. So, if you do not see
+your way to going quietly, I shall take you by the back of the
+neck and run you out. Do I make myself fairly clear now?'
+
+He permitted himself a rich chuckle.
+
+'You have gall, young man. Well, I hate to seem unfriendly. I like
+you, sonny. You amuse me--but there are moments when one wants to
+be alone. I have a whole heap of arrears of sleep to make up. Trot
+along, kiddo, and quit disturbing uncle. Tie a string to yourself
+and disappear. Bye-bye.'
+
+The wicker-work creaked as he settled his stout body. He picked up
+the handkerchief.
+
+'Mr Fisher,' I said, 'I have no wish to propel your grey hairs at
+a rapid run down the drive, so I will explain further. I am
+physically stronger than you. I mean to turn you out. How can you
+prevent it? Mr Abney is away. You can't appeal to him. The police
+are at the end of the telephone, but you can't appeal to them. So
+what _can_ you do, except go? Do you get me now?'
+
+He regarded the situation in thoughtful silence. He allowed no
+emotion to find expression in his face, but I knew that the
+significance of my remarks had sunk in. I could almost follow his
+mind as he tested my position point by point and found it
+impregnable.
+
+When he spoke it was to accept defeat jauntily.
+
+'You _are_ my jinx, young man. I said it all along. You're
+really set on my going? Say no more. I'll go. After all, it's
+quiet at the inn, and what more does a man want at my time of
+life?'
+
+I went out into the garden to interview Audrey.
+
+She was walking up and down on the tennis-lawn. The Nugget,
+lounging in a deck-chair, appeared to be asleep.
+
+She caught sight of me as I came out from the belt of trees, and
+stopped. I had the trying experience of walking across open
+country under hostile observation.
+
+The routing of Sam had left me alert and self-confident. I felt no
+embarrassment. I greeted her briskly.
+
+'Good afternoon. I have been talking to Sam Fisher. If you wait,
+you will see him passing away down the drive. He is leaving the
+house. I am coming back.'
+
+'Coming back?'
+
+She spoke incredulously, or, rather, as if my words had conveyed
+no meaning. It was so that Sam had spoken. Her mind, like his,
+took time to adjust itself to the unexpected.
+
+She seemed to awake to my meaning with a start.
+
+'Coming back?' Her eyes widened. The flush deepened on her cheeks.
+'But I told you--'
+
+'I know what you told me. You said you did not trust me. It
+doesn't matter. I am coming back whether you trust me or not. This
+house is under martial law, and I am in command. The situation has
+changed since I spoke to you last night. Last night I was ready to
+let you have your way. I intended to keep an eye on things from
+the inn. But it's different now. It is not a case of Sam Fisher
+any longer. You could have managed Sam. It's Buck MacGinnis now,
+the man who came that night in the automobile. I saw him in the
+village after I left you. He's dangerous.'
+
+She looked away, past me, in the direction of the drive. I
+followed her gaze. A stout figure, carrying a suit-case, was
+moving slowly down it.
+
+I smiled. Her eyes met mine, and I saw the anger that had been
+lying at the back of them flash out. Her chin went up with the old
+defiant tilt. I was sorry I had smiled. It was my old fault, the
+complacency that would not be hidden.
+
+'I don't believe you!' she cried. 'I don't trust you!'
+
+It is curious how one's motive for embarking on a course of
+conduct changes or disappears altogether as the action develops.
+Once started on an enterprise it is as if one proceeded with it
+automatically, irrespective of one's original motives. I had begun
+what I might call the second phase of this matter of the Little
+Nugget, the abandoning of Cynthia's cause in favour of Audrey's,
+with a clear idea of why I was doing it. I had set myself to
+resist the various forces which were trying to take Ogden from
+Audrey, for one simple reason, because I loved Audrey and wished
+to help her. That motive, if it still existed at all, did so only
+in the form of abstract chivalry. My personal feelings towards her
+seemed to have undergone a complete change, dating from our
+parting in the road the night before. I found myself now meeting
+hostility with hostility. I looked at her critically and told
+myself that her spell was broken at last, that, if she disliked
+me, I was at least indifferent to her.
+
+And yet, despite my altered feelings, my determination to help her
+never wavered. The guarding of Ogden might be--primarily--no
+business of mine, but I had adopted it as my business.
+
+'I don't ask you to trust me,' I said. 'We have settled all that.
+There's no need to go over old ground. Think what you please about
+this. I've made up my mind.'
+
+'If you mean to stay, I suppose I can't prevent you.'
+
+'Exactly.'
+
+Sam appeared again in a gap in the trees, walking slowly and
+pensively, as one retreating from his Moscow. Her eyes followed
+him till he was out of sight.
+
+'If you like,' I said bitterly, 'you may put what I am doing down
+to professional rivalry. If I am in love with Mrs Ford and am here
+to steal Ogden for her, it is natural for me to do all I can to
+prevent Buck MacGinnis getting him. There is no need for you to
+look on me as an ally because we are working together.'
+
+'We are not working together.'
+
+'We shall be in a very short time. Buck will not let another night
+go by without doing something.'
+
+'I don't believe that you saw him.'
+
+'Just as you please,' I said, and walked away. What did it matter
+to me what she believed?
+
+The day dragged on. Towards evening the weather broke suddenly,
+after the fashion of spring in England. Showers of rain drove me
+to the study.
+
+It must have been nearly ten o'clock when the telephone rang.
+
+It was Mr Fisher.
+
+'Hello, is that you, sonny?'
+
+'It is. Do you want anything?'
+
+'I want a talk with you. Business. Can I come up?'
+
+'If you wish it.'
+
+'I'll start right away.'
+
+It was some fifteen minutes later that I heard in the distance the
+engines of an automobile. The headlights gleamed through the
+trees, and presently the car swept round the bend of the drive and
+drew up at the front door. A portly figure got down and rang the
+bell. I observed these things from a window on the first floor,
+overlooking the front steps; and it was from this window that I
+spoke.
+
+'Is that you, Mr Fisher?'
+
+He backed away from the door.
+
+'Where are you?'
+
+'Is that your car?'
+
+'It belongs to a friend of mine.'
+
+'I didn't know you meant to bring a party.'
+
+'There's only three of us. Me, the chauffeur, and my friend--MacGinnis.'
+
+The possibility, indeed the probability, of Sam seeking out Buck
+and forming an alliance had occurred to me, and I was prepared for
+it. I shifted my grip on the automatic pistol in my hand.
+
+'Mr Fisher.'
+
+'Hello!'
+
+'Ask your friend MacGinnis to be good enough to step into the
+light of that lamp and drop his gun.'
+
+There was a muttered conversation. I heard Buck's voice rumbling
+like a train going under a bridge. The request did not appear to
+find favour with him. Then came an interlude of soothing speech
+from Mr Fisher. I could not distinguish the words, but I gathered
+that he was pointing out to him that, on this occasion only, the
+visit being for the purposes of parley and not of attack, pistols
+might be looked on as non-essentials. Whatever his arguments, they
+were successful, for, finally, humped as to the back and
+muttering, Buck moved into the light.
+
+'Good evening, Mr MacGinnis,' I said. 'I'm glad to see your leg is
+all right again. I won't detain you a moment. Just feel in your
+pockets and shed a few of your guns, and then you can come in out
+of the rain. To prevent any misunderstanding, I may say I have a
+gun of my own. It is trained on you now.'
+
+'I ain't got no gun.'
+
+'Come along. This is no time for airy persiflage. Out with them.'
+
+A moment's hesitation, and a small black pistol fell to the
+ground.
+
+'No more?'
+
+'Think I'm a regiment?'
+
+'I don't know what you are. Well, I'll take your word for it. You
+will come in one by one, with your hands up.'
+
+I went down and opened the door, holding my pistol in readiness
+against the unexpected.
+
+
+II
+
+Sam came first. His raised hands gave him a vaguely pontifical air
+(Bishop Blessing Pilgrims), and the kindly smile he wore
+heightened the illusion. Mr MacGinnis, who followed, suggested no
+such idea. He was muttering moodily to himself, and he eyed me
+askance.
+
+I showed them into the classroom and switched on the light. The
+air was full of many odours. Disuse seems to bring out the
+inky-chalky, appley-deal-boardy bouquet of a classroom as the
+night brings out the scent of flowers. During the term I had never
+known this classroom smell so exactly like a classroom. I made use
+of my free hand to secure and light a cigarette.
+
+Sam rose to a point of order.
+
+'Young man,' he said. I should like to remind you that we are
+here, as it were, under a flag of truce. To pull a gun on us and
+keep us holding our hands up this way is raw work. I feel sure I
+speak for my friend Mr MacGinnis.'
+
+He cocked an eye at his friend Mr MacGinnis, who seconded the
+motion by expectorating into the fireplace. I had observed at a
+previous interview his peculiar gift for laying bare his soul by
+this means of mode of expression. A man of silent habit, judged by
+the more conventional standard of words, he was almost an orator
+in expectoration.
+
+'Mr MacGinnis agrees with me,' said Sam cheerfully. 'Do we take
+them down? Have we your permission to assume Position Two of these
+Swedish exercises? All we came for was a little friendly chat
+among gentlemen, and we can talk just as well--speaking for
+myself, better--in a less strained attitude. A little rest, Mr
+Burns! A little folding of the hands? Thank you.'
+
+He did not wait for permission, nor was it necessary. Sam and the
+melodramatic atmosphere was as oil and water. It was impossible to
+blend them. I laid the pistol on the table and sat down. Buck,
+after one wistful glance at the weapon, did the same. Sam was
+already seated, and was looking so cosy and at home that I almost
+felt it remiss of me not to have provided sherry and cake for this
+pleasant gathering.
+
+'Well,' I said, 'what can I do for you?'
+
+'Let me explain,' said Sam. 'As you have, no doubt, gathered, Mr
+MacGinnis and I have gone into partnership. The Little Nugget
+Combine!'
+
+'I gathered that--well?'
+
+'Judicious partnerships are the soul of business. Mr MacGinnis and
+I have been rivals in the past, but we both saw that the moment
+had come for the genial smile, the hearty handshake, in fact, for
+an alliance. We form a strong team, sonny. My partner's speciality
+is action. I supply the strategy. Say, can't you see you're up
+against it? Why be foolish?'
+
+'You think you're certain to win?'
+
+'It's a cinch.'
+
+'Then why trouble to come here and see me?'
+
+I appeared to have put into words the smouldering thought which
+was vexing Mr MacGinnis. He burst into speech.
+
+'Ahr chee! Sure! What's de use? Didn't I tell youse? What's de use
+of wastin' time? What are we spielin' away here for? Let's get
+busy.'
+
+Sam waved a hand towards him with the air of a lecturer making a
+point.
+
+'You see! The man of action! He likes trouble. He asks for it. He
+eats it alive. Now I prefer peace. Why have a fuss when you can
+get what you want quietly? That's my motto. That's why we've come.
+It's the old proposition. We're here to buy you out. Yes, I know
+you have turned the offer down before, but things have changed.
+Your stock has fallen. In fact, instead of letting you in on
+sharing terms, we only feel justified now in offering a commission.
+For the moment you may seem to hold a strong position. You are in
+the house, and you've got the boy. But there's nothing to it really.
+We could get him in five minutes if we cared to risk having a fuss.
+But it seems to me there's no need of any fuss. We should win dead
+easy all right, if it came to trouble; but, on the other hand,
+you've a gun, and there's a chance some of us might get hurt, so
+what's the good when we can settle it quietly? How about it, sonny?'
+
+Mr MacGinnis began to rumble, preparatory to making further
+remarks on the situation, but Sam waved him down and turned his
+brown eyes inquiringly on me.
+
+'Fifteen per cent is our offer,' he said.
+
+'And to think it was once fifty-fifty!'
+
+'Strict business!'
+
+'Business? It's sweating!'
+
+'It's our limit. And it wasn't easy to make Buck here agree to
+that. He kicked like a mule.'
+
+Buck shuffled his feet and eyed me disagreeably. I suppose it is
+hard to think kindly of a man who has broken your leg. It was
+plain that, with Mr MacGinnis, bygones were by no means bygones.
+
+I rose.
+
+'Well, I'm sorry you should have had the trouble of coming here
+for nothing. Let me see you out. Single file, please.'
+
+Sam looked aggrieved.
+
+'You turn it down?'
+
+'I do.'
+
+'One moment. Let's have this thing clear. Do you realize what
+you're up against? Don't think it's only Buck and me you've got to
+tackle. All the boys are here, waiting round the corner, the same
+gang that came the other night. Be sensible, sonny. You don't
+stand a dog's chance. I shouldn't like to see you get hurt. And
+you never know what may not happen. The boys are pretty sore at
+you because of what you did that night. I shouldn't act like a
+bonehead, sonny--honest.'
+
+There was a kindly ring in his voice which rather touched me.
+Between him and me there had sprung up an odd sort of friendship.
+He meant business; but he would, I knew, be genuinely sorry if I
+came to harm. And I could see that he was quite sincere in his
+belief that I was in a tight corner and that my chances against
+the Combine were infinitesimal. I imagine that, with victory so
+apparently certain, he had had difficulty in persuading his allies
+to allow him to make his offer.
+
+But he had overlooked one thing--the telephone. That he should
+have made this mistake surprised me. If it had been Buck, I could
+have understood it. Buck's was a mind which lent itself to such
+blunders. From Sam I had expected better things, especially as the
+telephone had been so much in evidence of late. He had used it
+himself only half an hour ago.
+
+I clung to the thought of the telephone. It gave me the quiet
+satisfaction of the gambler who holds the unforeseen ace. The
+situation was in my hands. The police, I knew, had been profoundly
+stirred by Mr MacGinnis's previous raid. When I called them up, as
+I proposed to do directly the door had closed on the ambassadors,
+there would be no lack of response. It would not again be a case
+of Inspector Bones and Constable Johnson to the rescue. A great
+cloud of willing helpers would swoop to our help.
+
+With these thoughts in my mind, I answered Sam pleasantly but
+firmly.
+
+'I'm sorry I'm unpopular, but all the same--'
+
+I indicated the door.
+
+Emotion that could only be expressed in words and not through his
+usual medium welled up in Mr MacGinnis. He sprang forward with a
+snarl, falling back as my faithful automatic caught his eye.
+
+'Say, you! Listen here! You'll--'
+
+Sam, the peaceable, plucked at his elbow.
+
+'Nothing doing, Buck. Step lively.'
+
+Buck wavered, then allowed himself to be drawn away. We passed out
+of the classroom in our order of entry.
+
+An exclamation from the stairs made me look up. Audrey was leaning
+over the banisters. Her face was in the shadow, but I gathered
+from her voice that the sight of our little procession had
+startled her. I was not surprised. Buck was a distinctly startling
+spectacle, and his habit of growling to himself, as he walked,
+highly disturbing to strangers.
+
+'Good evening, Mrs Sheridan,' said Sam suavely.
+
+Audrey did not speak. She seemed fascinated by Buck.
+
+I opened the front door and they passed out. The automobile was
+still purring on the drive. Buck's pistol had disappeared. I
+supposed the chauffeur had picked it up, a surmise which was
+proved correct a few moments later, when, just as the car was
+moving off, there was a sharp crack and a bullet struck the wall
+to the right of the door. It was a random shot, and I did not
+return it. Its effect on me was to send me into the hall with a
+leap that was almost a back-somersault. Somehow, though I was
+keyed up for violence and the shooting of pistols, I had not
+expected it at just that moment, and I was disagreeably surprised
+at the shock it had given me. I slammed the door and bolted it. I
+was intensely irritated to find that my fingers were trembling.
+
+Audrey had left the stairs and was standing beside me.
+
+'They shot at me,' I said.
+
+By the light of the hall lamp I could see that she was very pale.
+
+'It missed by a mile.' My nerves had not recovered and I spoke
+abruptly. 'Don't be frightened.'
+
+'I--I was not frightened,' she said, without conviction.
+
+'I was,' I said, with conviction. 'It was too sudden for me. It's
+the sort of thing one wants to get used to gradually. I shall be
+ready for it another time.'
+
+I made for the stairs.
+
+'Where are you going?'
+
+'I'm going to call up the police-station.'
+
+'Peter.'
+
+'Yes?'
+
+'Was--was that man the one you spoke of?'
+
+'Yes, that was Buck MacGinnis. He and Sam have gone into
+partnership.'
+
+She hesitated.
+
+'I'm sorry,' she said.
+
+I was half-way up the stairs by this time. I stopped and looked
+over the banisters.
+
+'Sorry?'
+
+'I didn't believe you this afternoon.'
+
+'Oh, that's all right,' I said. I tried to make my voice
+indifferent, for I was on guard against insidious friendliness. I
+had bludgeoned my mind into an attitude of safe hostility towards
+her, and I saw the old chaos ahead if I allowed myself to abandon
+it.
+
+I went to the telephone and unhooked the receiver.
+
+There is apt to be a certain leisureliness about the methods of
+country telephone-operators, and the fact that a voice did not
+immediately ask me what number I wanted did not at first disturb
+me. Suspicion of the truth came to me, I think, after my third
+shout into the receiver had remained unanswered. I had suffered
+from delay before, but never such delay as this.
+
+I must have remained there fully two minutes, shouting at
+intervals, before I realized the truth. Then I dropped the
+receiver and leaned limply against the wall. For the moment I was
+as stunned as if I had received a blow. I could not even think. It
+was only by degrees that I recovered sufficiently to understand
+that Audrey was speaking to me.
+
+'What is it? Don't they answer?'
+
+It is curious how the mind responds to the need for making an
+effort for the sake of somebody else. If I had had only myself to
+think of, it would, I believe, have been a considerable time
+before I could have adjusted my thoughts to grapple with this
+disaster. But the necessity of conveying the truth quietly to
+Audrey and of helping her to bear up under it steadied me at once.
+I found myself thinking quite coolly how best I might break to her
+what had happened.
+
+'I'm afraid,' I said, 'I have something to tell you which may--'
+
+She interrupted me quickly.
+
+'What is it? Can't you make them answer?'
+
+I shook my head. We looked at each other in silence.
+
+Her mind leaped to the truth more quickly than mine had done.
+
+'They have cut the wire!'
+
+I took up the receiver again and gave another call. There was no
+reply.
+
+'I'm afraid so,' I said.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 15
+
+
+I
+
+'What shall we do?' said Audrey.
+
+She looked at me hopefully, as if I were a mine of ideas. Her
+voice was level, without a suggestion of fear in it. Women have
+the gift of being courageous at times when they might legitimately
+give way. It is part of their unexpectedness.
+
+This was certainly such an occasion. Daylight would bring us
+relief, for I did not suppose that even Buck MacGinnis would care
+to conduct a siege which might be interrupted by the arrival of
+tradesmen's carts; but while the darkness lasted we were
+completely cut off from the world. With the destruction of the
+telephone wire our only link with civilization had been snapped.
+Even had the night been less stormy than it was, there was no
+chance of the noise of our warfare reaching the ears of anyone who
+might come to the rescue. It was as Sam had said, Buck's energy
+united to his strategy formed a strong combination.
+
+Broadly speaking, there are only two courses open to a beleaguered
+garrison. It can stay where it is, or it can make a sortie. I
+considered the second of these courses.
+
+It was possible that Sam and his allies had departed in the
+automobile to get reinforcements, leaving the coast temporarily
+clear; in which case, by escaping from the house at once, we might
+be able to slip unobserved through the grounds and reach the
+village in safety. To support this theory there was the fact that
+the car, on its late visit, had contained only the chauffeur and
+the two ambassadors, while Sam had spoken of the remainder of
+Buck's gang as being in readiness to attack in the event of my not
+coming to terms. That might mean that they were waiting at Buck's
+headquarters, wherever those might be--at one of the cottages down
+the road, I imagined; and, in the interval before the attack
+began, it might be possible for us to make our sortie with
+success.
+
+'Is Ogden in bed?' I asked.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Will you go and get him up as quickly as you can?'
+
+I strained my eyes at the window, but it was impossible to see
+anything. The rain was still falling heavily. If the drive had
+been full of men they would have been invisible to me.
+
+Presently Audrey returned, followed by Ogden. The Little Nugget
+was yawning the aggrieved yawns of one roused from his beauty
+sleep.
+
+'What's all this?' he demanded.
+
+'Listen,' I said. 'Buck MacGinnis and Smooth Sam Fisher have come
+after you. They are outside now. Don't be frightened.'
+
+He snorted derisively.
+
+'Who's frightened? I guess they won't hurt _me_. How do you know
+it's them?'
+
+'They have just been here. The man who called himself White, the
+butler, was really Sam Fisher. He has been waiting an opportunity
+to get you all the term.'
+
+'White! Was he Sam Fisher?' He chuckled admiringly. 'Say, he's a
+wonder!'
+
+'They have gone to fetch the rest of the gang.'
+
+'Why don't you call the cops?'
+
+'They have cut the wire.'
+
+His only emotions at the news seemed to be amusement and a renewed
+admiration for Smooth Sam. He smiled broadly, the little brute.
+
+'He's a wonder!' he repeated. 'I guess he's smooth, all right.
+He's the limit! He'll get me all right this trip. I bet you a
+nickel he wins out.'
+
+I found his attitude trying. That he, the cause of all the trouble,
+should be so obviously regarding it as a sporting contest got up
+for his entertainment, was hard to bear. And the fact that, whatever
+might happen to myself, he was in no danger, comforted me not at all.
+If I could have felt that we were in any way companions in peril,
+I might have looked on the bulbous boy with quite a friendly eye.
+As it was, I nearly kicked him.
+
+'We had better waste no time,' suggested Audrey, 'if we are going.'
+
+'I think we ought to try it,' I said.
+
+'What's that?' asked the Nugget. 'Go where?'
+
+'We are going to steal out through the back way and try to slip
+through to the village.'
+
+The Nugget's comment on the scheme was brief and to the point. He
+did not embarrass me with fulsome praise of my strategic genius.
+
+'Of all the fool games!' he said simply. 'In this rain? No, sir!'
+
+This new complication was too much for me. In planning out my
+manoeuvres I had taken his cooperation for granted. I had looked
+on him as so much baggage--the impedimenta of the retreating army.
+And, behold, a mutineer!
+
+I took him by the scruff of the neck and shook him. It was a
+relief to my feelings and a sound move. The argument was one which
+he understood.
+
+'Oh, all right,' he said. 'Anything you like. Come on. But it sounds
+to me like darned foolishness!'
+
+If nothing else had happened to spoil the success of that sortie,
+the Nugget's depressing attitude would have done so. Of all things,
+it seems to me, a forlorn hope should be undertaken with a certain
+enthusiasm and optimism if it is to have a chance of being successful.
+Ogden threw a gloom over the proceedings from the start. He was cross
+and sleepy, and he condemned the expedition unequivocally. As we moved
+towards the back door he kept up a running stream of abusive comment.
+I silenced him before cautiously unbolting the door, but he had said
+enough to damp my spirits. I do not know what effect it would have
+had on Napoleon's tactics if his army--say, before Austerlitz--had
+spoken of his manoeuvres as a 'fool game' and of himself as a 'big
+chump', but I doubt if it would have stimulated him.
+
+The back door of Sanstead House opened on to a narrow yard, paved
+with flagstones and shut in on all sides but one by walls. To the
+left was the outhouse where the coal was stored, a squat barnlike
+building: to the right a wall that appeared to have been erected
+by the architect in an outburst of pure whimsicality. It just
+stood there. It served no purpose that I had ever been able to
+discover, except to act as a cats' club-house.
+
+Tonight, however, I was thankful for this wall. It formed an
+important piece of cover. By keeping in its shelter it was
+possible to work round the angle of the coal-shed, enter the
+stable-yard, and, by making a detour across the football field,
+avoid the drive altogether. And it was the drive, in my opinion,
+that might be looked on as the danger zone.
+
+The Nugget's complaints, which I had momentarily succeeded in
+checking, burst out afresh as the rain swept in at the open door
+and lashed our faces. Certainly it was not an ideal night for a
+ramble. The wind was blowing through the opening at the end of the
+yard with a compressed violence due to the confined space. There
+was a suggestion in our position of the Cave of the Winds under
+Niagara Falls, the verisimilitude of which was increased by the
+stream of water that poured down from the gutter above our heads.
+The Nugget found it unpleasant, and said so shrilly.
+
+I pushed him out into the storm, still protesting, and we began to
+creep across the yard. Half-way to the first point of importance
+of our journey, the corner of the coal-shed, I halted the
+expedition. There was a sudden lull in the wind, and I took
+advantage of it to listen.
+
+From somewhere beyond the wall, apparently near the house, sounded
+the muffled note of the automobile. The siege-party had returned.
+
+There was no time to be lost. Apparently the possibility of a
+sortie had not yet occurred to Sam, or he would hardly have left
+the back door unguarded; but a general of his astuteness was
+certain to remedy the mistake soon, and our freedom of action
+might be a thing of moments. It behoved us to reach the stable-yard
+as quickly as possible. Once there, we should be practically through
+the enemy's lines.
+
+Administering a kick to the Nugget, who showed a disposition to
+linger and talk about the weather, I moved on, and we reached the
+corner of the coal-shed in safety.
+
+We had now arrived at the really perilous stage in our journey.
+Having built his wall to a point level with the end of the coal-shed,
+the architect had apparently wearied of the thing and given it up;
+for it ceased abruptly, leaving us with a matter of half a dozen
+yards of open ground to cross, with nothing to screen us from the
+watchers on the drive. The flagstones, moreover, stopped at this
+point. On the open space was loose gravel. Even if the darkness
+allowed us to make the crossing unseen, there was the risk that we
+might be heard.
+
+It was a moment for a flash of inspiration, and I was waiting for
+one, when that happened which took the problem out of my hands.
+From the interior of the shed on our left there came a sudden
+scrabbling of feet over loose coal, and through the square opening
+in the wall, designed for the peaceful purpose of taking in sacks,
+climbed two men. A pistol cracked. From the drive came an
+answering shout. We had been ambushed.
+
+I had misjudged Sam. He had not overlooked the possibility of a
+sortie.
+
+It is the accidents of life that turn the scale in a crisis. The
+opening through which the men had leaped was scarcely a couple of
+yards behind the spot where we were standing. If they had leaped
+fairly and kept their feet, they would have been on us before we
+could have moved. But Fortune ordered it that, zeal outrunning
+discretion, the first of the two should catch his foot in the
+woodwork and fall on all fours, while the second, unable to check
+his spring, alighted on top of him, and, judging from the stifled
+yell which followed, must have kicked him in the face.
+
+In the moment of their downfall I was able to form a plan and
+execute it.
+
+'The stables!'
+
+I shouted the words to Audrey in the act of snatching up the
+Nugget and starting to run. She understood. She did not hesitate
+in the direction of the house for even the instant which might
+have undone us, but was with me at once; and we were across the
+open space and in the stable-yard before the first of the men in
+the drive loomed up through the darkness. Half of the wooden
+double-gate of the yard was open, and the other half served us as
+a shield. They fired as they ran--at random, I think, for it was
+too dark for them to have seen us clearly--and two bullets slapped
+against the gate. A third struck the wall above our heads and
+ricocheted off into the night. But before they could fire again we
+were in the stables, the door slammed behind us, and I had dumped
+the Nugget on the floor, and was shooting the heavy bolts into
+their places. Footsteps clattered over the flagstones and stopped
+outside. Some weighty body plunged against the door. Then there
+was silence. The first round was over.
+
+The stables, as is the case in most English country-houses, had
+been, in its palmy days, the glory of Sanstead House. In whatever
+other respect the British architect of that period may have fallen
+short, he never scamped his work on the stables. He built them
+strong and solid, with walls fitted to repel the assaults of the
+weather, and possibly those of men as well, for the Boones in
+their day had been mighty owners of race-horses at a time when men
+with money at stake did not stick at trifles, and it was prudent
+to see to it that the spot where the favourite was housed had
+something of the nature of a fortress. The walls were thick, the
+door solid, the windows barred with iron. We could scarcely have
+found a better haven of refuge.
+
+Under Mr Abney's rule, the stables had lost their original
+character. They had been divided into three compartments, each
+separated by a stout wall. One compartment became a gymnasium,
+another the carpenter's shop, the third, in which we were,
+remained a stable, though in these degenerate days no horse ever
+set foot inside it, its only use being to provide a place for the
+odd-job man to clean shoes. The mangers which had once held fodder
+were given over now to brushes and pots of polish. In term-time,
+bicycles were stored in the loose-box which had once echoed to the
+tramping of Derby favourites.
+
+I groped about among the pots and brushes, and found a candle-end,
+which I lit. I was running a risk, but it was necessary to inspect
+our ground. I had never troubled really to examine this stable
+before, and I wished to put myself in touch with its geography.
+
+I blew out the candle, well content with what I had seen. The only
+two windows were small, high up, and excellently barred. Even if
+the enemy fired through them there were half a dozen spots where
+we should be perfectly safe. Best of all, in the event of the door
+being carried by assault, we had a second line of defence in a
+loft. A ladder against the back wall led to it, by way of a trap-door.
+Circumstances had certainly been kind to us in driving us to this
+apparently impregnable shelter.
+
+On concluding my inspection, I became aware that the Nugget was
+still occupied with his grievances. I think the shots must have
+stimulated his nerve centres, for he had abandoned the languid
+drawl with which, in happier moments, he was wont to comment on
+life's happenings, and was dealing with the situation with a
+staccato briskness.
+
+'Of all the darned fool lay-outs I ever struck, this is the limit.
+What do those idiots think they're doing, shooting us up that way?
+It went within an inch of my head. It might have killed me. Gee,
+and I'm all wet. I'm catching cold. It's all through your blamed
+foolishness, bringing us out here. Why couldn't we stay in the
+house?'
+
+'We could not have kept them out of the house for five minutes,' I
+explained. 'We can hold this place.'
+
+'Who wants to hold it? I don't. What does it matter if they do get
+me? _I_ don't care. I've a good mind to walk straight out through
+that door and let them rope me in. It would serve Dad right. It
+would teach him not to send me away from home to any darned school
+again. What did he want to do it for? I was all right where I was.
+I--'
+
+A loud hammering on the door cut off his eloquence. The
+intermission was over, and the second round had begun.
+
+It was pitch dark in the stable now that I had blown out the
+candle, and there is something about a combination of noise and
+darkness which tries the nerves. If mine had remained steady, I
+should have ignored the hammering. From the sound, it appeared to
+be made by some wooden instrument--a mallet from the carpenter's
+shop I discovered later--and the door could be relied on to hold
+its own without my intervention. For a novice to violence,
+however, to maintain a state of calm inaction is the most
+difficult feat of all. I was irritated and worried by the noise,
+and exaggerated its importance. It seemed to me that it must be
+stopped at once.
+
+A moment before, I had bruised my shins against an empty packing-case,
+which had found its way with other lumber into the stable. I groped
+for this, swung it noiselessly into position beneath the window,
+and, standing on it, looked out. I found the catch of the window,
+and opened it. There was nothing to be seen, but the sound of the
+hammering became more distinct; and pushing an arm through the bars,
+I emptied my pistol at a venture.
+
+As a practical move, the action had flaws. The shots cannot have
+gone anywhere near their vague target. But as a demonstration, it
+was a wonderful success. The yard became suddenly full of dancing
+bullets. They struck the flagstones, bounded off, chipped the
+bricks of the far wall, ricocheted from those, buzzed in all
+directions, and generally behaved in a manner calculated to unman
+the stoutest hearted.
+
+The siege-party did not stop to argue. They stampeded as one man.
+I could hear them clattering across the flagstones to every point
+of the compass. In a few seconds silence prevailed, broken only by
+the swish of the rain. Round two had been brief, hardly worthy to
+be called a round at all, and, like round one, it had ended wholly
+in our favour.
+
+I jumped down from my packing-case, swelling with pride. I had had
+no previous experience of this sort of thing, yet here I was
+handling the affair like a veteran. I considered that I had a
+right to feel triumphant. I lit the candle again, and beamed
+protectively upon the garrison.
+
+The Nugget was sitting on the floor, gaping feebly, and awed for
+the moment into silence. Audrey, in the far corner, looked pale
+but composed. Her behaviour was perfect. There was nothing for her
+to do, and she was doing it with a quiet self-control which won
+my admiration. Her manner seemed to me exactly suited to the
+exigencies of the situation. With a super-competent dare-devil
+like myself in charge of affairs, all she had to do was to wait
+and not get in the way.
+
+'I didn't hit anybody,' I announced, 'but they ran like rabbits.
+They are all over Hampshire.'
+
+I laughed indulgently. I could afford an attitude of tolerant
+amusement towards the enemy.
+
+'Will they come back?'
+
+'Possibly. And in that case'--I felt in my left-hand coat-pocket--'I
+had better be getting ready.' I felt in my right-hand coat-pocket.
+'Ready,' I repeated blankly. A clammy coldness took possession of me.
+My voice trailed off into nothingness. For in neither pocket was
+there a single one of the shells with which I had fancied that I
+was abundantly provided. In moments of excitement man is apt to make
+mistakes. I had made mine when, starting out on the sortie, I had
+left all my ammunition in the house.
+
+
+II
+
+I should like to think that it was an unselfish desire to spare my
+companions anxiety that made me keep my discovery to myself. But I
+am afraid that my reticence was due far more to the fact that I
+shrank from letting the Nugget discover my imbecile carelessness.
+Even in times of peril one retains one's human weaknesses; and I
+felt that I could not face his comments. If he had permitted a
+certain note of querulousness to creep into his conversation
+already, the imagination recoiled from the thought of the caustic
+depths he would reach now should I reveal the truth.
+
+I tried to make things better with cheery optimism.
+
+'_They_ won't come back!' I said stoutly, and tried to believe it.
+
+The Nugget as usual struck the jarring note.
+
+'Well, then, let's beat it,' he said. 'I don't want to spend the
+night in this darned icehouse. I tell you I'm catching cold. My
+chest's weak. If you're so dead certain you've scared them away,
+let's quit.'
+
+I was not prepared to go as far as this.
+
+'They may be somewhere near, hiding.'
+
+'Well, what if they are? I don't mind being kidnapped. Let's go.'
+
+'I think we ought to wait,' said Audrey.
+
+'Of course,' I said. 'It would be madness to go out now.'
+
+'Oh, pshaw!' said the Little Nugget; and from this point onwards
+punctuated the proceedings with a hacking cough.
+
+I had never really believed that my demonstration had brought the
+siege to a definite end. I anticipated that there would be some
+delay before the renewal of hostilities, but I was too well
+acquainted with Buck MacGinnis's tenacity to imagine that he would
+abandon his task because a few random shots had spread momentary
+panic in his ranks. He had all the night before him, and sooner or
+later he would return.
+
+I had judged him correctly. Many minutes dragged wearily by
+without a sign from the enemy, then, listening at the window, I
+heard footsteps crossing the yard and voices talking in cautious
+undertones. The fight was on once more.
+
+A bright light streamed through the window, flooding the opening
+and spreading in a wide circle on the ceiling. It was not
+difficult to understand what had happened. They had gone to the
+automobile and come back with one of the head-lamps, an astute
+move in which I seemed to see the finger of Sam. The danger-spot
+thus rendered harmless, they renewed their attack on the door with
+a reckless vigour. The mallet had been superseded by some heavier
+instrument--of iron this time. I think it must have been the jack
+from the automobile. It was a more formidable weapon altogether
+than the mallet, and even our good oak door quivered under it.
+
+A splintering of wood decided me that the time had come to retreat
+to our second line of entrenchments. How long the door would hold
+it was impossible to say, but I doubted if it was more than a
+matter of minutes.
+
+Relighting my candle, which I had extinguished from motives of
+economy, I caught Audrey's eye and jerked my head towards the
+ladder.
+
+'You go first,' I whispered.
+
+The Nugget watched her disappear through the trap-door, then
+turned to me with an air of resolution.
+
+'If you think you're going to get _me_ up there, you've
+another guess coming. I'm going to wait here till they get in, and
+let them take me. I'm about tired of this foolishness.'
+
+It was no time for verbal argument. I collected him, a kicking
+handful, bore him to the ladder, and pushed him through the
+opening. He uttered one of his devastating squeals. The sound
+seemed to encourage the workers outside like a trumpet-blast. The
+blows on the door redoubled.
+
+I climbed the ladder and shut the trap-door behind me.
+
+The air of the loft was close and musty and smelt of mildewed hay.
+It was not the sort of spot which one would have selected of one's
+own free will to sit in for any length of time. There was a rustling
+noise, and a rat scurried across the rickety floor, drawing a
+startled gasp from Audrey and a disgusted 'Oh, piffle!' from the
+Nugget. Whatever merits this final refuge might have as a stronghold,
+it was beyond question a noisome place.
+
+The beating on the stable-door was working up to a crescendo.
+Presently there came a crash that shook the floor on which we sat
+and sent our neighbours, the rats, scuttling to and fro in a
+perfect frenzy of perturbation. The light of the automobile lamp
+poured in through the numerous holes and chinks which the passage
+of time had made in the old boards. There was one large hole near
+the centre which produced a sort of searchlight effect, and
+allowed us for the first time to see what manner of place it was
+in which we had entrenched ourselves. The loft was high and
+spacious. The roof must have been some seven feet above our heads.
+I could stand upright without difficulty.
+
+In the proceedings beneath us there had come a lull. The mystery
+of our disappearance had not baffled the enemy for long, for almost
+immediately the rays of the lamp had shifted and begun to play on
+the trap-door. I heard somebody climb the ladder, and the trap-door
+creaked gently as a hand tested it. I had taken up a position beside
+it, ready, if the bolt gave way, to do what I could with the butt of
+my pistol, my only weapon. But the bolt, though rusty, was strong,
+and the man dropped to the ground again. Since then, except for
+occasional snatches of whispered conversation, I had heard nothing.
+
+Suddenly Sam's voice spoke.
+
+'Mr Burns!'
+
+I saw no advantage in remaining silent.
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Haven't you had enough of this? You've given us a mighty good run
+for our money, but you can see for yourself that you're through
+now. I'd hate like anything for you to get hurt. Pass the kid
+down, and we'll call it off.'
+
+He paused.
+
+'Well?' he said. 'Why don't you answer?'
+
+'I did.'
+
+'Did you? I didn't hear you.'
+
+'I smiled.'
+
+'You mean to stick it out? Don't be foolish, sonny. The boys here
+are mad enough at you already. What's the use of getting yourself
+in bad for nothing? We've got you in a pocket. I know all about that
+gun of yours, young fellow. I had a suspicion what had happened,
+and I've been into the house and found the shells you forgot to
+take with you. So, if you were thinking of making a bluff in that
+direction forget it!'
+
+The exposure had the effect I had anticipated.
+
+'Of all the chumps!' exclaimed the Nugget caustically. 'You ought
+to be in a home. Well, I guess you'll agree to end this foolishness
+now? Let's go down and get it over and have some peace. I'm getting
+pneumonia.'
+
+'You're quite right, Mr Fisher,' I said. 'But don't forget I still
+have the pistol, even if I haven't the shells. The first man who
+tries to come up here will have a headache tomorrow.'
+
+'I shouldn't bank on it, sonny. Come along, kiddo! You're done. Be
+good, and own it. We can't wait much longer.'
+
+'You'll have to try.'
+
+Buck's voice broke in on the discussion, quite unintelligible
+except that it was obviously wrathful.
+
+'Oh well!' I heard Sam say resignedly, and then there was silence
+again below.
+
+I resumed my watch over the trap-door, encouraged. This parleying,
+I thought, was an admission of failure on the part of the
+besiegers. I did not credit Sam with a real concern for my
+welfare--thereby doing him an injustice. I can see now that he
+spoke perfectly sincerely. The position, though I was unaware of
+it, really was hopeless, for the reason that, like most positions,
+it had a flank as well as a front. In estimating the possibilities
+of attack, I had figured assaults as coming only from below. I had
+omitted from my calculations the fact that the loft had a roof.
+
+It was a scraping on the tiles above my head that first brought
+the new danger-point to my notice. There followed the sound of
+heavy hammering, and with it came a sickening realization of the
+truth of what Sam had said. We were beaten.
+
+I was too paralysed by the unexpectedness of the attack to form
+any plan; and, indeed, I do not think that there was anything that
+I could have done. I was unarmed and helpless. I stood there,
+waiting for the inevitable.
+
+Affairs moved swiftly. Plaster rained down on to the wooden floor.
+I was vaguely aware that the Nugget was speaking, but I did not
+listen to him.
+
+A gap appeared in the roof and widened. I could hear the heavy
+breathing of the man as he wrenched at the tiles.
+
+And then the climax arrived, with anticlimax following so swiftly
+upon it that the two were almost simultaneous. I saw the worker on
+the roof cautiously poise himself in the opening, hunched up like
+some strange ape. The next moment he had sprung.
+
+As his feet touched the floor there came a rending, splintering
+crash; the air was filled with a choking dust, and he was gone.
+The old worn out boards had shaken under my tread. They had given
+way in complete ruin beneath this sharp onslaught. The rays of the
+lamp, which had filtered in like pencils of light through
+crevices, now shone in a great lake in the centre of the floor.
+
+In the stable below all was confusion. Everybody was speaking at
+once. The hero of the late disaster was groaning horribly, for
+which he certainly had good reason: I did not know the extent of
+his injuries, but a man does not do that sort of thing with
+impunity. The next of the strange happenings of the night now
+occurred.
+
+I had not been giving the Nugget a great deal of my attention for
+some time, other and more urgent matters occupying me.
+
+His action at this juncture, consequently, came as a complete and
+crushing surprise.
+
+I was edging my way cautiously towards the jagged hole in the
+centre of the floor, in the hope of seeing something of what was
+going on below, when from close beside me his voice screamed.
+'It's me, Ogden Ford. I'm coming!' and, without further warning,
+he ran to the hole, swung himself over, and dropped.
+
+Manna falling from the skies in the wilderness never received a
+more whole-hearted welcome. Howls and cheers and ear-splitting
+whoops filled the air. The babel of talk broke out again. Some
+exuberant person found expression of his joy in emptying his
+pistol at the ceiling, to my acute discomfort, the spot he had
+selected as a target chancing to be within a foot of where I
+stood. Then they moved off in a body, still cheering. The fight
+was over.
+
+I do not know how long it was before I spoke. It may have been
+some minutes. I was dazed with the swiftness with which the final
+stages of the drama had been played out. If I had given him more
+of my attention, I might have divined that Ogden had been waiting
+his opportunity to make some such move; but, as it was, the
+possibility had not even occurred to me, and I was stunned.
+
+In the distance I heard the automobile moving off down the drive.
+The sound roused me.
+
+'Well, we may as well go,' I said dully. I lit the candle and held
+it up. Audrey was standing against the wall, her face white and
+set.
+
+I raised the trap-door and followed her down the ladder.
+
+The rain had ceased, and the stars were shining. After the
+closeness of the loft, the clean wet air was delicious. For a
+moment we stopped, held by the peace and stillness of the night.
+
+Then, quite suddenly, she broke down.
+
+It was the unexpectedness of it that first threw me off my balance.
+In all the time I had known her, I had never before seen Audrey in
+tears. Always, in the past, she had borne the blows of fate with a
+stoical indifference which had alternately attracted and repelled
+me, according as my mood led me to think it courage or insensibility.
+In the old days, it had done much, this trait of hers, to rear a
+barrier between us. It had made her seem aloof and unapproachable.
+Subconsciously, I suppose, it had offended my egoism that she should
+be able to support herself in times of trouble, and not feel it
+necessary to lean on me.
+
+And now the barrier had fallen. The old independence, the almost
+aggressive self-reliance, had vanished. A new Audrey had revealed
+herself.
+
+She was sobbing helplessly, standing quite still, her arms hanging
+and her eyes staring blankly before her. There was something in
+her attitude so hopeless, so beaten, that the pathos of it seemed
+to cut me like a knife.
+
+'Audrey!'
+
+The stars glittered in the little pools among the worn flagstones.
+The night was very still. Only the steady drip of water from the
+trees broke the silence.
+
+A great wave of tenderness seemed to sweep from my mind everything
+in the world but her. Everything broke abruptly that had been
+checking me, stifling me, holding me gagged and bound since the
+night when our lives had come together again after those five long
+years. I forgot Cynthia, my promise, everything.
+
+'Audrey!'
+
+She was in my arms, clinging to me, murmuring my name. The
+darkness was about us like a cloud.
+
+And then she had slipped from me, and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 16
+
+
+In my recollections of that strange night there are wide gaps.
+Trivial incidents come back to me with extraordinary vividness;
+while there are hours of which I can remember nothing. What I did
+or where I went I cannot recall. It seems to me, looking back,
+that I walked without a pause till morning; yet, when day came, I
+was still in the school grounds. Perhaps I walked, as a wounded
+animal runs, in circles. I lost, I know, all count of time. I
+became aware of the dawn as something that had happened suddenly,
+as if light had succeeded darkness in a flash. It had been night;
+I looked about me, and it was day--a steely, cheerless day, like a
+December evening. And I found that I was very cold, very tired,
+and very miserable.
+
+My mind was like the morning, grey and overcast. Conscience may be
+expelled, but, like Nature, it will return. Mine, which I had cast
+from me, had crept back with the daylight. I had had my hour of
+freedom, and it was now for me to pay for it.
+
+I paid in full. My thoughts tore me. I could see no way out.
+Through the night the fever and exhilaration of that mad moment
+had sustained me, but now the morning had come, when dreams must
+yield to facts, and I had to face the future.
+
+I sat on the stump of a tree, and buried my face in my hands. I
+must have fallen asleep, for, when I raised my eyes again, the day
+was brighter. Its cheerlessness had gone. The sky was blue, and
+birds were singing.
+
+It must have been about half an hour later that the first
+beginnings of a plan of action came to me. I could not trust
+myself to reason out my position clearly and honestly in this
+place where Audrey's spell was over everything. The part of me
+that was struggling to be loyal to Cynthia was overwhelmed here.
+London called to me. I could think there, face my position
+quietly, and make up my mind.
+
+I turned to walk to the station. I could not guess even remotely
+what time it was. The sun was shining through the trees, but in
+the road outside the grounds there were no signs of workers
+beginning the day.
+
+It was half past five when I reached the station. A sleepy porter
+informed me that there would be a train to London, a slow train,
+at six.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I remained in London two days, and on the third went down to Sanstead
+to see Audrey for the last time. I had made my decision.
+
+I found her on the drive, close by the gate. She turned at my
+footstep on the gravel; and, as I saw her, I knew that the fight
+which I had thought over was only beginning.
+
+I was shocked at her appearance. Her face was very pale, and there
+were tired lines about her eyes.
+
+I could not speak. Something choked me. Once again, as on that
+night in the stable-yard, the world and all that was in it seemed
+infinitely remote.
+
+It was she who broke the silence.
+
+'Well, Peter,' she said listlessly.
+
+We walked up the drive together.
+
+'Have you been to London?'
+
+'Yes. I came down this morning.' I paused. 'I went there to
+think,' I said.
+
+She nodded.
+
+'I have been thinking, too.'
+
+I stopped, and began to hollow out a groove in the wet gravel with
+my heel. Words were not coming readily.
+
+Suddenly she found speech. She spoke quickly, but her voice was
+dull and lifeless.
+
+'Let us forget what has happened, Peter. We were neither of us
+ourselves. I was tired and frightened and disappointed. You were
+sorry for me just at the moment, and your nerves were strained,
+like mine. It was all nothing. Let us forget it.'
+
+I shook my head.
+
+'No,' I said. 'It was not that. I can't let you even pretend you
+think that was all. I love you. I always have loved you, though I
+did not know how much till you had gone away. After a time, I
+thought I had got over it. But when I met you again down here, I
+knew that I had not, and never should. I came back to say good-bye,
+but I shall always love you. It is my punishment for being the sort
+of man I was five years ago.'
+
+'And mine for being the sort of woman I was five years ago.' She
+laughed bitterly. 'Woman! I was just a little fool, a sulky child.
+My punishment is going to be worse than yours, Peter. You will not
+be always thinking that you had the happiness of two lives in your
+hands, and threw it away because you had not the sense to hold
+it.'
+
+'It is just that that I shall always be thinking. What happened
+five years ago was my fault, Audrey, and nobody's but mine. I
+don't think that, even when the loss of you hurt most, I ever
+blamed you for going away. You had made me see myself as I was,
+and I knew that you had done the right thing. I was selfish,
+patronizing--I was insufferable. It was I who threw away our
+happiness. You put it in a sentence that first day here, when you
+said that I had been kind--sometimes--when I happened to think of
+it. That summed me up. You have nothing to reproach yourself for.
+I think we have not had the best of luck; but all the blame is
+mine.'
+
+A flush came into her pale face.
+
+'I remember saying that. I said it because I was afraid of myself.
+I was shaken by meeting you again. I thought you must be hating
+me--you had every reason to hate me, and you spoke as if you
+did--and I did not want to show you what you were to me. It wasn't
+true, Peter. Five years ago I may have thought it, but not now. I
+have grown to understand the realities by this time. I have been
+through too much to have any false ideas left. I have had some
+chance to compare men, and I realize that they are not all kind,
+Peter, even sometimes, when they happen to think of it.'
+
+'Audrey,' I said--I had never found myself able to ask the
+question before--'was--was--he--was Sheridan kind to you?'
+
+She did not speak for a moment, and I thought she was resenting
+the question.
+
+'No!' she said abruptly.
+
+She shot out the monosyllable with a force that startled and
+silenced me. There was a whole history of unhappiness in the word.
+
+'No,' she said again, after a pause, more gently this time. I
+understood. She was speaking of a dead man.
+
+'I can't talk about him,' she went on hurriedly. 'I expect most of
+it was my fault. I was unhappy because he was not you, and he saw
+that I was unhappy and hated me for it. We had nothing in common.
+It was just a piece of sheer madness, our marriage. He swept me
+off my feet. I never had a great deal of sense, and I lost it all
+then. I was far happier when he had left me.'
+
+'Left you?'
+
+'He deserted me almost directly we reached America.' She laughed.
+'I told you I had grown to understand the realities. I began
+then.'
+
+I was horrified. For the first time I realized vividly all that
+she had gone through. When she had spoken to me before of her
+struggles that evening over the study fire, I had supposed that
+they had begun only after her husband's death, and that her life
+with him had in some measure trained her for the fight. That she
+should have been pitched into the arena, a mere child, with no
+experience of life, appalled me. And, as she spoke, there came to
+me the knowledge that now I could never do what I had come to do.
+I could not give her up. She needed me. I tried not to think of
+Cynthia.
+
+I took her hand.
+
+'Audrey,' I said, 'I came here to say good-bye. I can't. I want
+you. Nothing matters except you. I won't give you up.'
+
+'It's too late,' she said, with a little catch in her voice. 'You
+are engaged to Mrs Ford.'
+
+'I am engaged, but not to Mrs Ford. I am engaged to someone you
+have never met--Cynthia Drassilis.'
+
+She pulled her hand away quickly, wide-eyed, and for some moments
+was silent.
+
+'Do you love her?' she asked at last.
+
+'No.'
+
+'Does she love you?'
+
+Cynthia's letter rose before my eyes, that letter that could have
+had no meaning, but one.
+
+'I am afraid she does,' I said.
+
+She looked at me steadily. Her face was very pale.
+
+'You must marry her, Peter.'
+
+I shook my head.
+
+'You must. She believes in you.'
+
+'I can't. I want you. And you need me. Can you deny that you need
+me?'
+
+'No.'
+
+She said it quite simply, without emotion. I moved towards her,
+thrilling, but she stepped back.
+
+'She needs you too,' she said.
+
+A dull despair was creeping over me. I was weighed down by a
+premonition of failure. I had fought my conscience, my sense of
+duty and honour, and crushed them. She was raising them up against
+me once more. My self-control broke down.
+
+'Audrey,' I cried, 'for God's sake can't you see what you're
+doing? We have been given a second chance. Our happiness is in
+your hands again, and you are throwing it away. Why should we make
+ourselves wretched for the whole of our lives? What does anything
+else matter except that we love each other? Why should we let
+anything stand in our way? I won't give you up.'
+
+She did not answer. Her eyes were fixed on the ground. Hope began
+to revive in me, telling me that I had persuaded her. But when she
+looked up it was with the same steady gaze, and my heart sank
+again.
+
+'Peter,' she said, 'I want to tell you something. It will make you
+understand, I think. I haven't been honest, Peter. I have not
+fought fairly. All these weeks, ever since we met, I have been
+trying to steal you. It's the only word. I have tried every little
+miserable trick I could think of to steal you from the girl you
+had promised to marry. And she wasn't here to fight for herself. I
+didn't think of her. I was wrapped up in my own selfishness. And
+then, after that night, when you had gone away, I thought it all
+out. I had a sort of awakening. I saw the part I had been playing.
+Even then I tried to persuade myself that I had done something
+rather fine. I thought, you see, at that time that you were
+infatuated with Mrs Ford--and I know Mrs Ford. If she is capable
+of loving any man, she loves Mr Ford, though they are divorced. I
+knew she would only make you unhappy. I told myself I was saving
+you. Then you told me it was not Mrs Ford, but this girl. That
+altered everything. Don't you see that I can't let you give her up
+now? You would despise me. I shouldn't feel clean. I should feel
+as if I had stabbed her in the back.'
+
+I forced a laugh. It rang hollow against the barrier that
+separated us. In my heart I knew that this barrier was not to be
+laughed away.
+
+'Can't you see, Peter? You must see.'
+
+'I certainly don't. I think you're overstrained, and that you have
+let your imagination run away with you. I--'
+
+She interrupted me.
+
+'Do you remember that evening in the study?' she asked abruptly.
+'We had been talking. I had been telling you how I had lived
+during those five years.'
+
+'I remember.'
+
+'Every word I spoke was spoken with an object--calculated.... Yes,
+even the pauses. I tried to make _them_ tell, too. I knew
+you, you see, Peter. I knew you through and through, because I
+loved you, and I knew the effect those tales would have on you.
+Oh, they were all true. I was honest as far as that goes. But they
+had the mean motive at the back of them. I was playing on your
+feelings. I knew how kind you were, how you would pity me. I set
+myself to create an image which would stay in your mind and kill
+the memory of the other girl; the image of a poor, ill-treated
+little creature who should work through to your heart by way of
+your compassion. I knew you, Peter, I knew you. And then I did a
+meaner thing still. I pretended to stumble in the dark. I meant
+you to catch me and hold me, and you did. And ...'
+
+Her voice broke off.
+
+'I'm glad I have told you,' she said. 'It makes it a little
+better. You understand now how I feel, don't you?'
+
+She held out her hand.
+
+'Good-bye.'
+
+'I am not going to give you up,' I said doggedly.
+
+'Good-bye,' she said again. Her voice was a whisper.
+
+I took her hand and began to draw her towards me.
+
+'It is not good-bye. There is no one else in the world but you,
+and I am not going to give you up.'
+
+'Peter!' she struggled feebly. 'Oh, let me go.'
+
+I drew her nearer.
+
+'I won't let you go,' I said.
+
+But, as I spoke, there came the sound of automobile wheels on the
+gravel. A large red car was coming up the drive. I dropped
+Audrey's hand, and she stepped back and was lost in the shrubbery.
+The car slowed down and stopped beside me. There were two women in
+the tonneau. One, who was dark and handsome, I did not know. The
+other was Mrs Drassilis.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 17
+
+
+I was given no leisure for wondering how Cynthia's mother came to
+be in the grounds of Sanstead House, for her companion, almost
+before the car had stopped, jumped out and clutched me by the arm,
+at the same time uttering this cryptic speech: 'Whatever he offers
+I'll double!'
+
+She fixed me, as she spoke, with a commanding eye. She was a woman,
+I gathered in that instant, born to command. There seemed, at any
+rate, no doubt in her mind that she could command me. If I had
+been a black beetle she could not have looked at me with a more
+scornful superiority. Her eyes were very large and of a rich, fiery
+brown colour, and it was these that gave me my first suspicion of
+her identity. As to the meaning of her words, however, I had no clue.
+
+'Bear that in mind,' she went on. 'I'll double it if it's a
+million dollars.'
+
+'I'm afraid I don't understand,' I said, finding speech.
+
+She clicked her tongue impatiently.
+
+'There's no need to be so cautious and mysterious. This lady is a
+friend of mine. She knows all about it. I asked her to come. I'm
+Mrs Elmer Ford. I came here directly I got your letter. I think
+you're the lowest sort of scoundrel that ever managed to keep out
+of gaol, but that needn't make any difference just now. We're here
+to talk business, Mr Fisher, so we may as well begin.'
+
+I was getting tired of being taken for Smooth Sam.
+
+'I am not Smooth Sam Fisher.'
+
+I turned to the automobile. 'Will you identify me, Mrs Drassilis?'
+
+She was regarding me with wide-open eyes.
+
+'What on earth are you doing down here? I have been trying
+everywhere to find you, but nobody--'
+
+Mrs Ford interrupted her. She gave me the impression of being a
+woman who wanted a good deal of the conversation, and who did not
+care how she got it. In a conversational sense she thugged Mrs
+Drassilis at this point, or rather she swept over her like some
+tidal wave, blotting her out.
+
+'Oh,' she said fixing her brown eyes, less scornful now but still
+imperious, on mine. 'I must apologize. I have made a mistake. I
+took you for a low villain of the name of Sam Fisher. I hope you
+will forgive me. I was to have met him at this exact spot just
+about this time, by appointment, so, seeing you here, I mistook
+you for him.'
+
+'If I might have a word with you alone?' I said.
+
+Mrs Ford had a short way with people. In matters concerning her
+own wishes, she took their acquiescence for granted.
+
+'Drive on up to the house, Jarvis,' she said, and Mrs Drassilis
+was whirled away round the curve of the drive before she knew what
+had happened to her.
+
+'Well?'
+
+'My name is Burns,' I said.
+
+'Now I understand,' she said. 'I know who you are now.' She
+paused, and I was expecting her to fawn upon me for my gallant
+service in her cause, when she resumed in quite a different
+strain.
+
+'I can't think what you can have been about, Mr Burns, not to have
+been able to do what Cynthia asked you. Surely in all these weeks
+and months.... And then, after all, to have let this Fisher
+scoundrel steal him away from under your nose...!'
+
+She gave me a fleeting glance of unfathomable scorn. And when I
+thought of all the sufferings I had gone through that term owing
+to her repulsive son and, indirectly, for her sake, I felt that
+the time had come to speak out.
+
+'May I describe the way in which I allowed your son to be stolen
+away from under my nose?' I said. And in well-chosen words, I
+sketched the outline of what had happened. I did not omit to lay
+stress on the fact that the Nugget's departure with the enemy was
+entirely voluntary.
+
+She heard me out in silence.
+
+'That was too bad of Oggie,' she said tolerantly, when I had
+ceased dramatically on the climax of my tale.
+
+As a comment it seemed to me inadequate.
+
+'Oggie was always high-spirited,' she went on. 'No doubt you have
+noticed that?'
+
+'A little.'
+
+'He could be led, but never driven. With the best intentions, no
+doubt, you refused to allow him to leave the stables that night
+and return to the house, and he resented the check and took the
+matter into his own hands.' She broke off and looked at her watch.
+'Have you a watch? What time is it? Only that? I thought it must
+be later. I arrived too soon. I got a letter from this man Fisher,
+naming this spot and this hour for a meeting, when we could
+discuss terms. He said that he had written to Mr Ford, appointing
+the same time.' She frowned. 'I have no doubt he will come,' she
+said coldly.
+
+'Perhaps this is his car,' I said.
+
+A second automobile was whirring up the drive. There was a shout
+as it came within sight of us, and the chauffeur put on the brake.
+A man sprang from the tonneau. He jerked a word to the chauffeur,
+and the car went on up the drive.
+
+He was a massively built man of middle age, with powerful shoulders,
+and a face--when he had removed his motor-goggles very like any one
+of half a dozen of those Roman emperors whose features have come
+down to us on coins and statues, square-jawed, clean-shaven, and
+aggressive. Like his late wife (who was now standing, drawn up to
+her full height, staring haughtily at him) he had the air of one
+born to command. I should imagine that the married life of these
+two must have been something more of a battle even than most married
+lives. The clashing of those wills must have smacked of a collision
+between the immovable mass and the irresistible force.
+
+He met Mrs Ford's stare with one equally militant, then turned to
+me.
+
+'I'll give you double what she has offered you,' he said. He
+paused, and eyed me with loathing. 'You damned scoundrel,' he
+added.
+
+Custom ought to have rendered me immune to irritation, but it had
+not. I spoke my mind.
+
+'One of these days, Mr Ford,' I said, 'I am going to publish a
+directory of the names and addresses of the people who have
+mistaken me for Smooth Sam Fisher. I am not Sam Fisher. Can you
+grasp that? My name is Peter Burns, and for the past term I have
+been a master at this school. And I may say that, judging from
+what I know of the little brute, any one who kidnapped your son as
+long as two days ago will be so anxious by now to get rid of him
+that he will probably want to pay you for taking him back.'
+
+My words almost had the effect of bringing this divorced couple
+together again. They made common cause against me. It was probably
+the first time in years that they had formed even a temporary
+alliance.
+
+'How dare you talk like that!' said Mrs Ford. 'Oggie is a sweet
+boy in every respect.'
+
+'You're perfectly right, Nesta,' said Mr Ford. 'He may want
+intelligent handling, but he's a mighty fine boy. I shall make
+inquiries, and if this man has been ill-treating Ogden, I shall
+complain to Mr Abney. Where the devil is this man Fisher?' he
+broke off abruptly.
+
+'On the spot,' said an affable voice. The bushes behind me parted,
+and Smooth Sam stepped out on to the gravel.
+
+I had recognized him by his voice. I certainly should not have
+done so by his appearance. He had taken the precaution of 'making
+up' for this important meeting. A white wig of indescribable
+respectability peeped out beneath his black hat. His eyes twinkled
+from under two penthouses of white eyebrows. A white moustache
+covered his mouth. He was venerable to a degree.
+
+He nodded to me, and bared his white head gallantly to Mrs Ford.
+
+'No worse for our little outing, Mr Burns, I am glad to see. Mrs
+Ford, I must apologize for my apparent unpunctuality, but I was
+not really behind time. I have been waiting in the bushes. I
+thought it just possible that you might have brought unwelcome
+members of the police force with you, and I have been scouting, as
+it were, before making my advance. I see, however, that all is
+well, and we can come at once to business. May I say, before we
+begin, that I overheard your recent conversation, and that I
+entirely disagree with Mr Burns. Master Ford is a charming boy.
+Already I feel like an elder brother to him. I am loath to part
+with him.'
+
+'How much?' snapped Mr Ford. 'You've got me. How much do you
+want?'
+
+'I'll give you double what he offers,' cried Mrs Ford.
+
+Sam held up his hand, his old pontifical manner intensified by the
+white wig.
+
+'May I speak? Thank you. This is a little embarrassing. When I
+asked you both to meet me here, it was not for the purpose of
+holding an auction. I had a straight-forward business proposition
+to make to you. It will necessitate a certain amount of plain and
+somewhat personal speaking. May I proceed? Thank you. I will be as
+brief as possible.'
+
+His eloquence appeared to have had a soothing effect on the two
+Fords. They remained silent.
+
+'You must understand,' said Sam, 'that I am speaking as an expert.
+I have been in the kidnapping business many years, and I know what
+I am talking about. And I tell you that the moment you two got
+your divorce, you said good-bye to all peace and quiet. Bless
+you'--Sam's manner became fatherly--'I've seen it a hundred
+times. Couple get divorced, and, if there's a child, what happens?
+They start in playing battledore-and-shuttlecock with him. Wife
+sneaks him from husband. Husband sneaks him back from wife. After
+a while along comes a gentleman in my line of business, a
+professional at the game, and he puts one across on both the
+amateurs. He takes advantage of the confusion, slips in, and gets
+away with the kid. That's what has happened here, and I'm going to
+show you the way to stop it another time. Now I'll make you a
+proposition. What you want to do'--I have never heard anything so
+soothing, so suggestive of the old family friend healing an
+unfortunate breach, as Sam's voice at this juncture--'what you
+want to do is to get together again right quick. Never mind the
+past. Let bygones be bygones. Kiss and be friends.'
+
+A snort from Mr Ford checked him for a moment, but he resumed.
+
+'I guess there were faults on both sides. Get together and talk it
+over. And when you've agreed to call the fight off and start fair
+again, that's where I come in. Mr Burns here will tell you, if you
+ask him, that I'm anxious to quit this business and marry and
+settle down. Well, see here. What you want to do is to give me a
+salary--we can talk figures later on--to stay by you and watch
+over the kid. Don't snort--I'm talking plain sense. You'd a sight
+better have me with you than against you. Set a thief to catch a
+thief. What I don't know about the fine points of the game isn't
+worth knowing. I'll guarantee, if you put me in charge, to see
+that nobody comes within a hundred miles of the kid unless he has
+an order-to-view. You'll find I earn every penny of that salary ...
+Mr Burns and I will now take a turn up the drive while you think
+it over.'
+
+He linked his arm in mine and drew me away. As we turned the
+corner of the drive I caught a glimpse over my shoulder of the
+Little Nugget's parents. They were standing where we had left
+them, as if Sam's eloquence had rooted them to the spot.
+
+'Well, well, well, young man,' said Sam, eyeing me affectionately,
+'it's pleasant to meet you again, under happier conditions than
+last time. You certainly have all the luck, sonny, or you would
+have been badly hurt that night. I was getting scared how the
+thing would end. Buck's a plain roughneck, and his gang are as bad
+as he is, and they had got mighty sore at you, mighty sore. If
+they had grabbed you, there's no knowing what might not have
+happened. However, all's well that ends well, and this little game
+has surely had the happy ending. I shall get that job, sonny. Old
+man Ford isn't a fool, and it won't take him long, when he gets to
+thinking it over, to see that I'm right. He'll hire me.'
+
+'Aren't you rather reckoning without your partner?' I said. 'Where
+does Buck MacGinnis come in on the deal?'
+
+Sam patted my shoulder paternally.
+
+'He doesn't, sonny, he doesn't. It was a shame to do it--it was
+like taking candy from a kid--but business is business, and I was
+reluctantly compelled to double-cross poor old Buck. I sneaked the
+Nugget away from him next day. It's not worth talking about; it
+was too easy. Buck's all right in a rough-and-tumble, but when it
+comes to brains he gets left, and so he'll go on through life,
+poor fellow. I hate to think of it.'
+
+He sighed. Buck's misfortunes seemed to move him deeply.
+
+'I shouldn't be surprised if he gave up the profession after this.
+He has had enough to discourage him. I told you about what
+happened to him that night, didn't I? No? I thought I did. Why,
+Buck was the guy who did the Steve Brodie through the roof; and,
+when we picked him up, we found he'd broken his leg again! Isn't
+that enough to jar a man? I guess he'll retire from the business
+after that. He isn't intended for it.'
+
+We were approaching the two automobiles now, and, looking back, I
+saw Mr and Mrs Ford walking up the drive. Sam followed my gaze,
+and I heard him chuckle.
+
+'It's all right,' he said. 'They've fixed it up. Something in the
+way they're walking tells me they've fixed it up.'
+
+Mrs Drassilis was still sitting in the red automobile, looking
+piqued but resigned. Mrs Ford addressed her.
+
+'I shall have to leave you, Mrs Drassilis,' she said. 'Tell Jarvis
+to drive you wherever you want to go. I am going with my husband
+to see my boy Oggie.'
+
+She stretched out a hand towards the millionaire. He caught it in
+his, and they stood there, smiling foolishly at each other, while
+Sam, almost purring, brooded over them like a stout fairy queen.
+The two chauffeurs looked on woodenly.
+
+Mr Ford released his wife's hand and turned to Sam.
+
+'Fisher.'
+
+'Sir?'
+
+'I've been considering your proposition. There's a string tied to
+it.'
+
+'Oh no, sir, I assure you!'
+
+'There is. What guarantee have I that you won't double-cross me?'
+
+Sam smiled, relieved.
+
+'You forget that I told you I was about to be married, sir. My
+wife won't let me!'
+
+Mr Ford waved his hand towards the automobile.
+
+'Jump in,' he said briefly, 'and tell him where to drive to.
+You're engaged!'
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 18
+
+
+'No manners!' said Mrs Drassilis. 'None whatever. I always said
+so.'
+
+She spoke bitterly. She was following the automobile with an
+offended eye as it moved down the drive.
+
+The car rounded the corner. Sam turned and waved a farewell. Mr
+and Mrs Ford, seated close together in the tonneau, did not even
+look round.
+
+Mrs Drassilis sniffed disgustedly.
+
+'She's a friend of Cynthia's. Cynthia asked me to come down here
+with her to see you. I came, to oblige her. And now, without a
+word of apology, she leaves me stranded. She has no manners
+whatever.'
+
+I offered no defence of the absent one. The verdict more or less
+squared with my own opinion.
+
+'Is Cynthia back in England?' I asked, to change the subject.
+
+'The yacht got back yesterday. Peter, I have something of the
+utmost importance to speak to you about.' She glanced at Jarvis
+the chauffeur, leaning back in his seat with the air, peculiar to
+chauffeurs in repose, of being stuffed. 'Walk down the drive with
+me.'
+
+I helped her out of the car, and we set off in silence. There was
+a suppressed excitement in my companion's manner which interested
+me, and something furtive which brought back all my old dislike of
+her. I could not imagine what she could have to say to me that had
+brought her all these miles.
+
+'How _do_ you come to be down here?' she said. 'When Cynthia
+told me you were here, I could hardly believe her. Why are you a
+master at this school? I cannot understand it!'
+
+'What did you want to see me about?' I asked.
+
+She hesitated. It was always an effort for her to be direct. Now,
+apparently, the effort was too great. The next moment she had
+rambled off on some tortuous bypath of her own, which, though it
+presumably led in the end to her destination, was evidently a long
+way round.
+
+'I have known you for so many years now, Peter, and I don't know of
+anybody whose character I admire more. You are so generous--quixotic
+in fact. You are one of the few really unselfish men I have ever
+met. You are always thinking of other people. Whatever it cost you,
+I know you would not hesitate to give up anything if you felt that
+it was for someone else's happiness. I do admire you so for it.
+One meets so few young men nowadays who consider anybody except
+themselves.'
+
+She paused, either for breath or for fresh ideas, and I took
+advantage of the lull in the rain of bouquets to repeat my
+question.
+
+'What _did_ you want to see me about?' I asked patiently.
+
+'About Cynthia. She asked me to see you.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+'You got a letter from her.'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Last night, when she came home, she told me about it, and showed
+me your answer. It was a beautiful letter, Peter. I'm sure I cried
+when I read it. And Cynthia did, I feel certain. Of course, to a
+girl of her character that letter was final. She is so loyal, dear
+child.'
+
+'I don't understand.'
+
+As Sam would have said, she seemed to be speaking; words appeared
+to be fluttering from her; but her meaning was beyond me.
+
+'Once she has given her promise, I am sure nothing would induce
+her to break it, whatever her private feelings. She is so loyal.
+She has such character.'
+
+'Would you mind being a little clearer?' I said sharply. 'I really
+don't understand what it is you are trying to tell me. What do you
+mean about loyalty and character? I don't understand.'
+
+She was not to be hustled from her bypath. She had chosen her
+route, and she meant to travel by it, ignoring short-cuts.
+
+'To Cynthia, as I say, it was final. She simply could not see that
+the matter was not irrevocably settled. I thought it so fine of
+her. But I am her mother, and it was my duty not to give in and
+accept the situation as inevitable while there was anything I
+could do for her happiness. I knew your chivalrous, unselfish
+nature, Peter. I could speak to you as Cynthia could not. I could
+appeal to your generosity in a way impossible, of course, for her.
+I could put the whole facts of the case clearly before you.'
+
+I snatched at the words.
+
+'I wish you would. What are they?'
+
+She rambled off again.
+
+'She has such a rigid sense of duty. There is no arguing with her.
+I told her that, if you knew, you would not dream of standing in
+her way. You are so generous, such a true friend, that your only
+thought would be for her. If her happiness depended on your
+releasing her from her promise, you would not think of yourself.
+So in the end I took matters into my own hands and came to see
+you. I am truly sorry for you, dear Peter, but to me Cynthia's
+happiness, of course, must come before everything. You do
+understand, don't you?'
+
+Gradually, as she was speaking, I had begun to grasp hesitatingly
+at her meaning, hesitatingly, because the first hint of it had
+stirred me to such a whirl of hope that I feared to risk the shock
+of finding that, after all, I had been mistaken. If I were
+right--and surely she could mean nothing else--I was free, free
+with honour. But I could not live on hints. I must hear this thing
+in words.
+
+'Has--has Cynthia--' I stopped, to steady my voice. 'Has Cynthia
+found--' I stopped again. I was finding it absurdly difficult to
+frame my sentence. 'Is there someone else?' I concluded with a
+rush.
+
+Mrs Drassilis patted my arm sympathetically.
+
+'Be brave, Peter!'
+
+'There is?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+The trees, the drive, the turf, the sky, the birds, the house, the
+automobile, and Jarvis, the stuffed chauffeur, leaped together for
+an instant in one whirling, dancing mass of which I was the
+centre. And then, out of the chaos, as it separated itself once
+more into its component parts, I heard my voice saying, 'Tell me.'
+
+The world was itself again, and I was listening quietly and with a
+mild interest which, try as I would, I could not make any
+stronger. I had exhausted my emotion on the essential fact: the
+details were an anticlimax.
+
+'I liked him directly I saw him,' said Mrs Drassilis. 'And, of
+course, as he was such a friend of yours, we naturally--'
+
+'A friend of mine?'
+
+'I am speaking of Lord Mountry.'
+
+'Mountry? What about him?' Light flooded in on my numbed brain.
+'You don't mean--Is it Lord Mountry?'
+
+My manner must have misled her. She stammered in her eagerness to
+dispel what she took to be my misapprehension.
+
+'Don't think that he acted in anything but the most honourable
+manner. Nothing could be farther from the truth. He knew nothing
+of Cynthia's engagement to you. She told him when he asked her to
+marry him, and he--as a matter of fact, it was he who insisted on
+dear Cynthia writing that letter to you.'
+
+She stopped, apparently staggered by this excursion into honesty.
+
+'Well?'
+
+'In fact, he dictated it.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+'Unfortunately, it was quite the wrong sort of letter. It was the
+very opposite of clear. It can have given you no inkling of the
+real state of affairs.'
+
+'It certainly did not.'
+
+'He would not allow her to alter it in any way. He is very
+obstinate at times, like so many shy men. And when your answer
+came, you see, things were worse than before.'
+
+'I suppose so.'
+
+'I could see last night how unhappy they both were. And when
+Cynthia suggested it, I agreed at once to come to you and tell you
+everything.'
+
+She looked at me anxiously. From her point of view, this was the
+climax, the supreme moment. She hesitated. I seemed to see her
+marshalling her forces, the telling sentences, the persuasive
+adjectives; rallying them together for the grand assault.
+
+But through the trees I caught a glimpse of Audrey, walking on the
+lawn; and the assault was never made.
+
+'I will write to Cynthia tonight,' I said, 'wishing her
+happiness.'
+
+'Oh, Peter!' said Mrs Drassilis.
+
+'Don't mention it,' said I.
+
+Doubts appeared to mar her perfect contentment.
+
+'You are sure you can convince her?'
+
+'Convince her?'
+
+'And--er--Lord Mountry. He is so determined not to do
+anything--er--what he would call unsportsmanlike.'
+
+'Perhaps I had better tell her I am going to marry some one else,'
+I suggested.
+
+'I think that would be an excellent idea,' she said, brightening
+visibly. 'How clever of you to have thought of it.'
+
+She permitted herself a truism.
+
+'After all, dear Peter, there are plenty of nice girls in the
+world. You have only to look for them.'
+
+'You're perfectly right,' I said. 'I'll start at once.'
+
+A gleam of white caught my eye through the trees by the lawn. I
+moved towards it.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 6683 ***
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5dba15
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this book outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..860da7e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+book #6683 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6683)
diff --git a/old/ltngg10.txt b/old/ltngg10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a057e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/ltngg10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10300 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Nugget, by P.G. Wodehouse
+#8 in our series by P.G. Wodehouse
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
+Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
+header without written permission.
+
+Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
+eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
+important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
+how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
+donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: The Little Nugget
+
+Author: P.G. Wodehouse
+
+Release Date: October, 2004 [EBook #6683]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on January 12, 2003]
+[Date last updated: February 27, 2005]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE NUGGET ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Tom Allen, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE NUGGET
+
+
+
+By P. G. Wodehouse
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Part One
+
+
+In which the Little Nugget is introduced to the reader, and plans
+are made for his future by several interested parties. In which,
+also, the future Mr Peter Burns is touched upon. The whole concluding
+with a momentous telephone-call.
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE NUGGET
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+If the management of the Hotel Guelph, that London landmark, could
+have been present at three o'clock one afternoon in early January
+in the sitting-room of the suite which they had assigned to Mrs
+Elmer Ford, late of New York, they might well have felt a little
+aggrieved. Philosophers among them would possibly have meditated
+on the limitations of human effort; for they had done their best
+for Mrs Ford. They had housed her well. They had fed her well.
+They had caused inspired servants to anticipate her every need.
+Yet here she was, in the midst of all these aids to a contented
+mind, exhibiting a restlessness and impatience of her surroundings
+that would have been noticeable in a caged tigress or a prisoner
+of the Bastille. She paced the room. She sat down, picked up a
+novel, dropped it, and, rising, resumed her patrol. The clock
+striking, she compared it with her watch, which she had consulted
+two minutes before. She opened the locket that hung by a gold
+chain from her neck, looked at its contents, and sighed. Finally,
+going quickly into the bedroom, she took from a suit-case a framed
+oil-painting, and returning with it to the sitting-room, placed it
+on a chair, and stepped back, gazing at it hungrily. Her large
+brown eyes, normally hard and imperious, were strangely softened.
+Her mouth quivered.
+
+'Ogden!' she whispered.
+
+The picture which had inspired this exhibition of feeling would
+probably not have affected the casual spectator to quite the same
+degree. He would have seen merely a very faulty and amateurish
+portrait of a singularly repellent little boy of about eleven, who
+stared out from the canvas with an expression half stolid, half
+querulous; a bulgy, overfed little boy; a little boy who looked
+exactly what he was, the spoiled child of parents who had far more
+money than was good for them.
+
+As Mrs Ford gazed at the picture, and the picture stared back at
+her, the telephone bell rang. She ran to it eagerly. It was the
+office of the hotel, announcing a caller.
+
+'Yes? Yes? Who?' Her voice fell, as if the name was not the one
+she had expected. 'Oh, yes,' she said. 'Yes, ask Lord Mountry to
+come to me here, please.'
+
+She returned to the portrait. The look of impatience, which had
+left her face as the bell sounded, was back now. She suppressed it
+with an effort as her visitor entered.
+
+Lord Mountry was a blond, pink-faced, fair-moustached young man of
+about twenty-eight--a thick-set, solemn young man. He winced as he
+caught sight of the picture, which fixed him with a stony eye
+immediately on his entry, and quickly looked away.
+
+'I say, it's all right, Mrs Ford.' He was of the type which wastes
+no time on preliminary greetings. 'I've got him.'
+
+'Got him!'
+
+Mrs Ford's voice was startled.
+
+'Stanborough, you know.'
+
+'Oh! I--I was thinking of something else. Won't you sit down?'
+
+Lord Mountry sat down.
+
+'The artist, you know. You remember you said at lunch the other
+day you wanted your little boy's portrait painted, as you only had
+one of him, aged eleven--'
+
+'This is Ogden, Lord Mountry. I painted this myself.'
+
+His lordship, who had selected a chair that enabled him to present
+a shoulder to the painting, and was wearing a slightly dogged look
+suggestive of one who 'turns no more his head, because he knows a
+frightful fiend doth close behind him tread', forced himself
+round, and met his gaze with as much nonchalance as he could
+summon up.
+
+'Er, yes,' he said.
+
+He paused.
+
+'Fine manly little fellow--what?' he continued.
+
+'Yes, isn't he?'
+
+His lordship stealthily resumed his former position.
+
+'I recommended this fellow, Stanborough, if you remember. He's a
+great pal of mine, and I'd like to give him a leg up if I could.
+They tell me he's a topping artist. Don't know much about it
+myself. You told me to bring him round here this afternoon, you
+remember, to talk things over. He's waiting downstairs.'
+
+'Oh yes, yes. Of course, I've not forgotten. Thank you so much,
+Lord Mountry.'
+
+'Rather a good scheme occurred to me, that is, if you haven't
+thought over the idea of that trip on my yacht and decided it
+would bore you to death. You still feel like making one of the
+party--what?'
+
+Mrs Ford shot a swift glance at the clock.
+
+'I'm looking forward to it,' she said.
+
+'Well, then, why shouldn't we kill two birds with one stone?
+Combine the voyage and the portrait, don't you know. You could
+bring your little boy along--he'd love the trip--and I'd bring
+Stanborough--what?'
+
+This offer was not the outcome of a sudden spasm of warm-heartedness
+on his lordship's part. He had pondered the matter deeply, and had
+come to the conclusion that, though it had flaws, it was the best
+plan. He was alive to the fact that a small boy was not an absolute
+essential to the success of a yachting trip, and, since seeing
+Ogden's portrait, he had realized still more clearly that the
+scheme had draw-backs. But he badly wanted Stanborough to make
+one of the party. Whatever Ogden might be, there was no doubt that
+Billy Stanborough, that fellow of infinite jest, was the ideal
+companion for a voyage. It would make just all the difference having
+him. The trouble was that Stanborough flatly refused to take an
+indefinite holiday, on the plea that he could not afford the time.
+Upon which his lordship, seldom blessed with great ideas, had surprised
+himself by producing the scheme he had just sketched out to Mrs Ford.
+
+He looked at her expectantly, as he finished speaking, and was
+surprised to see a swift cloud of distress pass over her face. He
+rapidly reviewed his last speech. No, nothing to upset anyone in
+that. He was puzzled.
+
+She looked past him at the portrait. There was pain in her eyes.
+
+'I'm afraid you don't quite understand the position of affairs,'
+she said. Her voice was harsh and strained.
+
+'Eh?'
+
+'You see--I have not--' She stopped. 'My little boy is not--Ogden
+is not living with me just now.'
+
+'At school, eh?'
+
+'No, not at school. Let me tell you the whole position. Mr Ford
+and I did not get on very well together, and a year ago we were
+divorced in Washington, on the ground of incompatibility,
+and--and--'
+
+She choked. His lordship, a young man with a shrinking horror of
+the deeper emotions, whether exhibited in woman or man, writhed
+silently. That was the worst of these Americans! Always getting
+divorced and causing unpleasantness. How was a fellow to know? Why
+hadn't whoever it was who first introduced them--he couldn't
+remember who the dickens it was--told him about this? He had
+supposed she was just the ordinary American woman doing Europe
+with an affectionate dollar-dispensing husband in the background
+somewhere.
+
+'Er--' he said. It was all he could find to say.
+
+'And--and the court,' said Mrs Ford, between her teeth, 'gave him
+the custody of Ogden.'
+
+Lord Mountry, pink with embarrassment, gurgled sympathetically.
+
+'Since then I have not seen Ogden. That was why I was interested
+when you mentioned your friend Mr Stanborough. It struck me that
+Mr Ford could hardly object to my having a portrait of my son
+painted at my own expense. Nor do I suppose that he will, when--if
+the matter is put to him. But, well, you see it would be premature
+to make any arrangements at present for having the picture painted
+on our yacht trip.'
+
+'I'm afraid it knocks that scheme on the head,' said Lord Mountry
+mournfully.
+
+'Not necessarily.'
+
+'Eh?'
+
+'I don't want to make plans yet, but--it is possible that Ogden
+may be with us after all. Something may be--arranged.'
+
+'You think you may be able to bring him along on the yacht after
+all?'
+
+'I am hoping so.'
+
+Lord Mountry, however willing to emit sympathetic gurgles, was too
+plain and straightforward a young man to approve of wilful
+blindness to obvious facts.
+
+'I don't see how you are going to override the decision of the
+court. It holds good in England, I suppose?'
+
+'I am hoping something may be--arranged.'
+
+'Oh, same here, same here. Certainly.' Having done his duty by not
+allowing plain facts to be ignored, his lordship was ready to
+become sympathetic again. 'By the way, where is Ogden?'
+
+'He is down at Mr Ford's house in the country. But--'
+
+She was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone bell. She was
+out of her seat and across the room at the receiver with what
+appeared to Lord Mountry's startled gaze one bound. As she put the
+instrument to her ear a wave of joy swept over her face. She gave
+a little cry of delight and excitement.
+
+'Send them right up at once,' she said, and turned to Lord Mountry
+transformed.
+
+'Lord Mountry,' she said quickly, 'please don't think me
+impossibly rude if I turn you out. Some--some people are coming to
+see me. I must--'
+
+His lordship rose hurriedly.
+
+'Of course. Of course. Certainly. Where did I put my--ah, here.'
+He seized his hat, and by way of economizing effort, knocked his
+stick on to the floor with the same movement. Mrs Ford watched his
+bendings and gropings with growing impatience, till finally he
+rose, a little flushed but with a full hand--stick, gloves, and
+hat, all present and correct.
+
+'Good-bye, then, Mrs Ford, for the present. You'll let me know if
+your little boy will be able to make one of our party on the
+yacht?'
+
+'Yes, yes. Thank you ever so much. Good-bye.'
+
+'Good-bye.'
+
+He reached the door and opened it.
+
+'By Jove,' he said, springing round--'Stanborough! What about
+Stanborough? Shall I tell him to wait? He's down below, you know!'
+
+'Yes, yes. Tell Mr Stanborough I'm dreadfully sorry to have to
+keep him waiting, and ask him if he won't stay for a few minutes
+in the Palm Room.'
+
+Inspiration came to Lord Mountry.
+
+'I'll give him a drink,' he said.
+
+'Yes, yes, anything. Lord Mountry, you really must go. I know I'm
+rude. I don't know what I'm saying. But--my boy is returning to
+me.'
+
+The accumulated chivalry of generations of chivalrous ancestors
+acted like a spur on his lordship. He understood but dimly, yet
+enough to enable him to realize that a scene was about to take
+place in which he was most emphatically not 'on'. A mother's
+meeting with her long-lost child, this is a sacred thing. This was
+quite clear to him, so, turning like a flash, he bounded through
+the doorway, and, as somebody happened to be coming in at the same
+time, there was a collision, which left him breathing apologies in
+his familiar attitude of stooping to pick up his hat.
+
+The new-comers were a tall, strikingly handsome girl, with a
+rather hard and cynical cast of countenance. She was leading by
+the hand a small, fat boy of about fourteen years of age, whose
+likeness to the portrait on the chair proclaimed his identity. He
+had escaped the collision, but seemed offended by it; for, eyeing
+the bending peer with cold distaste, he summed up his opinion of
+him in the one word 'Chump!'
+
+Lord Mountry rose.
+
+'I beg your pardon,' he said for perhaps the seventh time. He was
+thoroughly unstrung. Always excessively shy, he was embarrassed
+now by quite a variety of causes. The world was full of eyes--Mrs
+Ford's saying 'Go!' Ogden's saying 'Fool!' the portrait saying
+'Idiot!' and, finally, the eyes of this wonderfully handsome girl,
+large, grey, cool, amused, and contemptuous saying--so it seemed
+to him in that feverish moment--'Who is this curious pink person
+who cumbers the ground before me?'
+
+'I--I beg your pardon.' he repeated.
+
+'Ought to look where you're going,' said Ogden severely.
+
+'Not at all,' said the girl. 'Won't you introduce me, Nesta?'
+
+'Lord Mountry--Miss Drassilis,' said Mrs Ford.
+
+'I'm afraid we're driving Lord Mountry away,' said the girl. Her
+eyes seemed to his lordship larger, greyer, cooler, more amused,
+and more contemptuous than ever. He floundered in them like an
+unskilful swimmer in deep waters.
+
+'No, no,' he stammered. 'Give you my word. Just going. Good-bye.
+You won't forget to let me know about the yacht, Mrs Ford--what?
+It'll be an awfully jolly party. Good-bye, good-bye, Miss
+Drassilis.'
+
+He looked at Ogden for an instant, as if undecided whether to take
+the liberty of addressing him too, and then, his heart apparently
+failing him, turned and bolted. From down the corridor came the
+clatter of a dropped stick.
+
+Cynthia Drassilis closed the door and smiled.
+
+'A nervous young person!' she said. 'What was he saying about a
+yacht, Nesta?'
+
+Mrs Ford roused herself from her fascinated contemplation of
+Ogden.
+
+'Oh, nothing. Some of us are going to the south of France in his
+yacht next week.'
+
+'What a delightful idea!'
+
+There was a certain pensive note in Cynthia's voice.
+
+'A splendid idea!' she murmured.
+
+Mrs Ford swooped. She descended on Ogden in a swirl and rustle of
+expensive millinery, and clasped him to her.
+
+'My boy!'
+
+It is not given to everybody to glide neatly into a scene of tense
+emotion. Ogden failed to do so. He wriggled roughly from the
+embrace.
+
+'Got a cigarette?' he said.
+
+He was an extraordinarily unpleasant little boy. Physically the
+portrait standing on the chair did him more than justice. Painted
+by a mother's loving hand, it flattered him. It was bulgy. He was
+more bulgy. It was sullen. He scowled. And, art having its
+limitations, particularly amateur art, the portrait gave no hint
+of his very repellent manner. He was an intensely sophisticated
+child. He had the air of one who has seen all life has to offer,
+and is now permanently bored. His speech and bearing were those of
+a young man, and a distinctly unlovable young man.
+
+Even Mrs Ford was momentarily chilled. She laughed shakily.
+
+'How very matter-of-fact you are, darling!' she said.
+
+Cynthia was regarding the heir to the Ford millions with her usual
+steady, half-contemptuous gaze.
+
+'He has been that all day,' she said. 'You have no notion what a
+help it was to me.'
+
+Mrs Ford turned to her effusively.
+
+'Oh, Cynthia, dear, I haven't thanked you.'
+
+'No,' interpolated the girl dryly.
+
+'You're a wonder, darling. You really are. I've been repeating
+that ever since I got your telegram from Eastnor.' She broke off.
+'Ogden, come near me, my little son.'
+
+He lurched towards her sullenly.
+
+'Don't muss a fellow now,' he stipulated, before allowing himself
+to be enfolded in the outstretched arms.
+
+'Tell me, Cynthia,' resumed Mrs Ford, 'how did you do it? I was
+telling Lord Mountry that I _hoped_ I might see my Ogden again
+soon, but I never really hoped. It seemed too impossible that you
+should succeed.'
+
+'This Lord Mountry of yours,' said Cynthia. 'How did you get to
+know him? Why have I not seen him before?'
+
+'I met him in Paris in the fall. He has been out of London for a
+long time, looking after his father, who was ill.'
+
+'I see.'
+
+'He has been most kind, making arrangements about getting Ogden's
+portrait painted. But, bother Lord Mountry. How did we get
+sidetracked on to him? Tell me how you got Ogden away.'
+
+Cynthia yawned.
+
+'It was extraordinarily easy, as it turned out, you see.'
+
+'Ogden, darling,' observed Mrs Ford, 'don't go away. I want you
+near me.'
+
+'Oh, all right.'
+
+'Then stay by me, angel-face.'
+
+'Oh, slush!' muttered angel-face beneath his breath. 'Say, I'm
+darned hungry,' he added.
+
+It was if an electric shock had been applied to Mrs Ford. She
+sprang to her feet.
+
+'My poor child! Of course you must have some lunch. Ring the bell,
+Cynthia. I'll have them send up some here.'
+
+'I'll have _mine_ here,' said Cynthia.
+
+'Oh, you've had no lunch either! I was forgetting that.'
+
+'I thought you were.'
+
+'You must both lunch here.'
+
+'Really,' said Cynthia, 'I think it would be better if Ogden had
+his downstairs in the restaurant.'
+
+'Want to talk scandal, eh?'
+
+'Ogden, _dearest!_' said Mrs Ford. 'Very well, Cynthia. Go,
+Ogden. You will order yourself something substantial, marvel-child?'
+
+'Bet your life,' said the son and heir tersely.
+
+There was a brief silence as the door closed. Cynthia gazed at her
+friend with a peculiar expression.
+
+'Well, I did it, dear,' she said.
+
+'Yes. It's splendid. You're a wonder, darling.'
+
+'Yes,' said Cynthia.
+
+There was another silence.
+
+'By the way,' said Mrs Ford, 'didn't you say there was a little
+thing, a small bill, that was worrying you?'
+
+'Did I mention it? Yes, there is. It's rather pressing. In fact,
+it's taking up most of the horizon at present. Here it is.'
+
+'Is it a large sum?' Mrs Ford took the slip of paper and gave a slight
+gasp. Then, coming to the bureau, she took out her cheque-book.
+
+'It's very kind of you, Nesta,' said Cynthia. 'They were beginning
+to show quite a vindictive spirit about it.'
+
+She folded the cheque calmly and put it in her purse.
+
+'And now tell me how you did it,' said Mrs Ford.
+
+She dropped into a chair and leaned back, her hands behind her
+head. For the first time, she seemed to enjoy perfect peace of
+mind. Her eyes half closed, as if she had been making ready to
+listen to some favourite music.
+
+'Tell me from the very beginning,' she said softly.
+
+Cynthia checked a yawn.
+
+'Very well, dear,' she said. 'I caught the 10.20 to Eastnor, which
+isn't a bad train, if you ever want to go down there. I arrived at
+a quarter past twelve, and went straight up to the house--you've
+never seen the house, of course? It's quite charming--and told the
+butler that I wanted to see Mr Ford on business. I had taken the
+precaution to find out that he was not there. He is at Droitwich.'
+
+'Rheumatism,' murmured Mrs Ford. 'He has it sometimes.'
+
+'The man told me he was away, and then he seemed to think that I
+ought to go. I stuck like a limpet. I sent him to fetch Ogden's
+tutor. His name is Broster--Reggie Broster. He is a very nice
+young man. Big, broad shoulders, and such a kind face.'
+
+'Yes, dear, yes?'
+
+'I told him I was doing a series of drawings for a magazine of the
+interiors of well-known country houses.'
+
+'He believed you?'
+
+'He believed everything. He's that kind of man. He believed me
+when I told him that my editor particularly wanted me to sketch
+the staircase. They had told me about the staircase at the inn. I
+forget what it is exactly, but it's something rather special in
+staircases.'
+
+'So you got in?'
+
+'So I got in.'
+
+'And saw Ogden?'
+
+'Only for a moment--then Reggie--'
+
+'Who?'
+
+'Mr Broster. I always think of him as Reggie. He's one of Nature's
+Reggies. _Such_ a kind, honest face. Well, as I was saying,
+Reggie discovered that it was time for lessons, and sent Ogden
+upstairs.'
+
+'By himself?'
+
+'By himself! Reggie and I chatted for a while.'
+
+Mrs Ford's eyes opened, brown and bright and hard.
+
+'Mr Broster is not a proper tutor for my boy,' she said coldly.
+
+'I suppose it was wrong of Reggie,' said Cynthia. 'But--I was
+wearing this hat.'
+
+'Go on.'
+
+'Well, after a time, I said I must be starting my work. He wanted
+me to start with the room we were in. I said no, I was going out
+into the grounds to sketch the house from the EAST. I chose the
+EAST because it happens to be nearest the railway station. I added
+that I supposed he sometimes took Ogden for a little walk in the
+grounds. He said yes, he did, and it was just about due. He said
+possibly he might come round my way. He said Ogden would be
+interested in my sketch. He seemed to think a lot of Ogden's
+fondness for art.'
+
+'Mr Broster is _not_ a proper tutor for my boy.'
+
+'Well, he isn't your boy's tutor now, is he, dear?'
+
+'What happened then?'
+
+'I strolled off with my sketching things. After a while Reggie and
+Ogden came up. I said I hadn't been able to work because I had
+been frightened by a bull.'
+
+'Did he believe _that_?'
+
+'_Certainly_ he believed it. He was most kind and sympathetic.
+We had a nice chat. He told me all about himself. He used to be
+very good at football. He doesn't play now, but he often thinks of
+the past.'
+
+'But he must have seen that you couldn't sketch. Then what became
+of your magazine commission story?'
+
+'Well, somehow the sketch seemed to get shelved. I didn't even
+have to start it. We were having our chat, you see. Reggie was
+telling me how good he had been at football when he was at Oxford,
+and he wanted me to see a newspaper clipping of a Varsity match he
+had played in. I said I'd love to see it. He said it was in his
+suit-case in the house. So I promised to look after Ogden while he
+fetched it. I sent him off to get it just in time for us to catch
+the train. Off he went, and here we are. And now, won't you order
+that lunch you mentioned? I'm starving.'
+
+Mrs Ford rose. Half-way to the telephone she stopped suddenly.
+
+'My dear child! It has only just struck me! We must leave here at
+once. He will have followed you. He will guess that Ogden has been
+kidnapped.'
+
+Cynthia smiled.
+
+'Believe me, it takes Reggie quite a long time to guess anything.
+Besides, there are no trains for hours. We are quite safe.'
+
+'Are you sure?'
+
+'Absolutely. I made certain of that before I left.'
+
+Mrs Ford kissed her impulsively.
+
+'Oh, Cynthia, you really are wonderful!'
+
+She started back with a cry as the bell rang sharply.
+
+'For goodness' sake, Nesta,' said Cynthia, with irritation, 'do
+keep control of yourself. There's nothing to be frightened about.
+I tell you Mr Broster can't possibly have got here in the time,
+even if he knew where to go to, which I don't see how he could.
+It's probably Ogden.'
+
+The colour came back into Mrs Ford's cheeks.
+
+'Why, of course.'
+
+Cynthia opened the door.
+
+'Come in, darling,' said Mrs Ford fondly. And a wiry little man
+with grey hair and spectacles entered.
+
+'Good afternoon, Mrs Ford,' he said. 'I have come to take Ogden
+back.'
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+There are some situations in life so unexpected, so trying, that,
+as far as concerns our opinion of those subjected to them, we
+agree, as it were, not to count them; we refuse to allow the
+victim's behaviour in circumstances so exacting to weigh with us
+in our estimate of his or her character. We permit the great
+general, confronted suddenly with a mad bull, to turn and run,
+without forfeiting his reputation for courage. The bishop who,
+stepping on a concealed slide in winter, entertains passers-by
+with momentary rag-time steps, loses none of his dignity once the
+performance is concluded.
+
+In the same way we must condone the behaviour of Cynthia Drassilis
+on opening the door of Mrs Ford's sitting-room and admitting, not
+Ogden, but this total stranger, who accompanied his entry with the
+remarkable speech recorded at the close of the last section.
+
+She was a girl who prided herself on her carefully blase' and
+supercilious attitude towards life; but this changeling was too
+much for her. She released the handle, tottered back, and, having
+uttered a discordant squeak of amazement, stood staring, eyes and
+mouth wide open.
+
+On Mrs Ford the apparition had a different effect. The rather
+foolish smile of welcome vanished from her face as if wiped away
+with a sponge. Her eyes, fixed and frightened like those of a
+trapped animal, glared at the intruder. She took a step forward,
+choking.
+
+'What--what do you mean by daring to enter my room?' she cried.
+
+The man held his ground, unmoved. His bearing was a curious blend
+of diffidence and aggressiveness. He was determined, but
+apologetic. A hired assassin of the Middle Ages, resolved to do
+his job loyally, yet conscious of causing inconvenience to his
+victim, might have looked the same.
+
+'I am sorry,' he said, 'but I must ask you to let me have the boy,
+Mrs Ford.'
+
+Cynthia was herself again now. She raked the intruder with the
+cool stare which had so disconcerted Lord Mountry.
+
+'Who is this gentleman?' she asked languidly.
+
+The intruder was made of tougher stuff than his lordship. He met
+her eye with quiet firmness.
+
+'My name is Mennick,' he said. 'I am Mr Elmer Ford's private
+secretary.'
+
+'What do you want?' said Mrs Ford.
+
+'I have already explained what I want, Mrs Ford. I want Ogden.'
+
+Cynthia raised her eyebrows.
+
+'What _does_ he mean, Nesta? Ogden is not here.'
+
+Mr Mennick produced from his breast-pocket a telegraph form, and
+in his quiet, business-like way proceeded to straighten it out.
+
+'I have here,' he said, 'a telegram from Mr Broster, Ogden's
+tutor. It was one of the conditions of his engagement that if ever
+he was not certain of Ogden's whereabouts he should let me know at
+once. He tells me that early this afternoon he left Ogden in the
+company of a strange young lady'--Mr Mennick's spectacles flashed
+for a moment at Cynthia--'and that, when he returned, both of them
+had disappeared. He made inquiries and discovered that this young
+lady caught the 1.15 express to London, Ogden with her. On receipt
+of this information I at once wired to Mr Ford for instructions. I
+have his reply'--he fished for and produced a second telegram--'here.'
+
+'I still fail to see what brings you here,' said Mrs Ford. 'Owing
+to the gross carelessness of his father's employees, my son
+appears to have been kidnapped. That is no reason--'
+
+'I will read Mr Ford's telegram,' proceeded Mr Mennick unmoved.
+'It is rather long. I think Mr Ford is somewhat annoyed. "The boy
+has obviously been stolen by some hireling of his mother's." I am
+reading Mr Ford's actual words,' he said, addressing Cynthia with
+that touch of diffidence which had marked his manner since his
+entrance.
+
+'Don't apologize,' said Cynthia, with a short laugh. 'You're not
+responsible for Mr Ford's rudeness.'
+
+Mr Mennick bowed.
+
+'He continued: "Remove him from her illegal restraint. If
+necessary call in police and employ force."'
+
+'Charming!' said Mrs Ford.
+
+'Practical,' said Mr Mennick. 'There is more. "Before doing
+anything else sack that fool of a tutor, then go to Agency and
+have them recommend good private school for boy. On no account
+engage another tutor. They make me tired. Fix all this today. Send
+Ogden back to Eastnor with Mrs Sheridan. She will stay there with
+him till further notice." That is Mr Ford's message.'
+
+Mr Mennick folded both documents carefully and replaced them in
+his pocket.
+
+Mrs Ford looked at the clock.
+
+'And now, would you mind going, Mr Mennick?'
+
+'I am sorry to appear discourteous, Mrs Ford, but I cannot go
+without Ogden.'
+
+'I shall telephone to the office to send up a porter to remove
+you.'
+
+'I shall take advantage of his presence to ask him to fetch a
+policeman.'
+
+In the excitement of combat the veneer of apologetic diffidence
+was beginning to wear off Mr Mennick. He spoke irritably. Cynthia
+appealed to his reason with the air of a bored princess descending
+to argument with a groom.
+
+'Can't you see for yourself that he's not here?' she said. 'Do you
+think we are hiding him?'
+
+'Perhaps you would like to search my bedroom?' said Mrs Ford,
+flinging the door open.
+
+Mr Mennick remained uncrushed.
+
+'Quite unnecessary, Mrs Ford. I take it, from the fact that he
+does not appear to be in this suite, that he is downstairs making
+a late luncheon in the restaurant.'
+
+'I shall telephone--'
+
+'And tell them to send him up. Believe me, Mrs Ford, it is the
+only thing to do. You have my deepest sympathy, but I am employed
+by Mr Ford and must act solely in his interests. The law is on my
+side. I am here to fetch Ogden away, and I am going to have him.'
+
+'You shan't!'
+
+'I may add that, when I came up here, I left Mrs Sheridan--she is
+a fellow-secretary of mine. You may remember Mr Ford mentioning
+her in his telegram--I left her to search the restaurant and
+grill-room, with instructions to bring Ogden, if found, to me in
+this room.'
+
+The door-bell rang. He went to the door and opened it.
+
+'Come in, Mrs Sheridan. Ah!'
+
+A girl in a plain, neat blue dress entered the room. She was a
+small, graceful girl of about twenty-five, pretty and brisk, with
+the air of one accustomed to look after herself in a difficult
+world. Her eyes were clear and steady, her mouth sensitive but
+firm, her chin the chin of one who has met trouble and faced it
+bravely. A little soldier.
+
+She was shepherding Ogden before her, a gorged but still sullen
+Ogden. He sighted Mr Mennick and stopped.
+
+'Hello!' he said. 'What have you blown in for?'
+
+'He was just in the middle of his lunch,' said the girl. 'I
+thought you wouldn't mind if I let him finish.'
+
+'Say, what's it all about, anyway?' demanded Ogden crossly. 'Can't
+a fellow have a bit of grub in peace? You give me a pain.'
+
+Mr Mennick explained.
+
+'Your father wishes you to return to Eastnor, Ogden.'
+
+'Oh, all right. I guess I'd better go, then. Good-bye, ma.'
+
+Mrs Ford choked.
+
+'Kiss me, Ogden.'
+
+Ogden submitted to the embrace in sulky silence. The others
+comported themselves each after his or her own fashion. Mr Mennick
+fingered his chin uncomfortably. Cynthia turned to the table and
+picked up an illustrated paper. Mrs Sheridan's eyes filled with
+tears. She took a half-step towards Mrs Ford, as if about to
+speak, then drew back.
+
+'Come, Ogden,' said Mr Mennick gruffly. Necessary, this Hired
+Assassin work, but painful--devilish painful. He breathed a sigh
+of relief as he passed into the corridor with his prize.
+
+At the door Mrs Sheridan hesitated, stopped, and turned.
+
+'I'm sorry,' she said impulsively.
+
+Mrs Ford turned away without speaking, and went into the bedroom.
+
+Cynthia laid down her paper.
+
+'One moment, Mrs Sheridan.'
+
+The girl had turned to go. She stopped.
+
+'Can you give me a minute? Come in and shut the door. Won't you
+sit down? Very well. You seemed sorry for Mrs Ford just now.'
+
+'I am very sorry for Mrs Ford. Very sorry. I hate to see her
+suffering. I wish Mr Mennick had not brought me into this.'
+
+'Nesta's mad about that boy,' said Cynthia. 'Heaven knows why.
+_I_ never saw such a repulsive child in my life. However,
+there it is. I am sorry for you. I gathered from what Mr Mennick
+said that you were to have a good deal of Ogden's society for some
+time to come. How do you feel about it?'
+
+Mrs Sheridan moved towards the door.
+
+'I must be going,' she said. 'Mr Mennick will be waiting for me.'
+
+'One moment. Tell me, don't you think, after what you saw just
+now, that Mrs Ford is the proper person to have charge of Ogden?
+You see how devoted she is to him?'
+
+'May I be quite frank with you?'
+
+'Please.'
+
+'Well, then, I think that Mrs Ford's influence is the worst
+possible for Ogden. I am sorry for her, but that does not alter my
+opinion. It is entirely owing to Mrs Ford that Ogden is what he
+is. She spoiled him, indulged him in every way, never checked
+him--till he has become--well, what you yourself called him,
+repulsive.'
+
+Cynthia laughed.
+
+'Oh well,' she said, 'I only talked that mother's love stuff
+because you looked the sort of girl who would like it. We can drop
+all that now, and come down to business.'
+
+'I don't understand you.'
+
+'You will. I don't know if you think that I kidnapped Ogden from
+sheer affection for Mrs Ford. I like Nesta, but not as much as
+that. No. I'm one of the Get-Rich-Quick-Wallingfords, and I'm
+looking out for myself all the time. There's no one else to do it
+for me. I've a beastly home. My father's dead. My mother's a cat.
+So--'
+
+'Please stop,' said Mrs Sheridan. I don't know why you are telling
+me all this.'
+
+'Yes, you do. I don't know what salary Mr Ford pays you, but I
+don't suppose it's anything princely. Why don't you come over to
+us? Mrs Ford would give you the earth if you smuggled Ogden back
+to her.'
+
+'You seem to be trying to bribe me,' said Mrs Sheridan.
+
+'In this case,' said Cynthia, 'appearances aren't deceptive. I
+am.'
+
+'Good afternoon.'
+
+'Don't be a little fool.'
+
+The door slammed.
+
+'Come back!' cried Cynthia. She took a step as if to follow, but
+gave up the idea with a laugh. She sat down and began to read her
+illustrated paper again. Presently the bedroom door opened. Mrs
+Ford came in. She touched her eyes with a handkerchief as she
+entered. Cynthia looked up.
+
+'I'm very sorry, Nesta,' she said.
+
+Mrs Ford went to the window and looked out.
+
+'I'm not going to break down, if that's what you mean,' she said.
+'I don't care. And, anyhow, it shows that it _can_ be done.'
+
+Cynthia turned a page of her paper.
+
+'I've just been trying my hand at bribery and corruption.'
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+'Oh, I promised and vowed many things in your name to that
+secretary person, the female one--not Mennick--if she would help
+us. Nothing doing. I told her to let us have Ogden as soon as
+possible, C.O.D., and she withered me with a glance and went.'
+
+Mrs Ford shrugged her shoulders impatiently.
+
+'Oh, let her go. I'm sick of amateurs.'
+
+'Thank you, dear,' said Cynthia.
+
+'Oh, I know you did your best. For an amateur you did wonderfully
+well. But amateurs never really succeed. There were a dozen little
+easy precautions which we neglected to take. What we want is a
+professional; a man whose business is kidnapping; the sort of man
+who kidnaps as a matter of course; someone like Smooth Sam
+Fisher.'
+
+'My dear Nesta! Who? I don't think I know the gentleman.'
+
+'He tried to kidnap Ogden in 1906, when we were in New York. At
+least, the police put it down to him, though they could prove
+nothing. Then there was a horrible man, the police said he was
+called Buck MacGinnis. He tried in 1907. That was in Chicago.'
+
+'Good gracious! Kidnapping Ogden seems to be as popular as
+football. And I thought I was a pioneer!'
+
+Something approaching pride came into Mrs Ford's voice.
+
+'I don't suppose there's a child in America,' she said, 'who has
+had to be so carefully guarded. Why, the kidnappers had a special
+name for him--they called him "The Little Nugget". For years we
+never allowed him out of our sight without a detective to watch
+him.'
+
+'Well, Mr Ford seems to have changed all that now. I saw no
+detectives. I suppose he thinks they aren't necessary in England.
+Or perhaps he relied on Mr Broster. Poor Reggie!'
+
+'It was criminally careless of him. This will be a lesson to him.
+He will be more careful in future how he leaves Ogden at the mercy
+of anybody who cares to come along and snap him up.'
+
+'Which, incidentally, does not make your chance of getting him
+away any lighter.'
+
+'Oh, I've given up hope now,' said Mrs Ford resignedly.
+
+'_I_ haven't,' said Cynthia.
+
+There was something in her voice which made her companion turn
+sharply and look at her. Mrs Ford might affect to be resigned, but
+she was a woman of determination, and if the recent reverse had
+left her bruised, it had by no means crushed her.
+
+'Cynthia! What do you mean? What are you hinting?'
+
+'You despise amateurs, Nesta, but, for all that, it seems that
+your professionals who kidnap as a matter of course and all the
+rest of it have not been a bit more successful. It was not my want
+of experience that made me fail. It was my sex. This is man's
+work. If I had been a man, I should at least have had brute force
+to fall back upon when Mr Mennick arrived.'
+
+Mrs Ford nodded.
+
+'Yes, but--'
+
+'And,' continued Cynthia, 'as all these Smooth Sam Fishers of
+yours have failed too, it is obvious that the only way to kidnap
+Ogden is from within. We must have some man working for us in the
+enemy's camp.'
+
+'Which is impossible,' said Mrs Ford dejectedly.
+
+'Not at all.'
+
+'You know a man?'
+
+'I know _the_ man.'
+
+'Cynthia! What do you mean? Who is he?'
+
+'His name is Peter Burns.'
+
+Mrs Ford shook her head.
+
+'I don't know him.'
+
+'I'll introduce you. You'll like him.'
+
+'But, Cynthia, how do you know he would be willing to help us?'
+
+'He would do it for me,' Cynthia paused. 'You see,' she went on,
+'we are engaged to be married.'
+
+'My dear Cynthia! Why did you not tell me? When did it happen?'
+
+'Last night at the Fletchers' dance.'
+
+Mrs Ford's eyes opened.
+
+'Last night! Were you at a dance last night? And two railway
+journeys today! You must be tired to death.'
+
+'Oh, I'm all right, thanks. I suppose I shall be a wreck and not
+fit to be seen tomorrow, but just at present I feel as if nothing
+could tire me. It's the effect of being engaged, perhaps.'
+
+'Tell me about him.'
+
+'Well, he's rich, and good-looking, and amiable'--Cynthia ticked
+off these qualities on her fingers--'and I think he's brave, and
+he's certainly not so stupid as Mr Broster.'
+
+'And you're very much in love with him?'
+
+'I like him. There's no harm in Peter.'
+
+'You certainly aren't wildly enthusiastic!'
+
+'Oh, we shall hit it off quite well together. I needn't pose to
+_you_, Nesta, thank goodness! That's one reason why I'm fond
+of you. You know how I am situated. I've got to marry some one
+rich, and Peter's quite the nicest rich man I've ever met. He's
+really wonderfully unselfish. I can't understand it. With his
+money, you would expect him to be a perfect horror.'
+
+A thought seemed to strike Mrs Ford.
+
+'But, if he's so rich--' she began. 'I forget what I was going to
+say,' she broke off.
+
+'Dear Nesta, I know what you were going to say. If he's so rich,
+why should he be marrying me, when he could take his pick of half
+London? Well, I'll tell you. He's marrying me for one reason,
+because he's sorry for me: for another, because I had the sense to
+make him. He didn't think he was going to marry anyone. A few
+years ago he had a disappointment. A girl jilted him. She must
+have been a fool. He thought he was going to live the rest of his
+life alone with his broken heart. I didn't mean to allow that.
+It's taken a long time--over two years, from start to finish--but
+I've done it. He's a sentimentalist. I worked on his sympathy, and
+last night I made him propose to me at the Fletchers' dance.'
+
+Mrs Ford had not listened to these confidences unmoved. Several
+times she had tried to interrupt, but had been brushed aside. Now
+she spoke sharply.
+
+'You know I was not going to say anything of the kind. And I don't
+think you should speak in this horrible, cynical way of--of--'
+
+She stopped, flushing. There were moments when she hated Cynthia.
+These occurred for the most part when the latter, as now, stirred
+her to an exhibition of honest feeling which she looked on as
+rather unbecoming. Mrs Ford had spent twenty years trying to
+forget that her husband had married her from behind the counter of
+a general store in an Illinois village, and these lapses into the
+uncultivated genuineness of her girlhood made her uncomfortable.
+
+'I wasn't going to say anything of the kind,' she repeated.
+
+Cynthia was all smiling good-humour.
+
+'I know. I was only teasing you. "Stringing", they call it in your
+country, don't they?'
+
+Mrs Ford was mollified.
+
+'I'm sorry, Cynthia. I didn't mean to snap at you. All the
+same ...' She hesitated. What she wanted to ask smacked so
+dreadfully of Mechanicsville, Illinois. Yet she put the question
+bravely, for she was somehow feeling quite troubled about this
+unknown Mr Burns. 'Aren't you really fond of him at all, Cynthia?'
+
+Cynthia beamed.
+
+'Of course I am! He's a dear. Nothing would make me give him up.
+I'm devoted to old Peter. I only told you all that about him
+because it shows you how kind-hearted he is. He'll do anything for
+me. Well, shall I sound him about Ogden?'
+
+The magic word took Mrs Ford's mind off the matrimonial future of
+Mr Burns, and brought him into prominence in his capacity of
+knight-errant. She laughed happily. The contemplation of Mr Burns
+as knight-errant healed the sting of defeat. The affair of Mr
+Mennick began to appear in the light of a mere skirmish.
+
+'You take my breath away!' she said. 'How do you propose that Mr
+Burns shall help us?'
+
+'It's perfectly simple. You heard Mr Mennick read that telegram.
+Ogden is to be sent to a private school. Peter shall go there
+too.'
+
+'But how? I don't understand. We don't know which school Mr
+Mennick will choose.'
+
+'We can very soon find out.'
+
+'But how can Mr Burns go there?'
+
+'Nothing easier. He will be a young man who has been left a little
+money and wants to start a school of his own. He goes to Ogden's
+man and suggests that he pay a small premium to come to him for a
+term as an extra-assistant-master, to learn the business. Mr Man
+will jump at him. He will be getting the bargain of his life.
+Peter didn't get much of a degree at Oxford, but I believe he was
+wonderful at games. From a private-school point of view he's a
+treasure.'
+
+'But--would he do it?'
+
+'I think I can persuade him.'
+
+Mrs Ford kissed her with an enthusiasm which hitherto she had
+reserved for Ogden.
+
+'My darling girl,' she cried, 'if you knew how happy you have made
+me!'
+
+'I do,' said Cynthia definitely. 'And now you can do the same for
+me.'
+
+'Anything, anything! You must have some more hats.'
+
+'I don't want any more hats. I want to go with you on Lord
+Mountry's yacht to the Riviera.'
+
+'Of course,' said Mrs Ford after a slight pause, 'it isn't my
+party, you know, dear.'
+
+'No. But you can work me in, darling.'
+
+'It's quite a small party. Very quiet.'
+
+'Crowds bore me. I enjoy quiet.'
+
+Mrs Ford capitulated.
+
+'I fancy you are doing me a very good turn,' she said. 'You must
+certainly come on the yacht.'
+
+'I'll tell Peter to come straight round here now,' said Cynthia
+simply. She went to the telephone.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Part Two
+
+
+In which other interested parties, notably one Buck MacGinnis and
+a trade rival, Smooth Sam Fisher, make other plans for the Nugget's
+future. Of stirring times at a private school for young gentlemen.
+Of stratagems, spoils, and alarms by night. Of journeys ending in
+lovers' meetings. The whole related by Mr Peter Burns, gentleman
+of leisure, who forfeits that leisure in a good cause.
+
+
+
+Peter Burns's Narrative
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 1
+
+
+I
+
+I am strongly of the opinion that, after the age of twenty-one, a
+man ought not to be out of bed and awake at four in the morning.
+The hour breeds thought. At twenty-one, life being all future, it
+may be examined with impunity. But, at thirty, having become an
+uncomfortable mixture of future and past, it is a thing to be
+looked at only when the sun is high and the world full of warmth
+and optimism.
+
+This thought came to me as I returned to my rooms after the
+Fletchers' ball. The dawn was breaking as I let myself in. The air
+was heavy with the peculiar desolation of a London winter morning.
+The houses looked dead and untenanted. A cart rumbled past, and
+across the grey street a dingy black cat, moving furtively along
+the pavement, gave an additional touch of forlornness to the
+scene.
+
+I shivered. I was tired and hungry, and the reaction after the
+emotions of the night had left me dispirited.
+
+I was engaged to be married. An hour back I had proposed to
+Cynthia Drassilis. And I can honestly say that it had come as a
+great surprise to me.
+
+Why had I done it? Did I love her? It was so difficult to analyse
+love: and perhaps the mere fact that I was attempting the task was
+an answer to the question. Certainly I had never tried to do so
+five years ago when I had loved Audrey Blake. I had let myself be
+carried on from day to day in a sort of trance, content to be
+utterly happy, without dissecting my happiness. But I was five
+years younger then, and Audrey was--Audrey.
+
+I must explain Audrey, for she in her turn explains Cynthia.
+
+I have no illusions regarding my character when I first met Audrey
+Blake. Nature had given me the soul of a pig, and circumstances
+had conspired to carry on Nature's work. I loved comfort, and I
+could afford to have it. From the moment I came of age and
+relieved my trustees of the care of my money, I wrapped myself in
+comfort as in a garment. I wallowed in egoism. In fact, if,
+between my twenty-first and my twenty-fifth birthdays, I had one
+unselfish thought, or did one genuinely unselfish action, my
+memory is a blank on the point.
+
+It was at the height of this period that I became engaged to
+Audrey. Now that I can understand her better and see myself,
+impartially, as I was in those days, I can realize how indescribably
+offensive I must have been. My love was real, but that did not
+prevent its patronizing complacency being an insult. I was King
+Cophetua. If I did not actually say in so many words, 'This
+beggar-maid shall be my queen', I said it plainly and often in my
+manner. She was the daughter of a dissolute, evil-tempered artist
+whom I had met at a Bohemian club. He made a living by painting
+an occasional picture, illustrating an occasional magazine-story,
+but mainly by doing advertisement work. A proprietor of a patent
+Infants' Food, not satisfied with the bare statement that Baby
+Cried For It, would feel it necessary to push the fact home to the
+public through the medium of Art, and Mr Blake would be commissioned
+to draw the picture. A good many specimens of his work in this vein
+were to be found in the back pages of the magazines.
+
+A man may make a living by these means, but it is one that
+inclines him to jump at a wealthy son-in-law. Mr Blake jumped at
+me. It was one of his last acts on this earth. A week after he
+had--as I now suspect--bullied Audrey into accepting me, he died
+of pneumonia.
+
+His death had several results. It postponed the wedding: it
+stirred me to a very crescendo of patronage, for with the removal
+of the bread-winner the only flaw in my Cophetua pose had
+vanished: and it gave Audrey a great deal more scope than she had
+hitherto been granted for the exercise of free will in the choice
+of a husband.
+
+This last aspect of the matter was speedily brought to my notice,
+which till then it had escaped, by a letter from her, handed to me
+one night at the club, where I was sipping coffee and musing on
+the excellence of life in this best of all possible worlds.
+
+It was brief and to the point. She had been married that morning.
+
+To say that that moment was a turning point in my life would be to
+use a ridiculously inadequate phrase. It dynamited my life. In a
+sense it killed me. The man I had been died that night, regretted,
+I imagine, by few. Whatever I am today, I am certainly not the
+complacent spectator of life that I had been before that night.
+
+I crushed the letter in my hand, and sat staring at it, my pigsty
+in ruins about my ears, face to face with the fact that, even in a
+best of all possible worlds, money will not buy everything.
+
+I remember, as I sat there, a man, a club acquaintance, a bore
+from whom I had fled many a time, came and settled down beside me
+and began to talk. He was a small man, but he possessed a voice to
+which one had to listen. He talked and talked and talked. How I
+loathed him, as I sat trying to think through his stream of words.
+I see now that he saved me. He forced me out of myself. But at the
+time he oppressed me. I was raw and bleeding. I was struggling to
+grasp the incredible. I had taken Audrey's unalterable affection
+for granted. She was the natural complement to my scheme of
+comfort. I wanted her; I had chosen and was satisfied with her,
+therefore all was well. And now I had to adjust my mind to the
+impossible fact that I had lost her.
+
+Her letter was a mirror in which I saw myself. She said little,
+but I understood, and my self-satisfaction was in ribbons--and
+something deeper than self-satisfaction. I saw now that I loved
+her as I had not dreamed myself capable of loving.
+
+And all the while this man talked and talked.
+
+I have a theory that speech, persevered in, is more efficacious in
+times of trouble than silent sympathy. Up to a certain point it
+maddens almost beyond endurance; but, that point past, it soothes.
+At least, it was so in my case. Gradually I found myself hating
+him less. Soon I began to listen, then to answer. Before I left
+the club that night, the first mad frenzy, in which I could have
+been capable of anything, had gone from me, and I walked home,
+feeling curiously weak and helpless, but calm, to begin the new
+life.
+
+Three years passed before I met Cynthia. I spent those years
+wandering in many countries. At last, as one is apt to do, I
+drifted back to London, and settled down again to a life which,
+superficially, was much the same as the one I had led in the days
+before I knew Audrey. My old circle in London had been wide, and I
+found it easy to pick up dropped threads. I made new friends,
+among them Cynthia Drassilis.
+
+I liked Cynthia, and I was sorry for her. I think that, about that
+time I met her, I was sorry for most people. The shock of Audrey's
+departure had had that effect upon me. It is always the bad nigger
+who gets religion most strongly at the camp-meeting, and in my
+case 'getting religion' had taken the form of suppression of self.
+I never have been able to do things by halves, or even with a
+decent moderation. As an egoist I had been thorough in my egoism;
+and now, fate having bludgeoned that vice out of me, I found
+myself possessed of an almost morbid sympathy with the troubles of
+other people.
+
+I was extremely sorry for Cynthia Drassilis. Meeting her mother
+frequently, I could hardly fail to be. Mrs Drassilis was a
+representative of a type I disliked. She was a widow, who had been
+left with what she considered insufficient means, and her outlook
+on life was a compound of greed and querulousness. Sloane Square
+and South Kensington are full of women in her situation. Their
+position resembles that of the Ancient Mariner. 'Water, water
+everywhere, and not a drop to drink.' For 'water' in their case
+substitute 'money'. Mrs Drassilis was connected with money on all
+sides, but could only obtain it in rare and minute quantities. Any
+one of a dozen relations-in-law could, if they had wished, have
+trebled her annual income without feeling it. But they did not so
+wish. They disapproved of Mrs Drassilis. In their opinion the Hon.
+Hugo Drassilis had married beneath him--not so far beneath him as
+to make the thing a horror to be avoided in conversation and
+thought, but far enough to render them coldly polite to his wife
+during his lifetime and almost icy to his widow after his death.
+Hugo's eldest brother, the Earl of Westbourne, had never liked the
+obviously beautiful, but equally obviously second-rate, daughter
+of a provincial solicitor whom Hugo had suddenly presented to the
+family one memorable summer as his bride. He considered that, by
+doubling the income derived from Hugo's life-insurance and
+inviting Cynthia to the family seat once a year during her
+childhood, he had done all that could be expected of him in the
+matter.
+
+He had not. Mrs Drassilis expected a great deal more of him, the
+non-receipt of which had spoiled her temper, her looks, and the
+peace of mind of all who had anything much to do with her.
+
+It used to irritate me when I overheard people, as I occasionally
+have done, speak of Cynthia as hard. I never found her so myself,
+though heaven knows she had enough to make her so, to me she was
+always a sympathetic, charming friend.
+
+Ours was a friendship almost untouched by sex. Our minds fitted so
+smoothly into one another that I had no inclination to fall in
+love. I knew her too well. I had no discoveries to make about her.
+Her honest, simple soul had always been open to me to read. There
+was none of that curiosity, that sense of something beyond that
+makes for love. We had reached a point of comradeship beyond which
+neither of us desired to pass.
+
+Yet at the Fletchers' ball I asked Cynthia to marry me, and she
+consented.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Looking back, I can see that, though the determining cause was Mr
+Tankerville Gifford, it was Audrey who was responsible. She had
+made me human, capable of sympathy, and it was sympathy,
+primarily, that led me to say what I said that night.
+
+But the immediate cause was certainly young Mr Gifford.
+
+I arrived at Marlow Square, where I was to pick up Cynthia and her
+mother, a little late, and found Mrs Drassilis, florid and
+overdressed, in the drawing-room with a sleek-haired, pale young
+man known to me as Tankerville Gifford--to his intimates, of whom
+I was not one, and in the personal paragraphs of the coloured
+sporting weeklies, as 'Tanky'. I had seen him frequently at
+restaurants. Once, at the Empire, somebody had introduced me to
+him; but, as he had not been sober at the moment, he had missed
+any intellectual pleasure my acquaintanceship might have afforded
+him. Like everybody else who moves about in London, I knew all
+about him. To sum him up, he was a most unspeakable little cad,
+and, if the drawing-room had not been Mrs Drassilis's, I should
+have wondered at finding him in it.
+
+Mrs Drassilis introduced us.
+
+'I think we have already met,' I said.
+
+He stared glassily.
+
+'Don't remember.'
+
+I was not surprised.
+
+At this moment Cynthia came in. Out of the corner of my eye I
+observed a look of fuddled displeasure come into Tanky's face at
+her frank pleasure at seeing me.
+
+I had never seen her looking better. She is a tall girl, who
+carries herself magnificently. The simplicity of her dress gained
+an added dignity from comparison with the rank glitter of her
+mother's. She wore unrelieved black, a colour which set off to
+wonderful advantage the clear white of her skin and her pale-gold
+hair.
+
+'You're late, Peter,' she said, looking at the clock.
+
+'I know. I'm sorry.'
+
+'Better be pushing, what?' suggested Tanky.
+
+'My cab's waiting.'
+
+'Will you ring the bell, Mr Gifford?' said Mrs Drassilis. 'I will
+tell Parker to whistle for another.'
+
+'Take me in yours,' I heard a voice whisper in my ear.
+
+I looked at Cynthia. Her expression had not changed. Then I looked
+at Tanky Gifford, and I understood. I had seen that stuffed-fish
+look on his face before--on the occasion when I had been
+introduced to him at the Empire.
+
+'If you and Mr Gifford will take my cab,' I said to Mrs Drassilis,
+'we will follow.'
+
+Mrs Drassilis blocked the motion. I imagine that the sharp note in
+her voice was lost on Tanky, but it rang out like a clarion to me.
+
+'I am in no hurry,' she said. 'Mr Gifford, will you take Cynthia?
+I will follow with Mr Burns. You will meet Parker on the stairs.
+Tell him to call another cab.'
+
+As the door closed behind them, she turned on me like a many-coloured
+snake.
+
+'How can you be so extraordinarily tactless, Peter?' she cried.
+'You're a perfect fool. Have you no eyes?'
+
+'I'm sorry,' I said.
+
+'He's devoted to her.'
+
+'I'm sorry.'
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+'Sorry for her.'
+
+She seemed to draw herself together inside her dress. Her eyes
+glittered. My mouth felt very dry, and my heart was beginning to
+thump. We were both furiously angry. It was a moment that had been
+coming for years, and we both knew it. For my part I was glad that
+it had come. On subjects on which one feels deeply it is a relief
+to speak one's mind.
+
+'Oh!' she said at last. Her voice quivered. She was clutching at
+her self-control as it slipped from her. 'Oh! And what is my
+daughter to you, Mr Burns!'
+
+'A great friend.'
+
+'And I suppose you think it friendly to try to spoil her chances?'
+
+'If Mr Gifford is a sample of them--yes.'
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+She choked.
+
+'I see. I understand. I am going to put a stop to this once and
+for all. Do you hear? I have noticed it for a long time. Because I
+have given you the run of the house, and allowed you to come in
+and out as you pleased, like a tame cat, you presume--'
+
+'Presume--' I prompted.
+
+'You come here and stand in Cynthia's way. You trade on the fact
+that you have known us all this time to monopolize her attention.
+You spoil her chances. You--'
+
+The invaluable Parker entered to say that the cab was at the door.
+
+We drove to the Fletchers' house in silence. The spell had been
+broken. Neither of us could recapture that first, fine, careless
+rapture which had carried us through the opening stages of the
+conflict, and discussion of the subject on a less exalted plane
+was impossible. It was that blessed period of calm, the rest
+between rounds, and we observed it to the full.
+
+When I reached the ballroom a waltz was just finishing. Cynthia, a
+statue in black, was dancing with Tanky Gifford. They were
+opposite me when the music stopped, and she caught sight of me
+over his shoulder.
+
+She disengaged herself and moved quickly towards me.
+
+'Take me away,' she said under her breath. 'Anywhere. Quick.'
+
+It was no time to consider the etiquette of the ballroom. Tanky,
+startled at his sudden loneliness, seemed by his expression to be
+endeavouring to bring his mind to bear on the matter. A couple
+making for the door cut us off from him, and following them, we
+passed out.
+
+Neither of us spoke till we had reached the little room where I
+had meditated.
+
+She sat down. She was looking pale and tired.
+
+'Oh, dear!' she said.
+
+I understood. I seemed to see that journey in the cab, those
+dances, those terrible between-dances ...
+
+It was very sudden.
+
+I took her hand. She turned to me with a tired smile. There were
+tears in her eyes ...
+
+I heard myself speaking ...
+
+She was looking at me, her eyes shining. All the weariness seemed
+to have gone out of them.
+
+I looked at her.
+
+There was something missing. I had felt it when I was speaking. To
+me my voice had had no ring of conviction. And then I saw what it
+was. There was no mystery. We knew each other too well. Friendship
+kills love.
+
+She put my thought into words.
+
+'We have always been brother and sister,' she said doubtfully.
+
+'Till tonight.'
+
+'You have changed tonight? You really want me?'
+
+Did I? I tried to put the question to myself and answer it
+honestly. Yes, in a sense, I had changed tonight. There was an
+added appreciation of her fineness, a quickening of that blend of
+admiration and pity which I had always felt for her. I wanted with
+all my heart to help her, to take her away from her dreadful
+surroundings, to make her happy. But did I want her in the sense
+in which she had used the word? Did I want her as I had wanted
+Audrey Blake? I winced away from the question. Audrey belonged to
+the dead past, but it hurt to think of her.
+
+Was it merely because I was five years older now than when I had
+wanted Audrey that the fire had gone out of me?
+
+I shut my mind against my doubts.
+
+'I have changed tonight,' I said.
+
+And I bent down and kissed her.
+
+I was conscious of being defiant against somebody. And then I knew
+that the somebody was myself.
+
+I poured myself out a cup of hot coffee from the flask which
+Smith, my man, had filled against my return. It put life into me.
+The oppression lifted.
+
+And yet there remained something that made for uneasiness, a sort
+of foreboding at the back of my mind.
+
+I had taken a step in the dark, and I was afraid for Cynthia. I
+had undertaken to give her happiness. Was I certain that I could
+succeed? The glow of chivalry had left me, and I began to doubt.
+
+Audrey had taken from me something that I could not recover--poetry
+was as near as I could get to a definition of it. Yes, poetry.
+With Cynthia my feet would always be on the solid earth. To the
+end of the chapter we should be friends and nothing more.
+
+I found myself pitying Cynthia intensely. I saw her future a
+series of years of intolerable dullness. She was too good to be
+tied for life to a battered hulk like myself.
+
+I drank more coffee and my mood changed. Even in the grey of a
+winter morning a man of thirty, in excellent health, cannot pose
+to himself for long as a piece of human junk, especially if he
+comforts himself with hot coffee.
+
+My mind resumed its balance. I laughed at myself as a sentimental
+fraud. Of course I could make her happy. No man and woman had ever
+been more admirably suited to each other. As for that first
+disaster, which I had been magnifying into a life-tragedy, what of
+it? An incident of my boyhood. A ridiculous episode which--I rose
+with the intention of doing so at once--I should now proceed to
+eliminate from my life.
+
+I went quickly to my desk, unlocked it, and took out a photograph.
+
+And then--undoubtedly four o'clock in the morning is no time for a
+man to try to be single-minded and decisive--I wavered. I had
+intended to tear the thing in pieces without a glance, and fling
+it into the wastepaper-basket. But I took the glance and I
+hesitated.
+
+The girl in the photograph was small and slight, and she looked
+straight out of the picture with large eyes that met and
+challenged mine. How well I remembered them, those Irish-blue eyes
+under their expressive, rather heavy brows. How exactly the
+photographer had caught that half-wistful, half-impudent look, the
+chin tilted, the mouth curving into a smile.
+
+In a wave all my doubts had surged back upon me. Was this mere
+sentimentalism, a four-in-the-morning tribute to the pathos of the
+flying years, or did she really fill my soul and stand guard over
+it so that no successor could enter in and usurp her place?
+
+I had no answer, unless the fact that I replaced the photograph in
+its drawer was one. I felt that this thing could not be decided
+now. It was more difficult than I had thought.
+
+All my gloom had returned by the time I was in bed. Hours seemed
+to pass while I tossed restlessly aching for sleep.
+
+When I woke my last coherent thought was still clear in my mind.
+It was a passionate vow that, come what might, if those Irish eyes
+were to haunt me till my death, I would play the game loyally with
+Cynthia.
+
+
+II
+
+The telephone bell rang just as I was getting ready to call at
+Marlow Square and inform Mrs Drassilis of the position of affairs.
+Cynthia, I imagined, would have broken the news already, which
+would mitigate the embarrassment of the interview to some extent;
+but the recollection of my last night's encounter with Mrs
+Drassilis prevented me from looking forward with any joy to the
+prospect of meeting her again.
+
+Cynthia's voice greeted me as I unhooked the receiver.
+
+'Hullo, Peter! Is that you? I want you to come round here at
+once.'
+
+'I was just starting,' I said.
+
+'I don't mean Marlow Square. I'm not there. I'm at the Guelph. Ask
+for Mrs Ford's suite. It's very important. I'll tell you all about
+it when you get here. Come as soon as you can.'
+
+My rooms were conveniently situated for visits to the Hotel
+Guelph. A walk of a couple of minutes took me there. Mrs Ford's
+suite was on the third floor. I rang the bell and Cynthia opened
+the door to me.
+
+'Come in,' she said. 'You're a dear to be so quick.'
+
+'My rooms are only just round the corner.' She shut the door, and
+for the first time we looked at one another. I could not say that
+I was nervous, but there was certainly, to me, a something strange
+in the atmosphere. Last night seemed a long way off and somehow a
+little unreal. I suppose I must have shown this in my manner, for
+she suddenly broke what had amounted to a distinct pause by giving
+a little laugh. 'Peter,' she said, 'you're embarrassed.' I denied
+the charge warmly, but without real conviction. I was embarrassed.
+'Then you ought to be,' she said. 'Last night, when I was looking
+my very best in a lovely dress, you asked me to marry you. Now you
+see me again in cold blood, and you're wondering how you can back
+out of it without hurting my feelings.'
+
+I smiled. She did not. I ceased to smile. She was looking at me in
+a very peculiar manner.
+
+'Peter,' she said, 'are you sure?'
+
+'My dear old Cynthia,' I said, 'what's the matter with you?'
+
+'You are sure?' she persisted.
+
+'Absolutely, entirely sure.' I had a vision of two large eyes
+looking at me out of a photograph. It came and went in a flash.
+
+I kissed Cynthia.
+
+'What quantities of hair you have,' I said. 'It's a shame to cover
+it up.' She was not responsive. 'You're in a very queer mood
+today, Cynthia,' I went on. 'What's the matter?'
+
+'I've been thinking.'
+
+'Out with it. Something has gone wrong.' An idea flashed upon me.
+'Er--has your mother--is your mother very angry about--'
+
+'Mother's delighted. She always liked you, Peter.'
+
+I had the self-restraint to check a grin.
+
+'Then what is it?' I said. 'Tired after the dance?'
+
+'Nothing as simple as that.'
+
+'Tell me.'
+
+'It's so difficult to put it into words.'
+
+'Try.'
+
+She was playing with the papers on the table, her face turned
+away. For a moment she did not speak.
+
+'I've been worrying myself, Peter,' she said at last. 'You are so
+chivalrous and unselfish. You're quixotic. It's that that is
+troubling me. Are you marrying me just because you're sorry for
+me? Don't speak. I can tell you now if you will just let me say
+straight out what's in my mind. We have known each other for two
+years now. You know all about me. You know how--how unhappy I am
+at home. Are you marrying me just because you pity me and want to
+take me out of all that?'
+
+'My dear girl!'
+
+'You haven't answered my question.'
+
+'I answered it two minutes ago when you asked me if--'
+
+'You do love me?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+All this time she had been keeping her face averted, but now she
+turned and looked into my eyes with an abrupt intensity which, I
+confess, startled me. Her words startled me more.
+
+'Peter, do you love me as much as you loved Audrey Blake?'
+
+In the instant which divided her words from my reply my mind flew
+hither and thither, trying to recall an occasion when I could have
+mentioned Audrey to her. I was convinced that I had not done so. I
+never mentioned Audrey to anyone.
+
+There is a grain of superstition in the most level-headed man. I
+am not particularly level-headed, and I have more than a grain in
+me. I was shaken. Ever since I had asked Cynthia to marry me, it
+seemed as if the ghost of Audrey had come back into my life.
+
+'Good Lord!' I cried. 'What do you know of Audrey Blake?'
+
+She turned her face away again.
+
+'Her name seems to affect you very strongly,' she said quietly.
+
+I recovered myself.
+
+'If you ask an old soldier,' I said, 'he will tell you that a
+wound, long after it has healed, is apt to give you an occasional
+twinge.'
+
+'Not if it has really healed.'
+
+'Yes, when it has really healed--when you can hardly remember how
+you were fool enough to get it.'
+
+She said nothing.
+
+'How did you hear about--it?' I asked.
+
+'When I first met you, or soon after, a friend of yours--we
+happened to be talking about you--told me that you had been engaged
+to be married to a girl named Audrey Blake. He was to have been
+your best man, he said, but one day you wrote and told him there
+would be no wedding, and then you disappeared; and nobody saw you
+again for three years.'
+
+'Yes,' I said: 'that is all quite true.'
+
+'It seems to have been a serious affair, Peter. I mean--the sort
+of thing a man would find it hard to forget.'
+
+I tried to smile, but I knew that I was not doing it well. It was
+hurting me extraordinarily, this discussion of Audrey.
+
+'A man would find it almost impossible,' I said, 'unless he had a
+remarkably poor memory.'
+
+'I didn't mean that. You know what I mean by forget.'
+
+'Yes,' I said, 'I do.'
+
+She came quickly to me and took me by the shoulders, looking into
+my face.
+
+'Peter, can you honestly say you have forgotten her--in the sense
+I mean?'
+
+'Yes,' I said.
+
+Again that feeling swept over me--that curious sensation of being
+defiant against myself.
+
+'She does not stand between us?'
+
+'No,' I said.
+
+I could feel the effort behind the word. It was as if some
+subconscious part of me were working to keep it back.
+
+'Peter!'
+
+There was a soft smile on her face; as she raised it to mine I put
+my arms around her.
+
+She drew away with a little laugh. Her whole manner had changed.
+She was a different being from the girl who had looked so gravely
+into my eyes a moment before.
+
+'Oh, my dear boy, how terribly muscular you are! You've crushed
+me. I expect you used to be splendid at football, like Mr
+Broster.'
+
+I did not reply at once. I cannot wrap up the deeper emotions and
+put them back on their shelf directly I have no further immediate
+use for them. I slowly adjusted myself to the new key of the
+conversation.
+
+'Who's Broster?' I asked at length.
+
+'He used to be tutor to'--she turned me round and pointed--'to
+_that_.'
+
+I had seen a picture standing on one of the chairs when I entered
+the room but had taken no particular notice of it. I now gave it a
+closer glance. It was a portrait, very crudely done, of a
+singularly repulsive child of about ten or eleven years old.
+
+_Was_ he, poor chap! Well, we all have our troubles, don't
+we! Who _is_ this young thug! Not a friend of yours, I hope?'
+
+'That is Ogden, Mrs Ford's son. It's a tragedy--'
+
+'Perhaps it doesn't do him justice. Does he really squint like
+that, or is it just the artist's imagination?'
+
+'Don't make fun of it. It's the loss of that boy that is breaking
+Nesta's heart.'
+
+I was shocked.
+
+'Is he dead? I'm awfully sorry. I wouldn't for the world--'
+
+'No, no. He is alive and well. But he is dead to her. The court
+gave him into the custody of his father.'
+
+'The court?'
+
+'Mrs Ford was the wife of Elmer Ford, the American millionaire.
+They were divorced a year ago.'
+
+'I see.'
+
+Cynthia was gazing at the portrait.
+
+'This boy is quite a celebrity in his way,' she said. 'They call
+him "The Little Nugget" in America.'
+
+'Oh! Why is that?'
+
+'It's a nickname the kidnappers have for him. Ever so many
+attempts have been made to steal him.'
+
+She stopped and looked at me oddly.
+
+'I made one today, Peter,' she said. I went down to the country,
+where the boy was, and kidnapped him.'
+
+'Cynthia! What on earth do you mean?'
+
+'Don't you understand? I did it for Nesta's sake. She was breaking
+her heart about not being able to see him, so I slipped down and
+stole him away, and brought him back here.'
+
+I do not know if I was looking as amazed as I felt. I hope not,
+for I felt as if my brain were giving way. The perfect calmness
+with which she spoke of this extraordinary freak added to my
+confusion.
+
+'You're joking!'
+
+'No; I stole him.'
+
+'But, good heavens! The law! It's a penal offence, you know!'
+
+'Well, I did it. Men like Elmer Ford aren't fit to have charge of
+a child. You don't know him, but he's just an unscrupulous
+financier, without a thought above money. To think of a boy
+growing up in that tainted atmosphere--at his most impressionable
+age. It means death to any good there is in him.'
+
+My mind was still grappling feebly with the legal aspect of the
+affair.
+
+'But, Cynthia, kidnapping's kidnapping, you know! The law doesn't
+take any notice of motives. If you're caught--'
+
+She cut through my babble.
+
+'Would you have been afraid to do it, Peter?'
+
+'Well--' I began. I had not considered the point before.
+
+'I don't believe you would. If I asked you to do it for my sake--'
+
+'But, Cynthia, kidnapping, you know! It's such an infernally low-down
+game.'
+
+'I played it. Do you despise _me_?'
+
+I perspired. I could think of no other reply.
+
+'Peter,' she said, 'I understand your scruples. I know exactly how
+you feel. But can't you see that this is quite different from the
+sort of kidnapping you naturally look on as horrible? It's just
+taking a boy away from surroundings that must harm him, back to
+his mother, who worships him. It's not wrong. It's splendid.'
+
+She paused.
+
+'You _will_ do it for me, Peter?' she said.
+
+'I don't understand,' I said feebly. 'It's done. You've kidnapped
+him yourself.'
+
+'They tracked him and took him back. And now I want _you_ to
+try.' She came closer to me. 'Peter, don't you see what it will
+mean to me if you agree to try? I'm only human, I can't help, at
+the bottom of my heart, still being a little jealous of this
+Audrey Blake. No, don't say anything. Words can't cure me; but if
+you do this thing for me, I shall be satisfied. I shall _know_.'
+
+She was close beside me, holding my arm and looking into my face.
+That sense of the unreality of things which had haunted me since
+that moment at the dance came over me with renewed intensity. Life
+had ceased to be a rather grey, orderly business in which day
+succeeded day calmly and without event. Its steady stream had
+broken up into rapids, and I was being whirled away on them.
+
+'Will you do it, Peter? Say you will.'
+
+A voice, presumably mine, answered 'Yes'.
+
+'My dear old boy!'
+
+She pushed me into a chair, and, sitting on the arm of it, laid
+her hand on mine and became of a sudden wondrously business-like.
+
+'Listen,' she said, 'I'll tell you what we have arranged.'
+
+It was borne in upon me, as she began to do so, that she appeared
+from the very beginning to have been extremely confident that that
+essential part of her plans, my consent to the scheme, could be
+relied upon as something of a certainty. Women have these
+intuitions.
+
+
+III
+
+Looking back, I think I can fix the point at which this insane
+venture I had undertaken ceased to be a distorted dream, from
+which I vaguely hoped that I might shortly waken, and took shape
+as a reality of the immediate future. That moment came when I met
+Mr Arnold Abney by appointment at his club.
+
+Till then the whole enterprise had been visionary. I gathered from
+Cynthia that the boy Ogden was shortly to be sent to a preparatory
+school, and that I was to insinuate myself into this school and,
+watching my opportunity, to remove him; but it seemed to me that
+the obstacles to this comparatively lucid scheme were insuperable.
+In the first place, how were we to discover which of England's
+million preparatory schools Mr Ford, or Mr Mennick for him, would
+choose? Secondly, the plot which was to carry me triumphantly into
+this school when--or if--found, struck me as extremely thin. I
+was to pose, Cynthia told me, as a young man of private means,
+anxious to learn the business, with a view to setting up a school
+of his own. The objection to that was, I held, that I obviously
+did not want to do anything of the sort. I had not the appearance
+of a man with such an ambition. I had none of the conversation of
+such a man.
+
+I put it to Cynthia.
+
+'They would find me out in a day,' I assured her. 'A man who wants
+to set up a school has got to be a pretty brainy sort of fellow. I
+don't know anything.'
+
+'You got your degree.'
+
+'A degree. At any rate, I've forgotten all I knew.'
+
+'That doesn't matter. You have the money. Anybody with money can
+start a school, even if he doesn't know a thing. Nobody would
+think it strange.'
+
+It struck me as a monstrous slur on our educational system, but
+reflection told me it was true. The proprietor of a preparatory
+school, if he is a man of wealth, need not be able to teach, any
+more than an impresario need be able to write plays.
+
+'Well, we'll pass that for the moment,' I said. 'Here's the real
+difficulty. How are you going to find out the school Mr Ford has
+chosen?'
+
+'I have found it out already--or Nesta has. She set a detective to
+work. It was perfectly easy. Ogden's going to Mr Abney's. Sanstead
+House is the name of the place. It's in Hampshire somewhere. Quite
+a small school, but full of little dukes and earls and things.
+Lord Mountry's younger brother, Augustus Beckford, is there.'
+
+I had known Lord Mountry and his family well some years ago. I
+remembered Augustus dimly.
+
+'Mountry? Do you know him? He was up at Oxford with me.'
+
+She seemed interested.
+
+'What kind of a man is he?' she asked.
+
+'Oh, quite a good sort. Rather an ass. I haven't seen him for
+years.'
+
+'He's a friend of Nesta's. I've only met him once. He is going to
+be your reference.'
+
+'My what?'
+
+'You will need a reference. At least, I suppose you will. And,
+anyhow, if you say you know Lord Mountry it will make it simpler
+for you with Mr Abney, the brother being at the school.'
+
+'Does Mountry know about this business? Have you told him why I
+want to go to Abney's?'
+
+'Nesta told him. He thought it was very sporting of you. He will
+tell Mr Abney anything we like. By the way, Peter, you will have
+to pay a premium or something, I suppose. But Nesta will look
+after all expenses, of course.'
+
+On this point I made my only stand of the afternoon.
+
+'No,' I said; 'it's very kind of her, but this is going to be
+entirely an amateur performance. I'm doing this for you, and I'll
+stand the racket. Good heavens! Fancy taking money for a job of
+this kind!'
+
+She looked at me rather oddly.
+
+'That is very sweet of you, Peter,' she said, after a slight
+pause. 'Now let's get to work.'
+
+And together we composed the letter which led to my sitting, two
+days later, in stately conference at his club with Mr Arnold
+Abney, M.A., of Sanstead House, Hampshire.
+
+Mr Abney proved to be a long, suave, benevolent man with an Oxford
+manner, a high forehead, thin white hands, a cooing intonation,
+and a general air of hushed importance, as of one in constant
+communication with the Great. There was in his bearing something
+of the family solicitor in whom dukes confide, and something of
+the private chaplain at the Castle.
+
+He gave me the key-note to his character in the first minute of
+our acquaintanceship. We had seated ourselves at a table in the
+smoking-room when an elderly gentleman shuffled past, giving a nod
+in transit. My companion sprang to his feet almost convulsively,
+returned the salutation, and subsided slowly into his chair again.
+
+'The Duke of Devizes,' he said in an undertone. 'A most able man.
+Most able. His nephew, Lord Ronald Stokeshaye, was one of my
+pupils. A charming boy.'
+
+I gathered that the old feudal spirit still glowed to some extent
+in Mr Abney's bosom.
+
+We came to business.
+
+'So you wish to be one of us, Mr Burns, to enter the scholastic
+profession?'
+
+I tried to look as if I did.
+
+'Well, in certain circumstances, the circumstances in which
+I--ah--myself, I may say, am situated, there is no more delightful
+occupation. The work is interesting. There is the constant
+fascination of seeing these fresh young lives develop--and of
+helping them to develop--under one's eyes; in any case, I may say,
+there is the exceptional interest of being in a position to mould
+the growing minds of lads who will some day take their place among
+the country's hereditary legislators, that little knot of devoted
+men who, despite the vulgar attacks of loudmouthed demagogues,
+still do their share, and more, in the guidance of England's
+fortunes. Yes.'
+
+He paused. I said I thought so, too.
+
+'You are an Oxford man, Mr Burns, I think you told me? Ah, I have
+your letter here. Just so. You were at--ah, yes. A fine college.
+The Dean is a lifelong friend of mine. Perhaps you knew my late
+pupil, Lord Rollo?--no, he would have been since your time. A
+delightful boy. Quite delightful ... And you took your degree?
+Exactly. _And_ represented the university at both cricket and
+Rugby football? Excellent. _Mens sana in_--ah--_corpore_, in fact,
+_sano_, yes!'
+
+He folded the letter carefully and replaced it in his pocket.
+
+'Your primary object in coming to me, Mr Burns, is, I gather, to
+learn the--ah--the ropes, the business? You have had little or no
+previous experience of school-mastering?'
+
+'None whatever.'
+
+'Then your best plan would undoubtedly be to consider yourself and
+work for a time simply as an ordinary assistant-master. You would
+thus get a sound knowledge of the intricacies of the profession
+which would stand you in good stead when you decide to set up your
+own school. School-mastering is a profession, which cannot be
+taught adequately except in practice. "Only those who--ah--brave
+its dangers comprehend its mystery." Yes, I would certainly
+recommend you to begin at the foot of the ladder and go, at least
+for a time, through the mill.'
+
+'Certainly,' I said. 'Of course.'
+
+My ready acquiescence pleased him. I could see that he was
+relieved. I think he had expected me to jib at the prospect of
+actual work.
+
+'As it happens,' he said, 'my classical master left me at the end
+of last term. I was about to go to the Agency for a successor when
+your letter arrived. Would you consider--'
+
+I had to think this over. Feeling kindly disposed towards Mr
+Arnold Abney, I wished to do him as little harm as possible. I was
+going to rob him of a boy, who, while no moulding of his growing
+mind could make him into a hereditary legislator, did undoubtedly
+represent a portion of Mr Abney's annual income; and I did not
+want to increase my offence by being a useless assistant-master.
+Then I reflected that, if I was no Jowett, at least I knew enough
+Latin and Greek to teach the rudiments of those languages to small
+boys. My conscience was satisfied.
+
+'I should be delighted,' I said.
+
+'Excellent. Then let us consider that as--ah--settled,' said Mr
+Abney.
+
+There was a pause. My companion began to fiddle a little
+uncomfortably with an ash-tray. I wondered what was the matter,
+and then it came to me. We were about to become sordid. The
+discussion of terms was upon us.
+
+And as I realized this, I saw simultaneously how I could throw one
+more sop to my exigent conscience. After all, the whole thing was
+really a question of hard cash. By kidnapping Ogden I should be
+taking money from Mr Abney. By paying my premium I should be
+giving it back to him.
+
+I considered the circumstances. Ogden was now about thirteen years
+old. The preparatory-school age limit may be estimated roughly at
+fourteen. That is to say, in any event Sanstead House could only
+harbour him for one year. Mr Abney's fees I had to guess at. To be
+on the safe side, I fixed my premium at an outside figure, and,
+getting to the point at once, I named it.
+
+It was entirely satisfactory. My mental arithmetic had done me
+credit. Mr Abney beamed upon me. Over tea and muffins we became
+very friendly. In half an hour I heard more of the theory of
+school-mastering than I had dreamed existed.
+
+We said good-bye at the club front door. He smiled down at me
+benevolently from the top of the steps.
+
+'Good-bye, Mr Burns, good-bye,' he said. 'We shall meet
+at--ah--Philippi.'
+
+When I reached my rooms, I rang for Smith.
+
+'Smith,' I said, 'I want you to get some books for me first thing
+tomorrow. You had better take a note of them.'
+
+He moistened his pencil.
+
+'A Latin Grammar.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'A Greek Grammar.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Brodley Arnold's Easy Prose Sentences.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'And Caesar's Gallic Wars.'
+
+'What name, sir?'
+
+'Caesar.'
+
+'Thank you, sir. Anything else, sir?'
+
+'No, that will be all.'
+
+'Very good, sir.'
+
+He shimmered from the room.
+
+Thank goodness, Smith always has thought me mad, and is consequently
+never surprised at anything I ask him to do.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 2
+
+
+Sanstead House was an imposing building in the Georgian style. It
+stood, foursquare, in the midst of about nine acres of land. For
+the greater part of its existence, I learned later, it had been
+the private home of a family of the name of Boone, and in its
+early days the estate had been considerable. But the progress of
+the years had brought changes to the Boones. Money losses had
+necessitated the sale of land. New roads had come into being,
+cutting off portions of the estate from their centre. New
+facilities for travel had drawn members of the family away from
+home. The old fixed life of the country had changed, and in the
+end the latest Boone had come to the conclusion that to keep up so
+large and expensive a house was not worth his while.
+
+That the place should have become a school was the natural process
+of evolution. It was too large for the ordinary purchaser, and the
+estate had been so whittled down in the course of time that it was
+inadequate for the wealthy. Colonel Boone had been glad to let it
+to Mr Abney, and the school had started its career.
+
+It had all the necessary qualifications for a school. It was
+isolated. The village was two miles from its gates. It was near
+the sea. There were fields for cricket and football, and inside
+the house a number of rooms of every size, suitable for classrooms
+and dormitories.
+
+The household, when I arrived, consisted, besides Mr Abney, myself,
+another master named Glossop, and the matron, of twenty-four boys,
+the butler, the cook, the odd-job-man, two housemaids, a scullery-maid,
+and a parlour-maid. It was a little colony, cut off from the outer
+world.
+
+With the exception of Mr Abney and Glossop, a dismal man of nerves
+and mannerisms, the only person with whom I exchanged speech on my
+first evening was White, the butler. There are some men one likes
+at sight. White was one of them. Even for a butler he was a man of
+remarkably smooth manners, but he lacked that quality of austere
+aloofness which I have noticed in other butlers.
+
+He helped me unpack my box, and we chatted during the process. He
+was a man of medium height, square and muscular, with something,
+some quality of springiness, as it were, that seemed unusual in a
+butler. From one or two things he said, I gathered that he had
+travelled a good deal. Altogether he interested me. He had humour,
+and the half-hour which I had spent with Glossop made me set a
+premium on humour. I found that he, like myself, was a new-comer.
+His predecessor had left at short notice during the holidays, and
+he had secured the vacancy at about the same time that I was
+securing mine. We agreed that it was a pretty place. White, I
+gathered, regarded its isolation as a merit. He was not fond of
+village society.
+
+On the following morning, at eight o'clock, my work began.
+
+My first day had the effect of entirely revolutionizing what ideas
+I possessed of the lot of the private-school assistant-master.
+
+My view, till then, had been that the assistant-master had an easy
+time. I had only studied him from the outside. My opinion was
+based on observations made as a boy at my own private school, when
+masters were an enviable race who went to bed when they liked, had
+no preparation to do, and couldn't be caned. It seemed to me then
+that those three facts, especially the last, formed a pretty good
+basis on which to build up the Perfect Life.
+
+I had not been at Sanstead House two days before doubts began to
+creep in on this point. What the boy, observing the assistant-master
+standing about in apparently magnificent idleness, does not realize
+is that the unfortunate is really putting in a spell of exceedingly
+hard work. He is 'taking duty'. And 'taking duty' is a thing to be
+remembered, especially by a man who, like myself, has lived a life
+of fatted ease, protected from all the minor annoyances of life by
+a substantial income.
+
+Sanstead House educated me. It startled me. It showed me a hundred
+ways in which I had allowed myself to become soft and inefficient,
+without being aware of it. There may be other professions which
+call for a fiercer display of energy, but for the man with a
+private income who has loitered through life at his own pace, a
+little school-mastering is brisk enough to be a wonderful tonic.
+
+I needed it, and I got it.
+
+It was almost as if Mr Abney had realized intuitively how excellent
+the discipline of work was for my soul, for the kindly man allowed
+me to do not only my own, but most of his as well. I have talked
+with assistant-masters since, and I have gathered from them that
+headmasters of private schools are divided into two classes: the
+workers and the runners-up-to-London. Mr Abney belonged to the
+latter class. Indeed, I doubt if a finer representative of the
+class could have been found in the length and breadth of southern
+England. London drew him like a magnet.
+
+After breakfast he would take me aside. The formula was always the
+same.
+
+'Ah--Mr Burns.'
+
+Myself (apprehensively, scenting disaster, 'like some wild
+creature caught within a trap, who sees the trapper coming through
+the wood'). 'Yes? Er--yes?'
+
+'I am afraid I shall be obliged to run up to London today. I have
+received an important letter from--' And then he would name some
+parent or some prospective parent. (By 'prospective' I mean one
+who was thinking of sending his son to Sanstead House. You may
+have twenty children, but unless you send them to his school, a
+schoolmaster will refuse to dignify you with the name of parent.)
+
+Then, 'He wishes--ah--to see me,' or, in the case of titled
+parents, 'He wishes--ah--to talk things over with me.' The
+distinction is subtle, but he always made it.
+
+And presently the cab would roll away down the long drive, and my
+work would begin, and with it that soul-discipline to which I have
+alluded.
+
+'Taking duty' makes certain definite calls upon a man. He has to
+answer questions; break up fights; stop big boys bullying small
+boys; prevent small boys bullying smaller boys; check stone-throwing,
+going-on-the-wet-grass, worrying-the-cook, teasing-the-dog,
+making-too-much-noise, and, in particular, discourage all forms
+of _hara-kiri_ such as tree-climbing, water-spout-scaling,
+leaning-too-far-out-of-the-window, sliding-down-the-banisters,
+pencil-swallowing, and ink-drinking-because-somebody-dared-me-to.
+
+At intervals throughout the day there are further feats to
+perform. Carving the joint, helping the pudding, playing football,
+reading prayers, teaching, herding stragglers in for meals, and
+going round the dormitories to see that the lights are out, are a
+few of them.
+
+I wanted to oblige Cynthia, if I could, but there were moments
+during the first day or so when I wondered how on earth I was
+going to snatch the necessary time to combine kidnapping with my
+other duties. Of all the learned professions it seemed to me that
+that of the kidnapper most urgently demanded certain intervals for
+leisured thought, in which schemes and plots might be matured.
+
+Schools vary. Sanstead House belonged to the more difficult class.
+Mr Abney's constant flittings did much to add to the burdens of
+his assistants, and his peculiar reverence for the aristocracy did
+even more. His endeavour to make Sanstead House a place where the
+delicately nurtured scions of the governing class might feel as
+little as possible the temporary loss of titled mothers led him
+into a benevolent tolerance which would have unsettled angels.
+
+Success or failure for an assistant-master is, I consider, very
+much a matter of luck. My colleague, Glossop, had most of the
+qualities that make for success, but no luck. Properly backed up
+by Mr Abney, he might have kept order. As it was, his class-room
+was a bear-garden, and, when he took duty, chaos reigned.
+
+I, on the other hand, had luck. For some reason the boys agreed to
+accept me. Quite early in my sojourn I enjoyed that sweetest triumph
+of the assistant-master's life, the spectacle of one boy smacking
+another boy's head because the latter persisted in making a noise
+after I had told him to stop. I doubt if a man can experience so
+keenly in any other way that thrill which comes from the knowledge
+that the populace is his friend. Political orators must have the
+same sort of feeling when their audience clamours for the ejection
+of a heckler, but it cannot be so keen. One is so helpless with boys,
+unless they decide that they like one.
+
+It was a week from the beginning of the term before I made the
+acquaintance of the Little Nugget.
+
+I had kept my eyes open for him from the beginning, and when I
+discovered that he was not at school, I had felt alarmed. Had
+Cynthia sent me down here, to work as I had never worked before,
+on a wild-goose chase?
+
+Then, one morning, Mr Abney drew me aside after breakfast.
+
+'Ah--Mr Burns.'
+
+It was the first time that I had heard those soon-to-be-familiar
+words.
+
+'I fear I shall be compelled to run up to London today. I have an
+important appointment with the father of a boy who is coming to
+the school. He wishes--ah--to see me.'
+
+This might be the Little Nugget at last.
+
+I was right. During the interval before school, Augustus Beckford
+approached me. Lord Mountry's brother was a stolid boy with
+freckles. He had two claims to popular fame. He could hold his
+breath longer than any other boy in the school, and he always got
+hold of any piece of gossip first.
+
+'There's a new kid coming tonight, sir,' he said--'an American
+kid. I heard him talking about it to the matron. The kid's name's
+Ford, I believe the kid's father's awfully rich. Would you like to
+be rich, sir? I wish I was rich. If I was rich, I'd buy all sorts
+of things. I believe I'm going to be rich when I grow up. I heard
+father talking to a lawyer about it. There's a new parlour-maid
+coming soon, sir. I heard cook telling Emily. I'm blowed if I'd
+like to be a parlour-maid, would you, sir? I'd much rather be a
+cook.'
+
+He pondered the point for a moment. When he spoke again, it was to
+touch on a still more profound problem.
+
+'If you wanted a halfpenny to make up twopence to buy a lizard,
+what would you do, sir?'
+
+He got it.
+
+Ogden Ford, the El Dorado of the kidnapping industry, entered
+Sanstead House at a quarter past nine that evening. He was
+preceded by a Worried Look, Mr Arnold Abney, a cabman bearing a
+large box, and the odd-job man carrying two suitcases. I have
+given precedence to the Worried Look because it was a thing by
+itself. To say that Mr Abney wore it would be to create a wrong
+impression. Mr Abney simply followed in its wake. He was concealed
+behind it much as Macbeth's army was concealed behind the woods of
+Dunsinane.
+
+I only caught a glimpse of Ogden as Mr Abney showed him into his
+study. He seemed a self-possessed boy, very like but, if anything,
+uglier than the portrait of him which I had seen at the Hotel
+Guelph.
+
+A moment later the door opened, and my employer came out. He
+appeared relieved at seeing me.
+
+'Ah, Mr Burns, I was about to go in search of you. Can you spare
+me a moment? Let us go into the dining-room.'
+
+'That is a boy called Ford, Mr Burns,' he said, when he had closed
+the door. 'A rather--er--remarkable boy. He is an American, the
+son of a Mr Elmer Ford. As he will be to a great extent in your
+charge, I should like to prepare you for his--ah--peculiarities.'
+
+'Is he peculiar?'
+
+A faint spasm disturbed Mr Abney's face. He applied a silk
+handkerchief to his forehead before he replied.
+
+'In many ways, judged by the standard of the lads who have passed
+through my hands--boys, of course, who, it is only fair to add,
+have enjoyed the advantages of a singularly refined home-life--he
+may be said to be--ah--somewhat peculiar. While I have no doubt
+that _au fond ... au fond_ he is a charming boy, quite charming,
+at present he is--shall I say?--peculiar. I am disposed to imagine
+that he has been, from childhood up, systematically indulged.
+There has been in his life, I suspect, little or no discipline.
+The result has been to make him curiously unboylike. There is a
+complete absence of that diffidence, that childish capacity for
+surprise, which I for one find so charming in our English boys.
+Little Ford appears to be completely blase'. He has tastes and ideas
+which are precocious, and--unusual in a boy of his age.... He
+expresses himself in a curious manner sometimes.... He seems to have
+little or no reverence for--ah--constituted authority.'
+
+He paused while he passed his handkerchief once more over his
+forehead.
+
+'Mr Ford, the boy's father, who struck me as a man of great
+ability, a typical American merchant prince, was singularly frank
+with me about his domestic affairs as they concerned his son. I
+cannot recall his exact words, but the gist of what he said was
+that, until now, Mrs Ford had had sole charge of the boy's
+upbringing, and--Mr Ford was singularly outspoken--was too
+indulgent, in fact--ah--spoilt him. Indeed--you will, of course,
+respect my confidence--that was the real reason for the divorce
+which--ah--has unhappily come about. Mr Ford regards this school
+as in a measure--shall I say?--an antidote. He wishes there to be
+no lack of wholesome discipline. So that I shall expect you, Mr
+Burns, to check firmly, though, of course, kindly, such habits of
+his as--ah--cigarette-smoking. On our journey down he smoked
+incessantly. I found it impossible--without physical violence--to
+induce him to stop. But, of course, now that he is actually at the
+school, and subject to the discipline of the school ...'
+
+'Exactly,' I said.
+
+'That was all I wished to say. Perhaps it would be as well if you
+saw him now, Mr Burns. You will find him in the study.'
+
+He drifted away, and I went to the study to introduce myself.
+
+A cloud of tobacco-smoke rising above the back of an easy-chair
+greeted me as I opened the door. Moving into the room, I perceived
+a pair of boots resting on the grate. I stepped to the light, and
+the remainder of the Little Nugget came into view.
+
+He was lying almost at full length in the chair, his eyes fixed in
+dreamy abstraction upon the ceiling. As I came towards him, he
+drew at the cigarette between his fingers, glanced at me, looked
+away again, and expelled another mouthful of smoke. He was not
+interested in me.
+
+Perhaps this indifference piqued me, and I saw him with prejudiced
+eyes. At any rate, he seemed to me a singularly unprepossessing
+youth. That portrait had flattered him. He had a stout body and a
+round, unwholesome face. His eyes were dull, and his mouth dropped
+discontentedly. He had the air of one who is surfeited with life.
+
+I am disposed to imagine, as Mr Abney would have said, that my
+manner in addressing him was brisker and more incisive than Mr
+Abney's own. I was irritated by his supercilious detachment.
+
+'Throw away that cigarette,' I said.
+
+To my amazement, he did, promptly. I was beginning to wonder
+whether I had not been too abrupt--he gave me a curious sensation
+of being a man of my own age--when he produced a silver case from
+his pocket and opened it. I saw that the cigarette in the fender
+was a stump.
+
+I took the case from his hand and threw it on to a table. For the
+first time he seemed really to notice my existence.
+
+'You've got a hell of a nerve,' he said.
+
+He was certainly exhibiting his various gifts in rapid order,
+This, I took it, was what Mr Abney had called 'expressing himself
+in a curious manner'.
+
+'And don't swear,' I said.
+
+We eyed each other narrowly for the space of some seconds.
+
+'Who are you?' he demanded.
+
+I introduced myself.
+
+'What do you want to come butting in for?'
+
+'I am paid to butt in. It's the main duty of an assistant-master.'
+
+'Oh, you're the assistant-master, are you?'
+
+'One of them. And, in passing--it's a small technical point--you're
+supposed to call me "sir" during these invigorating little chats
+of ours.'
+
+'Call you what? Up an alley!'
+
+'I beg your pardon?'
+
+'Fade away. Take a walk.'
+
+I gathered that he was meaning to convey that he had considered my
+proposition, but regretted his inability to entertain it.
+
+'Didn't you call your tutor "sir" when you were at home?'
+
+'Me? Don't make me laugh. I've got a cracked lip.'
+
+'I gather you haven't an overwhelming respect for those set in
+authority over you.'
+
+'If you mean my tutors, I should say nix.'
+
+'You use the plural. Had you a tutor before Mr Broster?'
+
+He laughed.
+
+'Had I? Only about ten million.'
+
+'Poor devils!' I said.
+
+'Who's swearing now?'
+
+The point was well taken. I corrected myself.
+
+'Poor brutes! What happened to them? Did they commit suicide?'
+
+'Oh, they quit. And I don't blame them. I'm a pretty tough
+proposition, and you don't want to forget it.'
+
+He reached out for the cigarette-case. I pocketed it.
+
+'You make me tired,' he said.
+
+'The sensation's mutual.'
+
+'Do you think you can swell around, stopping me doing things?'
+
+'You've defined my job exactly.'
+
+'Guess again. I know all about this joint. The hot-air merchant
+was telling me about it on the train.'
+
+I took the allusion to be to Mr Arnold Abney, and thought it
+rather a happy one.
+
+'He's the boss, and nobody but him is allowed to hit the fellows.
+If you tried it, you'd lose your job. And he ain't going to,
+because the Dad's paying double fees, and he's scared stiff he'll
+lose me if there's any trouble.'
+
+'You seem to have a grasp of the position.'
+
+'Bet your life I have.'
+
+I looked at him as he sprawled in the chair.
+
+'You're a funny kid,' I said.
+
+He stiffened, outraged. His little eyes gleamed.
+
+'Say, it looks to me as if you wanted making a head shorter.
+You're a darned sight too fresh. Who do you think you are,
+anyway?'
+
+'I'm your guardian angel,' I replied. 'I'm the fellow who's going
+to take you in hand and make you a little ray of sunshine about
+the home. I know your type backwards. I've been in America and
+studied it on its native asphalt. You superfatted millionaire kids
+are all the same. If Dad doesn't jerk you into the office before
+you're out of knickerbockers, you just run to seed. You get to
+think you're the only thing on earth, and you go on thinking it
+till one day somebody comes along and shows you you're not, and
+then you get what's coming to you--good and hard.'
+
+He began to speak, but I was on my favourite theme, one I had
+studied and brooded upon since the evening when I had received a
+certain letter at my club.
+
+'I knew a man,' I said, 'who started out just like you. He always
+had all the money he wanted: never worked: grew to think himself a
+sort of young prince. What happened?'
+
+He yawned.
+
+'I'm afraid I'm boring you,' I said.
+
+'Go on. Enjoy yourself,' said the Little Nugget.
+
+'Well, it's a long story, so I'll spare you it. But the moral of
+it was that a boy who is going to have money needs to be taken in
+hand and taught sense while he's young.'
+
+He stretched himself.
+
+'You talk a lot. What do you reckon you're going to do?'
+
+I eyed him thoughtfully.
+
+'Well, everything's got to have a beginning,' I said. 'What you
+seem to me to want most is exercise. I'll take you for a run every
+day. You won't know yourself at the end of a week.'
+
+'Say, if you think you're going to get _me_ to run--'
+
+'When I grab your little hand, and start running, you'll find
+you'll soon be running too. And, years hence, when you win the
+Marathon at the Olympic Games, you'll come to me with tears in
+your eyes, and you'll say--'
+
+'Oh, slush!'
+
+'I shouldn't wonder.' I looked at my watch. 'Meanwhile, you had
+better go to bed. It's past your proper time.'
+
+He stared at me in open-eyed amazement.
+
+'Bed!'
+
+'Bed.'
+
+He seemed more amused than annoyed.
+
+'Say, what time do you think I usually go to bed?'
+
+'I know what time you go here. Nine o'clock.'
+
+As if to support my words, the door opened, and Mrs Attwell, the
+matron, entered.
+
+'I think it's time he came to bed, Mr Burns.'
+
+'Just what I was saying, Mrs Attwell.'
+
+'You're crazy,' observed the Little Nugget. 'Bed nothing!'
+
+Mrs Attwell looked at me despairingly.
+
+'I never saw such a boy!'
+
+The whole machinery of the school was being held up by this legal
+infant. Any vacillation now, and Authority would suffer a set-back
+from which it would be hard put to it to recover. It seemed to me
+a situation that called for action.
+
+I bent down, scooped the Little Nugget out of his chair like an
+oyster, and made for the door. Outside he screamed incessantly. He
+kicked me in the stomach and then on the knee. He continued to
+scream. He screamed all the way upstairs. He was screaming when we
+reached his room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Half an hour later I sat in the study, smoking thoughtfully.
+Reports from the seat of war told of a sullen and probably only
+temporary acquiescence with Fate on the part of the enemy. He was
+in bed, and seemed to have made up his mind to submit to the
+position. An air of restrained jubilation prevailed among the
+elder members of the establishment. Mr Abney was friendly and Mrs
+Attwell openly congratulatory. I was something like the hero of
+the hour.
+
+But was I jubilant? No, I was inclined to moodiness. Unforeseen
+difficulties had arisen in my path. Till now, I had regarded this
+kidnapping as something abstract. Personality had not entered into
+the matter. If I had had any picture in my mind's eye, it was of
+myself stealing away softly into the night with a docile child,
+his little hand laid trustfully in mine. From what I had seen and
+heard of Ogden Ford in moments of emotion, it seemed to me that
+whoever wanted to kidnap him with any approach to stealth would
+need to use chloroform.
+
+Things were getting very complex.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 3
+
+
+I have never kept a diary, and I have found it, in consequence,
+somewhat difficult, in telling this narrative, to arrange the
+minor incidents of my story in their proper sequence. I am writing
+by the light of an imperfect memory; and the work is complicated
+by the fact that the early days of my sojourn at Sanstead House
+are a blur, a confused welter like a Futurist picture, from which
+emerge haphazard the figures of boys--boys working, boys eating,
+boys playing football, boys whispering, shouting, asking
+questions, banging doors, jumping on beds, and clattering upstairs
+and along passages, the whole picture faintly scented with a
+composite aroma consisting of roast beef, ink, chalk, and that
+curious classroom smell which is like nothing else on earth.
+
+I cannot arrange the incidents. I can see Mr Abney, furrowed as to
+the brow and drooping at the jaw, trying to separate Ogden Ford
+from a half-smoked cigar-stump. I can hear Glossop, feverishly
+angry, bellowing at an amused class. A dozen other pictures come
+back to me, but I cannot place them in their order; and perhaps,
+after all, their sequence is unimportant. This story deals with
+affairs which were outside the ordinary school life.
+
+With the war between the Little Nugget and Authority, for
+instance, the narrative has little to do. It is a subject for an
+epic, but it lies apart from the main channel of the story, and
+must be avoided. To tell of his gradual taming, of the chaos his
+advent caused until we became able to cope with him, would be to
+turn this story into a treatise on education. It is enough to say
+that the process of moulding his character and exorcising the
+devil which seemed to possess him was slow.
+
+It was Ogden who introduced tobacco-chewing into the school, with
+fearful effects one Saturday night on the aristocratic interiors
+of Lords Gartridge and Windhall and Honourables Edwin Bellamy and
+Hildebrand Kyne. It was the ingenious gambling-game imported by
+Ogden which was rapidly undermining the moral sense of twenty-four
+innocent English boys when it was pounced upon by Glossop. It was
+Ogden who, on the one occasion when Mr Abney reluctantly resorted
+to the cane, and administered four mild taps with it, relieved his
+feelings by going upstairs and breaking all the windows in all the
+bedrooms.
+
+We had some difficult young charges at Sanstead House. Abney's
+policy of benevolent toleration ensured that. But Ogden Ford stood
+alone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have said that it is difficult for me to place the lesser events
+of my narrative in their proper order. I except three, however
+which I will call the Affair of the Strange American, the Adventure
+of the Sprinting Butler, and the Episode of the Genial Visitor.
+
+I will describe them singly, as they happened.
+
+It was the custom at Sanstead House for each of the assistant
+masters to take half of one day in every week as a holiday. The
+allowance was not liberal, and in most schools, I believe, it is
+increased; but Mr Abney was a man with peculiar views on other
+people's holidays, and Glossop and I were accordingly restricted.
+
+My day was Wednesday; and on the Wednesday of which I write I
+strolled towards the village. I had in my mind a game of billiards
+at the local inn. Sanstead House and its neighbourhood were
+lacking in the fiercer metropolitan excitements, and billiards at
+the 'Feathers' constituted for the pleasure-seeker the beginning
+and end of the Gay Whirl.
+
+There was a local etiquette governing the game of billiards at the
+'Feathers'. You played the marker a hundred up, then you took him
+into the bar-parlour and bought him refreshment. He raised his
+glass, said, 'To you, sir', and drained it at a gulp. After that
+you could, if you wished, play another game, or go home, as your
+fancy dictated.
+
+There was only one other occupant of the bar-parlour when we
+adjourned thither, and a glance at him told me that he was not
+ostentatiously sober. He was lying back in a chair, with his feet
+on the side-table, and crooning slowly, in a melancholy voice, the
+following words:
+
+  _'I don't care--if he wears--a crown,
+  He--can't--keep kicking my--dawg aroun'.'_
+
+He was a tough, clean-shaven man, with a broken nose, over which
+was tilted a soft felt hat. His wiry limbs were clad in what I put
+down as a mail-order suit. I could have placed him by his
+appearance, if I had not already done so by his voice, as an
+East-side New Yorker. And what an East-side New Yorker could be
+doing in Sanstead it was beyond me to explain.
+
+We had hardly seated ourselves when he rose and lurched out. I saw
+him pass the window, and his assertion that no crowned head should
+molest his dog came faintly to my ears as he went down the street.
+
+'American!' said Miss Benjafield, the stately barmaid, with strong
+disapproval. 'They're all alike.'
+
+I never contradict Miss Benjafield--one would as soon contradict
+the Statue of Liberty--so I merely breathed sympathetically.
+
+'What's he here for I'd like to know?'
+
+It occurred to me that I also should like to know. In another
+thirty hours I was to find out.
+
+I shall lay myself open to a charge of denseness such as even
+Doctor Watson would have scorned when I say that, though I thought
+of the matter a good deal on my way back to the school, I did not
+arrive at the obvious solution. Much teaching and taking of duty
+had dulled my wits, and the presence at Sanstead House of the
+Little Nugget did not even occur to me as a reason why strange
+Americans should be prowling in the village.
+
+We now come to the remarkable activity of White, the butler.
+
+It happened that same evening.
+
+It was not late when I started on my way back to the house, but the
+short January day was over, and it was very dark as I turned in at
+the big gate of the school and made my way up the drive. The drive
+at Sanstead House was a fine curving stretch of gravel, about two
+hundred yards in length, flanked on either side by fir trees and
+rhododendrons. I stepped out briskly, for it had begun to freeze.
+Just as I caught sight through the trees of the lights of the
+windows, there came to me the sound of running feet.
+
+I stopped. The noise grew louder. There seemed to be two runners,
+one moving with short, quick steps, the other, the one in front,
+taking a longer stride.
+
+I drew aside instinctively. In another moment, making a great
+clatter on the frozen gravel, the first of the pair passed me; and
+as he did so, there was a sharp crack, and something sang through
+the darkness like a large mosquito.
+
+The effect of the sound on the man who had been running was
+immediate. He stopped in his stride and dived into the bushes. His
+footsteps thudded faintly on the turf.
+
+The whole incident had lasted only a few seconds, and I was still
+standing there when I was aware of the other man approaching. He
+had apparently given up the pursuit, for he was walking quite
+slowly. He stopped within a few feet of me and I heard him
+swearing softly to himself.
+
+'Who's that?' I cried sharply. The crack of the pistol had given a
+flick to my nerves. Mine had been a sheltered life, into which
+hitherto revolver-shots had not entered, and I was resenting this
+abrupt introduction of them. I felt jumpy and irritated.
+
+It gave me a malicious pleasure to see that I had startled the
+unknown dispenser of shocks quite as much as he had startled me.
+The movement he made as he faced towards my direction was almost a
+leap; and it suddenly flashed upon me that I had better at once
+establish my identity as a non-combatant. I appeared to have
+wandered inadvertently into the midst of a private quarrel, one
+party to which--the one standing a couple of yards from me with a
+loaded revolver in his hand--was evidently a man of impulse, the
+sort of man who would shoot first and inquire afterwards.
+
+'I'm Mr Burns,' I said. 'I'm one of the assistant-masters. Who are
+you?'
+
+'Mr Burns?'
+
+Surely that rich voice was familiar.
+
+'White?' I said.
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'What on earth do you think you're doing? Have you gone mad? Who
+was that man?'
+
+'I wish I could tell you, sir. A very doubtful character. I found
+him prowling at the back of the house very suspiciously. He took
+to his heels and I followed him.'
+
+'But'--I spoke querulously, my orderly nature was shocked--'you
+can't go shooting at people like that just because you find them
+at the back of the house. He might have been a tradesman.'
+
+'I think not, sir.'
+
+'Well, so do I, if it comes to that. He didn't behave like one. But
+all the same--'
+
+'I take your point, sir. But I was merely intending to frighten
+him.'
+
+'You succeeded all right. He went through those bushes like a
+cannon-ball.'
+
+I heard him chuckle.
+
+'I think I may have scared him a little, sir.'
+
+'We must phone to the police-station. Could you describe the man?'
+
+'I think not, sir. It was very dark. And, if I may make the
+suggestion, it would be better not to inform the police. I have a
+very poor opinion of these country constables.'
+
+'But we can't have men prowling--'
+
+'If you will permit me, sir. I say--let them prowl. It's the only
+way to catch them.'
+
+'If you think this sort of thing is likely to happen again I must
+tell Mr Abney.'
+
+'Pardon me, sir, I think it would be better not. He impresses me
+as a somewhat nervous gentleman, and it would only disturb him.'
+
+At this moment it suddenly struck me that, in my interest in the
+mysterious fugitive, I had omitted to notice what was really the
+most remarkable point in the whole affair. How did White happen to
+have a revolver at all? I have met many butlers who behaved
+unexpectedly in their spare time. One I knew played the fiddle;
+another preached Socialism in Hyde Park. But I had never yet come
+across a butler who fired pistols.
+
+'What were you doing with a revolver?' I asked.
+
+He hesitated.
+
+'May I ask you to keep it to yourself, sir, if I tell you
+something?' he said at last.
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+'I'm a detective.'
+
+'What!'
+
+'A Pinkerton's man, Mr Burns.'
+
+I felt like one who sees the 'danger' board over thin ice. But for
+this information, who knew what rash move I might not have made,
+under the assumption that the Little Nugget was unguarded? At the
+same time, I could not help reflecting that, if things had been
+complex before, they had become far more so in the light of this
+discovery. To spirit Ogden away had never struck me, since his
+arrival at the school, as an easy task. It seemed more difficult
+now than ever.
+
+I had the sense to affect astonishment. I made my imitation of an
+innocent assistant-master astounded by the news that the butler is
+a detective in disguise as realistic as I was able. It appeared to
+be satisfactory, for he began to explain.
+
+'I am employed by Mr Elmer Ford to guard his son. There are
+several parties after that boy, Mr Burns. Naturally he is a
+considerable prize. Mr Ford would pay a large sum to get back his
+only son if he were kidnapped. So it stands to reason he takes
+precautions.'
+
+'Does Mr Abney know what you are?'
+
+'No, sir. Mr Abney thinks I am an ordinary butler. You are the
+only person who knows, and I have only told you because you have
+happened to catch me in a rather queer position for a butler to be
+in. You will keep it to yourself, sir? It doesn't do for it to get
+about. These things have to be done quietly. It would be bad for
+the school if my presence here were advertised. The other parents
+wouldn't like it. They would think that their sons were in danger,
+you see. It would be disturbing for them. So if you will just
+forget what I've been telling you, Mr Burns--'
+
+I assured him that I would. But I was very far from meaning it. If
+there was one thing which I intended to bear in mind, it was the
+fact that watchful eyes besides mine were upon that Little Nugget.
+
+The third and last of this chain of occurrences, the Episode of
+the Genial Visitor, took place on the following day, and may be
+passed over briefly. All that happened was that a well-dressed
+man, who gave his name as Arthur Gordon, of Philadelphia, dropped
+in unexpectedly to inspect the school. He apologized for not
+having written to make an appointment, but explained that he was
+leaving England almost immediately. He was looking for a school
+for his sister's son, and, happening to meet his business
+acquaintance, Mr Elmer Ford, in London, he had been recommended to
+Mr Abney. He made himself exceedingly pleasant. He was a breezy,
+genial man, who joked with Mr Abney, chaffed the boys, prodded the
+Little Nugget in the ribs, to that overfed youth's discomfort,
+made a rollicking tour of the house, in the course of which he
+inspected Ogden's bedroom--in order, he told Mr Abney, to be able
+to report conscientiously to his friend Ford that the son and heir
+was not being pampered too much, and departed in a whirl of
+good-humour, leaving every one enthusiastic over his charming
+personality. His last words were that everything was thoroughly
+satisfactory, and that he had learned all he wanted to know.
+
+Which, as was proved that same night, was the simple truth.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 4
+
+
+I
+
+I owed it to my colleague Glossop that I was in the centre of the
+surprising things that occurred that night. By sheer weight of
+boredom, Glossop drove me from the house, so that it came about
+that, at half past nine, the time at which the affair began, I was
+patrolling the gravel in front of the porch.
+
+It was the practice of the staff of Sanstead House School to
+assemble after dinner in Mr Abney's study for coffee. The room was
+called the study, but it was really more of a master's common
+room. Mr Abney had a smaller sanctum of his own, reserved
+exclusively for himself.
+
+On this particular night he went there early, leaving me alone
+with Glossop. It is one of the drawbacks of the desert-island
+atmosphere of a private school that everybody is always meeting
+everybody else. To avoid a man for long is impossible. I had been
+avoiding Glossop as long as I could, for I knew that he wanted to
+corner me with a view to a heart-to-heart talk on Life Insurance.
+
+These amateur Life Insurance agents are a curious band. The world
+is full of them. I have met them at country-houses, at seaside
+hotels, on ships, everywhere; and it has always amazed me that
+they should find the game worth the candle. What they add to their
+incomes I do not know, but it cannot be very much, and the trouble
+they have to take is colossal. Nobody loves them, and they must
+see it; yet they persevere. Glossop, for instance, had been trying
+to buttonhole me every time there was a five minutes' break in the
+day's work.
+
+He had his chance now, and he did not mean to waste it. Mr Abney
+had scarcely left the room when he began to exude pamphlets and
+booklets at every pocket.
+
+I eyed him sourly, as he droned on about 'reactionable endowment',
+'surrender-value', and 'interest accumulating on the tontine
+policy', and tried, as I did so, to analyse the loathing I felt
+for him. I came to the conclusion that it was partly due to his
+pose of doing the whole thing from purely altruistic motives,
+entirely for my good, and partly because he forced me to face the
+fact that I was not always going to be young. In an abstract
+fashion I had already realized that I should in time cease to be
+thirty, but the way in which Glossop spoke of my sixty-fifth
+birthday made me feel as if it was due tomorrow. He was a man with
+a manner suggestive of a funeral mute suffering from suppressed
+jaundice, and I had never before been so weighed down with a sense
+of the inevitability of decay and the remorseless passage of time.
+I could feel my hair whitening.
+
+A need for solitude became imperative; and, murmuring something
+about thinking it over, I escaped from the room.
+
+Except for my bedroom, whither he was quite capable of following
+me, I had no refuge but the grounds. I unbolted the front door and
+went out.
+
+It was still freezing, and, though the stars shone, the trees grew
+so closely about the house that it was too dark for me to see more
+than a few feet in front of me.
+
+I began to stroll up and down. The night was wonderfully still. I
+could hear somebody walking up the drive--one of the maids, I
+supposed, returning from her evening out. I could even hear a bird
+rustling in the ivy on the walls of the stables.
+
+I fell into a train of thought. I think my mind must still have
+been under Glossop's gloom-breeding spell, for I was filled with a
+sense of the infinite pathos of Life. What was the good of it all?
+Why was a man given chances of happiness without the sense to
+realize and use them? If Nature had made me so self-satisfied that
+I had lost Audrey because of my self-satisfaction why had she not
+made me so self-satisfied that I could lose her without a pang?
+Audrey! It annoyed me that, whenever I was free for a moment from
+active work, my thoughts should keep turning to her. It frightened
+me, too. Engaged to Cynthia, I had no right to have such thoughts.
+
+Perhaps it was the mystery which hung about her that kept her in
+my mind. I did not know where she was. I did not know how she
+fared. I did not know what sort of a man it was whom she had
+preferred to me. That, it struck me, was the crux of the matter.
+She had vanished absolutely with another man whom I had never seen
+and whose very name I did not know. I had been beaten by an unseen
+foe.
+
+I was deep in a very slough of despond when suddenly things began
+to happen. I might have known that Sanstead House would never
+permit solitary brooding on Life for long. It was a place of
+incident, not of abstract speculation.
+
+I had reached the end of my 'beat', and had stopped to relight my
+pipe, when drama broke loose with the swift unexpectedness which
+was characteristic of the place. The stillness of the night was
+split by a sound which I could have heard in a gale and recognized
+among a hundred conflicting noises. It was a scream, a shrill,
+piercing squeal that did not rise to a crescendo, but started at
+its maximum and held the note; a squeal which could only proceed
+from one throat: the deafening war-cry of the Little Nugget.
+
+I had grown accustomed, since my arrival at Sanstead House, to a
+certain quickening of the pace of life, but tonight events
+succeeded one another with a rapidity which surprised me. A whole
+cinematograph-drama was enacted during the space of time it takes
+for a wooden match to burn.
+
+At the moment when the Little Nugget gave tongue, I had just
+struck one, and I stood, startled into rigidity, holding it in the
+air as if I had decided to constitute myself a sort of limelight
+man to the performance.
+
+It cannot have been more than a few seconds later before some
+person unknown nearly destroyed me.
+
+I was standing, holding my match and listening to the sounds of
+confusion indoors, when this person, rounding the angle of the
+house in a desperate hurry, emerged from the bushes and rammed me
+squarely.
+
+He was a short man, or he must have crouched as he ran, for his
+shoulder--a hard, bony shoulder--was precisely the same distance
+from the ground as my solar plexus. In the brief impact which
+ensued between the two, the shoulder had the advantage of being in
+motion, while the solar plexus was stationary, and there was no
+room for any shadow of doubt as to which had the worst of it.
+
+That the mysterious unknown was not unshaken by the encounter was
+made clear by a sharp yelp of surprise and pain. He staggered.
+What happened to him after that was not a matter of interest to
+me. I gather that he escaped into the night. But I was too
+occupied with my own affairs to follow his movements.
+
+Of all cures for melancholy introspection a violent blow in the
+solar plexus is the most immediate. If Mr Corbett had any abstract
+worries that day at Carson City, I fancy they ceased to occupy his
+mind from the moment when Mr Fitzsimmons administered that historic
+left jab. In my case the cure was instantaneous. I can remember
+reeling across the gravel and falling in a heap and trying to
+breathe and knowing that I should never again be able to, and
+then for some minutes all interest in the affairs of this world
+left me.
+
+How long it was before my breath returned, hesitatingly, like some
+timid Prodigal Son trying to muster up courage to enter the old
+home, I do not know; but it cannot have been many minutes, for the
+house was only just beginning to disgorge its occupants as I sat
+up. Disconnected cries and questions filled the air. Dim forms
+moved about in the darkness.
+
+I had started to struggle to my feet, feeling very sick and
+boneless, when it was borne in upon me that the sensations of this
+remarkable night were not yet over. As I reached a sitting
+position, and paused before adventuring further, to allow a wave
+of nausea to pass, a hand was placed on my shoulder and a voice
+behind me said, 'Don't move!'
+
+
+II
+
+I was not in a condition to argue. Beyond a fleeting feeling that
+a liberty was being taken with me and that I was being treated
+unjustly, I do not remember resenting the command. I had no notion
+who the speaker might be, and no curiosity. Breathing just then
+had all the glamour of a difficult feat cleverly performed. I
+concentrated my whole attention upon it. I was pleased, and
+surprised, to find myself getting on so well. I remember having
+much the same sensation when I first learned to ride a bicycle--a
+kind of dazed feeling that I seemed to be doing it, but Heaven
+alone knew how.
+
+A minute or so later, when I had leisure to observe outside
+matters, I perceived that among the other actors in the drama
+confusion still reigned. There was much scuttering about and much
+meaningless shouting. Mr Abney's reedy tenor voice was issuing
+directions, each of which reached a dizzier height of futility
+than the last. Glossop was repeating over and over again the
+words, 'Shall I telephone for the police?' to which nobody
+appeared to pay the least attention. One or two boys were darting
+about like rabbits and squealing unintelligibly. A female voice--I
+think Mrs Attwell's--was saying, 'Can you see him?'
+
+Up to this point, my match, long since extinguished, had been the
+only illumination the affair had received; but now somebody, who
+proved to be White, the butler, came from the direction of the
+stable-yard with a carriage-lamp. Every one seemed calmer and
+happier for it. The boys stopped squealing, Mrs Attwell and
+Glossop subsided, and Mr Abney said 'Ah!' in a self-satisfied
+voice, as if he had directed this move and was congratulating
+himself on the success with which it had been carried out.
+
+The whole strength of the company gathered round the light.
+
+'Thank you, White,' said Mr Abney. 'Excellent. I fear the
+scoundrel has escaped.'
+
+'I suspect so, sir.'
+
+'This is a very remarkable occurrence, White.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'The man was actually in Master Ford's bedroom.'
+
+'Indeed, sir?'
+
+A shrill voice spoke. I recognized it as that of Augustus
+Beckford, always to be counted upon to be in the centre of things
+gathering information.
+
+'Sir, please, sir, what was up? Who was it, sir? Sir, was it a
+burglar, sir? Have you ever met a burglar, sir? My father took me
+to see Raffles in the holidays, sir. Do you think this chap was
+like Raffles, sir? Sir--'
+
+'It was undoubtedly--' Mr Abney was beginning, when the identity
+of the questioner dawned upon him, and for the first time he
+realized that the drive was full of boys actively engaged in
+catching their deaths of cold. His all-friends-here-let-us-
+discuss-this-interesting-episode-fully manner changed. He became
+the outraged schoolmaster. Never before had I heard him speak so
+sharply to boys, many of whom, though breaking rules, were still
+titled.
+
+'What are you boys doing out of bed? Go back to bed instantly. I
+shall punish you most severely. I--'
+
+'Shall I telephone for the police?' asked Glossop. Disregarded.
+
+'I will not have this conduct. You will catch cold. This is
+disgraceful. Ten bad marks! I shall punish you most severely if
+you do not instantly--'
+
+A calm voice interrupted him.
+
+'Say!'
+
+The Little Nugget strolled easily into the circle of light. He was
+wearing a dressing-gown, and in his hand was a smouldering
+cigarette, from which he proceeded, before continuing his remarks,
+to blow a cloud of smoke.
+
+'Say, I guess you're wrong. That wasn't any ordinary porch-climber.'
+
+The spectacle of his _bete noire_ wreathed in smoke, coming
+on top of the emotions of the night, was almost too much for Mr
+Abney. He gesticulated for a moment in impassioned silence, his
+arms throwing grotesque shadows on the gravel.
+
+'How _dare_ you smoke, boy! How _dare_ you smoke that cigarette!'
+
+'It's the only one I've got,' responded the Little Nugget amiably.
+
+'I have spoken to you--I have warned you--Ten bad marks!--I will
+not have--Fifteen bad marks!'
+
+The Little Nugget ignored the painful scene. He was smiling
+quietly.
+
+'If you ask _me_,' he said, 'that guy was after something better
+than plated spoons. Yes, sir! If you want my opinion, it was Buck
+MacGinnis, or Chicago Ed., or one of those guys, and what he was
+trailing was me. They're always at it. Buck had a try for me in the
+fall of '07, and Ed.--'
+
+'Do you hear me? Will you return instantly--'
+
+'If you don't believe me I can show you the piece there was about
+it in the papers. I've got a press-clipping album in my box.
+Whenever there's a piece about me in the papers, I cut it out and
+paste it into my album. If you'll come right along, I'll show you
+the story about Buck now. It happened in Chicago, and he'd have
+got away with me if it hadn't been--'
+
+'Twenty bad marks!'
+
+'Mr Abney!'
+
+It was the person standing behind me who spoke. Till now he or she
+had remained a silent spectator, waiting, I suppose, for a lull in
+the conversation.
+
+They jumped, all together, like a well-trained chorus.
+
+'Who is that?' cried Mr Abney. I could tell by the sound of his
+voice that his nerves were on wires. 'Who was that who spoke?'
+
+'Shall I telephone for the police?' asked Glossop. Ignored.
+
+'I am Mrs Sheridan, Mr Abney. You were expecting me to-night.'
+
+'Mrs Sheridan? Mrs Sher--I expected you in a cab. I expected you
+in--ah--in fact, a cab.'
+
+'I walked.'
+
+I had a curious sensation of having heard the voice before. When
+she had told me not to move, she had spoken in a whisper--or, to
+me, in my dazed state, it had sounded like a whisper--but now she
+was raising her voice, and there was a note in it that seemed
+familiar. It stirred some chord in my memory, and I waited to hear
+it again.
+
+When it came it brought the same sensation, but nothing more
+definite. It left me groping for the clue.
+
+'Here is one of the men, Mr Abney.'
+
+There was a profound sensation. Boys who had ceased to squeal,
+squealed with fresh vigour. Glossop made his suggestion about the
+telephone with a new ring of hope in his voice. Mrs Attwell
+shrieked. They made for us in a body, boys and all, White leading
+with the lantern. I was almost sorry for being compelled to
+provide an anticlimax.
+
+Augustus Beckford was the first to recognize me, and I expect he
+was about to ask me if I liked sitting on the gravel on a frosty
+night, or what gravel was made of, when Mr Abney spoke.
+
+'Mr Burns! What--dear me!--_what_ are you doing there?'
+
+'Perhaps Mr Burns can give us some information as to where the man
+went, sir,' suggested White.
+
+'On everything except that,' I said, 'I'm a mine of information. I
+haven't the least idea where he went. All I know about him is that
+he has a shoulder like the ram of a battleship, and that he
+charged me with it.'
+
+As I was speaking, I thought I heard a little gasp behind me. I
+turned. I wanted to see this woman who stirred my memory with her
+voice. But the rays of the lantern did not fall on her, and she
+was a shapeless blur in the darkness. Somehow I felt that she was
+looking intently at me.
+
+I resumed my narrative.
+
+'I was lighting my pipe when I heard a scream--' A chuckle came
+from the group behind the lantern.
+
+'I screamed,' said the Little Nugget. 'You bet I screamed! What
+would _you_ do if you woke up in the dark and found a strong-armed
+roughneck prising you out of bed as if you were a clam? He tried to
+get his hand over my mouth, but he only connected with my forehead,
+and I'd got going before he could switch. I guess I threw a scare
+into that gink!'
+
+He chuckled again, reminiscently, and drew at his cigarette.
+
+'How dare you smoke! Throw away that cigarette!' cried Mr Abney,
+roused afresh by the red glow.
+
+'Forget it!' advised the Little Nugget tersely.
+
+'And then,' I said, 'somebody whizzed out from nowhere and hit me.
+And after that I didn't seem to care much about him or anything
+else.' I spoke in the direction of my captor. She was still
+standing outside the circle of light. 'I expect you can tell us
+what happened, Mrs Sheridan?'
+
+I did not think that her information was likely to be of any
+practical use, but I wanted to make her speak again.
+
+Her first words were enough. I wondered how I could ever have been
+in doubt. I knew the voice now. It was one which I had not heard
+for five years, but one which I could never forget if I lived for
+ever.
+
+'Somebody ran past me.' I hardly heard her. My heart was pounding,
+and a curious dizziness had come over me. I was grappling with the
+incredible. 'I think he went into the bushes.'
+
+I heard Glossop speak, and gathered from Mr Abney's reply; that he
+had made his suggestion about the telephone once more.
+
+'I think that will be--ah--unnecessary, Mr Glossop. The man has
+undoubtedly--ah--made good his escape. I think we had all better
+return to the house.' He turned to the dim figure beside me. 'Ah,
+Mrs Sheridan, you must be tired after your journey and the--ah unusual
+excitement. Mrs Attwell will show you where you--in fact, your room.'
+
+In the general movement White must have raised the lamp or stepped
+forward, for the rays shifted. The figure beside me was no longer
+dim, but stood out sharp and clear in the yellow light.
+
+I was aware of two large eyes looking into mine as, in the grey
+London morning two weeks before, they had looked from a faded
+photograph.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 5
+
+
+Of all the emotions which kept me awake that night, a vague
+discomfort and a feeling of resentment against Fate more than
+against any individual, were the two that remained with me next
+morning. Astonishment does not last. The fact of Audrey and myself
+being under the same roof after all these years had ceased to
+amaze me. It was a minor point, and my mind shelved it in order to
+deal with the one thing that really mattered, the fact that she
+had come back into my life just when I had definitely, as I
+thought, put her out of it.
+
+My resentment deepened. Fate had played me a wanton trick. Cynthia
+trusted me. If I were weak, I should not be the only one to
+suffer. And something told me that I should be weak. How could I
+hope to be strong, tortured by the thousand memories which the
+sight of her would bring back to me?
+
+But I would fight, I told myself. I would not yield easily. I
+promised that to my self-respect, and was rewarded with a certain
+glow of excitement. I felt defiant. I wanted to test myself at
+once.
+
+My opportunity came after breakfast. She was standing on the
+gravel in front of the house, almost, in fact, on the spot where
+we had met the night before. She looked up as she heard my step,
+and I saw that her chin had that determined tilt which, in the
+days of our engagement, I had noticed often without attaching any
+particular significance to it. Heavens, what a ghastly lump of
+complacency I must have been in those days! A child, I thought, if
+he were not wrapped up in the contemplation of his own magnificence,
+could read its meaning.
+
+It meant war, and I was glad of it. I wanted war.
+
+'Good morning,' I said.
+
+'Good morning.'
+
+There was a pause. I took the opportunity to collect my thoughts.
+
+I looked at her curiously. Five years had left their mark on her,
+but entirely for the good. She had an air of quiet strength which
+I had never noticed in her before. It may have been there in the
+old days, but I did not think so. It was, I felt certain, a later
+development. She gave the impression of having been through much
+and of being sure of herself.
+
+In appearance she had changed amazingly little. She looked as
+small and slight and trim as ever she had done. She was a little
+paler, I thought, and the Irish eyes were older and a shade
+harder; but that was all.
+
+I awoke with a start to the fact that I was staring at her. A
+slight flush had crept into her pale cheeks.
+
+'Don't!' she said suddenly, with a little gesture of irritation.
+
+The word and the gesture killed, as if they had been a blow, a
+kind of sentimental tenderness which had been stealing over me.
+
+'What are you doing here?' I asked.
+
+She was silent.
+
+'Please don't think I want to pry into your affairs,' I said
+viciously. 'I was only interested in the coincidence that we
+should meet here like this.'
+
+She turned to me impulsively. Her face had lost its hard look.
+
+'Oh, Peter,' she said, 'I'm sorry. I _am_ sorry.'
+
+It was my chance, and I snatched at it with a lack of chivalry
+which I regretted almost immediately. But I was feeling bitter,
+and bitterness makes a man do cheap things.
+
+'Sorry?' I said, politely puzzled. 'Why?'
+
+She looked taken aback, as I hoped she would.
+
+'For--for what happened.'
+
+'My dear Audrey! Anybody would have made the same mistake. I don't
+wonder you took me for a burglar.'
+
+'I didn't mean that. I meant--five years ago.'
+
+I laughed. I was not feeling like laughter at the moment, but I
+did my best, and had the satisfaction of seeing that it jarred
+upon her.
+
+'Surely you're not worrying yourself about that?' I said. I
+laughed again. Very jovial and debonair I was that winter morning.
+
+The brief moment in which we might have softened towards each
+other was over. There was a glitter in her blue eyes which told me
+that it was once more war between us.
+
+'I thought you would get over it,' she said.
+
+'Well,' I said, 'I was only twenty-five. One's heart doesn't break
+at twenty-five.'
+
+'I don't think yours would ever be likely to break, Peter.'
+
+'Is that a compliment, or otherwise?'
+
+'You would probably think it a compliment. I meant that you were
+not human enough to be heart-broken.'
+
+'So that's your idea of a compliment!'
+
+'I said I thought it was probably yours.'
+
+'I must have been a curious sort of man five years ago, if I gave
+you that impression.'
+
+'You were.'
+
+She spoke in a meditative voice, as if, across the years, she were
+idly inspecting some strange species of insect. The attitude
+annoyed me. I could look, myself, with a detached eye at the man I
+had once been, but I still retained a sort of affection for him,
+and I felt piqued.
+
+'I suppose you looked on me as a kind of ogre in those days?' I
+said.
+
+'I suppose I did.'
+
+There was a pause.
+
+'I didn't mean to hurt your feelings,' she said. And that was the
+most galling part of it. Mine was an attitude of studied
+offensiveness. I did want to hurt her feelings. But hers, it
+seemed to me, was no pose. She really had had--and, I suppose,
+still retained--a genuine horror of me. The struggle was unequal.
+
+'You were very kind,' she went on, 'sometimes--when you happened
+to think of it.'
+
+Considered as the best she could find to say of me, it was not an
+eulogy.
+
+'Well,' I said, 'we needn't discuss what I was or did five years
+ago. Whatever I was or did, you escaped. Let's think of the
+present. What are we going to do about this?'
+
+'You think the situation's embarrassing?'
+
+'I do.'
+
+'One of us ought to go, I suppose,' she said doubtfully.
+
+'Exactly.'
+
+'Well, I can't go.'
+
+'Nor can I.'
+
+'I have business here.'
+
+'Obviously, so have I.'
+
+'It's absolutely necessary that I should be here.'
+
+'And that I should.'
+
+She considered me for a moment.
+
+'Mrs Attwell told me that you were one of the assistant-masters
+at the school.'
+
+'I am acting as assistant-master. I am supposed to be learning the
+business.'
+
+She hesitated.
+
+'Why?' she said.
+
+'Why not?'
+
+'But--but--you used to be very well off.'
+
+'I'm better off now. I'm working.'
+
+She was silent for a moment.
+
+'Of course it's impossible for you to leave. You couldn't, could
+you?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'I can't either.'
+
+'Then I suppose we must face the embarrassment.'
+
+'But why must it be embarrassing? You said yourself you had--got
+over it.'
+
+'Absolutely. I am engaged to be married.'
+
+She gave a little start. She drew a pattern on the gravel with her
+foot before she spoke.
+
+'I congratulate you,' she said at last.
+
+'Thank you.'
+
+'I hope you will be very happy.'
+
+'I'm sure I shall.'
+
+She relapsed into silence. It occurred to me that, having posted
+her thoroughly in my affairs, I was entitled to ask about hers.
+
+'How in the world did you come to be here?' I said.
+
+'It's rather a long story. After my husband died--'
+
+'Oh!' I exclaimed, startled.
+
+'Yes; he died three years ago.'
+
+She spoke in a level voice, with a ring of hardness in it, for
+which I was to learn the true reason later. At the time it seemed
+to me due to resentment at having to speak of the man she had
+loved to me, whom she disliked, and my bitterness increased.
+
+'I have been looking after myself for a long time.'
+
+'In England?'
+
+'In America. We went to New York directly we--directly I had
+written to you. I have been in America ever since. I only returned
+to England a few weeks ago.'
+
+'But what brought you to Sanstead?'
+
+'Some years ago I got to know Mr Ford, the father of the little
+boy who is at the school. He recommended me to Mr Abney, who
+wanted somebody to help with the school.'
+
+'And you are dependent on your work? I mean--forgive me if I am
+personal--Mr Sheridan did not--'
+
+'He left no money at all.'
+
+'Who was he?' I burst out. I felt that the subject of the dead man
+was one which it was painful for her to talk about, at any rate to
+me; but the Sheridan mystery had vexed me for five years, and I
+thirsted to know something of this man who had dynamited my life
+without ever appearing in it.
+
+'He was an artist, a friend of my father.'
+
+I wanted to hear more. I wanted to know what he looked like, how
+he spoke, how he compared with me in a thousand ways; but it was
+plain that she would not willingly be communicative about him;
+and, with a feeling of resentment, I gave her her way and
+suppressed my curiosity.
+
+'So your work here is all you have?' I said.
+
+'Absolutely all. And, if it's the same with you, well, here we
+are!'
+
+'Here we are!' I echoed. 'Exactly.'
+
+'We must try and make it as easy for each other as we can,' she
+said.
+
+'Of course.'
+
+She looked at me in that curious, wide-eyed way of hers.
+
+'You have got thinner, Peter,' she said.
+
+'Have I?' I said. 'Suffering, I suppose, or exercise.'
+
+Her eyes left my face. I saw her bite her lip.
+
+'You hate me,' she said abruptly. 'You've been hating me all these
+years. Well, I don't wonder.'
+
+She turned and began to walk slowly away, and as she did so a
+sense of the littleness of the part I was playing came over me.
+Ever since our talk had begun I had been trying to hurt her,
+trying to take a petty revenge on her--for what? All that had
+happened five years ago had been my fault. I could not let her go
+like this. I felt unutterably mean.
+
+'Audrey!' I called.
+
+She stopped. I went to her.
+
+'Audrey!' I said, 'you're wrong. If there's anybody I hate, it's
+myself. I just want to tell you I understand.'
+
+Her lips parted, but she did not speak.
+
+'I understand just what made you do it,' I went on. 'I can see now
+the sort of man I was in those days.'
+
+'You're saying that to--to help me,' she said in a low voice.
+
+'No. I have felt like that about it for years.'
+
+'I treated you shamefully.'
+
+'Nothing of the kind. There's a certain sort of man who badly
+needs a--jolt, and he has to get it sooner or later. It happened
+that you gave me mine, but that wasn't your fault. I was bound to
+get it--somehow.' I laughed. 'Fate was waiting for me round the
+corner. Fate wanted something to hit me with. You happened to be
+the nearest thing handy.'
+
+'I'm sorry, Peter.'
+
+'Nonsense. You knocked some sense into me. That's all you did.
+Every man needs education. Most men get theirs in small doses, so
+that they hardly know they are getting it at all. My money kept me
+from getting mine that way. By the time I met you there was a
+great heap of back education due to me, and I got it in a lump.
+That's all.'
+
+'You're generous.'
+
+'Nothing of the kind. It's only that I see things clearer than I
+did. I was a pig in those days.'
+
+'You weren't!'
+
+'I was. Well, we won't quarrel about it.'
+
+Inside the house the bell rang for breakfast. We turned. As I drew
+back to let her go in, she stopped.
+
+'Peter,' she said.
+
+She began to speak quickly.
+
+'Peter, let's be sensible. Why should we let this embarrass us,
+this being together here? Can't we just pretend that we're two old
+friends who parted through a misunderstanding, and have come
+together again, with all the misunderstanding cleared away--friends
+again? Shall we?'
+
+She held out her hand. She was smiling, but her eyes were grave.
+
+'Old friends, Peter?'
+
+I took her hand.
+
+'Old friends,' I said.
+
+And we went in to breakfast. On the table, beside my plate, was
+lying a letter from Cynthia.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 6
+
+
+I
+
+I give the letter in full. It was written from the s.y. _Mermaid_,
+lying in Monaco Harbour.
+
+MY DEAR PETER, Where is Ogden? We have been expecting him every
+day. Mrs Ford is worrying herself to death. She keeps asking me if
+I have any news, and it is very tiresome to have to keep telling
+her that I have not heard from you. Surely, with the opportunities
+you must get every day, you can manage to kidnap him. Do be quick.
+We are relying on you.--In haste,
+                                  CYNTHIA.
+
+I read this brief and business-like communication several times
+during the day; and after dinner that night, in order to meditate
+upon it in solitude, I left the house and wandered off in the
+direction of the village.
+
+I was midway between house and village when I became aware that I
+was being followed. The night was dark, and the wind moving in the
+tree-tops emphasized the loneliness of the country road. Both time
+and place were such as made it peculiarly unpleasant to hear
+stealthy footsteps on the road behind me.
+
+Uncertainty in such cases is the unnerving thing. I turned
+sharply, and began to walk back on tiptoe in the direction from
+which I had come.
+
+I had not been mistaken. A moment later a dark figure loomed up
+out of the darkness, and the exclamation which greeted me, as I
+made my presence known, showed that I had taken him by surprise.
+
+There was a momentary pause. I expected the man, whoever he might
+be, to run, but he held his ground. Indeed, he edged forward.
+
+'Get back!' I said, and allowed my stick to rasp suggestively on
+the road before raising it in readiness for any sudden development.
+It was as well that he should know it was there.
+
+The hint seemed to wound rather than frighten him.
+
+'Aw, cut out the rough stuff, bo,' he said reproachfully in a
+cautious, husky undertone. 'I ain't goin' to start anything.'
+
+I had an impression that I had heard the voice before, but I could
+not place it.
+
+'What are you following me for?' I demanded. 'Who are you?'
+
+'Say, I want a talk wit youse. I took a slant at youse under de
+lamp-post back dere, an' I seen it was you, so I tagged along.
+Say, I'm wise to your game, sport.'
+
+I had identified him by this time. Unless there were two men in
+the neighbourhood of Sanstead who hailed from the Bowery, this
+must be the man I had seen at the 'Feathers' who had incurred the
+disapproval of Miss Benjafield.
+
+'I haven't the faintest idea what you mean,' I said. 'What is my
+game?'
+
+His voice became reproachful again.
+
+'Ah chee!' he protested. 'Quit yer kiddin'! What was youse
+rubberin' around de house for last night if you wasn't trailin' de
+kid?'
+
+'Was it you who ran into me last night?' I asked.
+
+'Gee! I fought it was a tree. I came near takin' de count.'
+
+'I did take it. You seemed in a great hurry.'
+
+'Hell!' said the man simply, and expectorated.
+
+'Say,' he resumed, having delivered this criticism on that
+stirring episode, dat's a great kid, dat Nugget. I fought it was a
+Black Hand soup explosion when he cut loose. But, say, let's don't
+waste time. We gotta get together about dat kid.'
+
+'Certainly, if you wish it. What do you happen to mean?'
+
+'Aw, quit yer kiddin'!' He expectorated again. He seemed to be a
+man who could express the whole gamut of emotions by this simple
+means. 'I know you!'
+
+'Then you have the advantage of me, though I believe I remember
+seeing you before. Weren't you at the "Feathers" one Wednesday
+evening, singing something about a dog?'
+
+'Sure. Dat was me.'
+
+'What do you mean by saying that you know me?'
+
+'Aw, quit yer kiddin', Sam!'
+
+There was, it seemed to me, a reluctantly admiring note in his
+voice.
+
+'Tell me, who do you think I am?' I asked patiently.
+
+'Ahr ghee! You can't string me, sport. Smooth Sam Fisher, is who
+you are, bo. I know you.'
+
+I was too surprised to speak. Verily, some have greatness thrust
+upon them.
+
+'I hain't never seen youse, Sam,' he continued, 'but I know it's
+you. And I'll tell youse how I doped it out. To begin with, there
+ain't but you and your bunch and me and my bunch dat knows de
+Little Nugget's on dis side at all. Dey sneaked him out of New
+York mighty slick. And I heard that you had come here after him.
+So when I runs into a guy dat's trailin' de kid down here, well,
+who's it going to be if it ain't youse? And when dat guy talks
+like a dude, like they all say you do, well, who's it going to be
+if it ain't youse? So quit yer kiddin', Sam, and let's get down to
+business.'
+
+'Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr Buck MacGinnis?' I said. I
+felt convinced that this could be no other than that celebrity.
+
+'Dat's right. Dere's no need to keep up anyt'ing wit me, Sam.
+We're bote on de same trail, so let's get down to it.'
+
+'One moment,' I said. 'Would it surprise you to hear that my name
+is Burns, and that I am a master at the school?'
+
+He expectorated admirably.
+
+'Hell, no!' he said. 'Gee, it's just what you would be, Sam. I
+always heard youse had been one of dese rah-rah boys oncest. Say,
+it's mighty smart of youse to be a perfessor. You're right in on
+de ground floor.'
+
+His voice became appealing.
+
+'Say, Sam, don't be a hawg. Let's go fifty-fifty in dis deal. My
+bunch and me has come a hell of a number of miles on dis
+proposition, and dere ain't no need for us to fall scrappin' over
+it. Dere's plenty for all of us. Old man Ford'll cough up enough
+for every one, and dere won't be any fuss. Let's sit in togedder
+on dis nuggett'ing. It ain't like as if it was an ornery two-by-four
+deal. I wouldn't ask youse if it wasn't big enough fir de whole
+bunch of us.'
+
+As I said nothing, he proceeded.
+
+'It ain't square, Sam, to take advantage of your having education.
+If it was a square fight, and us bote wit de same chance, I
+wouldn't say; but you bein' a dude perfessor and gettin' right
+into de place like dat ain't right. Say, don't be a hawg, Sam.
+Don't swipe it all. Fifty-fifty! Does dat go?'
+
+'I don't know,' I said. 'You had better ask the real Sam. Good
+night.'
+
+I walked past him and made for the school gates at my best pace.
+He trotted after me, pleading.
+
+'Sam, give us a quarter, then.'
+
+I walked on.
+
+'Sam, don't be a hawg!'
+
+He broke into a run.
+
+'Sam!' His voice lost its pleading tone and rasped menacingly.
+
+'Gee, if I had me canister, youse wouldn't be so flip! Listen
+here, you big cheese! You t'ink youse is de only t'ing in sight,
+huh? Well, we ain't done yet. You'll see yet. We'll fix you! Youse
+had best watch out.'
+
+I stopped and turned on him. 'Look here, you fool,' I cried. 'I
+tell you I am not Sam Fisher. Can't you understand that you have
+got hold of the wrong man? My name is Burns--_Burns_.'
+
+He expectorated--scornfully this time. He was a man slow by nature
+to receive ideas, but slower to rid himself of one that had
+contrived to force its way into what he probably called his brain.
+He had decided on the evidence that I was Smooth Sam Fisher, and
+no denials on my part were going to shake his belief. He looked on
+them merely as so many unsportsmanlike quibbles prompted by greed.
+
+'Tell it to Sweeney!' was the form in which he crystallized his
+scepticism.
+
+'May be you'll say youse ain't trailin' de Nugget, huh?'
+
+It was a home-thrust. If truth-telling has become a habit, one
+gets slowly off the mark when the moment arrives for the prudent
+lie. Quite against my will, I hesitated. Observant Mr MacGinnis
+perceived my hesitation and expectorated triumphantly.
+
+'Ah ghee!' he remarked. And then with a sudden return to ferocity,
+'All right, you Sam, you wait! We'll fix you, and fix you good!
+See? Dat goes. You t'ink youse kin put it across us, huh? All
+right, you'll get yours. You wait!'
+
+And with these words he slid off into the night. From somewhere in
+the murky middle distance came a scornful 'Hawg!' and he was gone,
+leaving me with a settled conviction that, while I had frequently
+had occasion, since my expedition to Sanstead began, to describe
+affairs as complex, their complexity had now reached its height.
+With a watchful Pinkerton's man within, and a vengeful gang of
+rivals without, Sanstead House seemed likely to become an
+unrestful place for a young kidnapper with no previous experience.
+
+The need for swift action had become imperative.
+
+
+II
+
+White, the butler, looking singularly unlike a detective--which, I
+suppose, is how a detective wants to look--was taking the air on
+the football field when I left the house next morning for a
+before-breakfast stroll. The sight of him filled me with a desire
+for first-hand information on the subject of the man Mr MacGinnis
+supposed me to be and also of Mr MacGinnis himself. I wanted to be
+assured that my friend Buck, despite appearances, was a placid
+person whose bark was worse than his bite.
+
+White's manner, at our first conversational exchanges, was
+entirely that of the butler. From what I came to know of him
+later, I think he took an artistic pride in throwing himself into
+whatever role he had to assume.
+
+At the mention of Smooth Sam Fisher, however, his manner peeled
+off him like a skin, and he began to talk as himself, a racy and
+vigorous self vastly different from the episcopal person he
+thought it necessary to be when on duty.
+
+'White,' I said, 'do you know anything of Smooth Sam Fisher?'
+
+He stared at me. I suppose the question, led up to by no previous
+remark, was unusual.
+
+'I met a gentleman of the name of Buck MacGinnis--he was our
+visitor that night, by the way--and he was full of Sam. Do you
+know him?'
+
+'Buck?'
+
+'Either of them.'
+
+'Well, I've never seen Buck, but I know all about him. There's
+pepper to Buck.'
+
+'So I should imagine. And Sam?'
+
+'You may take it from me that there's more pepper to Sam's little
+finger than there is to Buck's whole body. Sam could make Buck
+look like the last run of shad, if it came to a showdown. Buck's
+just a common roughneck. Sam's an educated man. He's got brains.'
+
+'So I gathered. Well, I'm glad to hear you speak so well of him,
+because that's who I'm supposed to be.'
+
+'How's that?'
+
+'Buck MacGinnis insists that I am Smooth Sam Fisher. Nothing I can
+say will shift him.'
+
+White stared. He had very bright humorous brown eyes. Then he
+began to laugh.
+
+'Well, what do you know about that?' he exclaimed. 'Wouldn't that
+jar you!'
+
+'It would. I may say it did. He called me a hog for wanting to
+keep the Little Nugget to myself, and left threatening to "fix
+me". What would you say the verb "to fix" signified in Mr
+MacGinnis's vocabulary?'
+
+White was still chuckling quietly to himself.
+
+'He's a wonder!' he observed. 'Can you beat it? Taking you for
+Smooth Sam!'
+
+'He said he had never seen Smooth Sam. Have you?'
+
+'Lord, yes.'
+
+'Does he look like me?'
+
+'Not a bit.'
+
+'Do you think he's over here in England?'
+
+'Sam? I know he is.'
+
+'Then Buck MacGinnis was right?'
+
+'Dead right, as far as Sam being on the trail goes. Sam's after
+the Nugget to get him this time. He's tried often enough before,
+but we've been too smart for him. This time he allows he's going
+to bring it off.'
+
+'Then why haven't we seen anything of him? Buck MacGinnis seems to
+be monopolizing the kidnapping industry in these parts.'
+
+'Oh, Sam'll show up when he feels good and ready. You can take it
+from me that Sam knows what he is doing. Sam's a special pet of
+mine. I don't give a flip for Buck MacGinnis.'
+
+'I wish I had your cheery disposition! To me Buck MacGinnis seems
+a pretty important citizen. I wonder what he meant by "fix"?'
+
+White, however, declined to leave the subject of Buck's more
+gifted rival.
+
+'Sam's a college man, you know. That gives him a pull. He has
+brains, and can use them.'
+
+'That was one of the points on which Buck MacGinnis reproached me.
+He said it was not fair to use my superior education.'
+
+He laughed.
+
+'Buck's got no sense. That's why you find him carrying on like a
+porch-climber. It's his only notion of how to behave when he wants
+to do a job. And that's why there's only one man to keep your eye
+on in this thing of the Little Nugget, and that's Sam. I wish you
+could get to know Sam. You'd like him.'
+
+'You seem to look on him as a personal friend. I certainly don't
+like Buck.'
+
+'Oh, Buck!' said White scornfully.
+
+We turned towards the house as the sound of the bell came to us
+across the field.
+
+'Then you think we may count on Sam's arrival, sooner or later, as
+a certainty?' I said.
+
+'Surest thing you know.'
+
+'You will have a busy time.'
+
+'All in the day's work.'
+
+'I suppose I ought to look at it in that way. But I do wish I knew
+exactly what Buck meant by "fix".'
+
+White at last condescended to give his mind to the trivial point.
+
+'I guess he'll try to put one over on you with a sand-bag,' he
+said carelessly. He seemed to face the prospect with calm.
+
+'A sand-bag, eh?' I said. 'It sounds exciting.'
+
+'And feels it. I know. I've had some.'
+
+I parted from him at the door. As a comforter he had failed to
+qualify. He had not eased my mind to the slightest extent.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 7
+
+
+Looking at it now I can see that the days which followed Audrey's
+arrival at Sanstead marked the true beginning of our acquaintanceship.
+Before, during our engagement, we had been strangers, artificially
+tied together, and she had struggled against the chain. But now,
+for the first time, we were beginning to know each other, and were
+discovering that, after all, we had much in common.
+
+It did not alarm me, this growing feeling of comradeship. Keenly
+on the alert as I was for the least sign that would show that I
+was in danger of weakening in my loyalty to Cynthia, I did not
+detect one in my friendliness for Audrey. On the contrary, I was
+hugely relieved, for it seemed to me that the danger was past. I
+had not imagined it possible that I could ever experience towards
+her such a tranquil emotion as this easy friendliness. For the
+last five years my imagination had been playing round her memory,
+until I suppose I had built up in my mind some almost superhuman
+image, some goddess. What I was passing through now, of course,
+though I was unaware of it, was the natural reaction from that
+state of mind. Instead of the goddess, I had found a companionable
+human being, and I imagined that I had effected the change myself,
+and by sheer force of will brought Audrey into a reasonable
+relation to the scheme of things.
+
+I suppose a not too intelligent moth has much the same views with
+regard to the lamp. His last thought, as he enters the flame, is
+probably one of self-congratulation that he has arranged his
+dealings with it on such a satisfactory commonsense basis.
+
+And then, when I was feeling particularly safe and complacent,
+disaster came.
+
+The day was Wednesday, and my 'afternoon off', but the rain was
+driving against the windows, and the attractions of billiards with
+the marker at the 'Feathers' had not proved sufficient to make me
+face the two-mile walk in the storm. I had settled myself in the
+study. There was a noble fire burning in the grate, and the
+darkness lit by the glow of the coals, the dripping of the rain,
+the good behaviour of my pipe, and the reflection that, as I sat
+there, Glossop was engaged downstairs in wrestling with my class,
+combined to steep me in a meditative peace. Audrey was playing the
+piano in the drawing-room. The sound came to me faintly through
+the closed doors. I recognized what she was playing. I wondered if
+the melody had the same associations for her that it had for me.
+
+The music stopped. I heard the drawing-room door open. She came
+into the study.
+
+'I didn't know there was anyone here,' she said. 'I'm frozen. The
+drawing-room fire's out.'
+
+'Come and sit down,' I said. 'You don't mind the smoke?'
+
+I drew a chair up to the fire for her, feeling, as I did so, a
+certain pride. Here I was, alone with her in the firelight, and my
+pulse was regular and my brain cool. I had a momentary vision of
+myself as the Strong Man, the strong, quiet man with the iron grip
+on his emotions. I was pleased with myself.
+
+She sat for some minutes, gazing into the fire. Little spurts of
+flame whistled comfortably in the heart of the black-red coals.
+Outside the storm shrieked faintly, and flurries of rain dashed
+themselves against the window.
+
+'It's very nice in here,' she said at last.
+
+'Peaceful.'
+
+I filled my pipe and re-lit it. Her eyes, seen for an instant in
+the light of the match, looked dreamy.
+
+'I've been sitting here listening to you,' I said. 'I liked that
+last thing you played.'
+
+'You always did.'
+
+'You remember that? Do you remember one evening--no, you
+wouldn't.'
+
+'Which evening?'
+
+'Oh, you wouldn't remember. It's only one particular evening when
+you played that thing. It sticks in my mind. It was at your
+father's studio.'
+
+She looked up quickly.
+
+'We went out afterwards and sat in the park.'
+
+I sat up thrilled.
+
+'A man came by with a dog,' I said.
+
+'Two dogs.'
+
+'One surely!'
+
+'Two. A bull-dog and a fox-terrier.'
+
+'I remember the bull-dog, but--by Jove, you're right. A fox-terrier
+with a black patch over his left eye.'
+
+'Right eye.'
+
+'Right eye. They came up to us, and you--'
+
+'Gave them chocolates.'
+
+I sank back slowly in my chair.
+
+'You've got a wonderful memory,' I said.
+
+She bent over the fire without speaking. The rain rattled on the
+window.
+
+'So you still like my playing, Peter?'
+
+'I like it better than ever; there's something in it now that I
+don't believe there used to be. I can't describe it--something--'
+
+'I think it's knowledge, Peter,' she said quietly. 'Experience.
+I'm five years older than I was when I used to play to you before,
+and I've seen a good deal in those five years. It may not be
+altogether pleasant seeing life, but--well, it makes you play the
+piano better. Experience goes in at the heart and comes out at the
+finger-tips.'
+
+It seemed to me that she spoke a little bitterly.
+
+'Have you had a bad time, Audrey, these last years?' I said.
+
+'Pretty bad.'
+
+'I'm sorry.'
+
+'I'm not--altogether. I've learned a lot.'
+
+She was silent again, her eyes fixed on the fire.
+
+'What are you thinking about?' I said.
+
+'Oh, a great many things.'
+
+'Pleasant?'
+
+'Mixed. The last thing I thought about was pleasant. That was,
+that I am very lucky to be doing the work I am doing now. Compared
+with some of the things I have done--'
+
+She shivered.
+
+'I wish you would tell me about those years, Audrey,' I said.
+'What were some of the things you did?'
+
+She leaned back in her chair and shaded her face from the fire
+with a newspaper. Her eyes were in the shadow.
+
+'Well, let me see. I was a nurse for some time at the Lafayette
+Hospital in New York.'
+
+'That's hard work?'
+
+'Horribly hard. I had to give it up after a while. But--it teaches
+you.... You learn.... You learn--all sorts of things. Realities.
+How much of your own trouble is imagination. You get real trouble
+in a hospital. You get it thrown at you.'
+
+I said nothing. I was feeling--I don't know why--a little
+uncomfortable, a little at a disadvantage, as one feels in the
+presence of some one bigger than oneself.
+
+'Then I was a waitress.'
+
+'A waitress?'
+
+'I tell you I did everything. I was a waitress, and a very bad
+one. I broke plates. I muddled orders. Finally I was very rude to
+a customer and I went on to try something else. I forget what came
+next. I think it was the stage. I travelled for a year with a
+touring company. That was hard work, too, but I liked it. After
+that came dressmaking, which was harder and which I hated. And
+then I had my first stroke of real luck.'
+
+'What was that?'
+
+'I met Mr Ford.'
+
+'How did that happen?'
+
+'You wouldn't remember a Miss Vanderley, an American girl who was
+over in London five or six years ago? My father taught her
+painting. She was very rich, but she was wild at that time to be
+Bohemian. I think that's why she chose Father as a teacher. Well,
+she was always at the studio, and we became great friends, and one
+day, after all these things I have been telling you of, I thought
+I would write to her, and see if she could not find me something
+to do. She was a _dear_.' Her voice trembled, and she lowered
+the newspaper till her whole face was hidden. 'She wanted me to
+come to their home and live on her for ever, but I couldn't have
+that. I told her I must work. So she sent me to Mr Ford, whom the
+Vanderleys knew very well, and I became Ogden's governess.'
+
+'Great Scott!' I cried. 'What!'
+
+She laughed rather shakily.
+
+'I don't think I was a very good governess. I knew next to
+nothing. I ought to have been having a governess myself. But I
+managed somehow.'
+
+'But Ogden?' I said. 'That little fiend, didn't he worry the life
+out of you?'
+
+'Oh, I had luck there again. He happened to take a mild liking to
+me, and he was as good as gold--for him; that's to say, if I
+didn't interfere with him too much, and I didn't. I was horribly
+weak; he let me alone. It was the happiest time I had had for
+ages.'
+
+'And when he came here, you came too, as a sort of ex-governess,
+to continue exerting your moral influence over him?'
+
+She laughed.
+
+'More or less that.'
+
+We sat in silence for a while, and then she put into words the
+thought which was in both our minds.
+
+'How odd it seems, you and I sitting together chatting like this,
+Peter, after all--all these years.'
+
+'Like a dream!'
+
+'Just like a dream ... I'm so glad.... You don't know how I've
+hated myself sometimes for--for--'
+
+'Audrey! You mustn't talk like that. Don't let's think of it.
+Besides, it was my fault.'
+
+She shook her head.
+
+'Well, put it that we didn't understand one another.'
+
+She nodded slowly.
+
+'No, we didn't understand one another.'
+
+'But we do now,' I said. 'We're friends, Audrey.'
+
+She did not answer. For a long time we sat in silence. And then the
+newspaper must have moved--a gleam from the fire fell upon her face,
+lighting up her eyes; and at the sight something in me began to
+throb, like a drum warning a city against danger. The next moment
+the shadow had covered them again.
+
+I sat there, tense, gripping the arms of my chair. I was tingling.
+Something was happening to me. I had a curious sensation of being
+on the threshold of something wonderful and perilous.
+
+From downstairs there came the sound of boys' voices. Work was
+over, and with it this talk by the firelight. In a few minutes
+somebody, Glossop, or Mr Abney, would be breaking in on our
+retreat.
+
+We both rose, and then--it happened. She must have tripped in the
+darkness. She stumbled forward, her hand caught at my coat, and
+she was in my arms.
+
+It was a thing of an instant. She recovered herself, moved to the
+door, and was gone.
+
+But I stood where I was, motionless, aghast at the revelation
+which had come to me in that brief moment. It was the physical
+contact, the feel of her, warm and alive, that had shattered for
+ever that flimsy structure of friendship which I had fancied so
+strong. I had said to Love, 'Thus far, and no farther', and Love
+had swept over me, the more powerful for being checked. The time
+of self-deception was over. I knew myself.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 8
+
+
+I
+
+That Buck MacGinnis was not the man to let the grass grow under
+his feet in a situation like the present one, I would have
+gathered from White's remarks if I had not already done so from
+personal observation. The world is divided into dreamers and men
+of action. From what little I had seen of him I placed Buck
+MacGinnis in the latter class. Every day I expected him to act,
+and was agreeably surprised as each twenty-four hours passed and
+left me still unfixed. But I knew the hour would come, and it did.
+
+I looked for frontal attack from Buck, not subtlety; but, when the
+attack came, it was so excessively frontal that my chief emotion
+was a sort of paralysed amazement. It seemed incredible that such
+peculiarly Wild Western events could happen in peaceful England,
+even in so isolated a spot as Sanstead House.
+
+It had been one of those interminable days which occur only at
+schools. A school, more than any other institution, is dependent
+on the weather. Every small boy rises from his bed of a morning
+charged with a definite quantity of devilry; and this, if he is to
+sleep the sound sleep of health, he has got to work off somehow
+before bedtime. That is why the summer term is the one a master
+longs for, when the intervals between classes can be spent in the
+open. There is no pleasanter sight for an assistant-master at a
+private school than that of a number of boys expending their venom
+harmlessly in the sunshine.
+
+On this particular day, snow had begun to fall early in the
+morning, and, while his pupils would have been only too delighted
+to go out and roll in it by the hour, they were prevented from
+doing so by Mr Abney's strict orders. No schoolmaster enjoys
+seeing his pupils running risks of catching cold, and just then Mr
+Abney was especially definite on the subject. The Saturnalia which
+had followed Mr MacGinnis' nocturnal visit to the school had had
+the effect of giving violent colds to three lords, a baronet, and
+the younger son of an honourable. And, in addition to that, Mr
+Abney himself, his penetrating tenor changed to a guttural croak,
+was in his bed looking on the world with watering eyes. His views,
+therefore, on playing in the snow as an occupation for boys were
+naturally prejudiced.
+
+The result was that Glossop and I had to try and keep order among
+a mob of small boys, none of whom had had any chance of working
+off his superfluous energy. How Glossop fared I can only imagine.
+Judging by the fact that I, who usually kept fair order without
+excessive effort, was almost overwhelmed, I should fancy he fared
+badly. His classroom was on the opposite side of the hall from
+mine, and at frequent intervals his voice would penetrate my door,
+raised to a frenzied fortissimo.
+
+Little by little, however, we had won through the day, and the
+boys had subsided into comparative quiet over their evening
+preparation, when from outside the front door there sounded the
+purring of the engine of a large automobile. The bell rang.
+
+I did not, I remember, pay much attention to this at the moment. I
+supposed that somebody from one of the big houses in the
+neighbourhood had called, or, taking the lateness of the hour into
+consideration, that a motoring party had come, as they did
+sometimes--Sanstead House standing some miles from anywhere in the
+middle of an intricate system of by-roads--to inquire the way to
+Portsmouth or London. If my class had allowed me, I would have
+ignored the sound. But for them it supplied just that break in the
+monotony of things which they had needed. They welcomed it
+vociferously.
+
+A voice: 'Sir, please, sir, there's a motor outside.'
+
+Myself (austerely): T know there's a motor outside. Get on with
+your work.'
+
+Various voices: 'Sir, have you ever ridden in a motor?'
+
+'Sir, my father let me help drive our motor last Easter, sir.'
+
+'Sir, who do you think it is?'
+
+An isolated genius (imitating the engine): 'Pr-prr! Pr-prr! Pr-prr!'
+
+I was on the point of distributing bad marks (the schoolmaster's
+stand-by) broadcast, when a curious sound checked me. It followed
+directly upon the opening of the front door. I heard White's
+footsteps crossing the hall, then the click of the latch, and
+then--a sound that I could not define. The closed door of the
+classroom deadened it, but for all that it was audible. It
+resembled the thud of a falling body, but I knew it could not be
+that, for in peaceful England butlers opening front doors did not
+fall with thuds.
+
+My class, eager listeners, found fresh material in the sound for
+friendly conversation.
+
+'Sir, what was that, sir?'
+
+'Did you hear that, sir?'
+
+'What do you think's happened, sir?'
+
+'Be quiet,' I shouted. 'Will you be--'
+
+There was a quick footstep outside, the door flew open, and on the
+threshold stood a short, sturdy man in a motoring coat and cap.
+The upper part of his face was covered by a strip of white linen,
+with holes for the eyes, and there was a Browning pistol in his
+hand.
+
+It is my belief that, if assistant-masters were allowed to wear
+white masks and carry automatic pistols, keeping order in a school
+would become child's play. A silence such as no threat of bad
+marks had ever been able to produce fell instantaneously upon the
+classroom. Out of the corner of my eye, as I turned to face our
+visitor, I could see small boys goggling rapturously at this
+miraculous realization of all the dreams induced by juvenile
+adventure fiction. As far as I could ascertain, on subsequent
+inquiry, not one of them felt a tremor of fear. It was all too
+tremendously exciting for that. For their exclusive benefit an
+illustration from a weekly paper for boys had come to life, and
+they had no time to waste in being frightened.
+
+As for me, I was dazed. Motor bandits may terrorize France, and
+desperadoes hold up trains in America, but this was peaceful
+England. The fact that Buck MacGinnis was at large in the
+neighbourhood did not make the thing any the less incredible. I
+had looked on my affair with Buck as a thing of the open air and
+the darkness. I had figured him lying in wait in lonely roads,
+possibly, even, lurking about the grounds; but in my most
+apprehensive moments I had not imagined him calling at the front
+door and holding me up with a revolver in my own classroom.
+
+And yet it was the simple, even the obvious, thing for him to do.
+Given an automobile, success was certain. Sanstead House stood
+absolutely alone. There was not even a cottage within half a mile.
+A train broken down in the middle of the Bad Lands was not more
+cut off.
+
+Consider, too, the peculiar helplessness of a school in such a
+case. A school lives on the confidence of parents, a nebulous
+foundation which the slightest breath can destroy. Everything
+connected with it must be done with exaggerated discretion. I do
+not suppose Mr MacGinnis had thought the thing out in all its
+bearings, but he could not have made a sounder move if he had been
+a Napoleon. Where the owner of an ordinary country-house raided by
+masked men can raise the countryside in pursuit, a schoolmaster
+must do precisely the opposite. From his point of view, the fewer
+people that know of the affair the better. Parents are a jumpy
+race. A man may be the ideal schoolmaster, yet will a connection
+with melodrama damn him in the eyes of parents. They do not
+inquire. They are too panic-stricken for that. Golden-haired
+Willie may be receiving the finest education conceivable, yet if
+men with Browning pistols are familiar objects at his shrine of
+learning they will remove him. Fortunately for schoolmasters it is
+seldom that such visitors call upon them. Indeed, I imagine Mr
+MacGinnis's effort to have been the first of its kind.
+
+I do not, as I say, suppose that Buck, whose forte was action
+rather than brain-work, had thought all this out. He had trusted
+to luck, and luck had stood by him. There would be no raising of
+the countryside in his case. On the contrary, I could see Mr Abney
+becoming one of the busiest persons on record in his endeavour to
+hush the thing up and prevent it getting into the papers. The man
+with the pistol spoke. He sighted me--I was standing with my back
+to the mantelpiece, parallel with the door--made a sharp turn, and
+raised his weapon.
+
+'Put 'em up, sport,' he said.
+
+It was not the voice of Buck MacGinnis. I put my hands up.
+
+'Say, which of dese is de Nugget?'
+
+He half turned his head to the class.
+
+'Which of youse kids is Ogden Ford?'
+
+The class was beyond speech. The silence continued.
+
+'Ogden Ford is not here,' I said.
+
+Our visitor had not that simple faith which is so much better than
+Norman blood. He did not believe me. Without moving his head he
+gave a long whistle. Steps sounded outside. Another, short, sturdy
+form, entered the room.
+
+'He ain't in de odder room,' observed the newcomer. 'I been
+rubberin'!'
+
+This was friend Buck beyond question. I could have recognized his
+voice anywhere!
+
+'Well dis guy,' said the man with the pistol, indicating me, 'says
+he ain't here. What's de answer?'
+
+'Why, it's Sam!' said Buck. 'Howdy, Sam? Pleased to see us, huh?
+We're in on de ground floor, too, dis time, all right, all right.'
+
+His words had a marked effect on his colleague.
+
+'Is dat Sam? Hell! Let me blow de head off'n him!' he said, with
+simple fervour; and, advancing a step nearer, he waved his
+disengaged fist truculently. In my role of Sam I had plainly made
+myself very unpopular. I have never heard so much emotion packed
+into a few words.
+
+Buck, to my relief, opposed the motion. I thought this decent of
+Buck.
+
+'Cheese it,' he said curtly.
+
+The other cheesed it. The operation took the form of lowering the
+fist. The pistol he kept in position.
+
+Mr MacGinnis resumed the conduct of affairs.
+
+'Now den, Sam,' he said, 'come across! Where's de Nugget?'
+
+'My name is not Sam,' I said. 'May I put my hands down?'
+
+'Yep, if you want the top of your damn head blown off.'
+
+Such was not my desire. I kept them up.
+
+'Now den, you Sam,' said Mr MacGinnis again, 'we ain't got time to
+burn. Out with it. Where's dat Nugget?'
+
+Some reply was obviously required. It was useless to keep
+protesting that I was not Sam.
+
+'At this time in the evening he is generally working with Mr
+Glossop.'
+
+'Who's Glossop? Dat dough-faced dub in de room over dere?'
+
+'Exactly. You have described him perfectly.'
+
+'Well, he ain't dere. I bin rubberin.' Aw, quit yer foolin', Sam,
+where is he?'
+
+'I couldn't tell you just where he is at the present moment,' I
+said precisely.
+
+'Ahr chee! Let me swot him one!' begged the man with the pistol; a
+most unlovable person. I could never have made a friend of him.
+
+'Cheese it, you!' said Mr MacGinnis.
+
+The other cheesed it once more, regretfully.
+
+'You got him hidden away somewheres, Sam,' said Mr MacGinnis. 'You
+can't fool me. I'm com' t'roo dis joint wit a fine-tooth comb till
+I find him.'
+
+'By all means,' I said. 'Don't let me stop you.'
+
+'You? You're coming wit me.'
+
+'If you wish it. I shall be delighted.'
+
+'An' cut out dat dam' sissy way of talking, you rummy,' bellowed
+Buck, with a sudden lapse into ferocity. 'Spiel like a regular
+guy! Standin' dere, pullin' dat dude stuff on me! Cut it out!'
+
+'Say, why _mayn't_ I hand him one?' demanded the pistol-bearer
+pathetically. 'What's your kick against pushin' his face in?'
+
+I thought the question in poor taste. Buck ignored it.
+
+'Gimme dat canister,' he said, taking the Browning pistol from
+him. 'Now den, Sam, are youse goin' to be good, and come across,
+or ain't you--which?'
+
+'I'd be delighted to do anything you wished, Mr MacGinnis,' I
+said, 'but--'
+
+'Aw, hire a hall!' said Buck disgustedly. 'Step lively, den, an'
+we'll go t'roo de joint. I t'ought youse 'ud have had more sense,
+Sam, dan to play dis fool game when you know you're beat. You--'
+
+Shooting pains in my shoulders caused me to interrupt him.
+
+'One moment,' I said. 'I'm going to put my hands down. I'm getting
+cramp.'
+
+'I'll blow a hole in you if you do!'
+
+'Just as you please. But I'm not armed.'
+
+'Lefty,' he said to the other man, 'feel around to see if he's
+carryin' anyt'ing.'
+
+Lefty advanced and began to tap me scientifically in the
+neighbourhood of my pockets. He grunted morosely the while. I
+suppose, at this close range, the temptation to 'hand me one' was
+almost more than he could bear.
+
+'He ain't got no gun,' he announced gloomily.
+
+'Den youse can put 'em down,' said Mr MacGinnis.
+
+'Thanks,' I said.
+
+'Lefty, youse stay here and look after dese kids. Get a move on,
+Sam.'
+
+We left the room, a little procession of two, myself leading, Buck
+in my immediate rear administering occasional cautionary prods
+with the faithful 'canister'.
+
+
+II
+
+The first thing that met my eyes as we entered the hall was the
+body of a man lying by the front door. The light of the lamp fell
+on his face and I saw that it was White. His hands and feet were
+tied. As I looked at him, he moved, as if straining against his
+bonds, and I was conscious of a feeling of relief. That sound that
+had reached me in the classroom, that thud of a falling body, had
+become, in the light of what had happened later, very sinister. It
+was good to know that he was still alive. I gathered--correctly,
+as I discovered subsequently--that in his case the sand-bag had
+been utilized. He had been struck down and stunned the instant he
+opened the door.
+
+There was a masked man leaning against the wall by Glossop's
+classroom. He was short and sturdy. The Buck MacGinnis gang seemed
+to have been turned out on a pattern. Externally, they might all
+have been twins. This man, to give him a semblance of individuality,
+had a ragged red moustache. He was smoking a cigar with the air of
+the warrior taking his rest.
+
+'Hello!' he said, as we appeared. He jerked a thumb towards the
+classroom. 'I've locked dem in. What's doin', Buck?' he asked,
+indicating me with a languid nod.
+
+'We're going t'roo de joint,' explained Mr MacGinnis. 'De kid
+ain't in dere. Hump yourself, Sam!'
+
+His colleague's languor disappeared with magic swiftness.
+
+'Sam! Is dat Sam? Here, let me beat de block off'n him!'
+
+Few points in this episode struck me as more remarkable than the
+similarity of taste which prevailed, as concerned myself, among
+the members of Mr MacGinnis's gang. Men, doubtless of varying
+opinions on other subjects, on this one point they were unanimous.
+They all wanted to assault me.
+
+Buck, however, had other uses for me. For the present, I was
+necessary as a guide, and my value as such would be impaired were
+the block to be beaten off me. Though feeling no friendlier
+towards me than did his assistants, he declined to allow sentiment
+to interfere with business. He concentrated his attention on the
+upward journey with all the earnestness of the young gentleman who
+carried the banner with the strange device in the poem.
+
+Briefly requesting his ally to cheese it--which he did--he urged
+me on with the nozzle of the pistol. The red-moustached man sank
+back against the wall again with an air of dejection, sucking his
+cigar now like one who has had disappointments in life, while we
+passed on up the stairs and began to draw the rooms on the first
+floor.
+
+These consisted of Mr Abney's study and two dormitories. The study
+was empty, and the only occupants of the dormitories were the
+three boys who had been stricken down with colds on the occasion
+of Mr MacGinnis's last visit. They squeaked with surprise at the
+sight of the assistant-master in such questionable company.
+
+Buck eyed them disappointedly. I waited with something of the
+feelings of a drummer taking a buyer round the sample room.
+
+'Get on,' said Buck.
+
+'Won't one of those do?'
+
+'Hump yourself, Sam.'
+
+'Call me Sammy,' I urged. 'We're old friends now.'
+
+'Don't get fresh,' he said austerely. And we moved on.
+
+The top floor was even more deserted than the first. There was no
+one in the dormitories. The only other room was Mr Abney's; and,
+as we came opposite it, a sneeze from within told of the
+sufferings of its occupant.
+
+The sound stirred Buck to his depths. He 'pointed' at the door
+like a smell-dog.
+
+'Who's in dere?' he demanded.
+
+'Only Mr Abney. Better not disturb him. He has a bad cold.'
+
+He placed a wrong construction on my solicitude for my employer.
+His manner became excited.
+
+'Open dat door, you,' he cried.
+
+'It'll give him a nasty shock.'
+
+'G'wan! Open it!'
+
+No one who is digging a Browning pistol into the small of my back
+will ever find me disobliging. I opened the door--knocking first,
+as a mild concession to the conventions--and the procession passed
+in.
+
+My stricken employer was lying on his back, staring at the
+ceiling, and our entrance did not at first cause him to change
+this position.
+
+'Yes?' he said thickly, and disappeared beneath a huge
+pocket-handkerchief. Muffled sounds, as of distant explosions of
+dynamite, together with earthquake shudderings of the bedclothes,
+told of another sneezing-fit.
+
+'I'm sorry to disturb you,' I began, when Buck, ever the man of
+action, with a scorn of palaver, strode past me, and, having
+prodded with the pistol that part of the bedclothes beneath which
+a rough calculation suggested that Mr Abney's lower ribs were
+concealed, uttered the one word, 'Sa-a-ay!'
+
+Mr Abney sat up like a Jack-in-the-box. One might almost say that
+he shot up. And then he saw Buck.
+
+I cannot even faintly imagine what were Mr Abney's emotions at
+that moment. He was a man who, from boyhood up, had led a quiet
+and regular life. Things like Buck had appeared to him hitherto,
+if they appeared at all, only in dreams after injudicious suppers.
+Even in the ordinary costume of the Bowery gentleman, without such
+adventitious extras as masks and pistols, Buck was no beauty. With
+that hideous strip of dingy white linen on his face, he was a
+walking nightmare.
+
+Mr Abney's eyebrows had risen and his jaw had fallen to their
+uttermost limits. His hair, disturbed by contact with the pillow,
+gave the impression of standing on end. His eyes seemed to bulge
+like a snail's. He stared at Buck, fascinated.
+
+'Say, you, quit rubberin'. Youse ain't in a dime museum. Where's
+dat Ford kid, huh?'
+
+I have set down all Mr MacGinnis's remarks as if they had been
+uttered in a bell-like voice with a clear and crisp enunciation;
+but, in doing so, I have flattered him. In reality, his mode of
+speech suggested that he had something large and unwieldy
+permanently stuck in his mouth; and it was not easy for a stranger
+to follow him. Mr Abney signally failed to do so. He continued to
+gape helplessly till the tension was broken by a sneeze.
+
+One cannot interrogate a sneezing man with any satisfaction to
+oneself. Buck stood by the bedside in moody silence, waiting for
+the paroxysm to spend itself.
+
+I, meanwhile, had remained where I stood, close to the door. And,
+as I waited for Mr Abney to finish sneezing, for the first time
+since Buck's colleague Lefty had entered the classroom the idea of
+action occurred to me. Until this moment, I suppose, the
+strangeness and unexpectedness of these happenings had numbed my
+brain. To precede Buck meekly upstairs and to wait with equal
+meekness while he interviewed Mr Abney had seemed the only course
+open to me. To one whose life has lain apart from such things, the
+hypnotic influence of a Browning pistol is irresistible.
+
+But now, freed temporarily from this influence, I began to think;
+and, my mind making up for its previous inaction by working with
+unwonted swiftness, I formed a plan of action at once.
+
+It was simple, but I had an idea that it would be effective. My
+strength lay in my acquaintance with the geography of Sanstead
+House and Buck's ignorance of it. Let me but get an adequate
+start, and he might find pursuit vain. It was this start which I
+saw my way to achieving.
+
+To Buck it had not yet occurred that it was a tactical error to
+leave me between the door and himself. I supposed he relied too
+implicitly on the mesmeric pistol. He was not even looking at me.
+
+The next moment my fingers were on the switch of the electric
+light, and the room was in darkness.
+
+There was a chair by the door. I seized it and swung it into the
+space between us. Then, springing back, I banged the door and ran.
+
+I did not run without a goal in view. My objective was the study.
+This, as I have explained, was on the first floor. Its window
+looked out on to a strip of lawn at the side of the house ending
+in a shrubbery. The drop would not be pleasant, but I seemed to
+remember a waterspout that ran up the wall close to the window,
+and, in any case, I was not in a position to be deterred by the
+prospect of a bruise or two. I had not failed to realize that my
+position was one of extreme peril. When Buck, concluding the tour
+of the house, found that the Little Nugget was not there--as I had
+reason to know that he would--there was no room for doubt that he
+would withdraw the protection which he had extended to me up to
+the present in my capacity of guide. On me the disappointed fury
+of the raiders would fall. No prudent consideration for their own
+safety would restrain them. If ever the future was revealed to
+man, I saw mine. My only chance was to get out into the grounds,
+where the darkness would make pursuit an impossibility.
+
+It was an affair which must be settled one way or the other in a
+few seconds, and I calculated that it would take Buck just those
+few seconds to win his way past the chair and find the door-handle.
+
+I was right. Just as I reached the study, the door of the bedroom
+flew open, and the house rang with shouts and the noise of feet on
+the uncarpeted landing. From the hall below came answering shouts,
+but with an interrogatory note in them. The assistants were
+willing, but puzzled. They did not like to leave their posts
+without specific instructions, and Buck, shouting as he clattered
+over the bare boards, was unintelligible.
+
+I was in the study, the door locked behind me, before they could
+arrive at an understanding. I sprang to the window.
+
+The handle rattled. Voices shouted. A panel splintered beneath a
+kick, and the door shook on its hinges.
+
+And then, for the first time, I think, in my life, panic gripped
+me, the sheer, blind fear which destroys the reason. It swept over
+me in a wave, that numbing terror which comes to one in dreams.
+Indeed, the thing had become dream-like. I seemed to be standing
+outside myself, looking on at myself, watching myself heave and
+strain with bruised fingers at a window that would not open.
+
+
+III
+
+The arm-chair critic, reviewing a situation calmly and at his
+ease, is apt to make too small allowances for the effect of hurry
+and excitement on the human mind. He is cool and detached. He sees
+exactly what ought to have been done, and by what simple means
+catastrophe might have been averted.
+
+He would have made short work of my present difficulty, I feel
+certain. It was ridiculously simple. But I had lost my head, and
+had ceased for the moment to be a reasoning creature. In the end,
+indeed, it was no presence of mind but pure good luck which saved
+me. Just as the door, which had held out gallantly, gave way
+beneath the attack from outside, my fingers, slipping, struck
+against the catch of the window, and I understood why I had failed
+to raise it.
+
+I snapped the catch back, and flung up the sash. An icy wind swept
+into the room, bearing particles of snow. I scrambled on to the
+window-sill, and a crash from behind me told of the falling of the
+door.
+
+The packed snow on the sill was drenching my knees as I worked my
+way out and prepared to drop. There was a deafening explosion
+inside the room, and simultaneously something seared my shoulder
+like a hot iron. I cried out with the pain of it, and, losing my
+balance, fell from the sill.
+
+There was, fortunately for me, a laurel bush immediately below the
+window, or I should have been undone. I fell into it, all arms and
+legs, in a way which would have meant broken bones if I had struck
+the hard turf. I was on my feet in an instant, shaken and
+scratched and, incidentally, in a worse temper than ever in my
+life before. The idea of flight, which had obsessed me a moment
+before, to the exclusion of all other mundane affairs, had
+vanished absolutely. I was full of fight, I might say overflowing
+with it. I remember standing there, with the snow trickling in
+chilly rivulets down my face and neck, and shaking my fist at the
+window. Two of my pursuers were leaning out of it, while a third
+dodged behind them, like a small man on the outskirts of a crowd.
+So far from being thankful for my escape, I was conscious only of
+a feeling of regret that there was no immediate way of getting at
+them.
+
+They made no move towards travelling the quick but trying route
+which had commended itself to me. They seemed to be waiting for
+something to happen. It was not long before I was made aware of
+what this something was. From the direction of the front door came
+the sound of one running. A sudden diminution of the noise of his
+feet told me that he had left the gravel and was on the turf. I
+drew back a pace or two and waited.
+
+It was pitch dark, and I had no fear that I should be seen. I was
+standing well outside the light from the window.
+
+The man stopped just in front of me. A short parley followed.
+
+'Can'tja see him?'
+
+The voice was not Buck's. It was Buck who answered. And when I
+realized that this man in front of me, within easy reach, on whose
+back I was shortly about to spring, and whose neck I proposed,
+under Providence, to twist into the shape of a corkscrew, was no
+mere underling, but Mr MacGinnis himself, I was filled with a joy
+which I found it hard to contain in silence.
+
+Looking back, I am a little sorry for Mr MacGinnis. He was not a
+good man. His mode of speech was not pleasant, and his manners
+were worse than his speech. But, though he undoubtedly deserved
+all that was coming to him, it was nevertheless bad luck for him
+to be standing just there at just that moment. The reactions after
+my panic, added to the pain of my shoulder, the scratches on my
+face, and the general misery of being wet and cold, had given me a
+reckless fury and a determination to do somebody, whoever happened
+to come along, grievous bodily hurt, such as seldom invades the
+bosoms of the normally peaceful. To put it crisply, I was fighting
+mad, and I looked on Buck as something sent by Heaven.
+
+He had got as far, in his reply, as 'Naw, I can't--' when I
+sprang.
+
+I have read of the spring of the jaguar, and I have seen some very
+creditable flying-tackles made on the football field. My leap
+combined the outstanding qualities of both. I connected with Mr
+MacGinnis in the region of the waist, and the howl he gave as we
+crashed to the ground was music to my ears.
+
+But how true is the old Roman saying, _'Surgit amari aliquid'_.
+Our pleasures are never perfect. There is always something. In the
+programme which I had hastily mapped out, the upsetting of Mr
+MacGinnis was but a small item, a mere preliminary. There were a
+number of things which I had wished to do to him, once upset. But
+it was not to be. Even as I reached for his throat I perceived that
+the light of the window was undergoing an eclipse. A compact form
+had wriggled out on to the sill, as I had done, and I heard the
+grating of his shoes on the wall as he lowered himself for the drop.
+
+There is a moment when the pleasantest functions must come to
+an end. I was loath to part from Mr MacGinnis just when I was
+beginning, as it were, to do myself justice; but it was unavoidable.
+In another moment his ally would descend upon us, like some Homeric
+god swooping from a cloud, and I was not prepared to continue the
+battle against odds.
+
+I disengaged myself--Mr MacGinnis strangely quiescent during the
+process--and was on my feet in the safety of the darkness just as
+the reinforcement touched earth. This time I did not wait. My
+hunger for fight had been appeased to some extent by my brush with
+Buck, and I was satisfied to have achieved safety with honour.
+
+Making a wide detour I crossed the drive and worked my way through
+the bushes to within a few yards of where the automobile stood,
+filling the night with the soft purring of its engines. I was
+interested to see what would be the enemy's next move. It was
+improbable that they would attempt to draw the grounds in search
+of me. I imagined that they would recognize failure and retire
+whence they had come.
+
+I was right. I had not been watching long, before a little group
+advanced into the light of the automobile's lamps. There were four
+of them. Three were walking, the fourth, cursing with the vigour
+and breadth that marks the expert, lying on their arms, of which
+they had made something resembling a stretcher.
+
+The driver of the car, who had been sitting woodenly in his seat,
+turned at the sound.
+
+'Ja get him?' he inquired.
+
+'Get nothing!' replied one of the three moodily. 'De Nugget ain't
+dere, an' we was chasin' Sam to fix him, an' he laid for us, an'
+what he did to Buck was plenty.'
+
+They placed their valuable burden in the tonneau, where he lay
+repeating himself, and two of them climbed in after him. The third
+seated himself beside the driver.
+
+'Buck's leg's broke,' he announced.
+
+'Hell!' said the chauffeur.
+
+No young actor, receiving his first round of applause, could have
+felt a keener thrill of gratification than I did at those words.
+Life may have nobler triumphs than the breaking of a kidnapper's
+leg, but I did not think so then. It was with an effort that I
+stopped myself from cheering.
+
+'Let her go,' said the man in the front seat.
+
+The purring rose to a roar. The car turned and began to move with
+increasing speed down the drive. Its drone grew fainter, and
+ceased. I brushed the snow from my coat and walked to the front
+door.
+
+My first act on entering the house, was to release White. He was
+still lying where I had seen him last. He appeared to have made no
+headway with the cords on his wrists and ankles. I came to his
+help with a rather blunt pocket-knife, and he rose stiffly and
+began to chafe the injured arms in silence.
+
+'They've gone,' I said.
+
+He nodded.
+
+'Did they hit you with a sand-bag?'
+
+He nodded again.
+
+'I broke Buck's leg,' I said, with modest pride.
+
+He looked up incredulously. I related my experiences as briefly
+as possible, and when I came to the part where I made my flying
+tackle, the gloom was swept from his face by a joyful smile. Buck's
+injury may have given its recipient pain, but it was certainly the
+cause of pleasure to others. White's manner was one of the utmost
+enthusiasm as I described the scene.
+
+'That'll hold Buck for a while,' was his comment. 'I guess we
+shan't hear from _him_ for a week or two. That's the best cure
+for the headache I've ever struck.'
+
+He rubbed the lump that just showed beneath his hair. I did not
+wonder at his emotion. Whoever had wielded the sand-bag had done
+his work well, in a manner to cause hard feelings on the part of
+the victim.
+
+I had been vaguely conscious during this conversation of an
+intermittent noise like distant thunder. I now perceived that it
+came from Glossop's classroom, and was caused by the beating of
+hands on the door-panels. I remembered that the red-moustached man
+had locked Glossop and his young charges in. It seemed to me that
+he had done well. There would be plenty of confusion without their
+assistance.
+
+I was turning towards my own classroom when I saw Audrey on the
+stairs and went to meet her.
+
+'It's all right,' I said. 'They've gone.'
+
+'Who was it? What did they want?'
+
+'It was a gentleman named MacGinnis and some friends. They came
+after Ogden Ford, but they didn't get him.'
+
+'Where is he? Where is Ogden?'
+
+Before I could reply, babel broke loose. While we had been
+talking, White had injudiciously turned the key of Glossop's
+classroom which now disgorged its occupants, headed by my
+colleague, in a turbulent stream. At the same moment my own
+classroom began to empty itself. The hall was packed with boys,
+and the din became deafening. Every one had something to say, and
+they all said it at once.
+
+Glossop was at my side, semaphoring violently.
+
+'We must telephone,' he bellowed in my ear, 'for the police.'
+
+Somebody tugged at my arm. It was Audrey. She was saying something
+which was drowned in the uproar. I drew her towards the stairs,
+and we found comparative quiet on the first landing.
+
+'What were you saying?' I asked.
+
+'He isn't there.'
+
+'Who?'
+
+'Ogden Ford. Where is he? He is not in his room. They must have
+taken him.'
+
+Glossop came up at a gallop, springing from stair to stair like
+the chamois of the Alps.
+
+'We must telephone for the police!' he cried.
+
+'I have telephoned,' said Audrey, 'ten minutes ago. They are
+sending some men at once. Mr Glossop, was Ogden Ford in your
+classroom?'
+
+'No, Mrs Sheridan. I thought he was with you, Burns.'
+
+I shook my head.
+
+'Those men came to kidnap him, Mr Glossop,' said Audrey.
+
+'Undoubtedly the gang of scoundrels to which that man the other
+night belonged! This is preposterous. My nerves will not stand
+these repeated outrages. We must have police protection. The
+villains must be brought to justice. I never heard of such a
+thing! In an English school!'
+
+Glossop's eyes gleamed agitatedly behind their spectacles.
+Macbeth's deportment when confronted with Banquo's ghost was
+stolid by comparison. There was no doubt that Buck's visit had
+upset the smooth peace of our happy little community to quite a
+considerable extent.
+
+The noise in the hall had increased rather than subsided. A
+belated sense of professional duty returned to Glossop and myself.
+We descended the stairs and began to do our best, in our
+respective styles, to produce order. It was not an easy task.
+Small boys are always prone to make a noise, even without
+provocation. When they get a genuine excuse like the incursion of
+men in white masks, who prod assistant-masters in the small of the
+back with Browning pistols, they tend to eclipse themselves. I
+doubt whether we should ever have quieted them, had it not been
+that the hour of Buck's visit had chanced to fall within a short
+time of that set apart for the boys' tea, and that the kitchen had
+lain outside the sphere of our visitors' operations. As in many
+English country houses, the kitchen at Sanstead House was at the
+end of a long corridor, shut off by doors through which even
+pistol-shots penetrated but faintly. Our excellent cook had,
+moreover, the misfortune to be somewhat deaf, with the result
+that, throughout all the storm and stress in our part of the
+house, she, like the lady in Goethe's poem, had gone on cutting
+bread and butter; till now, when it seemed that nothing could
+quell the uproar, there rose above it the ringing of the bell.
+
+If there is anything exciting enough to keep the Englishman or the
+English boy from his tea, it has yet to be discovered. The
+shouting ceased on the instant. The general feeling seemed to be
+that inquiries could be postponed till a more suitable occasion,
+but not tea. There was a general movement in the direction of the
+dining-room.
+
+Glossop had already gone with the crowd, and I was about to
+follow, when there was another ring at the front-door bell.
+
+I gathered that this must be the police, and waited. In the
+impending inquiry I was by way of being a star witness. If any one
+had been in the thick of things from the beginning it was myself.
+
+White opened the door. I caught a glimpse of blue uniforms, and
+came forward to do the honours.
+
+There were two of them, no more. In response to our urgent appeal
+for assistance against armed bandits, the Majesty of the Law had
+materialized itself in the shape of a stout inspector and a long,
+lean constable. I thought, as I came to meet them, that they were
+fortunate to have arrived late. I could see Lefty and the
+red-moustached man, thwarted in their designs on me, making
+dreadful havoc among the official force, as here represented.
+
+White, the simple butler once more, introduced us.
+
+'This is Mr Burns, one of the masters at the school,' he said, and
+removed himself from the scene. There never was a man like White
+for knowing his place when he played the butler.
+
+The inspector looked at me sharply. The constable gazed into
+space.
+
+'H'm!' said the inspector.
+
+Mentally I had named them Bones and Johnson. I do not know why,
+except that they seemed to deserve it.
+
+'You telephoned for us,' said Bones accusingly.
+
+'We did.'
+
+'What's the trouble? What--got your notebook?--has been
+happening?'
+
+Johnson removed his gaze from the middle distance and produced a
+notebook.
+
+'At about half past five--' I began.
+
+Johnson moistened his pencil.
+
+'At about half past five an automobile drove up to the front door.
+In it were five masked men with revolvers.'
+
+I interested them. There was no doubt of that. Bones's healthy
+colour deepened, and his eyes grew round. Johnson's pencil raced
+over the page, wobbling with emotion.
+
+'Masked men?' echoed Bones.
+
+'With revolvers,' I said. 'Now aren't you glad you didn't go to
+the circus? They rang the front-door bell; when White opened it,
+they stunned him with a sand-bag. Then--'
+
+Bones held up a large hand.
+
+'Wait!'
+
+I waited.
+
+'Who is White?'
+
+'The butler.'
+
+'I will take his statement. Fetch the butler.'
+
+Johnson trotted off obediently.
+
+Left alone with me, Bones became friendlier and less official.
+
+'This is as queer a start as ever I heard of, Mr Burns,' he said.
+'Twenty years I've been in the force, and nothing like this has
+transpired. It beats cock-fighting. What in the world do you
+suppose men with masks and revolvers was after? First idea I had
+was that you were making fun of me.'
+
+I was shocked at the idea. I hastened to give further details.
+
+'They were a gang of American crooks who had come over to kidnap
+Mr Elmer Ford's son, who is a pupil at the school. You have heard
+of Mr Ford? He is an American millionaire, and there have been
+several attempts during the past few years to kidnap Ogden.'
+
+At this point Johnson returned with White. White told his story
+briefly, exhibited his bruise, showed the marks of the cords on his
+wrists, and was dismissed. I suggested that further conversation
+had better take place in the presence of Mr Abney, who, I imagined,
+would have something to say on the subject of hushing the thing up.
+
+We went upstairs. The broken door of the study delayed us a while
+and led to a fresh spasm of activity on the part of Johnson's
+pencil. Having disposed of this, we proceeded to Mr Abney's room.
+
+Bones's authoritative rap upon the door produced an agitated
+'Who's that?' from the occupant. I explained the nature of the
+visitation through the keyhole and there came from within the
+sound of moving furniture. His one brief interview with Buck had
+evidently caused my employer to ensure against a second by
+barricading himself in with everything he could find suitable for
+the purpose. It was some moments before the way was clear for our
+entrance.
+
+'Cub id,' said a voice at last.
+
+Mr Abney was sitting up in bed, the blankets wrapped tightly about
+him. His appearance was still disordered. The furniture of the
+room was in great confusion, and a poker on the floor by the
+dressing-table showed that he had been prepared to sell his life
+dearly.
+
+'I ab glad to see you, Idspector,' he said. 'Bister Burds, what is
+the expladation of this extraordinary affair?'
+
+It took some time to explain matters to Mr Abney, and more to
+convince Bones and his colleague that, so far from wanting a hue
+and cry raised over the countryside and columns about the affair
+in the papers, publicity was the thing we were anxious to avoid.
+They were visibly disappointed when they grasped the position of
+affairs. The thing, properly advertised, would have been the
+biggest that had ever happened to the neighbourhood, and their
+eager eyes could see glory within easy reach. Mention of a cold
+snack and a drop of beer, however, to be found in the kitchen,
+served to cast a gleam of brightness on their gloom, and they
+vanished in search of it with something approaching cheeriness,
+Johnson taking notes to the last.
+
+They had hardly gone when Glossop whirled into the room in a state
+of effervescing agitation.
+
+'Mr Abney, Ogden Ford is nowhere to be found!'
+
+Mr Abney greeted the information with a prodigious sneeze.
+
+'What do you bead?' he demanded, when the paroxysm was over. He
+turned to me. 'Bister Burds, I understood you to--ah--say that
+the scou'drels took their departure without the boy Ford.'
+
+'They certainly did. I watched them go.'
+
+'I have searched the house thoroughly,' said Glossop, 'and there
+are no signs of him. And not only that, the Boy Beckford cannot be
+found.'
+
+Mr Abney clasped his head in his hands. Poor man, he was in no
+condition to bear up with easy fortitude against this succession
+of shocks. He was like one who, having survived an earthquake, is
+hit by an automobile. He had partly adjusted his mind to the quiet
+contemplation of Mr MacGinnis and friends when he was called upon
+to face this fresh disaster. And he had a cold in the head, which
+unmans the stoutest. Napoleon would have won Waterloo if
+Wellington had had a cold in the head.
+
+'Augustus Beckford caddot be fou'd?' he echoed feebly.
+
+'They must have run away together,' said Glossop.
+
+Mr Abney sat up, galvanized.
+
+'Such a thing has never happened id the school before!' he cried.
+'It has aldways beed my--ah--codstant endeavour to make my boys
+look upod Sadstead House as a happy hobe. I have systebatically
+edcouraged a spirit of cheerful codtedment. I caddot seriously
+credit the fact that Augustus Beckford, one of the bost charbig
+boys it has ever beed by good fortude to have id by charge, has
+deliberately rud away.'
+
+'He must have been persuaded by that boy Ford,' said Glossop,
+'who,' he added morosely, 'I believe, is the devil in disguise.'
+
+Mr Abney did not rebuke the strength of his language. Probably the
+theory struck him as eminently sound. To me there certainly seemed
+something in it.
+
+'Subbthig bust be done at once!' Mr Abney exclaimed. 'It
+is--ah--ibperative that we take ibbediate steps. They bust
+have gone to Londod. Bister Burds, you bust go to Londod by the
+next traid. I caddot go byself with this cold.'
+
+It was the irony of fate that, on the one occasion when duty
+really summoned that champion popper-up-to-London to the
+Metropolis, he should be unable to answer the call.
+
+'Very well,' I said. 'I'll go and look out a train.'
+
+'Bister Glossop, you will be in charge of the school. Perhaps you
+had better go back to the boys dow.'
+
+White was in the hall when I got there.
+
+'White,' I said, 'do you know anything about the trains to
+London?'
+
+'Are you going to London?' he asked, in his more conversational
+manner. I thought he looked at me curiously as he spoke.
+
+'Yes. Ogden Ford and Lord Beckford cannot be found. Mr Abney
+thinks they must have run away to London.'
+
+'I shouldn't wonder,' said White dryly, it seemed to me. There was
+something distinctly odd in his manner. 'And you're going after
+them.'
+
+'Yes. I must look up a train.'
+
+'There is a fast train in an hour. You will have plenty of time.'
+
+'Will you tell Mr Abney that, while I go and pack my bag? And
+telephone for a cab.'
+
+'Sure,' said White, nodding.
+
+I went up to my room and began to put a few things together in a
+suit-case. I felt happy, for several reasons. A visit to London,
+after my arduous weeks at Sanstead, was in the nature of an
+unexpected treat. My tastes are metropolitan, and the vision of an
+hour at a music-hall--I should be too late for the theatres--with
+supper to follow in some restaurant where there was an orchestra,
+appealed to me.
+
+When I returned to the hall, carrying my bag, I found Audrey
+there.
+
+'I'm being sent to London,' I announced.
+
+'I know. White told me. Peter, bring him back.'
+
+'That's why I'm being sent.'
+
+'It means everything to me.'
+
+I looked at her in surprise. There was a strained, anxious
+expression on her face, for which I could not account. I declined
+to believe that anybody could care what happened to the Little
+Nugget purely for that amiable youth's own sake. Besides, as he
+had gone to London willingly, the assumption was that he was
+enjoying himself.
+
+'I don't understand,' I said. 'What do you mean?'
+
+'I'll tell you. Mr Ford sent me here to be near Ogden, to guard
+him. He knew that there was always a danger of attempts being made
+to kidnap him, even though he was brought over to England very
+quietly. That is how I come to be here. I go wherever Ogden goes.
+I am responsible for him. And I have failed. If Ogden is not
+brought back, Mr Ford will have nothing more to do with me. He
+never forgives failures. It will mean going back to the old work
+again--the dressmaking, or the waiting, or whatever I can manage
+to find.' She gave a little shiver. 'Peter, I can't. All the pluck
+has gone out of me. I'm afraid. I couldn't face all that again.
+Bring him back. You must. You will. Say you will.'
+
+I did not answer. I could find nothing to say; for it was I who
+was responsible for all her trouble. I had planned everything. I
+had given Ogden Ford the money that had taken him to London. And
+soon, unless I could reach London before it happened, and prevent
+him, he, with my valet Smith, would be in the Dover boat-train on
+his way to Monaco.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 9
+
+
+I
+
+It was only after many hours of thought that it had flashed upon
+me that the simplest and safest way of removing the Little Nugget
+was to induce him to remove himself. Once the idea had come, the
+rest was simple. The negotiations which had taken place that
+morning in the stable-yard had been brief. I suppose a boy in
+Ogden's position, with his record of narrow escapes from the
+kidnapper, comes to take things as a matter of course which would
+startle the ordinary boy. He assumed, I imagine, that I was the
+accredited agent of his mother, and that the money which I gave
+him for travelling expenses came from her. Perhaps he had been
+expecting something of the sort. At any rate, he grasped the
+essential points of the scheme with amazing promptitude. His
+little hand was extended to receive the cash almost before I had
+finished speaking.
+
+The main outline of my plan was that he should slip away to
+London, during the afternoon, go to my rooms, where he would find
+Smith, and with Smith travel to his mother at Monaco. I had
+written to Smith, bidding him be in readiness for the expedition.
+There was no flaw in the scheme as I had mapped it out, and though
+Ogden had complicated it a little by gratuitously luring away
+Augustus Beckford to bear him company, he had not endangered its
+success.
+
+But now an utterly unforeseen complication had arisen. My one
+desire now was to undo everything for which I had been plotting.
+
+I stood there, looking at her dumbly, hating myself for being the
+cause of the anxiety in her eyes. If I had struck her, I could not
+have felt more despicable. In my misery I cursed Cynthia for
+leading me into this tangle.
+
+I heard my name spoken, and turned to find White at my elbow.
+
+'Mr Abney would like to see you, sir.'
+
+I went upstairs, glad to escape. The tension of the situation had
+begun to tear at my nerves.
+
+'Cub id, Bister Burds,' said my employer, swallowing a lozenge.
+His aspect was more dazed than ever. 'White has just bade
+an--ah--extraordinary cobbudicatiod to me. It seebs he is in
+reality a detective, an employee of Pidkertod's Agedcy, of which
+you have, of course--ah--heard.'
+
+So White had revealed himself. On the whole, I was not surprised.
+Certainly his motive for concealment, the fear of making Mr Abney
+nervous, was removed. An inrush of Red Indians with tomahawks
+could hardly have added greatly to Mr Abney's nervousness at the
+present juncture.
+
+'Sent here by Mr Ford, I suppose?' I said. I had to say something.
+
+'Exactly. Ah--precisely.' He sneezed. 'Bister Ford, without
+codsulting me--I do not cobbedt on the good taste or wisdob of his
+actiod--dispatched White to apply for the post of butler at
+this--ah--house, his predecessor having left at a bobedt's dotice,
+bribed to do so, I strodgly suspect, by Bister Ford himself. I bay
+be wrodging Bister Ford, but do dot thig so.'
+
+I thought the reasoning sound.
+
+'All thad, however,' resumed Mr Abney, removing his face from a
+jug of menthol at which he had been sniffing with the tense
+concentration of a dog at a rabbit-hole, 'is beside the poidt. I
+berely bedtiod it to explaid why White will accompady you to
+London.'
+
+'What!'
+
+The exclamation was forced from me by my dismay. This was
+appalling. If this infernal detective was to accompany me, my
+chance of bringing Ogden back was gone. It had been my intention
+to go straight to my rooms, in the hope of finding him not yet
+departed. But how was I to explain his presence there to White?
+
+'I don't think it's necessary, Mr Abney,' I protested. 'I am sure
+I can manage this affair by myself.'
+
+'Two heads are better thad wud,' said the invalid sententiously,
+burying his features in the jug once more.
+
+'Too many cooks spoil the broth,' I replied. If the conversation
+was to consist of copybook maxims, I could match him as long as he
+pleased.
+
+He did not keep up the intellectual level of the discussion.
+
+'Dodseds!' he snapped, with the irritation of a man whose proverb
+has been capped by another. I had seldom heard him speak so
+sharply. White's revelation had evidently impressed him. He had
+all the ordinary peaceful man's reverence for the professional
+detective.
+
+'White will accompany you, Bister Burds,' he said doggedly.
+
+'Very well,' I said.
+
+After all, it might be that I should get an opportunity of giving
+him the slip. London is a large city.
+
+A few minutes later the cab arrived, and White and I set forth on
+our mission.
+
+We did not talk much in the cab. I was too busy with my thoughts
+to volunteer remarks, and White, apparently, had meditations of
+his own to occupy him.
+
+It was when we had settled ourselves in an empty compartment and
+the train had started that he found speech. I had provided myself
+with a book as a barrier against conversation, and began at once
+to make a pretence of reading, but he broke through my defences.
+
+'Interesting book, Mr Burns?'
+
+'Very,' I said.
+
+'Life's more interesting than books.'
+
+I made no comment on this profound observation. He was not
+discouraged.
+
+'Mr Burns,' he said, after the silence had lasted a few moments.
+
+'Yes?'
+
+'Let's talk for a spell. These train-journeys are pretty slow.'
+
+Again I seemed to detect that curious undercurrent of meaning in
+his voice which I had noticed in the course of our brief exchange
+of remarks in the hall. I glanced up and met his eye. He was
+looking at me in a way that struck me as curious. There was
+something in those bright brown eyes of his which had the effect
+of making me vaguely uneasy. Something seemed to tell me that he
+had a definite motive in forcing his conversation on me.
+
+'I guess I can interest you a heap more than that book, even if
+it's the darndest best seller that was ever hatched.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+He lit a cigarette.
+
+'You didn't want me around on this trip, did you?'
+
+'It seemed rather unnecessary for both of us to go,' I said
+indifferently. 'Still, perhaps two heads are better than one, as
+Mr Abney remarked. What do you propose to do when you get to
+London?'
+
+He bent forward and tapped me on the knee.
+
+'I propose to stick to you like a label on a bottle, sonny,' he
+said. 'That's what I propose to do.'
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+I was finding it difficult, such is the effect of a guilty
+conscience, to meet his eye, and the fact irritated me.
+
+'I want to find out that address you gave the Ford kid this
+morning out in the stable-yard.'
+
+It is strange how really literal figurative expressions are. I had
+read stories in which some astonished character's heart leaped
+into his mouth. For an instant I could have supposed that mine had
+actually done so. The illusion of some solid object blocking up my
+throat was extraordinarily vivid, and there certainly seemed to be
+a vacuum in the spot where my heart should have been. Not for a
+substantial reward could I have uttered a word at that moment. I
+could not even breathe. The horrible unexpectedness of the blow
+had paralysed me.
+
+White, however, was apparently prepared to continue the chat
+without my assistance.
+
+'I guess you didn't know I was around, or you wouldn't have talked
+that way. Well, I was, and I heard every word you said. Here was
+the money, you said, and he was to take it and break for London,
+and go to the address on this card, and your pal Smith would look
+after him. I guess there had been some talk before that, but I
+didn't arrive in time to hear it. But I heard all I wanted, except
+that address. And that's what I'm going to find out when we get to
+London.'
+
+He gave out this appalling information in a rich and soothing
+voice, as if it were some ordinary commonplace. To me it seemed to
+end everything. I imagined I was already as good as under arrest.
+What a fool I had been to discuss such a matter in a place like a
+stable yard, however apparently empty. I might have known that at
+a school there are no empty places.
+
+'I must say it jarred me when I heard you pulling that stuff,'
+continued White. 'I haven't what you might call a childlike faith
+in my fellow-man as a rule, but it had never occurred to me for a
+moment that you could be playing that game. It only shows,' he
+added philosophically, 'that you've got to suspect everybody when
+it comes to a gilt-edged proposition like the Little Nugget.'
+
+The train rattled on. I tried to reduce my mind to working order,
+to formulate some plan, but could not.
+
+Beyond the realization that I was in the tightest corner of my
+life, I seemed to have lost the power of thought.
+
+White resumed his monologue.
+
+'You had me guessing,' he admitted. 'I couldn't figure you out.
+First thing, of course, I thought you must be working in with Buck
+MacGinnis and his crowd. Then all that happened tonight, and I saw
+that, whoever you might be working in with, it wasn't Buck. And
+now I've placed you. You're not in with any one. You're just
+playing it by yourself. I shouldn't mind betting this was your
+first job, and that you saw your chance of making a pile by
+holding up old man Ford, and thought it was better than
+schoolmastering, and grabbed it.'
+
+He leaned forward and tapped me on the knee again. There was
+something indescribably irritating in the action. As one who has
+had experience, I can state that, while to be arrested at all is
+bad, to be arrested by a detective with a fatherly manner is
+maddening.
+
+'See here,' he said, 'we must get together over this business.'
+
+I suppose it was the recollection of the same words in the mouth
+of Buck MacGinnis that made me sit up with a jerk and stare at
+him.
+
+'We'll make a great team,' he said, still in that same cosy voice.
+'If ever there was a case of fifty-fifty, this is it. You've got
+the kid, and I've got you. I can't get away with him without your
+help, and you can't get away with him unless you square me. It's a
+stand-off. The only thing is to sit in at the game together and
+share out. Does it go?'
+
+He beamed kindly on my bewilderment during the space of time it
+takes to select a cigarette and light a match. Then, blowing a
+contented puff of smoke, he crossed his legs and leaned back.
+
+'When I told you I was a Pinkerton's man, sonny,' he said, 'I
+missed the cold truth by about a mile. But you caught me shooting
+off guns in the grounds, and it was up to me to say something.'
+
+He blew a smoke-ring and watched it dreamily till it melted in the
+draught from the ventilator.
+
+'I'm Smooth Sam Fisher,' he said.
+
+
+II
+
+When two emotions clash, the weaker goes to the wall. Any surprise
+I might have felt was swallowed up in my relief. If I had been at
+liberty to be astonished, my companion's information would no
+doubt have astonished me. But I was not. I was so relieved that he
+was not a Pinkerton's man that I did not really care what else he
+might be.
+
+'It's always been a habit of mine, in these little matters,' he
+went on, 'to let other folks do the rough work, and chip in myself
+when they've cleared the way. It saves trouble and expense. I
+don't travel with a gang, like that bone-headed Buck. What's the
+use of a gang? They only get tumbling over each other and spoiling
+everything. Look at Buck! Where is he? Down and out. While I--'
+
+He smiled complacently. His manner annoyed me. I objected to being
+looked upon as a humble cat's paw by this bland scoundrel.
+
+'While you--what?' I said.
+
+He looked at me in mild surprise.
+
+'Why, I come in with you, sonny, and take my share like a
+gentleman.'
+
+'Do you!'
+
+'Well, don't I?'
+
+He looked at me in the half-reproachful half-affectionate manner
+of the kind old uncle who reasons with a headstrong nephew.
+
+'Young man,' he said, 'you surely aren't thinking you can put one
+over on me in this business? Tell me, you don't take me for that
+sort of ivory-skulled boob? Do you imagine for one instant, sonny,
+that I'm not next to every move in this game? Are you deluding
+yourself with the idea that this thing isn't a perfect cinch for
+me? Let's hear what's troubling you. You seem to have gotten some
+foolish ideas in your head. Let's talk it over quietly.'
+
+'If you have no objection,' I said, 'no. I don't want to talk to
+you, Mr Fisher. I don't like you, and I don't like your way of
+earning your living. Buck MacGinnis was bad enough, but at least
+he was a straightforward tough. There's no excuse for you.'
+
+'Surely we are unusually righteous this p.m., are we not?' said
+Sam suavely.
+
+I did not answer.
+
+'Is this not mere professional jealousy?'
+
+This was too much for me.
+
+'Do you imagine for a moment that I'm doing this for money?'
+
+'I did have that impression. Was I wrong? Do you kidnap the sons
+of millionaires for your health?'
+
+'I promised that I would get this boy back to his mother. That is
+why I gave him the money to go to London. And that is why my valet
+was to have taken him to--to where Mrs Ford is.'
+
+He did not reply in words, but if ever eyebrows spoke, his said,
+'My dear sir, really!' I could not remain silent under their
+patent disbelief.
+
+'That's the simple truth,' I said.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, as who would say, 'Have it your own
+way. Let us change the subject.'
+
+'You say "was to have taken". Have you changed your plans?'
+
+'Yes, I'm going to take the boy back to the school.'
+
+He laughed--a rich, rolling laugh. His double chin shook
+comfortably.
+
+'It won't do,' he said, shaking his head with humorous reproach.
+'It won't do.'
+
+'You don't believe me?'
+
+'Frankly, I do not.'
+
+'Very well,' I said, and began to read my book.
+
+'If you want to give me the slip,' he chuckled, 'you must do
+better than that. I can see you bringing the Nugget back to the
+school.'
+
+'You will, if you wait,' I said.
+
+'I wonder what that address was that you gave him,' he mused.
+'Well, I shall soon know.'
+
+He lapsed into silence. The train rolled on. I looked at my watch.
+London was not far off now.
+
+'The present arrangement of equal division,' said Sam, breaking a
+long silence, 'holds good, of course, only in the event of your
+quitting this fool game and doing the square thing by me. Let me
+put it plainly. We are either partners or competitors. It is for
+you to decide. If you will be sensible and tell me that address, I
+will pledge my word--'
+
+'Your word!' I said scornfully.
+
+'Honour among thieves!' replied Sam, with unruffled geniality. 'I
+wouldn't double-cross you for worlds. If, however, you think you
+can manage without my assistance, it will then be my melancholy
+duty to beat you to the kid, and collect him and the money
+entirely on my own account. Am I to take it,' he said, as I was
+silent, 'that you prefer war to an alliance?'
+
+I turned a page of my book and went on reading.
+
+'If Youth but knew!' he sighed. 'Young man, I am nearly twice your
+age, and I have, at a modest estimate, about ten times as much
+sense. Yet, in your overweening self-confidence, with your
+ungovernable gall, you fancy you can hand me a lemon. _Me!_ I
+should smile!'
+
+'Do,' I said. 'Do, while you can.'
+
+He shook his head reprovingly.
+
+'You will not be so fresh, sonny, in a few hours. You will be
+biting pieces out of yourself, I fear. And later on, when my
+automobile splashes you with mud in Piccadilly, you will taste the
+full bitterness of remorse. Well, Youth must buy its experience, I
+suppose!'
+
+I looked across at him as he sat, plump and rosy and complacent,
+puffing at his cigarette, and my heart warmed to the old ruffian.
+It was impossible to maintain an attitude of righteous iciness
+with him. I might loathe his mode of life, and hate him as a
+representative--and a leading representative--of one of the most
+contemptible trades on earth, but there was a sunny charm about
+the man himself which made it hard to feel hostile to him as an
+individual.
+
+I closed my book with a bang and burst out laughing.
+
+'You're a wonder!' I said.
+
+He beamed at what he took to be evidence that I was coming round
+to the friendly and sensible view of the matter.
+
+'Then you think, on consideration--' he said. 'Excellent! Now, my
+dear young man, all joking aside, you will take me with you to
+that address, will you not? You observe that I do not ask you to
+give it to me. Let there be not so much as the faintest odour of
+the double-cross about this business. All I ask is that you allow
+me to accompany you to where the Nugget is hidden, and then rely
+on my wider experience of this sort of game to get him safely away
+and open negotiations with the dad.'
+
+'I suppose your experience has been wide?' I said.
+
+'Quite tolerably--quite tolerably.'
+
+'Doesn't it ever worry you the anxiety and misery you cause?'
+
+'Purely temporary, both. And then, look at it in another way.
+Think of the joy and relief of the bereaved parents when sonny
+comes toddling home again! Surely it is worth some temporary
+distress to taste that supreme happiness? In a sense, you might
+call me a human benefactor. I teach parents to appreciate their
+children. You know what parents are. Father gets caught short in
+steel rails one morning. When he reaches home, what does he do? He
+eases his mind by snapping at little Willie. Mrs Van First-Family
+forgets to invite mother to her freak-dinner. What happens? Mother
+takes it out of William. They love him, maybe, but they are too
+used to him. They do not realize all he is to them. And then, one
+afternoon, he disappears. The agony! The remorse! "How could I
+ever have told our lost angel to stop his darned noise!" moans
+father. "I struck him!" sobs mother. "With this jewelled hand I
+spanked our vanished darling!" "We were not worthy to have him,"
+they wail together. "But oh, if we could but get him back!" Well
+they do. They get him back as soon as ever they care to come
+across in unmarked hundred-dollar bills. And after that they think
+twice before working off their grouches on the poor kid. So I
+bring universal happiness into the home. I don't say father
+doesn't get a twinge every now and then when he catches sight of
+the hole in his bank balance, but, darn it, what's money for if
+it's not to spend?'
+
+He snorted with altruistic fervour.
+
+'What makes you so set on kidnapping Ogden Ford?' I asked. 'I know
+he is valuable, but you must have made your pile by this time. I
+gather that you have been practising your particular brand of
+philanthropy for a good many years. Why don't you retire?'
+
+He sighed.
+
+'It is the dream of my life to retire, young man. You may not
+believe me, but my instincts are thoroughly domestic. When I have
+the leisure to weave day-dreams, they centre around a cosy little
+home with a nice porch and stationary washtubs.'
+
+He regarded me closely, as if to decide whether I was worthy of
+these confidences. There was something wistful in his brown eyes.
+I suppose the inspection must have been favourable, or he was in a
+mood when a man must unbosom himself to someone, for he proceeded
+to open his heart to me. A man in his particular line of business,
+I imagine, finds few confidants, and the strain probably becomes
+intolerable at times.
+
+'Have you ever experienced the love of a good woman, sonny? It's a
+wonderful thing.' He brooded sentimentally for a moment, then
+continued, and--to my mind--somewhat spoiled the impressiveness of
+his opening words. 'The love of a good woman,' he said, 'is about
+the darnedest wonderful lay-out that ever came down the pike. I
+know. I've had some.'
+
+A spark from his cigarette fell on his hand. He swore a startled
+oath.
+
+'We came from the same old town,' he resumed, having recovered
+from this interlude. 'Used to be kids at the same school ...
+Walked to school together ... me carrying her luncheon-basket and
+helping her over the fences ... Ah! ... Just the same when we grew
+up. Still pals. And that was twenty years ago ... The arrangement
+was that I should go out and make the money to buy the home, and
+then come back and marry her.'
+
+'Then why the devil haven't you done it?' I said severely.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+'If you know anything about crooks, young man,' he said, 'you'll
+know that outside of their own line they are the easiest marks that
+ever happened. They fall for anything. At least, it's always been
+that way with me. No sooner did I get together a sort of pile and
+start out for the old town, when some smooth stranger would come
+along and steer me up against some skin-game, and back I'd have to
+go to work. That happened a few times, and when I did manage at
+last to get home with the dough I found she had married another
+guy. It's hard on women, you see,' he explained chivalrously. 'They
+get lonesome and Roving Rupert doesn't show up, so they have to
+marry Stay-at-Home Henry just to keep from getting the horrors.'
+
+'So she's Mrs Stay-at-Home Henry now?' I said sympathetically.
+
+'She was till a year ago. She's a widow now. Deceased had a
+misunderstanding with a hydrophobia skunk, so I'm informed. I
+believe he was a good man. Outside of licking him at school I
+didn't know him well. I saw her just before I left to come here.
+She's as fond of me as ever. It's all settled, if only I can
+connect with the mazuma. And she don't want much, either. Just
+enough to keep the home together.'
+
+'I wish you happiness,' I said.
+
+'You can do better than that. You can take me with you to that
+address.'
+
+I avoided the subject.
+
+'What does she say to your way of making money?' I asked.
+
+'She doesn't know, and she ain't going to know. I don't see why a
+man has got to tell his wife every little thing in his past. She
+thinks I'm a drummer, travelling in England for a dry-goods firm.
+She wouldn't stand for the other thing, not for a minute. She's
+very particular. Always was. That's why I'm going to quit after
+I've won out over this thing of the Little Nugget.' He looked at
+me hopefully. 'So you _will_ take me along, sonny, won't you?'
+
+I shook my head.
+
+'You won't?'
+
+'I'm sorry to spoil a romance, but I can't. You must look around
+for some other home into which to bring happiness. The Fords' is
+barred.'
+
+'You are very obstinate, young man,' he said, sadly, but without
+any apparent ill-feeling. 'I can't persuade you?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Ah, well! So we are to be rivals, not allies. You will regret
+this, sonny. I may say you will regret it very bitterly. When you
+see me in my automo--'
+
+'You mentioned your automobile before.'
+
+'Ah! So I did.'
+
+The train had stopped, as trains always do on English railways
+before entering a terminus. Presently it began to move forward
+hesitatingly, as if saying to itself, 'Now, am I really wanted
+here? Shall I be welcome?' Eventually, after a second halt, it
+glided slowly alongside the platform.
+
+I sprang out and ran to the cab-rank. I was aboard a taxi, bowling
+out of the station before the train had stopped.
+
+Peeping out of the window at the back, I was unable to see Sam. My
+adroit move, I took it, had baffled him. I had left him standing.
+
+It was a quarter of an hour's drive to my rooms, but to me, in my
+anxiety, it seemed more. This was going to be a close thing, and
+success or failure a matter of minutes. If he followed my
+instructions Smith would be starting for the Continental boat-train
+tonight with his companion; and, working out the distances,
+I saw that, by the time I could arrive, he might already have left
+my rooms. Sam's supervision at Sanstead Station had made it
+impossible for me to send a telegram. I had had to trust to
+chance. Fortunately my train, by a miracle, had been up to time,
+and at my present rate of progress I ought to catch Smith a few
+minutes before he left the building.
+
+The cab pulled up. I ran up the stairs and opened the door of my
+apartment.
+
+'Smith!' I called.
+
+A chair scraped along the floor and a door opened at the end of
+the passage. Smith came out.
+
+'Thank goodness you have not started. I thought I should miss you.
+Where is the boy?'
+
+'The boy, sir?'
+
+'The boy I wrote to you about.'
+
+'He has not arrived, sir.'
+
+'Not arrived?'
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+I stared at him blankly.
+
+'How long have you been here?'
+
+'All day, sir.'
+
+'You have not been out?'
+
+'Not since the hour of two, sir.'
+
+'I can't understand it,' I said.
+
+'Perhaps the young gentleman changed his mind and never started,
+sir?'
+
+'I know he started.'
+
+Smith had no further suggestion to offer.
+
+'Pending the young gentleman's arrival, sir, I remain in London?'
+
+A fruity voice spoke at the door behind me.
+
+'What! Hasn't he arrived?'
+
+I turned. There, beaming and benevolent, stood Mr Fisher.
+
+'It occurred to me to look your name out in the telephone
+directory,' he explained. 'I might have thought of that before.'
+
+'Come in here,' I said, opening the door of the sitting-room. I
+did not want to discuss the thing with him before Smith.
+
+He looked about the room admiringly.
+
+'So these are your quarters,' he said. 'You do yourself pretty
+well, young man. So I understand that the Nugget has gone wrong in
+transit. He has altered his plans on the way?'
+
+'I can't understand it.'
+
+'I can! You gave him a certain amount of money?'
+
+'Yes. Enough to get him to--where he was going.'
+
+'Then, knowing the boy, I should say that he has found other uses
+for it. He's whooping it up in London, and, I should fancy, having
+the time of his young life.'
+
+He got up.
+
+'This of course,' he said, 'alters considerably any understanding
+we may have come to, sonny. All idea of a partnership is now out
+of the question. I wish you well, but I have no further use for
+you. Somewhere in this great city the Little Nugget is hiding, and
+I mean to find him--entirely on my own account. This is where our
+paths divide, Mr Burns. Good night.'
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 10
+
+
+When Sam had left, which he did rather in the manner of a heavy
+father in melodrama, shaking the dust of an erring son's threshold
+off his feet, I mixed myself a high-ball, and sat down to consider
+the position of affairs. It did not take me long to see that the
+infernal boy had double-crossed me with a smooth effectiveness
+which Mr Fisher himself might have envied. Somewhere in this great
+city, as Sam had observed, he was hiding. But where? London is a
+vague address.
+
+I wondered what steps Sam was taking. Was there some underground
+secret service bureau to which persons of his profession had
+access? I doubted it. I imagined that he, as I proposed to do, was
+drawing the city at a venture in the hope of flushing the quarry
+by accident. Yet such was the impression he had made upon me as a
+man of resource and sagacity, that I did not relish the idea of
+his getting a start on me, even in a venture so uncertain as this.
+My imagination began to picture him miraculously inspired in the
+search, and such was the vividness of the vision that I jumped up
+from my chair, resolved to get on the trail at once. It was
+hopelessly late, however, and I did not anticipate that I should
+meet with any success.
+
+Nor did I. For two hours and a half I tramped the streets, my
+spirits sinking more and more under the influence of failure and a
+blend of snow and sleet which had begun to fall; and then, tired
+out, I went back to my rooms, and climbed sorrowfully into bed.
+
+It was odd to wake up and realize that I was in London. Years
+seemed to have passed since I had left it. Time is a thing of
+emotions, not of hours and minutes, and I had certainly packed a
+considerable number of emotional moments into my stay at Sanstead
+House. I lay in bed, reviewing the past, while Smith, with a
+cheerful clatter of crockery, prepared my breakfast in the next
+room.
+
+A curious lethargy had succeeded the feverish energy of the
+previous night. More than ever the impossibility of finding the
+needle in this human bundle of hay oppressed me. No one is
+optimistic before breakfast, and I regarded the future with dull
+resignation, turning my thoughts from it after a while to the
+past. But the past meant Audrey, and to think of Audrey hurt.
+
+It seemed curious to me that in a life of thirty years I should
+have been able to find, among the hundreds of women I had met,
+only one capable of creating in me that disquieting welter of
+emotions which is called love, and hard that that one should
+reciprocate my feeling only to the extent of the mild liking which
+Audrey entertained for me.
+
+I tried to analyse her qualifications for the place she held in my
+heart. I had known women who had attracted me more physically, and
+women who had attracted me more mentally. I had known wiser women,
+handsomer women, more amiable women, but none of them had affected
+me like Audrey. The problem was inexplicable. Any idea that we
+might be affinities, soul-mates destined for each other from the
+beginning of time, was disposed of by the fact that my attraction
+for her was apparently in inverse ratio to hers for me. For
+possibly the millionth time in the past five years I tried to
+picture in my mind the man Sheridan, that shadowy wooer to whom
+she had yielded so readily. What quality had he possessed that I
+did not? Wherein lay the magnetism that had brought about his
+triumph?
+
+These were unprofitable speculations. I laid them aside until the
+next occasion when I should feel disposed for self-torture, and
+got out of bed. A bath and breakfast braced me up, and I left the
+house in a reasonably cheerful frame of mind.
+
+To search at random for an individual unit among London's millions
+lends an undeniable attraction to a day in town. In a desultory
+way I pursued my investigations through the morning and afternoon,
+but neither of Ogden nor of his young friend Lord Beckford was I
+vouchsafed a glimpse. My consolation was that Smooth Sam was
+probably being equally unsuccessful.
+
+Towards the evening there arose the question of return to
+Sanstead. I had not gathered whether Mr Abney had intended to set
+any time-limit on my wanderings, or whether I was not supposed to
+come back except with the deserters. I decided that I had better
+remain in London, at any rate for another night, and went to the
+nearest post office to send Mr Abney a telegram to that effect.
+
+As I was writing it, the problem which had baffled me for twenty-four
+hours, solved itself in under a minute. Whether my powers of
+inductive reasoning had been under a cloud since I left Sanstead,
+or whether they were normally beneath contempt, I do not know. But
+the fact remains, that I had completely overlooked the obvious
+solution of my difficulty. I think I must have been thinking so
+exclusively of the Little Nugget that I had entirely forgotten the
+existence of Augustus Beckford. It occurred to me now that, by
+making inquiries at the latter's house, I should learn something
+to my advantage. A boy of the Augustus type does not run away from
+school without a reason. Probably some party was taking place
+tonight at the ancestral home, at which, tempted by the lawless
+Nugget, he had decided that his presence was necessary.
+
+I knew the house well. There had been a time, when Lord Mountry
+and I were at Oxford, when I had spent frequent week-ends there.
+Since then, owing to being abroad, I had seen little of the
+family. Now was the moment to reintroduce myself. I hailed a cab.
+
+Inductive reasoning had not played me false. There was a red
+carpet outside the house, and from within came the sounds of
+music.
+
+Lady Wroxham, the mother of Mountry and the vanishing Augustus,
+was one of those women who take things as they come. She did not
+seem surprised at seeing me.
+
+'How nice of you to come and see us,' she said. 'Somebody told me
+you were abroad. Ted is in the south of France in the yacht.
+Augustus is here. Mr Abney, his schoolmaster, let him come up for
+the night.'
+
+I perceived that Augustus had been playing a bold game. I saw the
+coaching of Ogden behind these dashing falsehoods.
+
+'You will hardly remember Sybil. She was quite a baby when you
+were here last. She is having her birthday-party this evening.'
+
+'May I go in and help?' I said.
+
+'I wish you would. They would love it.'
+
+I doubted it, but went in. A dance had just finished. Strolling
+towards me in his tightest Eton suit, his face shining with honest
+joy, was the errant Augustus, and close behind him, wearing the
+blase' air of one for whom custom has staled the pleasures of life,
+was the Little Nugget.
+
+I think they both saw me at the same moment. The effect of my
+appearance on them was illustrative of their respective characters.
+Augustus turned a deep shade of purple and fixed me with a
+horrified stare. The Nugget winked. Augustus halted and shuffled
+his feet. The Nugget strolled up and accosted me like an old
+friend.
+
+'Hello!' he said. 'How did you get here? Say, I was going to try
+and get you on the phone some old time and explain things. I've
+been pretty much on the jump since I hit London.'
+
+'You little brute!'
+
+My gleaming eye, travelling past him, met that of the Hon.
+Augustus Beckford, causing that youth to jump guiltily. The Nugget
+looked over his shoulder.
+
+'I guess we don't want him around if we're to talk business,' he
+said. 'I'll go and tell him to beat it.'
+
+'You'll do nothing of the kind. I don't propose to lose sight of
+either of you.'
+
+'Oh, he's all right. You don't have to worry about him. He was
+going back to the school anyway tomorrow. He only ran away to go
+to this party. Why not let him enjoy himself while he's here? I'll
+go and make a date for you to meet at the end of the show.'
+
+He approached his friend, and a short colloquy ensued, which ended
+in the latter shuffling off in the direction of the other
+revellers. Such is the buoyancy of youth that a moment later he
+was dancing a two-step with every appearance of careless enjoyment.
+The future, with its storms, seemed to have slipped from his mind.
+
+'That's all right,' said the Nugget, returning to me. 'He's
+promised he won't duck away. You'll find him somewhere around
+whenever you care to look for him. Now we can talk.'
+
+'I hardly like to trespass on your valuable time,' I said. The
+airy way in which this demon boy handled what should have been--to
+him--an embarrassing situation irritated me. For all the authority
+I seemed to have over him I might have been the potted palm
+against which he was leaning.
+
+'That's all right.' Everything appeared to be all right with him.
+'This sort of thing does not appeal to me. Don't be afraid of
+spoiling my evening. I only came because Becky was so set on it.
+Dancing bores me pallid, so let's get somewhere where we can sit
+down and talk.'
+
+I was beginning to feel that a children's party was the right
+place for me. Sam Fisher had treated me as a child, and so did the
+Little Nugget. That I was a responsible person, well on in my
+thirty-first year, with a narrow escape from death and a hopeless
+love-affair on my record, seemed to strike neither of them. I
+followed my companion to a secluded recess with the utmost
+meekness.
+
+He leaned back and crossed his legs.
+
+'Got a cigarette?'
+
+'I have not got a cigarette, and, if I had, I wouldn't give it to
+you.'
+
+He regarded me tolerantly.
+
+'Got a grouch tonight, haven't you? You seem all flittered up
+about something. What's the trouble? Sore about my not showing up
+at your apartment? I'll explain that all right.'
+
+'I shall be glad to listen.'
+
+'It's like this. It suddenly occurred to me that a day or two one
+way or the other wasn't going to affect our deal and that, while I
+was about it, I might just as well see a bit of London before I
+left. I suggested it to Becky, and the idea made the biggest kind
+of a hit with him. I found he had only been in an automobile once
+in his life. Can you beat it? I've had one of my own ever since
+I was a kid. Well, naturally, it was up to me to blow him to a
+joy-ride, and that's where the money went.'
+
+'Where the money went?'
+
+'Sure. I've got two dollars left, and that's all. It wasn't
+altogether the automobiling. It was the meals that got away with
+my roll. Say, that kid Beckford is one swell feeder. He's wrapping
+himself around the eats all the time. I guess it's not smoking
+that does it. I haven't the appetite I used to have. Well, that's
+how it was, you see. But I'm through now. Cough up the fare and
+I'll make the trip tomorrow. Mother'll be tickled to death to see
+me.'
+
+'She won't see you. We're going back to the school tomorrow.'
+
+He looked at me incredulously.
+
+'What's that? Going back to school?'
+
+'I've altered my plans.'
+
+'I'm not going back to any old school. You daren't take me.
+Where'll you be if I tell the hot-air merchant about our deal and
+you slipping me the money and all that?'
+
+'Tell him what you like. He won't believe it.'
+
+He thought this over, and its truth came home to him. The
+complacent expression left his face.
+
+'What's the matter with you? Are you dippy, or what? You get me
+away up to London, and the first thing that happens when I'm here
+is that you want to take me back. You make me tired.'
+
+It was borne in upon me that there was something in his point of
+view. My sudden change of mind must have seemed inexplicable to
+him. And, having by a miracle succeeded in finding him, I was in a
+mood to be generous. I unbent.
+
+'Ogden, old sport,' I said cordially, T think we've both had all
+we want of this children's party. You're bored and if I stop on
+another half hour I may be called on to entertain these infants
+with comic songs. We men of the world are above this sort of
+thing. Get your hat and coat and I'll take you to a show. We can
+discuss business later over a bit of supper.'
+
+The gloom of his countenance melted into a pleased smile.
+
+'You said something that time!' he observed joyfully; and we slunk
+away to get our hats, the best of friends. A note for Augustus
+Beckford, requesting his presence at Waterloo Station at ten
+minutes past twelve on the following morning, I left with the
+butler. There was a certain informality about my methods which I
+doubt if Mr Abney would have approved, but I felt that I could
+rely on Augustus.
+
+Much may be done by kindness. By the time the curtain fell on the
+musical comedy which we had attended all was peace between the
+Nugget and myself. Supper cemented our friendship, and we drove
+back to my rooms on excellent terms with one another. Half an hour
+later he was snoring in the spare room, while I smoked contentedly
+before the fire in the sitting-room.
+
+I had not been there five minutes when the bell rang. Smith was in
+bed, so I went to the door myself and found Mr Fisher on the mat.
+
+My feeling of benevolence towards all created things, the result
+of my successful handling of the Little Nugget, embraced Sam. I
+invited him in.
+
+'Well,' I said, when I had given him a cigar and filled his glass,
+'and how have you been getting on, Mr Fisher? Any luck?'
+
+He shook his head at me reproachfully.
+
+'Young man, you're deep. I've got to hand it to you. I
+underestimated you. You're very deep.'
+
+'Approbation from Smooth Sam Fisher is praise indeed. But why
+these stately compliments?'
+
+'You took me in, young man. I don't mind owning it. When you told
+me the Nugget had gone astray, I lapped it up like a babe. And all
+the time you were putting one over on me. Well, well!'
+
+'But he had gone astray, Mr Fisher.'
+
+He knocked the ash off his cigar. He wore a pained look.
+
+'You needn't keep it up, sonny. I happened to be standing within
+three yards of you when you got into a cab with him in Shaftesbury
+Avenue.'
+
+I laughed.
+
+'Well, if that's the case, let there be no secrets between us.
+He's asleep in the next room.'
+
+Sam leaned forward earnestly and tapped me on the knee.
+
+'Young man, this is a critical moment. This is where, if you
+aren't careful, you may undo all the good work you have done by
+getting chesty and thinking that, because you've won out so far,
+you're the whole show. Believe me, the difficult part is to come,
+and it's right here that you need an experienced man to work in
+with you. Let me in on this and leave the negotiations with old
+man Ford to me. You would only make a mess of them. I've handled
+this kind of thing a dozen times, and I know just how to act. You
+won't regret taking me on as a partner. You won't lose a cent by
+it. I can work him for just double what you would get, even
+supposing you didn't make a mess of the deal and get nothing.'
+
+'It's very good of you, but there won't be any negotiations with
+Mr Ford. I am taking the boy back to Sanstead, as I told you.' I
+caught his pained eye. 'I'm afraid you don't believe me.'
+
+He drew at his cigar without replying.
+
+It is a human weakness to wish to convince those who doubt us,
+even if their opinion is not intrinsically valuable. I remembered
+that I had Cynthia's letter in my pocket. I produced it as exhibit
+A in my evidence and read it to him.
+
+Sam listened carefully.
+
+'I see,' he said. 'Who wrote that?'
+
+'Never mind. A friend of mine.'
+
+I returned the letter to my pocket.
+
+'I was going to have sent him over to Monaco, but I altered my
+plans. Something interfered.'
+
+'What?'
+
+'I might call it coincidence, if you know what that means.'
+
+'And you are really going to take him back to the school?'
+
+'I am.'
+
+'We shall travel back together,' he said. 'I had hoped I had seen
+the last of the place. The English countryside may be delightful
+in the summer, but for winter give me London. However,' he sighed
+resignedly, and rose from his chair, 'I will say good-bye till
+tomorrow. What train do you catch?'
+
+'Do you mean to say,' I demanded, 'that you have the nerve to come
+back to Sanstead after what you have told me about yourself?'
+
+'You entertain some idea of exposing me to Mr Abney? Forget it,
+young man. We are both in glass houses. Don't let us throw stones.
+Besides, would he believe it? What proof have you?'
+
+I had thought this argument tolerably sound when I had used it on
+the Nugget. Now that it was used on myself I realized its
+soundness even more thoroughly. My hands were tied.
+
+'Yes,' said Sam, 'tomorrow, after our little jaunt to London, we
+shall all resume the quiet, rural life once more.'
+
+He beamed expansively upon me from the doorway.
+
+'However, even the quiet, rural life has its interest. I guess we
+shan't be dull!' he said.
+
+I believed him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 11
+
+
+Considering the various handicaps under which he laboured notably
+a cold in the head, a fear of the Little Nugget, and a reverence
+for the aristocracy--Mr Abney's handling of the situation, when
+the runaways returned to school, bordered on the masterly. Any sort
+of physical punishment being out of the question--especially in the
+case of the Nugget, who would certainly have retaliated with a bout
+of window-breaking--he had to fall back on oratory, and he did this
+to such effect that, when he had finished, Augustus wept openly and
+was so subdued that he did not ask a single question for nearly three
+days.
+
+One result of the adventure was that Ogden's bed was moved to a
+sort of cubby-hole adjoining my room. In the house, as originally
+planned, this had evidently been a dressing-room. Under Mr Abney's
+rule it had come to be used as a general repository for lumber. My
+boxes were there, and a portmanteau of Glossop's. It was an
+excellent place in which to bestow a boy in quest of whom
+kidnappers might break in by night. The window was too small to
+allow a man to pass through, and the only means of entrance was by
+way of my room. By night, at any rate, the Nugget's safety seemed
+to be assured.
+
+The curiosity of the small boy, fortunately, is not lasting. His
+active mind lives mainly in the present. It was not many days,
+therefore, before the excitement caused by Buck's raid and the
+Nugget's disappearance began to subside. Within a week both
+episodes had been shelved as subjects of conversation, and the
+school had settled down to its normal humdrum life.
+
+To me, however, there had come a period of mental unrest more
+acute than I had ever experienced. My life, for the past five
+years, had run in so smooth a stream that, now that I found myself
+tossed about in the rapids, I was bewildered. It was a peculiar
+aggravation of the difficulty of my position that in my world, the
+little world of Sanstead House, there should be but one woman, and
+she the very one whom, if I wished to recover my peace of mind, it
+was necessary for me to avoid.
+
+My feelings towards Cynthia at this time defied my powers of
+analysis. There were moments when I clung to the memory of her,
+when she seemed the only thing solid and safe in a world of chaos,
+and moments, again, when she was a burden crushing me. There were
+days when I would give up the struggle and let myself drift, and
+days when I would fight myself inch by inch. But every day found
+my position more hopeless than the last.
+
+At night sometimes, as I lay awake, I would tell myself that if
+only I could see her or even hear from her the struggle would be
+easier. It was her total disappearance from my life that made it
+so hard for me. I had nothing to help me to fight.
+
+And then, one morning, as if in answer to my thoughts her letter
+came.
+
+The letter startled me. It was as if there had been some
+telepathic communion between us.
+
+It was very short, almost formal:
+
+'MY DEAR PETER--I want to ask you a question. I can put it quite
+shortly. It is this. Are your feelings towards me still the same?
+I don't tell you why I ask this. I simply ask it. Whatever your
+answer is, it cannot affect our friendship, so be quite candid.
+CYNTHIA.'
+
+I sat down there and then to write my reply. The letter, coming
+when it did and saying what it said, had affected me profoundly.
+It was like an unexpected reinforcement in a losing battle. It
+filled me with a glow of self-confidence. I felt strong again,
+able to fight and win. My mood bore me away, and I poured out my
+whole heart to her. I told her that my feelings had not altered,
+that I loved her and nobody but her. It was a letter, I can see,
+looking back, born of fretted nerves; but at the time I had no
+such criticism to make. It seemed to me a true expression of my
+real feelings.
+
+That the fight was not over because in my moment of exaltation I
+had imagined that I had conquered myself was made uncomfortably
+plain to me by the thrill that ran through me when, returning from
+posting my letter, I met Audrey. The sight of her reminded me that
+a reinforcement is only a reinforcement, a help towards victory,
+not victory itself.
+
+For the first time I found myself feeling resentful towards her.
+There was no reason in my resentment. It would not have borne
+examination. But it was there, and its presence gave me support. I
+found myself combating the thrill the sight of her had caused, and
+looking at her with a critical and hostile eye. Who was she that
+she should enslave a man against his will? Fascination exists only
+in the imagination of the fascinated. If he have the strength to
+deny the fascination and convince himself that it does not exist,
+he is saved. It is purely a matter of willpower and calm
+reasonableness. There must have been sturdy, level-headed Egyptian
+citizens who could not understand what people saw to admire in
+Cleopatra.
+
+Thus reasoning, I raised my hat, uttered a crisp 'Good morning',
+and passed on, the very picture of the brisk man of affairs.
+
+'Peter!'
+
+Even the brisk man of affairs must stop when spoken to. Otherwise,
+apart from any question of politeness, it looks as if he were
+running away.
+
+Her face was still wearing the faint look of surprise which my
+manner had called forth.
+
+'You're in a great hurry.'
+
+I had no answer. She did not appear to expect one.
+
+We moved towards the house in silence, to me oppressive silence.
+The force of her personality was beginning to beat against my
+defences, concerning the stability of which, under pressure, a
+certain uneasiness troubled my mind.
+
+'Are you worried about anything, Peter?' she said at last.
+
+'No,' I said. 'Why?'
+
+'I was afraid you might be.'
+
+I felt angry with myself. I was mismanaging this thing in the most
+idiotic way. Instead of this bovine silence, gay small-talk, the
+easy eloquence, in fact, of the brisk man of affairs should have
+been my policy. No wonder Smooth Sam Fisher treated me as a child.
+My whole bearing was that of a sulky school-boy.
+
+The silence became more oppressive.
+
+We reached the house. In the hall we parted, she to upper regions,
+I to my classroom. She did not look at me. Her face was cold and
+offended.
+
+One is curiously inconsistent. Having created what in the
+circumstances was a most desirable coldness between Audrey and
+myself, I ought to have been satisfied. Reason told me that this
+was the best thing that could have happened. Yet joy was one of
+the few emotions which I did not feel during the days which
+followed. My brief moment of clear-headedness had passed, and with
+it the exhilaration that had produced the letter to Cynthia and
+the resentment which had helped me to reason calmly with myself on
+the intrinsic nature of fascination in woman. Once more Audrey
+became the centre of my world. But our friendship, that elusive
+thing which had contrived to exist side by side with my love, had
+vanished. There was a breach between us which widened daily. Soon
+we hardly spoke.
+
+Nothing, in short, could have been more eminently satisfactory,
+and the fact that I regretted it is only a proof of the essential
+weakness of my character.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 12
+
+
+I
+
+In those grey days there was one thought, of the many that
+occupied my mind, which brought with it a certain measure of
+consolation. It was the reflection that this state of affairs
+could not last for ever. The school term was drawing to a close.
+Soon I should be free from the propinquity which paralysed my
+efforts to fight. I was resolved that the last day of term should
+end for ever my connection with Sanstead House and all that was in
+it. Mrs Ford must find some other minion. If her happiness
+depended on the recovery of the Little Nugget, she must learn to
+do without happiness, like the rest of the inhabitants of this
+horrible world.
+
+Meanwhile, however, I held myself to be still on duty. By what
+tortuous processes of thought I had arrived at the conclusion I do
+not know, but I considered myself responsible to Audrey for the
+safeguarding of the Little Nugget, and no altered relations
+between us could affect my position. Perhaps mixed up with this
+attitude of mind, was the less altruistic wish to foil Smooth Sam.
+His continued presence at the school was a challenge to me.
+
+Sam's behaviour puzzled me. I do not know exactly what I expected
+him to do, but I certainly did not expect him to do nothing. Yet
+day followed day, and still he made no move. He was the very model
+of a butler. But our dealings with one another in London had left
+me vigilant, and his inaction did not disarm me. It sprang from
+patience, not from any weakening of purpose or despair of success.
+Sooner or later I knew he would act, swiftly and suddenly, with a
+plan perfected in every detail.
+
+But when he made his attack it was the very simplicity of his
+methods that tricked me, and only pure chance defeated him.
+
+I have said that it was the custom of the staff of masters at
+Sanstead House School--in other words, of every male adult in the
+house except Mr Fisher himself--to assemble in Mr Abney's study
+after dinner of an evening to drink coffee. It was a ceremony,
+like most of the ceremonies at an establishment such as a school,
+where things are run on a schedule, which knew of no variation.
+Sometimes Mr Abney would leave us immediately after the ceremony,
+but he never omitted to take his part in it first.
+
+On this particular evening, for the first time since the beginning
+of the term, I was seized with a prejudice against coffee. I had
+been sleeping badly for several nights, and I decided that
+abstention from coffee might remedy this.
+
+I waited, for form's sake, till Glossop and Mr Abney had filled
+their cups, then went to my room, where I lay down in the dark to
+wrestle with a more than usually pronounced fit of depression
+which had descended upon me. Solitude and darkness struck me as
+the suitable setting for my thoughts.
+
+At this moment Smooth Sam Fisher had no place in my meditations.
+My mind was not occupied with him at all. When, therefore, the
+door, which had been ajar, began to open slowly, I did not become
+instantly on the alert. Perhaps it was some sound, barely audible,
+that aroused me from my torpor and set my blood tingling with
+anticipation. Perhaps it was the way the door was opening. An
+honest draught does not move a door furtively, in jerks.
+
+I sat up noiseless, tense, and alert. And then, very quietly,
+somebody entered the room.
+
+There was only one person in Sanstead House who would enter a room
+like that. I was amused. The impudence of the thing tickled me. It
+seemed so foreign to Mr Fisher's usual cautious methods. This
+strolling in and helping oneself was certainly kidnapping _de
+luxe_. In the small hours I could have understood it; but at
+nine o'clock at night, with Glossop, Mr Abney and myself awake and
+liable to be met at any moment on the stairs, it was absurd. I
+marvelled at Smooth Sam's effrontery.
+
+I lay still. I imagined that, being in, he would switch on the
+electric light. He did, and I greeted him pleasantly.
+
+'And what can I do for _you_, Mr Fisher?'
+
+For a man who had learned to control himself in difficult
+situations he took the shock badly. He uttered a startled
+exclamation and spun round, open-mouthed.
+
+I could not help admiring the quickness with which he recovered
+himself. Almost immediately he was the suave, chatty Sam Fisher
+who had unbosomed his theories and dreams to me in the train to
+London.
+
+'I quit,' he said pleasantly. 'The episode is closed. I am a man
+of peace, and I take it that you would not keep on lying quietly
+on that bed while I went into the other room and abstracted our
+young friend? Unless you have changed your mind again, would a
+fifty-fifty offer tempt you?'
+
+'Not an inch.'
+
+'Just so. I merely asked.'
+
+'And how about Mr Abney, in any case? Suppose we met him on the
+stairs?'
+
+'We should not meet him on the stairs,' said Sam confidently. 'You
+did not take coffee tonight, I gather?'
+
+'I didn't--no. Why?'
+
+He jerked his head resignedly.
+
+'Can you beat it! I ask you, young man, could I have foreseen
+that, after drinking coffee every night regularly for two months,
+you would pass it up tonight of all nights? You certainly are my
+jinx, sonny. You have hung the Indian sign on me all right.'
+
+His words had brought light to me.
+
+'Did you drug the coffee?'
+
+'Did I! I fixed it so that one sip would have an insomnia patient
+in dreamland before he had time to say "Good night". That stuff
+Rip Van Winkle drank had nothing on my coffee. And all wasted!
+Well, well!'
+
+He turned towards the door.
+
+'Shall I leave the light on, or would you prefer it off?'
+
+'On please. I might fall asleep in the dark.'
+
+'Not you! And, if you did, you would dream that I was there, and
+wake up. There are moments, young man, when you bring me pretty
+near to quitting and taking to honest work.'
+
+He paused.
+
+'But not altogether. I have still a shot or two in my locker. We
+shall see what we shall see. I am not dead yet. Wait!'
+
+'I will, and some day, when I am walking along Piccadilly, a
+passing automobile will splash me with mud. A heavily furred
+plutocrat will stare haughtily at me from the tonneau, and with a
+start of surprise I shall recognize--'
+
+'Stranger things have happened. Be flip while you can, sonny. You
+win so far, but this hoodoo of mine can't last for ever.'
+
+He passed from the room with a certain sad dignity. A moment later
+he reappeared.
+
+'A thought strikes me,' he said. 'The fifty-fifty proposition does
+not impress you. Would it make things easier if I were to offer my
+cooperation for a mere quarter of the profit?'
+
+'Not in the least.'
+
+'It's a handsome offer.'
+
+'Wonderfully. I'm afraid I'm not dealing on any terms.'
+
+He left the room, only to return once more. His head appeared,
+staring at me round the door, in a disembodied way, like the
+Cheshire Cat.
+
+'You won't say later on I didn't give you your chance?' he said
+anxiously.
+
+He vanished again, permanently this time. I heard his steps
+passing down the stairs.
+
+
+II
+
+We had now arrived at the last week of term, at the last days of
+the last week. The holiday spirit was abroad in the school. Among
+the boys it took the form of increased disorderliness. Boys who
+had hitherto only made Glossop bellow now made him perspire and
+tear his hair as well. Boys who had merely spilt ink now broke
+windows. The Little Nugget abandoned cigarettes in favour of an
+old clay pipe which he had found in the stables.
+
+As for me, I felt like a spent swimmer who sees the shore almost
+within his reach. Audrey avoided me when she could, and was
+frigidly polite when we met. But I suffered less now. A few more
+days, and I should have done with this phase of my life for ever,
+and Audrey would once more become a memory.
+
+Complete quiescence marked the deportment of Mr Fisher during
+these days. He did not attempt to repeat his last effort. The
+coffee came to the study unmixed with alien drugs. Sam, like
+lightning, did not strike twice in the same place. He had the
+artist's soul, and disliked patching up bungled work. If he made
+another move, it would, I knew, be on entirely fresh lines.
+
+Ignoring the fact that I had had all the luck, I was inclined to
+be self-satisfied when I thought of Sam. I had pitted my wits
+against his, and I had won. It was a praiseworthy performance for
+a man who had done hitherto nothing particular in his life.
+
+If all the copybook maxims which had been drilled into me in my
+childhood and my early disaster with Audrey had not been
+sufficient, I ought to have been warned by Sam's advice not to
+take victory for granted till the fight was over. As Sam had said,
+his luck would turn sooner or later.
+
+One realizes these truths in theory, but the practical application
+of them seldom fails to come as a shock. I received mine on the
+last morning but one of the term.
+
+Shortly after breakfast a message was brought to me that Mr Abney
+would like to see me in his study. I went without any sense of
+disaster to come. Most of the business of the school was discussed
+in the study after breakfast, and I imagined that the matter had
+to do with some detail of the morrow's exodus.
+
+I found Mr Abney pacing the room, a look of annoyance on his face.
+At the desk, her back to me, Audrey was writing. It was part of
+her work to take charge of the business correspondence of the
+establishment. She did not look round when I came in, nor when Mr
+Abney spoke my name, but went on writing as if I did not exist.
+
+There was a touch of embarrassment in Mr Abney's manner, for which
+I could not at first account. He was stately, but with the rather
+defensive stateliness which marked his announcements that he was
+about to pop up to London and leave me to do his work. He coughed
+once or twice before proceeding to the business of the moment.
+
+'Ah, Mr Burns,' he said at length, 'might I ask if your plans for
+the holidays, the--ah--earlier part of the holidays are settled?
+No? ah--excellent.'
+
+He produced a letter from the heap of papers on the desk.
+
+'Ah--excellent. That simplifies matters considerably. I have no
+right to ask what I am about to--ah--in fact ask. I have no claim
+on your time in the holidays. But, in the circumstances, perhaps
+you may see your way to doing me a considerable service. I have
+received a letter from Mr Elmer Ford which puts me in a position
+of some difficulty. It is not my wish--indeed, it is foreign to my
+policy--to disoblige the parents of the boys who are entrusted to
+my--ah--care, and I should like, if possible, to do what Mr Ford
+asks. It appears that certain business matters call him to the
+north of England for a few days, this rendering it impossible for
+him to receive little Ogden tomorrow. It is not my custom to
+criticize parents who have paid me the compliment of placing their
+sons at the most malleable and important period of their lives, in
+my--ah--charge, but I must say that a little longer notice would
+have been a--in fact, a convenience. But Mr Ford, like so many of
+his countrymen, is what I believe is called a hustler. He does it
+now, as the expression is. In short, he wishes to leave little
+Ogden at the school for the first few days of the holidays, and I
+should be extremely obliged, Mr Burns, if you should find it
+possible to stay here and--ah--look after him.'
+
+Audrey stopped writing and turned in her chair, the first
+intimation she had given that she had heard Mr Abney's remarks.
+
+'It really won't be necessary to trouble Mr Burns,' she said,
+without looking at me. 'I can take care of Ogden very well by
+myself.'
+
+'In the case of an--ah--ordinary boy, Mrs Sheridan, I should not
+hesitate to leave you in sole charge as you have very kindly
+offered to stay and help me in this matter. But we must recollect
+not only--I speak frankly--not only the peculiar--ah--disposition
+of this particular lad, but also the fact that those ruffians who
+visited the house that night may possibly seize the opportunity to
+make a fresh attack. I should not feel--ah--justified in
+thrusting so heavy a responsibility upon you.'
+
+There was reason in what he said. Audrey made no reply. I heard
+her pen tapping on the desk and deduced her feelings. I, myself,
+felt like a prisoner who, having filed through the bars of his
+cell, is removed to another on the eve of escape. I had so braced
+myself up to endure till the end of term and no longer that this
+postponement of the day of release had a crushing effect.
+
+Mr Abney coughed and lowered his voice confidentially.
+
+'I would stay myself, but the fact is, I am called to London on
+very urgent business, and shall be unable to return for a day or
+so. My late pupil, the--ah--the Earl of Buxton, has been--I can
+rely on your discretion, Mr Burns--has been in trouble with the
+authorities at Eton, and his guardian, an old college friend of
+mine--the--in fact, the Duke of Bessborough, who, rightly or wrongly,
+places--er--considerable reliance on my advice, is anxious to consult
+me on the matter. I shall return as soon as possible, but you will
+readily understand that, in the circumstances, my time will not be my
+own. I must place myself unreservedly at--ah--Bessborough's disposal.'
+
+He pressed the bell.
+
+'In the event of your observing any suspicious characters in
+the neighbourhood, you have the telephone and can instantly
+communicate with the police. And you will have the assistance of--'
+
+The door opened and Smooth Sam Fisher entered.
+
+'You rang, sir?'
+
+'Ah! Come in, White, and close the door. I have something to say
+to you. I have just been informing Mr Burns that Mr Ford has
+written asking me to allow his son to stay on at the school for
+the first few days of the vacation.'
+
+He turned to Audrey.
+
+'You will doubtless be surprised, Mrs Sheridan, and possibly--ah--
+somewhat startled, to learn the peculiar nature of White's position
+at Sanstead House. You have no objection to my informing Mrs Sheridan,
+White, in consideration of the fact that you will be working together
+in this matter? Just so. White is a detective in the employment of
+Pinkerton's Agency. Mr Ford'--a slight frown appeared on his lofty
+brow--'Mr Ford obtained his present situation for him in order that
+he might protect his son in the event of--ah--in fact, any attempt
+to remove him.'
+
+I saw Audrey start. A quick flush came into her face. She uttered
+a little exclamation of astonishment.
+
+'Just so,' said Mr Abney, by way of comment on this. 'You are
+naturally surprised. The whole arrangement is excessively unusual,
+and, I may say--ah--disturbing. However, you have your duty to
+fulfil to your employer, White, and you will, of course, remain
+here with the boy.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+I found myself looking into a bright brown eye that gleamed with
+genial triumph. The other was closed. In the exuberance of the
+moment, Smooth Sam had had the bad taste to wink at me.
+
+'You will have Mr Burns to help you, White. He has kindly
+consented to postpone his departure during the short period in
+which I shall be compelled to be absent.'
+
+I had no recollection of having given any kind consent, but I was
+very willing to have it assumed, and I was glad to see that Mr
+Fisher, though Mr Abney did not observe it, was visibly taken
+aback by this piece of information. But he made one of his swift
+recoveries.
+
+'It is very kind of Mr Burns,' he said in his fruitiest voice,
+'but I hardly think it will be necessary to put him to the
+inconvenience of altering his plans. I am sure that Mr Ford would
+prefer the entire charge of the affair to be in my hands.'
+
+He had not chosen a happy moment for the introduction of the
+millionaire's name. Mr Abney was a man of method, who hated any
+dislocation of the fixed routine of life; and Mr Ford's letter had
+upset him. The Ford family, father and son, were just then
+extremely unpopular with him.
+
+He crushed Sam.
+
+'What Mr Ford would or would not prefer is, in this particular
+matter, beside the point. The responsibility for the boy, while he
+remains on the school premises, is--ah--mine, and I shall take
+such precautions as seem fit and adequate to--him--myself,
+irrespective of those which, in your opinion, might suggest
+themselves to Mr Ford. As I cannot be here myself, owing
+to--ah--urgent business in London, I shall certainly take
+advantage of Mr Burns's kind offer to remain as my deputy.'
+
+He paused and blew his nose, his invariable custom after these
+occasional outbursts of his. Sam had not wilted beneath the storm.
+He waited, unmoved, till all was over:
+
+'I am afraid I shall have to be more explicit,' he said: 'I had
+hoped to avoid scandal and unpleasantness, but I see it is
+impossible.'
+
+Mr Abney's astonished face emerged slowly from behind his
+handkerchief.
+
+'I quite agree with you, sir, that somebody should be here to help
+me look after the boy, but not Mr Burns. I am sorry to have to say
+it, but I do not trust Mr Burns.'
+
+Mr Abney's look of astonishment deepened. I, too, was surprised.
+It was so unlike Sam to fling away his chances on a blundering
+attack like this.
+
+'What do you mean?' demanded Mr Abney.
+
+'Mr Burns is after the boy himself. He came to kidnap him.'
+
+Mr Abney, as he had every excuse for doing, grunted with
+amazement. I achieved the ringing laugh of amused innocence. It
+was beyond me to fathom Sam's mind. He could not suppose that any
+credence would be given to his wild assertion. It seemed to me
+that disappointment had caused him momentarily to lose his head.
+
+'Are you mad, White?'
+
+'No, sir. I can prove what I say. If I had not gone to London with
+him that last time, he'd have got away with the boy then, for
+certain.'
+
+For an instant an uneasy thought came to me that he might have
+something in reserve, something unknown to me, which had
+encouraged him to this direct attack. I dismissed the notion.
+There could be nothing.
+
+Mr Abney had turned to me with a look of hopeless bewilderment. I
+raised my eyebrows.
+
+'Ridiculous,' I said.
+
+That this was the only comment seemed to be Mr Abney's view. He
+turned on Sam with the pettish anger of the mild man.
+
+'What do you _mean_, White, by coming to me with such a
+preposterous story?'
+
+'I don't say Mr Burns wished to kidnap the boy in the ordinary
+way,' said Sam imperturbably, 'like those men who came that night.
+He had a special reason. Mr and Mrs Ford, as of course you know,
+sir, are divorced. Mr Burns was trying to get the boy away and
+take him back to his mother.'
+
+I heard Audrey give a little gasp. Mr Abney's anger became
+modified by a touch of doubt. I could see that these words, by
+lifting the accusation from the wholly absurd to the somewhat
+plausible, had impressed him. Once again I was gripped by the
+uneasy feeling that Sam had an unsuspected card to play. This
+might be bluff, but it had a sinister ring.
+
+'You might say,' went on Sam smoothly, 'that this was creditable
+to Mr Burns's heart. But, from my employer's viewpoint and yours,
+too, it was a chivalrous impulse that needed to be checked. Will
+you please read this, sir?'
+
+He handed a letter to Mr Abney, who adjusted his glasses and began
+to read--at first in a detached, judicial way, then with startled
+eagerness.
+
+'I felt it necessary to search among Mr Burns's papers, sir, in
+the hope of finding--'
+
+And then I knew what he had found. From the first the blue-grey
+notepaper had had a familiar look. I recognized it now. It was
+Cynthia's letter, that damning document which I had been mad
+enough to read to him in London. His prediction that the luck
+would change had come amazingly true.
+
+I caught Sam's eye. For the second time he was unfeeling enough to
+wink. It was a rich, comprehensive wink, as expressive and joyous
+as a college yell.
+
+Mr Abney had absorbed the letter and was struggling for speech. I
+could appreciate his emotion. If he had not actually been
+nurturing a viper in his bosom, he had come, from his point of
+view, very near it. Of all men, a schoolmaster necessarily looks
+with the heartiest dislike on the would-be kidnapper.
+
+As for me, my mind was in a whirl. I was entirely without a plan,
+without the very beginnings of a plan, to help me cope with this
+appalling situation. I was crushed by a sense of the utter
+helplessness of my position. To denounce Sam was impossible; to
+explain my comparative innocence was equally out of the question.
+The suddenness of the onslaught had deprived me of the power of
+coherent thought. I was routed.
+
+Mr Abney was speaking.
+
+'Is your name Peter, Mr Burns?'
+
+I nodded. Speech was beyond me.
+
+'This letter is written by--ah--by a lady. It asks you in set
+terms to--ah--hasten to kidnap Ogden Ford. Do you wish me to read
+it to you? Or do you confess to knowing its contents?'
+
+He waited for a reply. I had none to make.
+
+'You do not deny that you came to Sanstead House for the
+deliberate purpose of kidnapping Ogden Ford?'
+
+I had nothing to say. I caught a glimpse of Audrey's face, cold
+and hard, and shifted my eyes quickly. Mr Abney gulped. His face
+wore the reproachful expression of a cod-fish when jerked out of
+the water on the end of a line. He stared at me with pained
+repulsion. That scoundrelly old buccaneer Sam did the same. He
+looked like a shocked bishop.
+
+'I--ah--trusted you implicitly,' said Mr Abney.
+
+Sam wagged his head at me reproachfully. With a flicker of spirit
+I glared at him. He only wagged the more.
+
+It was, I think, the blackest moment of my life. A wild desire for
+escape on any terms surged over me. That look on Audrey's face was
+biting into my brain like an acid.
+
+'I will go and pack,' I said.
+
+'This is the end of all things,' I said to myself.
+
+I had suspended my packing in order to sit on my bed and brood. I
+was utterly depressed. There are crises in a man's life when
+Reason fails to bring the slightest consolation. In vain I tried
+to tell myself that what had happened was, in essence, precisely
+what, twenty-four hours ago, I was so eager to bring about. It
+amounted to this, that now, at last, Audrey had definitely gone
+out of my life. From now on I could have no relations with her of
+any sort. Was not this exactly what, twenty-four hours ago, I had
+wished? Twenty-four hours ago had I not said to myself that I
+would go away and never see her again? Undoubtedly. Nevertheless,
+I sat there and groaned in spirit.
+
+It was the end of all things.
+
+A mild voice interrupted my meditations.
+
+'Can I help?'
+
+Sam was standing in the doorway, beaming on me with invincible
+good-humour.
+
+'You are handling them wrong. Allow me. A moment more and you
+would have ruined the crease.'
+
+I became aware of a pair of trousers hanging limply in my grasp.
+He took them from me, and, folding them neatly, placed them in my
+trunk.
+
+'Don't get all worked up about it, sonny,' he said. 'It's the
+fortune of war. Besides, what does it matter to you? Judging by
+that very snug apartment in London, you have quite enough money
+for a young man. Losing your job here won't break you. And, if
+you're worrying about Mrs Ford and her feelings, don't! I guess
+she's probably forgotten all about the Nugget by this time. So
+cheer up. _You're_ all right!'
+
+He stretched out a hand to pat me on the shoulder, then thought
+better of it and drew it back.
+
+'Think of _my_ happiness, if you want something to make you
+feel good. Believe me, young man, it's _some_. I could sing!
+Gee, when I think that it's all plain sailing now and no more
+troubles, I could dance! You don't know what it means to me,
+putting through this deal. I wish you knew Mary! That's her name.
+You must come and visit us, sonny, when we're fixed up in the
+home. There'll always be a knife and fork for _you_. We'll
+make you one of the family! Lord! I can see the place as plain as
+I can see you. Nice frame house with a good porch.... Me in a
+rocker in my shirt-sleeves, smoking a cigar and reading the
+baseball news; Mary in another rocker, mending my socks and
+nursing the cat! We'll sure have a cat. Two cats. I like cats. And
+a goat in the front garden. Say, it'll be _great!_'
+
+And on the word, emotion overcoming prudence, he brought his fat
+hand down with a resounding smack on my bowed shoulders.
+
+There is a limit. I bounded to my feet.
+
+'Get out!' I yelped. 'Get out of here!'
+
+'Sure,' he replied agreeably. He rose without haste and regarded
+me compassionately. 'Cheer up, son! Be a sport!'
+
+There are moments when the best of men become melodramatic. I
+offer this as excuse for my next observation.
+
+Clenching my fists and glaring at him, I cried, 'I'll foil you
+yet, you hound!'
+
+Some people have no soul for the dramatic. He smiled tolerantly.
+
+'Sure,' he said. 'Anything you like, Desperate Desmond. Enjoy
+yourself!'
+
+And he left me.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 13
+
+
+I evacuated Sanstead House unostentatiously, setting off on foot
+down the long drive. My luggage, I gathered, was to follow me to
+the station in a cart. I was thankful to Providence for the small
+mercy that the boys were in their classrooms and consequently
+unable to ask me questions. Augustus Beckford alone would have
+handled the subject of my premature exit in a manner calculated to
+bleach my hair.
+
+It was a wonderful morning. The sky was an unclouded blue, and a
+fresh breeze was blowing in from the sea. I think that something
+of the exhilaration of approaching spring must have stirred me,
+for quite suddenly the dull depression with which I had started my
+walk left me, and I found myself alert and full of schemes.
+
+Why should I feebly withdraw from the struggle? Why should I give
+in to Smooth Sam in this tame way? The memory of that wink came
+back to me with a tonic effect. I would show him that I was still
+a factor in the game. If the house was closed to me, was there not
+the 'Feathers'? I could lie in hiding there, and observe his
+movements unseen.
+
+I stopped on reaching the inn, and was on the point of entering
+and taking up my position at once, when it occurred to me that
+this would be a false move. It was possible that Sam would not
+take my departure for granted so readily as I assumed. It was
+Sam's way to do a thing thoroughly, and the probability was that,
+if he did not actually come to see me off, he would at least make
+inquiries at the station to find out if I had gone. I walked on.
+
+He was not at the station. Nor did he arrive in the cart with my
+trunk. But I was resolved to risk nothing. I bought a ticket for
+London, and boarded the London train. It had been my intention to
+leave it at Guildford and catch an afternoon train back to
+Stanstead; but it seemed to me, on reflection, that this was
+unnecessary. There was no likelihood of Sam making any move in the
+matter of the Nugget until the following day. I could take my time
+about returning.
+
+I spent the night in London, and arrived at Sanstead by an early
+morning train with a suit-case containing, among other things, a
+Browning pistol. I was a little ashamed of this purchase. To the
+Buck MacGinnis type of man, I suppose, a pistol is as commonplace
+a possession as a pair of shoes, but I blushed as I entered the
+gun-shop. If it had been Buck with whom I was about to deal, I
+should have felt less self-conscious. But there was something
+about Sam which made pistols ridiculous.
+
+My first act, after engaging a room at the inn and leaving my
+suit-case, was to walk to the school. Before doing anything else,
+I felt I must see Audrey and tell her the facts in the case of
+Smooth Sam. If she were on her guard, my assistance might not be
+needed. But her present state of trust in him was fatal.
+
+A school, when the boys are away, is a lonely place. The deserted
+air of the grounds, as I slipped cautiously through the trees, was
+almost eerie. A stillness brooded over everything, as if the place
+had been laid under a spell. Never before had I been so impressed
+with the isolation of Sanstead House. Anything might happen in
+this lonely spot, and the world would go on its way in ignorance.
+It was with quite distinct relief that, as I drew nearer the
+house, I caught sight of the wire of the telephone among the trees
+above my head. It had a practical, comforting look.
+
+A tradesman's cart rattled up the drive and disappeared round the
+side of the house. This reminder, also, of the outside world was
+pleasant. But I could not rid myself of the feeling that the
+atmosphere of the place was sinister. I attributed it to the fact
+that I was a spy in an enemy's country. I had to see without being
+seen. I did not imagine that Johnson, grocer, who had just passed
+in his cart, found anything wrong with the atmosphere. It was
+created for me by my own furtive attitude.
+
+Of Audrey and Ogden there were no signs. That they were out
+somewhere in the grounds this mellow spring morning I took for
+granted; but I could not make an extended search. Already I had
+come nearer to the house than was prudent.
+
+My eye caught the telephone wire again and an idea came to me. I
+would call her up from the inn and ask her to meet me. There was
+the risk that the call would be answered by Smooth Sam, but it was
+not great. Sam, unless he had thrown off his role of butler
+completely--which would be unlike the artist that he was--would be
+in the housekeeper's room, and the ringing of the telephone, which
+was in the study, would not penetrate to him.
+
+I chose a moment when dinner was likely to be over and Audrey
+might be expected to be in the drawing-room.
+
+I had deduced her movements correctly. It was her voice that
+answered the call.
+
+'This is Peter Burns speaking.'
+
+There was a perceptible pause before she replied. When she did,
+her voice was cold.
+
+'Yes?'
+
+'I want to speak to you on a matter of urgent importance.'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'I can't do it through the telephone. Will you meet me in half an
+hour's time at the gate?'
+
+'Where are you speaking from?'
+
+'The "Feathers". I am staying there.'
+
+'I thought you were in London.'
+
+'I came back. Will you meet me?'
+
+She hesitated.
+
+'Why?'
+
+'Because I have something important to say to you--important to
+you.'
+
+There was another pause.
+
+'Very well.'
+
+'In half an hour, then. Is Ogden Ford in bed?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Is his door locked?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Then lock it and bring the key with you.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'I will tell you when we meet.'
+
+'I will bring it.'
+
+'Thank you. Good-bye.'
+
+I hung up the receiver and set out at once for the school.
+
+She was waiting in the road, a small, indistinct figure in the
+darkness.
+
+'Is that you--Peter?'
+
+Her voice had hesitated at the name, as if at some obstacle. It
+was a trivial thing, but, in my present mood, it stung me.
+
+'I'm afraid I'm late. I won't keep you long. Shall we walk down
+the road? You may not have been followed, but it is as well to be
+on the safe side.'
+
+'Followed? I don't understand.'
+
+We walked a few paces and halted.
+
+'Who would follow me?'
+
+'A very eminent person of the name of Smooth Sam Fisher.'
+
+'Smooth Sam Fisher?'
+
+'Better known to you as White.'
+
+'I don't understand.'
+
+'I should be surprised if you did. I asked you to meet me here so
+that I could make you understand. The man who poses as a
+Pinkerton's detective, and is staying in the house to help you
+take care of Ogden Ford, is Smooth Sam Fisher, a professional
+kidnapper.'
+
+'But--but--'
+
+'But what proof have I? Was that what you were going to say? None.
+But I had the information from the man himself. He told me in the
+train that night going to London.'
+
+She spoke quickly. I knew from her tone that she thought she had
+detected a flaw in my story.
+
+'Why did he tell you?'
+
+'Because he needed me as an accomplice. He wanted my help. It was
+I who got Ogden away that day. Sam overheard me giving money and
+directions to him, telling him how to get away from the school and
+where to go, and he gathered--correctly--that I was in the same
+line of business as himself. He suggested a partnership which I
+was unable to accept.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'Our objects were different. My motive in kidnapping Ogden was not
+to extract a ransom.'
+
+She blazed out at me in an absolutely unexpected manner. Till now
+she had listened so calmly and asked her questions with such a
+notable absence of emotion that the outburst overwhelmed me.
+
+'Oh, I know what your motive was. There is no need to explain
+that. Isn't there any depth to which a man who thinks himself in
+love won't stoop? I suppose you told yourself you were doing
+something noble and chivalrous? A woman of her sort can trick a
+man into whatever meanness she pleases, and, just because she asks
+him, he thinks himself a kind of knight-errant. I suppose she
+told you that he had ill-treated her and didn't appreciate her
+higher self, and all that sort of thing? She looked at you with
+those big brown eyes of hers--I can see her--and drooped, and
+cried, till you were ready to do anything she asked you.'
+
+'Whom do you mean?'
+
+'Mrs Ford, of course. The woman who sent you here to steal Ogden.
+The woman who wrote you that letter.'
+
+'She did not write that letter. But never mind that. The reason
+why I wanted you to come here was to warn you against Sam Fisher.
+That was all. If there is any way in which I can help you, send
+for me. If you like, I will come and stay at the house till Mr
+Abney returns.'
+
+Before the words were out of my mouth, I saw that I had made a
+mistake. The balance of her mind was poised between suspicion and
+belief, and my offer turned the scale.
+
+'No, thank you,' she said curtly.
+
+'You don't trust me?'
+
+'Why should I? White may or may not be Sam Fisher. I shall be on
+my guard, and I thank you for telling me. But why should I trust
+you? It all hangs together. You told me you were engaged to be
+married. You come here on an errand which no man would undertake
+except for a woman, and a woman with whom he was very much in
+love. There is that letter, imploring you to steal the boy. I know
+what a man will do for a woman he is fond of. Why should I trust
+you?'
+
+'There is this. You forget that I had the opportunity to steal
+Ogden if I had wanted to. I had got him away to London. But I
+brought him back. I did it because you had told me what it meant
+to you.'
+
+She hesitated, but only for an instant. Suspicion was too strong
+for her.
+
+'I don't believe you. You brought him back because this man whom
+you call Fisher got to know of your plans. Why should you have
+done it because of me? Why should you have put my interests before
+Mrs Ford's? I am nothing to you.'
+
+For a moment a mad impulse seized me to cast away all restraint,
+to pour out the unspoken words that danced like imps in my brain,
+to make her understand, whatever the cost, my feelings towards
+her. But the thought of my letter to Cynthia checked me. That
+letter had been the irrevocable step. If I was to preserve a shred
+of self-respect I must be silent.
+
+'Very well,' I said, 'good night.' And I turned to go.
+
+'Peter!'
+
+There was something in her voice which whirled me round,
+thrilling, despite my resolution.
+
+'Are you going?'
+
+Weakness would now be my undoing. I steadied myself and answered
+abruptly.
+
+'I have said all I came to say. Good night.'
+
+I turned once more and walked quickly off towards the village. I
+came near to running. I was in the mood when flight alone can save
+a man. She did not speak again, and soon I was out of danger,
+hurrying on through the friendly darkness, beyond the reach of her
+voice.
+
+The bright light from the doorway of the 'Feathers', was the only
+illumination that relieved the blackness of the Market Square. As
+I approached, a man came out and stopped in the entrance to light
+a cigar. His back was turned towards me as he crouched to protect
+the match from the breeze, but something in his appearance seemed
+familiar.
+
+I had only a glimpse of him as he straightened himself and walked
+out of the pool of light into the Square, but it was enough.
+
+It was my much-enduring acquaintance, Mr Buck MacGinnis.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 14
+
+
+I
+
+At the receipt of custom behind the bar sat Miss Benjafield,
+stately as ever, relaxing her massive mind over a penny novelette.
+
+'Who was the man who just left, Miss Benjafield?' I asked.
+
+She marked the place with a shapely thumb and looked up.
+
+'The man? Oh, _him_! He's--why, weren't you in here, Mr Burns,
+one evening in January when--'
+
+'That American?'
+
+'That's him. What he's doing here I don't know. He disappeared
+quite a while back, and I haven't seen him since. _Nor_ want.
+Tonight up he turns again like a bad ha'penny. I'd like to know
+what he's after. No good, if you ask _me_.'
+
+Miss Benjafield's prejudices did not easily dissolve. She prided
+herself, as she frequently observed, on knowing her own mind.
+
+'Is he staying here?'
+
+'Not at the "Feathers". We're particular who we have here.'
+
+I thanked her for the implied compliment, ordered beer for the
+good of the house, and, lighting a pipe, sat down to meditate on
+this new development.
+
+The vultures were gathered together with a vengeance. Sam within,
+Buck without, it was quite like old times, with the difference
+that now, I, too, was on the wrong side of the school door.
+
+It was not hard to account for Buck's reappearance. He would, of
+course, have made it his business to get early information of Mr
+Ford's movements. It would be easy for him to discover that the
+millionaire had been called away to the north and that the Nugget
+was still an inmate of Sanstead House. And here he was preparing
+for the grand attack.
+
+I had been premature in removing Buck's name from the list of
+active combatants. Broken legs mend. I ought to have remembered
+that.
+
+His presence on the scene made, I perceived, a vast difference to
+my plan of campaign. It was at this point that my purchase of the
+Browning pistol lost its absurdity and appeared in the light of an
+acute strategic move. With Sam the only menace, I had been
+prepared to play a purely waiting game, watching proceedings from
+afar, ready to give my help if necessary. To check Buck, more
+strenuous methods were called for.
+
+My mind was made up. With Buck, that stout disciple of the frontal
+attack, in the field, there was only one place for me. I must get
+into Sanstead House and stay there on guard.
+
+Did he intend to make an offensive movement tonight? That was the
+question which occupied my mind. From the point of view of an
+opponent, there was this merit about Mr MacGinnis, that he was
+not subtle. He could be counted on with fair certainty to do
+the direct thing. Sooner or later he would make another of his
+vigorous frontal attacks upon the stronghold. The only point to be
+decided was whether he would make it that night. Would professional
+zeal cause him to omit his beauty sleep?
+
+I did not relish the idea of spending the night patrolling the
+grounds, but it was imperative that the house be protected. Then
+it occurred to me that the man for the vigil was Smooth Sam. If
+the arrival of Mr MacGinnis had complicated matters in one way, it
+had simplified them in another, for there was no more need for the
+secrecy which had been, till now, the basis of my plan of action.
+Buck's arrival made it possible for me to come out and fight in
+the open, instead of brooding over Sanstead House from afar like a
+Providence. Tomorrow I proposed to turn Sam out. Tonight I would use
+him. The thing had resolved itself into a triangular tournament,
+and Sam and Buck should play the first game.
+
+Once more I called up the house on the telephone. There was a long
+delay before a reply came. It was Mr Fisher's voice that spoke.
+Audrey, apparently, had not returned to the house immediately
+after leaving me.
+
+'Hullo!' said Sam.
+
+'Good evening, Mr Fisher.'
+
+'Gee! Is that you, young fellow-me-lad? Are you speaking from
+London?'
+
+'No. I am at the "Feathers".'
+
+He chuckled richly.
+
+'Can't tear yourself away? Hat still in the ring? Say, what's the
+use? Why not turn it up, sonny? You're only wasting your time.'
+
+'Do you sleep lightly, Mr Fisher?'
+
+'I don't get you.'
+
+'You had better do so tonight. Buck MacGinnis is back again.'
+
+There was silence at the other end of the wire. Then I heard him
+swear softly. The significance of the information had not been
+lost on Mr Fisher.
+
+'Is that straight?'
+
+'It is.'
+
+'You're not stringing me?'
+
+'Certainly not.'
+
+'You're sure it was Buck?'
+
+'Is Buck's the sort of face one forgets?'
+
+He swore again.
+
+'You seem disturbed,' I said.
+
+'Where did you see him?' asked Sam.
+
+'Coming out of the "Feathers", looking very fierce and determined.
+The Berserk blood of the MacGinnises is up. He's going to do or
+die. I'm afraid this means an all-night sitting for you, Mr
+Fisher.'
+
+'I thought you had put him out of business!'
+
+There was a somewhat querulous note in his voice.
+
+'Only temporarily. I did my best, but he wasn't even limping when
+I saw him.'
+
+He did not speak for a moment. I gathered that he was pondering
+over the new development.
+
+'Thanks for tipping me off, sonny. It's a thing worth knowing. Why
+did you do it?'
+
+'Because I love you, Samuel. Good night.'
+
+I rose late and breakfasted at my leisure. The peace of the
+English country inn enveloped me as I tilted back my chair and
+smoked the first pipe of the morning. It was a day to hearten a
+man for great deeds, one of those days of premature summer which
+comes sometimes to help us bear the chill winds of early spring.
+The sun streamed in through the open window. In the yard below
+fowls made their soothing music. The thought of violence seemed
+very alien to such a morning.
+
+I strolled out into the Square. I was in no hurry to end this
+interlude of peace and embark on what, for all practical purposes,
+would be a siege.
+
+After lunch, I decided, would be time enough to begin active
+campaigning.
+
+The clock on the church tower was striking two as I set forth,
+carrying my suit-case, on my way to the school. The light-heartedness
+of the morning still lingered with me. I was amused at the thought
+of the surprise I was about to give Mr Fisher. That wink still
+rankled.
+
+As I made my way through the grounds I saw Audrey in the distance,
+walking with the Nugget. I avoided them and went on into the
+house.
+
+About the house there was the same air of enchanted quiet which
+pervaded the grounds. Perhaps the stillness indoors was even more
+insistent. I had grown so accustomed to the never-ending noise and
+bustle of the boys' quarters that, as I crossed the silent hall, I
+had an almost guilty sense of intrusion. I felt like a burglar.
+
+Sam, the object of my visit, would, I imagined, if he were in the
+house at all, be in the housekeeper's room, a cosy little apartment
+off the passage leading to the kitchen. I decided to draw that
+first, and was rewarded, on pushing open the half-closed door, by
+the sight of a pair of black-trousered legs stretched out before me
+from the depths of a wicker-work armchair. His portly middle
+section, rising beyond like a small hill, heaved rhythmically. His
+face was covered with a silk handkerchief, from beneath which came,
+in even succession, faint and comfortable snores. It was a peaceful
+picture--the good man taking his rest; and for me it had an added
+attractiveness in that it suggested that Sam was doing by day what
+my information had prevented him from doing in the night. It had
+been some small consolation to me, as I lay trying to compose my
+anxious mind for sleep on the previous night, that Mr Fisher also
+was keeping his vigil.
+
+Pleasing as Sam was as a study in still life, pressure of business
+compelled me to stir him into activity. I prodded him gently in
+the centre of the rising territory beyond the black trousers. He
+grunted discontentedly and sat up. The handkerchief fell from his
+face, and he blinked at me, first with the dazed glassiness of the
+newly awakened, then with a 'Soul's Awakening' expression, which
+spread over his face until it melted into a friendly smile.
+
+'Hello, young man!'
+
+'Good afternoon. You seem tired.'
+
+He yawned cavernously.
+
+'Lord! What a night!'
+
+'Did Buck drop in?'
+
+'No, but I thought he had every time I heard a board creak. I
+didn't dare close my eyes for a minute. Have you ever stayed awake
+all night, waiting for the goblins that get you if you don't watch
+out? Well, take it from me it's no picnic.'
+
+His face split in another mammoth yawn. He threw his heart into
+it, as if life held no other tasks for him. Only in alligators
+have I ever seen its equal.
+
+I waited till the seismic upheaval had spent itself. Then I came
+to business.
+
+'I'm sorry you had a disturbed night, Mr Fisher. You must make up
+for it this afternoon. You will find the beds very comfortable.'
+
+'How's that?'
+
+'At the "Feathers". I should go there, if I were you. The charges
+are quite reasonable, and the food is good. You will like the
+"Feathers".'
+
+'I don't get you, sonny.'
+
+'I was trying to break it gently to you that you are about to move
+from this house. Now. At once. Take your last glimpse of the old
+home, Sam, and out into the hard world.'
+
+He looked at me inquiringly.
+
+'You seem to be talking, young man; words appear to be fluttering
+from you; but your meaning, if any, escapes me.'
+
+'My meaning is that I am about to turn you out. I am coming back
+here, and there is not room for both of us. So, if you do not see
+your way to going quietly, I shall take you by the back of the
+neck and run you out. Do I make myself fairly clear now?'
+
+He permitted himself a rich chuckle.
+
+'You have gall, young man. Well, I hate to seem unfriendly. I like
+you, sonny. You amuse me--but there are moments when one wants to
+be alone. I have a whole heap of arrears of sleep to make up. Trot
+along, kiddo, and quit disturbing uncle. Tie a string to yourself
+and disappear. Bye-bye.'
+
+The wicker-work creaked as he settled his stout body. He picked up
+the handkerchief.
+
+'Mr Fisher,' I said, 'I have no wish to propel your grey hairs at
+a rapid run down the drive, so I will explain further. I am
+physically stronger than you. I mean to turn you out. How can you
+prevent it? Mr Abney is away. You can't appeal to him. The police
+are at the end of the telephone, but you can't appeal to them. So
+what _can_ you do, except go? Do you get me now?'
+
+He regarded the situation in thoughtful silence. He allowed no
+emotion to find expression in his face, but I knew that the
+significance of my remarks had sunk in. I could almost follow his
+mind as he tested my position point by point and found it
+impregnable.
+
+When he spoke it was to accept defeat jauntily.
+
+'You _are_ my jinx, young man. I said it all along. You're
+really set on my going? Say no more. I'll go. After all, it's
+quiet at the inn, and what more does a man want at my time of
+life?'
+
+I went out into the garden to interview Audrey.
+
+She was walking up and down on the tennis-lawn. The Nugget,
+lounging in a deck-chair, appeared to be asleep.
+
+She caught sight of me as I came out from the belt of trees, and
+stopped. I had the trying experience of walking across open
+country under hostile observation.
+
+The routing of Sam had left me alert and self-confident. I felt no
+embarrassment. I greeted her briskly.
+
+'Good afternoon. I have been talking to Sam Fisher. If you wait,
+you will see him passing away down the drive. He is leaving the
+house. I am coming back.'
+
+'Coming back?'
+
+She spoke incredulously, or, rather, as if my words had conveyed
+no meaning. It was so that Sam had spoken. Her mind, like his,
+took time to adjust itself to the unexpected.
+
+She seemed to awake to my meaning with a start.
+
+'Coming back?' Her eyes widened. The flush deepened on her cheeks.
+'But I told you--'
+
+'I know what you told me. You said you did not trust me. It
+doesn't matter. I am coming back whether you trust me or not. This
+house is under martial law, and I am in command. The situation has
+changed since I spoke to you last night. Last night I was ready to
+let you have your way. I intended to keep an eye on things from
+the inn. But it's different now. It is not a case of Sam Fisher
+any longer. You could have managed Sam. It's Buck MacGinnis now,
+the man who came that night in the automobile. I saw him in the
+village after I left you. He's dangerous.'
+
+She looked away, past me, in the direction of the drive. I
+followed her gaze. A stout figure, carrying a suit-case, was
+moving slowly down it.
+
+I smiled. Her eyes met mine, and I saw the anger that had been
+lying at the back of them flash out. Her chin went up with the old
+defiant tilt. I was sorry I had smiled. It was my old fault, the
+complacency that would not be hidden.
+
+'I don't believe you!' she cried. 'I don't trust you!'
+
+It is curious how one's motive for embarking on a course of
+conduct changes or disappears altogether as the action develops.
+Once started on an enterprise it is as if one proceeded with it
+automatically, irrespective of one's original motives. I had begun
+what I might call the second phase of this matter of the Little
+Nugget, the abandoning of Cynthia's cause in favour of Audrey's,
+with a clear idea of why I was doing it. I had set myself to
+resist the various forces which were trying to take Ogden from
+Audrey, for one simple reason, because I loved Audrey and wished
+to help her. That motive, if it still existed at all, did so only
+in the form of abstract chivalry. My personal feelings towards her
+seemed to have undergone a complete change, dating from our
+parting in the road the night before. I found myself now meeting
+hostility with hostility. I looked at her critically and told
+myself that her spell was broken at last, that, if she disliked
+me, I was at least indifferent to her.
+
+And yet, despite my altered feelings, my determination to help her
+never wavered. The guarding of Ogden might be--primarily--no
+business of mine, but I had adopted it as my business.
+
+'I don't ask you to trust me,' I said. 'We have settled all that.
+There's no need to go over old ground. Think what you please about
+this. I've made up my mind.'
+
+'If you mean to stay, I suppose I can't prevent you.'
+
+'Exactly.'
+
+Sam appeared again in a gap in the trees, walking slowly and
+pensively, as one retreating from his Moscow. Her eyes followed
+him till he was out of sight.
+
+'If you like,' I said bitterly, 'you may put what I am doing down
+to professional rivalry. If I am in love with Mrs Ford and am here
+to steal Ogden for her, it is natural for me to do all I can to
+prevent Buck MacGinnis getting him. There is no need for you to
+look on me as an ally because we are working together.'
+
+'We are not working together.'
+
+'We shall be in a very short time. Buck will not let another night
+go by without doing something.'
+
+'I don't believe that you saw him.'
+
+'Just as you please,' I said, and walked away. What did it matter
+to me what she believed?
+
+The day dragged on. Towards evening the weather broke suddenly,
+after the fashion of spring in England. Showers of rain drove me
+to the study.
+
+It must have been nearly ten o'clock when the telephone rang.
+
+It was Mr Fisher.
+
+'Hello, is that you, sonny?'
+
+'It is. Do you want anything?'
+
+'I want a talk with you. Business. Can I come up?'
+
+'If you wish it.'
+
+'I'll start right away.'
+
+It was some fifteen minutes later that I heard in the distance the
+engines of an automobile. The headlights gleamed through the
+trees, and presently the car swept round the bend of the drive and
+drew up at the front door. A portly figure got down and rang the
+bell. I observed these things from a window on the first floor,
+overlooking the front steps; and it was from this window that I
+spoke.
+
+'Is that you, Mr Fisher?'
+
+He backed away from the door.
+
+'Where are you?'
+
+'Is that your car?'
+
+'It belongs to a friend of mine.'
+
+'I didn't know you meant to bring a party.'
+
+'There's only three of us. Me, the chauffeur, and my friend--MacGinnis.'
+
+The possibility, indeed the probability, of Sam seeking out Buck
+and forming an alliance had occurred to me, and I was prepared for
+it. I shifted my grip on the automatic pistol in my hand.
+
+'Mr Fisher.'
+
+'Hello!'
+
+'Ask your friend MacGinnis to be good enough to step into the
+light of that lamp and drop his gun.'
+
+There was a muttered conversation. I heard Buck's voice rumbling
+like a train going under a bridge. The request did not appear to
+find favour with him. Then came an interlude of soothing speech
+from Mr Fisher. I could not distinguish the words, but I gathered
+that he was pointing out to him that, on this occasion only, the
+visit being for the purposes of parley and not of attack, pistols
+might be looked on as non-essentials. Whatever his arguments, they
+were successful, for, finally, humped as to the back and
+muttering, Buck moved into the light.
+
+'Good evening, Mr MacGinnis,' I said. 'I'm glad to see your leg is
+all right again. I won't detain you a moment. Just feel in your
+pockets and shed a few of your guns, and then you can come in out
+of the rain. To prevent any misunderstanding, I may say I have a
+gun of my own. It is trained on you now.'
+
+'I ain't got no gun.'
+
+'Come along. This is no time for airy persiflage. Out with them.'
+
+A moment's hesitation, and a small black pistol fell to the
+ground.
+
+'No more?'
+
+'Think I'm a regiment?'
+
+'I don't know what you are. Well, I'll take your word for it. You
+will come in one by one, with your hands up.'
+
+I went down and opened the door, holding my pistol in readiness
+against the unexpected.
+
+
+II
+
+Sam came first. His raised hands gave him a vaguely pontifical air
+(Bishop Blessing Pilgrims), and the kindly smile he wore
+heightened the illusion. Mr MacGinnis, who followed, suggested no
+such idea. He was muttering moodily to himself, and he eyed me
+askance.
+
+I showed them into the classroom and switched on the light. The
+air was full of many odours. Disuse seems to bring out the
+inky-chalky, appley-deal-boardy bouquet of a classroom as the
+night brings out the scent of flowers. During the term I had never
+known this classroom smell so exactly like a classroom. I made use
+of my free hand to secure and light a cigarette.
+
+Sam rose to a point of order.
+
+'Young man,' he said. I should like to remind you that we are
+here, as it were, under a flag of truce. To pull a gun on us and
+keep us holding our hands up this way is raw work. I feel sure I
+speak for my friend Mr MacGinnis.'
+
+He cocked an eye at his friend Mr MacGinnis, who seconded the
+motion by expectorating into the fireplace. I had observed at a
+previous interview his peculiar gift for laying bare his soul by
+this means of mode of expression. A man of silent habit, judged by
+the more conventional standard of words, he was almost an orator
+in expectoration.
+
+'Mr MacGinnis agrees with me,' said Sam cheerfully. 'Do we take
+them down? Have we your permission to assume Position Two of these
+Swedish exercises? All we came for was a little friendly chat
+among gentlemen, and we can talk just as well--speaking for
+myself, better--in a less strained attitude. A little rest, Mr
+Burns! A little folding of the hands? Thank you.'
+
+He did not wait for permission, nor was it necessary. Sam and the
+melodramatic atmosphere was as oil and water. It was impossible to
+blend them. I laid the pistol on the table and sat down. Buck,
+after one wistful glance at the weapon, did the same. Sam was
+already seated, and was looking so cosy and at home that I almost
+felt it remiss of me not to have provided sherry and cake for this
+pleasant gathering.
+
+'Well,' I said, 'what can I do for you?'
+
+'Let me explain,' said Sam. 'As you have, no doubt, gathered, Mr
+MacGinnis and I have gone into partnership. The Little Nugget
+Combine!'
+
+'I gathered that--well?'
+
+'Judicious partnerships are the soul of business. Mr MacGinnis and
+I have been rivals in the past, but we both saw that the moment
+had come for the genial smile, the hearty handshake, in fact, for
+an alliance. We form a strong team, sonny. My partner's speciality
+is action. I supply the strategy. Say, can't you see you're up
+against it? Why be foolish?'
+
+'You think you're certain to win?'
+
+'It's a cinch.'
+
+'Then why trouble to come here and see me?'
+
+I appeared to have put into words the smouldering thought which
+was vexing Mr MacGinnis. He burst into speech.
+
+'Ahr chee! Sure! What's de use? Didn't I tell youse? What's de use
+of wastin' time? What are we spielin' away here for? Let's get
+busy.'
+
+Sam waved a hand towards him with the air of a lecturer making a
+point.
+
+'You see! The man of action! He likes trouble. He asks for it. He
+eats it alive. Now I prefer peace. Why have a fuss when you can
+get what you want quietly? That's my motto. That's why we've come.
+It's the old proposition. We're here to buy you out. Yes, I know
+you have turned the offer down before, but things have changed.
+Your stock has fallen. In fact, instead of letting you in on
+sharing terms, we only feel justified now in offering a commission.
+For the moment you may seem to hold a strong position. You are in
+the house, and you've got the boy. But there's nothing to it really.
+We could get him in five minutes if we cared to risk having a fuss.
+But it seems to me there's no need of any fuss. We should win dead
+easy all right, if it came to trouble; but, on the other hand,
+you've a gun, and there's a chance some of us might get hurt, so
+what's the good when we can settle it quietly? How about it, sonny?'
+
+Mr MacGinnis began to rumble, preparatory to making further
+remarks on the situation, but Sam waved him down and turned his
+brown eyes inquiringly on me.
+
+'Fifteen per cent is our offer,' he said.
+
+'And to think it was once fifty-fifty!'
+
+'Strict business!'
+
+'Business? It's sweating!'
+
+'It's our limit. And it wasn't easy to make Buck here agree to
+that. He kicked like a mule.'
+
+Buck shuffled his feet and eyed me disagreeably. I suppose it is
+hard to think kindly of a man who has broken your leg. It was
+plain that, with Mr MacGinnis, bygones were by no means bygones.
+
+I rose.
+
+'Well, I'm sorry you should have had the trouble of coming here
+for nothing. Let me see you out. Single file, please.'
+
+Sam looked aggrieved.
+
+'You turn it down?'
+
+'I do.'
+
+'One moment. Let's have this thing clear. Do you realize what
+you're up against? Don't think it's only Buck and me you've got to
+tackle. All the boys are here, waiting round the corner, the same
+gang that came the other night. Be sensible, sonny. You don't
+stand a dog's chance. I shouldn't like to see you get hurt. And
+you never know what may not happen. The boys are pretty sore at
+you because of what you did that night. I shouldn't act like a
+bonehead, sonny--honest.'
+
+There was a kindly ring in his voice which rather touched me.
+Between him and me there had sprung up an odd sort of friendship.
+He meant business; but he would, I knew, be genuinely sorry if I
+came to harm. And I could see that he was quite sincere in his
+belief that I was in a tight corner and that my chances against
+the Combine were infinitesimal. I imagine that, with victory so
+apparently certain, he had had difficulty in persuading his allies
+to allow him to make his offer.
+
+But he had overlooked one thing--the telephone. That he should
+have made this mistake surprised me. If it had been Buck, I could
+have understood it. Buck's was a mind which lent itself to such
+blunders. From Sam I had expected better things, especially as the
+telephone had been so much in evidence of late. He had used it
+himself only half an hour ago.
+
+I clung to the thought of the telephone. It gave me the quiet
+satisfaction of the gambler who holds the unforeseen ace. The
+situation was in my hands. The police, I knew, had been profoundly
+stirred by Mr MacGinnis's previous raid. When I called them up, as
+I proposed to do directly the door had closed on the ambassadors,
+there would be no lack of response. It would not again be a case
+of Inspector Bones and Constable Johnson to the rescue. A great
+cloud of willing helpers would swoop to our help.
+
+With these thoughts in my mind, I answered Sam pleasantly but
+firmly.
+
+'I'm sorry I'm unpopular, but all the same--'
+
+I indicated the door.
+
+Emotion that could only be expressed in words and not through his
+usual medium welled up in Mr MacGinnis. He sprang forward with a
+snarl, falling back as my faithful automatic caught his eye.
+
+'Say, you! Listen here! You'll--'
+
+Sam, the peaceable, plucked at his elbow.
+
+'Nothing doing, Buck. Step lively.'
+
+Buck wavered, then allowed himself to be drawn away. We passed out
+of the classroom in our order of entry.
+
+An exclamation from the stairs made me look up. Audrey was leaning
+over the banisters. Her face was in the shadow, but I gathered
+from her voice that the sight of our little procession had
+startled her. I was not surprised. Buck was a distinctly startling
+spectacle, and his habit of growling to himself, as he walked,
+highly disturbing to strangers.
+
+'Good evening, Mrs Sheridan,' said Sam suavely.
+
+Audrey did not speak. She seemed fascinated by Buck.
+
+I opened the front door and they passed out. The automobile was
+still purring on the drive. Buck's pistol had disappeared. I
+supposed the chauffeur had picked it up, a surmise which was
+proved correct a few moments later, when, just as the car was
+moving off, there was a sharp crack and a bullet struck the wall
+to the right of the door. It was a random shot, and I did not
+return it. Its effect on me was to send me into the hall with a
+leap that was almost a back-somersault. Somehow, though I was
+keyed up for violence and the shooting of pistols, I had not
+expected it at just that moment, and I was disagreeably surprised
+at the shock it had given me. I slammed the door and bolted it. I
+was intensely irritated to find that my fingers were trembling.
+
+Audrey had left the stairs and was standing beside me.
+
+'They shot at me,' I said.
+
+By the light of the hall lamp I could see that she was very pale.
+
+'It missed by a mile.' My nerves had not recovered and I spoke
+abruptly. 'Don't be frightened.'
+
+'I--I was not frightened,' she said, without conviction.
+
+'I was,' I said, with conviction. 'It was too sudden for me. It's
+the sort of thing one wants to get used to gradually. I shall be
+ready for it another time.'
+
+I made for the stairs.
+
+'Where are you going?'
+
+'I'm going to call up the police-station.'
+
+'Peter.'
+
+'Yes?'
+
+'Was--was that man the one you spoke of?'
+
+'Yes, that was Buck MacGinnis. He and Sam have gone into
+partnership.'
+
+She hesitated.
+
+'I'm sorry,' she said.
+
+I was half-way up the stairs by this time. I stopped and looked
+over the banisters.
+
+'Sorry?'
+
+'I didn't believe you this afternoon.'
+
+'Oh, that's all right,' I said. I tried to make my voice
+indifferent, for I was on guard against insidious friendliness. I
+had bludgeoned my mind into an attitude of safe hostility towards
+her, and I saw the old chaos ahead if I allowed myself to abandon
+it.
+
+I went to the telephone and unhooked the receiver.
+
+There is apt to be a certain leisureliness about the methods of
+country telephone-operators, and the fact that a voice did not
+immediately ask me what number I wanted did not at first disturb
+me. Suspicion of the truth came to me, I think, after my third
+shout into the receiver had remained unanswered. I had suffered
+from delay before, but never such delay as this.
+
+I must have remained there fully two minutes, shouting at
+intervals, before I realized the truth. Then I dropped the
+receiver and leaned limply against the wall. For the moment I was
+as stunned as if I had received a blow. I could not even think. It
+was only by degrees that I recovered sufficiently to understand
+that Audrey was speaking to me.
+
+'What is it? Don't they answer?'
+
+It is curious how the mind responds to the need for making an
+effort for the sake of somebody else. If I had had only myself to
+think of, it would, I believe, have been a considerable time
+before I could have adjusted my thoughts to grapple with this
+disaster. But the necessity of conveying the truth quietly to
+Audrey and of helping her to bear up under it steadied me at once.
+I found myself thinking quite coolly how best I might break to her
+what had happened.
+
+'I'm afraid,' I said, 'I have something to tell you which may--'
+
+She interrupted me quickly.
+
+'What is it? Can't you make them answer?'
+
+I shook my head. We looked at each other in silence.
+
+Her mind leaped to the truth more quickly than mine had done.
+
+'They have cut the wire!'
+
+I took up the receiver again and gave another call. There was no
+reply.
+
+'I'm afraid so,' I said.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 15
+
+
+I
+
+'What shall we do?' said Audrey.
+
+She looked at me hopefully, as if I were a mine of ideas. Her
+voice was level, without a suggestion of fear in it. Women have
+the gift of being courageous at times when they might legitimately
+give way. It is part of their unexpectedness.
+
+This was certainly such an occasion. Daylight would bring us
+relief, for I did not suppose that even Buck MacGinnis would care
+to conduct a siege which might be interrupted by the arrival of
+tradesmen's carts; but while the darkness lasted we were
+completely cut off from the world. With the destruction of the
+telephone wire our only link with civilization had been snapped.
+Even had the night been less stormy than it was, there was no
+chance of the noise of our warfare reaching the ears of anyone who
+might come to the rescue. It was as Sam had said, Buck's energy
+united to his strategy formed a strong combination.
+
+Broadly speaking, there are only two courses open to a beleaguered
+garrison. It can stay where it is, or it can make a sortie. I
+considered the second of these courses.
+
+It was possible that Sam and his allies had departed in the
+automobile to get reinforcements, leaving the coast temporarily
+clear; in which case, by escaping from the house at once, we might
+be able to slip unobserved through the grounds and reach the
+village in safety. To support this theory there was the fact that
+the car, on its late visit, had contained only the chauffeur and
+the two ambassadors, while Sam had spoken of the remainder of
+Buck's gang as being in readiness to attack in the event of my not
+coming to terms. That might mean that they were waiting at Buck's
+headquarters, wherever those might be--at one of the cottages down
+the road, I imagined; and, in the interval before the attack
+began, it might be possible for us to make our sortie with
+success.
+
+'Is Ogden in bed?' I asked.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Will you go and get him up as quickly as you can?'
+
+I strained my eyes at the window, but it was impossible to see
+anything. The rain was still falling heavily. If the drive had
+been full of men they would have been invisible to me.
+
+Presently Audrey returned, followed by Ogden. The Little Nugget
+was yawning the aggrieved yawns of one roused from his beauty
+sleep.
+
+'What's all this?' he demanded.
+
+'Listen,' I said. 'Buck MacGinnis and Smooth Sam Fisher have come
+after you. They are outside now. Don't be frightened.'
+
+He snorted derisively.
+
+'Who's frightened? I guess they won't hurt _me_. How do you know
+it's them?'
+
+'They have just been here. The man who called himself White, the
+butler, was really Sam Fisher. He has been waiting an opportunity
+to get you all the term.'
+
+'White! Was he Sam Fisher?' He chuckled admiringly. 'Say, he's a
+wonder!'
+
+'They have gone to fetch the rest of the gang.'
+
+'Why don't you call the cops?'
+
+'They have cut the wire.'
+
+His only emotions at the news seemed to be amusement and a renewed
+admiration for Smooth Sam. He smiled broadly, the little brute.
+
+'He's a wonder!' he repeated. 'I guess he's smooth, all right.
+He's the limit! He'll get me all right this trip. I bet you a
+nickel he wins out.'
+
+I found his attitude trying. That he, the cause of all the trouble,
+should be so obviously regarding it as a sporting contest got up
+for his entertainment, was hard to bear. And the fact that, whatever
+might happen to myself, he was in no danger, comforted me not at all.
+If I could have felt that we were in any way companions in peril,
+I might have looked on the bulbous boy with quite a friendly eye.
+As it was, I nearly kicked him.
+
+'We had better waste no time,' suggested Audrey, 'if we are going.'
+
+'I think we ought to try it,' I said.
+
+'What's that?' asked the Nugget. 'Go where?'
+
+'We are going to steal out through the back way and try to slip
+through to the village.'
+
+The Nugget's comment on the scheme was brief and to the point. He
+did not embarrass me with fulsome praise of my strategic genius.
+
+'Of all the fool games!' he said simply. 'In this rain? No, sir!'
+
+This new complication was too much for me. In planning out my
+manoeuvres I had taken his cooperation for granted. I had looked
+on him as so much baggage--the impedimenta of the retreating army.
+And, behold, a mutineer!
+
+I took him by the scruff of the neck and shook him. It was a
+relief to my feelings and a sound move. The argument was one which
+he understood.
+
+'Oh, all right,' he said. 'Anything you like. Come on. But it sounds
+to me like darned foolishness!'
+
+If nothing else had happened to spoil the success of that sortie,
+the Nugget's depressing attitude would have done so. Of all things,
+it seems to me, a forlorn hope should be undertaken with a certain
+enthusiasm and optimism if it is to have a chance of being successful.
+Ogden threw a gloom over the proceedings from the start. He was cross
+and sleepy, and he condemned the expedition unequivocally. As we moved
+towards the back door he kept up a running stream of abusive comment.
+I silenced him before cautiously unbolting the door, but he had said
+enough to damp my spirits. I do not know what effect it would have
+had on Napoleon's tactics if his army--say, before Austerlitz--had
+spoken of his manoeuvres as a 'fool game' and of himself as a 'big
+chump', but I doubt if it would have stimulated him.
+
+The back door of Sanstead House opened on to a narrow yard, paved
+with flagstones and shut in on all sides but one by walls. To the
+left was the outhouse where the coal was stored, a squat barnlike
+building: to the right a wall that appeared to have been erected
+by the architect in an outburst of pure whimsicality. It just
+stood there. It served no purpose that I had ever been able to
+discover, except to act as a cats' club-house.
+
+Tonight, however, I was thankful for this wall. It formed an
+important piece of cover. By keeping in its shelter it was
+possible to work round the angle of the coal-shed, enter the
+stable-yard, and, by making a detour across the football field,
+avoid the drive altogether. And it was the drive, in my opinion,
+that might be looked on as the danger zone.
+
+The Nugget's complaints, which I had momentarily succeeded in
+checking, burst out afresh as the rain swept in at the open door
+and lashed our faces. Certainly it was not an ideal night for a
+ramble. The wind was blowing through the opening at the end of the
+yard with a compressed violence due to the confined space. There
+was a suggestion in our position of the Cave of the Winds under
+Niagara Falls, the verisimilitude of which was increased by the
+stream of water that poured down from the gutter above our heads.
+The Nugget found it unpleasant, and said so shrilly.
+
+I pushed him out into the storm, still protesting, and we began to
+creep across the yard. Half-way to the first point of importance
+of our journey, the corner of the coal-shed, I halted the
+expedition. There was a sudden lull in the wind, and I took
+advantage of it to listen.
+
+From somewhere beyond the wall, apparently near the house, sounded
+the muffled note of the automobile. The siege-party had returned.
+
+There was no time to be lost. Apparently the possibility of a
+sortie had not yet occurred to Sam, or he would hardly have left
+the back door unguarded; but a general of his astuteness was
+certain to remedy the mistake soon, and our freedom of action
+might be a thing of moments. It behoved us to reach the stable-yard
+as quickly as possible. Once there, we should be practically through
+the enemy's lines.
+
+Administering a kick to the Nugget, who showed a disposition to
+linger and talk about the weather, I moved on, and we reached the
+corner of the coal-shed in safety.
+
+We had now arrived at the really perilous stage in our journey.
+Having built his wall to a point level with the end of the coal-shed,
+the architect had apparently wearied of the thing and given it up;
+for it ceased abruptly, leaving us with a matter of half a dozen
+yards of open ground to cross, with nothing to screen us from the
+watchers on the drive. The flagstones, moreover, stopped at this
+point. On the open space was loose gravel. Even if the darkness
+allowed us to make the crossing unseen, there was the risk that we
+might be heard.
+
+It was a moment for a flash of inspiration, and I was waiting for
+one, when that happened which took the problem out of my hands.
+From the interior of the shed on our left there came a sudden
+scrabbling of feet over loose coal, and through the square opening
+in the wall, designed for the peaceful purpose of taking in sacks,
+climbed two men. A pistol cracked. From the drive came an
+answering shout. We had been ambushed.
+
+I had misjudged Sam. He had not overlooked the possibility of a
+sortie.
+
+It is the accidents of life that turn the scale in a crisis. The
+opening through which the men had leaped was scarcely a couple of
+yards behind the spot where we were standing. If they had leaped
+fairly and kept their feet, they would have been on us before we
+could have moved. But Fortune ordered it that, zeal outrunning
+discretion, the first of the two should catch his foot in the
+woodwork and fall on all fours, while the second, unable to check
+his spring, alighted on top of him, and, judging from the stifled
+yell which followed, must have kicked him in the face.
+
+In the moment of their downfall I was able to form a plan and
+execute it.
+
+'The stables!'
+
+I shouted the words to Audrey in the act of snatching up the
+Nugget and starting to run. She understood. She did not hesitate
+in the direction of the house for even the instant which might
+have undone us, but was with me at once; and we were across the
+open space and in the stable-yard before the first of the men in
+the drive loomed up through the darkness. Half of the wooden
+double-gate of the yard was open, and the other half served us as
+a shield. They fired as they ran--at random, I think, for it was
+too dark for them to have seen us clearly--and two bullets slapped
+against the gate. A third struck the wall above our heads and
+ricocheted off into the night. But before they could fire again we
+were in the stables, the door slammed behind us, and I had dumped
+the Nugget on the floor, and was shooting the heavy bolts into
+their places. Footsteps clattered over the flagstones and stopped
+outside. Some weighty body plunged against the door. Then there
+was silence. The first round was over.
+
+The stables, as is the case in most English country-houses, had
+been, in its palmy days, the glory of Sanstead House. In whatever
+other respect the British architect of that period may have fallen
+short, he never scamped his work on the stables. He built them
+strong and solid, with walls fitted to repel the assaults of the
+weather, and possibly those of men as well, for the Boones in
+their day had been mighty owners of race-horses at a time when men
+with money at stake did not stick at trifles, and it was prudent
+to see to it that the spot where the favourite was housed had
+something of the nature of a fortress. The walls were thick, the
+door solid, the windows barred with iron. We could scarcely have
+found a better haven of refuge.
+
+Under Mr Abney's rule, the stables had lost their original
+character. They had been divided into three compartments, each
+separated by a stout wall. One compartment became a gymnasium,
+another the carpenter's shop, the third, in which we were,
+remained a stable, though in these degenerate days no horse ever
+set foot inside it, its only use being to provide a place for the
+odd-job man to clean shoes. The mangers which had once held fodder
+were given over now to brushes and pots of polish. In term-time,
+bicycles were stored in the loose-box which had once echoed to the
+tramping of Derby favourites.
+
+I groped about among the pots and brushes, and found a candle-end,
+which I lit. I was running a risk, but it was necessary to inspect
+our ground. I had never troubled really to examine this stable
+before, and I wished to put myself in touch with its geography.
+
+I blew out the candle, well content with what I had seen. The only
+two windows were small, high up, and excellently barred. Even if
+the enemy fired through them there were half a dozen spots where
+we should be perfectly safe. Best of all, in the event of the door
+being carried by assault, we had a second line of defence in a
+loft. A ladder against the back wall led to it, by way of a trap-door.
+Circumstances had certainly been kind to us in driving us to this
+apparently impregnable shelter.
+
+On concluding my inspection, I became aware that the Nugget was
+still occupied with his grievances. I think the shots must have
+stimulated his nerve centres, for he had abandoned the languid
+drawl with which, in happier moments, he was wont to comment on
+life's happenings, and was dealing with the situation with a
+staccato briskness.
+
+'Of all the darned fool lay-outs I ever struck, this is the limit.
+What do those idiots think they're doing, shooting us up that way?
+It went within an inch of my head. It might have killed me. Gee,
+and I'm all wet. I'm catching cold. It's all through your blamed
+foolishness, bringing us out here. Why couldn't we stay in the
+house?'
+
+'We could not have kept them out of the house for five minutes,' I
+explained. 'We can hold this place.'
+
+'Who wants to hold it? I don't. What does it matter if they do get
+me? _I_ don't care. I've a good mind to walk straight out through
+that door and let them rope me in. It would serve Dad right. It
+would teach him not to send me away from home to any darned school
+again. What did he want to do it for? I was all right where I was.
+I--'
+
+A loud hammering on the door cut off his eloquence. The
+intermission was over, and the second round had begun.
+
+It was pitch dark in the stable now that I had blown out the
+candle, and there is something about a combination of noise and
+darkness which tries the nerves. If mine had remained steady, I
+should have ignored the hammering. From the sound, it appeared to
+be made by some wooden instrument--a mallet from the carpenter's
+shop I discovered later--and the door could be relied on to hold
+its own without my intervention. For a novice to violence,
+however, to maintain a state of calm inaction is the most
+difficult feat of all. I was irritated and worried by the noise,
+and exaggerated its importance. It seemed to me that it must be
+stopped at once.
+
+A moment before, I had bruised my shins against an empty packing-case,
+which had found its way with other lumber into the stable. I groped
+for this, swung it noiselessly into position beneath the window,
+and, standing on it, looked out. I found the catch of the window,
+and opened it. There was nothing to be seen, but the sound of the
+hammering became more distinct; and pushing an arm through the bars,
+I emptied my pistol at a venture.
+
+As a practical move, the action had flaws. The shots cannot have
+gone anywhere near their vague target. But as a demonstration, it
+was a wonderful success. The yard became suddenly full of dancing
+bullets. They struck the flagstones, bounded off, chipped the
+bricks of the far wall, ricocheted from those, buzzed in all
+directions, and generally behaved in a manner calculated to unman
+the stoutest hearted.
+
+The siege-party did not stop to argue. They stampeded as one man.
+I could hear them clattering across the flagstones to every point
+of the compass. In a few seconds silence prevailed, broken only by
+the swish of the rain. Round two had been brief, hardly worthy to
+be called a round at all, and, like round one, it had ended wholly
+in our favour.
+
+I jumped down from my packing-case, swelling with pride. I had had
+no previous experience of this sort of thing, yet here I was
+handling the affair like a veteran. I considered that I had a
+right to feel triumphant. I lit the candle again, and beamed
+protectively upon the garrison.
+
+The Nugget was sitting on the floor, gaping feebly, and awed for
+the moment into silence. Audrey, in the far corner, looked pale
+but composed. Her behaviour was perfect. There was nothing for her
+to do, and she was doing it with a quiet self-control which won
+my admiration. Her manner seemed to me exactly suited to the
+exigencies of the situation. With a super-competent dare-devil
+like myself in charge of affairs, all she had to do was to wait
+and not get in the way.
+
+'I didn't hit anybody,' I announced, 'but they ran like rabbits.
+They are all over Hampshire.'
+
+I laughed indulgently. I could afford an attitude of tolerant
+amusement towards the enemy.
+
+'Will they come back?'
+
+'Possibly. And in that case'--I felt in my left-hand coat-pocket--'I
+had better be getting ready.' I felt in my right-hand coat-pocket.
+'Ready,' I repeated blankly. A clammy coldness took possession of me.
+My voice trailed off into nothingness. For in neither pocket was
+There a single one of the shells with which I had fancied that I
+was abundantly provided. In moments of excitement man is apt to make
+mistakes. I had made mine when, starting out on the sortie, I had
+left all my ammunition in the house.
+
+
+II
+
+I should like to think that it was an unselfish desire to spare my
+companions anxiety that made me keep my discovery to myself. But I
+am afraid that my reticence was due far more to the fact that I
+shrank from letting the Nugget discover my imbecile carelessness.
+Even in times of peril one retains one's human weaknesses; and I
+felt that I could not face his comments. If he had permitted a
+certain note of querulousness to creep into his conversation
+already, the imagination recoiled from the thought of the caustic
+depths he would reach now should I reveal the truth.
+
+I tried to make things better with cheery optimism.
+
+'_They_ won't come back!' I said stoutly, and tried to believe it.
+
+The Nugget as usual struck the jarring note.
+
+'Well, then, let's beat it,' he said. 'I don't want to spend the
+night in this darned icehouse. I tell you I'm catching cold. My
+chest's weak. If you're so dead certain you've scared them away,
+let's quit.'
+
+I was not prepared to go as far as this.
+
+'They may be somewhere near, hiding.'
+
+'Well, what if they are? I don't mind being kidnapped. Let's go.'
+
+'I think we ought to wait,' said Audrey.
+
+'Of course,' I said. 'It would be madness to go out now.'
+
+'Oh, pshaw!' said the Little Nugget; and from this point onwards
+punctuated the proceedings with a hacking cough.
+
+I had never really believed that my demonstration had brought the
+siege to a definite end. I anticipated that there would be some
+delay before the renewal of hostilities, but I was too well
+acquainted with Buck MacGinnis's tenacity to imagine that he would
+abandon his task because a few random shots had spread momentary
+panic in his ranks. He had all the night before him, and sooner or
+later he would return.
+
+I had judged him correctly. Many minutes dragged wearily by
+without a sign from the enemy, then, listening at the window, I
+heard footsteps crossing the yard and voices talking in cautious
+undertones. The fight was on once more.
+
+A bright light streamed through the window, flooding the opening
+and spreading in a wide circle on the ceiling. It was not
+difficult to understand what had happened. They had gone to the
+automobile and come back with one of the head-lamps, an astute
+move in which I seemed to see the finger of Sam. The danger-spot
+thus rendered harmless, they renewed their attack on the door with
+a reckless vigour. The mallet had been superseded by some heavier
+instrument--of iron this time. I think it must have been the jack
+from the automobile. It was a more formidable weapon altogether
+than the mallet, and even our good oak door quivered under it.
+
+A splintering of wood decided me that the time had come to retreat
+to our second line of entrenchments. How long the door would hold
+it was impossible to say, but I doubted if it was more than a
+matter of minutes.
+
+Relighting my candle, which I had extinguished from motives of
+economy, I caught Audrey's eye and jerked my head towards the
+ladder.
+
+'You go first,' I whispered.
+
+The Nugget watched her disappear through the trap-door, then
+turned to me with an air of resolution.
+
+'If you think you're going to get _me_ up there, you've
+another guess coming. I'm going to wait here till they get in, and
+let them take me. I'm about tired of this foolishness.'
+
+It was no time for verbal argument. I collected him, a kicking
+handful, bore him to the ladder, and pushed him through the
+opening. He uttered one of his devastating squeals. The sound
+seemed to encourage the workers outside like a trumpet-blast. The
+blows on the door redoubled.
+
+I climbed the ladder and shut the trap-door behind me.
+
+The air of the loft was close and musty and smelt of mildewed hay.
+It was not the sort of spot which one would have selected of one's
+own free will to sit in for any length of time. There was a rustling
+noise, and a rat scurried across the rickety floor, drawing a
+startled gasp from Audrey and a disgusted 'Oh, piffle!' from the
+Nugget. Whatever merits this final refuge might have as a stronghold,
+it was beyond question a noisome place.
+
+The beating on the stable-door was working up to a crescendo.
+Presently there came a crash that shook the floor on which we sat
+and sent our neighbours, the rats, scuttling to and fro in a
+perfect frenzy of perturbation. The light of the automobile lamp
+poured in through the numerous holes and chinks which the passage
+of time had made in the old boards. There was one large hole near
+the centre which produced a sort of searchlight effect, and
+allowed us for the first time to see what manner of place it was
+in which we had entrenched ourselves. The loft was high and
+spacious. The roof must have been some seven feet above our heads.
+I could stand upright without difficulty.
+
+In the proceedings beneath us there had come a lull. The mystery
+of our disappearance had not baffled the enemy for long, for almost
+immediately the rays of the lamp had shifted and begun to play on
+the trap-door. I heard somebody climb the ladder, and the trap-door
+creaked gently as a hand tested it. I had taken up a position beside
+it, ready, if the bolt gave way, to do what I could with the butt of
+my pistol, my only weapon. But the bolt, though rusty, was strong,
+and the man dropped to the ground again. Since then, except for
+occasional snatches of whispered conversation, I had heard nothing.
+
+Suddenly Sam's voice spoke.
+
+'Mr Burns!'
+
+I saw no advantage in remaining silent.
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Haven't you had enough of this? You've given us a mighty good run
+for our money, but you can see for yourself that you're through
+now. I'd hate like anything for you to get hurt. Pass the kid
+down, and we'll call it off.'
+
+He paused.
+
+'Well?' he said. 'Why don't you answer?'
+
+'I did.'
+
+'Did you? I didn't hear you.'
+
+'I smiled.'
+
+'You mean to stick it out? Don't be foolish, sonny. The boys here
+are mad enough at you already. What's the use of getting yourself
+in bad for nothing? We've got you in a pocket. I know all about that
+gun of yours, young fellow. I had a suspicion what had happened,
+and I've been into the house and found the shells you forgot to
+take with you. So, if you were thinking of making a bluff in that
+direction forget it!'
+
+The exposure had the effect I had anticipated.
+
+'Of all the chumps!' exclaimed the Nugget caustically. 'You ought
+to be in a home. Well, I guess you'll agree to end this foolishness
+now? Let's go down and get it over and have some peace. I'm getting
+pneumonia.'
+
+'You're quite right, Mr Fisher,' I said. 'But don't forget I still
+have the pistol, even if I haven't the shells. The first man who
+tries to come up here will have a headache tomorrow.'
+
+'I shouldn't bank on it, sonny. Come along, kiddo! You're done. Be
+good, and own it. We can't wait much longer.'
+
+'You'll have to try.'
+
+Buck's voice broke in on the discussion, quite unintelligible
+except that it was obviously wrathful.
+
+'Oh well!' I heard Sam say resignedly, and then there was silence
+again below.
+
+I resumed my watch over the trap-door, encouraged. This parleying,
+I thought, was an admission of failure on the part of the
+besiegers. I did not credit Sam with a real concern for my
+welfare--thereby doing him an injustice. I can see now that he
+spoke perfectly sincerely. The position, though I was unaware of
+it, really was hopeless, for the reason that, like most positions,
+it had a flank as well as a front. In estimating the possibilities
+of attack, I had figured assaults as coming only from below. I had
+omitted from my calculations the fact that the loft had a roof.
+
+It was a scraping on the tiles above my head that first brought
+the new danger-point to my notice. There followed the sound of
+heavy hammering, and with it came a sickening realization of the
+truth of what Sam had said. We were beaten.
+
+I was too paralysed by the unexpectedness of the attack to form
+any plan; and, indeed, I do not think that there was anything that
+I could have done. I was unarmed and helpless. I stood there,
+waiting for the inevitable.
+
+Affairs moved swiftly. Plaster rained down on to the wooden floor.
+I was vaguely aware that the Nugget was speaking, but I did not
+listen to him.
+
+A gap appeared in the roof and widened. I could hear the heavy
+breathing of the man as he wrenched at the tiles.
+
+And then the climax arrived, with anticlimax following so swiftly
+upon it that the two were almost simultaneous. I saw the worker on
+the roof cautiously poise himself in the opening, hunched up like
+some strange ape. The next moment he had sprung.
+
+As his feet touched the floor there came a rending, splintering
+crash; the air was filled with a choking dust, and he was gone.
+The old worn out boards had shaken under my tread. They had given
+way in complete ruin beneath this sharp onslaught. The rays of the
+lamp, which had filtered in like pencils of light through
+crevices, now shone in a great lake in the centre of the floor.
+
+In the stable below all was confusion. Everybody was speaking at
+once. The hero of the late disaster was groaning horribly, for
+which he certainly had good reason: I did not know the extent of
+his injuries, but a man does not do that sort of thing with
+impunity. The next of the strange happenings of the night now
+occurred.
+
+I had not been giving the Nugget a great deal of my attention for
+some time, other and more urgent matters occupying me.
+
+His action at this juncture, consequently, came as a complete and
+crushing surprise.
+
+I was edging my way cautiously towards the jagged hole in the
+centre of the floor, in the hope of seeing something of what was
+going on below, when from close beside me his voice screamed.
+'It's me, Ogden Ford. I'm coming!' and, without further warning,
+he ran to the hole, swung himself over, and dropped.
+
+Manna falling from the skies in the wilderness never received a
+more whole-hearted welcome. Howls and cheers and ear-splitting
+whoops filled the air. The babel of talk broke out again. Some
+exuberant person found expression of his joy in emptying his
+pistol at the ceiling, to my acute discomfort, the spot he had
+selected as a target chancing to be within a foot of where I
+stood. Then they moved off in a body, still cheering. The fight
+was over.
+
+I do not know how long it was before I spoke. It may have been
+some minutes. I was dazed with the swiftness with which the final
+stages of the drama had been played out. If I had given him more
+of my attention, I might have divined that Ogden had been waiting
+his opportunity to make some such move; but, as it was, the
+possibility had not even occurred to me, and I was stunned.
+
+In the distance I heard the automobile moving off down the drive.
+The sound roused me.
+
+'Well, we may as well go,' I said dully. I lit the candle and held
+it up. Audrey was standing against the wall, her face white and
+set.
+
+I raised the trap-door and followed her down the ladder.
+
+The rain had ceased, and the stars were shining. After the
+closeness of the loft, the clean wet air was delicious. For a
+moment we stopped, held by the peace and stillness of the night.
+
+Then, quite suddenly, she broke down.
+
+It was the unexpectedness of it that first threw me off my balance.
+In all the time I had known her, I had never before seen Audrey in
+tears. Always, in the past, she had borne the blows of fate with a
+stoical indifference which had alternately attracted and repelled
+me, according as my mood led me to think it courage or insensibility.
+In the old days, it had done much, this trait of hers, to rear a
+barrier between us. It had made her seem aloof and unapproachable.
+Subconsciously, I suppose, it had offended my egoism that she should
+be able to support herself in times of trouble, and not feel it
+necessary to lean on me.
+
+And now the barrier had fallen. The old independence, the almost
+aggressive self-reliance, had vanished. A new Audrey had revealed
+herself.
+
+She was sobbing helplessly, standing quite still, her arms hanging
+and her eyes staring blankly before her. There was something in
+her attitude so hopeless, so beaten, that the pathos of it seemed
+to cut me like a knife.
+
+'Audrey!'
+
+The stars glittered in the little pools among the worn flagstones.
+The night was very still. Only the steady drip of water from the
+trees broke the silence.
+
+A great wave of tenderness seemed to sweep from my mind everything
+in the world but her. Everything broke abruptly that had been
+checking me, stifling me, holding me gagged and bound since the
+night when our lives had come together again after those five long
+years. I forgot Cynthia, my promise, everything.
+
+'Audrey!'
+
+She was in my arms, clinging to me, murmuring my name. The
+darkness was about us like a cloud.
+
+And then she had slipped from me, and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 16
+
+
+In my recollections of that strange night there are wide gaps.
+Trivial incidents come back to me with extraordinary vividness;
+while there are hours of which I can remember nothing. What I did
+or where I went I cannot recall. It seems to me, looking back,
+that I walked without a pause till morning; yet, when day came, I
+was still in the school grounds. Perhaps I walked, as a wounded
+animal runs, in circles. I lost, I know, all count of time. I
+became aware of the dawn as something that had happened suddenly,
+as if light had succeeded darkness in a flash. It had been night;
+I looked about me, and it was day--a steely, cheerless day, like a
+December evening. And I found that I was very cold, very tired,
+and very miserable.
+
+My mind was like the morning, grey and overcast. Conscience may be
+expelled, but, like Nature, it will return. Mine, which I had cast
+from me, had crept back with the daylight. I had had my hour of
+freedom, and it was now for me to pay for it.
+
+I paid in full. My thoughts tore me. I could see no way out.
+Through the night the fever and exhilaration of that mad moment
+had sustained me, but now the morning had come, when dreams must
+yield to facts, and I had to face the future.
+
+I sat on the stump of a tree, and buried my face in my hands. I
+must have fallen asleep, for, when I raised my eyes again, the day
+was brighter. Its cheerlessness had gone. The sky was blue, and
+birds were singing.
+
+It must have been about half an hour later that the first
+beginnings of a plan of action came to me. I could not trust
+myself to reason out my position clearly and honestly in this
+place where Audrey's spell was over everything. The part of me
+that was struggling to be loyal to Cynthia was overwhelmed here.
+London called to me. I could think there, face my position
+quietly, and make up my mind.
+
+I turned to walk to the station. I could not guess even remotely
+what time it was. The sun was shining through the trees, but in
+the road outside the grounds there were no signs of workers
+beginning the day.
+
+It was half past five when I reached the station. A sleepy porter
+informed me that there would be a train to London, a slow train,
+at six.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I remained in London two days, and on the third went down to Sanstead
+to see Audrey for the last time. I had made my decision.
+
+I found her on the drive, close by the gate. She turned at my
+footstep on the gravel; and, as I saw her, I knew that the fight
+which I had thought over was only beginning.
+
+I was shocked at her appearance. Her face was very pale, and there
+were tired lines about her eyes.
+
+I could not speak. Something choked me. Once again, as on that
+night in the stable-yard, the world and all that was in it seemed
+infinitely remote.
+
+It was she who broke the silence.
+
+'Well, Peter,' she said listlessly.
+
+We walked up the drive together.
+
+'Have you been to London?'
+
+'Yes. I came down this morning.' I paused. 'I went there to
+think,' I said.
+
+She nodded.
+
+'I have been thinking, too.'
+
+I stopped, and began to hollow out a groove in the wet gravel with
+my heel. Words were not coming readily.
+
+Suddenly she found speech. She spoke quickly, but her voice was
+dull and lifeless.
+
+'Let us forget what has happened, Peter. We were neither of us
+ourselves. I was tired and frightened and disappointed. You were
+sorry for me just at the moment, and your nerves were strained,
+like mine. It was all nothing. Let us forget it.'
+
+I shook my head.
+
+'No,' I said. 'It was not that. I can't let you even pretend you
+think that was all. I love you. I always have loved you, though I
+did not know how much till you had gone away. After a time, I
+thought I had got over it. But when I met you again down here, I
+knew that I had not, and never should. I came back to say good-bye,
+but I shall always love you. It is my punishment for being the sort
+of man I was five years ago.'
+
+'And mine for being the sort of woman I was five years ago.' She
+laughed bitterly. 'Woman! I was just a little fool, a sulky child.
+My punishment is going to be worse than yours, Peter. You will not
+be always thinking that you had the happiness of two lives in your
+hands, and threw it away because you had not the sense to hold
+it.'
+
+'It is just that that I shall always be thinking. What happened
+five years ago was my fault, Audrey, and nobody's but mine. I
+don't think that, even when the loss of you hurt most, I ever
+blamed you for going away. You had made me see myself as I was,
+and I knew that you had done the right thing. I was selfish,
+patronizing--I was insufferable. It was I who threw away our
+happiness. You put it in a sentence that first day here, when you
+said that I had been kind--sometimes--when I happened to think of
+it. That summed me up. You have nothing to reproach yourself for.
+I think we have not had the best of luck; but all the blame is
+mine.'
+
+A flush came into her pale face.
+
+'I remember saying that. I said it because I was afraid of myself.
+I was shaken by meeting you again. I thought you must be hating
+me--you had every reason to hate me, and you spoke as if you
+did--and I did not want to show you what you were to me. It wasn't
+true, Peter. Five years ago I may have thought it, but not now. I
+have grown to understand the realities by this time. I have been
+through too much to have any false ideas left. I have had some
+chance to compare men, and I realize that they are not all kind,
+Peter, even sometimes, when they happen to think of it.'
+
+'Audrey,' I said--I had never found myself able to ask the
+question before--'was--was--he--was Sheridan kind to you?'
+
+She did not speak for a moment, and I thought she was resenting
+the question.
+
+'No!' she said abruptly.
+
+She shot out the monosyllable with a force that startled and
+silenced me. There was a whole history of unhappiness in the word.
+
+'No,' she said again, after a pause, more gently this time. I
+understood. She was speaking of a dead man.
+
+'I can't talk about him,' she went on hurriedly. 'I expect most of
+it was my fault. I was unhappy because he was not you, and he saw
+that I was unhappy and hated me for it. We had nothing in common.
+It was just a piece of sheer madness, our marriage. He swept me
+off my feet. I never had a great deal of sense, and I lost it all
+then. I was far happier when he had left me.'
+
+'Left you?'
+
+'He deserted me almost directly we reached America.' She laughed.
+'I told you I had grown to understand the realities. I began
+then.'
+
+I was horrified. For the first time I realized vividly all that
+she had gone through. When she had spoken to me before of her
+struggles that evening over the study fire, I had supposed that
+they had begun only after her husband's death, and that her life
+with him had in some measure trained her for the fight. That she
+should have been pitched into the arena, a mere child, with no
+experience of life, appalled me. And, as she spoke, there came to
+me the knowledge that now I could never do what I had come to do.
+I could not give her up. She needed me. I tried not to think of
+Cynthia.
+
+I took her hand.
+
+'Audrey,' I said, 'I came here to say good-bye. I can't. I want
+you. Nothing matters except you. I won't give you up.'
+
+'It's too late,' she said, with a little catch in her voice. 'You
+are engaged to Mrs Ford.'
+
+'I am engaged, but not to Mrs Ford. I am engaged to someone you
+have never met--Cynthia Drassilis.'
+
+She pulled her hand away quickly, wide-eyed, and for some moments
+was silent.
+
+'Do you love her?' she asked at last.
+
+'No.'
+
+'Does she love you?'
+
+Cynthia's letter rose before my eyes, that letter that could have
+had no meaning, but one.
+
+'I am afraid she does,' I said.
+
+She looked at me steadily. Her face was very pale.
+
+'You must marry her, Peter.'
+
+I shook my head.
+
+'You must. She believes in you.'
+
+'I can't. I want you. And you need me. Can you deny that you need
+me?'
+
+'No.'
+
+She said it quite simply, without emotion. I moved towards her,
+thrilling, but she stepped back.
+
+'She needs you too,' she said.
+
+A dull despair was creeping over me. I was weighed down by a
+premonition of failure. I had fought my conscience, my sense of
+duty and honour, and crushed them. She was raising them up against
+me once more. My self-control broke down.
+
+'Audrey,' I cried, 'for God's sake can't you see what you're
+doing? We have been given a second chance. Our happiness is in
+your hands again, and you are throwing it away. Why should we make
+ourselves wretched for the whole of our lives? What does anything
+else matter except that we love each other? Why should we let
+anything stand in our way? I won't give you up.'
+
+She did not answer. Her eyes were fixed on the ground. Hope began
+to revive in me, telling me that I had persuaded her. But when she
+looked up it was with the same steady gaze, and my heart sank
+again.
+
+'Peter,' she said, 'I want to tell you something. It will make you
+understand, I think. I haven't been honest, Peter. I have not
+fought fairly. All these weeks, ever since we met, I have been
+trying to steal you. It's the only word. I have tried every little
+miserable trick I could think of to steal you from the girl you
+had promised to marry. And she wasn't here to fight for herself. I
+didn't think of her. I was wrapped up in my own selfishness. And
+then, after that night, when you had gone away, I thought it all
+out. I had a sort of awakening. I saw the part I had been playing.
+Even then I tried to persuade myself that I had done something
+rather fine. I thought, you see, at that time that you were
+infatuated with Mrs Ford--and I know Mrs Ford. If she is capable
+of loving any man, she loves Mr Ford, though they are divorced. I
+knew she would only make you unhappy. I told myself I was saving
+you. Then you told me it was not Mrs Ford, but this girl. That
+altered everything. Don't you see that I can't let you give her up
+now? You would despise me. I shouldn't feel clean. I should feel
+as if I had stabbed her in the back.'
+
+I forced a laugh. It rang hollow against the barrier that
+separated us. In my heart I knew that this barrier was not to be
+laughed away.
+
+'Can't you see, Peter? You must see.'
+
+'I certainly don't. I think you're overstrained, and that you have
+let your imagination run away with you. I--'
+
+She interrupted me.
+
+'Do you remember that evening in the study?' she asked abruptly.
+'We had been talking. I had been telling you how I had lived
+during those five years.'
+
+'I remember.'
+
+'Every word I spoke was spoken with an object--calculated.... Yes,
+even the pauses. I tried to make _them_ tell, too. I knew
+you, you see, Peter. I knew you through and through, because I
+loved you, and I knew the effect those tales would have on you.
+Oh, they were all true. I was honest as far as that goes. But they
+had the mean motive at the back of them. I was playing on your
+feelings. I knew how kind you were, how you would pity me. I set
+myself to create an image which would stay in your mind and kill
+the memory of the other girl; the image of a poor, ill-treated
+little creature who should work through to your heart by way of
+your compassion. I knew you, Peter, I knew you. And then I did a
+meaner thing still. I pretended to stumble in the dark. I meant
+you to catch me and hold me, and you did. And ...'
+
+Her voice broke off.
+
+'I'm glad I have told you,' she said. 'It makes it a little
+better. You understand now how I feel, don't you?'
+
+She held out her hand.
+
+'Good-bye.'
+
+'I am not going to give you up,' I said doggedly.
+
+'Good-bye,' she said again. Her voice was a whisper.
+
+I took her hand and began to draw her towards me.
+
+'It is not good-bye. There is no one else in the world but you,
+and I am not going to give you up.'
+
+'Peter!' she struggled feebly. 'Oh, let me go.'
+
+I drew her nearer.
+
+'I won't let you go,' I said.
+
+But, as I spoke, there came the sound of automobile wheels on the
+gravel. A large red car was coming up the drive. I dropped
+Audrey's hand, and she stepped back and was lost in the shrubbery.
+The car slowed down and stopped beside me. There were two women in
+the tonneau. One, who was dark and handsome, I did not know. The
+other was Mrs Drassilis.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 17
+
+
+I was given no leisure for wondering how Cynthia's mother came to
+be in the grounds of Sanstead House, for her companion, almost
+before the car had stopped, jumped out and clutched me by the arm,
+at the same time uttering this cryptic speech: 'Whatever he offers
+I'll double!'
+
+She fixed me, as she spoke, with a commanding eye. She was a woman,
+I gathered in that instant, born to command. There seemed, at any
+rate, no doubt in her mind that she could command me. If I had
+been a black beetle she could not have looked at me with a more
+scornful superiority. Her eyes were very large and of a rich, fiery
+brown colour, and it was these that gave me my first suspicion of
+her identity. As to the meaning of her words, however, I had no clue.
+
+'Bear that in mind,' she went on. 'I'll double it if it's a
+million dollars.'
+
+'I'm afraid I don't understand,' I said, finding speech.
+
+She clicked her tongue impatiently.
+
+'There's no need to be so cautious and mysterious. This lady is a
+friend of mine. She knows all about it. I asked her to come. I'm
+Mrs Elmer Ford. I came here directly I got your letter. I think
+you're the lowest sort of scoundrel that ever managed to keep out
+of gaol, but that needn't make any difference just now. We're here
+to talk business, Mr Fisher, so we may as well begin.'
+
+I was getting tired of being taken for Smooth Sam.
+
+'I am not Smooth Sam Fisher.'
+
+I turned to the automobile. 'Will you identify me, Mrs Drassilis?'
+
+She was regarding me with wide-open eyes.
+
+'What on earth are you doing down here? I have been trying
+everywhere to find you, but nobody--'
+
+Mrs Ford interrupted her. She gave me the impression of being a
+woman who wanted a good deal of the conversation, and who did not
+care how she got it. In a conversational sense she thugged Mrs
+Drassilis at this point, or rather she swept over her like some
+tidal wave, blotting her out.
+
+'Oh,' she said fixing her brown eyes, less scornful now but still
+imperious, on mine. 'I must apologize. I have made a mistake. I
+took you for a low villain of the name of Sam Fisher. I hope you
+will forgive me. I was to have met him at this exact spot just
+about this time, by appointment, so, seeing you here, I mistook
+you for him.'
+
+'If I might have a word with you alone?' I said.
+
+Mrs Ford had a short way with people. In matters concerning her
+own wishes, she took their acquiescence for granted.
+
+'Drive on up to the house, Jarvis,' she said, and Mrs Drassilis
+was whirled away round the curve of the drive before she knew what
+had happened to her.
+
+'Well?'
+
+'My name is Burns,' I said.
+
+'Now I understand,' she said. 'I know who you are now.' She
+paused, and I was expecting her to fawn upon me for my gallant
+service in her cause, when she resumed in quite a different
+strain.
+
+'I can't think what you can have been about, Mr Burns, not to have
+been able to do what Cynthia asked you. Surely in all these weeks
+and months.... And then, after all, to have let this Fisher
+scoundrel steal him away from under your nose...!'
+
+She gave me a fleeting glance of unfathomable scorn. And when I
+thought of all the sufferings I had gone through that term owing
+to her repulsive son and, indirectly, for her sake, I felt that
+the time had come to speak out.
+
+'May I describe the way in which I allowed your son to be stolen
+away from under my nose?' I said. And in well-chosen words, I
+sketched the outline of what had happened. I did not omit to lay
+stress on the fact that the Nugget's departure with the enemy was
+entirely voluntary.
+
+She heard me out in silence.
+
+'That was too bad of Oggie,' she said tolerantly, when I had
+ceased dramatically on the climax of my tale.
+
+As a comment it seemed to me inadequate.
+
+'Oggie was always high-spirited,' she went on. 'No doubt you have
+noticed that?'
+
+'A little.'
+
+'He could be led, but never driven. With the best intentions, no
+doubt, you refused to allow him to leave the stables that night
+and return to the house, and he resented the check and took the
+matter into his own hands.' She broke off and looked at her watch.
+'Have you a watch? What time is it? Only that? I thought it must
+be later. I arrived too soon. I got a letter from this man Fisher,
+naming this spot and this hour for a meeting, when we could
+discuss terms. He said that he had written to Mr Ford, appointing
+the same time.' She frowned. 'I have no doubt he will come,' she
+said coldly.
+
+'Perhaps this is his car,' I said.
+
+A second automobile was whirring up the drive. There was a shout
+as it came within sight of us, and the chauffeur put on the brake.
+A man sprang from the tonneau. He jerked a word to the chauffeur,
+and the car went on up the drive.
+
+He was a massively built man of middle age, with powerful shoulders,
+and a face--when he had removed his motor-goggles very like any one
+of half a dozen of those Roman emperors whose features have come
+down to us on coins and statues, square-jawed, clean-shaven, and
+aggressive. Like his late wife (who was now standing, drawn up to
+her full height, staring haughtily at him) he had the air of one
+born to command. I should imagine that the married life of these
+two must have been something more of a battle even than most married
+lives. The clashing of those wills must have smacked of a collision
+between the immovable mass and the irresistible force.
+
+He met Mrs Ford's stare with one equally militant, then turned to
+me.
+
+'I'll give you double what she has offered you,' he said. He
+paused, and eyed me with loathing. 'You damned scoundrel,' he
+added.
+
+Custom ought to have rendered me immune to irritation, but it had
+not. I spoke my mind.
+
+'One of these days, Mr Ford,' I said, 'I am going to publish a
+directory of the names and addresses of the people who have
+mistaken me for Smooth Sam Fisher. I am not Sam Fisher. Can you
+grasp that? My name is Peter Burns, and for the past term I have
+been a master at this school. And I may say that, judging from
+what I know of the little brute, any one who kidnapped your son as
+long as two days ago will be so anxious by now to get rid of him
+that he will probably want to pay you for taking him back.'
+
+My words almost had the effect of bringing this divorced couple
+together again. They made common cause against me. It was probably
+the first time in years that they had formed even a temporary
+alliance.
+
+'How dare you talk like that!' said Mrs Ford. 'Oggie is a sweet
+boy in every respect.'
+
+'You're perfectly right, Nesta,' said Mr Ford. 'He may want
+intelligent handling, but he's a mighty fine boy. I shall make
+inquiries, and if this man has been ill-treating Ogden, I shall
+complain to Mr Abney. Where the devil is this man Fisher?' he
+broke off abruptly.
+
+'On the spot,' said an affable voice. The bushes behind me parted,
+and Smooth Sam stepped out on to the gravel.
+
+I had recognized him by his voice. I certainly should not have
+done so by his appearance. He had taken the precaution of 'making
+up' for this important meeting. A white wig of indescribable
+respectability peeped out beneath his black hat. His eyes twinkled
+from under two penthouses of white eyebrows. A white moustache
+covered his mouth. He was venerable to a degree.
+
+He nodded to me, and bared his white head gallantly to Mrs Ford.
+
+'No worse for our little outing, Mr Burns, I am glad to see. Mrs
+Ford, I must apologize for my apparent unpunctuality, but I was
+not really behind time. I have been waiting in the bushes. I
+thought it just possible that you might have brought unwelcome
+members of the police force with you, and I have been scouting, as
+it were, before making my advance. I see, however, that all is
+well, and we can come at once to business. May I say, before we
+begin, that I overheard your recent conversation, and that I
+entirely disagree with Mr Burns. Master Ford is a charming boy.
+Already I feel like an elder brother to him. I am loath to part
+with him.'
+
+'How much?' snapped Mr Ford. 'You've got me. How much do you
+want?'
+
+'I'll give you double what he offers,' cried Mrs Ford.
+
+Sam held up his hand, his old pontifical manner intensified by the
+white wig.
+
+'May I speak? Thank you. This is a little embarrassing. When I
+asked you both to meet me here, it was not for the purpose of
+holding an auction. I had a straight-forward business proposition
+to make to you. It will necessitate a certain amount of plain and
+somewhat personal speaking. May I proceed? Thank you. I will be as
+brief as possible.'
+
+His eloquence appeared to have had a soothing effect on the two
+Fords. They remained silent.
+
+'You must understand,' said Sam, 'that I am speaking as an expert.
+I have been in the kidnapping business many years, and I know what
+I am talking about. And I tell you that the moment you two got
+your divorce, you said good-bye to all peace and quiet. Bless
+you'--Sam's manner became fatherly--'I've seen it a hundred
+times. Couple get divorced, and, if there's a child, what happens?
+They start in playing battledore-and-shuttlecock with him. Wife
+sneaks him from husband. Husband sneaks him back from wife. After
+a while along comes a gentleman in my line of business, a
+professional at the game, and he puts one across on both the
+amateurs. He takes advantage of the confusion, slips in, and gets
+away with the kid. That's what has happened here, and I'm going to
+show you the way to stop it another time. Now I'll make you a
+proposition. What you want to do'--I have never heard anything so
+soothing, so suggestive of the old family friend healing an
+unfortunate breach, as Sam's voice at this juncture--'what you
+want to do is to get together again right quick. Never mind the
+past. Let bygones be bygones. Kiss and be friends.'
+
+A snort from Mr Ford checked him for a moment, but he resumed.
+
+'I guess there were faults on both sides. Get together and talk it
+over. And when you've agreed to call the fight off and start fair
+again, that's where I come in. Mr Burns here will tell you, if you
+ask him, that I'm anxious to quit this business and marry and
+settle down. Well, see here. What you want to do is to give me a
+salary--we can talk figures later on--to stay by you and watch
+over the kid. Don't snort--I'm talking plain sense. You'd a sight
+better have me with you than against you. Set a thief to catch a
+thief. What I don't know about the fine points of the game isn't
+worth knowing. I'll guarantee, if you put me in charge, to see
+that nobody comes within a hundred miles of the kid unless he has
+an order-to-view. You'll find I earn every penny of that salary ...
+Mr Burns and I will now take a turn up the drive while you think
+it over.'
+
+He linked his arm in mine and drew me away. As we turned the
+corner of the drive I caught a glimpse over my shoulder of the
+Little Nugget's parents. They were standing where we had left
+them, as if Sam's eloquence had rooted them to the spot.
+
+'Well, well, well, young man,' said Sam, eyeing me affectionately,
+'it's pleasant to meet you again, under happier conditions than
+last time. You certainly have all the luck, sonny, or you would
+have been badly hurt that night. I was getting scared how the
+thing would end. Buck's a plain roughneck, and his gang are as bad
+as he is, and they had got mighty sore at you, mighty sore. If
+they had grabbed you, there's no knowing what might not have
+happened. However, all's well that ends well, and this little game
+has surely had the happy ending. I shall get that job, sonny. Old
+man Ford isn't a fool, and it won't take him long, when he gets to
+thinking it over, to see that I'm right. He'll hire me.'
+
+'Aren't you rather reckoning without your partner?' I said. 'Where
+does Buck MacGinnis come in on the deal?'
+
+Sam patted my shoulder paternally.
+
+'He doesn't, sonny, he doesn't. It was a shame to do it--it was
+like taking candy from a kid--but business is business, and I was
+reluctantly compelled to double-cross poor old Buck. I sneaked the
+Nugget away from him next day. It's not worth talking about; it
+was too easy. Buck's all right in a rough-and-tumble, but when it
+comes to brains he gets left, and so he'll go on through life,
+poor fellow. I hate to think of it.'
+
+He sighed. Buck's misfortunes seemed to move him deeply.
+
+'I shouldn't be surprised if he gave up the profession after this.
+He has had enough to discourage him. I told you about what
+happened to him that night, didn't I? No? I thought I did. Why,
+Buck was the guy who did the Steve Brodie through the roof; and,
+when we picked him up, we found he'd broken his leg again! Isn't
+that enough to jar a man? I guess he'll retire from the business
+after that. He isn't intended for it.'
+
+We were approaching the two automobiles now, and, looking back, I
+saw Mr and Mrs Ford walking up the drive. Sam followed my gaze,
+and I heard him chuckle.
+
+'It's all right,' he said. 'They've fixed it up. Something in the
+way they're walking tells me they've fixed it up.'
+
+Mrs Drassilis was still sitting in the red automobile, looking
+piqued but resigned. Mrs Ford addressed her.
+
+'I shall have to leave you, Mrs Drassilis,' she said. 'Tell Jarvis
+to drive you wherever you want to go. I am going with my husband
+to see my boy Oggie.'
+
+She stretched out a hand towards the millionaire. He caught it in
+his, and they stood there, smiling foolishly at each other, while
+Sam, almost purring, brooded over them like a stout fairy queen.
+The two chauffeurs looked on woodenly.
+
+Mr Ford released his wife's hand and turned to Sam.
+
+'Fisher.'
+
+'Sir?'
+
+'I've been considering your proposition. There's a string tied to
+it.'
+
+'Oh no, sir, I assure you!'
+
+'There is. What guarantee have I that you won't double-cross me?'
+
+Sam smiled, relieved.
+
+'You forget that I told you I was about to be married, sir. My
+wife won't let me!'
+
+Mr Ford waved his hand towards the automobile.
+
+'Jump in,' he said briefly, 'and tell him where to drive to.
+You're engaged!'
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 18
+
+
+'No manners!' said Mrs Drassilis. 'None whatever. I always said
+so.'
+
+She spoke bitterly. She was following the automobile with an
+offended eye as it moved down the drive.
+
+The car rounded the corner. Sam turned and waved a farewell. Mr
+and Mrs Ford, seated close together in the tonneau, did not even
+look round.
+
+Mrs Drassilis sniffed disgustedly.
+
+'She's a friend of Cynthia's. Cynthia asked me to come down here
+with her to see you. I came, to oblige her. And now, without a
+word of apology, she leaves me stranded. She has no manners
+whatever.'
+
+I offered no defence of the absent one. The verdict more or less
+squared with my own opinion.
+
+'Is Cynthia back in England?' I asked, to change the subject.
+
+'The yacht got back yesterday. Peter, I have something of the
+utmost importance to speak to you about.' She glanced at Jarvis
+the chauffeur, leaning back in his seat with the air, peculiar to
+chauffeurs in repose, of being stuffed. 'Walk down the drive with
+me.'
+
+I helped her out of the car, and we set off in silence. There was
+a suppressed excitement in my companion's manner which interested
+me, and something furtive which brought back all my old dislike of
+her. I could not imagine what she could have to say to me that had
+brought her all these miles.
+
+'How _do_ you come to be down here?' she said. 'When Cynthia
+told me you were here, I could hardly believe her. Why are you a
+master at this school? I cannot understand it!'
+
+'What did you want to see me about?' I asked.
+
+She hesitated. It was always an effort for her to be direct. Now,
+apparently, the effort was too great. The next moment she had
+rambled off on some tortuous bypath of her own, which, though it
+presumably led in the end to her destination, was evidently a long
+way round.
+
+'I have known you for so many years now, Peter, and I don't know of
+anybody whose character I admire more. You are so generous--quixotic
+in fact. You are one of the few really unselfish men I have ever
+met. You are always thinking of other people. Whatever it cost you,
+I know you would not hesitate to give up anything if you felt that
+it was for someone else's happiness. I do admire you so for it.
+One meets so few young men nowadays who consider anybody except
+themselves.'
+
+She paused, either for breath or for fresh ideas, and I took
+advantage of the lull in the rain of bouquets to repeat my
+question.
+
+'What _did_ you want to see me about?' I asked patiently.
+
+'About Cynthia. She asked me to see you.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+'You got a letter from her.'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Last night, when she came home, she told me about it, and showed
+me your answer. It was a beautiful letter, Peter. I'm sure I cried
+when I read it. And Cynthia did, I feel certain. Of course, to a
+girl of her character that letter was final. She is so loyal, dear
+child.'
+
+'I don't understand.'
+
+As Sam would have said, she seemed to be speaking; words appeared
+to be fluttering from her; but her meaning was beyond me.
+
+'Once she has given her promise, I am sure nothing would induce
+her to break it, whatever her private feelings. She is so loyal.
+She has such character.'
+
+'Would you mind being a little clearer?' I said sharply. 'I really
+don't understand what it is you are trying to tell me. What do you
+mean about loyalty and character? I don't understand.'
+
+She was not to be hustled from her bypath. She had chosen her
+route, and she meant to travel by it, ignoring short-cuts.
+
+'To Cynthia, as I say, it was final. She simply could not see that
+the matter was not irrevocably settled. I thought it so fine of
+her. But I am her mother, and it was my duty not to give in and
+accept the situation as inevitable while there was anything I
+could do for her happiness. I knew your chivalrous, unselfish
+nature, Peter. I could speak to you as Cynthia could not. I could
+appeal to your generosity in a way impossible, of course, for her.
+I could put the whole facts of the case clearly before you.'
+
+I snatched at the words.
+
+'I wish you would. What are they?'
+
+She rambled off again.
+
+'She has such a rigid sense of duty. There is no arguing with her.
+I told her that, if you knew, you would not dream of standing in
+her way. You are so generous, such a true friend, that your only
+thought would be for her. If her happiness depended on your
+releasing her from her promise, you would not think of yourself.
+So in the end I took matters into my own hands and came to see
+you. I am truly sorry for you, dear Peter, but to me Cynthia's
+happiness, of course, must come before everything. You do
+understand, don't you?'
+
+Gradually, as she was speaking, I had begun to grasp hesitatingly
+at her meaning, hesitatingly, because the first hint of it had
+stirred me to such a whirl of hope that I feared to risk the shock
+of finding that, after all, I had been mistaken. If I were
+right--and surely she could mean nothing else--I was free, free
+with honour. But I could not live on hints. I must hear this thing
+in words.
+
+'Has--has Cynthia--' I stopped, to steady my voice. 'Has Cynthia
+found--' I stopped again. I was finding it absurdly difficult to
+frame my sentence. 'Is there someone else?' I concluded with a
+rush.
+
+Mrs Drassilis patted my arm sympathetically.
+
+'Be brave, Peter!'
+
+'There is?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+The trees, the drive, the turf, the sky, the birds, the house, the
+automobile, and Jarvis, the stuffed chauffeur, leaped together for
+an instant in one whirling, dancing mass of which I was the
+centre. And then, out of the chaos, as it separated itself once
+more into its component parts, I heard my voice saying, 'Tell me.'
+
+The world was itself again, and I was listening quietly and with a
+mild interest which, try as I would, I could not make any
+stronger. I had exhausted my emotion on the essential fact: the
+details were an anticlimax.
+
+'I liked him directly I saw him,' said Mrs Drassilis. 'And, of
+course, as he was such a friend of yours, we naturally--'
+
+'A friend of mine?'
+
+'I am speaking of Lord Mountry.'
+
+'Mountry? What about him?' Light flooded in on my numbed brain.
+'You don't mean--Is it Lord Mountry?'
+
+My manner must have misled her. She stammered in her eagerness to
+dispel what she took to be my misapprehension.
+
+'Don't think that he acted in anything but the most honourable
+manner. Nothing could be farther from the truth. He knew nothing
+of Cynthia's engagement to you. She told him when he asked her to
+marry him, and he--as a matter of fact, it was he who insisted on
+dear Cynthia writing that letter to you.'
+
+She stopped, apparently staggered by this excursion into honesty.
+
+'Well?'
+
+'In fact, he dictated it.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+'Unfortunately, it was quite the wrong sort of letter. It was the
+very opposite of clear. It can have given you no inkling of the
+real state of affairs.'
+
+'It certainly did not.'
+
+'He would not allow her to alter it in any way. He is very
+obstinate at times, like so many shy men. And when your answer
+came, you see, things were worse than before.'
+
+'I suppose so.'
+
+'I could see last night how unhappy they both were. And when
+Cynthia suggested it, I agreed at once to come to you and tell you
+everything.'
+
+She looked at me anxiously. From her point of view, this was the
+climax, the supreme moment. She hesitated. I seemed to see her
+marshalling her forces, the telling sentences, the persuasive
+adjectives; rallying them together for the grand assault.
+
+But through the trees I caught a glimpse of Audrey, walking on the
+lawn; and the assault was never made.
+
+'I will write to Cynthia tonight,' I said, 'wishing her
+happiness.'
+
+'Oh, Peter!' said Mrs Drassilis.
+
+'Don't mention it,' said I.
+
+Doubts appeared to mar her perfect contentment.
+
+'You are sure you can convince her?'
+
+'Convince her?'
+
+'And--er--Lord Mountry. He is so determined not to do anything--
+er--what he would call unsportsmanlike.'
+
+'Perhaps I had better tell her I am going to marry some one else,'
+I suggested.
+
+'I think that would be an excellent idea,' she said, brightening
+visibly. 'How clever of you to have thought of it.'
+
+She permitted herself a truism.
+
+'After all, dear Peter, there are plenty of nice girls in the
+world. You have only to look for them.'
+
+'You're perfectly right,' I said. 'I'll start at once.'
+
+A gleam of white caught my eye through the trees by the lawn. I
+moved towards it.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Nugget, by P.G. Wodehouse
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE NUGGET ***
+
+This file should be named ltngg10.txt or ltngg10.zip
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, ltngg11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, ltngg10a.txt
+
+Produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Tom Allen, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our Web sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
+files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
+We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
+
+eBooks Year Month
+
+    1  1971 July
+   10  1991 January
+  100  1994 January
+ 1000  1997 August
+ 1500  1998 October
+ 2000  1999 December
+ 2500  2000 December
+ 3000  2001 November
+ 4000  2001 October/November
+ 6000  2002 December*
+ 9000  2003 November*
+10000  2004 January*
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
+Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
+Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
+Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
+Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
+Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information online at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
+when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
+Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
+used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
+they hardware or software or any other related product without
+express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
+
diff --git a/old/ltngg10.zip b/old/ltngg10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddc7e31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/ltngg10.zip
diff --git a/old/old-2025-04-01/6683.txt b/old/old-2025-04-01/6683.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..867de05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old-2025-04-01/6683.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10319 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Nugget, by P. G. Wodehouse
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: The Little Nugget
+
+Author: P. G. Wodehouse
+
+Posting Date: August 26, 2012 [EBook #6683]
+Release Date: October, 2004
+First Posted: January 12, 2003
+[Last updated: June 10, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE NUGGET ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Tom Allen, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE NUGGET
+
+
+
+By P. G. Wodehouse
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Part One
+
+
+In which the Little Nugget is introduced to the reader, and plans
+are made for his future by several interested parties. In which,
+also, the future Mr Peter Burns is touched upon. The whole concluding
+with a momentous telephone-call.
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE NUGGET
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+If the management of the Hotel Guelph, that London landmark, could
+have been present at three o'clock one afternoon in early January
+in the sitting-room of the suite which they had assigned to Mrs
+Elmer Ford, late of New York, they might well have felt a little
+aggrieved. Philosophers among them would possibly have meditated
+on the limitations of human effort; for they had done their best
+for Mrs Ford. They had housed her well. They had fed her well.
+They had caused inspired servants to anticipate her every need.
+Yet here she was, in the midst of all these aids to a contented
+mind, exhibiting a restlessness and impatience of her surroundings
+that would have been noticeable in a caged tigress or a prisoner
+of the Bastille. She paced the room. She sat down, picked up a
+novel, dropped it, and, rising, resumed her patrol. The clock
+striking, she compared it with her watch, which she had consulted
+two minutes before. She opened the locket that hung by a gold
+chain from her neck, looked at its contents, and sighed. Finally,
+going quickly into the bedroom, she took from a suit-case a framed
+oil-painting, and returning with it to the sitting-room, placed it
+on a chair, and stepped back, gazing at it hungrily. Her large
+brown eyes, normally hard and imperious, were strangely softened.
+Her mouth quivered.
+
+'Ogden!' she whispered.
+
+The picture which had inspired this exhibition of feeling would
+probably not have affected the casual spectator to quite the same
+degree. He would have seen merely a very faulty and amateurish
+portrait of a singularly repellent little boy of about eleven, who
+stared out from the canvas with an expression half stolid, half
+querulous; a bulgy, overfed little boy; a little boy who looked
+exactly what he was, the spoiled child of parents who had far more
+money than was good for them.
+
+As Mrs Ford gazed at the picture, and the picture stared back at
+her, the telephone bell rang. She ran to it eagerly. It was the
+office of the hotel, announcing a caller.
+
+'Yes? Yes? Who?' Her voice fell, as if the name was not the one
+she had expected. 'Oh, yes,' she said. 'Yes, ask Lord Mountry to
+come to me here, please.'
+
+She returned to the portrait. The look of impatience, which had
+left her face as the bell sounded, was back now. She suppressed it
+with an effort as her visitor entered.
+
+Lord Mountry was a blond, pink-faced, fair-moustached young man of
+about twenty-eight--a thick-set, solemn young man. He winced as he
+caught sight of the picture, which fixed him with a stony eye
+immediately on his entry, and quickly looked away.
+
+'I say, it's all right, Mrs Ford.' He was of the type which wastes
+no time on preliminary greetings. 'I've got him.'
+
+'Got him!'
+
+Mrs Ford's voice was startled.
+
+'Stanborough, you know.'
+
+'Oh! I--I was thinking of something else. Won't you sit down?'
+
+Lord Mountry sat down.
+
+'The artist, you know. You remember you said at lunch the other
+day you wanted your little boy's portrait painted, as you only had
+one of him, aged eleven--'
+
+'This is Ogden, Lord Mountry. I painted this myself.'
+
+His lordship, who had selected a chair that enabled him to present
+a shoulder to the painting, and was wearing a slightly dogged look
+suggestive of one who 'turns no more his head, because he knows a
+frightful fiend doth close behind him tread', forced himself
+round, and met his gaze with as much nonchalance as he could
+summon up.
+
+'Er, yes,' he said.
+
+He paused.
+
+'Fine manly little fellow--what?' he continued.
+
+'Yes, isn't he?'
+
+His lordship stealthily resumed his former position.
+
+'I recommended this fellow, Stanborough, if you remember. He's a
+great pal of mine, and I'd like to give him a leg up if I could.
+They tell me he's a topping artist. Don't know much about it
+myself. You told me to bring him round here this afternoon, you
+remember, to talk things over. He's waiting downstairs.'
+
+'Oh yes, yes. Of course, I've not forgotten. Thank you so much,
+Lord Mountry.'
+
+'Rather a good scheme occurred to me, that is, if you haven't
+thought over the idea of that trip on my yacht and decided it
+would bore you to death. You still feel like making one of the
+party--what?'
+
+Mrs Ford shot a swift glance at the clock.
+
+'I'm looking forward to it,' she said.
+
+'Well, then, why shouldn't we kill two birds with one stone?
+Combine the voyage and the portrait, don't you know. You could
+bring your little boy along--he'd love the trip--and I'd bring
+Stanborough--what?'
+
+This offer was not the outcome of a sudden spasm of warm-heartedness
+on his lordship's part. He had pondered the matter deeply, and had
+come to the conclusion that, though it had flaws, it was the best
+plan. He was alive to the fact that a small boy was not an absolute
+essential to the success of a yachting trip, and, since seeing
+Ogden's portrait, he had realized still more clearly that the
+scheme had draw-backs. But he badly wanted Stanborough to make
+one of the party. Whatever Ogden might be, there was no doubt that
+Billy Stanborough, that fellow of infinite jest, was the ideal
+companion for a voyage. It would make just all the difference having
+him. The trouble was that Stanborough flatly refused to take an
+indefinite holiday, on the plea that he could not afford the time.
+Upon which his lordship, seldom blessed with great ideas, had surprised
+himself by producing the scheme he had just sketched out to Mrs Ford.
+
+He looked at her expectantly, as he finished speaking, and was
+surprised to see a swift cloud of distress pass over her face. He
+rapidly reviewed his last speech. No, nothing to upset anyone in
+that. He was puzzled.
+
+She looked past him at the portrait. There was pain in her eyes.
+
+'I'm afraid you don't quite understand the position of affairs,'
+she said. Her voice was harsh and strained.
+
+'Eh?'
+
+'You see--I have not--' She stopped. 'My little boy is not--Ogden
+is not living with me just now.'
+
+'At school, eh?'
+
+'No, not at school. Let me tell you the whole position. Mr Ford
+and I did not get on very well together, and a year ago we were
+divorced in Washington, on the ground of incompatibility,
+and--and--'
+
+She choked. His lordship, a young man with a shrinking horror of
+the deeper emotions, whether exhibited in woman or man, writhed
+silently. That was the worst of these Americans! Always getting
+divorced and causing unpleasantness. How was a fellow to know? Why
+hadn't whoever it was who first introduced them--he couldn't
+remember who the dickens it was--told him about this? He had
+supposed she was just the ordinary American woman doing Europe
+with an affectionate dollar-dispensing husband in the background
+somewhere.
+
+'Er--' he said. It was all he could find to say.
+
+'And--and the court,' said Mrs Ford, between her teeth, 'gave him
+the custody of Ogden.'
+
+Lord Mountry, pink with embarrassment, gurgled sympathetically.
+
+'Since then I have not seen Ogden. That was why I was interested
+when you mentioned your friend Mr Stanborough. It struck me that
+Mr Ford could hardly object to my having a portrait of my son
+painted at my own expense. Nor do I suppose that he will, when--if
+the matter is put to him. But, well, you see it would be premature
+to make any arrangements at present for having the picture painted
+on our yacht trip.'
+
+'I'm afraid it knocks that scheme on the head,' said Lord Mountry
+mournfully.
+
+'Not necessarily.'
+
+'Eh?'
+
+'I don't want to make plans yet, but--it is possible that Ogden
+may be with us after all. Something may be--arranged.'
+
+'You think you may be able to bring him along on the yacht after
+all?'
+
+'I am hoping so.'
+
+Lord Mountry, however willing to emit sympathetic gurgles, was too
+plain and straightforward a young man to approve of wilful
+blindness to obvious facts.
+
+'I don't see how you are going to override the decision of the
+court. It holds good in England, I suppose?'
+
+'I am hoping something may be--arranged.'
+
+'Oh, same here, same here. Certainly.' Having done his duty by not
+allowing plain facts to be ignored, his lordship was ready to
+become sympathetic again. 'By the way, where is Ogden?'
+
+'He is down at Mr Ford's house in the country. But--'
+
+She was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone bell. She was
+out of her seat and across the room at the receiver with what
+appeared to Lord Mountry's startled gaze one bound. As she put the
+instrument to her ear a wave of joy swept over her face. She gave
+a little cry of delight and excitement.
+
+'Send them right up at once,' she said, and turned to Lord Mountry
+transformed.
+
+'Lord Mountry,' she said quickly, 'please don't think me
+impossibly rude if I turn you out. Some--some people are coming to
+see me. I must--'
+
+His lordship rose hurriedly.
+
+'Of course. Of course. Certainly. Where did I put my--ah, here.'
+He seized his hat, and by way of economizing effort, knocked his
+stick on to the floor with the same movement. Mrs Ford watched his
+bendings and gropings with growing impatience, till finally he
+rose, a little flushed but with a full hand--stick, gloves, and
+hat, all present and correct.
+
+'Good-bye, then, Mrs Ford, for the present. You'll let me know if
+your little boy will be able to make one of our party on the
+yacht?'
+
+'Yes, yes. Thank you ever so much. Good-bye.'
+
+'Good-bye.'
+
+He reached the door and opened it.
+
+'By Jove,' he said, springing round--'Stanborough! What about
+Stanborough? Shall I tell him to wait? He's down below, you know!'
+
+'Yes, yes. Tell Mr Stanborough I'm dreadfully sorry to have to
+keep him waiting, and ask him if he won't stay for a few minutes
+in the Palm Room.'
+
+Inspiration came to Lord Mountry.
+
+'I'll give him a drink,' he said.
+
+'Yes, yes, anything. Lord Mountry, you really must go. I know I'm
+rude. I don't know what I'm saying. But--my boy is returning to
+me.'
+
+The accumulated chivalry of generations of chivalrous ancestors
+acted like a spur on his lordship. He understood but dimly, yet
+enough to enable him to realize that a scene was about to take
+place in which he was most emphatically not 'on'. A mother's
+meeting with her long-lost child, this is a sacred thing. This was
+quite clear to him, so, turning like a flash, he bounded through
+the doorway, and, as somebody happened to be coming in at the same
+time, there was a collision, which left him breathing apologies in
+his familiar attitude of stooping to pick up his hat.
+
+The new-comers were a tall, strikingly handsome girl, with a
+rather hard and cynical cast of countenance. She was leading by
+the hand a small, fat boy of about fourteen years of age, whose
+likeness to the portrait on the chair proclaimed his identity. He
+had escaped the collision, but seemed offended by it; for, eyeing
+the bending peer with cold distaste, he summed up his opinion of
+him in the one word 'Chump!'
+
+Lord Mountry rose.
+
+'I beg your pardon,' he said for perhaps the seventh time. He was
+thoroughly unstrung. Always excessively shy, he was embarrassed
+now by quite a variety of causes. The world was full of eyes--Mrs
+Ford's saying 'Go!' Ogden's saying 'Fool!' the portrait saying
+'Idiot!' and, finally, the eyes of this wonderfully handsome girl,
+large, grey, cool, amused, and contemptuous saying--so it seemed
+to him in that feverish moment--'Who is this curious pink person
+who cumbers the ground before me?'
+
+'I--I beg your pardon.' he repeated.
+
+'Ought to look where you're going,' said Ogden severely.
+
+'Not at all,' said the girl. 'Won't you introduce me, Nesta?'
+
+'Lord Mountry--Miss Drassilis,' said Mrs Ford.
+
+'I'm afraid we're driving Lord Mountry away,' said the girl. Her
+eyes seemed to his lordship larger, greyer, cooler, more amused,
+and more contemptuous than ever. He floundered in them like an
+unskilful swimmer in deep waters.
+
+'No, no,' he stammered. 'Give you my word. Just going. Good-bye.
+You won't forget to let me know about the yacht, Mrs Ford--what?
+It'll be an awfully jolly party. Good-bye, good-bye, Miss
+Drassilis.'
+
+He looked at Ogden for an instant, as if undecided whether to take
+the liberty of addressing him too, and then, his heart apparently
+failing him, turned and bolted. From down the corridor came the
+clatter of a dropped stick.
+
+Cynthia Drassilis closed the door and smiled.
+
+'A nervous young person!' she said. 'What was he saying about a
+yacht, Nesta?'
+
+Mrs Ford roused herself from her fascinated contemplation of
+Ogden.
+
+'Oh, nothing. Some of us are going to the south of France in his
+yacht next week.'
+
+'What a delightful idea!'
+
+There was a certain pensive note in Cynthia's voice.
+
+'A splendid idea!' she murmured.
+
+Mrs Ford swooped. She descended on Ogden in a swirl and rustle of
+expensive millinery, and clasped him to her.
+
+'My boy!'
+
+It is not given to everybody to glide neatly into a scene of tense
+emotion. Ogden failed to do so. He wriggled roughly from the
+embrace.
+
+'Got a cigarette?' he said.
+
+He was an extraordinarily unpleasant little boy. Physically the
+portrait standing on the chair did him more than justice. Painted
+by a mother's loving hand, it flattered him. It was bulgy. He was
+more bulgy. It was sullen. He scowled. And, art having its
+limitations, particularly amateur art, the portrait gave no hint
+of his very repellent manner. He was an intensely sophisticated
+child. He had the air of one who has seen all life has to offer,
+and is now permanently bored. His speech and bearing were those of
+a young man, and a distinctly unlovable young man.
+
+Even Mrs Ford was momentarily chilled. She laughed shakily.
+
+'How very matter-of-fact you are, darling!' she said.
+
+Cynthia was regarding the heir to the Ford millions with her usual
+steady, half-contemptuous gaze.
+
+'He has been that all day,' she said. 'You have no notion what a
+help it was to me.'
+
+Mrs Ford turned to her effusively.
+
+'Oh, Cynthia, dear, I haven't thanked you.'
+
+'No,' interpolated the girl dryly.
+
+'You're a wonder, darling. You really are. I've been repeating
+that ever since I got your telegram from Eastnor.' She broke off.
+'Ogden, come near me, my little son.'
+
+He lurched towards her sullenly.
+
+'Don't muss a fellow now,' he stipulated, before allowing himself
+to be enfolded in the outstretched arms.
+
+'Tell me, Cynthia,' resumed Mrs Ford, 'how did you do it? I was
+telling Lord Mountry that I _hoped_ I might see my Ogden again
+soon, but I never really hoped. It seemed too impossible that you
+should succeed.'
+
+'This Lord Mountry of yours,' said Cynthia. 'How did you get to
+know him? Why have I not seen him before?'
+
+'I met him in Paris in the fall. He has been out of London for a
+long time, looking after his father, who was ill.'
+
+'I see.'
+
+'He has been most kind, making arrangements about getting Ogden's
+portrait painted. But, bother Lord Mountry. How did we get
+sidetracked on to him? Tell me how you got Ogden away.'
+
+Cynthia yawned.
+
+'It was extraordinarily easy, as it turned out, you see.'
+
+'Ogden, darling,' observed Mrs Ford, 'don't go away. I want you
+near me.'
+
+'Oh, all right.'
+
+'Then stay by me, angel-face.'
+
+'Oh, slush!' muttered angel-face beneath his breath. 'Say, I'm
+darned hungry,' he added.
+
+It was if an electric shock had been applied to Mrs Ford. She
+sprang to her feet.
+
+'My poor child! Of course you must have some lunch. Ring the bell,
+Cynthia. I'll have them send up some here.'
+
+'I'll have _mine_ here,' said Cynthia.
+
+'Oh, you've had no lunch either! I was forgetting that.'
+
+'I thought you were.'
+
+'You must both lunch here.'
+
+'Really,' said Cynthia, 'I think it would be better if Ogden had
+his downstairs in the restaurant.'
+
+'Want to talk scandal, eh?'
+
+'Ogden, _dearest!_' said Mrs Ford. 'Very well, Cynthia. Go,
+Ogden. You will order yourself something substantial, marvel-child?'
+
+'Bet your life,' said the son and heir tersely.
+
+There was a brief silence as the door closed. Cynthia gazed at her
+friend with a peculiar expression.
+
+'Well, I did it, dear,' she said.
+
+'Yes. It's splendid. You're a wonder, darling.'
+
+'Yes,' said Cynthia.
+
+There was another silence.
+
+'By the way,' said Mrs Ford, 'didn't you say there was a little
+thing, a small bill, that was worrying you?'
+
+'Did I mention it? Yes, there is. It's rather pressing. In fact,
+it's taking up most of the horizon at present. Here it is.'
+
+'Is it a large sum?' Mrs Ford took the slip of paper and gave a slight
+gasp. Then, coming to the bureau, she took out her cheque-book.
+
+'It's very kind of you, Nesta,' said Cynthia. 'They were beginning
+to show quite a vindictive spirit about it.'
+
+She folded the cheque calmly and put it in her purse.
+
+'And now tell me how you did it,' said Mrs Ford.
+
+She dropped into a chair and leaned back, her hands behind her
+head. For the first time, she seemed to enjoy perfect peace of
+mind. Her eyes half closed, as if she had been making ready to
+listen to some favourite music.
+
+'Tell me from the very beginning,' she said softly.
+
+Cynthia checked a yawn.
+
+'Very well, dear,' she said. 'I caught the 10.20 to Eastnor, which
+isn't a bad train, if you ever want to go down there. I arrived at
+a quarter past twelve, and went straight up to the house--you've
+never seen the house, of course? It's quite charming--and told the
+butler that I wanted to see Mr Ford on business. I had taken the
+precaution to find out that he was not there. He is at Droitwich.'
+
+'Rheumatism,' murmured Mrs Ford. 'He has it sometimes.'
+
+'The man told me he was away, and then he seemed to think that I
+ought to go. I stuck like a limpet. I sent him to fetch Ogden's
+tutor. His name is Broster--Reggie Broster. He is a very nice
+young man. Big, broad shoulders, and such a kind face.'
+
+'Yes, dear, yes?'
+
+'I told him I was doing a series of drawings for a magazine of the
+interiors of well-known country houses.'
+
+'He believed you?'
+
+'He believed everything. He's that kind of man. He believed me
+when I told him that my editor particularly wanted me to sketch
+the staircase. They had told me about the staircase at the inn. I
+forget what it is exactly, but it's something rather special in
+staircases.'
+
+'So you got in?'
+
+'So I got in.'
+
+'And saw Ogden?'
+
+'Only for a moment--then Reggie--'
+
+'Who?'
+
+'Mr Broster. I always think of him as Reggie. He's one of Nature's
+Reggies. _Such_ a kind, honest face. Well, as I was saying,
+Reggie discovered that it was time for lessons, and sent Ogden
+upstairs.'
+
+'By himself?'
+
+'By himself! Reggie and I chatted for a while.'
+
+Mrs Ford's eyes opened, brown and bright and hard.
+
+'Mr Broster is not a proper tutor for my boy,' she said coldly.
+
+'I suppose it was wrong of Reggie,' said Cynthia. 'But--I was
+wearing this hat.'
+
+'Go on.'
+
+'Well, after a time, I said I must be starting my work. He wanted
+me to start with the room we were in. I said no, I was going out
+into the grounds to sketch the house from the EAST. I chose the
+EAST because it happens to be nearest the railway station. I added
+that I supposed he sometimes took Ogden for a little walk in the
+grounds. He said yes, he did, and it was just about due. He said
+possibly he might come round my way. He said Ogden would be
+interested in my sketch. He seemed to think a lot of Ogden's
+fondness for art.'
+
+'Mr Broster is _not_ a proper tutor for my boy.'
+
+'Well, he isn't your boy's tutor now, is he, dear?'
+
+'What happened then?'
+
+'I strolled off with my sketching things. After a while Reggie and
+Ogden came up. I said I hadn't been able to work because I had
+been frightened by a bull.'
+
+'Did he believe _that_?'
+
+'_Certainly_ he believed it. He was most kind and sympathetic.
+We had a nice chat. He told me all about himself. He used to be
+very good at football. He doesn't play now, but he often thinks of
+the past.'
+
+'But he must have seen that you couldn't sketch. Then what became
+of your magazine commission story?'
+
+'Well, somehow the sketch seemed to get shelved. I didn't even
+have to start it. We were having our chat, you see. Reggie was
+telling me how good he had been at football when he was at Oxford,
+and he wanted me to see a newspaper clipping of a Varsity match he
+had played in. I said I'd love to see it. He said it was in his
+suit-case in the house. So I promised to look after Ogden while he
+fetched it. I sent him off to get it just in time for us to catch
+the train. Off he went, and here we are. And now, won't you order
+that lunch you mentioned? I'm starving.'
+
+Mrs Ford rose. Half-way to the telephone she stopped suddenly.
+
+'My dear child! It has only just struck me! We must leave here at
+once. He will have followed you. He will guess that Ogden has been
+kidnapped.'
+
+Cynthia smiled.
+
+'Believe me, it takes Reggie quite a long time to guess anything.
+Besides, there are no trains for hours. We are quite safe.'
+
+'Are you sure?'
+
+'Absolutely. I made certain of that before I left.'
+
+Mrs Ford kissed her impulsively.
+
+'Oh, Cynthia, you really are wonderful!'
+
+She started back with a cry as the bell rang sharply.
+
+'For goodness' sake, Nesta,' said Cynthia, with irritation, 'do
+keep control of yourself. There's nothing to be frightened about.
+I tell you Mr Broster can't possibly have got here in the time,
+even if he knew where to go to, which I don't see how he could.
+It's probably Ogden.'
+
+The colour came back into Mrs Ford's cheeks.
+
+'Why, of course.'
+
+Cynthia opened the door.
+
+'Come in, darling,' said Mrs Ford fondly. And a wiry little man
+with grey hair and spectacles entered.
+
+'Good afternoon, Mrs Ford,' he said. 'I have come to take Ogden
+back.'
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+There are some situations in life so unexpected, so trying, that,
+as far as concerns our opinion of those subjected to them, we
+agree, as it were, not to count them; we refuse to allow the
+victim's behaviour in circumstances so exacting to weigh with us
+in our estimate of his or her character. We permit the great
+general, confronted suddenly with a mad bull, to turn and run,
+without forfeiting his reputation for courage. The bishop who,
+stepping on a concealed slide in winter, entertains passers-by
+with momentary rag-time steps, loses none of his dignity once the
+performance is concluded.
+
+In the same way we must condone the behaviour of Cynthia Drassilis
+on opening the door of Mrs Ford's sitting-room and admitting, not
+Ogden, but this total stranger, who accompanied his entry with the
+remarkable speech recorded at the close of the last section.
+
+She was a girl who prided herself on her carefully blase' and
+supercilious attitude towards life; but this changeling was too
+much for her. She released the handle, tottered back, and, having
+uttered a discordant squeak of amazement, stood staring, eyes and
+mouth wide open.
+
+On Mrs Ford the apparition had a different effect. The rather
+foolish smile of welcome vanished from her face as if wiped away
+with a sponge. Her eyes, fixed and frightened like those of a
+trapped animal, glared at the intruder. She took a step forward,
+choking.
+
+'What--what do you mean by daring to enter my room?' she cried.
+
+The man held his ground, unmoved. His bearing was a curious blend
+of diffidence and aggressiveness. He was determined, but
+apologetic. A hired assassin of the Middle Ages, resolved to do
+his job loyally, yet conscious of causing inconvenience to his
+victim, might have looked the same.
+
+'I am sorry,' he said, 'but I must ask you to let me have the boy,
+Mrs Ford.'
+
+Cynthia was herself again now. She raked the intruder with the
+cool stare which had so disconcerted Lord Mountry.
+
+'Who is this gentleman?' she asked languidly.
+
+The intruder was made of tougher stuff than his lordship. He met
+her eye with quiet firmness.
+
+'My name is Mennick,' he said. 'I am Mr Elmer Ford's private
+secretary.'
+
+'What do you want?' said Mrs Ford.
+
+'I have already explained what I want, Mrs Ford. I want Ogden.'
+
+Cynthia raised her eyebrows.
+
+'What _does_ he mean, Nesta? Ogden is not here.'
+
+Mr Mennick produced from his breast-pocket a telegraph form, and
+in his quiet, business-like way proceeded to straighten it out.
+
+'I have here,' he said, 'a telegram from Mr Broster, Ogden's
+tutor. It was one of the conditions of his engagement that if ever
+he was not certain of Ogden's whereabouts he should let me know at
+once. He tells me that early this afternoon he left Ogden in the
+company of a strange young lady'--Mr Mennick's spectacles flashed
+for a moment at Cynthia--'and that, when he returned, both of them
+had disappeared. He made inquiries and discovered that this young
+lady caught the 1.15 express to London, Ogden with her. On receipt
+of this information I at once wired to Mr Ford for instructions. I
+have his reply'--he fished for and produced a second telegram--'here.'
+
+'I still fail to see what brings you here,' said Mrs Ford. 'Owing
+to the gross carelessness of his father's employees, my son
+appears to have been kidnapped. That is no reason--'
+
+'I will read Mr Ford's telegram,' proceeded Mr Mennick unmoved.
+'It is rather long. I think Mr Ford is somewhat annoyed. "The boy
+has obviously been stolen by some hireling of his mother's." I am
+reading Mr Ford's actual words,' he said, addressing Cynthia with
+that touch of diffidence which had marked his manner since his
+entrance.
+
+'Don't apologize,' said Cynthia, with a short laugh. 'You're not
+responsible for Mr Ford's rudeness.'
+
+Mr Mennick bowed.
+
+'He continued: "Remove him from her illegal restraint. If
+necessary call in police and employ force."'
+
+'Charming!' said Mrs Ford.
+
+'Practical,' said Mr Mennick. 'There is more. "Before doing
+anything else sack that fool of a tutor, then go to Agency and
+have them recommend good private school for boy. On no account
+engage another tutor. They make me tired. Fix all this today. Send
+Ogden back to Eastnor with Mrs Sheridan. She will stay there with
+him till further notice." That is Mr Ford's message.'
+
+Mr Mennick folded both documents carefully and replaced them in
+his pocket.
+
+Mrs Ford looked at the clock.
+
+'And now, would you mind going, Mr Mennick?'
+
+'I am sorry to appear discourteous, Mrs Ford, but I cannot go
+without Ogden.'
+
+'I shall telephone to the office to send up a porter to remove
+you.'
+
+'I shall take advantage of his presence to ask him to fetch a
+policeman.'
+
+In the excitement of combat the veneer of apologetic diffidence
+was beginning to wear off Mr Mennick. He spoke irritably. Cynthia
+appealed to his reason with the air of a bored princess descending
+to argument with a groom.
+
+'Can't you see for yourself that he's not here?' she said. 'Do you
+think we are hiding him?'
+
+'Perhaps you would like to search my bedroom?' said Mrs Ford,
+flinging the door open.
+
+Mr Mennick remained uncrushed.
+
+'Quite unnecessary, Mrs Ford. I take it, from the fact that he
+does not appear to be in this suite, that he is downstairs making
+a late luncheon in the restaurant.'
+
+'I shall telephone--'
+
+'And tell them to send him up. Believe me, Mrs Ford, it is the
+only thing to do. You have my deepest sympathy, but I am employed
+by Mr Ford and must act solely in his interests. The law is on my
+side. I am here to fetch Ogden away, and I am going to have him.'
+
+'You shan't!'
+
+'I may add that, when I came up here, I left Mrs Sheridan--she is
+a fellow-secretary of mine. You may remember Mr Ford mentioning
+her in his telegram--I left her to search the restaurant and
+grill-room, with instructions to bring Ogden, if found, to me in
+this room.'
+
+The door-bell rang. He went to the door and opened it.
+
+'Come in, Mrs Sheridan. Ah!'
+
+A girl in a plain, neat blue dress entered the room. She was a
+small, graceful girl of about twenty-five, pretty and brisk, with
+the air of one accustomed to look after herself in a difficult
+world. Her eyes were clear and steady, her mouth sensitive but
+firm, her chin the chin of one who has met trouble and faced it
+bravely. A little soldier.
+
+She was shepherding Ogden before her, a gorged but still sullen
+Ogden. He sighted Mr Mennick and stopped.
+
+'Hello!' he said. 'What have you blown in for?'
+
+'He was just in the middle of his lunch,' said the girl. 'I
+thought you wouldn't mind if I let him finish.'
+
+'Say, what's it all about, anyway?' demanded Ogden crossly. 'Can't
+a fellow have a bit of grub in peace? You give me a pain.'
+
+Mr Mennick explained.
+
+'Your father wishes you to return to Eastnor, Ogden.'
+
+'Oh, all right. I guess I'd better go, then. Good-bye, ma.'
+
+Mrs Ford choked.
+
+'Kiss me, Ogden.'
+
+Ogden submitted to the embrace in sulky silence. The others
+comported themselves each after his or her own fashion. Mr Mennick
+fingered his chin uncomfortably. Cynthia turned to the table and
+picked up an illustrated paper. Mrs Sheridan's eyes filled with
+tears. She took a half-step towards Mrs Ford, as if about to
+speak, then drew back.
+
+'Come, Ogden,' said Mr Mennick gruffly. Necessary, this Hired
+Assassin work, but painful--devilish painful. He breathed a sigh
+of relief as he passed into the corridor with his prize.
+
+At the door Mrs Sheridan hesitated, stopped, and turned.
+
+'I'm sorry,' she said impulsively.
+
+Mrs Ford turned away without speaking, and went into the bedroom.
+
+Cynthia laid down her paper.
+
+'One moment, Mrs Sheridan.'
+
+The girl had turned to go. She stopped.
+
+'Can you give me a minute? Come in and shut the door. Won't you
+sit down? Very well. You seemed sorry for Mrs Ford just now.'
+
+'I am very sorry for Mrs Ford. Very sorry. I hate to see her
+suffering. I wish Mr Mennick had not brought me into this.'
+
+'Nesta's mad about that boy,' said Cynthia. 'Heaven knows why.
+_I_ never saw such a repulsive child in my life. However,
+there it is. I am sorry for you. I gathered from what Mr Mennick
+said that you were to have a good deal of Ogden's society for some
+time to come. How do you feel about it?'
+
+Mrs Sheridan moved towards the door.
+
+'I must be going,' she said. 'Mr Mennick will be waiting for me.'
+
+'One moment. Tell me, don't you think, after what you saw just
+now, that Mrs Ford is the proper person to have charge of Ogden?
+You see how devoted she is to him?'
+
+'May I be quite frank with you?'
+
+'Please.'
+
+'Well, then, I think that Mrs Ford's influence is the worst
+possible for Ogden. I am sorry for her, but that does not alter my
+opinion. It is entirely owing to Mrs Ford that Ogden is what he
+is. She spoiled him, indulged him in every way, never checked
+him--till he has become--well, what you yourself called him,
+repulsive.'
+
+Cynthia laughed.
+
+'Oh well,' she said, 'I only talked that mother's love stuff
+because you looked the sort of girl who would like it. We can drop
+all that now, and come down to business.'
+
+'I don't understand you.'
+
+'You will. I don't know if you think that I kidnapped Ogden from
+sheer affection for Mrs Ford. I like Nesta, but not as much as
+that. No. I'm one of the Get-Rich-Quick-Wallingfords, and I'm
+looking out for myself all the time. There's no one else to do it
+for me. I've a beastly home. My father's dead. My mother's a cat.
+So--'
+
+'Please stop,' said Mrs Sheridan. I don't know why you are telling
+me all this.'
+
+'Yes, you do. I don't know what salary Mr Ford pays you, but I
+don't suppose it's anything princely. Why don't you come over to
+us? Mrs Ford would give you the earth if you smuggled Ogden back
+to her.'
+
+'You seem to be trying to bribe me,' said Mrs Sheridan.
+
+'In this case,' said Cynthia, 'appearances aren't deceptive. I
+am.'
+
+'Good afternoon.'
+
+'Don't be a little fool.'
+
+The door slammed.
+
+'Come back!' cried Cynthia. She took a step as if to follow, but
+gave up the idea with a laugh. She sat down and began to read her
+illustrated paper again. Presently the bedroom door opened. Mrs
+Ford came in. She touched her eyes with a handkerchief as she
+entered. Cynthia looked up.
+
+'I'm very sorry, Nesta,' she said.
+
+Mrs Ford went to the window and looked out.
+
+'I'm not going to break down, if that's what you mean,' she said.
+'I don't care. And, anyhow, it shows that it _can_ be done.'
+
+Cynthia turned a page of her paper.
+
+'I've just been trying my hand at bribery and corruption.'
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+'Oh, I promised and vowed many things in your name to that
+secretary person, the female one--not Mennick--if she would help
+us. Nothing doing. I told her to let us have Ogden as soon as
+possible, C.O.D., and she withered me with a glance and went.'
+
+Mrs Ford shrugged her shoulders impatiently.
+
+'Oh, let her go. I'm sick of amateurs.'
+
+'Thank you, dear,' said Cynthia.
+
+'Oh, I know you did your best. For an amateur you did wonderfully
+well. But amateurs never really succeed. There were a dozen little
+easy precautions which we neglected to take. What we want is a
+professional; a man whose business is kidnapping; the sort of man
+who kidnaps as a matter of course; someone like Smooth Sam
+Fisher.'
+
+'My dear Nesta! Who? I don't think I know the gentleman.'
+
+'He tried to kidnap Ogden in 1906, when we were in New York. At
+least, the police put it down to him, though they could prove
+nothing. Then there was a horrible man, the police said he was
+called Buck MacGinnis. He tried in 1907. That was in Chicago.'
+
+'Good gracious! Kidnapping Ogden seems to be as popular as
+football. And I thought I was a pioneer!'
+
+Something approaching pride came into Mrs Ford's voice.
+
+'I don't suppose there's a child in America,' she said, 'who has
+had to be so carefully guarded. Why, the kidnappers had a special
+name for him--they called him "The Little Nugget". For years we
+never allowed him out of our sight without a detective to watch
+him.'
+
+'Well, Mr Ford seems to have changed all that now. I saw no
+detectives. I suppose he thinks they aren't necessary in England.
+Or perhaps he relied on Mr Broster. Poor Reggie!'
+
+'It was criminally careless of him. This will be a lesson to him.
+He will be more careful in future how he leaves Ogden at the mercy
+of anybody who cares to come along and snap him up.'
+
+'Which, incidentally, does not make your chance of getting him
+away any lighter.'
+
+'Oh, I've given up hope now,' said Mrs Ford resignedly.
+
+'_I_ haven't,' said Cynthia.
+
+There was something in her voice which made her companion turn
+sharply and look at her. Mrs Ford might affect to be resigned, but
+she was a woman of determination, and if the recent reverse had
+left her bruised, it had by no means crushed her.
+
+'Cynthia! What do you mean? What are you hinting?'
+
+'You despise amateurs, Nesta, but, for all that, it seems that
+your professionals who kidnap as a matter of course and all the
+rest of it have not been a bit more successful. It was not my want
+of experience that made me fail. It was my sex. This is man's
+work. If I had been a man, I should at least have had brute force
+to fall back upon when Mr Mennick arrived.'
+
+Mrs Ford nodded.
+
+'Yes, but--'
+
+'And,' continued Cynthia, 'as all these Smooth Sam Fishers of
+yours have failed too, it is obvious that the only way to kidnap
+Ogden is from within. We must have some man working for us in the
+enemy's camp.'
+
+'Which is impossible,' said Mrs Ford dejectedly.
+
+'Not at all.'
+
+'You know a man?'
+
+'I know _the_ man.'
+
+'Cynthia! What do you mean? Who is he?'
+
+'His name is Peter Burns.'
+
+Mrs Ford shook her head.
+
+'I don't know him.'
+
+'I'll introduce you. You'll like him.'
+
+'But, Cynthia, how do you know he would be willing to help us?'
+
+'He would do it for me,' Cynthia paused. 'You see,' she went on,
+'we are engaged to be married.'
+
+'My dear Cynthia! Why did you not tell me? When did it happen?'
+
+'Last night at the Fletchers' dance.'
+
+Mrs Ford's eyes opened.
+
+'Last night! Were you at a dance last night? And two railway
+journeys today! You must be tired to death.'
+
+'Oh, I'm all right, thanks. I suppose I shall be a wreck and not
+fit to be seen tomorrow, but just at present I feel as if nothing
+could tire me. It's the effect of being engaged, perhaps.'
+
+'Tell me about him.'
+
+'Well, he's rich, and good-looking, and amiable'--Cynthia ticked
+off these qualities on her fingers--'and I think he's brave, and
+he's certainly not so stupid as Mr Broster.'
+
+'And you're very much in love with him?'
+
+'I like him. There's no harm in Peter.'
+
+'You certainly aren't wildly enthusiastic!'
+
+'Oh, we shall hit it off quite well together. I needn't pose to
+_you_, Nesta, thank goodness! That's one reason why I'm fond
+of you. You know how I am situated. I've got to marry some one
+rich, and Peter's quite the nicest rich man I've ever met. He's
+really wonderfully unselfish. I can't understand it. With his
+money, you would expect him to be a perfect horror.'
+
+A thought seemed to strike Mrs Ford.
+
+'But, if he's so rich--' she began. 'I forget what I was going to
+say,' she broke off.
+
+'Dear Nesta, I know what you were going to say. If he's so rich,
+why should he be marrying me, when he could take his pick of half
+London? Well, I'll tell you. He's marrying me for one reason,
+because he's sorry for me: for another, because I had the sense to
+make him. He didn't think he was going to marry anyone. A few
+years ago he had a disappointment. A girl jilted him. She must
+have been a fool. He thought he was going to live the rest of his
+life alone with his broken heart. I didn't mean to allow that.
+It's taken a long time--over two years, from start to finish--but
+I've done it. He's a sentimentalist. I worked on his sympathy, and
+last night I made him propose to me at the Fletchers' dance.'
+
+Mrs Ford had not listened to these confidences unmoved. Several
+times she had tried to interrupt, but had been brushed aside. Now
+she spoke sharply.
+
+'You know I was not going to say anything of the kind. And I don't
+think you should speak in this horrible, cynical way of--of--'
+
+She stopped, flushing. There were moments when she hated Cynthia.
+These occurred for the most part when the latter, as now, stirred
+her to an exhibition of honest feeling which she looked on as
+rather unbecoming. Mrs Ford had spent twenty years trying to
+forget that her husband had married her from behind the counter of
+a general store in an Illinois village, and these lapses into the
+uncultivated genuineness of her girlhood made her uncomfortable.
+
+'I wasn't going to say anything of the kind,' she repeated.
+
+Cynthia was all smiling good-humour.
+
+'I know. I was only teasing you. "Stringing", they call it in your
+country, don't they?'
+
+Mrs Ford was mollified.
+
+'I'm sorry, Cynthia. I didn't mean to snap at you. All the
+same ...' She hesitated. What she wanted to ask smacked so
+dreadfully of Mechanicsville, Illinois. Yet she put the question
+bravely, for she was somehow feeling quite troubled about this
+unknown Mr Burns. 'Aren't you really fond of him at all, Cynthia?'
+
+Cynthia beamed.
+
+'Of course I am! He's a dear. Nothing would make me give him up.
+I'm devoted to old Peter. I only told you all that about him
+because it shows you how kind-hearted he is. He'll do anything for
+me. Well, shall I sound him about Ogden?'
+
+The magic word took Mrs Ford's mind off the matrimonial future of
+Mr Burns, and brought him into prominence in his capacity of
+knight-errant. She laughed happily. The contemplation of Mr Burns
+as knight-errant healed the sting of defeat. The affair of Mr
+Mennick began to appear in the light of a mere skirmish.
+
+'You take my breath away!' she said. 'How do you propose that Mr
+Burns shall help us?'
+
+'It's perfectly simple. You heard Mr Mennick read that telegram.
+Ogden is to be sent to a private school. Peter shall go there
+too.'
+
+'But how? I don't understand. We don't know which school Mr
+Mennick will choose.'
+
+'We can very soon find out.'
+
+'But how can Mr Burns go there?'
+
+'Nothing easier. He will be a young man who has been left a little
+money and wants to start a school of his own. He goes to Ogden's
+man and suggests that he pay a small premium to come to him for a
+term as an extra-assistant-master, to learn the business. Mr Man
+will jump at him. He will be getting the bargain of his life.
+Peter didn't get much of a degree at Oxford, but I believe he was
+wonderful at games. From a private-school point of view he's a
+treasure.'
+
+'But--would he do it?'
+
+'I think I can persuade him.'
+
+Mrs Ford kissed her with an enthusiasm which hitherto she had
+reserved for Ogden.
+
+'My darling girl,' she cried, 'if you knew how happy you have made
+me!'
+
+'I do,' said Cynthia definitely. 'And now you can do the same for
+me.'
+
+'Anything, anything! You must have some more hats.'
+
+'I don't want any more hats. I want to go with you on Lord
+Mountry's yacht to the Riviera.'
+
+'Of course,' said Mrs Ford after a slight pause, 'it isn't my
+party, you know, dear.'
+
+'No. But you can work me in, darling.'
+
+'It's quite a small party. Very quiet.'
+
+'Crowds bore me. I enjoy quiet.'
+
+Mrs Ford capitulated.
+
+'I fancy you are doing me a very good turn,' she said. 'You must
+certainly come on the yacht.'
+
+'I'll tell Peter to come straight round here now,' said Cynthia
+simply. She went to the telephone.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Part Two
+
+
+In which other interested parties, notably one Buck MacGinnis and
+a trade rival, Smooth Sam Fisher, make other plans for the Nugget's
+future. Of stirring times at a private school for young gentlemen.
+Of stratagems, spoils, and alarms by night. Of journeys ending in
+lovers' meetings. The whole related by Mr Peter Burns, gentleman
+of leisure, who forfeits that leisure in a good cause.
+
+
+
+Peter Burns's Narrative
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 1
+
+
+I
+
+I am strongly of the opinion that, after the age of twenty-one, a
+man ought not to be out of bed and awake at four in the morning.
+The hour breeds thought. At twenty-one, life being all future, it
+may be examined with impunity. But, at thirty, having become an
+uncomfortable mixture of future and past, it is a thing to be
+looked at only when the sun is high and the world full of warmth
+and optimism.
+
+This thought came to me as I returned to my rooms after the
+Fletchers' ball. The dawn was breaking as I let myself in. The air
+was heavy with the peculiar desolation of a London winter morning.
+The houses looked dead and untenanted. A cart rumbled past, and
+across the grey street a dingy black cat, moving furtively along
+the pavement, gave an additional touch of forlornness to the
+scene.
+
+I shivered. I was tired and hungry, and the reaction after the
+emotions of the night had left me dispirited.
+
+I was engaged to be married. An hour back I had proposed to
+Cynthia Drassilis. And I can honestly say that it had come as a
+great surprise to me.
+
+Why had I done it? Did I love her? It was so difficult to analyse
+love: and perhaps the mere fact that I was attempting the task was
+an answer to the question. Certainly I had never tried to do so
+five years ago when I had loved Audrey Blake. I had let myself be
+carried on from day to day in a sort of trance, content to be
+utterly happy, without dissecting my happiness. But I was five
+years younger then, and Audrey was--Audrey.
+
+I must explain Audrey, for she in her turn explains Cynthia.
+
+I have no illusions regarding my character when I first met Audrey
+Blake. Nature had given me the soul of a pig, and circumstances
+had conspired to carry on Nature's work. I loved comfort, and I
+could afford to have it. From the moment I came of age and
+relieved my trustees of the care of my money, I wrapped myself in
+comfort as in a garment. I wallowed in egoism. In fact, if,
+between my twenty-first and my twenty-fifth birthdays, I had one
+unselfish thought, or did one genuinely unselfish action, my
+memory is a blank on the point.
+
+It was at the height of this period that I became engaged to
+Audrey. Now that I can understand her better and see myself,
+impartially, as I was in those days, I can realize how indescribably
+offensive I must have been. My love was real, but that did not
+prevent its patronizing complacency being an insult. I was King
+Cophetua. If I did not actually say in so many words, 'This
+beggar-maid shall be my queen', I said it plainly and often in my
+manner. She was the daughter of a dissolute, evil-tempered artist
+whom I had met at a Bohemian club. He made a living by painting
+an occasional picture, illustrating an occasional magazine-story,
+but mainly by doing advertisement work. A proprietor of a patent
+Infants' Food, not satisfied with the bare statement that Baby
+Cried For It, would feel it necessary to push the fact home to the
+public through the medium of Art, and Mr Blake would be commissioned
+to draw the picture. A good many specimens of his work in this vein
+were to be found in the back pages of the magazines.
+
+A man may make a living by these means, but it is one that
+inclines him to jump at a wealthy son-in-law. Mr Blake jumped at
+me. It was one of his last acts on this earth. A week after he
+had--as I now suspect--bullied Audrey into accepting me, he died
+of pneumonia.
+
+His death had several results. It postponed the wedding: it
+stirred me to a very crescendo of patronage, for with the removal
+of the bread-winner the only flaw in my Cophetua pose had
+vanished: and it gave Audrey a great deal more scope than she had
+hitherto been granted for the exercise of free will in the choice
+of a husband.
+
+This last aspect of the matter was speedily brought to my notice,
+which till then it had escaped, by a letter from her, handed to me
+one night at the club, where I was sipping coffee and musing on
+the excellence of life in this best of all possible worlds.
+
+It was brief and to the point. She had been married that morning.
+
+To say that that moment was a turning point in my life would be to
+use a ridiculously inadequate phrase. It dynamited my life. In a
+sense it killed me. The man I had been died that night, regretted,
+I imagine, by few. Whatever I am today, I am certainly not the
+complacent spectator of life that I had been before that night.
+
+I crushed the letter in my hand, and sat staring at it, my pigsty
+in ruins about my ears, face to face with the fact that, even in a
+best of all possible worlds, money will not buy everything.
+
+I remember, as I sat there, a man, a club acquaintance, a bore
+from whom I had fled many a time, came and settled down beside me
+and began to talk. He was a small man, but he possessed a voice to
+which one had to listen. He talked and talked and talked. How I
+loathed him, as I sat trying to think through his stream of words.
+I see now that he saved me. He forced me out of myself. But at the
+time he oppressed me. I was raw and bleeding. I was struggling to
+grasp the incredible. I had taken Audrey's unalterable affection
+for granted. She was the natural complement to my scheme of
+comfort. I wanted her; I had chosen and was satisfied with her,
+therefore all was well. And now I had to adjust my mind to the
+impossible fact that I had lost her.
+
+Her letter was a mirror in which I saw myself. She said little,
+but I understood, and my self-satisfaction was in ribbons--and
+something deeper than self-satisfaction. I saw now that I loved
+her as I had not dreamed myself capable of loving.
+
+And all the while this man talked and talked.
+
+I have a theory that speech, persevered in, is more efficacious in
+times of trouble than silent sympathy. Up to a certain point it
+maddens almost beyond endurance; but, that point past, it soothes.
+At least, it was so in my case. Gradually I found myself hating
+him less. Soon I began to listen, then to answer. Before I left
+the club that night, the first mad frenzy, in which I could have
+been capable of anything, had gone from me, and I walked home,
+feeling curiously weak and helpless, but calm, to begin the new
+life.
+
+Three years passed before I met Cynthia. I spent those years
+wandering in many countries. At last, as one is apt to do, I
+drifted back to London, and settled down again to a life which,
+superficially, was much the same as the one I had led in the days
+before I knew Audrey. My old circle in London had been wide, and I
+found it easy to pick up dropped threads. I made new friends,
+among them Cynthia Drassilis.
+
+I liked Cynthia, and I was sorry for her. I think that, about that
+time I met her, I was sorry for most people. The shock of Audrey's
+departure had had that effect upon me. It is always the bad nigger
+who gets religion most strongly at the camp-meeting, and in my
+case 'getting religion' had taken the form of suppression of self.
+I never have been able to do things by halves, or even with a
+decent moderation. As an egoist I had been thorough in my egoism;
+and now, fate having bludgeoned that vice out of me, I found
+myself possessed of an almost morbid sympathy with the troubles of
+other people.
+
+I was extremely sorry for Cynthia Drassilis. Meeting her mother
+frequently, I could hardly fail to be. Mrs Drassilis was a
+representative of a type I disliked. She was a widow, who had been
+left with what she considered insufficient means, and her outlook
+on life was a compound of greed and querulousness. Sloane Square
+and South Kensington are full of women in her situation. Their
+position resembles that of the Ancient Mariner. 'Water, water
+everywhere, and not a drop to drink.' For 'water' in their case
+substitute 'money'. Mrs Drassilis was connected with money on all
+sides, but could only obtain it in rare and minute quantities. Any
+one of a dozen relations-in-law could, if they had wished, have
+trebled her annual income without feeling it. But they did not so
+wish. They disapproved of Mrs Drassilis. In their opinion the Hon.
+Hugo Drassilis had married beneath him--not so far beneath him as
+to make the thing a horror to be avoided in conversation and
+thought, but far enough to render them coldly polite to his wife
+during his lifetime and almost icy to his widow after his death.
+Hugo's eldest brother, the Earl of Westbourne, had never liked the
+obviously beautiful, but equally obviously second-rate, daughter
+of a provincial solicitor whom Hugo had suddenly presented to the
+family one memorable summer as his bride. He considered that, by
+doubling the income derived from Hugo's life-insurance and
+inviting Cynthia to the family seat once a year during her
+childhood, he had done all that could be expected of him in the
+matter.
+
+He had not. Mrs Drassilis expected a great deal more of him, the
+non-receipt of which had spoiled her temper, her looks, and the
+peace of mind of all who had anything much to do with her.
+
+It used to irritate me when I overheard people, as I occasionally
+have done, speak of Cynthia as hard. I never found her so myself,
+though heaven knows she had enough to make her so, to me she was
+always a sympathetic, charming friend.
+
+Ours was a friendship almost untouched by sex. Our minds fitted so
+smoothly into one another that I had no inclination to fall in
+love. I knew her too well. I had no discoveries to make about her.
+Her honest, simple soul had always been open to me to read. There
+was none of that curiosity, that sense of something beyond that
+makes for love. We had reached a point of comradeship beyond which
+neither of us desired to pass.
+
+Yet at the Fletchers' ball I asked Cynthia to marry me, and she
+consented.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Looking back, I can see that, though the determining cause was Mr
+Tankerville Gifford, it was Audrey who was responsible. She had
+made me human, capable of sympathy, and it was sympathy,
+primarily, that led me to say what I said that night.
+
+But the immediate cause was certainly young Mr Gifford.
+
+I arrived at Marlow Square, where I was to pick up Cynthia and her
+mother, a little late, and found Mrs Drassilis, florid and
+overdressed, in the drawing-room with a sleek-haired, pale young
+man known to me as Tankerville Gifford--to his intimates, of whom
+I was not one, and in the personal paragraphs of the coloured
+sporting weeklies, as 'Tanky'. I had seen him frequently at
+restaurants. Once, at the Empire, somebody had introduced me to
+him; but, as he had not been sober at the moment, he had missed
+any intellectual pleasure my acquaintanceship might have afforded
+him. Like everybody else who moves about in London, I knew all
+about him. To sum him up, he was a most unspeakable little cad,
+and, if the drawing-room had not been Mrs Drassilis's, I should
+have wondered at finding him in it.
+
+Mrs Drassilis introduced us.
+
+'I think we have already met,' I said.
+
+He stared glassily.
+
+'Don't remember.'
+
+I was not surprised.
+
+At this moment Cynthia came in. Out of the corner of my eye I
+observed a look of fuddled displeasure come into Tanky's face at
+her frank pleasure at seeing me.
+
+I had never seen her looking better. She is a tall girl, who
+carries herself magnificently. The simplicity of her dress gained
+an added dignity from comparison with the rank glitter of her
+mother's. She wore unrelieved black, a colour which set off to
+wonderful advantage the clear white of her skin and her pale-gold
+hair.
+
+'You're late, Peter,' she said, looking at the clock.
+
+'I know. I'm sorry.'
+
+'Better be pushing, what?' suggested Tanky.
+
+'My cab's waiting.'
+
+'Will you ring the bell, Mr Gifford?' said Mrs Drassilis. 'I will
+tell Parker to whistle for another.'
+
+'Take me in yours,' I heard a voice whisper in my ear.
+
+I looked at Cynthia. Her expression had not changed. Then I looked
+at Tanky Gifford, and I understood. I had seen that stuffed-fish
+look on his face before--on the occasion when I had been
+introduced to him at the Empire.
+
+'If you and Mr Gifford will take my cab,' I said to Mrs Drassilis,
+'we will follow.'
+
+Mrs Drassilis blocked the motion. I imagine that the sharp note in
+her voice was lost on Tanky, but it rang out like a clarion to me.
+
+'I am in no hurry,' she said. 'Mr Gifford, will you take Cynthia?
+I will follow with Mr Burns. You will meet Parker on the stairs.
+Tell him to call another cab.'
+
+As the door closed behind them, she turned on me like a many-coloured
+snake.
+
+'How can you be so extraordinarily tactless, Peter?' she cried.
+'You're a perfect fool. Have you no eyes?'
+
+'I'm sorry,' I said.
+
+'He's devoted to her.'
+
+'I'm sorry.'
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+'Sorry for her.'
+
+She seemed to draw herself together inside her dress. Her eyes
+glittered. My mouth felt very dry, and my heart was beginning to
+thump. We were both furiously angry. It was a moment that had been
+coming for years, and we both knew it. For my part I was glad that
+it had come. On subjects on which one feels deeply it is a relief
+to speak one's mind.
+
+'Oh!' she said at last. Her voice quivered. She was clutching at
+her self-control as it slipped from her. 'Oh! And what is my
+daughter to you, Mr Burns!'
+
+'A great friend.'
+
+'And I suppose you think it friendly to try to spoil her chances?'
+
+'If Mr Gifford is a sample of them--yes.'
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+She choked.
+
+'I see. I understand. I am going to put a stop to this once and
+for all. Do you hear? I have noticed it for a long time. Because I
+have given you the run of the house, and allowed you to come in
+and out as you pleased, like a tame cat, you presume--'
+
+'Presume--' I prompted.
+
+'You come here and stand in Cynthia's way. You trade on the fact
+that you have known us all this time to monopolize her attention.
+You spoil her chances. You--'
+
+The invaluable Parker entered to say that the cab was at the door.
+
+We drove to the Fletchers' house in silence. The spell had been
+broken. Neither of us could recapture that first, fine, careless
+rapture which had carried us through the opening stages of the
+conflict, and discussion of the subject on a less exalted plane
+was impossible. It was that blessed period of calm, the rest
+between rounds, and we observed it to the full.
+
+When I reached the ballroom a waltz was just finishing. Cynthia, a
+statue in black, was dancing with Tanky Gifford. They were
+opposite me when the music stopped, and she caught sight of me
+over his shoulder.
+
+She disengaged herself and moved quickly towards me.
+
+'Take me away,' she said under her breath. 'Anywhere. Quick.'
+
+It was no time to consider the etiquette of the ballroom. Tanky,
+startled at his sudden loneliness, seemed by his expression to be
+endeavouring to bring his mind to bear on the matter. A couple
+making for the door cut us off from him, and following them, we
+passed out.
+
+Neither of us spoke till we had reached the little room where I
+had meditated.
+
+She sat down. She was looking pale and tired.
+
+'Oh, dear!' she said.
+
+I understood. I seemed to see that journey in the cab, those
+dances, those terrible between-dances ...
+
+It was very sudden.
+
+I took her hand. She turned to me with a tired smile. There were
+tears in her eyes ...
+
+I heard myself speaking ...
+
+She was looking at me, her eyes shining. All the weariness seemed
+to have gone out of them.
+
+I looked at her.
+
+There was something missing. I had felt it when I was speaking. To
+me my voice had had no ring of conviction. And then I saw what it
+was. There was no mystery. We knew each other too well. Friendship
+kills love.
+
+She put my thought into words.
+
+'We have always been brother and sister,' she said doubtfully.
+
+'Till tonight.'
+
+'You have changed tonight? You really want me?'
+
+Did I? I tried to put the question to myself and answer it
+honestly. Yes, in a sense, I had changed tonight. There was an
+added appreciation of her fineness, a quickening of that blend of
+admiration and pity which I had always felt for her. I wanted with
+all my heart to help her, to take her away from her dreadful
+surroundings, to make her happy. But did I want her in the sense
+in which she had used the word? Did I want her as I had wanted
+Audrey Blake? I winced away from the question. Audrey belonged to
+the dead past, but it hurt to think of her.
+
+Was it merely because I was five years older now than when I had
+wanted Audrey that the fire had gone out of me?
+
+I shut my mind against my doubts.
+
+'I have changed tonight,' I said.
+
+And I bent down and kissed her.
+
+I was conscious of being defiant against somebody. And then I knew
+that the somebody was myself.
+
+I poured myself out a cup of hot coffee from the flask which
+Smith, my man, had filled against my return. It put life into me.
+The oppression lifted.
+
+And yet there remained something that made for uneasiness, a sort
+of foreboding at the back of my mind.
+
+I had taken a step in the dark, and I was afraid for Cynthia. I
+had undertaken to give her happiness. Was I certain that I could
+succeed? The glow of chivalry had left me, and I began to doubt.
+
+Audrey had taken from me something that I could not recover--poetry
+was as near as I could get to a definition of it. Yes, poetry.
+With Cynthia my feet would always be on the solid earth. To the
+end of the chapter we should be friends and nothing more.
+
+I found myself pitying Cynthia intensely. I saw her future a
+series of years of intolerable dullness. She was too good to be
+tied for life to a battered hulk like myself.
+
+I drank more coffee and my mood changed. Even in the grey of a
+winter morning a man of thirty, in excellent health, cannot pose
+to himself for long as a piece of human junk, especially if he
+comforts himself with hot coffee.
+
+My mind resumed its balance. I laughed at myself as a sentimental
+fraud. Of course I could make her happy. No man and woman had ever
+been more admirably suited to each other. As for that first
+disaster, which I had been magnifying into a life-tragedy, what of
+it? An incident of my boyhood. A ridiculous episode which--I rose
+with the intention of doing so at once--I should now proceed to
+eliminate from my life.
+
+I went quickly to my desk, unlocked it, and took out a photograph.
+
+And then--undoubtedly four o'clock in the morning is no time for a
+man to try to be single-minded and decisive--I wavered. I had
+intended to tear the thing in pieces without a glance, and fling
+it into the wastepaper-basket. But I took the glance and I
+hesitated.
+
+The girl in the photograph was small and slight, and she looked
+straight out of the picture with large eyes that met and
+challenged mine. How well I remembered them, those Irish-blue eyes
+under their expressive, rather heavy brows. How exactly the
+photographer had caught that half-wistful, half-impudent look, the
+chin tilted, the mouth curving into a smile.
+
+In a wave all my doubts had surged back upon me. Was this mere
+sentimentalism, a four-in-the-morning tribute to the pathos of the
+flying years, or did she really fill my soul and stand guard over
+it so that no successor could enter in and usurp her place?
+
+I had no answer, unless the fact that I replaced the photograph in
+its drawer was one. I felt that this thing could not be decided
+now. It was more difficult than I had thought.
+
+All my gloom had returned by the time I was in bed. Hours seemed
+to pass while I tossed restlessly aching for sleep.
+
+When I woke my last coherent thought was still clear in my mind.
+It was a passionate vow that, come what might, if those Irish eyes
+were to haunt me till my death, I would play the game loyally with
+Cynthia.
+
+
+II
+
+The telephone bell rang just as I was getting ready to call at
+Marlow Square and inform Mrs Drassilis of the position of affairs.
+Cynthia, I imagined, would have broken the news already, which
+would mitigate the embarrassment of the interview to some extent;
+but the recollection of my last night's encounter with Mrs
+Drassilis prevented me from looking forward with any joy to the
+prospect of meeting her again.
+
+Cynthia's voice greeted me as I unhooked the receiver.
+
+'Hullo, Peter! Is that you? I want you to come round here at
+once.'
+
+'I was just starting,' I said.
+
+'I don't mean Marlow Square. I'm not there. I'm at the Guelph. Ask
+for Mrs Ford's suite. It's very important. I'll tell you all about
+it when you get here. Come as soon as you can.'
+
+My rooms were conveniently situated for visits to the Hotel
+Guelph. A walk of a couple of minutes took me there. Mrs Ford's
+suite was on the third floor. I rang the bell and Cynthia opened
+the door to me.
+
+'Come in,' she said. 'You're a dear to be so quick.'
+
+'My rooms are only just round the corner.' She shut the door, and
+for the first time we looked at one another. I could not say that
+I was nervous, but there was certainly, to me, a something strange
+in the atmosphere. Last night seemed a long way off and somehow a
+little unreal. I suppose I must have shown this in my manner, for
+she suddenly broke what had amounted to a distinct pause by giving
+a little laugh. 'Peter,' she said, 'you're embarrassed.' I denied
+the charge warmly, but without real conviction. I was embarrassed.
+'Then you ought to be,' she said. 'Last night, when I was looking
+my very best in a lovely dress, you asked me to marry you. Now you
+see me again in cold blood, and you're wondering how you can back
+out of it without hurting my feelings.'
+
+I smiled. She did not. I ceased to smile. She was looking at me in
+a very peculiar manner.
+
+'Peter,' she said, 'are you sure?'
+
+'My dear old Cynthia,' I said, 'what's the matter with you?'
+
+'You are sure?' she persisted.
+
+'Absolutely, entirely sure.' I had a vision of two large eyes
+looking at me out of a photograph. It came and went in a flash.
+
+I kissed Cynthia.
+
+'What quantities of hair you have,' I said. 'It's a shame to cover
+it up.' She was not responsive. 'You're in a very queer mood
+today, Cynthia,' I went on. 'What's the matter?'
+
+'I've been thinking.'
+
+'Out with it. Something has gone wrong.' An idea flashed upon me.
+'Er--has your mother--is your mother very angry about--'
+
+'Mother's delighted. She always liked you, Peter.'
+
+I had the self-restraint to check a grin.
+
+'Then what is it?' I said. 'Tired after the dance?'
+
+'Nothing as simple as that.'
+
+'Tell me.'
+
+'It's so difficult to put it into words.'
+
+'Try.'
+
+She was playing with the papers on the table, her face turned
+away. For a moment she did not speak.
+
+'I've been worrying myself, Peter,' she said at last. 'You are so
+chivalrous and unselfish. You're quixotic. It's that that is
+troubling me. Are you marrying me just because you're sorry for
+me? Don't speak. I can tell you now if you will just let me say
+straight out what's in my mind. We have known each other for two
+years now. You know all about me. You know how--how unhappy I am
+at home. Are you marrying me just because you pity me and want to
+take me out of all that?'
+
+'My dear girl!'
+
+'You haven't answered my question.'
+
+'I answered it two minutes ago when you asked me if--'
+
+'You do love me?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+All this time she had been keeping her face averted, but now she
+turned and looked into my eyes with an abrupt intensity which, I
+confess, startled me. Her words startled me more.
+
+'Peter, do you love me as much as you loved Audrey Blake?'
+
+In the instant which divided her words from my reply my mind flew
+hither and thither, trying to recall an occasion when I could have
+mentioned Audrey to her. I was convinced that I had not done so. I
+never mentioned Audrey to anyone.
+
+There is a grain of superstition in the most level-headed man. I
+am not particularly level-headed, and I have more than a grain in
+me. I was shaken. Ever since I had asked Cynthia to marry me, it
+seemed as if the ghost of Audrey had come back into my life.
+
+'Good Lord!' I cried. 'What do you know of Audrey Blake?'
+
+She turned her face away again.
+
+'Her name seems to affect you very strongly,' she said quietly.
+
+I recovered myself.
+
+'If you ask an old soldier,' I said, 'he will tell you that a
+wound, long after it has healed, is apt to give you an occasional
+twinge.'
+
+'Not if it has really healed.'
+
+'Yes, when it has really healed--when you can hardly remember how
+you were fool enough to get it.'
+
+She said nothing.
+
+'How did you hear about--it?' I asked.
+
+'When I first met you, or soon after, a friend of yours--we
+happened to be talking about you--told me that you had been engaged
+to be married to a girl named Audrey Blake. He was to have been
+your best man, he said, but one day you wrote and told him there
+would be no wedding, and then you disappeared; and nobody saw you
+again for three years.'
+
+'Yes,' I said: 'that is all quite true.'
+
+'It seems to have been a serious affair, Peter. I mean--the sort
+of thing a man would find it hard to forget.'
+
+I tried to smile, but I knew that I was not doing it well. It was
+hurting me extraordinarily, this discussion of Audrey.
+
+'A man would find it almost impossible,' I said, 'unless he had a
+remarkably poor memory.'
+
+'I didn't mean that. You know what I mean by forget.'
+
+'Yes,' I said, 'I do.'
+
+She came quickly to me and took me by the shoulders, looking into
+my face.
+
+'Peter, can you honestly say you have forgotten her--in the sense
+I mean?'
+
+'Yes,' I said.
+
+Again that feeling swept over me--that curious sensation of being
+defiant against myself.
+
+'She does not stand between us?'
+
+'No,' I said.
+
+I could feel the effort behind the word. It was as if some
+subconscious part of me were working to keep it back.
+
+'Peter!'
+
+There was a soft smile on her face; as she raised it to mine I put
+my arms around her.
+
+She drew away with a little laugh. Her whole manner had changed.
+She was a different being from the girl who had looked so gravely
+into my eyes a moment before.
+
+'Oh, my dear boy, how terribly muscular you are! You've crushed
+me. I expect you used to be splendid at football, like Mr
+Broster.'
+
+I did not reply at once. I cannot wrap up the deeper emotions and
+put them back on their shelf directly I have no further immediate
+use for them. I slowly adjusted myself to the new key of the
+conversation.
+
+'Who's Broster?' I asked at length.
+
+'He used to be tutor to'--she turned me round and pointed--'to
+_that_.'
+
+I had seen a picture standing on one of the chairs when I entered
+the room but had taken no particular notice of it. I now gave it a
+closer glance. It was a portrait, very crudely done, of a
+singularly repulsive child of about ten or eleven years old.
+
+_Was_ he, poor chap! Well, we all have our troubles, don't
+we! Who _is_ this young thug! Not a friend of yours, I hope?'
+
+'That is Ogden, Mrs Ford's son. It's a tragedy--'
+
+'Perhaps it doesn't do him justice. Does he really squint like
+that, or is it just the artist's imagination?'
+
+'Don't make fun of it. It's the loss of that boy that is breaking
+Nesta's heart.'
+
+I was shocked.
+
+'Is he dead? I'm awfully sorry. I wouldn't for the world--'
+
+'No, no. He is alive and well. But he is dead to her. The court
+gave him into the custody of his father.'
+
+'The court?'
+
+'Mrs Ford was the wife of Elmer Ford, the American millionaire.
+They were divorced a year ago.'
+
+'I see.'
+
+Cynthia was gazing at the portrait.
+
+'This boy is quite a celebrity in his way,' she said. 'They call
+him "The Little Nugget" in America.'
+
+'Oh! Why is that?'
+
+'It's a nickname the kidnappers have for him. Ever so many
+attempts have been made to steal him.'
+
+She stopped and looked at me oddly.
+
+'I made one today, Peter,' she said. I went down to the country,
+where the boy was, and kidnapped him.'
+
+'Cynthia! What on earth do you mean?'
+
+'Don't you understand? I did it for Nesta's sake. She was breaking
+her heart about not being able to see him, so I slipped down and
+stole him away, and brought him back here.'
+
+I do not know if I was looking as amazed as I felt. I hope not,
+for I felt as if my brain were giving way. The perfect calmness
+with which she spoke of this extraordinary freak added to my
+confusion.
+
+'You're joking!'
+
+'No; I stole him.'
+
+'But, good heavens! The law! It's a penal offence, you know!'
+
+'Well, I did it. Men like Elmer Ford aren't fit to have charge of
+a child. You don't know him, but he's just an unscrupulous
+financier, without a thought above money. To think of a boy
+growing up in that tainted atmosphere--at his most impressionable
+age. It means death to any good there is in him.'
+
+My mind was still grappling feebly with the legal aspect of the
+affair.
+
+'But, Cynthia, kidnapping's kidnapping, you know! The law doesn't
+take any notice of motives. If you're caught--'
+
+She cut through my babble.
+
+'Would you have been afraid to do it, Peter?'
+
+'Well--' I began. I had not considered the point before.
+
+'I don't believe you would. If I asked you to do it for my sake--'
+
+'But, Cynthia, kidnapping, you know! It's such an infernally low-down
+game.'
+
+'I played it. Do you despise _me_?'
+
+I perspired. I could think of no other reply.
+
+'Peter,' she said, 'I understand your scruples. I know exactly how
+you feel. But can't you see that this is quite different from the
+sort of kidnapping you naturally look on as horrible? It's just
+taking a boy away from surroundings that must harm him, back to
+his mother, who worships him. It's not wrong. It's splendid.'
+
+She paused.
+
+'You _will_ do it for me, Peter?' she said.
+
+'I don't understand,' I said feebly. 'It's done. You've kidnapped
+him yourself.'
+
+'They tracked him and took him back. And now I want _you_ to
+try.' She came closer to me. 'Peter, don't you see what it will
+mean to me if you agree to try? I'm only human, I can't help, at
+the bottom of my heart, still being a little jealous of this
+Audrey Blake. No, don't say anything. Words can't cure me; but if
+you do this thing for me, I shall be satisfied. I shall _know_.'
+
+She was close beside me, holding my arm and looking into my face.
+That sense of the unreality of things which had haunted me since
+that moment at the dance came over me with renewed intensity. Life
+had ceased to be a rather grey, orderly business in which day
+succeeded day calmly and without event. Its steady stream had
+broken up into rapids, and I was being whirled away on them.
+
+'Will you do it, Peter? Say you will.'
+
+A voice, presumably mine, answered 'Yes'.
+
+'My dear old boy!'
+
+She pushed me into a chair, and, sitting on the arm of it, laid
+her hand on mine and became of a sudden wondrously business-like.
+
+'Listen,' she said, 'I'll tell you what we have arranged.'
+
+It was borne in upon me, as she began to do so, that she appeared
+from the very beginning to have been extremely confident that that
+essential part of her plans, my consent to the scheme, could be
+relied upon as something of a certainty. Women have these
+intuitions.
+
+
+III
+
+Looking back, I think I can fix the point at which this insane
+venture I had undertaken ceased to be a distorted dream, from
+which I vaguely hoped that I might shortly waken, and took shape
+as a reality of the immediate future. That moment came when I met
+Mr Arnold Abney by appointment at his club.
+
+Till then the whole enterprise had been visionary. I gathered from
+Cynthia that the boy Ogden was shortly to be sent to a preparatory
+school, and that I was to insinuate myself into this school and,
+watching my opportunity, to remove him; but it seemed to me that
+the obstacles to this comparatively lucid scheme were insuperable.
+In the first place, how were we to discover which of England's
+million preparatory schools Mr Ford, or Mr Mennick for him, would
+choose? Secondly, the plot which was to carry me triumphantly into
+this school when--or if--found, struck me as extremely thin. I
+was to pose, Cynthia told me, as a young man of private means,
+anxious to learn the business, with a view to setting up a school
+of his own. The objection to that was, I held, that I obviously
+did not want to do anything of the sort. I had not the appearance
+of a man with such an ambition. I had none of the conversation of
+such a man.
+
+I put it to Cynthia.
+
+'They would find me out in a day,' I assured her. 'A man who wants
+to set up a school has got to be a pretty brainy sort of fellow. I
+don't know anything.'
+
+'You got your degree.'
+
+'A degree. At any rate, I've forgotten all I knew.'
+
+'That doesn't matter. You have the money. Anybody with money can
+start a school, even if he doesn't know a thing. Nobody would
+think it strange.'
+
+It struck me as a monstrous slur on our educational system, but
+reflection told me it was true. The proprietor of a preparatory
+school, if he is a man of wealth, need not be able to teach, any
+more than an impresario need be able to write plays.
+
+'Well, we'll pass that for the moment,' I said. 'Here's the real
+difficulty. How are you going to find out the school Mr Ford has
+chosen?'
+
+'I have found it out already--or Nesta has. She set a detective to
+work. It was perfectly easy. Ogden's going to Mr Abney's. Sanstead
+House is the name of the place. It's in Hampshire somewhere. Quite
+a small school, but full of little dukes and earls and things.
+Lord Mountry's younger brother, Augustus Beckford, is there.'
+
+I had known Lord Mountry and his family well some years ago. I
+remembered Augustus dimly.
+
+'Mountry? Do you know him? He was up at Oxford with me.'
+
+She seemed interested.
+
+'What kind of a man is he?' she asked.
+
+'Oh, quite a good sort. Rather an ass. I haven't seen him for
+years.'
+
+'He's a friend of Nesta's. I've only met him once. He is going to
+be your reference.'
+
+'My what?'
+
+'You will need a reference. At least, I suppose you will. And,
+anyhow, if you say you know Lord Mountry it will make it simpler
+for you with Mr Abney, the brother being at the school.'
+
+'Does Mountry know about this business? Have you told him why I
+want to go to Abney's?'
+
+'Nesta told him. He thought it was very sporting of you. He will
+tell Mr Abney anything we like. By the way, Peter, you will have
+to pay a premium or something, I suppose. But Nesta will look
+after all expenses, of course.'
+
+On this point I made my only stand of the afternoon.
+
+'No,' I said; 'it's very kind of her, but this is going to be
+entirely an amateur performance. I'm doing this for you, and I'll
+stand the racket. Good heavens! Fancy taking money for a job of
+this kind!'
+
+She looked at me rather oddly.
+
+'That is very sweet of you, Peter,' she said, after a slight
+pause. 'Now let's get to work.'
+
+And together we composed the letter which led to my sitting, two
+days later, in stately conference at his club with Mr Arnold
+Abney, M.A., of Sanstead House, Hampshire.
+
+Mr Abney proved to be a long, suave, benevolent man with an Oxford
+manner, a high forehead, thin white hands, a cooing intonation,
+and a general air of hushed importance, as of one in constant
+communication with the Great. There was in his bearing something
+of the family solicitor in whom dukes confide, and something of
+the private chaplain at the Castle.
+
+He gave me the key-note to his character in the first minute of
+our acquaintanceship. We had seated ourselves at a table in the
+smoking-room when an elderly gentleman shuffled past, giving a nod
+in transit. My companion sprang to his feet almost convulsively,
+returned the salutation, and subsided slowly into his chair again.
+
+'The Duke of Devizes,' he said in an undertone. 'A most able man.
+Most able. His nephew, Lord Ronald Stokeshaye, was one of my
+pupils. A charming boy.'
+
+I gathered that the old feudal spirit still glowed to some extent
+in Mr Abney's bosom.
+
+We came to business.
+
+'So you wish to be one of us, Mr Burns, to enter the scholastic
+profession?'
+
+I tried to look as if I did.
+
+'Well, in certain circumstances, the circumstances in which
+I--ah--myself, I may say, am situated, there is no more delightful
+occupation. The work is interesting. There is the constant
+fascination of seeing these fresh young lives develop--and of
+helping them to develop--under one's eyes; in any case, I may say,
+there is the exceptional interest of being in a position to mould
+the growing minds of lads who will some day take their place among
+the country's hereditary legislators, that little knot of devoted
+men who, despite the vulgar attacks of loudmouthed demagogues,
+still do their share, and more, in the guidance of England's
+fortunes. Yes.'
+
+He paused. I said I thought so, too.
+
+'You are an Oxford man, Mr Burns, I think you told me? Ah, I have
+your letter here. Just so. You were at--ah, yes. A fine college.
+The Dean is a lifelong friend of mine. Perhaps you knew my late
+pupil, Lord Rollo?--no, he would have been since your time. A
+delightful boy. Quite delightful ... And you took your degree?
+Exactly. _And_ represented the university at both cricket and
+Rugby football? Excellent. _Mens sana in_--ah--_corpore_, in fact,
+_sano_, yes!'
+
+He folded the letter carefully and replaced it in his pocket.
+
+'Your primary object in coming to me, Mr Burns, is, I gather, to
+learn the--ah--the ropes, the business? You have had little or no
+previous experience of school-mastering?'
+
+'None whatever.'
+
+'Then your best plan would undoubtedly be to consider yourself and
+work for a time simply as an ordinary assistant-master. You would
+thus get a sound knowledge of the intricacies of the profession
+which would stand you in good stead when you decide to set up your
+own school. School-mastering is a profession, which cannot be
+taught adequately except in practice. "Only those who--ah--brave
+its dangers comprehend its mystery." Yes, I would certainly
+recommend you to begin at the foot of the ladder and go, at least
+for a time, through the mill.'
+
+'Certainly,' I said. 'Of course.'
+
+My ready acquiescence pleased him. I could see that he was
+relieved. I think he had expected me to jib at the prospect of
+actual work.
+
+'As it happens,' he said, 'my classical master left me at the end
+of last term. I was about to go to the Agency for a successor when
+your letter arrived. Would you consider--'
+
+I had to think this over. Feeling kindly disposed towards Mr
+Arnold Abney, I wished to do him as little harm as possible. I was
+going to rob him of a boy, who, while no moulding of his growing
+mind could make him into a hereditary legislator, did undoubtedly
+represent a portion of Mr Abney's annual income; and I did not
+want to increase my offence by being a useless assistant-master.
+Then I reflected that, if I was no Jowett, at least I knew enough
+Latin and Greek to teach the rudiments of those languages to small
+boys. My conscience was satisfied.
+
+'I should be delighted,' I said.
+
+'Excellent. Then let us consider that as--ah--settled,' said Mr
+Abney.
+
+There was a pause. My companion began to fiddle a little
+uncomfortably with an ash-tray. I wondered what was the matter,
+and then it came to me. We were about to become sordid. The
+discussion of terms was upon us.
+
+And as I realized this, I saw simultaneously how I could throw one
+more sop to my exigent conscience. After all, the whole thing was
+really a question of hard cash. By kidnapping Ogden I should be
+taking money from Mr Abney. By paying my premium I should be
+giving it back to him.
+
+I considered the circumstances. Ogden was now about thirteen years
+old. The preparatory-school age limit may be estimated roughly at
+fourteen. That is to say, in any event Sanstead House could only
+harbour him for one year. Mr Abney's fees I had to guess at. To be
+on the safe side, I fixed my premium at an outside figure, and,
+getting to the point at once, I named it.
+
+It was entirely satisfactory. My mental arithmetic had done me
+credit. Mr Abney beamed upon me. Over tea and muffins we became
+very friendly. In half an hour I heard more of the theory of
+school-mastering than I had dreamed existed.
+
+We said good-bye at the club front door. He smiled down at me
+benevolently from the top of the steps.
+
+'Good-bye, Mr Burns, good-bye,' he said. 'We shall meet
+at--ah--Philippi.'
+
+When I reached my rooms, I rang for Smith.
+
+'Smith,' I said, 'I want you to get some books for me first thing
+tomorrow. You had better take a note of them.'
+
+He moistened his pencil.
+
+'A Latin Grammar.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'A Greek Grammar.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Brodley Arnold's Easy Prose Sentences.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'And Caesar's Gallic Wars.'
+
+'What name, sir?'
+
+'Caesar.'
+
+'Thank you, sir. Anything else, sir?'
+
+'No, that will be all.'
+
+'Very good, sir.'
+
+He shimmered from the room.
+
+Thank goodness, Smith always has thought me mad, and is consequently
+never surprised at anything I ask him to do.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 2
+
+
+Sanstead House was an imposing building in the Georgian style. It
+stood, foursquare, in the midst of about nine acres of land. For
+the greater part of its existence, I learned later, it had been
+the private home of a family of the name of Boone, and in its
+early days the estate had been considerable. But the progress of
+the years had brought changes to the Boones. Money losses had
+necessitated the sale of land. New roads had come into being,
+cutting off portions of the estate from their centre. New
+facilities for travel had drawn members of the family away from
+home. The old fixed life of the country had changed, and in the
+end the latest Boone had come to the conclusion that to keep up so
+large and expensive a house was not worth his while.
+
+That the place should have become a school was the natural process
+of evolution. It was too large for the ordinary purchaser, and the
+estate had been so whittled down in the course of time that it was
+inadequate for the wealthy. Colonel Boone had been glad to let it
+to Mr Abney, and the school had started its career.
+
+It had all the necessary qualifications for a school. It was
+isolated. The village was two miles from its gates. It was near
+the sea. There were fields for cricket and football, and inside
+the house a number of rooms of every size, suitable for classrooms
+and dormitories.
+
+The household, when I arrived, consisted, besides Mr Abney, myself,
+another master named Glossop, and the matron, of twenty-four boys,
+the butler, the cook, the odd-job-man, two housemaids, a scullery-maid,
+and a parlour-maid. It was a little colony, cut off from the outer
+world.
+
+With the exception of Mr Abney and Glossop, a dismal man of nerves
+and mannerisms, the only person with whom I exchanged speech on my
+first evening was White, the butler. There are some men one likes
+at sight. White was one of them. Even for a butler he was a man of
+remarkably smooth manners, but he lacked that quality of austere
+aloofness which I have noticed in other butlers.
+
+He helped me unpack my box, and we chatted during the process. He
+was a man of medium height, square and muscular, with something,
+some quality of springiness, as it were, that seemed unusual in a
+butler. From one or two things he said, I gathered that he had
+travelled a good deal. Altogether he interested me. He had humour,
+and the half-hour which I had spent with Glossop made me set a
+premium on humour. I found that he, like myself, was a new-comer.
+His predecessor had left at short notice during the holidays, and
+he had secured the vacancy at about the same time that I was
+securing mine. We agreed that it was a pretty place. White, I
+gathered, regarded its isolation as a merit. He was not fond of
+village society.
+
+On the following morning, at eight o'clock, my work began.
+
+My first day had the effect of entirely revolutionizing what ideas
+I possessed of the lot of the private-school assistant-master.
+
+My view, till then, had been that the assistant-master had an easy
+time. I had only studied him from the outside. My opinion was
+based on observations made as a boy at my own private school, when
+masters were an enviable race who went to bed when they liked, had
+no preparation to do, and couldn't be caned. It seemed to me then
+that those three facts, especially the last, formed a pretty good
+basis on which to build up the Perfect Life.
+
+I had not been at Sanstead House two days before doubts began to
+creep in on this point. What the boy, observing the assistant-master
+standing about in apparently magnificent idleness, does not realize
+is that the unfortunate is really putting in a spell of exceedingly
+hard work. He is 'taking duty'. And 'taking duty' is a thing to be
+remembered, especially by a man who, like myself, has lived a life
+of fatted ease, protected from all the minor annoyances of life by
+a substantial income.
+
+Sanstead House educated me. It startled me. It showed me a hundred
+ways in which I had allowed myself to become soft and inefficient,
+without being aware of it. There may be other professions which
+call for a fiercer display of energy, but for the man with a
+private income who has loitered through life at his own pace, a
+little school-mastering is brisk enough to be a wonderful tonic.
+
+I needed it, and I got it.
+
+It was almost as if Mr Abney had realized intuitively how excellent
+the discipline of work was for my soul, for the kindly man allowed
+me to do not only my own, but most of his as well. I have talked
+with assistant-masters since, and I have gathered from them that
+headmasters of private schools are divided into two classes: the
+workers and the runners-up-to-London. Mr Abney belonged to the
+latter class. Indeed, I doubt if a finer representative of the
+class could have been found in the length and breadth of southern
+England. London drew him like a magnet.
+
+After breakfast he would take me aside. The formula was always the
+same.
+
+'Ah--Mr Burns.'
+
+Myself (apprehensively, scenting disaster, 'like some wild
+creature caught within a trap, who sees the trapper coming through
+the wood'). 'Yes? Er--yes?'
+
+'I am afraid I shall be obliged to run up to London today. I have
+received an important letter from--' And then he would name some
+parent or some prospective parent. (By 'prospective' I mean one
+who was thinking of sending his son to Sanstead House. You may
+have twenty children, but unless you send them to his school, a
+schoolmaster will refuse to dignify you with the name of parent.)
+
+Then, 'He wishes--ah--to see me,' or, in the case of titled
+parents, 'He wishes--ah--to talk things over with me.' The
+distinction is subtle, but he always made it.
+
+And presently the cab would roll away down the long drive, and my
+work would begin, and with it that soul-discipline to which I have
+alluded.
+
+'Taking duty' makes certain definite calls upon a man. He has to
+answer questions; break up fights; stop big boys bullying small
+boys; prevent small boys bullying smaller boys; check stone-throwing,
+going-on-the-wet-grass, worrying-the-cook, teasing-the-dog,
+making-too-much-noise, and, in particular, discourage all forms
+of _hara-kiri_ such as tree-climbing, water-spout-scaling,
+leaning-too-far-out-of-the-window, sliding-down-the-banisters,
+pencil-swallowing, and ink-drinking-because-somebody-dared-me-to.
+
+At intervals throughout the day there are further feats to
+perform. Carving the joint, helping the pudding, playing football,
+reading prayers, teaching, herding stragglers in for meals, and
+going round the dormitories to see that the lights are out, are a
+few of them.
+
+I wanted to oblige Cynthia, if I could, but there were moments
+during the first day or so when I wondered how on earth I was
+going to snatch the necessary time to combine kidnapping with my
+other duties. Of all the learned professions it seemed to me that
+that of the kidnapper most urgently demanded certain intervals for
+leisured thought, in which schemes and plots might be matured.
+
+Schools vary. Sanstead House belonged to the more difficult class.
+Mr Abney's constant flittings did much to add to the burdens of
+his assistants, and his peculiar reverence for the aristocracy did
+even more. His endeavour to make Sanstead House a place where the
+delicately nurtured scions of the governing class might feel as
+little as possible the temporary loss of titled mothers led him
+into a benevolent tolerance which would have unsettled angels.
+
+Success or failure for an assistant-master is, I consider, very
+much a matter of luck. My colleague, Glossop, had most of the
+qualities that make for success, but no luck. Properly backed up
+by Mr Abney, he might have kept order. As it was, his class-room
+was a bear-garden, and, when he took duty, chaos reigned.
+
+I, on the other hand, had luck. For some reason the boys agreed to
+accept me. Quite early in my sojourn I enjoyed that sweetest triumph
+of the assistant-master's life, the spectacle of one boy smacking
+another boy's head because the latter persisted in making a noise
+after I had told him to stop. I doubt if a man can experience so
+keenly in any other way that thrill which comes from the knowledge
+that the populace is his friend. Political orators must have the
+same sort of feeling when their audience clamours for the ejection
+of a heckler, but it cannot be so keen. One is so helpless with boys,
+unless they decide that they like one.
+
+It was a week from the beginning of the term before I made the
+acquaintance of the Little Nugget.
+
+I had kept my eyes open for him from the beginning, and when I
+discovered that he was not at school, I had felt alarmed. Had
+Cynthia sent me down here, to work as I had never worked before,
+on a wild-goose chase?
+
+Then, one morning, Mr Abney drew me aside after breakfast.
+
+'Ah--Mr Burns.'
+
+It was the first time that I had heard those soon-to-be-familiar
+words.
+
+'I fear I shall be compelled to run up to London today. I have an
+important appointment with the father of a boy who is coming to
+the school. He wishes--ah--to see me.'
+
+This might be the Little Nugget at last.
+
+I was right. During the interval before school, Augustus Beckford
+approached me. Lord Mountry's brother was a stolid boy with
+freckles. He had two claims to popular fame. He could hold his
+breath longer than any other boy in the school, and he always got
+hold of any piece of gossip first.
+
+'There's a new kid coming tonight, sir,' he said--'an American
+kid. I heard him talking about it to the matron. The kid's name's
+Ford, I believe the kid's father's awfully rich. Would you like to
+be rich, sir? I wish I was rich. If I was rich, I'd buy all sorts
+of things. I believe I'm going to be rich when I grow up. I heard
+father talking to a lawyer about it. There's a new parlour-maid
+coming soon, sir. I heard cook telling Emily. I'm blowed if I'd
+like to be a parlour-maid, would you, sir? I'd much rather be a
+cook.'
+
+He pondered the point for a moment. When he spoke again, it was to
+touch on a still more profound problem.
+
+'If you wanted a halfpenny to make up twopence to buy a lizard,
+what would you do, sir?'
+
+He got it.
+
+Ogden Ford, the El Dorado of the kidnapping industry, entered
+Sanstead House at a quarter past nine that evening. He was
+preceded by a Worried Look, Mr Arnold Abney, a cabman bearing a
+large box, and the odd-job man carrying two suitcases. I have
+given precedence to the Worried Look because it was a thing by
+itself. To say that Mr Abney wore it would be to create a wrong
+impression. Mr Abney simply followed in its wake. He was concealed
+behind it much as Macbeth's army was concealed behind the woods of
+Dunsinane.
+
+I only caught a glimpse of Ogden as Mr Abney showed him into his
+study. He seemed a self-possessed boy, very like but, if anything,
+uglier than the portrait of him which I had seen at the Hotel
+Guelph.
+
+A moment later the door opened, and my employer came out. He
+appeared relieved at seeing me.
+
+'Ah, Mr Burns, I was about to go in search of you. Can you spare
+me a moment? Let us go into the dining-room.'
+
+'That is a boy called Ford, Mr Burns,' he said, when he had closed
+the door. 'A rather--er--remarkable boy. He is an American, the
+son of a Mr Elmer Ford. As he will be to a great extent in your
+charge, I should like to prepare you for his--ah--peculiarities.'
+
+'Is he peculiar?'
+
+A faint spasm disturbed Mr Abney's face. He applied a silk
+handkerchief to his forehead before he replied.
+
+'In many ways, judged by the standard of the lads who have passed
+through my hands--boys, of course, who, it is only fair to add,
+have enjoyed the advantages of a singularly refined home-life--he
+may be said to be--ah--somewhat peculiar. While I have no doubt
+that _au fond ... au fond_ he is a charming boy, quite charming,
+at present he is--shall I say?--peculiar. I am disposed to imagine
+that he has been, from childhood up, systematically indulged.
+There has been in his life, I suspect, little or no discipline.
+The result has been to make him curiously unboylike. There is a
+complete absence of that diffidence, that childish capacity for
+surprise, which I for one find so charming in our English boys.
+Little Ford appears to be completely blase'. He has tastes and ideas
+which are precocious, and--unusual in a boy of his age.... He
+expresses himself in a curious manner sometimes.... He seems to have
+little or no reverence for--ah--constituted authority.'
+
+He paused while he passed his handkerchief once more over his
+forehead.
+
+'Mr Ford, the boy's father, who struck me as a man of great
+ability, a typical American merchant prince, was singularly frank
+with me about his domestic affairs as they concerned his son. I
+cannot recall his exact words, but the gist of what he said was
+that, until now, Mrs Ford had had sole charge of the boy's
+upbringing, and--Mr Ford was singularly outspoken--was too
+indulgent, in fact--ah--spoilt him. Indeed--you will, of course,
+respect my confidence--that was the real reason for the divorce
+which--ah--has unhappily come about. Mr Ford regards this school
+as in a measure--shall I say?--an antidote. He wishes there to be
+no lack of wholesome discipline. So that I shall expect you, Mr
+Burns, to check firmly, though, of course, kindly, such habits of
+his as--ah--cigarette-smoking. On our journey down he smoked
+incessantly. I found it impossible--without physical violence--to
+induce him to stop. But, of course, now that he is actually at the
+school, and subject to the discipline of the school ...'
+
+'Exactly,' I said.
+
+'That was all I wished to say. Perhaps it would be as well if you
+saw him now, Mr Burns. You will find him in the study.'
+
+He drifted away, and I went to the study to introduce myself.
+
+A cloud of tobacco-smoke rising above the back of an easy-chair
+greeted me as I opened the door. Moving into the room, I perceived
+a pair of boots resting on the grate. I stepped to the light, and
+the remainder of the Little Nugget came into view.
+
+He was lying almost at full length in the chair, his eyes fixed in
+dreamy abstraction upon the ceiling. As I came towards him, he
+drew at the cigarette between his fingers, glanced at me, looked
+away again, and expelled another mouthful of smoke. He was not
+interested in me.
+
+Perhaps this indifference piqued me, and I saw him with prejudiced
+eyes. At any rate, he seemed to me a singularly unprepossessing
+youth. That portrait had flattered him. He had a stout body and a
+round, unwholesome face. His eyes were dull, and his mouth dropped
+discontentedly. He had the air of one who is surfeited with life.
+
+I am disposed to imagine, as Mr Abney would have said, that my
+manner in addressing him was brisker and more incisive than Mr
+Abney's own. I was irritated by his supercilious detachment.
+
+'Throw away that cigarette,' I said.
+
+To my amazement, he did, promptly. I was beginning to wonder
+whether I had not been too abrupt--he gave me a curious sensation
+of being a man of my own age--when he produced a silver case from
+his pocket and opened it. I saw that the cigarette in the fender
+was a stump.
+
+I took the case from his hand and threw it on to a table. For the
+first time he seemed really to notice my existence.
+
+'You've got a hell of a nerve,' he said.
+
+He was certainly exhibiting his various gifts in rapid order,
+This, I took it, was what Mr Abney had called 'expressing himself
+in a curious manner'.
+
+'And don't swear,' I said.
+
+We eyed each other narrowly for the space of some seconds.
+
+'Who are you?' he demanded.
+
+I introduced myself.
+
+'What do you want to come butting in for?'
+
+'I am paid to butt in. It's the main duty of an assistant-master.'
+
+'Oh, you're the assistant-master, are you?'
+
+'One of them. And, in passing--it's a small technical point--you're
+supposed to call me "sir" during these invigorating little chats
+of ours.'
+
+'Call you what? Up an alley!'
+
+'I beg your pardon?'
+
+'Fade away. Take a walk.'
+
+I gathered that he was meaning to convey that he had considered my
+proposition, but regretted his inability to entertain it.
+
+'Didn't you call your tutor "sir" when you were at home?'
+
+'Me? Don't make me laugh. I've got a cracked lip.'
+
+'I gather you haven't an overwhelming respect for those set in
+authority over you.'
+
+'If you mean my tutors, I should say nix.'
+
+'You use the plural. Had you a tutor before Mr Broster?'
+
+He laughed.
+
+'Had I? Only about ten million.'
+
+'Poor devils!' I said.
+
+'Who's swearing now?'
+
+The point was well taken. I corrected myself.
+
+'Poor brutes! What happened to them? Did they commit suicide?'
+
+'Oh, they quit. And I don't blame them. I'm a pretty tough
+proposition, and you don't want to forget it.'
+
+He reached out for the cigarette-case. I pocketed it.
+
+'You make me tired,' he said.
+
+'The sensation's mutual.'
+
+'Do you think you can swell around, stopping me doing things?'
+
+'You've defined my job exactly.'
+
+'Guess again. I know all about this joint. The hot-air merchant
+was telling me about it on the train.'
+
+I took the allusion to be to Mr Arnold Abney, and thought it
+rather a happy one.
+
+'He's the boss, and nobody but him is allowed to hit the fellows.
+If you tried it, you'd lose your job. And he ain't going to,
+because the Dad's paying double fees, and he's scared stiff he'll
+lose me if there's any trouble.'
+
+'You seem to have a grasp of the position.'
+
+'Bet your life I have.'
+
+I looked at him as he sprawled in the chair.
+
+'You're a funny kid,' I said.
+
+He stiffened, outraged. His little eyes gleamed.
+
+'Say, it looks to me as if you wanted making a head shorter.
+You're a darned sight too fresh. Who do you think you are,
+anyway?'
+
+'I'm your guardian angel,' I replied. 'I'm the fellow who's going
+to take you in hand and make you a little ray of sunshine about
+the home. I know your type backwards. I've been in America and
+studied it on its native asphalt. You superfatted millionaire kids
+are all the same. If Dad doesn't jerk you into the office before
+you're out of knickerbockers, you just run to seed. You get to
+think you're the only thing on earth, and you go on thinking it
+till one day somebody comes along and shows you you're not, and
+then you get what's coming to you--good and hard.'
+
+He began to speak, but I was on my favourite theme, one I had
+studied and brooded upon since the evening when I had received a
+certain letter at my club.
+
+'I knew a man,' I said, 'who started out just like you. He always
+had all the money he wanted: never worked: grew to think himself a
+sort of young prince. What happened?'
+
+He yawned.
+
+'I'm afraid I'm boring you,' I said.
+
+'Go on. Enjoy yourself,' said the Little Nugget.
+
+'Well, it's a long story, so I'll spare you it. But the moral of
+it was that a boy who is going to have money needs to be taken in
+hand and taught sense while he's young.'
+
+He stretched himself.
+
+'You talk a lot. What do you reckon you're going to do?'
+
+I eyed him thoughtfully.
+
+'Well, everything's got to have a beginning,' I said. 'What you
+seem to me to want most is exercise. I'll take you for a run every
+day. You won't know yourself at the end of a week.'
+
+'Say, if you think you're going to get _me_ to run--'
+
+'When I grab your little hand, and start running, you'll find
+you'll soon be running too. And, years hence, when you win the
+Marathon at the Olympic Games, you'll come to me with tears in
+your eyes, and you'll say--'
+
+'Oh, slush!'
+
+'I shouldn't wonder.' I looked at my watch. 'Meanwhile, you had
+better go to bed. It's past your proper time.'
+
+He stared at me in open-eyed amazement.
+
+'Bed!'
+
+'Bed.'
+
+He seemed more amused than annoyed.
+
+'Say, what time do you think I usually go to bed?'
+
+'I know what time you go here. Nine o'clock.'
+
+As if to support my words, the door opened, and Mrs Attwell, the
+matron, entered.
+
+'I think it's time he came to bed, Mr Burns.'
+
+'Just what I was saying, Mrs Attwell.'
+
+'You're crazy,' observed the Little Nugget. 'Bed nothing!'
+
+Mrs Attwell looked at me despairingly.
+
+'I never saw such a boy!'
+
+The whole machinery of the school was being held up by this legal
+infant. Any vacillation now, and Authority would suffer a set-back
+from which it would be hard put to it to recover. It seemed to me
+a situation that called for action.
+
+I bent down, scooped the Little Nugget out of his chair like an
+oyster, and made for the door. Outside he screamed incessantly. He
+kicked me in the stomach and then on the knee. He continued to
+scream. He screamed all the way upstairs. He was screaming when we
+reached his room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Half an hour later I sat in the study, smoking thoughtfully.
+Reports from the seat of war told of a sullen and probably only
+temporary acquiescence with Fate on the part of the enemy. He was
+in bed, and seemed to have made up his mind to submit to the
+position. An air of restrained jubilation prevailed among the
+elder members of the establishment. Mr Abney was friendly and Mrs
+Attwell openly congratulatory. I was something like the hero of
+the hour.
+
+But was I jubilant? No, I was inclined to moodiness. Unforeseen
+difficulties had arisen in my path. Till now, I had regarded this
+kidnapping as something abstract. Personality had not entered into
+the matter. If I had had any picture in my mind's eye, it was of
+myself stealing away softly into the night with a docile child,
+his little hand laid trustfully in mine. From what I had seen and
+heard of Ogden Ford in moments of emotion, it seemed to me that
+whoever wanted to kidnap him with any approach to stealth would
+need to use chloroform.
+
+Things were getting very complex.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 3
+
+
+I have never kept a diary, and I have found it, in consequence,
+somewhat difficult, in telling this narrative, to arrange the
+minor incidents of my story in their proper sequence. I am writing
+by the light of an imperfect memory; and the work is complicated
+by the fact that the early days of my sojourn at Sanstead House
+are a blur, a confused welter like a Futurist picture, from which
+emerge haphazard the figures of boys--boys working, boys eating,
+boys playing football, boys whispering, shouting, asking
+questions, banging doors, jumping on beds, and clattering upstairs
+and along passages, the whole picture faintly scented with a
+composite aroma consisting of roast beef, ink, chalk, and that
+curious classroom smell which is like nothing else on earth.
+
+I cannot arrange the incidents. I can see Mr Abney, furrowed as to
+the brow and drooping at the jaw, trying to separate Ogden Ford
+from a half-smoked cigar-stump. I can hear Glossop, feverishly
+angry, bellowing at an amused class. A dozen other pictures come
+back to me, but I cannot place them in their order; and perhaps,
+after all, their sequence is unimportant. This story deals with
+affairs which were outside the ordinary school life.
+
+With the war between the Little Nugget and Authority, for
+instance, the narrative has little to do. It is a subject for an
+epic, but it lies apart from the main channel of the story, and
+must be avoided. To tell of his gradual taming, of the chaos his
+advent caused until we became able to cope with him, would be to
+turn this story into a treatise on education. It is enough to say
+that the process of moulding his character and exorcising the
+devil which seemed to possess him was slow.
+
+It was Ogden who introduced tobacco-chewing into the school, with
+fearful effects one Saturday night on the aristocratic interiors
+of Lords Gartridge and Windhall and Honourables Edwin Bellamy and
+Hildebrand Kyne. It was the ingenious gambling-game imported by
+Ogden which was rapidly undermining the moral sense of twenty-four
+innocent English boys when it was pounced upon by Glossop. It was
+Ogden who, on the one occasion when Mr Abney reluctantly resorted
+to the cane, and administered four mild taps with it, relieved his
+feelings by going upstairs and breaking all the windows in all the
+bedrooms.
+
+We had some difficult young charges at Sanstead House. Abney's
+policy of benevolent toleration ensured that. But Ogden Ford stood
+alone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have said that it is difficult for me to place the lesser events
+of my narrative in their proper order. I except three, however
+which I will call the Affair of the Strange American, the Adventure
+of the Sprinting Butler, and the Episode of the Genial Visitor.
+
+I will describe them singly, as they happened.
+
+It was the custom at Sanstead House for each of the assistant
+masters to take half of one day in every week as a holiday. The
+allowance was not liberal, and in most schools, I believe, it is
+increased; but Mr Abney was a man with peculiar views on other
+people's holidays, and Glossop and I were accordingly restricted.
+
+My day was Wednesday; and on the Wednesday of which I write I
+strolled towards the village. I had in my mind a game of billiards
+at the local inn. Sanstead House and its neighbourhood were
+lacking in the fiercer metropolitan excitements, and billiards at
+the 'Feathers' constituted for the pleasure-seeker the beginning
+and end of the Gay Whirl.
+
+There was a local etiquette governing the game of billiards at the
+'Feathers'. You played the marker a hundred up, then you took him
+into the bar-parlour and bought him refreshment. He raised his
+glass, said, 'To you, sir', and drained it at a gulp. After that
+you could, if you wished, play another game, or go home, as your
+fancy dictated.
+
+There was only one other occupant of the bar-parlour when we
+adjourned thither, and a glance at him told me that he was not
+ostentatiously sober. He was lying back in a chair, with his feet
+on the side-table, and crooning slowly, in a melancholy voice, the
+following words:
+
+  _'I don't care--if he wears--a crown,
+  He--can't--keep kicking my--dawg aroun'.'_
+
+He was a tough, clean-shaven man, with a broken nose, over which
+was tilted a soft felt hat. His wiry limbs were clad in what I put
+down as a mail-order suit. I could have placed him by his
+appearance, if I had not already done so by his voice, as an
+East-side New Yorker. And what an East-side New Yorker could be
+doing in Sanstead it was beyond me to explain.
+
+We had hardly seated ourselves when he rose and lurched out. I saw
+him pass the window, and his assertion that no crowned head should
+molest his dog came faintly to my ears as he went down the street.
+
+'American!' said Miss Benjafield, the stately barmaid, with strong
+disapproval. 'They're all alike.'
+
+I never contradict Miss Benjafield--one would as soon contradict
+the Statue of Liberty--so I merely breathed sympathetically.
+
+'What's he here for I'd like to know?'
+
+It occurred to me that I also should like to know. In another
+thirty hours I was to find out.
+
+I shall lay myself open to a charge of denseness such as even
+Doctor Watson would have scorned when I say that, though I thought
+of the matter a good deal on my way back to the school, I did not
+arrive at the obvious solution. Much teaching and taking of duty
+had dulled my wits, and the presence at Sanstead House of the
+Little Nugget did not even occur to me as a reason why strange
+Americans should be prowling in the village.
+
+We now come to the remarkable activity of White, the butler.
+
+It happened that same evening.
+
+It was not late when I started on my way back to the house, but the
+short January day was over, and it was very dark as I turned in at
+the big gate of the school and made my way up the drive. The drive
+at Sanstead House was a fine curving stretch of gravel, about two
+hundred yards in length, flanked on either side by fir trees and
+rhododendrons. I stepped out briskly, for it had begun to freeze.
+Just as I caught sight through the trees of the lights of the
+windows, there came to me the sound of running feet.
+
+I stopped. The noise grew louder. There seemed to be two runners,
+one moving with short, quick steps, the other, the one in front,
+taking a longer stride.
+
+I drew aside instinctively. In another moment, making a great
+clatter on the frozen gravel, the first of the pair passed me; and
+as he did so, there was a sharp crack, and something sang through
+the darkness like a large mosquito.
+
+The effect of the sound on the man who had been running was
+immediate. He stopped in his stride and dived into the bushes. His
+footsteps thudded faintly on the turf.
+
+The whole incident had lasted only a few seconds, and I was still
+standing there when I was aware of the other man approaching. He
+had apparently given up the pursuit, for he was walking quite
+slowly. He stopped within a few feet of me and I heard him
+swearing softly to himself.
+
+'Who's that?' I cried sharply. The crack of the pistol had given a
+flick to my nerves. Mine had been a sheltered life, into which
+hitherto revolver-shots had not entered, and I was resenting this
+abrupt introduction of them. I felt jumpy and irritated.
+
+It gave me a malicious pleasure to see that I had startled the
+unknown dispenser of shocks quite as much as he had startled me.
+The movement he made as he faced towards my direction was almost a
+leap; and it suddenly flashed upon me that I had better at once
+establish my identity as a non-combatant. I appeared to have
+wandered inadvertently into the midst of a private quarrel, one
+party to which--the one standing a couple of yards from me with a
+loaded revolver in his hand--was evidently a man of impulse, the
+sort of man who would shoot first and inquire afterwards.
+
+'I'm Mr Burns,' I said. 'I'm one of the assistant-masters. Who are
+you?'
+
+'Mr Burns?'
+
+Surely that rich voice was familiar.
+
+'White?' I said.
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'What on earth do you think you're doing? Have you gone mad? Who
+was that man?'
+
+'I wish I could tell you, sir. A very doubtful character. I found
+him prowling at the back of the house very suspiciously. He took
+to his heels and I followed him.'
+
+'But'--I spoke querulously, my orderly nature was shocked--'you
+can't go shooting at people like that just because you find them
+at the back of the house. He might have been a tradesman.'
+
+'I think not, sir.'
+
+'Well, so do I, if it comes to that. He didn't behave like one. But
+all the same--'
+
+'I take your point, sir. But I was merely intending to frighten
+him.'
+
+'You succeeded all right. He went through those bushes like a
+cannon-ball.'
+
+I heard him chuckle.
+
+'I think I may have scared him a little, sir.'
+
+'We must phone to the police-station. Could you describe the man?'
+
+'I think not, sir. It was very dark. And, if I may make the
+suggestion, it would be better not to inform the police. I have a
+very poor opinion of these country constables.'
+
+'But we can't have men prowling--'
+
+'If you will permit me, sir. I say--let them prowl. It's the only
+way to catch them.'
+
+'If you think this sort of thing is likely to happen again I must
+tell Mr Abney.'
+
+'Pardon me, sir, I think it would be better not. He impresses me
+as a somewhat nervous gentleman, and it would only disturb him.'
+
+At this moment it suddenly struck me that, in my interest in the
+mysterious fugitive, I had omitted to notice what was really the
+most remarkable point in the whole affair. How did White happen to
+have a revolver at all? I have met many butlers who behaved
+unexpectedly in their spare time. One I knew played the fiddle;
+another preached Socialism in Hyde Park. But I had never yet come
+across a butler who fired pistols.
+
+'What were you doing with a revolver?' I asked.
+
+He hesitated.
+
+'May I ask you to keep it to yourself, sir, if I tell you
+something?' he said at last.
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+'I'm a detective.'
+
+'What!'
+
+'A Pinkerton's man, Mr Burns.'
+
+I felt like one who sees the 'danger' board over thin ice. But for
+this information, who knew what rash move I might not have made,
+under the assumption that the Little Nugget was unguarded? At the
+same time, I could not help reflecting that, if things had been
+complex before, they had become far more so in the light of this
+discovery. To spirit Ogden away had never struck me, since his
+arrival at the school, as an easy task. It seemed more difficult
+now than ever.
+
+I had the sense to affect astonishment. I made my imitation of an
+innocent assistant-master astounded by the news that the butler is
+a detective in disguise as realistic as I was able. It appeared to
+be satisfactory, for he began to explain.
+
+'I am employed by Mr Elmer Ford to guard his son. There are
+several parties after that boy, Mr Burns. Naturally he is a
+considerable prize. Mr Ford would pay a large sum to get back his
+only son if he were kidnapped. So it stands to reason he takes
+precautions.'
+
+'Does Mr Abney know what you are?'
+
+'No, sir. Mr Abney thinks I am an ordinary butler. You are the
+only person who knows, and I have only told you because you have
+happened to catch me in a rather queer position for a butler to be
+in. You will keep it to yourself, sir? It doesn't do for it to get
+about. These things have to be done quietly. It would be bad for
+the school if my presence here were advertised. The other parents
+wouldn't like it. They would think that their sons were in danger,
+you see. It would be disturbing for them. So if you will just
+forget what I've been telling you, Mr Burns--'
+
+I assured him that I would. But I was very far from meaning it. If
+there was one thing which I intended to bear in mind, it was the
+fact that watchful eyes besides mine were upon that Little Nugget.
+
+The third and last of this chain of occurrences, the Episode of
+the Genial Visitor, took place on the following day, and may be
+passed over briefly. All that happened was that a well-dressed
+man, who gave his name as Arthur Gordon, of Philadelphia, dropped
+in unexpectedly to inspect the school. He apologized for not
+having written to make an appointment, but explained that he was
+leaving England almost immediately. He was looking for a school
+for his sister's son, and, happening to meet his business
+acquaintance, Mr Elmer Ford, in London, he had been recommended to
+Mr Abney. He made himself exceedingly pleasant. He was a breezy,
+genial man, who joked with Mr Abney, chaffed the boys, prodded the
+Little Nugget in the ribs, to that overfed youth's discomfort,
+made a rollicking tour of the house, in the course of which he
+inspected Ogden's bedroom--in order, he told Mr Abney, to be able
+to report conscientiously to his friend Ford that the son and heir
+was not being pampered too much, and departed in a whirl of
+good-humour, leaving every one enthusiastic over his charming
+personality. His last words were that everything was thoroughly
+satisfactory, and that he had learned all he wanted to know.
+
+Which, as was proved that same night, was the simple truth.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 4
+
+
+I
+
+I owed it to my colleague Glossop that I was in the centre of the
+surprising things that occurred that night. By sheer weight of
+boredom, Glossop drove me from the house, so that it came about
+that, at half past nine, the time at which the affair began, I was
+patrolling the gravel in front of the porch.
+
+It was the practice of the staff of Sanstead House School to
+assemble after dinner in Mr Abney's study for coffee. The room was
+called the study, but it was really more of a master's common
+room. Mr Abney had a smaller sanctum of his own, reserved
+exclusively for himself.
+
+On this particular night he went there early, leaving me alone
+with Glossop. It is one of the drawbacks of the desert-island
+atmosphere of a private school that everybody is always meeting
+everybody else. To avoid a man for long is impossible. I had been
+avoiding Glossop as long as I could, for I knew that he wanted to
+corner me with a view to a heart-to-heart talk on Life Insurance.
+
+These amateur Life Insurance agents are a curious band. The world
+is full of them. I have met them at country-houses, at seaside
+hotels, on ships, everywhere; and it has always amazed me that
+they should find the game worth the candle. What they add to their
+incomes I do not know, but it cannot be very much, and the trouble
+they have to take is colossal. Nobody loves them, and they must
+see it; yet they persevere. Glossop, for instance, had been trying
+to buttonhole me every time there was a five minutes' break in the
+day's work.
+
+He had his chance now, and he did not mean to waste it. Mr Abney
+had scarcely left the room when he began to exude pamphlets and
+booklets at every pocket.
+
+I eyed him sourly, as he droned on about 'reactionable endowment',
+'surrender-value', and 'interest accumulating on the tontine
+policy', and tried, as I did so, to analyse the loathing I felt
+for him. I came to the conclusion that it was partly due to his
+pose of doing the whole thing from purely altruistic motives,
+entirely for my good, and partly because he forced me to face the
+fact that I was not always going to be young. In an abstract
+fashion I had already realized that I should in time cease to be
+thirty, but the way in which Glossop spoke of my sixty-fifth
+birthday made me feel as if it was due tomorrow. He was a man with
+a manner suggestive of a funeral mute suffering from suppressed
+jaundice, and I had never before been so weighed down with a sense
+of the inevitability of decay and the remorseless passage of time.
+I could feel my hair whitening.
+
+A need for solitude became imperative; and, murmuring something
+about thinking it over, I escaped from the room.
+
+Except for my bedroom, whither he was quite capable of following
+me, I had no refuge but the grounds. I unbolted the front door and
+went out.
+
+It was still freezing, and, though the stars shone, the trees grew
+so closely about the house that it was too dark for me to see more
+than a few feet in front of me.
+
+I began to stroll up and down. The night was wonderfully still. I
+could hear somebody walking up the drive--one of the maids, I
+supposed, returning from her evening out. I could even hear a bird
+rustling in the ivy on the walls of the stables.
+
+I fell into a train of thought. I think my mind must still have
+been under Glossop's gloom-breeding spell, for I was filled with a
+sense of the infinite pathos of Life. What was the good of it all?
+Why was a man given chances of happiness without the sense to
+realize and use them? If Nature had made me so self-satisfied that
+I had lost Audrey because of my self-satisfaction why had she not
+made me so self-satisfied that I could lose her without a pang?
+Audrey! It annoyed me that, whenever I was free for a moment from
+active work, my thoughts should keep turning to her. It frightened
+me, too. Engaged to Cynthia, I had no right to have such thoughts.
+
+Perhaps it was the mystery which hung about her that kept her in
+my mind. I did not know where she was. I did not know how she
+fared. I did not know what sort of a man it was whom she had
+preferred to me. That, it struck me, was the crux of the matter.
+She had vanished absolutely with another man whom I had never seen
+and whose very name I did not know. I had been beaten by an unseen
+foe.
+
+I was deep in a very slough of despond when suddenly things began
+to happen. I might have known that Sanstead House would never
+permit solitary brooding on Life for long. It was a place of
+incident, not of abstract speculation.
+
+I had reached the end of my 'beat', and had stopped to relight my
+pipe, when drama broke loose with the swift unexpectedness which
+was characteristic of the place. The stillness of the night was
+split by a sound which I could have heard in a gale and recognized
+among a hundred conflicting noises. It was a scream, a shrill,
+piercing squeal that did not rise to a crescendo, but started at
+its maximum and held the note; a squeal which could only proceed
+from one throat: the deafening war-cry of the Little Nugget.
+
+I had grown accustomed, since my arrival at Sanstead House, to a
+certain quickening of the pace of life, but tonight events
+succeeded one another with a rapidity which surprised me. A whole
+cinematograph-drama was enacted during the space of time it takes
+for a wooden match to burn.
+
+At the moment when the Little Nugget gave tongue, I had just
+struck one, and I stood, startled into rigidity, holding it in the
+air as if I had decided to constitute myself a sort of limelight
+man to the performance.
+
+It cannot have been more than a few seconds later before some
+person unknown nearly destroyed me.
+
+I was standing, holding my match and listening to the sounds of
+confusion indoors, when this person, rounding the angle of the
+house in a desperate hurry, emerged from the bushes and rammed me
+squarely.
+
+He was a short man, or he must have crouched as he ran, for his
+shoulder--a hard, bony shoulder--was precisely the same distance
+from the ground as my solar plexus. In the brief impact which
+ensued between the two, the shoulder had the advantage of being in
+motion, while the solar plexus was stationary, and there was no
+room for any shadow of doubt as to which had the worst of it.
+
+That the mysterious unknown was not unshaken by the encounter was
+made clear by a sharp yelp of surprise and pain. He staggered.
+What happened to him after that was not a matter of interest to
+me. I gather that he escaped into the night. But I was too
+occupied with my own affairs to follow his movements.
+
+Of all cures for melancholy introspection a violent blow in the
+solar plexus is the most immediate. If Mr Corbett had any abstract
+worries that day at Carson City, I fancy they ceased to occupy his
+mind from the moment when Mr Fitzsimmons administered that historic
+left jab. In my case the cure was instantaneous. I can remember
+reeling across the gravel and falling in a heap and trying to
+breathe and knowing that I should never again be able to, and
+then for some minutes all interest in the affairs of this world
+left me.
+
+How long it was before my breath returned, hesitatingly, like some
+timid Prodigal Son trying to muster up courage to enter the old
+home, I do not know; but it cannot have been many minutes, for the
+house was only just beginning to disgorge its occupants as I sat
+up. Disconnected cries and questions filled the air. Dim forms
+moved about in the darkness.
+
+I had started to struggle to my feet, feeling very sick and
+boneless, when it was borne in upon me that the sensations of this
+remarkable night were not yet over. As I reached a sitting
+position, and paused before adventuring further, to allow a wave
+of nausea to pass, a hand was placed on my shoulder and a voice
+behind me said, 'Don't move!'
+
+
+II
+
+I was not in a condition to argue. Beyond a fleeting feeling that
+a liberty was being taken with me and that I was being treated
+unjustly, I do not remember resenting the command. I had no notion
+who the speaker might be, and no curiosity. Breathing just then
+had all the glamour of a difficult feat cleverly performed. I
+concentrated my whole attention upon it. I was pleased, and
+surprised, to find myself getting on so well. I remember having
+much the same sensation when I first learned to ride a bicycle--a
+kind of dazed feeling that I seemed to be doing it, but Heaven
+alone knew how.
+
+A minute or so later, when I had leisure to observe outside
+matters, I perceived that among the other actors in the drama
+confusion still reigned. There was much scuttering about and much
+meaningless shouting. Mr Abney's reedy tenor voice was issuing
+directions, each of which reached a dizzier height of futility
+than the last. Glossop was repeating over and over again the
+words, 'Shall I telephone for the police?' to which nobody
+appeared to pay the least attention. One or two boys were darting
+about like rabbits and squealing unintelligibly. A female voice--I
+think Mrs Attwell's--was saying, 'Can you see him?'
+
+Up to this point, my match, long since extinguished, had been the
+only illumination the affair had received; but now somebody, who
+proved to be White, the butler, came from the direction of the
+stable-yard with a carriage-lamp. Every one seemed calmer and
+happier for it. The boys stopped squealing, Mrs Attwell and
+Glossop subsided, and Mr Abney said 'Ah!' in a self-satisfied
+voice, as if he had directed this move and was congratulating
+himself on the success with which it had been carried out.
+
+The whole strength of the company gathered round the light.
+
+'Thank you, White,' said Mr Abney. 'Excellent. I fear the
+scoundrel has escaped.'
+
+'I suspect so, sir.'
+
+'This is a very remarkable occurrence, White.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'The man was actually in Master Ford's bedroom.'
+
+'Indeed, sir?'
+
+A shrill voice spoke. I recognized it as that of Augustus
+Beckford, always to be counted upon to be in the centre of things
+gathering information.
+
+'Sir, please, sir, what was up? Who was it, sir? Sir, was it a
+burglar, sir? Have you ever met a burglar, sir? My father took me
+to see Raffles in the holidays, sir. Do you think this chap was
+like Raffles, sir? Sir--'
+
+'It was undoubtedly--' Mr Abney was beginning, when the identity
+of the questioner dawned upon him, and for the first time he
+realized that the drive was full of boys actively engaged in
+catching their deaths of cold. His all-friends-here-let-us-
+discuss-this-interesting-episode-fully manner changed. He became
+the outraged schoolmaster. Never before had I heard him speak so
+sharply to boys, many of whom, though breaking rules, were still
+titled.
+
+'What are you boys doing out of bed? Go back to bed instantly. I
+shall punish you most severely. I--'
+
+'Shall I telephone for the police?' asked Glossop. Disregarded.
+
+'I will not have this conduct. You will catch cold. This is
+disgraceful. Ten bad marks! I shall punish you most severely if
+you do not instantly--'
+
+A calm voice interrupted him.
+
+'Say!'
+
+The Little Nugget strolled easily into the circle of light. He was
+wearing a dressing-gown, and in his hand was a smouldering
+cigarette, from which he proceeded, before continuing his remarks,
+to blow a cloud of smoke.
+
+'Say, I guess you're wrong. That wasn't any ordinary porch-climber.'
+
+The spectacle of his _bete noire_ wreathed in smoke, coming
+on top of the emotions of the night, was almost too much for Mr
+Abney. He gesticulated for a moment in impassioned silence, his
+arms throwing grotesque shadows on the gravel.
+
+'How _dare_ you smoke, boy! How _dare_ you smoke that cigarette!'
+
+'It's the only one I've got,' responded the Little Nugget amiably.
+
+'I have spoken to you--I have warned you--Ten bad marks!--I will
+not have--Fifteen bad marks!'
+
+The Little Nugget ignored the painful scene. He was smiling
+quietly.
+
+'If you ask _me_,' he said, 'that guy was after something better
+than plated spoons. Yes, sir! If you want my opinion, it was Buck
+MacGinnis, or Chicago Ed., or one of those guys, and what he was
+trailing was me. They're always at it. Buck had a try for me in the
+fall of '07, and Ed.--'
+
+'Do you hear me? Will you return instantly--'
+
+'If you don't believe me I can show you the piece there was about
+it in the papers. I've got a press-clipping album in my box.
+Whenever there's a piece about me in the papers, I cut it out and
+paste it into my album. If you'll come right along, I'll show you
+the story about Buck now. It happened in Chicago, and he'd have
+got away with me if it hadn't been--'
+
+'Twenty bad marks!'
+
+'Mr Abney!'
+
+It was the person standing behind me who spoke. Till now he or she
+had remained a silent spectator, waiting, I suppose, for a lull in
+the conversation.
+
+They jumped, all together, like a well-trained chorus.
+
+'Who is that?' cried Mr Abney. I could tell by the sound of his
+voice that his nerves were on wires. 'Who was that who spoke?'
+
+'Shall I telephone for the police?' asked Glossop. Ignored.
+
+'I am Mrs Sheridan, Mr Abney. You were expecting me to-night.'
+
+'Mrs Sheridan? Mrs Sher--I expected you in a cab. I expected you
+in--ah--in fact, a cab.'
+
+'I walked.'
+
+I had a curious sensation of having heard the voice before. When
+she had told me not to move, she had spoken in a whisper--or, to
+me, in my dazed state, it had sounded like a whisper--but now she
+was raising her voice, and there was a note in it that seemed
+familiar. It stirred some chord in my memory, and I waited to hear
+it again.
+
+When it came it brought the same sensation, but nothing more
+definite. It left me groping for the clue.
+
+'Here is one of the men, Mr Abney.'
+
+There was a profound sensation. Boys who had ceased to squeal,
+squealed with fresh vigour. Glossop made his suggestion about the
+telephone with a new ring of hope in his voice. Mrs Attwell
+shrieked. They made for us in a body, boys and all, White leading
+with the lantern. I was almost sorry for being compelled to
+provide an anticlimax.
+
+Augustus Beckford was the first to recognize me, and I expect he
+was about to ask me if I liked sitting on the gravel on a frosty
+night, or what gravel was made of, when Mr Abney spoke.
+
+'Mr Burns! What--dear me!--_what_ are you doing there?'
+
+'Perhaps Mr Burns can give us some information as to where the man
+went, sir,' suggested White.
+
+'On everything except that,' I said, 'I'm a mine of information. I
+haven't the least idea where he went. All I know about him is that
+he has a shoulder like the ram of a battleship, and that he
+charged me with it.'
+
+As I was speaking, I thought I heard a little gasp behind me. I
+turned. I wanted to see this woman who stirred my memory with her
+voice. But the rays of the lantern did not fall on her, and she
+was a shapeless blur in the darkness. Somehow I felt that she was
+looking intently at me.
+
+I resumed my narrative.
+
+'I was lighting my pipe when I heard a scream--' A chuckle came
+from the group behind the lantern.
+
+'I screamed,' said the Little Nugget. 'You bet I screamed! What
+would _you_ do if you woke up in the dark and found a strong-armed
+roughneck prising you out of bed as if you were a clam? He tried to
+get his hand over my mouth, but he only connected with my forehead,
+and I'd got going before he could switch. I guess I threw a scare
+into that gink!'
+
+He chuckled again, reminiscently, and drew at his cigarette.
+
+'How dare you smoke! Throw away that cigarette!' cried Mr Abney,
+roused afresh by the red glow.
+
+'Forget it!' advised the Little Nugget tersely.
+
+'And then,' I said, 'somebody whizzed out from nowhere and hit me.
+And after that I didn't seem to care much about him or anything
+else.' I spoke in the direction of my captor. She was still
+standing outside the circle of light. 'I expect you can tell us
+what happened, Mrs Sheridan?'
+
+I did not think that her information was likely to be of any
+practical use, but I wanted to make her speak again.
+
+Her first words were enough. I wondered how I could ever have been
+in doubt. I knew the voice now. It was one which I had not heard
+for five years, but one which I could never forget if I lived for
+ever.
+
+'Somebody ran past me.' I hardly heard her. My heart was pounding,
+and a curious dizziness had come over me. I was grappling with the
+incredible. 'I think he went into the bushes.'
+
+I heard Glossop speak, and gathered from Mr Abney's reply; that he
+had made his suggestion about the telephone once more.
+
+'I think that will be--ah--unnecessary, Mr Glossop. The man has
+undoubtedly--ah--made good his escape. I think we had all better
+return to the house.' He turned to the dim figure beside me. 'Ah,
+Mrs Sheridan, you must be tired after your journey and the--ah unusual
+excitement. Mrs Attwell will show you where you--in fact, your room.'
+
+In the general movement White must have raised the lamp or stepped
+forward, for the rays shifted. The figure beside me was no longer
+dim, but stood out sharp and clear in the yellow light.
+
+I was aware of two large eyes looking into mine as, in the grey
+London morning two weeks before, they had looked from a faded
+photograph.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 5
+
+
+Of all the emotions which kept me awake that night, a vague
+discomfort and a feeling of resentment against Fate more than
+against any individual, were the two that remained with me next
+morning. Astonishment does not last. The fact of Audrey and myself
+being under the same roof after all these years had ceased to
+amaze me. It was a minor point, and my mind shelved it in order to
+deal with the one thing that really mattered, the fact that she
+had come back into my life just when I had definitely, as I
+thought, put her out of it.
+
+My resentment deepened. Fate had played me a wanton trick. Cynthia
+trusted me. If I were weak, I should not be the only one to
+suffer. And something told me that I should be weak. How could I
+hope to be strong, tortured by the thousand memories which the
+sight of her would bring back to me?
+
+But I would fight, I told myself. I would not yield easily. I
+promised that to my self-respect, and was rewarded with a certain
+glow of excitement. I felt defiant. I wanted to test myself at
+once.
+
+My opportunity came after breakfast. She was standing on the
+gravel in front of the house, almost, in fact, on the spot where
+we had met the night before. She looked up as she heard my step,
+and I saw that her chin had that determined tilt which, in the
+days of our engagement, I had noticed often without attaching any
+particular significance to it. Heavens, what a ghastly lump of
+complacency I must have been in those days! A child, I thought, if
+he were not wrapped up in the contemplation of his own magnificence,
+could read its meaning.
+
+It meant war, and I was glad of it. I wanted war.
+
+'Good morning,' I said.
+
+'Good morning.'
+
+There was a pause. I took the opportunity to collect my thoughts.
+
+I looked at her curiously. Five years had left their mark on her,
+but entirely for the good. She had an air of quiet strength which
+I had never noticed in her before. It may have been there in the
+old days, but I did not think so. It was, I felt certain, a later
+development. She gave the impression of having been through much
+and of being sure of herself.
+
+In appearance she had changed amazingly little. She looked as
+small and slight and trim as ever she had done. She was a little
+paler, I thought, and the Irish eyes were older and a shade
+harder; but that was all.
+
+I awoke with a start to the fact that I was staring at her. A
+slight flush had crept into her pale cheeks.
+
+'Don't!' she said suddenly, with a little gesture of irritation.
+
+The word and the gesture killed, as if they had been a blow, a
+kind of sentimental tenderness which had been stealing over me.
+
+'What are you doing here?' I asked.
+
+She was silent.
+
+'Please don't think I want to pry into your affairs,' I said
+viciously. 'I was only interested in the coincidence that we
+should meet here like this.'
+
+She turned to me impulsively. Her face had lost its hard look.
+
+'Oh, Peter,' she said, 'I'm sorry. I _am_ sorry.'
+
+It was my chance, and I snatched at it with a lack of chivalry
+which I regretted almost immediately. But I was feeling bitter,
+and bitterness makes a man do cheap things.
+
+'Sorry?' I said, politely puzzled. 'Why?'
+
+She looked taken aback, as I hoped she would.
+
+'For--for what happened.'
+
+'My dear Audrey! Anybody would have made the same mistake. I don't
+wonder you took me for a burglar.'
+
+'I didn't mean that. I meant--five years ago.'
+
+I laughed. I was not feeling like laughter at the moment, but I
+did my best, and had the satisfaction of seeing that it jarred
+upon her.
+
+'Surely you're not worrying yourself about that?' I said. I
+laughed again. Very jovial and debonair I was that winter morning.
+
+The brief moment in which we might have softened towards each
+other was over. There was a glitter in her blue eyes which told me
+that it was once more war between us.
+
+'I thought you would get over it,' she said.
+
+'Well,' I said, 'I was only twenty-five. One's heart doesn't break
+at twenty-five.'
+
+'I don't think yours would ever be likely to break, Peter.'
+
+'Is that a compliment, or otherwise?'
+
+'You would probably think it a compliment. I meant that you were
+not human enough to be heart-broken.'
+
+'So that's your idea of a compliment!'
+
+'I said I thought it was probably yours.'
+
+'I must have been a curious sort of man five years ago, if I gave
+you that impression.'
+
+'You were.'
+
+She spoke in a meditative voice, as if, across the years, she were
+idly inspecting some strange species of insect. The attitude
+annoyed me. I could look, myself, with a detached eye at the man I
+had once been, but I still retained a sort of affection for him,
+and I felt piqued.
+
+'I suppose you looked on me as a kind of ogre in those days?' I
+said.
+
+'I suppose I did.'
+
+There was a pause.
+
+'I didn't mean to hurt your feelings,' she said. And that was the
+most galling part of it. Mine was an attitude of studied
+offensiveness. I did want to hurt her feelings. But hers, it
+seemed to me, was no pose. She really had had--and, I suppose,
+still retained--a genuine horror of me. The struggle was unequal.
+
+'You were very kind,' she went on, 'sometimes--when you happened
+to think of it.'
+
+Considered as the best she could find to say of me, it was not an
+eulogy.
+
+'Well,' I said, 'we needn't discuss what I was or did five years
+ago. Whatever I was or did, you escaped. Let's think of the
+present. What are we going to do about this?'
+
+'You think the situation's embarrassing?'
+
+'I do.'
+
+'One of us ought to go, I suppose,' she said doubtfully.
+
+'Exactly.'
+
+'Well, I can't go.'
+
+'Nor can I.'
+
+'I have business here.'
+
+'Obviously, so have I.'
+
+'It's absolutely necessary that I should be here.'
+
+'And that I should.'
+
+She considered me for a moment.
+
+'Mrs Attwell told me that you were one of the assistant-masters
+at the school.'
+
+'I am acting as assistant-master. I am supposed to be learning the
+business.'
+
+She hesitated.
+
+'Why?' she said.
+
+'Why not?'
+
+'But--but--you used to be very well off.'
+
+'I'm better off now. I'm working.'
+
+She was silent for a moment.
+
+'Of course it's impossible for you to leave. You couldn't, could
+you?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'I can't either.'
+
+'Then I suppose we must face the embarrassment.'
+
+'But why must it be embarrassing? You said yourself you had--got
+over it.'
+
+'Absolutely. I am engaged to be married.'
+
+She gave a little start. She drew a pattern on the gravel with her
+foot before she spoke.
+
+'I congratulate you,' she said at last.
+
+'Thank you.'
+
+'I hope you will be very happy.'
+
+'I'm sure I shall.'
+
+She relapsed into silence. It occurred to me that, having posted
+her thoroughly in my affairs, I was entitled to ask about hers.
+
+'How in the world did you come to be here?' I said.
+
+'It's rather a long story. After my husband died--'
+
+'Oh!' I exclaimed, startled.
+
+'Yes; he died three years ago.'
+
+She spoke in a level voice, with a ring of hardness in it, for
+which I was to learn the true reason later. At the time it seemed
+to me due to resentment at having to speak of the man she had
+loved to me, whom she disliked, and my bitterness increased.
+
+'I have been looking after myself for a long time.'
+
+'In England?'
+
+'In America. We went to New York directly we--directly I had
+written to you. I have been in America ever since. I only returned
+to England a few weeks ago.'
+
+'But what brought you to Sanstead?'
+
+'Some years ago I got to know Mr Ford, the father of the little
+boy who is at the school. He recommended me to Mr Abney, who
+wanted somebody to help with the school.'
+
+'And you are dependent on your work? I mean--forgive me if I am
+personal--Mr Sheridan did not--'
+
+'He left no money at all.'
+
+'Who was he?' I burst out. I felt that the subject of the dead man
+was one which it was painful for her to talk about, at any rate to
+me; but the Sheridan mystery had vexed me for five years, and I
+thirsted to know something of this man who had dynamited my life
+without ever appearing in it.
+
+'He was an artist, a friend of my father.'
+
+I wanted to hear more. I wanted to know what he looked like, how
+he spoke, how he compared with me in a thousand ways; but it was
+plain that she would not willingly be communicative about him;
+and, with a feeling of resentment, I gave her her way and
+suppressed my curiosity.
+
+'So your work here is all you have?' I said.
+
+'Absolutely all. And, if it's the same with you, well, here we
+are!'
+
+'Here we are!' I echoed. 'Exactly.'
+
+'We must try and make it as easy for each other as we can,' she
+said.
+
+'Of course.'
+
+She looked at me in that curious, wide-eyed way of hers.
+
+'You have got thinner, Peter,' she said.
+
+'Have I?' I said. 'Suffering, I suppose, or exercise.'
+
+Her eyes left my face. I saw her bite her lip.
+
+'You hate me,' she said abruptly. 'You've been hating me all these
+years. Well, I don't wonder.'
+
+She turned and began to walk slowly away, and as she did so a
+sense of the littleness of the part I was playing came over me.
+Ever since our talk had begun I had been trying to hurt her,
+trying to take a petty revenge on her--for what? All that had
+happened five years ago had been my fault. I could not let her go
+like this. I felt unutterably mean.
+
+'Audrey!' I called.
+
+She stopped. I went to her.
+
+'Audrey!' I said, 'you're wrong. If there's anybody I hate, it's
+myself. I just want to tell you I understand.'
+
+Her lips parted, but she did not speak.
+
+'I understand just what made you do it,' I went on. 'I can see now
+the sort of man I was in those days.'
+
+'You're saying that to--to help me,' she said in a low voice.
+
+'No. I have felt like that about it for years.'
+
+'I treated you shamefully.'
+
+'Nothing of the kind. There's a certain sort of man who badly
+needs a--jolt, and he has to get it sooner or later. It happened
+that you gave me mine, but that wasn't your fault. I was bound to
+get it--somehow.' I laughed. 'Fate was waiting for me round the
+corner. Fate wanted something to hit me with. You happened to be
+the nearest thing handy.'
+
+'I'm sorry, Peter.'
+
+'Nonsense. You knocked some sense into me. That's all you did.
+Every man needs education. Most men get theirs in small doses, so
+that they hardly know they are getting it at all. My money kept me
+from getting mine that way. By the time I met you there was a
+great heap of back education due to me, and I got it in a lump.
+That's all.'
+
+'You're generous.'
+
+'Nothing of the kind. It's only that I see things clearer than I
+did. I was a pig in those days.'
+
+'You weren't!'
+
+'I was. Well, we won't quarrel about it.'
+
+Inside the house the bell rang for breakfast. We turned. As I drew
+back to let her go in, she stopped.
+
+'Peter,' she said.
+
+She began to speak quickly.
+
+'Peter, let's be sensible. Why should we let this embarrass us,
+this being together here? Can't we just pretend that we're two old
+friends who parted through a misunderstanding, and have come
+together again, with all the misunderstanding cleared away--friends
+again? Shall we?'
+
+She held out her hand. She was smiling, but her eyes were grave.
+
+'Old friends, Peter?'
+
+I took her hand.
+
+'Old friends,' I said.
+
+And we went in to breakfast. On the table, beside my plate, was
+lying a letter from Cynthia.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 6
+
+
+I
+
+I give the letter in full. It was written from the s.y. _Mermaid_,
+lying in Monaco Harbour.
+
+MY DEAR PETER, Where is Ogden? We have been expecting him every
+day. Mrs Ford is worrying herself to death. She keeps asking me if
+I have any news, and it is very tiresome to have to keep telling
+her that I have not heard from you. Surely, with the opportunities
+you must get every day, you can manage to kidnap him. Do be quick.
+We are relying on you.--In haste,
+                                  CYNTHIA.
+
+I read this brief and business-like communication several times
+during the day; and after dinner that night, in order to meditate
+upon it in solitude, I left the house and wandered off in the
+direction of the village.
+
+I was midway between house and village when I became aware that I
+was being followed. The night was dark, and the wind moving in the
+tree-tops emphasized the loneliness of the country road. Both time
+and place were such as made it peculiarly unpleasant to hear
+stealthy footsteps on the road behind me.
+
+Uncertainty in such cases is the unnerving thing. I turned
+sharply, and began to walk back on tiptoe in the direction from
+which I had come.
+
+I had not been mistaken. A moment later a dark figure loomed up
+out of the darkness, and the exclamation which greeted me, as I
+made my presence known, showed that I had taken him by surprise.
+
+There was a momentary pause. I expected the man, whoever he might
+be, to run, but he held his ground. Indeed, he edged forward.
+
+'Get back!' I said, and allowed my stick to rasp suggestively on
+the road before raising it in readiness for any sudden development.
+It was as well that he should know it was there.
+
+The hint seemed to wound rather than frighten him.
+
+'Aw, cut out the rough stuff, bo,' he said reproachfully in a
+cautious, husky undertone. 'I ain't goin' to start anything.'
+
+I had an impression that I had heard the voice before, but I could
+not place it.
+
+'What are you following me for?' I demanded. 'Who are you?'
+
+'Say, I want a talk wit youse. I took a slant at youse under de
+lamp-post back dere, an' I seen it was you, so I tagged along.
+Say, I'm wise to your game, sport.'
+
+I had identified him by this time. Unless there were two men in
+the neighbourhood of Sanstead who hailed from the Bowery, this
+must be the man I had seen at the 'Feathers' who had incurred the
+disapproval of Miss Benjafield.
+
+'I haven't the faintest idea what you mean,' I said. 'What is my
+game?'
+
+His voice became reproachful again.
+
+'Ah chee!' he protested. 'Quit yer kiddin'! What was youse
+rubberin' around de house for last night if you wasn't trailin' de
+kid?'
+
+'Was it you who ran into me last night?' I asked.
+
+'Gee! I fought it was a tree. I came near takin' de count.'
+
+'I did take it. You seemed in a great hurry.'
+
+'Hell!' said the man simply, and expectorated.
+
+'Say,' he resumed, having delivered this criticism on that
+stirring episode, dat's a great kid, dat Nugget. I fought it was a
+Black Hand soup explosion when he cut loose. But, say, let's don't
+waste time. We gotta get together about dat kid.'
+
+'Certainly, if you wish it. What do you happen to mean?'
+
+'Aw, quit yer kiddin'!' He expectorated again. He seemed to be a
+man who could express the whole gamut of emotions by this simple
+means. 'I know you!'
+
+'Then you have the advantage of me, though I believe I remember
+seeing you before. Weren't you at the "Feathers" one Wednesday
+evening, singing something about a dog?'
+
+'Sure. Dat was me.'
+
+'What do you mean by saying that you know me?'
+
+'Aw, quit yer kiddin', Sam!'
+
+There was, it seemed to me, a reluctantly admiring note in his
+voice.
+
+'Tell me, who do you think I am?' I asked patiently.
+
+'Ahr ghee! You can't string me, sport. Smooth Sam Fisher, is who
+you are, bo. I know you.'
+
+I was too surprised to speak. Verily, some have greatness thrust
+upon them.
+
+'I hain't never seen youse, Sam,' he continued, 'but I know it's
+you. And I'll tell youse how I doped it out. To begin with, there
+ain't but you and your bunch and me and my bunch dat knows de
+Little Nugget's on dis side at all. Dey sneaked him out of New
+York mighty slick. And I heard that you had come here after him.
+So when I runs into a guy dat's trailin' de kid down here, well,
+who's it going to be if it ain't youse? And when dat guy talks
+like a dude, like they all say you do, well, who's it going to be
+if it ain't youse? So quit yer kiddin', Sam, and let's get down to
+business.'
+
+'Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr Buck MacGinnis?' I said. I
+felt convinced that this could be no other than that celebrity.
+
+'Dat's right. Dere's no need to keep up anyt'ing wit me, Sam.
+We're bote on de same trail, so let's get down to it.'
+
+'One moment,' I said. 'Would it surprise you to hear that my name
+is Burns, and that I am a master at the school?'
+
+He expectorated admirably.
+
+'Hell, no!' he said. 'Gee, it's just what you would be, Sam. I
+always heard youse had been one of dese rah-rah boys oncest. Say,
+it's mighty smart of youse to be a perfessor. You're right in on
+de ground floor.'
+
+His voice became appealing.
+
+'Say, Sam, don't be a hawg. Let's go fifty-fifty in dis deal. My
+bunch and me has come a hell of a number of miles on dis
+proposition, and dere ain't no need for us to fall scrappin' over
+it. Dere's plenty for all of us. Old man Ford'll cough up enough
+for every one, and dere won't be any fuss. Let's sit in togedder
+on dis nuggett'ing. It ain't like as if it was an ornery two-by-four
+deal. I wouldn't ask youse if it wasn't big enough fir de whole
+bunch of us.'
+
+As I said nothing, he proceeded.
+
+'It ain't square, Sam, to take advantage of your having education.
+If it was a square fight, and us bote wit de same chance, I
+wouldn't say; but you bein' a dude perfessor and gettin' right
+into de place like dat ain't right. Say, don't be a hawg, Sam.
+Don't swipe it all. Fifty-fifty! Does dat go?'
+
+'I don't know,' I said. 'You had better ask the real Sam. Good
+night.'
+
+I walked past him and made for the school gates at my best pace.
+He trotted after me, pleading.
+
+'Sam, give us a quarter, then.'
+
+I walked on.
+
+'Sam, don't be a hawg!'
+
+He broke into a run.
+
+'Sam!' His voice lost its pleading tone and rasped menacingly.
+
+'Gee, if I had me canister, youse wouldn't be so flip! Listen
+here, you big cheese! You t'ink youse is de only t'ing in sight,
+huh? Well, we ain't done yet. You'll see yet. We'll fix you! Youse
+had best watch out.'
+
+I stopped and turned on him. 'Look here, you fool,' I cried. 'I
+tell you I am not Sam Fisher. Can't you understand that you have
+got hold of the wrong man? My name is Burns--_Burns_.'
+
+He expectorated--scornfully this time. He was a man slow by nature
+to receive ideas, but slower to rid himself of one that had
+contrived to force its way into what he probably called his brain.
+He had decided on the evidence that I was Smooth Sam Fisher, and
+no denials on my part were going to shake his belief. He looked on
+them merely as so many unsportsmanlike quibbles prompted by greed.
+
+'Tell it to Sweeney!' was the form in which he crystallized his
+scepticism.
+
+'May be you'll say youse ain't trailin' de Nugget, huh?'
+
+It was a home-thrust. If truth-telling has become a habit, one
+gets slowly off the mark when the moment arrives for the prudent
+lie. Quite against my will, I hesitated. Observant Mr MacGinnis
+perceived my hesitation and expectorated triumphantly.
+
+'Ah ghee!' he remarked. And then with a sudden return to ferocity,
+'All right, you Sam, you wait! We'll fix you, and fix you good!
+See? Dat goes. You t'ink youse kin put it across us, huh? All
+right, you'll get yours. You wait!'
+
+And with these words he slid off into the night. From somewhere in
+the murky middle distance came a scornful 'Hawg!' and he was gone,
+leaving me with a settled conviction that, while I had frequently
+had occasion, since my expedition to Sanstead began, to describe
+affairs as complex, their complexity had now reached its height.
+With a watchful Pinkerton's man within, and a vengeful gang of
+rivals without, Sanstead House seemed likely to become an
+unrestful place for a young kidnapper with no previous experience.
+
+The need for swift action had become imperative.
+
+
+II
+
+White, the butler, looking singularly unlike a detective--which, I
+suppose, is how a detective wants to look--was taking the air on
+the football field when I left the house next morning for a
+before-breakfast stroll. The sight of him filled me with a desire
+for first-hand information on the subject of the man Mr MacGinnis
+supposed me to be and also of Mr MacGinnis himself. I wanted to be
+assured that my friend Buck, despite appearances, was a placid
+person whose bark was worse than his bite.
+
+White's manner, at our first conversational exchanges, was
+entirely that of the butler. From what I came to know of him
+later, I think he took an artistic pride in throwing himself into
+whatever role he had to assume.
+
+At the mention of Smooth Sam Fisher, however, his manner peeled
+off him like a skin, and he began to talk as himself, a racy and
+vigorous self vastly different from the episcopal person he
+thought it necessary to be when on duty.
+
+'White,' I said, 'do you know anything of Smooth Sam Fisher?'
+
+He stared at me. I suppose the question, led up to by no previous
+remark, was unusual.
+
+'I met a gentleman of the name of Buck MacGinnis--he was our
+visitor that night, by the way--and he was full of Sam. Do you
+know him?'
+
+'Buck?'
+
+'Either of them.'
+
+'Well, I've never seen Buck, but I know all about him. There's
+pepper to Buck.'
+
+'So I should imagine. And Sam?'
+
+'You may take it from me that there's more pepper to Sam's little
+finger than there is to Buck's whole body. Sam could make Buck
+look like the last run of shad, if it came to a showdown. Buck's
+just a common roughneck. Sam's an educated man. He's got brains.'
+
+'So I gathered. Well, I'm glad to hear you speak so well of him,
+because that's who I'm supposed to be.'
+
+'How's that?'
+
+'Buck MacGinnis insists that I am Smooth Sam Fisher. Nothing I can
+say will shift him.'
+
+White stared. He had very bright humorous brown eyes. Then he
+began to laugh.
+
+'Well, what do you know about that?' he exclaimed. 'Wouldn't that
+jar you!'
+
+'It would. I may say it did. He called me a hog for wanting to
+keep the Little Nugget to myself, and left threatening to "fix
+me". What would you say the verb "to fix" signified in Mr
+MacGinnis's vocabulary?'
+
+White was still chuckling quietly to himself.
+
+'He's a wonder!' he observed. 'Can you beat it? Taking you for
+Smooth Sam!'
+
+'He said he had never seen Smooth Sam. Have you?'
+
+'Lord, yes.'
+
+'Does he look like me?'
+
+'Not a bit.'
+
+'Do you think he's over here in England?'
+
+'Sam? I know he is.'
+
+'Then Buck MacGinnis was right?'
+
+'Dead right, as far as Sam being on the trail goes. Sam's after
+the Nugget to get him this time. He's tried often enough before,
+but we've been too smart for him. This time he allows he's going
+to bring it off.'
+
+'Then why haven't we seen anything of him? Buck MacGinnis seems to
+be monopolizing the kidnapping industry in these parts.'
+
+'Oh, Sam'll show up when he feels good and ready. You can take it
+from me that Sam knows what he is doing. Sam's a special pet of
+mine. I don't give a flip for Buck MacGinnis.'
+
+'I wish I had your cheery disposition! To me Buck MacGinnis seems
+a pretty important citizen. I wonder what he meant by "fix"?'
+
+White, however, declined to leave the subject of Buck's more
+gifted rival.
+
+'Sam's a college man, you know. That gives him a pull. He has
+brains, and can use them.'
+
+'That was one of the points on which Buck MacGinnis reproached me.
+He said it was not fair to use my superior education.'
+
+He laughed.
+
+'Buck's got no sense. That's why you find him carrying on like a
+porch-climber. It's his only notion of how to behave when he wants
+to do a job. And that's why there's only one man to keep your eye
+on in this thing of the Little Nugget, and that's Sam. I wish you
+could get to know Sam. You'd like him.'
+
+'You seem to look on him as a personal friend. I certainly don't
+like Buck.'
+
+'Oh, Buck!' said White scornfully.
+
+We turned towards the house as the sound of the bell came to us
+across the field.
+
+'Then you think we may count on Sam's arrival, sooner or later, as
+a certainty?' I said.
+
+'Surest thing you know.'
+
+'You will have a busy time.'
+
+'All in the day's work.'
+
+'I suppose I ought to look at it in that way. But I do wish I knew
+exactly what Buck meant by "fix".'
+
+White at last condescended to give his mind to the trivial point.
+
+'I guess he'll try to put one over on you with a sand-bag,' he
+said carelessly. He seemed to face the prospect with calm.
+
+'A sand-bag, eh?' I said. 'It sounds exciting.'
+
+'And feels it. I know. I've had some.'
+
+I parted from him at the door. As a comforter he had failed to
+qualify. He had not eased my mind to the slightest extent.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 7
+
+
+Looking at it now I can see that the days which followed Audrey's
+arrival at Sanstead marked the true beginning of our acquaintanceship.
+Before, during our engagement, we had been strangers, artificially
+tied together, and she had struggled against the chain. But now,
+for the first time, we were beginning to know each other, and were
+discovering that, after all, we had much in common.
+
+It did not alarm me, this growing feeling of comradeship. Keenly
+on the alert as I was for the least sign that would show that I
+was in danger of weakening in my loyalty to Cynthia, I did not
+detect one in my friendliness for Audrey. On the contrary, I was
+hugely relieved, for it seemed to me that the danger was past. I
+had not imagined it possible that I could ever experience towards
+her such a tranquil emotion as this easy friendliness. For the
+last five years my imagination had been playing round her memory,
+until I suppose I had built up in my mind some almost superhuman
+image, some goddess. What I was passing through now, of course,
+though I was unaware of it, was the natural reaction from that
+state of mind. Instead of the goddess, I had found a companionable
+human being, and I imagined that I had effected the change myself,
+and by sheer force of will brought Audrey into a reasonable
+relation to the scheme of things.
+
+I suppose a not too intelligent moth has much the same views with
+regard to the lamp. His last thought, as he enters the flame, is
+probably one of self-congratulation that he has arranged his
+dealings with it on such a satisfactory commonsense basis.
+
+And then, when I was feeling particularly safe and complacent,
+disaster came.
+
+The day was Wednesday, and my 'afternoon off', but the rain was
+driving against the windows, and the attractions of billiards with
+the marker at the 'Feathers' had not proved sufficient to make me
+face the two-mile walk in the storm. I had settled myself in the
+study. There was a noble fire burning in the grate, and the
+darkness lit by the glow of the coals, the dripping of the rain,
+the good behaviour of my pipe, and the reflection that, as I sat
+there, Glossop was engaged downstairs in wrestling with my class,
+combined to steep me in a meditative peace. Audrey was playing the
+piano in the drawing-room. The sound came to me faintly through
+the closed doors. I recognized what she was playing. I wondered if
+the melody had the same associations for her that it had for me.
+
+The music stopped. I heard the drawing-room door open. She came
+into the study.
+
+'I didn't know there was anyone here,' she said. 'I'm frozen. The
+drawing-room fire's out.'
+
+'Come and sit down,' I said. 'You don't mind the smoke?'
+
+I drew a chair up to the fire for her, feeling, as I did so, a
+certain pride. Here I was, alone with her in the firelight, and my
+pulse was regular and my brain cool. I had a momentary vision of
+myself as the Strong Man, the strong, quiet man with the iron grip
+on his emotions. I was pleased with myself.
+
+She sat for some minutes, gazing into the fire. Little spurts of
+flame whistled comfortably in the heart of the black-red coals.
+Outside the storm shrieked faintly, and flurries of rain dashed
+themselves against the window.
+
+'It's very nice in here,' she said at last.
+
+'Peaceful.'
+
+I filled my pipe and re-lit it. Her eyes, seen for an instant in
+the light of the match, looked dreamy.
+
+'I've been sitting here listening to you,' I said. 'I liked that
+last thing you played.'
+
+'You always did.'
+
+'You remember that? Do you remember one evening--no, you
+wouldn't.'
+
+'Which evening?'
+
+'Oh, you wouldn't remember. It's only one particular evening when
+you played that thing. It sticks in my mind. It was at your
+father's studio.'
+
+She looked up quickly.
+
+'We went out afterwards and sat in the park.'
+
+I sat up thrilled.
+
+'A man came by with a dog,' I said.
+
+'Two dogs.'
+
+'One surely!'
+
+'Two. A bull-dog and a fox-terrier.'
+
+'I remember the bull-dog, but--by Jove, you're right. A fox-terrier
+with a black patch over his left eye.'
+
+'Right eye.'
+
+'Right eye. They came up to us, and you--'
+
+'Gave them chocolates.'
+
+I sank back slowly in my chair.
+
+'You've got a wonderful memory,' I said.
+
+She bent over the fire without speaking. The rain rattled on the
+window.
+
+'So you still like my playing, Peter?'
+
+'I like it better than ever; there's something in it now that I
+don't believe there used to be. I can't describe it--something--'
+
+'I think it's knowledge, Peter,' she said quietly. 'Experience.
+I'm five years older than I was when I used to play to you before,
+and I've seen a good deal in those five years. It may not be
+altogether pleasant seeing life, but--well, it makes you play the
+piano better. Experience goes in at the heart and comes out at the
+finger-tips.'
+
+It seemed to me that she spoke a little bitterly.
+
+'Have you had a bad time, Audrey, these last years?' I said.
+
+'Pretty bad.'
+
+'I'm sorry.'
+
+'I'm not--altogether. I've learned a lot.'
+
+She was silent again, her eyes fixed on the fire.
+
+'What are you thinking about?' I said.
+
+'Oh, a great many things.'
+
+'Pleasant?'
+
+'Mixed. The last thing I thought about was pleasant. That was,
+that I am very lucky to be doing the work I am doing now. Compared
+with some of the things I have done--'
+
+She shivered.
+
+'I wish you would tell me about those years, Audrey,' I said.
+'What were some of the things you did?'
+
+She leaned back in her chair and shaded her face from the fire
+with a newspaper. Her eyes were in the shadow.
+
+'Well, let me see. I was a nurse for some time at the Lafayette
+Hospital in New York.'
+
+'That's hard work?'
+
+'Horribly hard. I had to give it up after a while. But--it teaches
+you.... You learn.... You learn--all sorts of things. Realities.
+How much of your own trouble is imagination. You get real trouble
+in a hospital. You get it thrown at you.'
+
+I said nothing. I was feeling--I don't know why--a little
+uncomfortable, a little at a disadvantage, as one feels in the
+presence of some one bigger than oneself.
+
+'Then I was a waitress.'
+
+'A waitress?'
+
+'I tell you I did everything. I was a waitress, and a very bad
+one. I broke plates. I muddled orders. Finally I was very rude to
+a customer and I went on to try something else. I forget what came
+next. I think it was the stage. I travelled for a year with a
+touring company. That was hard work, too, but I liked it. After
+that came dressmaking, which was harder and which I hated. And
+then I had my first stroke of real luck.'
+
+'What was that?'
+
+'I met Mr Ford.'
+
+'How did that happen?'
+
+'You wouldn't remember a Miss Vanderley, an American girl who was
+over in London five or six years ago? My father taught her
+painting. She was very rich, but she was wild at that time to be
+Bohemian. I think that's why she chose Father as a teacher. Well,
+she was always at the studio, and we became great friends, and one
+day, after all these things I have been telling you of, I thought
+I would write to her, and see if she could not find me something
+to do. She was a _dear_.' Her voice trembled, and she lowered
+the newspaper till her whole face was hidden. 'She wanted me to
+come to their home and live on her for ever, but I couldn't have
+that. I told her I must work. So she sent me to Mr Ford, whom the
+Vanderleys knew very well, and I became Ogden's governess.'
+
+'Great Scott!' I cried. 'What!'
+
+She laughed rather shakily.
+
+'I don't think I was a very good governess. I knew next to
+nothing. I ought to have been having a governess myself. But I
+managed somehow.'
+
+'But Ogden?' I said. 'That little fiend, didn't he worry the life
+out of you?'
+
+'Oh, I had luck there again. He happened to take a mild liking to
+me, and he was as good as gold--for him; that's to say, if I
+didn't interfere with him too much, and I didn't. I was horribly
+weak; he let me alone. It was the happiest time I had had for
+ages.'
+
+'And when he came here, you came too, as a sort of ex-governess,
+to continue exerting your moral influence over him?'
+
+She laughed.
+
+'More or less that.'
+
+We sat in silence for a while, and then she put into words the
+thought which was in both our minds.
+
+'How odd it seems, you and I sitting together chatting like this,
+Peter, after all--all these years.'
+
+'Like a dream!'
+
+'Just like a dream ... I'm so glad.... You don't know how I've
+hated myself sometimes for--for--'
+
+'Audrey! You mustn't talk like that. Don't let's think of it.
+Besides, it was my fault.'
+
+She shook her head.
+
+'Well, put it that we didn't understand one another.'
+
+She nodded slowly.
+
+'No, we didn't understand one another.'
+
+'But we do now,' I said. 'We're friends, Audrey.'
+
+She did not answer. For a long time we sat in silence. And then the
+newspaper must have moved--a gleam from the fire fell upon her face,
+lighting up her eyes; and at the sight something in me began to
+throb, like a drum warning a city against danger. The next moment
+the shadow had covered them again.
+
+I sat there, tense, gripping the arms of my chair. I was tingling.
+Something was happening to me. I had a curious sensation of being
+on the threshold of something wonderful and perilous.
+
+From downstairs there came the sound of boys' voices. Work was
+over, and with it this talk by the firelight. In a few minutes
+somebody, Glossop, or Mr Abney, would be breaking in on our
+retreat.
+
+We both rose, and then--it happened. She must have tripped in the
+darkness. She stumbled forward, her hand caught at my coat, and
+she was in my arms.
+
+It was a thing of an instant. She recovered herself, moved to the
+door, and was gone.
+
+But I stood where I was, motionless, aghast at the revelation
+which had come to me in that brief moment. It was the physical
+contact, the feel of her, warm and alive, that had shattered for
+ever that flimsy structure of friendship which I had fancied so
+strong. I had said to Love, 'Thus far, and no farther', and Love
+had swept over me, the more powerful for being checked. The time
+of self-deception was over. I knew myself.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 8
+
+
+I
+
+That Buck MacGinnis was not the man to let the grass grow under
+his feet in a situation like the present one, I would have
+gathered from White's remarks if I had not already done so from
+personal observation. The world is divided into dreamers and men
+of action. From what little I had seen of him I placed Buck
+MacGinnis in the latter class. Every day I expected him to act,
+and was agreeably surprised as each twenty-four hours passed and
+left me still unfixed. But I knew the hour would come, and it did.
+
+I looked for frontal attack from Buck, not subtlety; but, when the
+attack came, it was so excessively frontal that my chief emotion
+was a sort of paralysed amazement. It seemed incredible that such
+peculiarly Wild Western events could happen in peaceful England,
+even in so isolated a spot as Sanstead House.
+
+It had been one of those interminable days which occur only at
+schools. A school, more than any other institution, is dependent
+on the weather. Every small boy rises from his bed of a morning
+charged with a definite quantity of devilry; and this, if he is to
+sleep the sound sleep of health, he has got to work off somehow
+before bedtime. That is why the summer term is the one a master
+longs for, when the intervals between classes can be spent in the
+open. There is no pleasanter sight for an assistant-master at a
+private school than that of a number of boys expending their venom
+harmlessly in the sunshine.
+
+On this particular day, snow had begun to fall early in the
+morning, and, while his pupils would have been only too delighted
+to go out and roll in it by the hour, they were prevented from
+doing so by Mr Abney's strict orders. No schoolmaster enjoys
+seeing his pupils running risks of catching cold, and just then Mr
+Abney was especially definite on the subject. The Saturnalia which
+had followed Mr MacGinnis' nocturnal visit to the school had had
+the effect of giving violent colds to three lords, a baronet, and
+the younger son of an honourable. And, in addition to that, Mr
+Abney himself, his penetrating tenor changed to a guttural croak,
+was in his bed looking on the world with watering eyes. His views,
+therefore, on playing in the snow as an occupation for boys were
+naturally prejudiced.
+
+The result was that Glossop and I had to try and keep order among
+a mob of small boys, none of whom had had any chance of working
+off his superfluous energy. How Glossop fared I can only imagine.
+Judging by the fact that I, who usually kept fair order without
+excessive effort, was almost overwhelmed, I should fancy he fared
+badly. His classroom was on the opposite side of the hall from
+mine, and at frequent intervals his voice would penetrate my door,
+raised to a frenzied fortissimo.
+
+Little by little, however, we had won through the day, and the
+boys had subsided into comparative quiet over their evening
+preparation, when from outside the front door there sounded the
+purring of the engine of a large automobile. The bell rang.
+
+I did not, I remember, pay much attention to this at the moment. I
+supposed that somebody from one of the big houses in the
+neighbourhood had called, or, taking the lateness of the hour into
+consideration, that a motoring party had come, as they did
+sometimes--Sanstead House standing some miles from anywhere in the
+middle of an intricate system of by-roads--to inquire the way to
+Portsmouth or London. If my class had allowed me, I would have
+ignored the sound. But for them it supplied just that break in the
+monotony of things which they had needed. They welcomed it
+vociferously.
+
+A voice: 'Sir, please, sir, there's a motor outside.'
+
+Myself (austerely): I know there's a motor outside. Get on with
+your work.'
+
+Various voices: 'Sir, have you ever ridden in a motor?'
+
+'Sir, my father let me help drive our motor last Easter, sir.'
+
+'Sir, who do you think it is?'
+
+An isolated genius (imitating the engine): 'Pr-prr! Pr-prr! Pr-prr!'
+
+I was on the point of distributing bad marks (the schoolmaster's
+stand-by) broadcast, when a curious sound checked me. It followed
+directly upon the opening of the front door. I heard White's
+footsteps crossing the hall, then the click of the latch, and
+then--a sound that I could not define. The closed door of the
+classroom deadened it, but for all that it was audible. It
+resembled the thud of a falling body, but I knew it could not be
+that, for in peaceful England butlers opening front doors did not
+fall with thuds.
+
+My class, eager listeners, found fresh material in the sound for
+friendly conversation.
+
+'Sir, what was that, sir?'
+
+'Did you hear that, sir?'
+
+'What do you think's happened, sir?'
+
+'Be quiet,' I shouted. 'Will you be--'
+
+There was a quick footstep outside, the door flew open, and on the
+threshold stood a short, sturdy man in a motoring coat and cap.
+The upper part of his face was covered by a strip of white linen,
+with holes for the eyes, and there was a Browning pistol in his
+hand.
+
+It is my belief that, if assistant-masters were allowed to wear
+white masks and carry automatic pistols, keeping order in a school
+would become child's play. A silence such as no threat of bad
+marks had ever been able to produce fell instantaneously upon the
+classroom. Out of the corner of my eye, as I turned to face our
+visitor, I could see small boys goggling rapturously at this
+miraculous realization of all the dreams induced by juvenile
+adventure fiction. As far as I could ascertain, on subsequent
+inquiry, not one of them felt a tremor of fear. It was all too
+tremendously exciting for that. For their exclusive benefit an
+illustration from a weekly paper for boys had come to life, and
+they had no time to waste in being frightened.
+
+As for me, I was dazed. Motor bandits may terrorize France, and
+desperadoes hold up trains in America, but this was peaceful
+England. The fact that Buck MacGinnis was at large in the
+neighbourhood did not make the thing any the less incredible. I
+had looked on my affair with Buck as a thing of the open air and
+the darkness. I had figured him lying in wait in lonely roads,
+possibly, even, lurking about the grounds; but in my most
+apprehensive moments I had not imagined him calling at the front
+door and holding me up with a revolver in my own classroom.
+
+And yet it was the simple, even the obvious, thing for him to do.
+Given an automobile, success was certain. Sanstead House stood
+absolutely alone. There was not even a cottage within half a mile.
+A train broken down in the middle of the Bad Lands was not more
+cut off.
+
+Consider, too, the peculiar helplessness of a school in such a
+case. A school lives on the confidence of parents, a nebulous
+foundation which the slightest breath can destroy. Everything
+connected with it must be done with exaggerated discretion. I do
+not suppose Mr MacGinnis had thought the thing out in all its
+bearings, but he could not have made a sounder move if he had been
+a Napoleon. Where the owner of an ordinary country-house raided by
+masked men can raise the countryside in pursuit, a schoolmaster
+must do precisely the opposite. From his point of view, the fewer
+people that know of the affair the better. Parents are a jumpy
+race. A man may be the ideal schoolmaster, yet will a connection
+with melodrama damn him in the eyes of parents. They do not
+inquire. They are too panic-stricken for that. Golden-haired
+Willie may be receiving the finest education conceivable, yet if
+men with Browning pistols are familiar objects at his shrine of
+learning they will remove him. Fortunately for schoolmasters it is
+seldom that such visitors call upon them. Indeed, I imagine Mr
+MacGinnis's effort to have been the first of its kind.
+
+I do not, as I say, suppose that Buck, whose forte was action
+rather than brain-work, had thought all this out. He had trusted
+to luck, and luck had stood by him. There would be no raising of
+the countryside in his case. On the contrary, I could see Mr Abney
+becoming one of the busiest persons on record in his endeavour to
+hush the thing up and prevent it getting into the papers. The man
+with the pistol spoke. He sighted me--I was standing with my back
+to the mantelpiece, parallel with the door--made a sharp turn, and
+raised his weapon.
+
+'Put 'em up, sport,' he said.
+
+It was not the voice of Buck MacGinnis. I put my hands up.
+
+'Say, which of dese is de Nugget?'
+
+He half turned his head to the class.
+
+'Which of youse kids is Ogden Ford?'
+
+The class was beyond speech. The silence continued.
+
+'Ogden Ford is not here,' I said.
+
+Our visitor had not that simple faith which is so much better than
+Norman blood. He did not believe me. Without moving his head he
+gave a long whistle. Steps sounded outside. Another, short, sturdy
+form, entered the room.
+
+'He ain't in de odder room,' observed the newcomer. 'I been
+rubberin'!'
+
+This was friend Buck beyond question. I could have recognized his
+voice anywhere!
+
+'Well dis guy,' said the man with the pistol, indicating me, 'says
+he ain't here. What's de answer?'
+
+'Why, it's Sam!' said Buck. 'Howdy, Sam? Pleased to see us, huh?
+We're in on de ground floor, too, dis time, all right, all right.'
+
+His words had a marked effect on his colleague.
+
+'Is dat Sam? Hell! Let me blow de head off'n him!' he said, with
+simple fervour; and, advancing a step nearer, he waved his
+disengaged fist truculently. In my role of Sam I had plainly made
+myself very unpopular. I have never heard so much emotion packed
+into a few words.
+
+Buck, to my relief, opposed the motion. I thought this decent of
+Buck.
+
+'Cheese it,' he said curtly.
+
+The other cheesed it. The operation took the form of lowering the
+fist. The pistol he kept in position.
+
+Mr MacGinnis resumed the conduct of affairs.
+
+'Now den, Sam,' he said, 'come across! Where's de Nugget?'
+
+'My name is not Sam,' I said. 'May I put my hands down?'
+
+'Yep, if you want the top of your damn head blown off.'
+
+Such was not my desire. I kept them up.
+
+'Now den, you Sam,' said Mr MacGinnis again, 'we ain't got time to
+burn. Out with it. Where's dat Nugget?'
+
+Some reply was obviously required. It was useless to keep
+protesting that I was not Sam.
+
+'At this time in the evening he is generally working with Mr
+Glossop.'
+
+'Who's Glossop? Dat dough-faced dub in de room over dere?'
+
+'Exactly. You have described him perfectly.'
+
+'Well, he ain't dere. I bin rubberin.' Aw, quit yer foolin', Sam,
+where is he?'
+
+'I couldn't tell you just where he is at the present moment,' I
+said precisely.
+
+'Ahr chee! Let me swot him one!' begged the man with the pistol; a
+most unlovable person. I could never have made a friend of him.
+
+'Cheese it, you!' said Mr MacGinnis.
+
+The other cheesed it once more, regretfully.
+
+'You got him hidden away somewheres, Sam,' said Mr MacGinnis. 'You
+can't fool me. I'm com' t'roo dis joint wit a fine-tooth comb till
+I find him.'
+
+'By all means,' I said. 'Don't let me stop you.'
+
+'You? You're coming wit me.'
+
+'If you wish it. I shall be delighted.'
+
+'An' cut out dat dam' sissy way of talking, you rummy,' bellowed
+Buck, with a sudden lapse into ferocity. 'Spiel like a regular
+guy! Standin' dere, pullin' dat dude stuff on me! Cut it out!'
+
+'Say, why _mayn't_ I hand him one?' demanded the pistol-bearer
+pathetically. 'What's your kick against pushin' his face in?'
+
+I thought the question in poor taste. Buck ignored it.
+
+'Gimme dat canister,' he said, taking the Browning pistol from
+him. 'Now den, Sam, are youse goin' to be good, and come across,
+or ain't you--which?'
+
+'I'd be delighted to do anything you wished, Mr MacGinnis,' I
+said, 'but--'
+
+'Aw, hire a hall!' said Buck disgustedly. 'Step lively, den, an'
+we'll go t'roo de joint. I t'ought youse 'ud have had more sense,
+Sam, dan to play dis fool game when you know you're beat. You--'
+
+Shooting pains in my shoulders caused me to interrupt him.
+
+'One moment,' I said. 'I'm going to put my hands down. I'm getting
+cramp.'
+
+'I'll blow a hole in you if you do!'
+
+'Just as you please. But I'm not armed.'
+
+'Lefty,' he said to the other man, 'feel around to see if he's
+carryin' anyt'ing.'
+
+Lefty advanced and began to tap me scientifically in the
+neighbourhood of my pockets. He grunted morosely the while. I
+suppose, at this close range, the temptation to 'hand me one' was
+almost more than he could bear.
+
+'He ain't got no gun,' he announced gloomily.
+
+'Den youse can put 'em down,' said Mr MacGinnis.
+
+'Thanks,' I said.
+
+'Lefty, youse stay here and look after dese kids. Get a move on,
+Sam.'
+
+We left the room, a little procession of two, myself leading, Buck
+in my immediate rear administering occasional cautionary prods
+with the faithful 'canister'.
+
+
+II
+
+The first thing that met my eyes as we entered the hall was the
+body of a man lying by the front door. The light of the lamp fell
+on his face and I saw that it was White. His hands and feet were
+tied. As I looked at him, he moved, as if straining against his
+bonds, and I was conscious of a feeling of relief. That sound that
+had reached me in the classroom, that thud of a falling body, had
+become, in the light of what had happened later, very sinister. It
+was good to know that he was still alive. I gathered--correctly,
+as I discovered subsequently--that in his case the sand-bag had
+been utilized. He had been struck down and stunned the instant he
+opened the door.
+
+There was a masked man leaning against the wall by Glossop's
+classroom. He was short and sturdy. The Buck MacGinnis gang seemed
+to have been turned out on a pattern. Externally, they might all
+have been twins. This man, to give him a semblance of individuality,
+had a ragged red moustache. He was smoking a cigar with the air of
+the warrior taking his rest.
+
+'Hello!' he said, as we appeared. He jerked a thumb towards the
+classroom. 'I've locked dem in. What's doin', Buck?' he asked,
+indicating me with a languid nod.
+
+'We're going t'roo de joint,' explained Mr MacGinnis. 'De kid
+ain't in dere. Hump yourself, Sam!'
+
+His colleague's languor disappeared with magic swiftness.
+
+'Sam! Is dat Sam? Here, let me beat de block off'n him!'
+
+Few points in this episode struck me as more remarkable than the
+similarity of taste which prevailed, as concerned myself, among
+the members of Mr MacGinnis's gang. Men, doubtless of varying
+opinions on other subjects, on this one point they were unanimous.
+They all wanted to assault me.
+
+Buck, however, had other uses for me. For the present, I was
+necessary as a guide, and my value as such would be impaired were
+the block to be beaten off me. Though feeling no friendlier
+towards me than did his assistants, he declined to allow sentiment
+to interfere with business. He concentrated his attention on the
+upward journey with all the earnestness of the young gentleman who
+carried the banner with the strange device in the poem.
+
+Briefly requesting his ally to cheese it--which he did--he urged
+me on with the nozzle of the pistol. The red-moustached man sank
+back against the wall again with an air of dejection, sucking his
+cigar now like one who has had disappointments in life, while we
+passed on up the stairs and began to draw the rooms on the first
+floor.
+
+These consisted of Mr Abney's study and two dormitories. The study
+was empty, and the only occupants of the dormitories were the
+three boys who had been stricken down with colds on the occasion
+of Mr MacGinnis's last visit. They squeaked with surprise at the
+sight of the assistant-master in such questionable company.
+
+Buck eyed them disappointedly. I waited with something of the
+feelings of a drummer taking a buyer round the sample room.
+
+'Get on,' said Buck.
+
+'Won't one of those do?'
+
+'Hump yourself, Sam.'
+
+'Call me Sammy,' I urged. 'We're old friends now.'
+
+'Don't get fresh,' he said austerely. And we moved on.
+
+The top floor was even more deserted than the first. There was no
+one in the dormitories. The only other room was Mr Abney's; and,
+as we came opposite it, a sneeze from within told of the
+sufferings of its occupant.
+
+The sound stirred Buck to his depths. He 'pointed' at the door
+like a smell-dog.
+
+'Who's in dere?' he demanded.
+
+'Only Mr Abney. Better not disturb him. He has a bad cold.'
+
+He placed a wrong construction on my solicitude for my employer.
+His manner became excited.
+
+'Open dat door, you,' he cried.
+
+'It'll give him a nasty shock.'
+
+'G'wan! Open it!'
+
+No one who is digging a Browning pistol into the small of my back
+will ever find me disobliging. I opened the door--knocking first,
+as a mild concession to the conventions--and the procession passed
+in.
+
+My stricken employer was lying on his back, staring at the
+ceiling, and our entrance did not at first cause him to change
+this position.
+
+'Yes?' he said thickly, and disappeared beneath a huge
+pocket-handkerchief. Muffled sounds, as of distant explosions of
+dynamite, together with earthquake shudderings of the bedclothes,
+told of another sneezing-fit.
+
+'I'm sorry to disturb you,' I began, when Buck, ever the man of
+action, with a scorn of palaver, strode past me, and, having
+prodded with the pistol that part of the bedclothes beneath which
+a rough calculation suggested that Mr Abney's lower ribs were
+concealed, uttered the one word, 'Sa-a-ay!'
+
+Mr Abney sat up like a Jack-in-the-box. One might almost say that
+he shot up. And then he saw Buck.
+
+I cannot even faintly imagine what were Mr Abney's emotions at
+that moment. He was a man who, from boyhood up, had led a quiet
+and regular life. Things like Buck had appeared to him hitherto,
+if they appeared at all, only in dreams after injudicious suppers.
+Even in the ordinary costume of the Bowery gentleman, without such
+adventitious extras as masks and pistols, Buck was no beauty. With
+that hideous strip of dingy white linen on his face, he was a
+walking nightmare.
+
+Mr Abney's eyebrows had risen and his jaw had fallen to their
+uttermost limits. His hair, disturbed by contact with the pillow,
+gave the impression of standing on end. His eyes seemed to bulge
+like a snail's. He stared at Buck, fascinated.
+
+'Say, you, quit rubberin'. Youse ain't in a dime museum. Where's
+dat Ford kid, huh?'
+
+I have set down all Mr MacGinnis's remarks as if they had been
+uttered in a bell-like voice with a clear and crisp enunciation;
+but, in doing so, I have flattered him. In reality, his mode of
+speech suggested that he had something large and unwieldy
+permanently stuck in his mouth; and it was not easy for a stranger
+to follow him. Mr Abney signally failed to do so. He continued to
+gape helplessly till the tension was broken by a sneeze.
+
+One cannot interrogate a sneezing man with any satisfaction to
+oneself. Buck stood by the bedside in moody silence, waiting for
+the paroxysm to spend itself.
+
+I, meanwhile, had remained where I stood, close to the door. And,
+as I waited for Mr Abney to finish sneezing, for the first time
+since Buck's colleague Lefty had entered the classroom the idea of
+action occurred to me. Until this moment, I suppose, the
+strangeness and unexpectedness of these happenings had numbed my
+brain. To precede Buck meekly upstairs and to wait with equal
+meekness while he interviewed Mr Abney had seemed the only course
+open to me. To one whose life has lain apart from such things, the
+hypnotic influence of a Browning pistol is irresistible.
+
+But now, freed temporarily from this influence, I began to think;
+and, my mind making up for its previous inaction by working with
+unwonted swiftness, I formed a plan of action at once.
+
+It was simple, but I had an idea that it would be effective. My
+strength lay in my acquaintance with the geography of Sanstead
+House and Buck's ignorance of it. Let me but get an adequate
+start, and he might find pursuit vain. It was this start which I
+saw my way to achieving.
+
+To Buck it had not yet occurred that it was a tactical error to
+leave me between the door and himself. I supposed he relied too
+implicitly on the mesmeric pistol. He was not even looking at me.
+
+The next moment my fingers were on the switch of the electric
+light, and the room was in darkness.
+
+There was a chair by the door. I seized it and swung it into the
+space between us. Then, springing back, I banged the door and ran.
+
+I did not run without a goal in view. My objective was the study.
+This, as I have explained, was on the first floor. Its window
+looked out on to a strip of lawn at the side of the house ending
+in a shrubbery. The drop would not be pleasant, but I seemed to
+remember a waterspout that ran up the wall close to the window,
+and, in any case, I was not in a position to be deterred by the
+prospect of a bruise or two. I had not failed to realize that my
+position was one of extreme peril. When Buck, concluding the tour
+of the house, found that the Little Nugget was not there--as I had
+reason to know that he would--there was no room for doubt that he
+would withdraw the protection which he had extended to me up to
+the present in my capacity of guide. On me the disappointed fury
+of the raiders would fall. No prudent consideration for their own
+safety would restrain them. If ever the future was revealed to
+man, I saw mine. My only chance was to get out into the grounds,
+where the darkness would make pursuit an impossibility.
+
+It was an affair which must be settled one way or the other in a
+few seconds, and I calculated that it would take Buck just those
+few seconds to win his way past the chair and find the door-handle.
+
+I was right. Just as I reached the study, the door of the bedroom
+flew open, and the house rang with shouts and the noise of feet on
+the uncarpeted landing. From the hall below came answering shouts,
+but with an interrogatory note in them. The assistants were
+willing, but puzzled. They did not like to leave their posts
+without specific instructions, and Buck, shouting as he clattered
+over the bare boards, was unintelligible.
+
+I was in the study, the door locked behind me, before they could
+arrive at an understanding. I sprang to the window.
+
+The handle rattled. Voices shouted. A panel splintered beneath a
+kick, and the door shook on its hinges.
+
+And then, for the first time, I think, in my life, panic gripped
+me, the sheer, blind fear which destroys the reason. It swept over
+me in a wave, that numbing terror which comes to one in dreams.
+Indeed, the thing had become dream-like. I seemed to be standing
+outside myself, looking on at myself, watching myself heave and
+strain with bruised fingers at a window that would not open.
+
+
+III
+
+The arm-chair critic, reviewing a situation calmly and at his
+ease, is apt to make too small allowances for the effect of hurry
+and excitement on the human mind. He is cool and detached. He sees
+exactly what ought to have been done, and by what simple means
+catastrophe might have been averted.
+
+He would have made short work of my present difficulty, I feel
+certain. It was ridiculously simple. But I had lost my head, and
+had ceased for the moment to be a reasoning creature. In the end,
+indeed, it was no presence of mind but pure good luck which saved
+me. Just as the door, which had held out gallantly, gave way
+beneath the attack from outside, my fingers, slipping, struck
+against the catch of the window, and I understood why I had failed
+to raise it.
+
+I snapped the catch back, and flung up the sash. An icy wind swept
+into the room, bearing particles of snow. I scrambled on to the
+window-sill, and a crash from behind me told of the falling of the
+door.
+
+The packed snow on the sill was drenching my knees as I worked my
+way out and prepared to drop. There was a deafening explosion
+inside the room, and simultaneously something seared my shoulder
+like a hot iron. I cried out with the pain of it, and, losing my
+balance, fell from the sill.
+
+There was, fortunately for me, a laurel bush immediately below the
+window, or I should have been undone. I fell into it, all arms and
+legs, in a way which would have meant broken bones if I had struck
+the hard turf. I was on my feet in an instant, shaken and
+scratched and, incidentally, in a worse temper than ever in my
+life before. The idea of flight, which had obsessed me a moment
+before, to the exclusion of all other mundane affairs, had
+vanished absolutely. I was full of fight, I might say overflowing
+with it. I remember standing there, with the snow trickling in
+chilly rivulets down my face and neck, and shaking my fist at the
+window. Two of my pursuers were leaning out of it, while a third
+dodged behind them, like a small man on the outskirts of a crowd.
+So far from being thankful for my escape, I was conscious only of
+a feeling of regret that there was no immediate way of getting at
+them.
+
+They made no move towards travelling the quick but trying route
+which had commended itself to me. They seemed to be waiting for
+something to happen. It was not long before I was made aware of
+what this something was. From the direction of the front door came
+the sound of one running. A sudden diminution of the noise of his
+feet told me that he had left the gravel and was on the turf. I
+drew back a pace or two and waited.
+
+It was pitch dark, and I had no fear that I should be seen. I was
+standing well outside the light from the window.
+
+The man stopped just in front of me. A short parley followed.
+
+'Can'tja see him?'
+
+The voice was not Buck's. It was Buck who answered. And when I
+realized that this man in front of me, within easy reach, on whose
+back I was shortly about to spring, and whose neck I proposed,
+under Providence, to twist into the shape of a corkscrew, was no
+mere underling, but Mr MacGinnis himself, I was filled with a joy
+which I found it hard to contain in silence.
+
+Looking back, I am a little sorry for Mr MacGinnis. He was not a
+good man. His mode of speech was not pleasant, and his manners
+were worse than his speech. But, though he undoubtedly deserved
+all that was coming to him, it was nevertheless bad luck for him
+to be standing just there at just that moment. The reactions after
+my panic, added to the pain of my shoulder, the scratches on my
+face, and the general misery of being wet and cold, had given me a
+reckless fury and a determination to do somebody, whoever happened
+to come along, grievous bodily hurt, such as seldom invades the
+bosoms of the normally peaceful. To put it crisply, I was fighting
+mad, and I looked on Buck as something sent by Heaven.
+
+He had got as far, in his reply, as 'Naw, I can't--' when I
+sprang.
+
+I have read of the spring of the jaguar, and I have seen some very
+creditable flying-tackles made on the football field. My leap
+combined the outstanding qualities of both. I connected with Mr
+MacGinnis in the region of the waist, and the howl he gave as we
+crashed to the ground was music to my ears.
+
+But how true is the old Roman saying, _'Surgit amari aliquid'_.
+Our pleasures are never perfect. There is always something. In the
+programme which I had hastily mapped out, the upsetting of Mr
+MacGinnis was but a small item, a mere preliminary. There were a
+number of things which I had wished to do to him, once upset. But
+it was not to be. Even as I reached for his throat I perceived that
+the light of the window was undergoing an eclipse. A compact form
+had wriggled out on to the sill, as I had done, and I heard the
+grating of his shoes on the wall as he lowered himself for the drop.
+
+There is a moment when the pleasantest functions must come to
+an end. I was loath to part from Mr MacGinnis just when I was
+beginning, as it were, to do myself justice; but it was unavoidable.
+In another moment his ally would descend upon us, like some Homeric
+god swooping from a cloud, and I was not prepared to continue the
+battle against odds.
+
+I disengaged myself--Mr MacGinnis strangely quiescent during the
+process--and was on my feet in the safety of the darkness just as
+the reinforcement touched earth. This time I did not wait. My
+hunger for fight had been appeased to some extent by my brush with
+Buck, and I was satisfied to have achieved safety with honour.
+
+Making a wide detour I crossed the drive and worked my way through
+the bushes to within a few yards of where the automobile stood,
+filling the night with the soft purring of its engines. I was
+interested to see what would be the enemy's next move. It was
+improbable that they would attempt to draw the grounds in search
+of me. I imagined that they would recognize failure and retire
+whence they had come.
+
+I was right. I had not been watching long, before a little group
+advanced into the light of the automobile's lamps. There were four
+of them. Three were walking, the fourth, cursing with the vigour
+and breadth that marks the expert, lying on their arms, of which
+they had made something resembling a stretcher.
+
+The driver of the car, who had been sitting woodenly in his seat,
+turned at the sound.
+
+'Ja get him?' he inquired.
+
+'Get nothing!' replied one of the three moodily. 'De Nugget ain't
+dere, an' we was chasin' Sam to fix him, an' he laid for us, an'
+what he did to Buck was plenty.'
+
+They placed their valuable burden in the tonneau, where he lay
+repeating himself, and two of them climbed in after him. The third
+seated himself beside the driver.
+
+'Buck's leg's broke,' he announced.
+
+'Hell!' said the chauffeur.
+
+No young actor, receiving his first round of applause, could have
+felt a keener thrill of gratification than I did at those words.
+Life may have nobler triumphs than the breaking of a kidnapper's
+leg, but I did not think so then. It was with an effort that I
+stopped myself from cheering.
+
+'Let her go,' said the man in the front seat.
+
+The purring rose to a roar. The car turned and began to move with
+increasing speed down the drive. Its drone grew fainter, and
+ceased. I brushed the snow from my coat and walked to the front
+door.
+
+My first act on entering the house, was to release White. He was
+still lying where I had seen him last. He appeared to have made no
+headway with the cords on his wrists and ankles. I came to his
+help with a rather blunt pocket-knife, and he rose stiffly and
+began to chafe the injured arms in silence.
+
+'They've gone,' I said.
+
+He nodded.
+
+'Did they hit you with a sand-bag?'
+
+He nodded again.
+
+'I broke Buck's leg,' I said, with modest pride.
+
+He looked up incredulously. I related my experiences as briefly
+as possible, and when I came to the part where I made my flying
+tackle, the gloom was swept from his face by a joyful smile. Buck's
+injury may have given its recipient pain, but it was certainly the
+cause of pleasure to others. White's manner was one of the utmost
+enthusiasm as I described the scene.
+
+'That'll hold Buck for a while,' was his comment. 'I guess we
+shan't hear from _him_ for a week or two. That's the best cure
+for the headache I've ever struck.'
+
+He rubbed the lump that just showed beneath his hair. I did not
+wonder at his emotion. Whoever had wielded the sand-bag had done
+his work well, in a manner to cause hard feelings on the part of
+the victim.
+
+I had been vaguely conscious during this conversation of an
+intermittent noise like distant thunder. I now perceived that it
+came from Glossop's classroom, and was caused by the beating of
+hands on the door-panels. I remembered that the red-moustached man
+had locked Glossop and his young charges in. It seemed to me that
+he had done well. There would be plenty of confusion without their
+assistance.
+
+I was turning towards my own classroom when I saw Audrey on the
+stairs and went to meet her.
+
+'It's all right,' I said. 'They've gone.'
+
+'Who was it? What did they want?'
+
+'It was a gentleman named MacGinnis and some friends. They came
+after Ogden Ford, but they didn't get him.'
+
+'Where is he? Where is Ogden?'
+
+Before I could reply, babel broke loose. While we had been
+talking, White had injudiciously turned the key of Glossop's
+classroom which now disgorged its occupants, headed by my
+colleague, in a turbulent stream. At the same moment my own
+classroom began to empty itself. The hall was packed with boys,
+and the din became deafening. Every one had something to say, and
+they all said it at once.
+
+Glossop was at my side, semaphoring violently.
+
+'We must telephone,' he bellowed in my ear, 'for the police.'
+
+Somebody tugged at my arm. It was Audrey. She was saying something
+which was drowned in the uproar. I drew her towards the stairs,
+and we found comparative quiet on the first landing.
+
+'What were you saying?' I asked.
+
+'He isn't there.'
+
+'Who?'
+
+'Ogden Ford. Where is he? He is not in his room. They must have
+taken him.'
+
+Glossop came up at a gallop, springing from stair to stair like
+the chamois of the Alps.
+
+'We must telephone for the police!' he cried.
+
+'I have telephoned,' said Audrey, 'ten minutes ago. They are
+sending some men at once. Mr Glossop, was Ogden Ford in your
+classroom?'
+
+'No, Mrs Sheridan. I thought he was with you, Burns.'
+
+I shook my head.
+
+'Those men came to kidnap him, Mr Glossop,' said Audrey.
+
+'Undoubtedly the gang of scoundrels to which that man the other
+night belonged! This is preposterous. My nerves will not stand
+these repeated outrages. We must have police protection. The
+villains must be brought to justice. I never heard of such a
+thing! In an English school!'
+
+Glossop's eyes gleamed agitatedly behind their spectacles.
+Macbeth's deportment when confronted with Banquo's ghost was
+stolid by comparison. There was no doubt that Buck's visit had
+upset the smooth peace of our happy little community to quite a
+considerable extent.
+
+The noise in the hall had increased rather than subsided. A
+belated sense of professional duty returned to Glossop and myself.
+We descended the stairs and began to do our best, in our
+respective styles, to produce order. It was not an easy task.
+Small boys are always prone to make a noise, even without
+provocation. When they get a genuine excuse like the incursion of
+men in white masks, who prod assistant-masters in the small of the
+back with Browning pistols, they tend to eclipse themselves. I
+doubt whether we should ever have quieted them, had it not been
+that the hour of Buck's visit had chanced to fall within a short
+time of that set apart for the boys' tea, and that the kitchen had
+lain outside the sphere of our visitors' operations. As in many
+English country houses, the kitchen at Sanstead House was at the
+end of a long corridor, shut off by doors through which even
+pistol-shots penetrated but faintly. Our excellent cook had,
+moreover, the misfortune to be somewhat deaf, with the result
+that, throughout all the storm and stress in our part of the
+house, she, like the lady in Goethe's poem, had gone on cutting
+bread and butter; till now, when it seemed that nothing could
+quell the uproar, there rose above it the ringing of the bell.
+
+If there is anything exciting enough to keep the Englishman or the
+English boy from his tea, it has yet to be discovered. The
+shouting ceased on the instant. The general feeling seemed to be
+that inquiries could be postponed till a more suitable occasion,
+but not tea. There was a general movement in the direction of the
+dining-room.
+
+Glossop had already gone with the crowd, and I was about to
+follow, when there was another ring at the front-door bell.
+
+I gathered that this must be the police, and waited. In the
+impending inquiry I was by way of being a star witness. If any one
+had been in the thick of things from the beginning it was myself.
+
+White opened the door. I caught a glimpse of blue uniforms, and
+came forward to do the honours.
+
+There were two of them, no more. In response to our urgent appeal
+for assistance against armed bandits, the Majesty of the Law had
+materialized itself in the shape of a stout inspector and a long,
+lean constable. I thought, as I came to meet them, that they were
+fortunate to have arrived late. I could see Lefty and the
+red-moustached man, thwarted in their designs on me, making
+dreadful havoc among the official force, as here represented.
+
+White, the simple butler once more, introduced us.
+
+'This is Mr Burns, one of the masters at the school,' he said, and
+removed himself from the scene. There never was a man like White
+for knowing his place when he played the butler.
+
+The inspector looked at me sharply. The constable gazed into
+space.
+
+'H'm!' said the inspector.
+
+Mentally I had named them Bones and Johnson. I do not know why,
+except that they seemed to deserve it.
+
+'You telephoned for us,' said Bones accusingly.
+
+'We did.'
+
+'What's the trouble? What--got your notebook?--has been
+happening?'
+
+Johnson removed his gaze from the middle distance and produced a
+notebook.
+
+'At about half past five--' I began.
+
+Johnson moistened his pencil.
+
+'At about half past five an automobile drove up to the front door.
+In it were five masked men with revolvers.'
+
+I interested them. There was no doubt of that. Bones's healthy
+colour deepened, and his eyes grew round. Johnson's pencil raced
+over the page, wobbling with emotion.
+
+'Masked men?' echoed Bones.
+
+'With revolvers,' I said. 'Now aren't you glad you didn't go to
+the circus? They rang the front-door bell; when White opened it,
+they stunned him with a sand-bag. Then--'
+
+Bones held up a large hand.
+
+'Wait!'
+
+I waited.
+
+'Who is White?'
+
+'The butler.'
+
+'I will take his statement. Fetch the butler.'
+
+Johnson trotted off obediently.
+
+Left alone with me, Bones became friendlier and less official.
+
+'This is as queer a start as ever I heard of, Mr Burns,' he said.
+'Twenty years I've been in the force, and nothing like this has
+transpired. It beats cock-fighting. What in the world do you
+suppose men with masks and revolvers was after? First idea I had
+was that you were making fun of me.'
+
+I was shocked at the idea. I hastened to give further details.
+
+'They were a gang of American crooks who had come over to kidnap
+Mr Elmer Ford's son, who is a pupil at the school. You have heard
+of Mr Ford? He is an American millionaire, and there have been
+several attempts during the past few years to kidnap Ogden.'
+
+At this point Johnson returned with White. White told his story
+briefly, exhibited his bruise, showed the marks of the cords on his
+wrists, and was dismissed. I suggested that further conversation
+had better take place in the presence of Mr Abney, who, I imagined,
+would have something to say on the subject of hushing the thing up.
+
+We went upstairs. The broken door of the study delayed us a while
+and led to a fresh spasm of activity on the part of Johnson's
+pencil. Having disposed of this, we proceeded to Mr Abney's room.
+
+Bones's authoritative rap upon the door produced an agitated
+'Who's that?' from the occupant. I explained the nature of the
+visitation through the keyhole and there came from within the
+sound of moving furniture. His one brief interview with Buck had
+evidently caused my employer to ensure against a second by
+barricading himself in with everything he could find suitable for
+the purpose. It was some moments before the way was clear for our
+entrance.
+
+'Cub id,' said a voice at last.
+
+Mr Abney was sitting up in bed, the blankets wrapped tightly about
+him. His appearance was still disordered. The furniture of the
+room was in great confusion, and a poker on the floor by the
+dressing-table showed that he had been prepared to sell his life
+dearly.
+
+'I ab glad to see you, Idspector,' he said. 'Bister Burds, what is
+the expladation of this extraordinary affair?'
+
+It took some time to explain matters to Mr Abney, and more to
+convince Bones and his colleague that, so far from wanting a hue
+and cry raised over the countryside and columns about the affair
+in the papers, publicity was the thing we were anxious to avoid.
+They were visibly disappointed when they grasped the position of
+affairs. The thing, properly advertised, would have been the
+biggest that had ever happened to the neighbourhood, and their
+eager eyes could see glory within easy reach. Mention of a cold
+snack and a drop of beer, however, to be found in the kitchen,
+served to cast a gleam of brightness on their gloom, and they
+vanished in search of it with something approaching cheeriness,
+Johnson taking notes to the last.
+
+They had hardly gone when Glossop whirled into the room in a state
+of effervescing agitation.
+
+'Mr Abney, Ogden Ford is nowhere to be found!'
+
+Mr Abney greeted the information with a prodigious sneeze.
+
+'What do you bead?' he demanded, when the paroxysm was over. He
+turned to me. 'Bister Burds, I understood you to--ah--say that
+the scou'drels took their departure without the boy Ford.'
+
+'They certainly did. I watched them go.'
+
+'I have searched the house thoroughly,' said Glossop, 'and there
+are no signs of him. And not only that, the Boy Beckford cannot be
+found.'
+
+Mr Abney clasped his head in his hands. Poor man, he was in no
+condition to bear up with easy fortitude against this succession
+of shocks. He was like one who, having survived an earthquake, is
+hit by an automobile. He had partly adjusted his mind to the quiet
+contemplation of Mr MacGinnis and friends when he was called upon
+to face this fresh disaster. And he had a cold in the head, which
+unmans the stoutest. Napoleon would have won Waterloo if
+Wellington had had a cold in the head.
+
+'Augustus Beckford caddot be fou'd?' he echoed feebly.
+
+'They must have run away together,' said Glossop.
+
+Mr Abney sat up, galvanized.
+
+'Such a thing has never happened id the school before!' he cried.
+'It has aldways beed my--ah--codstant endeavour to make my boys
+look upod Sadstead House as a happy hobe. I have systebatically
+edcouraged a spirit of cheerful codtedment. I caddot seriously
+credit the fact that Augustus Beckford, one of the bost charbig
+boys it has ever beed by good fortude to have id by charge, has
+deliberately rud away.'
+
+'He must have been persuaded by that boy Ford,' said Glossop,
+'who,' he added morosely, 'I believe, is the devil in disguise.'
+
+Mr Abney did not rebuke the strength of his language. Probably the
+theory struck him as eminently sound. To me there certainly seemed
+something in it.
+
+'Subbthig bust be done at once!' Mr Abney exclaimed. 'It
+is--ah--ibperative that we take ibbediate steps. They bust
+have gone to Londod. Bister Burds, you bust go to Londod by the
+next traid. I caddot go byself with this cold.'
+
+It was the irony of fate that, on the one occasion when duty
+really summoned that champion popper-up-to-London to the
+Metropolis, he should be unable to answer the call.
+
+'Very well,' I said. 'I'll go and look out a train.'
+
+'Bister Glossop, you will be in charge of the school. Perhaps you
+had better go back to the boys dow.'
+
+White was in the hall when I got there.
+
+'White,' I said, 'do you know anything about the trains to
+London?'
+
+'Are you going to London?' he asked, in his more conversational
+manner. I thought he looked at me curiously as he spoke.
+
+'Yes. Ogden Ford and Lord Beckford cannot be found. Mr Abney
+thinks they must have run away to London.'
+
+'I shouldn't wonder,' said White dryly, it seemed to me. There was
+something distinctly odd in his manner. 'And you're going after
+them.'
+
+'Yes. I must look up a train.'
+
+'There is a fast train in an hour. You will have plenty of time.'
+
+'Will you tell Mr Abney that, while I go and pack my bag? And
+telephone for a cab.'
+
+'Sure,' said White, nodding.
+
+I went up to my room and began to put a few things together in a
+suit-case. I felt happy, for several reasons. A visit to London,
+after my arduous weeks at Sanstead, was in the nature of an
+unexpected treat. My tastes are metropolitan, and the vision of an
+hour at a music-hall--I should be too late for the theatres--with
+supper to follow in some restaurant where there was an orchestra,
+appealed to me.
+
+When I returned to the hall, carrying my bag, I found Audrey
+there.
+
+'I'm being sent to London,' I announced.
+
+'I know. White told me. Peter, bring him back.'
+
+'That's why I'm being sent.'
+
+'It means everything to me.'
+
+I looked at her in surprise. There was a strained, anxious
+expression on her face, for which I could not account. I declined
+to believe that anybody could care what happened to the Little
+Nugget purely for that amiable youth's own sake. Besides, as he
+had gone to London willingly, the assumption was that he was
+enjoying himself.
+
+'I don't understand,' I said. 'What do you mean?'
+
+'I'll tell you. Mr Ford sent me here to be near Ogden, to guard
+him. He knew that there was always a danger of attempts being made
+to kidnap him, even though he was brought over to England very
+quietly. That is how I come to be here. I go wherever Ogden goes.
+I am responsible for him. And I have failed. If Ogden is not
+brought back, Mr Ford will have nothing more to do with me. He
+never forgives failures. It will mean going back to the old work
+again--the dressmaking, or the waiting, or whatever I can manage
+to find.' She gave a little shiver. 'Peter, I can't. All the pluck
+has gone out of me. I'm afraid. I couldn't face all that again.
+Bring him back. You must. You will. Say you will.'
+
+I did not answer. I could find nothing to say; for it was I who
+was responsible for all her trouble. I had planned everything. I
+had given Ogden Ford the money that had taken him to London. And
+soon, unless I could reach London before it happened, and prevent
+him, he, with my valet Smith, would be in the Dover boat-train on
+his way to Monaco.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 9
+
+
+I
+
+It was only after many hours of thought that it had flashed upon
+me that the simplest and safest way of removing the Little Nugget
+was to induce him to remove himself. Once the idea had come, the
+rest was simple. The negotiations which had taken place that
+morning in the stable-yard had been brief. I suppose a boy in
+Ogden's position, with his record of narrow escapes from the
+kidnapper, comes to take things as a matter of course which would
+startle the ordinary boy. He assumed, I imagine, that I was the
+accredited agent of his mother, and that the money which I gave
+him for travelling expenses came from her. Perhaps he had been
+expecting something of the sort. At any rate, he grasped the
+essential points of the scheme with amazing promptitude. His
+little hand was extended to receive the cash almost before I had
+finished speaking.
+
+The main outline of my plan was that he should slip away to
+London, during the afternoon, go to my rooms, where he would find
+Smith, and with Smith travel to his mother at Monaco. I had
+written to Smith, bidding him be in readiness for the expedition.
+There was no flaw in the scheme as I had mapped it out, and though
+Ogden had complicated it a little by gratuitously luring away
+Augustus Beckford to bear him company, he had not endangered its
+success.
+
+But now an utterly unforeseen complication had arisen. My one
+desire now was to undo everything for which I had been plotting.
+
+I stood there, looking at her dumbly, hating myself for being the
+cause of the anxiety in her eyes. If I had struck her, I could not
+have felt more despicable. In my misery I cursed Cynthia for
+leading me into this tangle.
+
+I heard my name spoken, and turned to find White at my elbow.
+
+'Mr Abney would like to see you, sir.'
+
+I went upstairs, glad to escape. The tension of the situation had
+begun to tear at my nerves.
+
+'Cub id, Bister Burds,' said my employer, swallowing a lozenge.
+His aspect was more dazed than ever. 'White has just bade
+an--ah--extraordinary cobbudicatiod to me. It seebs he is in
+reality a detective, an employee of Pidkertod's Agedcy, of which
+you have, of course--ah--heard.'
+
+So White had revealed himself. On the whole, I was not surprised.
+Certainly his motive for concealment, the fear of making Mr Abney
+nervous, was removed. An inrush of Red Indians with tomahawks
+could hardly have added greatly to Mr Abney's nervousness at the
+present juncture.
+
+'Sent here by Mr Ford, I suppose?' I said. I had to say something.
+
+'Exactly. Ah--precisely.' He sneezed. 'Bister Ford, without
+codsulting me--I do not cobbedt on the good taste or wisdob of his
+actiod--dispatched White to apply for the post of butler at
+this--ah--house, his predecessor having left at a bobedt's dotice,
+bribed to do so, I strodgly suspect, by Bister Ford himself. I bay
+be wrodging Bister Ford, but do dot thig so.'
+
+I thought the reasoning sound.
+
+'All thad, however,' resumed Mr Abney, removing his face from a
+jug of menthol at which he had been sniffing with the tense
+concentration of a dog at a rabbit-hole, 'is beside the poidt. I
+berely bedtiod it to explaid why White will accompady you to
+London.'
+
+'What!'
+
+The exclamation was forced from me by my dismay. This was
+appalling. If this infernal detective was to accompany me, my
+chance of bringing Ogden back was gone. It had been my intention
+to go straight to my rooms, in the hope of finding him not yet
+departed. But how was I to explain his presence there to White?
+
+'I don't think it's necessary, Mr Abney,' I protested. 'I am sure
+I can manage this affair by myself.'
+
+'Two heads are better thad wud,' said the invalid sententiously,
+burying his features in the jug once more.
+
+'Too many cooks spoil the broth,' I replied. If the conversation
+was to consist of copybook maxims, I could match him as long as he
+pleased.
+
+He did not keep up the intellectual level of the discussion.
+
+'Dodseds!' he snapped, with the irritation of a man whose proverb
+has been capped by another. I had seldom heard him speak so
+sharply. White's revelation had evidently impressed him. He had
+all the ordinary peaceful man's reverence for the professional
+detective.
+
+'White will accompany you, Bister Burds,' he said doggedly.
+
+'Very well,' I said.
+
+After all, it might be that I should get an opportunity of giving
+him the slip. London is a large city.
+
+A few minutes later the cab arrived, and White and I set forth on
+our mission.
+
+We did not talk much in the cab. I was too busy with my thoughts
+to volunteer remarks, and White, apparently, had meditations of
+his own to occupy him.
+
+It was when we had settled ourselves in an empty compartment and
+the train had started that he found speech. I had provided myself
+with a book as a barrier against conversation, and began at once
+to make a pretence of reading, but he broke through my defences.
+
+'Interesting book, Mr Burns?'
+
+'Very,' I said.
+
+'Life's more interesting than books.'
+
+I made no comment on this profound observation. He was not
+discouraged.
+
+'Mr Burns,' he said, after the silence had lasted a few moments.
+
+'Yes?'
+
+'Let's talk for a spell. These train-journeys are pretty slow.'
+
+Again I seemed to detect that curious undercurrent of meaning in
+his voice which I had noticed in the course of our brief exchange
+of remarks in the hall. I glanced up and met his eye. He was
+looking at me in a way that struck me as curious. There was
+something in those bright brown eyes of his which had the effect
+of making me vaguely uneasy. Something seemed to tell me that he
+had a definite motive in forcing his conversation on me.
+
+'I guess I can interest you a heap more than that book, even if
+it's the darndest best seller that was ever hatched.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+He lit a cigarette.
+
+'You didn't want me around on this trip, did you?'
+
+'It seemed rather unnecessary for both of us to go,' I said
+indifferently. 'Still, perhaps two heads are better than one, as
+Mr Abney remarked. What do you propose to do when you get to
+London?'
+
+He bent forward and tapped me on the knee.
+
+'I propose to stick to you like a label on a bottle, sonny,' he
+said. 'That's what I propose to do.'
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+I was finding it difficult, such is the effect of a guilty
+conscience, to meet his eye, and the fact irritated me.
+
+'I want to find out that address you gave the Ford kid this
+morning out in the stable-yard.'
+
+It is strange how really literal figurative expressions are. I had
+read stories in which some astonished character's heart leaped
+into his mouth. For an instant I could have supposed that mine had
+actually done so. The illusion of some solid object blocking up my
+throat was extraordinarily vivid, and there certainly seemed to be
+a vacuum in the spot where my heart should have been. Not for a
+substantial reward could I have uttered a word at that moment. I
+could not even breathe. The horrible unexpectedness of the blow
+had paralysed me.
+
+White, however, was apparently prepared to continue the chat
+without my assistance.
+
+'I guess you didn't know I was around, or you wouldn't have talked
+that way. Well, I was, and I heard every word you said. Here was
+the money, you said, and he was to take it and break for London,
+and go to the address on this card, and your pal Smith would look
+after him. I guess there had been some talk before that, but I
+didn't arrive in time to hear it. But I heard all I wanted, except
+that address. And that's what I'm going to find out when we get to
+London.'
+
+He gave out this appalling information in a rich and soothing
+voice, as if it were some ordinary commonplace. To me it seemed to
+end everything. I imagined I was already as good as under arrest.
+What a fool I had been to discuss such a matter in a place like a
+stable yard, however apparently empty. I might have known that at
+a school there are no empty places.
+
+'I must say it jarred me when I heard you pulling that stuff,'
+continued White. 'I haven't what you might call a childlike faith
+in my fellow-man as a rule, but it had never occurred to me for a
+moment that you could be playing that game. It only shows,' he
+added philosophically, 'that you've got to suspect everybody when
+it comes to a gilt-edged proposition like the Little Nugget.'
+
+The train rattled on. I tried to reduce my mind to working order,
+to formulate some plan, but could not.
+
+Beyond the realization that I was in the tightest corner of my
+life, I seemed to have lost the power of thought.
+
+White resumed his monologue.
+
+'You had me guessing,' he admitted. 'I couldn't figure you out.
+First thing, of course, I thought you must be working in with Buck
+MacGinnis and his crowd. Then all that happened tonight, and I saw
+that, whoever you might be working in with, it wasn't Buck. And
+now I've placed you. You're not in with any one. You're just
+playing it by yourself. I shouldn't mind betting this was your
+first job, and that you saw your chance of making a pile by
+holding up old man Ford, and thought it was better than
+schoolmastering, and grabbed it.'
+
+He leaned forward and tapped me on the knee again. There was
+something indescribably irritating in the action. As one who has
+had experience, I can state that, while to be arrested at all is
+bad, to be arrested by a detective with a fatherly manner is
+maddening.
+
+'See here,' he said, 'we must get together over this business.'
+
+I suppose it was the recollection of the same words in the mouth
+of Buck MacGinnis that made me sit up with a jerk and stare at
+him.
+
+'We'll make a great team,' he said, still in that same cosy voice.
+'If ever there was a case of fifty-fifty, this is it. You've got
+the kid, and I've got you. I can't get away with him without your
+help, and you can't get away with him unless you square me. It's a
+stand-off. The only thing is to sit in at the game together and
+share out. Does it go?'
+
+He beamed kindly on my bewilderment during the space of time it
+takes to select a cigarette and light a match. Then, blowing a
+contented puff of smoke, he crossed his legs and leaned back.
+
+'When I told you I was a Pinkerton's man, sonny,' he said, 'I
+missed the cold truth by about a mile. But you caught me shooting
+off guns in the grounds, and it was up to me to say something.'
+
+He blew a smoke-ring and watched it dreamily till it melted in the
+draught from the ventilator.
+
+'I'm Smooth Sam Fisher,' he said.
+
+
+II
+
+When two emotions clash, the weaker goes to the wall. Any surprise
+I might have felt was swallowed up in my relief. If I had been at
+liberty to be astonished, my companion's information would no
+doubt have astonished me. But I was not. I was so relieved that he
+was not a Pinkerton's man that I did not really care what else he
+might be.
+
+'It's always been a habit of mine, in these little matters,' he
+went on, 'to let other folks do the rough work, and chip in myself
+when they've cleared the way. It saves trouble and expense. I
+don't travel with a gang, like that bone-headed Buck. What's the
+use of a gang? They only get tumbling over each other and spoiling
+everything. Look at Buck! Where is he? Down and out. While I--'
+
+He smiled complacently. His manner annoyed me. I objected to being
+looked upon as a humble cat's paw by this bland scoundrel.
+
+'While you--what?' I said.
+
+He looked at me in mild surprise.
+
+'Why, I come in with you, sonny, and take my share like a
+gentleman.'
+
+'Do you!'
+
+'Well, don't I?'
+
+He looked at me in the half-reproachful half-affectionate manner
+of the kind old uncle who reasons with a headstrong nephew.
+
+'Young man,' he said, 'you surely aren't thinking you can put one
+over on me in this business? Tell me, you don't take me for that
+sort of ivory-skulled boob? Do you imagine for one instant, sonny,
+that I'm not next to every move in this game? Are you deluding
+yourself with the idea that this thing isn't a perfect cinch for
+me? Let's hear what's troubling you. You seem to have gotten some
+foolish ideas in your head. Let's talk it over quietly.'
+
+'If you have no objection,' I said, 'no. I don't want to talk to
+you, Mr Fisher. I don't like you, and I don't like your way of
+earning your living. Buck MacGinnis was bad enough, but at least
+he was a straightforward tough. There's no excuse for you.'
+
+'Surely we are unusually righteous this p.m., are we not?' said
+Sam suavely.
+
+I did not answer.
+
+'Is this not mere professional jealousy?'
+
+This was too much for me.
+
+'Do you imagine for a moment that I'm doing this for money?'
+
+'I did have that impression. Was I wrong? Do you kidnap the sons
+of millionaires for your health?'
+
+'I promised that I would get this boy back to his mother. That is
+why I gave him the money to go to London. And that is why my valet
+was to have taken him to--to where Mrs Ford is.'
+
+He did not reply in words, but if ever eyebrows spoke, his said,
+'My dear sir, really!' I could not remain silent under their
+patent disbelief.
+
+'That's the simple truth,' I said.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, as who would say, 'Have it your own
+way. Let us change the subject.'
+
+'You say "was to have taken". Have you changed your plans?'
+
+'Yes, I'm going to take the boy back to the school.'
+
+He laughed--a rich, rolling laugh. His double chin shook
+comfortably.
+
+'It won't do,' he said, shaking his head with humorous reproach.
+'It won't do.'
+
+'You don't believe me?'
+
+'Frankly, I do not.'
+
+'Very well,' I said, and began to read my book.
+
+'If you want to give me the slip,' he chuckled, 'you must do
+better than that. I can see you bringing the Nugget back to the
+school.'
+
+'You will, if you wait,' I said.
+
+'I wonder what that address was that you gave him,' he mused.
+'Well, I shall soon know.'
+
+He lapsed into silence. The train rolled on. I looked at my watch.
+London was not far off now.
+
+'The present arrangement of equal division,' said Sam, breaking a
+long silence, 'holds good, of course, only in the event of your
+quitting this fool game and doing the square thing by me. Let me
+put it plainly. We are either partners or competitors. It is for
+you to decide. If you will be sensible and tell me that address, I
+will pledge my word--'
+
+'Your word!' I said scornfully.
+
+'Honour among thieves!' replied Sam, with unruffled geniality. 'I
+wouldn't double-cross you for worlds. If, however, you think you
+can manage without my assistance, it will then be my melancholy
+duty to beat you to the kid, and collect him and the money
+entirely on my own account. Am I to take it,' he said, as I was
+silent, 'that you prefer war to an alliance?'
+
+I turned a page of my book and went on reading.
+
+'If Youth but knew!' he sighed. 'Young man, I am nearly twice your
+age, and I have, at a modest estimate, about ten times as much
+sense. Yet, in your overweening self-confidence, with your
+ungovernable gall, you fancy you can hand me a lemon. _Me!_ I
+should smile!'
+
+'Do,' I said. 'Do, while you can.'
+
+He shook his head reprovingly.
+
+'You will not be so fresh, sonny, in a few hours. You will be
+biting pieces out of yourself, I fear. And later on, when my
+automobile splashes you with mud in Piccadilly, you will taste the
+full bitterness of remorse. Well, Youth must buy its experience, I
+suppose!'
+
+I looked across at him as he sat, plump and rosy and complacent,
+puffing at his cigarette, and my heart warmed to the old ruffian.
+It was impossible to maintain an attitude of righteous iciness
+with him. I might loathe his mode of life, and hate him as a
+representative--and a leading representative--of one of the most
+contemptible trades on earth, but there was a sunny charm about
+the man himself which made it hard to feel hostile to him as an
+individual.
+
+I closed my book with a bang and burst out laughing.
+
+'You're a wonder!' I said.
+
+He beamed at what he took to be evidence that I was coming round
+to the friendly and sensible view of the matter.
+
+'Then you think, on consideration--' he said. 'Excellent! Now, my
+dear young man, all joking aside, you will take me with you to
+that address, will you not? You observe that I do not ask you to
+give it to me. Let there be not so much as the faintest odour of
+the double-cross about this business. All I ask is that you allow
+me to accompany you to where the Nugget is hidden, and then rely
+on my wider experience of this sort of game to get him safely away
+and open negotiations with the dad.'
+
+'I suppose your experience has been wide?' I said.
+
+'Quite tolerably--quite tolerably.'
+
+'Doesn't it ever worry you the anxiety and misery you cause?'
+
+'Purely temporary, both. And then, look at it in another way.
+Think of the joy and relief of the bereaved parents when sonny
+comes toddling home again! Surely it is worth some temporary
+distress to taste that supreme happiness? In a sense, you might
+call me a human benefactor. I teach parents to appreciate their
+children. You know what parents are. Father gets caught short in
+steel rails one morning. When he reaches home, what does he do? He
+eases his mind by snapping at little Willie. Mrs Van First-Family
+forgets to invite mother to her freak-dinner. What happens? Mother
+takes it out of William. They love him, maybe, but they are too
+used to him. They do not realize all he is to them. And then, one
+afternoon, he disappears. The agony! The remorse! "How could I
+ever have told our lost angel to stop his darned noise!" moans
+father. "I struck him!" sobs mother. "With this jewelled hand I
+spanked our vanished darling!" "We were not worthy to have him,"
+they wail together. "But oh, if we could but get him back!" Well
+they do. They get him back as soon as ever they care to come
+across in unmarked hundred-dollar bills. And after that they think
+twice before working off their grouches on the poor kid. So I
+bring universal happiness into the home. I don't say father
+doesn't get a twinge every now and then when he catches sight of
+the hole in his bank balance, but, darn it, what's money for if
+it's not to spend?'
+
+He snorted with altruistic fervour.
+
+'What makes you so set on kidnapping Ogden Ford?' I asked. 'I know
+he is valuable, but you must have made your pile by this time. I
+gather that you have been practising your particular brand of
+philanthropy for a good many years. Why don't you retire?'
+
+He sighed.
+
+'It is the dream of my life to retire, young man. You may not
+believe me, but my instincts are thoroughly domestic. When I have
+the leisure to weave day-dreams, they centre around a cosy little
+home with a nice porch and stationary washtubs.'
+
+He regarded me closely, as if to decide whether I was worthy of
+these confidences. There was something wistful in his brown eyes.
+I suppose the inspection must have been favourable, or he was in a
+mood when a man must unbosom himself to someone, for he proceeded
+to open his heart to me. A man in his particular line of business,
+I imagine, finds few confidants, and the strain probably becomes
+intolerable at times.
+
+'Have you ever experienced the love of a good woman, sonny? It's a
+wonderful thing.' He brooded sentimentally for a moment, then
+continued, and--to my mind--somewhat spoiled the impressiveness of
+his opening words. 'The love of a good woman,' he said, 'is about
+the darnedest wonderful lay-out that ever came down the pike. I
+know. I've had some.'
+
+A spark from his cigarette fell on his hand. He swore a startled
+oath.
+
+'We came from the same old town,' he resumed, having recovered
+from this interlude. 'Used to be kids at the same school ...
+Walked to school together ... me carrying her luncheon-basket and
+helping her over the fences ... Ah! ... Just the same when we grew
+up. Still pals. And that was twenty years ago ... The arrangement
+was that I should go out and make the money to buy the home, and
+then come back and marry her.'
+
+'Then why the devil haven't you done it?' I said severely.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+'If you know anything about crooks, young man,' he said, 'you'll
+know that outside of their own line they are the easiest marks that
+ever happened. They fall for anything. At least, it's always been
+that way with me. No sooner did I get together a sort of pile and
+start out for the old town, when some smooth stranger would come
+along and steer me up against some skin-game, and back I'd have to
+go to work. That happened a few times, and when I did manage at
+last to get home with the dough I found she had married another
+guy. It's hard on women, you see,' he explained chivalrously. 'They
+get lonesome and Roving Rupert doesn't show up, so they have to
+marry Stay-at-Home Henry just to keep from getting the horrors.'
+
+'So she's Mrs Stay-at-Home Henry now?' I said sympathetically.
+
+'She was till a year ago. She's a widow now. Deceased had a
+misunderstanding with a hydrophobia skunk, so I'm informed. I
+believe he was a good man. Outside of licking him at school I
+didn't know him well. I saw her just before I left to come here.
+She's as fond of me as ever. It's all settled, if only I can
+connect with the mazuma. And she don't want much, either. Just
+enough to keep the home together.'
+
+'I wish you happiness,' I said.
+
+'You can do better than that. You can take me with you to that
+address.'
+
+I avoided the subject.
+
+'What does she say to your way of making money?' I asked.
+
+'She doesn't know, and she ain't going to know. I don't see why a
+man has got to tell his wife every little thing in his past. She
+thinks I'm a drummer, travelling in England for a dry-goods firm.
+She wouldn't stand for the other thing, not for a minute. She's
+very particular. Always was. That's why I'm going to quit after
+I've won out over this thing of the Little Nugget.' He looked at
+me hopefully. 'So you _will_ take me along, sonny, won't you?'
+
+I shook my head.
+
+'You won't?'
+
+'I'm sorry to spoil a romance, but I can't. You must look around
+for some other home into which to bring happiness. The Fords' is
+barred.'
+
+'You are very obstinate, young man,' he said, sadly, but without
+any apparent ill-feeling. 'I can't persuade you?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Ah, well! So we are to be rivals, not allies. You will regret
+this, sonny. I may say you will regret it very bitterly. When you
+see me in my automo--'
+
+'You mentioned your automobile before.'
+
+'Ah! So I did.'
+
+The train had stopped, as trains always do on English railways
+before entering a terminus. Presently it began to move forward
+hesitatingly, as if saying to itself, 'Now, am I really wanted
+here? Shall I be welcome?' Eventually, after a second halt, it
+glided slowly alongside the platform.
+
+I sprang out and ran to the cab-rank. I was aboard a taxi, bowling
+out of the station before the train had stopped.
+
+Peeping out of the window at the back, I was unable to see Sam. My
+adroit move, I took it, had baffled him. I had left him standing.
+
+It was a quarter of an hour's drive to my rooms, but to me, in my
+anxiety, it seemed more. This was going to be a close thing, and
+success or failure a matter of minutes. If he followed my
+instructions Smith would be starting for the Continental boat-train
+tonight with his companion; and, working out the distances,
+I saw that, by the time I could arrive, he might already have left
+my rooms. Sam's supervision at Sanstead Station had made it
+impossible for me to send a telegram. I had had to trust to
+chance. Fortunately my train, by a miracle, had been up to time,
+and at my present rate of progress I ought to catch Smith a few
+minutes before he left the building.
+
+The cab pulled up. I ran up the stairs and opened the door of my
+apartment.
+
+'Smith!' I called.
+
+A chair scraped along the floor and a door opened at the end of
+the passage. Smith came out.
+
+'Thank goodness you have not started. I thought I should miss you.
+Where is the boy?'
+
+'The boy, sir?'
+
+'The boy I wrote to you about.'
+
+'He has not arrived, sir.'
+
+'Not arrived?'
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+I stared at him blankly.
+
+'How long have you been here?'
+
+'All day, sir.'
+
+'You have not been out?'
+
+'Not since the hour of two, sir.'
+
+'I can't understand it,' I said.
+
+'Perhaps the young gentleman changed his mind and never started,
+sir?'
+
+'I know he started.'
+
+Smith had no further suggestion to offer.
+
+'Pending the young gentleman's arrival, sir, I remain in London?'
+
+A fruity voice spoke at the door behind me.
+
+'What! Hasn't he arrived?'
+
+I turned. There, beaming and benevolent, stood Mr Fisher.
+
+'It occurred to me to look your name out in the telephone
+directory,' he explained. 'I might have thought of that before.'
+
+'Come in here,' I said, opening the door of the sitting-room. I
+did not want to discuss the thing with him before Smith.
+
+He looked about the room admiringly.
+
+'So these are your quarters,' he said. 'You do yourself pretty
+well, young man. So I understand that the Nugget has gone wrong in
+transit. He has altered his plans on the way?'
+
+'I can't understand it.'
+
+'I can! You gave him a certain amount of money?'
+
+'Yes. Enough to get him to--where he was going.'
+
+'Then, knowing the boy, I should say that he has found other uses
+for it. He's whooping it up in London, and, I should fancy, having
+the time of his young life.'
+
+He got up.
+
+'This of course,' he said, 'alters considerably any understanding
+we may have come to, sonny. All idea of a partnership is now out
+of the question. I wish you well, but I have no further use for
+you. Somewhere in this great city the Little Nugget is hiding, and
+I mean to find him--entirely on my own account. This is where our
+paths divide, Mr Burns. Good night.'
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 10
+
+
+When Sam had left, which he did rather in the manner of a heavy
+father in melodrama, shaking the dust of an erring son's threshold
+off his feet, I mixed myself a high-ball, and sat down to consider
+the position of affairs. It did not take me long to see that the
+infernal boy had double-crossed me with a smooth effectiveness
+which Mr Fisher himself might have envied. Somewhere in this great
+city, as Sam had observed, he was hiding. But where? London is a
+vague address.
+
+I wondered what steps Sam was taking. Was there some underground
+secret service bureau to which persons of his profession had
+access? I doubted it. I imagined that he, as I proposed to do, was
+drawing the city at a venture in the hope of flushing the quarry
+by accident. Yet such was the impression he had made upon me as a
+man of resource and sagacity, that I did not relish the idea of
+his getting a start on me, even in a venture so uncertain as this.
+My imagination began to picture him miraculously inspired in the
+search, and such was the vividness of the vision that I jumped up
+from my chair, resolved to get on the trail at once. It was
+hopelessly late, however, and I did not anticipate that I should
+meet with any success.
+
+Nor did I. For two hours and a half I tramped the streets, my
+spirits sinking more and more under the influence of failure and a
+blend of snow and sleet which had begun to fall; and then, tired
+out, I went back to my rooms, and climbed sorrowfully into bed.
+
+It was odd to wake up and realize that I was in London. Years
+seemed to have passed since I had left it. Time is a thing of
+emotions, not of hours and minutes, and I had certainly packed a
+considerable number of emotional moments into my stay at Sanstead
+House. I lay in bed, reviewing the past, while Smith, with a
+cheerful clatter of crockery, prepared my breakfast in the next
+room.
+
+A curious lethargy had succeeded the feverish energy of the
+previous night. More than ever the impossibility of finding the
+needle in this human bundle of hay oppressed me. No one is
+optimistic before breakfast, and I regarded the future with dull
+resignation, turning my thoughts from it after a while to the
+past. But the past meant Audrey, and to think of Audrey hurt.
+
+It seemed curious to me that in a life of thirty years I should
+have been able to find, among the hundreds of women I had met,
+only one capable of creating in me that disquieting welter of
+emotions which is called love, and hard that that one should
+reciprocate my feeling only to the extent of the mild liking which
+Audrey entertained for me.
+
+I tried to analyse her qualifications for the place she held in my
+heart. I had known women who had attracted me more physically, and
+women who had attracted me more mentally. I had known wiser women,
+handsomer women, more amiable women, but none of them had affected
+me like Audrey. The problem was inexplicable. Any idea that we
+might be affinities, soul-mates destined for each other from the
+beginning of time, was disposed of by the fact that my attraction
+for her was apparently in inverse ratio to hers for me. For
+possibly the millionth time in the past five years I tried to
+picture in my mind the man Sheridan, that shadowy wooer to whom
+she had yielded so readily. What quality had he possessed that I
+did not? Wherein lay the magnetism that had brought about his
+triumph?
+
+These were unprofitable speculations. I laid them aside until the
+next occasion when I should feel disposed for self-torture, and
+got out of bed. A bath and breakfast braced me up, and I left the
+house in a reasonably cheerful frame of mind.
+
+To search at random for an individual unit among London's millions
+lends an undeniable attraction to a day in town. In a desultory
+way I pursued my investigations through the morning and afternoon,
+but neither of Ogden nor of his young friend Lord Beckford was I
+vouchsafed a glimpse. My consolation was that Smooth Sam was
+probably being equally unsuccessful.
+
+Towards the evening there arose the question of return to
+Sanstead. I had not gathered whether Mr Abney had intended to set
+any time-limit on my wanderings, or whether I was not supposed to
+come back except with the deserters. I decided that I had better
+remain in London, at any rate for another night, and went to the
+nearest post office to send Mr Abney a telegram to that effect.
+
+As I was writing it, the problem which had baffled me for twenty-four
+hours, solved itself in under a minute. Whether my powers of
+inductive reasoning had been under a cloud since I left Sanstead,
+or whether they were normally beneath contempt, I do not know. But
+the fact remains, that I had completely overlooked the obvious
+solution of my difficulty. I think I must have been thinking so
+exclusively of the Little Nugget that I had entirely forgotten the
+existence of Augustus Beckford. It occurred to me now that, by
+making inquiries at the latter's house, I should learn something
+to my advantage. A boy of the Augustus type does not run away from
+school without a reason. Probably some party was taking place
+tonight at the ancestral home, at which, tempted by the lawless
+Nugget, he had decided that his presence was necessary.
+
+I knew the house well. There had been a time, when Lord Mountry
+and I were at Oxford, when I had spent frequent week-ends there.
+Since then, owing to being abroad, I had seen little of the
+family. Now was the moment to reintroduce myself. I hailed a cab.
+
+Inductive reasoning had not played me false. There was a red
+carpet outside the house, and from within came the sounds of
+music.
+
+Lady Wroxham, the mother of Mountry and the vanishing Augustus,
+was one of those women who take things as they come. She did not
+seem surprised at seeing me.
+
+'How nice of you to come and see us,' she said. 'Somebody told me
+you were abroad. Ted is in the south of France in the yacht.
+Augustus is here. Mr Abney, his schoolmaster, let him come up for
+the night.'
+
+I perceived that Augustus had been playing a bold game. I saw the
+coaching of Ogden behind these dashing falsehoods.
+
+'You will hardly remember Sybil. She was quite a baby when you
+were here last. She is having her birthday-party this evening.'
+
+'May I go in and help?' I said.
+
+'I wish you would. They would love it.'
+
+I doubted it, but went in. A dance had just finished. Strolling
+towards me in his tightest Eton suit, his face shining with honest
+joy, was the errant Augustus, and close behind him, wearing the
+blase' air of one for whom custom has staled the pleasures of life,
+was the Little Nugget.
+
+I think they both saw me at the same moment. The effect of my
+appearance on them was illustrative of their respective characters.
+Augustus turned a deep shade of purple and fixed me with a
+horrified stare. The Nugget winked. Augustus halted and shuffled
+his feet. The Nugget strolled up and accosted me like an old
+friend.
+
+'Hello!' he said. 'How did you get here? Say, I was going to try
+and get you on the phone some old time and explain things. I've
+been pretty much on the jump since I hit London.'
+
+'You little brute!'
+
+My gleaming eye, travelling past him, met that of the Hon.
+Augustus Beckford, causing that youth to jump guiltily. The Nugget
+looked over his shoulder.
+
+'I guess we don't want him around if we're to talk business,' he
+said. 'I'll go and tell him to beat it.'
+
+'You'll do nothing of the kind. I don't propose to lose sight of
+either of you.'
+
+'Oh, he's all right. You don't have to worry about him. He was
+going back to the school anyway tomorrow. He only ran away to go
+to this party. Why not let him enjoy himself while he's here? I'll
+go and make a date for you to meet at the end of the show.'
+
+He approached his friend, and a short colloquy ensued, which ended
+in the latter shuffling off in the direction of the other
+revellers. Such is the buoyancy of youth that a moment later he
+was dancing a two-step with every appearance of careless enjoyment.
+The future, with its storms, seemed to have slipped from his mind.
+
+'That's all right,' said the Nugget, returning to me. 'He's
+promised he won't duck away. You'll find him somewhere around
+whenever you care to look for him. Now we can talk.'
+
+'I hardly like to trespass on your valuable time,' I said. The
+airy way in which this demon boy handled what should have been--to
+him--an embarrassing situation irritated me. For all the authority
+I seemed to have over him I might have been the potted palm
+against which he was leaning.
+
+'That's all right.' Everything appeared to be all right with him.
+'This sort of thing does not appeal to me. Don't be afraid of
+spoiling my evening. I only came because Becky was so set on it.
+Dancing bores me pallid, so let's get somewhere where we can sit
+down and talk.'
+
+I was beginning to feel that a children's party was the right
+place for me. Sam Fisher had treated me as a child, and so did the
+Little Nugget. That I was a responsible person, well on in my
+thirty-first year, with a narrow escape from death and a hopeless
+love-affair on my record, seemed to strike neither of them. I
+followed my companion to a secluded recess with the utmost
+meekness.
+
+He leaned back and crossed his legs.
+
+'Got a cigarette?'
+
+'I have not got a cigarette, and, if I had, I wouldn't give it to
+you.'
+
+He regarded me tolerantly.
+
+'Got a grouch tonight, haven't you? You seem all flittered up
+about something. What's the trouble? Sore about my not showing up
+at your apartment? I'll explain that all right.'
+
+'I shall be glad to listen.'
+
+'It's like this. It suddenly occurred to me that a day or two one
+way or the other wasn't going to affect our deal and that, while I
+was about it, I might just as well see a bit of London before I
+left. I suggested it to Becky, and the idea made the biggest kind
+of a hit with him. I found he had only been in an automobile once
+in his life. Can you beat it? I've had one of my own ever since
+I was a kid. Well, naturally, it was up to me to blow him to a
+joy-ride, and that's where the money went.'
+
+'Where the money went?'
+
+'Sure. I've got two dollars left, and that's all. It wasn't
+altogether the automobiling. It was the meals that got away with
+my roll. Say, that kid Beckford is one swell feeder. He's wrapping
+himself around the eats all the time. I guess it's not smoking
+that does it. I haven't the appetite I used to have. Well, that's
+how it was, you see. But I'm through now. Cough up the fare and
+I'll make the trip tomorrow. Mother'll be tickled to death to see
+me.'
+
+'She won't see you. We're going back to the school tomorrow.'
+
+He looked at me incredulously.
+
+'What's that? Going back to school?'
+
+'I've altered my plans.'
+
+'I'm not going back to any old school. You daren't take me.
+Where'll you be if I tell the hot-air merchant about our deal and
+you slipping me the money and all that?'
+
+'Tell him what you like. He won't believe it.'
+
+He thought this over, and its truth came home to him. The
+complacent expression left his face.
+
+'What's the matter with you? Are you dippy, or what? You get me
+away up to London, and the first thing that happens when I'm here
+is that you want to take me back. You make me tired.'
+
+It was borne in upon me that there was something in his point of
+view. My sudden change of mind must have seemed inexplicable to
+him. And, having by a miracle succeeded in finding him, I was in a
+mood to be generous. I unbent.
+
+'Ogden, old sport,' I said cordially, I think we've both had all
+we want of this children's party. You're bored and if I stop on
+another half hour I may be called on to entertain these infants
+with comic songs. We men of the world are above this sort of
+thing. Get your hat and coat and I'll take you to a show. We can
+discuss business later over a bit of supper.'
+
+The gloom of his countenance melted into a pleased smile.
+
+'You said something that time!' he observed joyfully; and we slunk
+away to get our hats, the best of friends. A note for Augustus
+Beckford, requesting his presence at Waterloo Station at ten
+minutes past twelve on the following morning, I left with the
+butler. There was a certain informality about my methods which I
+doubt if Mr Abney would have approved, but I felt that I could
+rely on Augustus.
+
+Much may be done by kindness. By the time the curtain fell on the
+musical comedy which we had attended all was peace between the
+Nugget and myself. Supper cemented our friendship, and we drove
+back to my rooms on excellent terms with one another. Half an hour
+later he was snoring in the spare room, while I smoked contentedly
+before the fire in the sitting-room.
+
+I had not been there five minutes when the bell rang. Smith was in
+bed, so I went to the door myself and found Mr Fisher on the mat.
+
+My feeling of benevolence towards all created things, the result
+of my successful handling of the Little Nugget, embraced Sam. I
+invited him in.
+
+'Well,' I said, when I had given him a cigar and filled his glass,
+'and how have you been getting on, Mr Fisher? Any luck?'
+
+He shook his head at me reproachfully.
+
+'Young man, you're deep. I've got to hand it to you. I
+underestimated you. You're very deep.'
+
+'Approbation from Smooth Sam Fisher is praise indeed. But why
+these stately compliments?'
+
+'You took me in, young man. I don't mind owning it. When you told
+me the Nugget had gone astray, I lapped it up like a babe. And all
+the time you were putting one over on me. Well, well!'
+
+'But he had gone astray, Mr Fisher.'
+
+He knocked the ash off his cigar. He wore a pained look.
+
+'You needn't keep it up, sonny. I happened to be standing within
+three yards of you when you got into a cab with him in Shaftesbury
+Avenue.'
+
+I laughed.
+
+'Well, if that's the case, let there be no secrets between us.
+He's asleep in the next room.'
+
+Sam leaned forward earnestly and tapped me on the knee.
+
+'Young man, this is a critical moment. This is where, if you
+aren't careful, you may undo all the good work you have done by
+getting chesty and thinking that, because you've won out so far,
+you're the whole show. Believe me, the difficult part is to come,
+and it's right here that you need an experienced man to work in
+with you. Let me in on this and leave the negotiations with old
+man Ford to me. You would only make a mess of them. I've handled
+this kind of thing a dozen times, and I know just how to act. You
+won't regret taking me on as a partner. You won't lose a cent by
+it. I can work him for just double what you would get, even
+supposing you didn't make a mess of the deal and get nothing.'
+
+'It's very good of you, but there won't be any negotiations with
+Mr Ford. I am taking the boy back to Sanstead, as I told you.' I
+caught his pained eye. 'I'm afraid you don't believe me.'
+
+He drew at his cigar without replying.
+
+It is a human weakness to wish to convince those who doubt us,
+even if their opinion is not intrinsically valuable. I remembered
+that I had Cynthia's letter in my pocket. I produced it as exhibit
+A in my evidence and read it to him.
+
+Sam listened carefully.
+
+'I see,' he said. 'Who wrote that?'
+
+'Never mind. A friend of mine.'
+
+I returned the letter to my pocket.
+
+'I was going to have sent him over to Monaco, but I altered my
+plans. Something interfered.'
+
+'What?'
+
+'I might call it coincidence, if you know what that means.'
+
+'And you are really going to take him back to the school?'
+
+'I am.'
+
+'We shall travel back together,' he said. 'I had hoped I had seen
+the last of the place. The English countryside may be delightful
+in the summer, but for winter give me London. However,' he sighed
+resignedly, and rose from his chair, 'I will say good-bye till
+tomorrow. What train do you catch?'
+
+'Do you mean to say,' I demanded, 'that you have the nerve to come
+back to Sanstead after what you have told me about yourself?'
+
+'You entertain some idea of exposing me to Mr Abney? Forget it,
+young man. We are both in glass houses. Don't let us throw stones.
+Besides, would he believe it? What proof have you?'
+
+I had thought this argument tolerably sound when I had used it on
+the Nugget. Now that it was used on myself I realized its
+soundness even more thoroughly. My hands were tied.
+
+'Yes,' said Sam, 'tomorrow, after our little jaunt to London, we
+shall all resume the quiet, rural life once more.'
+
+He beamed expansively upon me from the doorway.
+
+'However, even the quiet, rural life has its interest. I guess we
+shan't be dull!' he said.
+
+I believed him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 11
+
+
+Considering the various handicaps under which he laboured notably
+a cold in the head, a fear of the Little Nugget, and a reverence
+for the aristocracy--Mr Abney's handling of the situation, when
+the runaways returned to school, bordered on the masterly. Any sort
+of physical punishment being out of the question--especially in the
+case of the Nugget, who would certainly have retaliated with a bout
+of window-breaking--he had to fall back on oratory, and he did this
+to such effect that, when he had finished, Augustus wept openly and
+was so subdued that he did not ask a single question for nearly three
+days.
+
+One result of the adventure was that Ogden's bed was moved to a
+sort of cubby-hole adjoining my room. In the house, as originally
+planned, this had evidently been a dressing-room. Under Mr Abney's
+rule it had come to be used as a general repository for lumber. My
+boxes were there, and a portmanteau of Glossop's. It was an
+excellent place in which to bestow a boy in quest of whom
+kidnappers might break in by night. The window was too small to
+allow a man to pass through, and the only means of entrance was by
+way of my room. By night, at any rate, the Nugget's safety seemed
+to be assured.
+
+The curiosity of the small boy, fortunately, is not lasting. His
+active mind lives mainly in the present. It was not many days,
+therefore, before the excitement caused by Buck's raid and the
+Nugget's disappearance began to subside. Within a week both
+episodes had been shelved as subjects of conversation, and the
+school had settled down to its normal humdrum life.
+
+To me, however, there had come a period of mental unrest more
+acute than I had ever experienced. My life, for the past five
+years, had run in so smooth a stream that, now that I found myself
+tossed about in the rapids, I was bewildered. It was a peculiar
+aggravation of the difficulty of my position that in my world, the
+little world of Sanstead House, there should be but one woman, and
+she the very one whom, if I wished to recover my peace of mind, it
+was necessary for me to avoid.
+
+My feelings towards Cynthia at this time defied my powers of
+analysis. There were moments when I clung to the memory of her,
+when she seemed the only thing solid and safe in a world of chaos,
+and moments, again, when she was a burden crushing me. There were
+days when I would give up the struggle and let myself drift, and
+days when I would fight myself inch by inch. But every day found
+my position more hopeless than the last.
+
+At night sometimes, as I lay awake, I would tell myself that if
+only I could see her or even hear from her the struggle would be
+easier. It was her total disappearance from my life that made it
+so hard for me. I had nothing to help me to fight.
+
+And then, one morning, as if in answer to my thoughts her letter
+came.
+
+The letter startled me. It was as if there had been some
+telepathic communion between us.
+
+It was very short, almost formal:
+
+'MY DEAR PETER--I want to ask you a question. I can put it quite
+shortly. It is this. Are your feelings towards me still the same?
+I don't tell you why I ask this. I simply ask it. Whatever your
+answer is, it cannot affect our friendship, so be quite candid.
+CYNTHIA.'
+
+I sat down there and then to write my reply. The letter, coming
+when it did and saying what it said, had affected me profoundly.
+It was like an unexpected reinforcement in a losing battle. It
+filled me with a glow of self-confidence. I felt strong again,
+able to fight and win. My mood bore me away, and I poured out my
+whole heart to her. I told her that my feelings had not altered,
+that I loved her and nobody but her. It was a letter, I can see,
+looking back, born of fretted nerves; but at the time I had no
+such criticism to make. It seemed to me a true expression of my
+real feelings.
+
+That the fight was not over because in my moment of exaltation I
+had imagined that I had conquered myself was made uncomfortably
+plain to me by the thrill that ran through me when, returning from
+posting my letter, I met Audrey. The sight of her reminded me that
+a reinforcement is only a reinforcement, a help towards victory,
+not victory itself.
+
+For the first time I found myself feeling resentful towards her.
+There was no reason in my resentment. It would not have borne
+examination. But it was there, and its presence gave me support. I
+found myself combating the thrill the sight of her had caused, and
+looking at her with a critical and hostile eye. Who was she that
+she should enslave a man against his will? Fascination exists only
+in the imagination of the fascinated. If he have the strength to
+deny the fascination and convince himself that it does not exist,
+he is saved. It is purely a matter of willpower and calm
+reasonableness. There must have been sturdy, level-headed Egyptian
+citizens who could not understand what people saw to admire in
+Cleopatra.
+
+Thus reasoning, I raised my hat, uttered a crisp 'Good morning',
+and passed on, the very picture of the brisk man of affairs.
+
+'Peter!'
+
+Even the brisk man of affairs must stop when spoken to. Otherwise,
+apart from any question of politeness, it looks as if he were
+running away.
+
+Her face was still wearing the faint look of surprise which my
+manner had called forth.
+
+'You're in a great hurry.'
+
+I had no answer. She did not appear to expect one.
+
+We moved towards the house in silence, to me oppressive silence.
+The force of her personality was beginning to beat against my
+defences, concerning the stability of which, under pressure, a
+certain uneasiness troubled my mind.
+
+'Are you worried about anything, Peter?' she said at last.
+
+'No,' I said. 'Why?'
+
+'I was afraid you might be.'
+
+I felt angry with myself. I was mismanaging this thing in the most
+idiotic way. Instead of this bovine silence, gay small-talk, the
+easy eloquence, in fact, of the brisk man of affairs should have
+been my policy. No wonder Smooth Sam Fisher treated me as a child.
+My whole bearing was that of a sulky school-boy.
+
+The silence became more oppressive.
+
+We reached the house. In the hall we parted, she to upper regions,
+I to my classroom. She did not look at me. Her face was cold and
+offended.
+
+One is curiously inconsistent. Having created what in the
+circumstances was a most desirable coldness between Audrey and
+myself, I ought to have been satisfied. Reason told me that this
+was the best thing that could have happened. Yet joy was one of
+the few emotions which I did not feel during the days which
+followed. My brief moment of clear-headedness had passed, and with
+it the exhilaration that had produced the letter to Cynthia and
+the resentment which had helped me to reason calmly with myself on
+the intrinsic nature of fascination in woman. Once more Audrey
+became the centre of my world. But our friendship, that elusive
+thing which had contrived to exist side by side with my love, had
+vanished. There was a breach between us which widened daily. Soon
+we hardly spoke.
+
+Nothing, in short, could have been more eminently satisfactory,
+and the fact that I regretted it is only a proof of the essential
+weakness of my character.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 12
+
+
+I
+
+In those grey days there was one thought, of the many that
+occupied my mind, which brought with it a certain measure of
+consolation. It was the reflection that this state of affairs
+could not last for ever. The school term was drawing to a close.
+Soon I should be free from the propinquity which paralysed my
+efforts to fight. I was resolved that the last day of term should
+end for ever my connection with Sanstead House and all that was in
+it. Mrs Ford must find some other minion. If her happiness
+depended on the recovery of the Little Nugget, she must learn to
+do without happiness, like the rest of the inhabitants of this
+horrible world.
+
+Meanwhile, however, I held myself to be still on duty. By what
+tortuous processes of thought I had arrived at the conclusion I do
+not know, but I considered myself responsible to Audrey for the
+safeguarding of the Little Nugget, and no altered relations
+between us could affect my position. Perhaps mixed up with this
+attitude of mind, was the less altruistic wish to foil Smooth Sam.
+His continued presence at the school was a challenge to me.
+
+Sam's behaviour puzzled me. I do not know exactly what I expected
+him to do, but I certainly did not expect him to do nothing. Yet
+day followed day, and still he made no move. He was the very model
+of a butler. But our dealings with one another in London had left
+me vigilant, and his inaction did not disarm me. It sprang from
+patience, not from any weakening of purpose or despair of success.
+Sooner or later I knew he would act, swiftly and suddenly, with a
+plan perfected in every detail.
+
+But when he made his attack it was the very simplicity of his
+methods that tricked me, and only pure chance defeated him.
+
+I have said that it was the custom of the staff of masters at
+Sanstead House School--in other words, of every male adult in the
+house except Mr Fisher himself--to assemble in Mr Abney's study
+after dinner of an evening to drink coffee. It was a ceremony,
+like most of the ceremonies at an establishment such as a school,
+where things are run on a schedule, which knew of no variation.
+Sometimes Mr Abney would leave us immediately after the ceremony,
+but he never omitted to take his part in it first.
+
+On this particular evening, for the first time since the beginning
+of the term, I was seized with a prejudice against coffee. I had
+been sleeping badly for several nights, and I decided that
+abstention from coffee might remedy this.
+
+I waited, for form's sake, till Glossop and Mr Abney had filled
+their cups, then went to my room, where I lay down in the dark to
+wrestle with a more than usually pronounced fit of depression
+which had descended upon me. Solitude and darkness struck me as
+the suitable setting for my thoughts.
+
+At this moment Smooth Sam Fisher had no place in my meditations.
+My mind was not occupied with him at all. When, therefore, the
+door, which had been ajar, began to open slowly, I did not become
+instantly on the alert. Perhaps it was some sound, barely audible,
+that aroused me from my torpor and set my blood tingling with
+anticipation. Perhaps it was the way the door was opening. An
+honest draught does not move a door furtively, in jerks.
+
+I sat up noiseless, tense, and alert. And then, very quietly,
+somebody entered the room.
+
+There was only one person in Sanstead House who would enter a room
+like that. I was amused. The impudence of the thing tickled me. It
+seemed so foreign to Mr Fisher's usual cautious methods. This
+strolling in and helping oneself was certainly kidnapping _de
+luxe_. In the small hours I could have understood it; but at
+nine o'clock at night, with Glossop, Mr Abney and myself awake and
+liable to be met at any moment on the stairs, it was absurd. I
+marvelled at Smooth Sam's effrontery.
+
+I lay still. I imagined that, being in, he would switch on the
+electric light. He did, and I greeted him pleasantly.
+
+'And what can I do for _you_, Mr Fisher?'
+
+For a man who had learned to control himself in difficult
+situations he took the shock badly. He uttered a startled
+exclamation and spun round, open-mouthed.
+
+I could not help admiring the quickness with which he recovered
+himself. Almost immediately he was the suave, chatty Sam Fisher
+who had unbosomed his theories and dreams to me in the train to
+London.
+
+'I quit,' he said pleasantly. 'The episode is closed. I am a man
+of peace, and I take it that you would not keep on lying quietly
+on that bed while I went into the other room and abstracted our
+young friend? Unless you have changed your mind again, would a
+fifty-fifty offer tempt you?'
+
+'Not an inch.'
+
+'Just so. I merely asked.'
+
+'And how about Mr Abney, in any case? Suppose we met him on the
+stairs?'
+
+'We should not meet him on the stairs,' said Sam confidently. 'You
+did not take coffee tonight, I gather?'
+
+'I didn't--no. Why?'
+
+He jerked his head resignedly.
+
+'Can you beat it! I ask you, young man, could I have foreseen
+that, after drinking coffee every night regularly for two months,
+you would pass it up tonight of all nights? You certainly are my
+jinx, sonny. You have hung the Indian sign on me all right.'
+
+His words had brought light to me.
+
+'Did you drug the coffee?'
+
+'Did I! I fixed it so that one sip would have an insomnia patient
+in dreamland before he had time to say "Good night". That stuff
+Rip Van Winkle drank had nothing on my coffee. And all wasted!
+Well, well!'
+
+He turned towards the door.
+
+'Shall I leave the light on, or would you prefer it off?'
+
+'On please. I might fall asleep in the dark.'
+
+'Not you! And, if you did, you would dream that I was there, and
+wake up. There are moments, young man, when you bring me pretty
+near to quitting and taking to honest work.'
+
+He paused.
+
+'But not altogether. I have still a shot or two in my locker. We
+shall see what we shall see. I am not dead yet. Wait!'
+
+'I will, and some day, when I am walking along Piccadilly, a
+passing automobile will splash me with mud. A heavily furred
+plutocrat will stare haughtily at me from the tonneau, and with a
+start of surprise I shall recognize--'
+
+'Stranger things have happened. Be flip while you can, sonny. You
+win so far, but this hoodoo of mine can't last for ever.'
+
+He passed from the room with a certain sad dignity. A moment later
+he reappeared.
+
+'A thought strikes me,' he said. 'The fifty-fifty proposition does
+not impress you. Would it make things easier if I were to offer my
+cooperation for a mere quarter of the profit?'
+
+'Not in the least.'
+
+'It's a handsome offer.'
+
+'Wonderfully. I'm afraid I'm not dealing on any terms.'
+
+He left the room, only to return once more. His head appeared,
+staring at me round the door, in a disembodied way, like the
+Cheshire Cat.
+
+'You won't say later on I didn't give you your chance?' he said
+anxiously.
+
+He vanished again, permanently this time. I heard his steps
+passing down the stairs.
+
+
+II
+
+We had now arrived at the last week of term, at the last days of
+the last week. The holiday spirit was abroad in the school. Among
+the boys it took the form of increased disorderliness. Boys who
+had hitherto only made Glossop bellow now made him perspire and
+tear his hair as well. Boys who had merely spilt ink now broke
+windows. The Little Nugget abandoned cigarettes in favour of an
+old clay pipe which he had found in the stables.
+
+As for me, I felt like a spent swimmer who sees the shore almost
+within his reach. Audrey avoided me when she could, and was
+frigidly polite when we met. But I suffered less now. A few more
+days, and I should have done with this phase of my life for ever,
+and Audrey would once more become a memory.
+
+Complete quiescence marked the deportment of Mr Fisher during
+these days. He did not attempt to repeat his last effort. The
+coffee came to the study unmixed with alien drugs. Sam, like
+lightning, did not strike twice in the same place. He had the
+artist's soul, and disliked patching up bungled work. If he made
+another move, it would, I knew, be on entirely fresh lines.
+
+Ignoring the fact that I had had all the luck, I was inclined to
+be self-satisfied when I thought of Sam. I had pitted my wits
+against his, and I had won. It was a praiseworthy performance for
+a man who had done hitherto nothing particular in his life.
+
+If all the copybook maxims which had been drilled into me in my
+childhood and my early disaster with Audrey had not been
+sufficient, I ought to have been warned by Sam's advice not to
+take victory for granted till the fight was over. As Sam had said,
+his luck would turn sooner or later.
+
+One realizes these truths in theory, but the practical application
+of them seldom fails to come as a shock. I received mine on the
+last morning but one of the term.
+
+Shortly after breakfast a message was brought to me that Mr Abney
+would like to see me in his study. I went without any sense of
+disaster to come. Most of the business of the school was discussed
+in the study after breakfast, and I imagined that the matter had
+to do with some detail of the morrow's exodus.
+
+I found Mr Abney pacing the room, a look of annoyance on his face.
+At the desk, her back to me, Audrey was writing. It was part of
+her work to take charge of the business correspondence of the
+establishment. She did not look round when I came in, nor when Mr
+Abney spoke my name, but went on writing as if I did not exist.
+
+There was a touch of embarrassment in Mr Abney's manner, for which
+I could not at first account. He was stately, but with the rather
+defensive stateliness which marked his announcements that he was
+about to pop up to London and leave me to do his work. He coughed
+once or twice before proceeding to the business of the moment.
+
+'Ah, Mr Burns,' he said at length, 'might I ask if your plans for
+the holidays, the--ah--earlier part of the holidays are settled?
+No? ah--excellent.'
+
+He produced a letter from the heap of papers on the desk.
+
+'Ah--excellent. That simplifies matters considerably. I have no
+right to ask what I am about to--ah--in fact ask. I have no claim
+on your time in the holidays. But, in the circumstances, perhaps
+you may see your way to doing me a considerable service. I have
+received a letter from Mr Elmer Ford which puts me in a position
+of some difficulty. It is not my wish--indeed, it is foreign to my
+policy--to disoblige the parents of the boys who are entrusted to
+my--ah--care, and I should like, if possible, to do what Mr Ford
+asks. It appears that certain business matters call him to the
+north of England for a few days, this rendering it impossible for
+him to receive little Ogden tomorrow. It is not my custom to
+criticize parents who have paid me the compliment of placing their
+sons at the most malleable and important period of their lives, in
+my--ah--charge, but I must say that a little longer notice would
+have been a--in fact, a convenience. But Mr Ford, like so many of
+his countrymen, is what I believe is called a hustler. He does it
+now, as the expression is. In short, he wishes to leave little
+Ogden at the school for the first few days of the holidays, and I
+should be extremely obliged, Mr Burns, if you should find it
+possible to stay here and--ah--look after him.'
+
+Audrey stopped writing and turned in her chair, the first
+intimation she had given that she had heard Mr Abney's remarks.
+
+'It really won't be necessary to trouble Mr Burns,' she said,
+without looking at me. 'I can take care of Ogden very well by
+myself.'
+
+'In the case of an--ah--ordinary boy, Mrs Sheridan, I should not
+hesitate to leave you in sole charge as you have very kindly
+offered to stay and help me in this matter. But we must recollect
+not only--I speak frankly--not only the peculiar--ah--disposition
+of this particular lad, but also the fact that those ruffians who
+visited the house that night may possibly seize the opportunity to
+make a fresh attack. I should not feel--ah--justified in
+thrusting so heavy a responsibility upon you.'
+
+There was reason in what he said. Audrey made no reply. I heard
+her pen tapping on the desk and deduced her feelings. I, myself,
+felt like a prisoner who, having filed through the bars of his
+cell, is removed to another on the eve of escape. I had so braced
+myself up to endure till the end of term and no longer that this
+postponement of the day of release had a crushing effect.
+
+Mr Abney coughed and lowered his voice confidentially.
+
+'I would stay myself, but the fact is, I am called to London on
+very urgent business, and shall be unable to return for a day or
+so. My late pupil, the--ah--the Earl of Buxton, has been--I can
+rely on your discretion, Mr Burns--has been in trouble with the
+authorities at Eton, and his guardian, an old college friend of
+mine--the--in fact, the Duke of Bessborough, who, rightly or wrongly,
+places--er--considerable reliance on my advice, is anxious to consult
+me on the matter. I shall return as soon as possible, but you will
+readily understand that, in the circumstances, my time will not be my
+own. I must place myself unreservedly at--ah--Bessborough's disposal.'
+
+He pressed the bell.
+
+'In the event of your observing any suspicious characters in
+the neighbourhood, you have the telephone and can instantly
+communicate with the police. And you will have the assistance of--'
+
+The door opened and Smooth Sam Fisher entered.
+
+'You rang, sir?'
+
+'Ah! Come in, White, and close the door. I have something to say
+to you. I have just been informing Mr Burns that Mr Ford has
+written asking me to allow his son to stay on at the school for
+the first few days of the vacation.'
+
+He turned to Audrey.
+
+'You will doubtless be surprised, Mrs Sheridan, and
+possibly--ah--somewhat startled, to learn the peculiar nature of
+White's position at Sanstead House. You have no objection to my
+informing Mrs Sheridan, White, in consideration of the fact that you
+will be working together in this matter? Just so. White is a detective
+in the employment of Pinkerton's Agency. Mr Ford'--a slight frown
+appeared on his lofty brow--'Mr Ford obtained his present situation
+for him in order that he might protect his son in the event
+of--ah--in fact, any attempt to remove him.'
+
+I saw Audrey start. A quick flush came into her face. She uttered
+a little exclamation of astonishment.
+
+'Just so,' said Mr Abney, by way of comment on this. 'You are
+naturally surprised. The whole arrangement is excessively unusual,
+and, I may say--ah--disturbing. However, you have your duty to
+fulfil to your employer, White, and you will, of course, remain
+here with the boy.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+I found myself looking into a bright brown eye that gleamed with
+genial triumph. The other was closed. In the exuberance of the
+moment, Smooth Sam had had the bad taste to wink at me.
+
+'You will have Mr Burns to help you, White. He has kindly
+consented to postpone his departure during the short period in
+which I shall be compelled to be absent.'
+
+I had no recollection of having given any kind consent, but I was
+very willing to have it assumed, and I was glad to see that Mr
+Fisher, though Mr Abney did not observe it, was visibly taken
+aback by this piece of information. But he made one of his swift
+recoveries.
+
+'It is very kind of Mr Burns,' he said in his fruitiest voice,
+'but I hardly think it will be necessary to put him to the
+inconvenience of altering his plans. I am sure that Mr Ford would
+prefer the entire charge of the affair to be in my hands.'
+
+He had not chosen a happy moment for the introduction of the
+millionaire's name. Mr Abney was a man of method, who hated any
+dislocation of the fixed routine of life; and Mr Ford's letter had
+upset him. The Ford family, father and son, were just then
+extremely unpopular with him.
+
+He crushed Sam.
+
+'What Mr Ford would or would not prefer is, in this particular
+matter, beside the point. The responsibility for the boy, while he
+remains on the school premises, is--ah--mine, and I shall take
+such precautions as seem fit and adequate to--him--myself,
+irrespective of those which, in your opinion, might suggest
+themselves to Mr Ford. As I cannot be here myself, owing
+to--ah--urgent business in London, I shall certainly take
+advantage of Mr Burns's kind offer to remain as my deputy.'
+
+He paused and blew his nose, his invariable custom after these
+occasional outbursts of his. Sam had not wilted beneath the storm.
+He waited, unmoved, till all was over:
+
+'I am afraid I shall have to be more explicit,' he said: 'I had
+hoped to avoid scandal and unpleasantness, but I see it is
+impossible.'
+
+Mr Abney's astonished face emerged slowly from behind his
+handkerchief.
+
+'I quite agree with you, sir, that somebody should be here to help
+me look after the boy, but not Mr Burns. I am sorry to have to say
+it, but I do not trust Mr Burns.'
+
+Mr Abney's look of astonishment deepened. I, too, was surprised.
+It was so unlike Sam to fling away his chances on a blundering
+attack like this.
+
+'What do you mean?' demanded Mr Abney.
+
+'Mr Burns is after the boy himself. He came to kidnap him.'
+
+Mr Abney, as he had every excuse for doing, grunted with
+amazement. I achieved the ringing laugh of amused innocence. It
+was beyond me to fathom Sam's mind. He could not suppose that any
+credence would be given to his wild assertion. It seemed to me
+that disappointment had caused him momentarily to lose his head.
+
+'Are you mad, White?'
+
+'No, sir. I can prove what I say. If I had not gone to London with
+him that last time, he'd have got away with the boy then, for
+certain.'
+
+For an instant an uneasy thought came to me that he might have
+something in reserve, something unknown to me, which had
+encouraged him to this direct attack. I dismissed the notion.
+There could be nothing.
+
+Mr Abney had turned to me with a look of hopeless bewilderment. I
+raised my eyebrows.
+
+'Ridiculous,' I said.
+
+That this was the only comment seemed to be Mr Abney's view. He
+turned on Sam with the pettish anger of the mild man.
+
+'What do you _mean_, White, by coming to me with such a
+preposterous story?'
+
+'I don't say Mr Burns wished to kidnap the boy in the ordinary
+way,' said Sam imperturbably, 'like those men who came that night.
+He had a special reason. Mr and Mrs Ford, as of course you know,
+sir, are divorced. Mr Burns was trying to get the boy away and
+take him back to his mother.'
+
+I heard Audrey give a little gasp. Mr Abney's anger became
+modified by a touch of doubt. I could see that these words, by
+lifting the accusation from the wholly absurd to the somewhat
+plausible, had impressed him. Once again I was gripped by the
+uneasy feeling that Sam had an unsuspected card to play. This
+might be bluff, but it had a sinister ring.
+
+'You might say,' went on Sam smoothly, 'that this was creditable
+to Mr Burns's heart. But, from my employer's viewpoint and yours,
+too, it was a chivalrous impulse that needed to be checked. Will
+you please read this, sir?'
+
+He handed a letter to Mr Abney, who adjusted his glasses and began
+to read--at first in a detached, judicial way, then with startled
+eagerness.
+
+'I felt it necessary to search among Mr Burns's papers, sir, in
+the hope of finding--'
+
+And then I knew what he had found. From the first the blue-grey
+notepaper had had a familiar look. I recognized it now. It was
+Cynthia's letter, that damning document which I had been mad
+enough to read to him in London. His prediction that the luck
+would change had come amazingly true.
+
+I caught Sam's eye. For the second time he was unfeeling enough to
+wink. It was a rich, comprehensive wink, as expressive and joyous
+as a college yell.
+
+Mr Abney had absorbed the letter and was struggling for speech. I
+could appreciate his emotion. If he had not actually been
+nurturing a viper in his bosom, he had come, from his point of
+view, very near it. Of all men, a schoolmaster necessarily looks
+with the heartiest dislike on the would-be kidnapper.
+
+As for me, my mind was in a whirl. I was entirely without a plan,
+without the very beginnings of a plan, to help me cope with this
+appalling situation. I was crushed by a sense of the utter
+helplessness of my position. To denounce Sam was impossible; to
+explain my comparative innocence was equally out of the question.
+The suddenness of the onslaught had deprived me of the power of
+coherent thought. I was routed.
+
+Mr Abney was speaking.
+
+'Is your name Peter, Mr Burns?'
+
+I nodded. Speech was beyond me.
+
+'This letter is written by--ah--by a lady. It asks you in set
+terms to--ah--hasten to kidnap Ogden Ford. Do you wish me to read
+it to you? Or do you confess to knowing its contents?'
+
+He waited for a reply. I had none to make.
+
+'You do not deny that you came to Sanstead House for the
+deliberate purpose of kidnapping Ogden Ford?'
+
+I had nothing to say. I caught a glimpse of Audrey's face, cold
+and hard, and shifted my eyes quickly. Mr Abney gulped. His face
+wore the reproachful expression of a cod-fish when jerked out of
+the water on the end of a line. He stared at me with pained
+repulsion. That scoundrelly old buccaneer Sam did the same. He
+looked like a shocked bishop.
+
+'I--ah--trusted you implicitly,' said Mr Abney.
+
+Sam wagged his head at me reproachfully. With a flicker of spirit
+I glared at him. He only wagged the more.
+
+It was, I think, the blackest moment of my life. A wild desire for
+escape on any terms surged over me. That look on Audrey's face was
+biting into my brain like an acid.
+
+'I will go and pack,' I said.
+
+'This is the end of all things,' I said to myself.
+
+I had suspended my packing in order to sit on my bed and brood. I
+was utterly depressed. There are crises in a man's life when
+Reason fails to bring the slightest consolation. In vain I tried
+to tell myself that what had happened was, in essence, precisely
+what, twenty-four hours ago, I was so eager to bring about. It
+amounted to this, that now, at last, Audrey had definitely gone
+out of my life. From now on I could have no relations with her of
+any sort. Was not this exactly what, twenty-four hours ago, I had
+wished? Twenty-four hours ago had I not said to myself that I
+would go away and never see her again? Undoubtedly. Nevertheless,
+I sat there and groaned in spirit.
+
+It was the end of all things.
+
+A mild voice interrupted my meditations.
+
+'Can I help?'
+
+Sam was standing in the doorway, beaming on me with invincible
+good-humour.
+
+'You are handling them wrong. Allow me. A moment more and you
+would have ruined the crease.'
+
+I became aware of a pair of trousers hanging limply in my grasp.
+He took them from me, and, folding them neatly, placed them in my
+trunk.
+
+'Don't get all worked up about it, sonny,' he said. 'It's the
+fortune of war. Besides, what does it matter to you? Judging by
+that very snug apartment in London, you have quite enough money
+for a young man. Losing your job here won't break you. And, if
+you're worrying about Mrs Ford and her feelings, don't! I guess
+she's probably forgotten all about the Nugget by this time. So
+cheer up. _You're_ all right!'
+
+He stretched out a hand to pat me on the shoulder, then thought
+better of it and drew it back.
+
+'Think of _my_ happiness, if you want something to make you
+feel good. Believe me, young man, it's _some_. I could sing!
+Gee, when I think that it's all plain sailing now and no more
+troubles, I could dance! You don't know what it means to me,
+putting through this deal. I wish you knew Mary! That's her name.
+You must come and visit us, sonny, when we're fixed up in the
+home. There'll always be a knife and fork for _you_. We'll
+make you one of the family! Lord! I can see the place as plain as
+I can see you. Nice frame house with a good porch.... Me in a
+rocker in my shirt-sleeves, smoking a cigar and reading the
+baseball news; Mary in another rocker, mending my socks and
+nursing the cat! We'll sure have a cat. Two cats. I like cats. And
+a goat in the front garden. Say, it'll be _great!_'
+
+And on the word, emotion overcoming prudence, he brought his fat
+hand down with a resounding smack on my bowed shoulders.
+
+There is a limit. I bounded to my feet.
+
+'Get out!' I yelped. 'Get out of here!'
+
+'Sure,' he replied agreeably. He rose without haste and regarded
+me compassionately. 'Cheer up, son! Be a sport!'
+
+There are moments when the best of men become melodramatic. I
+offer this as excuse for my next observation.
+
+Clenching my fists and glaring at him, I cried, 'I'll foil you
+yet, you hound!'
+
+Some people have no soul for the dramatic. He smiled tolerantly.
+
+'Sure,' he said. 'Anything you like, Desperate Desmond. Enjoy
+yourself!'
+
+And he left me.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 13
+
+
+I evacuated Sanstead House unostentatiously, setting off on foot
+down the long drive. My luggage, I gathered, was to follow me to
+the station in a cart. I was thankful to Providence for the small
+mercy that the boys were in their classrooms and consequently
+unable to ask me questions. Augustus Beckford alone would have
+handled the subject of my premature exit in a manner calculated to
+bleach my hair.
+
+It was a wonderful morning. The sky was an unclouded blue, and a
+fresh breeze was blowing in from the sea. I think that something
+of the exhilaration of approaching spring must have stirred me,
+for quite suddenly the dull depression with which I had started my
+walk left me, and I found myself alert and full of schemes.
+
+Why should I feebly withdraw from the struggle? Why should I give
+in to Smooth Sam in this tame way? The memory of that wink came
+back to me with a tonic effect. I would show him that I was still
+a factor in the game. If the house was closed to me, was there not
+the 'Feathers'? I could lie in hiding there, and observe his
+movements unseen.
+
+I stopped on reaching the inn, and was on the point of entering
+and taking up my position at once, when it occurred to me that
+this would be a false move. It was possible that Sam would not
+take my departure for granted so readily as I assumed. It was
+Sam's way to do a thing thoroughly, and the probability was that,
+if he did not actually come to see me off, he would at least make
+inquiries at the station to find out if I had gone. I walked on.
+
+He was not at the station. Nor did he arrive in the cart with my
+trunk. But I was resolved to risk nothing. I bought a ticket for
+London, and boarded the London train. It had been my intention to
+leave it at Guildford and catch an afternoon train back to
+Stanstead; but it seemed to me, on reflection, that this was
+unnecessary. There was no likelihood of Sam making any move in the
+matter of the Nugget until the following day. I could take my time
+about returning.
+
+I spent the night in London, and arrived at Sanstead by an early
+morning train with a suit-case containing, among other things, a
+Browning pistol. I was a little ashamed of this purchase. To the
+Buck MacGinnis type of man, I suppose, a pistol is as commonplace
+a possession as a pair of shoes, but I blushed as I entered the
+gun-shop. If it had been Buck with whom I was about to deal, I
+should have felt less self-conscious. But there was something
+about Sam which made pistols ridiculous.
+
+My first act, after engaging a room at the inn and leaving my
+suit-case, was to walk to the school. Before doing anything else,
+I felt I must see Audrey and tell her the facts in the case of
+Smooth Sam. If she were on her guard, my assistance might not be
+needed. But her present state of trust in him was fatal.
+
+A school, when the boys are away, is a lonely place. The deserted
+air of the grounds, as I slipped cautiously through the trees, was
+almost eerie. A stillness brooded over everything, as if the place
+had been laid under a spell. Never before had I been so impressed
+with the isolation of Sanstead House. Anything might happen in
+this lonely spot, and the world would go on its way in ignorance.
+It was with quite distinct relief that, as I drew nearer the
+house, I caught sight of the wire of the telephone among the trees
+above my head. It had a practical, comforting look.
+
+A tradesman's cart rattled up the drive and disappeared round the
+side of the house. This reminder, also, of the outside world was
+pleasant. But I could not rid myself of the feeling that the
+atmosphere of the place was sinister. I attributed it to the fact
+that I was a spy in an enemy's country. I had to see without being
+seen. I did not imagine that Johnson, grocer, who had just passed
+in his cart, found anything wrong with the atmosphere. It was
+created for me by my own furtive attitude.
+
+Of Audrey and Ogden there were no signs. That they were out
+somewhere in the grounds this mellow spring morning I took for
+granted; but I could not make an extended search. Already I had
+come nearer to the house than was prudent.
+
+My eye caught the telephone wire again and an idea came to me. I
+would call her up from the inn and ask her to meet me. There was
+the risk that the call would be answered by Smooth Sam, but it was
+not great. Sam, unless he had thrown off his role of butler
+completely--which would be unlike the artist that he was--would be
+in the housekeeper's room, and the ringing of the telephone, which
+was in the study, would not penetrate to him.
+
+I chose a moment when dinner was likely to be over and Audrey
+might be expected to be in the drawing-room.
+
+I had deduced her movements correctly. It was her voice that
+answered the call.
+
+'This is Peter Burns speaking.'
+
+There was a perceptible pause before she replied. When she did,
+her voice was cold.
+
+'Yes?'
+
+'I want to speak to you on a matter of urgent importance.'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'I can't do it through the telephone. Will you meet me in half an
+hour's time at the gate?'
+
+'Where are you speaking from?'
+
+'The "Feathers". I am staying there.'
+
+'I thought you were in London.'
+
+'I came back. Will you meet me?'
+
+She hesitated.
+
+'Why?'
+
+'Because I have something important to say to you--important to
+you.'
+
+There was another pause.
+
+'Very well.'
+
+'In half an hour, then. Is Ogden Ford in bed?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Is his door locked?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Then lock it and bring the key with you.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'I will tell you when we meet.'
+
+'I will bring it.'
+
+'Thank you. Good-bye.'
+
+I hung up the receiver and set out at once for the school.
+
+She was waiting in the road, a small, indistinct figure in the
+darkness.
+
+'Is that you--Peter?'
+
+Her voice had hesitated at the name, as if at some obstacle. It
+was a trivial thing, but, in my present mood, it stung me.
+
+'I'm afraid I'm late. I won't keep you long. Shall we walk down
+the road? You may not have been followed, but it is as well to be
+on the safe side.'
+
+'Followed? I don't understand.'
+
+We walked a few paces and halted.
+
+'Who would follow me?'
+
+'A very eminent person of the name of Smooth Sam Fisher.'
+
+'Smooth Sam Fisher?'
+
+'Better known to you as White.'
+
+'I don't understand.'
+
+'I should be surprised if you did. I asked you to meet me here so
+that I could make you understand. The man who poses as a
+Pinkerton's detective, and is staying in the house to help you
+take care of Ogden Ford, is Smooth Sam Fisher, a professional
+kidnapper.'
+
+'But--but--'
+
+'But what proof have I? Was that what you were going to say? None.
+But I had the information from the man himself. He told me in the
+train that night going to London.'
+
+She spoke quickly. I knew from her tone that she thought she had
+detected a flaw in my story.
+
+'Why did he tell you?'
+
+'Because he needed me as an accomplice. He wanted my help. It was
+I who got Ogden away that day. Sam overheard me giving money and
+directions to him, telling him how to get away from the school and
+where to go, and he gathered--correctly--that I was in the same
+line of business as himself. He suggested a partnership which I
+was unable to accept.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'Our objects were different. My motive in kidnapping Ogden was not
+to extract a ransom.'
+
+She blazed out at me in an absolutely unexpected manner. Till now
+she had listened so calmly and asked her questions with such a
+notable absence of emotion that the outburst overwhelmed me.
+
+'Oh, I know what your motive was. There is no need to explain
+that. Isn't there any depth to which a man who thinks himself in
+love won't stoop? I suppose you told yourself you were doing
+something noble and chivalrous? A woman of her sort can trick a
+man into whatever meanness she pleases, and, just because she asks
+him, he thinks himself a kind of knight-errant. I suppose she
+told you that he had ill-treated her and didn't appreciate her
+higher self, and all that sort of thing? She looked at you with
+those big brown eyes of hers--I can see her--and drooped, and
+cried, till you were ready to do anything she asked you.'
+
+'Whom do you mean?'
+
+'Mrs Ford, of course. The woman who sent you here to steal Ogden.
+The woman who wrote you that letter.'
+
+'She did not write that letter. But never mind that. The reason
+why I wanted you to come here was to warn you against Sam Fisher.
+That was all. If there is any way in which I can help you, send
+for me. If you like, I will come and stay at the house till Mr
+Abney returns.'
+
+Before the words were out of my mouth, I saw that I had made a
+mistake. The balance of her mind was poised between suspicion and
+belief, and my offer turned the scale.
+
+'No, thank you,' she said curtly.
+
+'You don't trust me?'
+
+'Why should I? White may or may not be Sam Fisher. I shall be on
+my guard, and I thank you for telling me. But why should I trust
+you? It all hangs together. You told me you were engaged to be
+married. You come here on an errand which no man would undertake
+except for a woman, and a woman with whom he was very much in
+love. There is that letter, imploring you to steal the boy. I know
+what a man will do for a woman he is fond of. Why should I trust
+you?'
+
+'There is this. You forget that I had the opportunity to steal
+Ogden if I had wanted to. I had got him away to London. But I
+brought him back. I did it because you had told me what it meant
+to you.'
+
+She hesitated, but only for an instant. Suspicion was too strong
+for her.
+
+'I don't believe you. You brought him back because this man whom
+you call Fisher got to know of your plans. Why should you have
+done it because of me? Why should you have put my interests before
+Mrs Ford's? I am nothing to you.'
+
+For a moment a mad impulse seized me to cast away all restraint,
+to pour out the unspoken words that danced like imps in my brain,
+to make her understand, whatever the cost, my feelings towards
+her. But the thought of my letter to Cynthia checked me. That
+letter had been the irrevocable step. If I was to preserve a shred
+of self-respect I must be silent.
+
+'Very well,' I said, 'good night.' And I turned to go.
+
+'Peter!'
+
+There was something in her voice which whirled me round,
+thrilling, despite my resolution.
+
+'Are you going?'
+
+Weakness would now be my undoing. I steadied myself and answered
+abruptly.
+
+'I have said all I came to say. Good night.'
+
+I turned once more and walked quickly off towards the village. I
+came near to running. I was in the mood when flight alone can save
+a man. She did not speak again, and soon I was out of danger,
+hurrying on through the friendly darkness, beyond the reach of her
+voice.
+
+The bright light from the doorway of the 'Feathers', was the only
+illumination that relieved the blackness of the Market Square. As
+I approached, a man came out and stopped in the entrance to light
+a cigar. His back was turned towards me as he crouched to protect
+the match from the breeze, but something in his appearance seemed
+familiar.
+
+I had only a glimpse of him as he straightened himself and walked
+out of the pool of light into the Square, but it was enough.
+
+It was my much-enduring acquaintance, Mr Buck MacGinnis.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 14
+
+
+I
+
+At the receipt of custom behind the bar sat Miss Benjafield,
+stately as ever, relaxing her massive mind over a penny novelette.
+
+'Who was the man who just left, Miss Benjafield?' I asked.
+
+She marked the place with a shapely thumb and looked up.
+
+'The man? Oh, _him_! He's--why, weren't you in here, Mr Burns,
+one evening in January when--'
+
+'That American?'
+
+'That's him. What he's doing here I don't know. He disappeared
+quite a while back, and I haven't seen him since. _Nor_ want.
+Tonight up he turns again like a bad ha'penny. I'd like to know
+what he's after. No good, if you ask _me_.'
+
+Miss Benjafield's prejudices did not easily dissolve. She prided
+herself, as she frequently observed, on knowing her own mind.
+
+'Is he staying here?'
+
+'Not at the "Feathers". We're particular who we have here.'
+
+I thanked her for the implied compliment, ordered beer for the
+good of the house, and, lighting a pipe, sat down to meditate on
+this new development.
+
+The vultures were gathered together with a vengeance. Sam within,
+Buck without, it was quite like old times, with the difference
+that now, I, too, was on the wrong side of the school door.
+
+It was not hard to account for Buck's reappearance. He would, of
+course, have made it his business to get early information of Mr
+Ford's movements. It would be easy for him to discover that the
+millionaire had been called away to the north and that the Nugget
+was still an inmate of Sanstead House. And here he was preparing
+for the grand attack.
+
+I had been premature in removing Buck's name from the list of
+active combatants. Broken legs mend. I ought to have remembered
+that.
+
+His presence on the scene made, I perceived, a vast difference to
+my plan of campaign. It was at this point that my purchase of the
+Browning pistol lost its absurdity and appeared in the light of an
+acute strategic move. With Sam the only menace, I had been
+prepared to play a purely waiting game, watching proceedings from
+afar, ready to give my help if necessary. To check Buck, more
+strenuous methods were called for.
+
+My mind was made up. With Buck, that stout disciple of the frontal
+attack, in the field, there was only one place for me. I must get
+into Sanstead House and stay there on guard.
+
+Did he intend to make an offensive movement tonight? That was the
+question which occupied my mind. From the point of view of an
+opponent, there was this merit about Mr MacGinnis, that he was
+not subtle. He could be counted on with fair certainty to do
+the direct thing. Sooner or later he would make another of his
+vigorous frontal attacks upon the stronghold. The only point to be
+decided was whether he would make it that night. Would professional
+zeal cause him to omit his beauty sleep?
+
+I did not relish the idea of spending the night patrolling the
+grounds, but it was imperative that the house be protected. Then
+it occurred to me that the man for the vigil was Smooth Sam. If
+the arrival of Mr MacGinnis had complicated matters in one way, it
+had simplified them in another, for there was no more need for the
+secrecy which had been, till now, the basis of my plan of action.
+Buck's arrival made it possible for me to come out and fight in
+the open, instead of brooding over Sanstead House from afar like a
+Providence. Tomorrow I proposed to turn Sam out. Tonight I would use
+him. The thing had resolved itself into a triangular tournament,
+and Sam and Buck should play the first game.
+
+Once more I called up the house on the telephone. There was a long
+delay before a reply came. It was Mr Fisher's voice that spoke.
+Audrey, apparently, had not returned to the house immediately
+after leaving me.
+
+'Hullo!' said Sam.
+
+'Good evening, Mr Fisher.'
+
+'Gee! Is that you, young fellow-me-lad? Are you speaking from
+London?'
+
+'No. I am at the "Feathers".'
+
+He chuckled richly.
+
+'Can't tear yourself away? Hat still in the ring? Say, what's the
+use? Why not turn it up, sonny? You're only wasting your time.'
+
+'Do you sleep lightly, Mr Fisher?'
+
+'I don't get you.'
+
+'You had better do so tonight. Buck MacGinnis is back again.'
+
+There was silence at the other end of the wire. Then I heard him
+swear softly. The significance of the information had not been
+lost on Mr Fisher.
+
+'Is that straight?'
+
+'It is.'
+
+'You're not stringing me?'
+
+'Certainly not.'
+
+'You're sure it was Buck?'
+
+'Is Buck's the sort of face one forgets?'
+
+He swore again.
+
+'You seem disturbed,' I said.
+
+'Where did you see him?' asked Sam.
+
+'Coming out of the "Feathers", looking very fierce and determined.
+The Berserk blood of the MacGinnises is up. He's going to do or
+die. I'm afraid this means an all-night sitting for you, Mr
+Fisher.'
+
+'I thought you had put him out of business!'
+
+There was a somewhat querulous note in his voice.
+
+'Only temporarily. I did my best, but he wasn't even limping when
+I saw him.'
+
+He did not speak for a moment. I gathered that he was pondering
+over the new development.
+
+'Thanks for tipping me off, sonny. It's a thing worth knowing. Why
+did you do it?'
+
+'Because I love you, Samuel. Good night.'
+
+I rose late and breakfasted at my leisure. The peace of the
+English country inn enveloped me as I tilted back my chair and
+smoked the first pipe of the morning. It was a day to hearten a
+man for great deeds, one of those days of premature summer which
+comes sometimes to help us bear the chill winds of early spring.
+The sun streamed in through the open window. In the yard below
+fowls made their soothing music. The thought of violence seemed
+very alien to such a morning.
+
+I strolled out into the Square. I was in no hurry to end this
+interlude of peace and embark on what, for all practical purposes,
+would be a siege.
+
+After lunch, I decided, would be time enough to begin active
+campaigning.
+
+The clock on the church tower was striking two as I set forth,
+carrying my suit-case, on my way to the school. The light-heartedness
+of the morning still lingered with me. I was amused at the thought
+of the surprise I was about to give Mr Fisher. That wink still
+rankled.
+
+As I made my way through the grounds I saw Audrey in the distance,
+walking with the Nugget. I avoided them and went on into the
+house.
+
+About the house there was the same air of enchanted quiet which
+pervaded the grounds. Perhaps the stillness indoors was even more
+insistent. I had grown so accustomed to the never-ending noise and
+bustle of the boys' quarters that, as I crossed the silent hall, I
+had an almost guilty sense of intrusion. I felt like a burglar.
+
+Sam, the object of my visit, would, I imagined, if he were in the
+house at all, be in the housekeeper's room, a cosy little apartment
+off the passage leading to the kitchen. I decided to draw that
+first, and was rewarded, on pushing open the half-closed door, by
+the sight of a pair of black-trousered legs stretched out before me
+from the depths of a wicker-work armchair. His portly middle
+section, rising beyond like a small hill, heaved rhythmically. His
+face was covered with a silk handkerchief, from beneath which came,
+in even succession, faint and comfortable snores. It was a peaceful
+picture--the good man taking his rest; and for me it had an added
+attractiveness in that it suggested that Sam was doing by day what
+my information had prevented him from doing in the night. It had
+been some small consolation to me, as I lay trying to compose my
+anxious mind for sleep on the previous night, that Mr Fisher also
+was keeping his vigil.
+
+Pleasing as Sam was as a study in still life, pressure of business
+compelled me to stir him into activity. I prodded him gently in
+the centre of the rising territory beyond the black trousers. He
+grunted discontentedly and sat up. The handkerchief fell from his
+face, and he blinked at me, first with the dazed glassiness of the
+newly awakened, then with a 'Soul's Awakening' expression, which
+spread over his face until it melted into a friendly smile.
+
+'Hello, young man!'
+
+'Good afternoon. You seem tired.'
+
+He yawned cavernously.
+
+'Lord! What a night!'
+
+'Did Buck drop in?'
+
+'No, but I thought he had every time I heard a board creak. I
+didn't dare close my eyes for a minute. Have you ever stayed awake
+all night, waiting for the goblins that get you if you don't watch
+out? Well, take it from me it's no picnic.'
+
+His face split in another mammoth yawn. He threw his heart into
+it, as if life held no other tasks for him. Only in alligators
+have I ever seen its equal.
+
+I waited till the seismic upheaval had spent itself. Then I came
+to business.
+
+'I'm sorry you had a disturbed night, Mr Fisher. You must make up
+for it this afternoon. You will find the beds very comfortable.'
+
+'How's that?'
+
+'At the "Feathers". I should go there, if I were you. The charges
+are quite reasonable, and the food is good. You will like the
+"Feathers".'
+
+'I don't get you, sonny.'
+
+'I was trying to break it gently to you that you are about to move
+from this house. Now. At once. Take your last glimpse of the old
+home, Sam, and out into the hard world.'
+
+He looked at me inquiringly.
+
+'You seem to be talking, young man; words appear to be fluttering
+from you; but your meaning, if any, escapes me.'
+
+'My meaning is that I am about to turn you out. I am coming back
+here, and there is not room for both of us. So, if you do not see
+your way to going quietly, I shall take you by the back of the
+neck and run you out. Do I make myself fairly clear now?'
+
+He permitted himself a rich chuckle.
+
+'You have gall, young man. Well, I hate to seem unfriendly. I like
+you, sonny. You amuse me--but there are moments when one wants to
+be alone. I have a whole heap of arrears of sleep to make up. Trot
+along, kiddo, and quit disturbing uncle. Tie a string to yourself
+and disappear. Bye-bye.'
+
+The wicker-work creaked as he settled his stout body. He picked up
+the handkerchief.
+
+'Mr Fisher,' I said, 'I have no wish to propel your grey hairs at
+a rapid run down the drive, so I will explain further. I am
+physically stronger than you. I mean to turn you out. How can you
+prevent it? Mr Abney is away. You can't appeal to him. The police
+are at the end of the telephone, but you can't appeal to them. So
+what _can_ you do, except go? Do you get me now?'
+
+He regarded the situation in thoughtful silence. He allowed no
+emotion to find expression in his face, but I knew that the
+significance of my remarks had sunk in. I could almost follow his
+mind as he tested my position point by point and found it
+impregnable.
+
+When he spoke it was to accept defeat jauntily.
+
+'You _are_ my jinx, young man. I said it all along. You're
+really set on my going? Say no more. I'll go. After all, it's
+quiet at the inn, and what more does a man want at my time of
+life?'
+
+I went out into the garden to interview Audrey.
+
+She was walking up and down on the tennis-lawn. The Nugget,
+lounging in a deck-chair, appeared to be asleep.
+
+She caught sight of me as I came out from the belt of trees, and
+stopped. I had the trying experience of walking across open
+country under hostile observation.
+
+The routing of Sam had left me alert and self-confident. I felt no
+embarrassment. I greeted her briskly.
+
+'Good afternoon. I have been talking to Sam Fisher. If you wait,
+you will see him passing away down the drive. He is leaving the
+house. I am coming back.'
+
+'Coming back?'
+
+She spoke incredulously, or, rather, as if my words had conveyed
+no meaning. It was so that Sam had spoken. Her mind, like his,
+took time to adjust itself to the unexpected.
+
+She seemed to awake to my meaning with a start.
+
+'Coming back?' Her eyes widened. The flush deepened on her cheeks.
+'But I told you--'
+
+'I know what you told me. You said you did not trust me. It
+doesn't matter. I am coming back whether you trust me or not. This
+house is under martial law, and I am in command. The situation has
+changed since I spoke to you last night. Last night I was ready to
+let you have your way. I intended to keep an eye on things from
+the inn. But it's different now. It is not a case of Sam Fisher
+any longer. You could have managed Sam. It's Buck MacGinnis now,
+the man who came that night in the automobile. I saw him in the
+village after I left you. He's dangerous.'
+
+She looked away, past me, in the direction of the drive. I
+followed her gaze. A stout figure, carrying a suit-case, was
+moving slowly down it.
+
+I smiled. Her eyes met mine, and I saw the anger that had been
+lying at the back of them flash out. Her chin went up with the old
+defiant tilt. I was sorry I had smiled. It was my old fault, the
+complacency that would not be hidden.
+
+'I don't believe you!' she cried. 'I don't trust you!'
+
+It is curious how one's motive for embarking on a course of
+conduct changes or disappears altogether as the action develops.
+Once started on an enterprise it is as if one proceeded with it
+automatically, irrespective of one's original motives. I had begun
+what I might call the second phase of this matter of the Little
+Nugget, the abandoning of Cynthia's cause in favour of Audrey's,
+with a clear idea of why I was doing it. I had set myself to
+resist the various forces which were trying to take Ogden from
+Audrey, for one simple reason, because I loved Audrey and wished
+to help her. That motive, if it still existed at all, did so only
+in the form of abstract chivalry. My personal feelings towards her
+seemed to have undergone a complete change, dating from our
+parting in the road the night before. I found myself now meeting
+hostility with hostility. I looked at her critically and told
+myself that her spell was broken at last, that, if she disliked
+me, I was at least indifferent to her.
+
+And yet, despite my altered feelings, my determination to help her
+never wavered. The guarding of Ogden might be--primarily--no
+business of mine, but I had adopted it as my business.
+
+'I don't ask you to trust me,' I said. 'We have settled all that.
+There's no need to go over old ground. Think what you please about
+this. I've made up my mind.'
+
+'If you mean to stay, I suppose I can't prevent you.'
+
+'Exactly.'
+
+Sam appeared again in a gap in the trees, walking slowly and
+pensively, as one retreating from his Moscow. Her eyes followed
+him till he was out of sight.
+
+'If you like,' I said bitterly, 'you may put what I am doing down
+to professional rivalry. If I am in love with Mrs Ford and am here
+to steal Ogden for her, it is natural for me to do all I can to
+prevent Buck MacGinnis getting him. There is no need for you to
+look on me as an ally because we are working together.'
+
+'We are not working together.'
+
+'We shall be in a very short time. Buck will not let another night
+go by without doing something.'
+
+'I don't believe that you saw him.'
+
+'Just as you please,' I said, and walked away. What did it matter
+to me what she believed?
+
+The day dragged on. Towards evening the weather broke suddenly,
+after the fashion of spring in England. Showers of rain drove me
+to the study.
+
+It must have been nearly ten o'clock when the telephone rang.
+
+It was Mr Fisher.
+
+'Hello, is that you, sonny?'
+
+'It is. Do you want anything?'
+
+'I want a talk with you. Business. Can I come up?'
+
+'If you wish it.'
+
+'I'll start right away.'
+
+It was some fifteen minutes later that I heard in the distance the
+engines of an automobile. The headlights gleamed through the
+trees, and presently the car swept round the bend of the drive and
+drew up at the front door. A portly figure got down and rang the
+bell. I observed these things from a window on the first floor,
+overlooking the front steps; and it was from this window that I
+spoke.
+
+'Is that you, Mr Fisher?'
+
+He backed away from the door.
+
+'Where are you?'
+
+'Is that your car?'
+
+'It belongs to a friend of mine.'
+
+'I didn't know you meant to bring a party.'
+
+'There's only three of us. Me, the chauffeur, and my friend--MacGinnis.'
+
+The possibility, indeed the probability, of Sam seeking out Buck
+and forming an alliance had occurred to me, and I was prepared for
+it. I shifted my grip on the automatic pistol in my hand.
+
+'Mr Fisher.'
+
+'Hello!'
+
+'Ask your friend MacGinnis to be good enough to step into the
+light of that lamp and drop his gun.'
+
+There was a muttered conversation. I heard Buck's voice rumbling
+like a train going under a bridge. The request did not appear to
+find favour with him. Then came an interlude of soothing speech
+from Mr Fisher. I could not distinguish the words, but I gathered
+that he was pointing out to him that, on this occasion only, the
+visit being for the purposes of parley and not of attack, pistols
+might be looked on as non-essentials. Whatever his arguments, they
+were successful, for, finally, humped as to the back and
+muttering, Buck moved into the light.
+
+'Good evening, Mr MacGinnis,' I said. 'I'm glad to see your leg is
+all right again. I won't detain you a moment. Just feel in your
+pockets and shed a few of your guns, and then you can come in out
+of the rain. To prevent any misunderstanding, I may say I have a
+gun of my own. It is trained on you now.'
+
+'I ain't got no gun.'
+
+'Come along. This is no time for airy persiflage. Out with them.'
+
+A moment's hesitation, and a small black pistol fell to the
+ground.
+
+'No more?'
+
+'Think I'm a regiment?'
+
+'I don't know what you are. Well, I'll take your word for it. You
+will come in one by one, with your hands up.'
+
+I went down and opened the door, holding my pistol in readiness
+against the unexpected.
+
+
+II
+
+Sam came first. His raised hands gave him a vaguely pontifical air
+(Bishop Blessing Pilgrims), and the kindly smile he wore
+heightened the illusion. Mr MacGinnis, who followed, suggested no
+such idea. He was muttering moodily to himself, and he eyed me
+askance.
+
+I showed them into the classroom and switched on the light. The
+air was full of many odours. Disuse seems to bring out the
+inky-chalky, appley-deal-boardy bouquet of a classroom as the
+night brings out the scent of flowers. During the term I had never
+known this classroom smell so exactly like a classroom. I made use
+of my free hand to secure and light a cigarette.
+
+Sam rose to a point of order.
+
+'Young man,' he said. I should like to remind you that we are
+here, as it were, under a flag of truce. To pull a gun on us and
+keep us holding our hands up this way is raw work. I feel sure I
+speak for my friend Mr MacGinnis.'
+
+He cocked an eye at his friend Mr MacGinnis, who seconded the
+motion by expectorating into the fireplace. I had observed at a
+previous interview his peculiar gift for laying bare his soul by
+this means of mode of expression. A man of silent habit, judged by
+the more conventional standard of words, he was almost an orator
+in expectoration.
+
+'Mr MacGinnis agrees with me,' said Sam cheerfully. 'Do we take
+them down? Have we your permission to assume Position Two of these
+Swedish exercises? All we came for was a little friendly chat
+among gentlemen, and we can talk just as well--speaking for
+myself, better--in a less strained attitude. A little rest, Mr
+Burns! A little folding of the hands? Thank you.'
+
+He did not wait for permission, nor was it necessary. Sam and the
+melodramatic atmosphere was as oil and water. It was impossible to
+blend them. I laid the pistol on the table and sat down. Buck,
+after one wistful glance at the weapon, did the same. Sam was
+already seated, and was looking so cosy and at home that I almost
+felt it remiss of me not to have provided sherry and cake for this
+pleasant gathering.
+
+'Well,' I said, 'what can I do for you?'
+
+'Let me explain,' said Sam. 'As you have, no doubt, gathered, Mr
+MacGinnis and I have gone into partnership. The Little Nugget
+Combine!'
+
+'I gathered that--well?'
+
+'Judicious partnerships are the soul of business. Mr MacGinnis and
+I have been rivals in the past, but we both saw that the moment
+had come for the genial smile, the hearty handshake, in fact, for
+an alliance. We form a strong team, sonny. My partner's speciality
+is action. I supply the strategy. Say, can't you see you're up
+against it? Why be foolish?'
+
+'You think you're certain to win?'
+
+'It's a cinch.'
+
+'Then why trouble to come here and see me?'
+
+I appeared to have put into words the smouldering thought which
+was vexing Mr MacGinnis. He burst into speech.
+
+'Ahr chee! Sure! What's de use? Didn't I tell youse? What's de use
+of wastin' time? What are we spielin' away here for? Let's get
+busy.'
+
+Sam waved a hand towards him with the air of a lecturer making a
+point.
+
+'You see! The man of action! He likes trouble. He asks for it. He
+eats it alive. Now I prefer peace. Why have a fuss when you can
+get what you want quietly? That's my motto. That's why we've come.
+It's the old proposition. We're here to buy you out. Yes, I know
+you have turned the offer down before, but things have changed.
+Your stock has fallen. In fact, instead of letting you in on
+sharing terms, we only feel justified now in offering a commission.
+For the moment you may seem to hold a strong position. You are in
+the house, and you've got the boy. But there's nothing to it really.
+We could get him in five minutes if we cared to risk having a fuss.
+But it seems to me there's no need of any fuss. We should win dead
+easy all right, if it came to trouble; but, on the other hand,
+you've a gun, and there's a chance some of us might get hurt, so
+what's the good when we can settle it quietly? How about it, sonny?'
+
+Mr MacGinnis began to rumble, preparatory to making further
+remarks on the situation, but Sam waved him down and turned his
+brown eyes inquiringly on me.
+
+'Fifteen per cent is our offer,' he said.
+
+'And to think it was once fifty-fifty!'
+
+'Strict business!'
+
+'Business? It's sweating!'
+
+'It's our limit. And it wasn't easy to make Buck here agree to
+that. He kicked like a mule.'
+
+Buck shuffled his feet and eyed me disagreeably. I suppose it is
+hard to think kindly of a man who has broken your leg. It was
+plain that, with Mr MacGinnis, bygones were by no means bygones.
+
+I rose.
+
+'Well, I'm sorry you should have had the trouble of coming here
+for nothing. Let me see you out. Single file, please.'
+
+Sam looked aggrieved.
+
+'You turn it down?'
+
+'I do.'
+
+'One moment. Let's have this thing clear. Do you realize what
+you're up against? Don't think it's only Buck and me you've got to
+tackle. All the boys are here, waiting round the corner, the same
+gang that came the other night. Be sensible, sonny. You don't
+stand a dog's chance. I shouldn't like to see you get hurt. And
+you never know what may not happen. The boys are pretty sore at
+you because of what you did that night. I shouldn't act like a
+bonehead, sonny--honest.'
+
+There was a kindly ring in his voice which rather touched me.
+Between him and me there had sprung up an odd sort of friendship.
+He meant business; but he would, I knew, be genuinely sorry if I
+came to harm. And I could see that he was quite sincere in his
+belief that I was in a tight corner and that my chances against
+the Combine were infinitesimal. I imagine that, with victory so
+apparently certain, he had had difficulty in persuading his allies
+to allow him to make his offer.
+
+But he had overlooked one thing--the telephone. That he should
+have made this mistake surprised me. If it had been Buck, I could
+have understood it. Buck's was a mind which lent itself to such
+blunders. From Sam I had expected better things, especially as the
+telephone had been so much in evidence of late. He had used it
+himself only half an hour ago.
+
+I clung to the thought of the telephone. It gave me the quiet
+satisfaction of the gambler who holds the unforeseen ace. The
+situation was in my hands. The police, I knew, had been profoundly
+stirred by Mr MacGinnis's previous raid. When I called them up, as
+I proposed to do directly the door had closed on the ambassadors,
+there would be no lack of response. It would not again be a case
+of Inspector Bones and Constable Johnson to the rescue. A great
+cloud of willing helpers would swoop to our help.
+
+With these thoughts in my mind, I answered Sam pleasantly but
+firmly.
+
+'I'm sorry I'm unpopular, but all the same--'
+
+I indicated the door.
+
+Emotion that could only be expressed in words and not through his
+usual medium welled up in Mr MacGinnis. He sprang forward with a
+snarl, falling back as my faithful automatic caught his eye.
+
+'Say, you! Listen here! You'll--'
+
+Sam, the peaceable, plucked at his elbow.
+
+'Nothing doing, Buck. Step lively.'
+
+Buck wavered, then allowed himself to be drawn away. We passed out
+of the classroom in our order of entry.
+
+An exclamation from the stairs made me look up. Audrey was leaning
+over the banisters. Her face was in the shadow, but I gathered
+from her voice that the sight of our little procession had
+startled her. I was not surprised. Buck was a distinctly startling
+spectacle, and his habit of growling to himself, as he walked,
+highly disturbing to strangers.
+
+'Good evening, Mrs Sheridan,' said Sam suavely.
+
+Audrey did not speak. She seemed fascinated by Buck.
+
+I opened the front door and they passed out. The automobile was
+still purring on the drive. Buck's pistol had disappeared. I
+supposed the chauffeur had picked it up, a surmise which was
+proved correct a few moments later, when, just as the car was
+moving off, there was a sharp crack and a bullet struck the wall
+to the right of the door. It was a random shot, and I did not
+return it. Its effect on me was to send me into the hall with a
+leap that was almost a back-somersault. Somehow, though I was
+keyed up for violence and the shooting of pistols, I had not
+expected it at just that moment, and I was disagreeably surprised
+at the shock it had given me. I slammed the door and bolted it. I
+was intensely irritated to find that my fingers were trembling.
+
+Audrey had left the stairs and was standing beside me.
+
+'They shot at me,' I said.
+
+By the light of the hall lamp I could see that she was very pale.
+
+'It missed by a mile.' My nerves had not recovered and I spoke
+abruptly. 'Don't be frightened.'
+
+'I--I was not frightened,' she said, without conviction.
+
+'I was,' I said, with conviction. 'It was too sudden for me. It's
+the sort of thing one wants to get used to gradually. I shall be
+ready for it another time.'
+
+I made for the stairs.
+
+'Where are you going?'
+
+'I'm going to call up the police-station.'
+
+'Peter.'
+
+'Yes?'
+
+'Was--was that man the one you spoke of?'
+
+'Yes, that was Buck MacGinnis. He and Sam have gone into
+partnership.'
+
+She hesitated.
+
+'I'm sorry,' she said.
+
+I was half-way up the stairs by this time. I stopped and looked
+over the banisters.
+
+'Sorry?'
+
+'I didn't believe you this afternoon.'
+
+'Oh, that's all right,' I said. I tried to make my voice
+indifferent, for I was on guard against insidious friendliness. I
+had bludgeoned my mind into an attitude of safe hostility towards
+her, and I saw the old chaos ahead if I allowed myself to abandon
+it.
+
+I went to the telephone and unhooked the receiver.
+
+There is apt to be a certain leisureliness about the methods of
+country telephone-operators, and the fact that a voice did not
+immediately ask me what number I wanted did not at first disturb
+me. Suspicion of the truth came to me, I think, after my third
+shout into the receiver had remained unanswered. I had suffered
+from delay before, but never such delay as this.
+
+I must have remained there fully two minutes, shouting at
+intervals, before I realized the truth. Then I dropped the
+receiver and leaned limply against the wall. For the moment I was
+as stunned as if I had received a blow. I could not even think. It
+was only by degrees that I recovered sufficiently to understand
+that Audrey was speaking to me.
+
+'What is it? Don't they answer?'
+
+It is curious how the mind responds to the need for making an
+effort for the sake of somebody else. If I had had only myself to
+think of, it would, I believe, have been a considerable time
+before I could have adjusted my thoughts to grapple with this
+disaster. But the necessity of conveying the truth quietly to
+Audrey and of helping her to bear up under it steadied me at once.
+I found myself thinking quite coolly how best I might break to her
+what had happened.
+
+'I'm afraid,' I said, 'I have something to tell you which may--'
+
+She interrupted me quickly.
+
+'What is it? Can't you make them answer?'
+
+I shook my head. We looked at each other in silence.
+
+Her mind leaped to the truth more quickly than mine had done.
+
+'They have cut the wire!'
+
+I took up the receiver again and gave another call. There was no
+reply.
+
+'I'm afraid so,' I said.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 15
+
+
+I
+
+'What shall we do?' said Audrey.
+
+She looked at me hopefully, as if I were a mine of ideas. Her
+voice was level, without a suggestion of fear in it. Women have
+the gift of being courageous at times when they might legitimately
+give way. It is part of their unexpectedness.
+
+This was certainly such an occasion. Daylight would bring us
+relief, for I did not suppose that even Buck MacGinnis would care
+to conduct a siege which might be interrupted by the arrival of
+tradesmen's carts; but while the darkness lasted we were
+completely cut off from the world. With the destruction of the
+telephone wire our only link with civilization had been snapped.
+Even had the night been less stormy than it was, there was no
+chance of the noise of our warfare reaching the ears of anyone who
+might come to the rescue. It was as Sam had said, Buck's energy
+united to his strategy formed a strong combination.
+
+Broadly speaking, there are only two courses open to a beleaguered
+garrison. It can stay where it is, or it can make a sortie. I
+considered the second of these courses.
+
+It was possible that Sam and his allies had departed in the
+automobile to get reinforcements, leaving the coast temporarily
+clear; in which case, by escaping from the house at once, we might
+be able to slip unobserved through the grounds and reach the
+village in safety. To support this theory there was the fact that
+the car, on its late visit, had contained only the chauffeur and
+the two ambassadors, while Sam had spoken of the remainder of
+Buck's gang as being in readiness to attack in the event of my not
+coming to terms. That might mean that they were waiting at Buck's
+headquarters, wherever those might be--at one of the cottages down
+the road, I imagined; and, in the interval before the attack
+began, it might be possible for us to make our sortie with
+success.
+
+'Is Ogden in bed?' I asked.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Will you go and get him up as quickly as you can?'
+
+I strained my eyes at the window, but it was impossible to see
+anything. The rain was still falling heavily. If the drive had
+been full of men they would have been invisible to me.
+
+Presently Audrey returned, followed by Ogden. The Little Nugget
+was yawning the aggrieved yawns of one roused from his beauty
+sleep.
+
+'What's all this?' he demanded.
+
+'Listen,' I said. 'Buck MacGinnis and Smooth Sam Fisher have come
+after you. They are outside now. Don't be frightened.'
+
+He snorted derisively.
+
+'Who's frightened? I guess they won't hurt _me_. How do you know
+it's them?'
+
+'They have just been here. The man who called himself White, the
+butler, was really Sam Fisher. He has been waiting an opportunity
+to get you all the term.'
+
+'White! Was he Sam Fisher?' He chuckled admiringly. 'Say, he's a
+wonder!'
+
+'They have gone to fetch the rest of the gang.'
+
+'Why don't you call the cops?'
+
+'They have cut the wire.'
+
+His only emotions at the news seemed to be amusement and a renewed
+admiration for Smooth Sam. He smiled broadly, the little brute.
+
+'He's a wonder!' he repeated. 'I guess he's smooth, all right.
+He's the limit! He'll get me all right this trip. I bet you a
+nickel he wins out.'
+
+I found his attitude trying. That he, the cause of all the trouble,
+should be so obviously regarding it as a sporting contest got up
+for his entertainment, was hard to bear. And the fact that, whatever
+might happen to myself, he was in no danger, comforted me not at all.
+If I could have felt that we were in any way companions in peril,
+I might have looked on the bulbous boy with quite a friendly eye.
+As it was, I nearly kicked him.
+
+'We had better waste no time,' suggested Audrey, 'if we are going.'
+
+'I think we ought to try it,' I said.
+
+'What's that?' asked the Nugget. 'Go where?'
+
+'We are going to steal out through the back way and try to slip
+through to the village.'
+
+The Nugget's comment on the scheme was brief and to the point. He
+did not embarrass me with fulsome praise of my strategic genius.
+
+'Of all the fool games!' he said simply. 'In this rain? No, sir!'
+
+This new complication was too much for me. In planning out my
+manoeuvres I had taken his cooperation for granted. I had looked
+on him as so much baggage--the impedimenta of the retreating army.
+And, behold, a mutineer!
+
+I took him by the scruff of the neck and shook him. It was a
+relief to my feelings and a sound move. The argument was one which
+he understood.
+
+'Oh, all right,' he said. 'Anything you like. Come on. But it sounds
+to me like darned foolishness!'
+
+If nothing else had happened to spoil the success of that sortie,
+the Nugget's depressing attitude would have done so. Of all things,
+it seems to me, a forlorn hope should be undertaken with a certain
+enthusiasm and optimism if it is to have a chance of being successful.
+Ogden threw a gloom over the proceedings from the start. He was cross
+and sleepy, and he condemned the expedition unequivocally. As we moved
+towards the back door he kept up a running stream of abusive comment.
+I silenced him before cautiously unbolting the door, but he had said
+enough to damp my spirits. I do not know what effect it would have
+had on Napoleon's tactics if his army--say, before Austerlitz--had
+spoken of his manoeuvres as a 'fool game' and of himself as a 'big
+chump', but I doubt if it would have stimulated him.
+
+The back door of Sanstead House opened on to a narrow yard, paved
+with flagstones and shut in on all sides but one by walls. To the
+left was the outhouse where the coal was stored, a squat barnlike
+building: to the right a wall that appeared to have been erected
+by the architect in an outburst of pure whimsicality. It just
+stood there. It served no purpose that I had ever been able to
+discover, except to act as a cats' club-house.
+
+Tonight, however, I was thankful for this wall. It formed an
+important piece of cover. By keeping in its shelter it was
+possible to work round the angle of the coal-shed, enter the
+stable-yard, and, by making a detour across the football field,
+avoid the drive altogether. And it was the drive, in my opinion,
+that might be looked on as the danger zone.
+
+The Nugget's complaints, which I had momentarily succeeded in
+checking, burst out afresh as the rain swept in at the open door
+and lashed our faces. Certainly it was not an ideal night for a
+ramble. The wind was blowing through the opening at the end of the
+yard with a compressed violence due to the confined space. There
+was a suggestion in our position of the Cave of the Winds under
+Niagara Falls, the verisimilitude of which was increased by the
+stream of water that poured down from the gutter above our heads.
+The Nugget found it unpleasant, and said so shrilly.
+
+I pushed him out into the storm, still protesting, and we began to
+creep across the yard. Half-way to the first point of importance
+of our journey, the corner of the coal-shed, I halted the
+expedition. There was a sudden lull in the wind, and I took
+advantage of it to listen.
+
+From somewhere beyond the wall, apparently near the house, sounded
+the muffled note of the automobile. The siege-party had returned.
+
+There was no time to be lost. Apparently the possibility of a
+sortie had not yet occurred to Sam, or he would hardly have left
+the back door unguarded; but a general of his astuteness was
+certain to remedy the mistake soon, and our freedom of action
+might be a thing of moments. It behoved us to reach the stable-yard
+as quickly as possible. Once there, we should be practically through
+the enemy's lines.
+
+Administering a kick to the Nugget, who showed a disposition to
+linger and talk about the weather, I moved on, and we reached the
+corner of the coal-shed in safety.
+
+We had now arrived at the really perilous stage in our journey.
+Having built his wall to a point level with the end of the coal-shed,
+the architect had apparently wearied of the thing and given it up;
+for it ceased abruptly, leaving us with a matter of half a dozen
+yards of open ground to cross, with nothing to screen us from the
+watchers on the drive. The flagstones, moreover, stopped at this
+point. On the open space was loose gravel. Even if the darkness
+allowed us to make the crossing unseen, there was the risk that we
+might be heard.
+
+It was a moment for a flash of inspiration, and I was waiting for
+one, when that happened which took the problem out of my hands.
+From the interior of the shed on our left there came a sudden
+scrabbling of feet over loose coal, and through the square opening
+in the wall, designed for the peaceful purpose of taking in sacks,
+climbed two men. A pistol cracked. From the drive came an
+answering shout. We had been ambushed.
+
+I had misjudged Sam. He had not overlooked the possibility of a
+sortie.
+
+It is the accidents of life that turn the scale in a crisis. The
+opening through which the men had leaped was scarcely a couple of
+yards behind the spot where we were standing. If they had leaped
+fairly and kept their feet, they would have been on us before we
+could have moved. But Fortune ordered it that, zeal outrunning
+discretion, the first of the two should catch his foot in the
+woodwork and fall on all fours, while the second, unable to check
+his spring, alighted on top of him, and, judging from the stifled
+yell which followed, must have kicked him in the face.
+
+In the moment of their downfall I was able to form a plan and
+execute it.
+
+'The stables!'
+
+I shouted the words to Audrey in the act of snatching up the
+Nugget and starting to run. She understood. She did not hesitate
+in the direction of the house for even the instant which might
+have undone us, but was with me at once; and we were across the
+open space and in the stable-yard before the first of the men in
+the drive loomed up through the darkness. Half of the wooden
+double-gate of the yard was open, and the other half served us as
+a shield. They fired as they ran--at random, I think, for it was
+too dark for them to have seen us clearly--and two bullets slapped
+against the gate. A third struck the wall above our heads and
+ricocheted off into the night. But before they could fire again we
+were in the stables, the door slammed behind us, and I had dumped
+the Nugget on the floor, and was shooting the heavy bolts into
+their places. Footsteps clattered over the flagstones and stopped
+outside. Some weighty body plunged against the door. Then there
+was silence. The first round was over.
+
+The stables, as is the case in most English country-houses, had
+been, in its palmy days, the glory of Sanstead House. In whatever
+other respect the British architect of that period may have fallen
+short, he never scamped his work on the stables. He built them
+strong and solid, with walls fitted to repel the assaults of the
+weather, and possibly those of men as well, for the Boones in
+their day had been mighty owners of race-horses at a time when men
+with money at stake did not stick at trifles, and it was prudent
+to see to it that the spot where the favourite was housed had
+something of the nature of a fortress. The walls were thick, the
+door solid, the windows barred with iron. We could scarcely have
+found a better haven of refuge.
+
+Under Mr Abney's rule, the stables had lost their original
+character. They had been divided into three compartments, each
+separated by a stout wall. One compartment became a gymnasium,
+another the carpenter's shop, the third, in which we were,
+remained a stable, though in these degenerate days no horse ever
+set foot inside it, its only use being to provide a place for the
+odd-job man to clean shoes. The mangers which had once held fodder
+were given over now to brushes and pots of polish. In term-time,
+bicycles were stored in the loose-box which had once echoed to the
+tramping of Derby favourites.
+
+I groped about among the pots and brushes, and found a candle-end,
+which I lit. I was running a risk, but it was necessary to inspect
+our ground. I had never troubled really to examine this stable
+before, and I wished to put myself in touch with its geography.
+
+I blew out the candle, well content with what I had seen. The only
+two windows were small, high up, and excellently barred. Even if
+the enemy fired through them there were half a dozen spots where
+we should be perfectly safe. Best of all, in the event of the door
+being carried by assault, we had a second line of defence in a
+loft. A ladder against the back wall led to it, by way of a trap-door.
+Circumstances had certainly been kind to us in driving us to this
+apparently impregnable shelter.
+
+On concluding my inspection, I became aware that the Nugget was
+still occupied with his grievances. I think the shots must have
+stimulated his nerve centres, for he had abandoned the languid
+drawl with which, in happier moments, he was wont to comment on
+life's happenings, and was dealing with the situation with a
+staccato briskness.
+
+'Of all the darned fool lay-outs I ever struck, this is the limit.
+What do those idiots think they're doing, shooting us up that way?
+It went within an inch of my head. It might have killed me. Gee,
+and I'm all wet. I'm catching cold. It's all through your blamed
+foolishness, bringing us out here. Why couldn't we stay in the
+house?'
+
+'We could not have kept them out of the house for five minutes,' I
+explained. 'We can hold this place.'
+
+'Who wants to hold it? I don't. What does it matter if they do get
+me? _I_ don't care. I've a good mind to walk straight out through
+that door and let them rope me in. It would serve Dad right. It
+would teach him not to send me away from home to any darned school
+again. What did he want to do it for? I was all right where I was.
+I--'
+
+A loud hammering on the door cut off his eloquence. The
+intermission was over, and the second round had begun.
+
+It was pitch dark in the stable now that I had blown out the
+candle, and there is something about a combination of noise and
+darkness which tries the nerves. If mine had remained steady, I
+should have ignored the hammering. From the sound, it appeared to
+be made by some wooden instrument--a mallet from the carpenter's
+shop I discovered later--and the door could be relied on to hold
+its own without my intervention. For a novice to violence,
+however, to maintain a state of calm inaction is the most
+difficult feat of all. I was irritated and worried by the noise,
+and exaggerated its importance. It seemed to me that it must be
+stopped at once.
+
+A moment before, I had bruised my shins against an empty packing-case,
+which had found its way with other lumber into the stable. I groped
+for this, swung it noiselessly into position beneath the window,
+and, standing on it, looked out. I found the catch of the window,
+and opened it. There was nothing to be seen, but the sound of the
+hammering became more distinct; and pushing an arm through the bars,
+I emptied my pistol at a venture.
+
+As a practical move, the action had flaws. The shots cannot have
+gone anywhere near their vague target. But as a demonstration, it
+was a wonderful success. The yard became suddenly full of dancing
+bullets. They struck the flagstones, bounded off, chipped the
+bricks of the far wall, ricocheted from those, buzzed in all
+directions, and generally behaved in a manner calculated to unman
+the stoutest hearted.
+
+The siege-party did not stop to argue. They stampeded as one man.
+I could hear them clattering across the flagstones to every point
+of the compass. In a few seconds silence prevailed, broken only by
+the swish of the rain. Round two had been brief, hardly worthy to
+be called a round at all, and, like round one, it had ended wholly
+in our favour.
+
+I jumped down from my packing-case, swelling with pride. I had had
+no previous experience of this sort of thing, yet here I was
+handling the affair like a veteran. I considered that I had a
+right to feel triumphant. I lit the candle again, and beamed
+protectively upon the garrison.
+
+The Nugget was sitting on the floor, gaping feebly, and awed for
+the moment into silence. Audrey, in the far corner, looked pale
+but composed. Her behaviour was perfect. There was nothing for her
+to do, and she was doing it with a quiet self-control which won
+my admiration. Her manner seemed to me exactly suited to the
+exigencies of the situation. With a super-competent dare-devil
+like myself in charge of affairs, all she had to do was to wait
+and not get in the way.
+
+'I didn't hit anybody,' I announced, 'but they ran like rabbits.
+They are all over Hampshire.'
+
+I laughed indulgently. I could afford an attitude of tolerant
+amusement towards the enemy.
+
+'Will they come back?'
+
+'Possibly. And in that case'--I felt in my left-hand coat-pocket--'I
+had better be getting ready.' I felt in my right-hand coat-pocket.
+'Ready,' I repeated blankly. A clammy coldness took possession of me.
+My voice trailed off into nothingness. For in neither pocket was
+there a single one of the shells with which I had fancied that I
+was abundantly provided. In moments of excitement man is apt to make
+mistakes. I had made mine when, starting out on the sortie, I had
+left all my ammunition in the house.
+
+
+II
+
+I should like to think that it was an unselfish desire to spare my
+companions anxiety that made me keep my discovery to myself. But I
+am afraid that my reticence was due far more to the fact that I
+shrank from letting the Nugget discover my imbecile carelessness.
+Even in times of peril one retains one's human weaknesses; and I
+felt that I could not face his comments. If he had permitted a
+certain note of querulousness to creep into his conversation
+already, the imagination recoiled from the thought of the caustic
+depths he would reach now should I reveal the truth.
+
+I tried to make things better with cheery optimism.
+
+'_They_ won't come back!' I said stoutly, and tried to believe it.
+
+The Nugget as usual struck the jarring note.
+
+'Well, then, let's beat it,' he said. 'I don't want to spend the
+night in this darned icehouse. I tell you I'm catching cold. My
+chest's weak. If you're so dead certain you've scared them away,
+let's quit.'
+
+I was not prepared to go as far as this.
+
+'They may be somewhere near, hiding.'
+
+'Well, what if they are? I don't mind being kidnapped. Let's go.'
+
+'I think we ought to wait,' said Audrey.
+
+'Of course,' I said. 'It would be madness to go out now.'
+
+'Oh, pshaw!' said the Little Nugget; and from this point onwards
+punctuated the proceedings with a hacking cough.
+
+I had never really believed that my demonstration had brought the
+siege to a definite end. I anticipated that there would be some
+delay before the renewal of hostilities, but I was too well
+acquainted with Buck MacGinnis's tenacity to imagine that he would
+abandon his task because a few random shots had spread momentary
+panic in his ranks. He had all the night before him, and sooner or
+later he would return.
+
+I had judged him correctly. Many minutes dragged wearily by
+without a sign from the enemy, then, listening at the window, I
+heard footsteps crossing the yard and voices talking in cautious
+undertones. The fight was on once more.
+
+A bright light streamed through the window, flooding the opening
+and spreading in a wide circle on the ceiling. It was not
+difficult to understand what had happened. They had gone to the
+automobile and come back with one of the head-lamps, an astute
+move in which I seemed to see the finger of Sam. The danger-spot
+thus rendered harmless, they renewed their attack on the door with
+a reckless vigour. The mallet had been superseded by some heavier
+instrument--of iron this time. I think it must have been the jack
+from the automobile. It was a more formidable weapon altogether
+than the mallet, and even our good oak door quivered under it.
+
+A splintering of wood decided me that the time had come to retreat
+to our second line of entrenchments. How long the door would hold
+it was impossible to say, but I doubted if it was more than a
+matter of minutes.
+
+Relighting my candle, which I had extinguished from motives of
+economy, I caught Audrey's eye and jerked my head towards the
+ladder.
+
+'You go first,' I whispered.
+
+The Nugget watched her disappear through the trap-door, then
+turned to me with an air of resolution.
+
+'If you think you're going to get _me_ up there, you've
+another guess coming. I'm going to wait here till they get in, and
+let them take me. I'm about tired of this foolishness.'
+
+It was no time for verbal argument. I collected him, a kicking
+handful, bore him to the ladder, and pushed him through the
+opening. He uttered one of his devastating squeals. The sound
+seemed to encourage the workers outside like a trumpet-blast. The
+blows on the door redoubled.
+
+I climbed the ladder and shut the trap-door behind me.
+
+The air of the loft was close and musty and smelt of mildewed hay.
+It was not the sort of spot which one would have selected of one's
+own free will to sit in for any length of time. There was a rustling
+noise, and a rat scurried across the rickety floor, drawing a
+startled gasp from Audrey and a disgusted 'Oh, piffle!' from the
+Nugget. Whatever merits this final refuge might have as a stronghold,
+it was beyond question a noisome place.
+
+The beating on the stable-door was working up to a crescendo.
+Presently there came a crash that shook the floor on which we sat
+and sent our neighbours, the rats, scuttling to and fro in a
+perfect frenzy of perturbation. The light of the automobile lamp
+poured in through the numerous holes and chinks which the passage
+of time had made in the old boards. There was one large hole near
+the centre which produced a sort of searchlight effect, and
+allowed us for the first time to see what manner of place it was
+in which we had entrenched ourselves. The loft was high and
+spacious. The roof must have been some seven feet above our heads.
+I could stand upright without difficulty.
+
+In the proceedings beneath us there had come a lull. The mystery
+of our disappearance had not baffled the enemy for long, for almost
+immediately the rays of the lamp had shifted and begun to play on
+the trap-door. I heard somebody climb the ladder, and the trap-door
+creaked gently as a hand tested it. I had taken up a position beside
+it, ready, if the bolt gave way, to do what I could with the butt of
+my pistol, my only weapon. But the bolt, though rusty, was strong,
+and the man dropped to the ground again. Since then, except for
+occasional snatches of whispered conversation, I had heard nothing.
+
+Suddenly Sam's voice spoke.
+
+'Mr Burns!'
+
+I saw no advantage in remaining silent.
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Haven't you had enough of this? You've given us a mighty good run
+for our money, but you can see for yourself that you're through
+now. I'd hate like anything for you to get hurt. Pass the kid
+down, and we'll call it off.'
+
+He paused.
+
+'Well?' he said. 'Why don't you answer?'
+
+'I did.'
+
+'Did you? I didn't hear you.'
+
+'I smiled.'
+
+'You mean to stick it out? Don't be foolish, sonny. The boys here
+are mad enough at you already. What's the use of getting yourself
+in bad for nothing? We've got you in a pocket. I know all about that
+gun of yours, young fellow. I had a suspicion what had happened,
+and I've been into the house and found the shells you forgot to
+take with you. So, if you were thinking of making a bluff in that
+direction forget it!'
+
+The exposure had the effect I had anticipated.
+
+'Of all the chumps!' exclaimed the Nugget caustically. 'You ought
+to be in a home. Well, I guess you'll agree to end this foolishness
+now? Let's go down and get it over and have some peace. I'm getting
+pneumonia.'
+
+'You're quite right, Mr Fisher,' I said. 'But don't forget I still
+have the pistol, even if I haven't the shells. The first man who
+tries to come up here will have a headache tomorrow.'
+
+'I shouldn't bank on it, sonny. Come along, kiddo! You're done. Be
+good, and own it. We can't wait much longer.'
+
+'You'll have to try.'
+
+Buck's voice broke in on the discussion, quite unintelligible
+except that it was obviously wrathful.
+
+'Oh well!' I heard Sam say resignedly, and then there was silence
+again below.
+
+I resumed my watch over the trap-door, encouraged. This parleying,
+I thought, was an admission of failure on the part of the
+besiegers. I did not credit Sam with a real concern for my
+welfare--thereby doing him an injustice. I can see now that he
+spoke perfectly sincerely. The position, though I was unaware of
+it, really was hopeless, for the reason that, like most positions,
+it had a flank as well as a front. In estimating the possibilities
+of attack, I had figured assaults as coming only from below. I had
+omitted from my calculations the fact that the loft had a roof.
+
+It was a scraping on the tiles above my head that first brought
+the new danger-point to my notice. There followed the sound of
+heavy hammering, and with it came a sickening realization of the
+truth of what Sam had said. We were beaten.
+
+I was too paralysed by the unexpectedness of the attack to form
+any plan; and, indeed, I do not think that there was anything that
+I could have done. I was unarmed and helpless. I stood there,
+waiting for the inevitable.
+
+Affairs moved swiftly. Plaster rained down on to the wooden floor.
+I was vaguely aware that the Nugget was speaking, but I did not
+listen to him.
+
+A gap appeared in the roof and widened. I could hear the heavy
+breathing of the man as he wrenched at the tiles.
+
+And then the climax arrived, with anticlimax following so swiftly
+upon it that the two were almost simultaneous. I saw the worker on
+the roof cautiously poise himself in the opening, hunched up like
+some strange ape. The next moment he had sprung.
+
+As his feet touched the floor there came a rending, splintering
+crash; the air was filled with a choking dust, and he was gone.
+The old worn out boards had shaken under my tread. They had given
+way in complete ruin beneath this sharp onslaught. The rays of the
+lamp, which had filtered in like pencils of light through
+crevices, now shone in a great lake in the centre of the floor.
+
+In the stable below all was confusion. Everybody was speaking at
+once. The hero of the late disaster was groaning horribly, for
+which he certainly had good reason: I did not know the extent of
+his injuries, but a man does not do that sort of thing with
+impunity. The next of the strange happenings of the night now
+occurred.
+
+I had not been giving the Nugget a great deal of my attention for
+some time, other and more urgent matters occupying me.
+
+His action at this juncture, consequently, came as a complete and
+crushing surprise.
+
+I was edging my way cautiously towards the jagged hole in the
+centre of the floor, in the hope of seeing something of what was
+going on below, when from close beside me his voice screamed.
+'It's me, Ogden Ford. I'm coming!' and, without further warning,
+he ran to the hole, swung himself over, and dropped.
+
+Manna falling from the skies in the wilderness never received a
+more whole-hearted welcome. Howls and cheers and ear-splitting
+whoops filled the air. The babel of talk broke out again. Some
+exuberant person found expression of his joy in emptying his
+pistol at the ceiling, to my acute discomfort, the spot he had
+selected as a target chancing to be within a foot of where I
+stood. Then they moved off in a body, still cheering. The fight
+was over.
+
+I do not know how long it was before I spoke. It may have been
+some minutes. I was dazed with the swiftness with which the final
+stages of the drama had been played out. If I had given him more
+of my attention, I might have divined that Ogden had been waiting
+his opportunity to make some such move; but, as it was, the
+possibility had not even occurred to me, and I was stunned.
+
+In the distance I heard the automobile moving off down the drive.
+The sound roused me.
+
+'Well, we may as well go,' I said dully. I lit the candle and held
+it up. Audrey was standing against the wall, her face white and
+set.
+
+I raised the trap-door and followed her down the ladder.
+
+The rain had ceased, and the stars were shining. After the
+closeness of the loft, the clean wet air was delicious. For a
+moment we stopped, held by the peace and stillness of the night.
+
+Then, quite suddenly, she broke down.
+
+It was the unexpectedness of it that first threw me off my balance.
+In all the time I had known her, I had never before seen Audrey in
+tears. Always, in the past, she had borne the blows of fate with a
+stoical indifference which had alternately attracted and repelled
+me, according as my mood led me to think it courage or insensibility.
+In the old days, it had done much, this trait of hers, to rear a
+barrier between us. It had made her seem aloof and unapproachable.
+Subconsciously, I suppose, it had offended my egoism that she should
+be able to support herself in times of trouble, and not feel it
+necessary to lean on me.
+
+And now the barrier had fallen. The old independence, the almost
+aggressive self-reliance, had vanished. A new Audrey had revealed
+herself.
+
+She was sobbing helplessly, standing quite still, her arms hanging
+and her eyes staring blankly before her. There was something in
+her attitude so hopeless, so beaten, that the pathos of it seemed
+to cut me like a knife.
+
+'Audrey!'
+
+The stars glittered in the little pools among the worn flagstones.
+The night was very still. Only the steady drip of water from the
+trees broke the silence.
+
+A great wave of tenderness seemed to sweep from my mind everything
+in the world but her. Everything broke abruptly that had been
+checking me, stifling me, holding me gagged and bound since the
+night when our lives had come together again after those five long
+years. I forgot Cynthia, my promise, everything.
+
+'Audrey!'
+
+She was in my arms, clinging to me, murmuring my name. The
+darkness was about us like a cloud.
+
+And then she had slipped from me, and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 16
+
+
+In my recollections of that strange night there are wide gaps.
+Trivial incidents come back to me with extraordinary vividness;
+while there are hours of which I can remember nothing. What I did
+or where I went I cannot recall. It seems to me, looking back,
+that I walked without a pause till morning; yet, when day came, I
+was still in the school grounds. Perhaps I walked, as a wounded
+animal runs, in circles. I lost, I know, all count of time. I
+became aware of the dawn as something that had happened suddenly,
+as if light had succeeded darkness in a flash. It had been night;
+I looked about me, and it was day--a steely, cheerless day, like a
+December evening. And I found that I was very cold, very tired,
+and very miserable.
+
+My mind was like the morning, grey and overcast. Conscience may be
+expelled, but, like Nature, it will return. Mine, which I had cast
+from me, had crept back with the daylight. I had had my hour of
+freedom, and it was now for me to pay for it.
+
+I paid in full. My thoughts tore me. I could see no way out.
+Through the night the fever and exhilaration of that mad moment
+had sustained me, but now the morning had come, when dreams must
+yield to facts, and I had to face the future.
+
+I sat on the stump of a tree, and buried my face in my hands. I
+must have fallen asleep, for, when I raised my eyes again, the day
+was brighter. Its cheerlessness had gone. The sky was blue, and
+birds were singing.
+
+It must have been about half an hour later that the first
+beginnings of a plan of action came to me. I could not trust
+myself to reason out my position clearly and honestly in this
+place where Audrey's spell was over everything. The part of me
+that was struggling to be loyal to Cynthia was overwhelmed here.
+London called to me. I could think there, face my position
+quietly, and make up my mind.
+
+I turned to walk to the station. I could not guess even remotely
+what time it was. The sun was shining through the trees, but in
+the road outside the grounds there were no signs of workers
+beginning the day.
+
+It was half past five when I reached the station. A sleepy porter
+informed me that there would be a train to London, a slow train,
+at six.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I remained in London two days, and on the third went down to Sanstead
+to see Audrey for the last time. I had made my decision.
+
+I found her on the drive, close by the gate. She turned at my
+footstep on the gravel; and, as I saw her, I knew that the fight
+which I had thought over was only beginning.
+
+I was shocked at her appearance. Her face was very pale, and there
+were tired lines about her eyes.
+
+I could not speak. Something choked me. Once again, as on that
+night in the stable-yard, the world and all that was in it seemed
+infinitely remote.
+
+It was she who broke the silence.
+
+'Well, Peter,' she said listlessly.
+
+We walked up the drive together.
+
+'Have you been to London?'
+
+'Yes. I came down this morning.' I paused. 'I went there to
+think,' I said.
+
+She nodded.
+
+'I have been thinking, too.'
+
+I stopped, and began to hollow out a groove in the wet gravel with
+my heel. Words were not coming readily.
+
+Suddenly she found speech. She spoke quickly, but her voice was
+dull and lifeless.
+
+'Let us forget what has happened, Peter. We were neither of us
+ourselves. I was tired and frightened and disappointed. You were
+sorry for me just at the moment, and your nerves were strained,
+like mine. It was all nothing. Let us forget it.'
+
+I shook my head.
+
+'No,' I said. 'It was not that. I can't let you even pretend you
+think that was all. I love you. I always have loved you, though I
+did not know how much till you had gone away. After a time, I
+thought I had got over it. But when I met you again down here, I
+knew that I had not, and never should. I came back to say good-bye,
+but I shall always love you. It is my punishment for being the sort
+of man I was five years ago.'
+
+'And mine for being the sort of woman I was five years ago.' She
+laughed bitterly. 'Woman! I was just a little fool, a sulky child.
+My punishment is going to be worse than yours, Peter. You will not
+be always thinking that you had the happiness of two lives in your
+hands, and threw it away because you had not the sense to hold
+it.'
+
+'It is just that that I shall always be thinking. What happened
+five years ago was my fault, Audrey, and nobody's but mine. I
+don't think that, even when the loss of you hurt most, I ever
+blamed you for going away. You had made me see myself as I was,
+and I knew that you had done the right thing. I was selfish,
+patronizing--I was insufferable. It was I who threw away our
+happiness. You put it in a sentence that first day here, when you
+said that I had been kind--sometimes--when I happened to think of
+it. That summed me up. You have nothing to reproach yourself for.
+I think we have not had the best of luck; but all the blame is
+mine.'
+
+A flush came into her pale face.
+
+'I remember saying that. I said it because I was afraid of myself.
+I was shaken by meeting you again. I thought you must be hating
+me--you had every reason to hate me, and you spoke as if you
+did--and I did not want to show you what you were to me. It wasn't
+true, Peter. Five years ago I may have thought it, but not now. I
+have grown to understand the realities by this time. I have been
+through too much to have any false ideas left. I have had some
+chance to compare men, and I realize that they are not all kind,
+Peter, even sometimes, when they happen to think of it.'
+
+'Audrey,' I said--I had never found myself able to ask the
+question before--'was--was--he--was Sheridan kind to you?'
+
+She did not speak for a moment, and I thought she was resenting
+the question.
+
+'No!' she said abruptly.
+
+She shot out the monosyllable with a force that startled and
+silenced me. There was a whole history of unhappiness in the word.
+
+'No,' she said again, after a pause, more gently this time. I
+understood. She was speaking of a dead man.
+
+'I can't talk about him,' she went on hurriedly. 'I expect most of
+it was my fault. I was unhappy because he was not you, and he saw
+that I was unhappy and hated me for it. We had nothing in common.
+It was just a piece of sheer madness, our marriage. He swept me
+off my feet. I never had a great deal of sense, and I lost it all
+then. I was far happier when he had left me.'
+
+'Left you?'
+
+'He deserted me almost directly we reached America.' She laughed.
+'I told you I had grown to understand the realities. I began
+then.'
+
+I was horrified. For the first time I realized vividly all that
+she had gone through. When she had spoken to me before of her
+struggles that evening over the study fire, I had supposed that
+they had begun only after her husband's death, and that her life
+with him had in some measure trained her for the fight. That she
+should have been pitched into the arena, a mere child, with no
+experience of life, appalled me. And, as she spoke, there came to
+me the knowledge that now I could never do what I had come to do.
+I could not give her up. She needed me. I tried not to think of
+Cynthia.
+
+I took her hand.
+
+'Audrey,' I said, 'I came here to say good-bye. I can't. I want
+you. Nothing matters except you. I won't give you up.'
+
+'It's too late,' she said, with a little catch in her voice. 'You
+are engaged to Mrs Ford.'
+
+'I am engaged, but not to Mrs Ford. I am engaged to someone you
+have never met--Cynthia Drassilis.'
+
+She pulled her hand away quickly, wide-eyed, and for some moments
+was silent.
+
+'Do you love her?' she asked at last.
+
+'No.'
+
+'Does she love you?'
+
+Cynthia's letter rose before my eyes, that letter that could have
+had no meaning, but one.
+
+'I am afraid she does,' I said.
+
+She looked at me steadily. Her face was very pale.
+
+'You must marry her, Peter.'
+
+I shook my head.
+
+'You must. She believes in you.'
+
+'I can't. I want you. And you need me. Can you deny that you need
+me?'
+
+'No.'
+
+She said it quite simply, without emotion. I moved towards her,
+thrilling, but she stepped back.
+
+'She needs you too,' she said.
+
+A dull despair was creeping over me. I was weighed down by a
+premonition of failure. I had fought my conscience, my sense of
+duty and honour, and crushed them. She was raising them up against
+me once more. My self-control broke down.
+
+'Audrey,' I cried, 'for God's sake can't you see what you're
+doing? We have been given a second chance. Our happiness is in
+your hands again, and you are throwing it away. Why should we make
+ourselves wretched for the whole of our lives? What does anything
+else matter except that we love each other? Why should we let
+anything stand in our way? I won't give you up.'
+
+She did not answer. Her eyes were fixed on the ground. Hope began
+to revive in me, telling me that I had persuaded her. But when she
+looked up it was with the same steady gaze, and my heart sank
+again.
+
+'Peter,' she said, 'I want to tell you something. It will make you
+understand, I think. I haven't been honest, Peter. I have not
+fought fairly. All these weeks, ever since we met, I have been
+trying to steal you. It's the only word. I have tried every little
+miserable trick I could think of to steal you from the girl you
+had promised to marry. And she wasn't here to fight for herself. I
+didn't think of her. I was wrapped up in my own selfishness. And
+then, after that night, when you had gone away, I thought it all
+out. I had a sort of awakening. I saw the part I had been playing.
+Even then I tried to persuade myself that I had done something
+rather fine. I thought, you see, at that time that you were
+infatuated with Mrs Ford--and I know Mrs Ford. If she is capable
+of loving any man, she loves Mr Ford, though they are divorced. I
+knew she would only make you unhappy. I told myself I was saving
+you. Then you told me it was not Mrs Ford, but this girl. That
+altered everything. Don't you see that I can't let you give her up
+now? You would despise me. I shouldn't feel clean. I should feel
+as if I had stabbed her in the back.'
+
+I forced a laugh. It rang hollow against the barrier that
+separated us. In my heart I knew that this barrier was not to be
+laughed away.
+
+'Can't you see, Peter? You must see.'
+
+'I certainly don't. I think you're overstrained, and that you have
+let your imagination run away with you. I--'
+
+She interrupted me.
+
+'Do you remember that evening in the study?' she asked abruptly.
+'We had been talking. I had been telling you how I had lived
+during those five years.'
+
+'I remember.'
+
+'Every word I spoke was spoken with an object--calculated.... Yes,
+even the pauses. I tried to make _them_ tell, too. I knew
+you, you see, Peter. I knew you through and through, because I
+loved you, and I knew the effect those tales would have on you.
+Oh, they were all true. I was honest as far as that goes. But they
+had the mean motive at the back of them. I was playing on your
+feelings. I knew how kind you were, how you would pity me. I set
+myself to create an image which would stay in your mind and kill
+the memory of the other girl; the image of a poor, ill-treated
+little creature who should work through to your heart by way of
+your compassion. I knew you, Peter, I knew you. And then I did a
+meaner thing still. I pretended to stumble in the dark. I meant
+you to catch me and hold me, and you did. And ...'
+
+Her voice broke off.
+
+'I'm glad I have told you,' she said. 'It makes it a little
+better. You understand now how I feel, don't you?'
+
+She held out her hand.
+
+'Good-bye.'
+
+'I am not going to give you up,' I said doggedly.
+
+'Good-bye,' she said again. Her voice was a whisper.
+
+I took her hand and began to draw her towards me.
+
+'It is not good-bye. There is no one else in the world but you,
+and I am not going to give you up.'
+
+'Peter!' she struggled feebly. 'Oh, let me go.'
+
+I drew her nearer.
+
+'I won't let you go,' I said.
+
+But, as I spoke, there came the sound of automobile wheels on the
+gravel. A large red car was coming up the drive. I dropped
+Audrey's hand, and she stepped back and was lost in the shrubbery.
+The car slowed down and stopped beside me. There were two women in
+the tonneau. One, who was dark and handsome, I did not know. The
+other was Mrs Drassilis.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 17
+
+
+I was given no leisure for wondering how Cynthia's mother came to
+be in the grounds of Sanstead House, for her companion, almost
+before the car had stopped, jumped out and clutched me by the arm,
+at the same time uttering this cryptic speech: 'Whatever he offers
+I'll double!'
+
+She fixed me, as she spoke, with a commanding eye. She was a woman,
+I gathered in that instant, born to command. There seemed, at any
+rate, no doubt in her mind that she could command me. If I had
+been a black beetle she could not have looked at me with a more
+scornful superiority. Her eyes were very large and of a rich, fiery
+brown colour, and it was these that gave me my first suspicion of
+her identity. As to the meaning of her words, however, I had no clue.
+
+'Bear that in mind,' she went on. 'I'll double it if it's a
+million dollars.'
+
+'I'm afraid I don't understand,' I said, finding speech.
+
+She clicked her tongue impatiently.
+
+'There's no need to be so cautious and mysterious. This lady is a
+friend of mine. She knows all about it. I asked her to come. I'm
+Mrs Elmer Ford. I came here directly I got your letter. I think
+you're the lowest sort of scoundrel that ever managed to keep out
+of gaol, but that needn't make any difference just now. We're here
+to talk business, Mr Fisher, so we may as well begin.'
+
+I was getting tired of being taken for Smooth Sam.
+
+'I am not Smooth Sam Fisher.'
+
+I turned to the automobile. 'Will you identify me, Mrs Drassilis?'
+
+She was regarding me with wide-open eyes.
+
+'What on earth are you doing down here? I have been trying
+everywhere to find you, but nobody--'
+
+Mrs Ford interrupted her. She gave me the impression of being a
+woman who wanted a good deal of the conversation, and who did not
+care how she got it. In a conversational sense she thugged Mrs
+Drassilis at this point, or rather she swept over her like some
+tidal wave, blotting her out.
+
+'Oh,' she said fixing her brown eyes, less scornful now but still
+imperious, on mine. 'I must apologize. I have made a mistake. I
+took you for a low villain of the name of Sam Fisher. I hope you
+will forgive me. I was to have met him at this exact spot just
+about this time, by appointment, so, seeing you here, I mistook
+you for him.'
+
+'If I might have a word with you alone?' I said.
+
+Mrs Ford had a short way with people. In matters concerning her
+own wishes, she took their acquiescence for granted.
+
+'Drive on up to the house, Jarvis,' she said, and Mrs Drassilis
+was whirled away round the curve of the drive before she knew what
+had happened to her.
+
+'Well?'
+
+'My name is Burns,' I said.
+
+'Now I understand,' she said. 'I know who you are now.' She
+paused, and I was expecting her to fawn upon me for my gallant
+service in her cause, when she resumed in quite a different
+strain.
+
+'I can't think what you can have been about, Mr Burns, not to have
+been able to do what Cynthia asked you. Surely in all these weeks
+and months.... And then, after all, to have let this Fisher
+scoundrel steal him away from under your nose...!'
+
+She gave me a fleeting glance of unfathomable scorn. And when I
+thought of all the sufferings I had gone through that term owing
+to her repulsive son and, indirectly, for her sake, I felt that
+the time had come to speak out.
+
+'May I describe the way in which I allowed your son to be stolen
+away from under my nose?' I said. And in well-chosen words, I
+sketched the outline of what had happened. I did not omit to lay
+stress on the fact that the Nugget's departure with the enemy was
+entirely voluntary.
+
+She heard me out in silence.
+
+'That was too bad of Oggie,' she said tolerantly, when I had
+ceased dramatically on the climax of my tale.
+
+As a comment it seemed to me inadequate.
+
+'Oggie was always high-spirited,' she went on. 'No doubt you have
+noticed that?'
+
+'A little.'
+
+'He could be led, but never driven. With the best intentions, no
+doubt, you refused to allow him to leave the stables that night
+and return to the house, and he resented the check and took the
+matter into his own hands.' She broke off and looked at her watch.
+'Have you a watch? What time is it? Only that? I thought it must
+be later. I arrived too soon. I got a letter from this man Fisher,
+naming this spot and this hour for a meeting, when we could
+discuss terms. He said that he had written to Mr Ford, appointing
+the same time.' She frowned. 'I have no doubt he will come,' she
+said coldly.
+
+'Perhaps this is his car,' I said.
+
+A second automobile was whirring up the drive. There was a shout
+as it came within sight of us, and the chauffeur put on the brake.
+A man sprang from the tonneau. He jerked a word to the chauffeur,
+and the car went on up the drive.
+
+He was a massively built man of middle age, with powerful shoulders,
+and a face--when he had removed his motor-goggles very like any one
+of half a dozen of those Roman emperors whose features have come
+down to us on coins and statues, square-jawed, clean-shaven, and
+aggressive. Like his late wife (who was now standing, drawn up to
+her full height, staring haughtily at him) he had the air of one
+born to command. I should imagine that the married life of these
+two must have been something more of a battle even than most married
+lives. The clashing of those wills must have smacked of a collision
+between the immovable mass and the irresistible force.
+
+He met Mrs Ford's stare with one equally militant, then turned to
+me.
+
+'I'll give you double what she has offered you,' he said. He
+paused, and eyed me with loathing. 'You damned scoundrel,' he
+added.
+
+Custom ought to have rendered me immune to irritation, but it had
+not. I spoke my mind.
+
+'One of these days, Mr Ford,' I said, 'I am going to publish a
+directory of the names and addresses of the people who have
+mistaken me for Smooth Sam Fisher. I am not Sam Fisher. Can you
+grasp that? My name is Peter Burns, and for the past term I have
+been a master at this school. And I may say that, judging from
+what I know of the little brute, any one who kidnapped your son as
+long as two days ago will be so anxious by now to get rid of him
+that he will probably want to pay you for taking him back.'
+
+My words almost had the effect of bringing this divorced couple
+together again. They made common cause against me. It was probably
+the first time in years that they had formed even a temporary
+alliance.
+
+'How dare you talk like that!' said Mrs Ford. 'Oggie is a sweet
+boy in every respect.'
+
+'You're perfectly right, Nesta,' said Mr Ford. 'He may want
+intelligent handling, but he's a mighty fine boy. I shall make
+inquiries, and if this man has been ill-treating Ogden, I shall
+complain to Mr Abney. Where the devil is this man Fisher?' he
+broke off abruptly.
+
+'On the spot,' said an affable voice. The bushes behind me parted,
+and Smooth Sam stepped out on to the gravel.
+
+I had recognized him by his voice. I certainly should not have
+done so by his appearance. He had taken the precaution of 'making
+up' for this important meeting. A white wig of indescribable
+respectability peeped out beneath his black hat. His eyes twinkled
+from under two penthouses of white eyebrows. A white moustache
+covered his mouth. He was venerable to a degree.
+
+He nodded to me, and bared his white head gallantly to Mrs Ford.
+
+'No worse for our little outing, Mr Burns, I am glad to see. Mrs
+Ford, I must apologize for my apparent unpunctuality, but I was
+not really behind time. I have been waiting in the bushes. I
+thought it just possible that you might have brought unwelcome
+members of the police force with you, and I have been scouting, as
+it were, before making my advance. I see, however, that all is
+well, and we can come at once to business. May I say, before we
+begin, that I overheard your recent conversation, and that I
+entirely disagree with Mr Burns. Master Ford is a charming boy.
+Already I feel like an elder brother to him. I am loath to part
+with him.'
+
+'How much?' snapped Mr Ford. 'You've got me. How much do you
+want?'
+
+'I'll give you double what he offers,' cried Mrs Ford.
+
+Sam held up his hand, his old pontifical manner intensified by the
+white wig.
+
+'May I speak? Thank you. This is a little embarrassing. When I
+asked you both to meet me here, it was not for the purpose of
+holding an auction. I had a straight-forward business proposition
+to make to you. It will necessitate a certain amount of plain and
+somewhat personal speaking. May I proceed? Thank you. I will be as
+brief as possible.'
+
+His eloquence appeared to have had a soothing effect on the two
+Fords. They remained silent.
+
+'You must understand,' said Sam, 'that I am speaking as an expert.
+I have been in the kidnapping business many years, and I know what
+I am talking about. And I tell you that the moment you two got
+your divorce, you said good-bye to all peace and quiet. Bless
+you'--Sam's manner became fatherly--'I've seen it a hundred
+times. Couple get divorced, and, if there's a child, what happens?
+They start in playing battledore-and-shuttlecock with him. Wife
+sneaks him from husband. Husband sneaks him back from wife. After
+a while along comes a gentleman in my line of business, a
+professional at the game, and he puts one across on both the
+amateurs. He takes advantage of the confusion, slips in, and gets
+away with the kid. That's what has happened here, and I'm going to
+show you the way to stop it another time. Now I'll make you a
+proposition. What you want to do'--I have never heard anything so
+soothing, so suggestive of the old family friend healing an
+unfortunate breach, as Sam's voice at this juncture--'what you
+want to do is to get together again right quick. Never mind the
+past. Let bygones be bygones. Kiss and be friends.'
+
+A snort from Mr Ford checked him for a moment, but he resumed.
+
+'I guess there were faults on both sides. Get together and talk it
+over. And when you've agreed to call the fight off and start fair
+again, that's where I come in. Mr Burns here will tell you, if you
+ask him, that I'm anxious to quit this business and marry and
+settle down. Well, see here. What you want to do is to give me a
+salary--we can talk figures later on--to stay by you and watch
+over the kid. Don't snort--I'm talking plain sense. You'd a sight
+better have me with you than against you. Set a thief to catch a
+thief. What I don't know about the fine points of the game isn't
+worth knowing. I'll guarantee, if you put me in charge, to see
+that nobody comes within a hundred miles of the kid unless he has
+an order-to-view. You'll find I earn every penny of that salary ...
+Mr Burns and I will now take a turn up the drive while you think
+it over.'
+
+He linked his arm in mine and drew me away. As we turned the
+corner of the drive I caught a glimpse over my shoulder of the
+Little Nugget's parents. They were standing where we had left
+them, as if Sam's eloquence had rooted them to the spot.
+
+'Well, well, well, young man,' said Sam, eyeing me affectionately,
+'it's pleasant to meet you again, under happier conditions than
+last time. You certainly have all the luck, sonny, or you would
+have been badly hurt that night. I was getting scared how the
+thing would end. Buck's a plain roughneck, and his gang are as bad
+as he is, and they had got mighty sore at you, mighty sore. If
+they had grabbed you, there's no knowing what might not have
+happened. However, all's well that ends well, and this little game
+has surely had the happy ending. I shall get that job, sonny. Old
+man Ford isn't a fool, and it won't take him long, when he gets to
+thinking it over, to see that I'm right. He'll hire me.'
+
+'Aren't you rather reckoning without your partner?' I said. 'Where
+does Buck MacGinnis come in on the deal?'
+
+Sam patted my shoulder paternally.
+
+'He doesn't, sonny, he doesn't. It was a shame to do it--it was
+like taking candy from a kid--but business is business, and I was
+reluctantly compelled to double-cross poor old Buck. I sneaked the
+Nugget away from him next day. It's not worth talking about; it
+was too easy. Buck's all right in a rough-and-tumble, but when it
+comes to brains he gets left, and so he'll go on through life,
+poor fellow. I hate to think of it.'
+
+He sighed. Buck's misfortunes seemed to move him deeply.
+
+'I shouldn't be surprised if he gave up the profession after this.
+He has had enough to discourage him. I told you about what
+happened to him that night, didn't I? No? I thought I did. Why,
+Buck was the guy who did the Steve Brodie through the roof; and,
+when we picked him up, we found he'd broken his leg again! Isn't
+that enough to jar a man? I guess he'll retire from the business
+after that. He isn't intended for it.'
+
+We were approaching the two automobiles now, and, looking back, I
+saw Mr and Mrs Ford walking up the drive. Sam followed my gaze,
+and I heard him chuckle.
+
+'It's all right,' he said. 'They've fixed it up. Something in the
+way they're walking tells me they've fixed it up.'
+
+Mrs Drassilis was still sitting in the red automobile, looking
+piqued but resigned. Mrs Ford addressed her.
+
+'I shall have to leave you, Mrs Drassilis,' she said. 'Tell Jarvis
+to drive you wherever you want to go. I am going with my husband
+to see my boy Oggie.'
+
+She stretched out a hand towards the millionaire. He caught it in
+his, and they stood there, smiling foolishly at each other, while
+Sam, almost purring, brooded over them like a stout fairy queen.
+The two chauffeurs looked on woodenly.
+
+Mr Ford released his wife's hand and turned to Sam.
+
+'Fisher.'
+
+'Sir?'
+
+'I've been considering your proposition. There's a string tied to
+it.'
+
+'Oh no, sir, I assure you!'
+
+'There is. What guarantee have I that you won't double-cross me?'
+
+Sam smiled, relieved.
+
+'You forget that I told you I was about to be married, sir. My
+wife won't let me!'
+
+Mr Ford waved his hand towards the automobile.
+
+'Jump in,' he said briefly, 'and tell him where to drive to.
+You're engaged!'
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 18
+
+
+'No manners!' said Mrs Drassilis. 'None whatever. I always said
+so.'
+
+She spoke bitterly. She was following the automobile with an
+offended eye as it moved down the drive.
+
+The car rounded the corner. Sam turned and waved a farewell. Mr
+and Mrs Ford, seated close together in the tonneau, did not even
+look round.
+
+Mrs Drassilis sniffed disgustedly.
+
+'She's a friend of Cynthia's. Cynthia asked me to come down here
+with her to see you. I came, to oblige her. And now, without a
+word of apology, she leaves me stranded. She has no manners
+whatever.'
+
+I offered no defence of the absent one. The verdict more or less
+squared with my own opinion.
+
+'Is Cynthia back in England?' I asked, to change the subject.
+
+'The yacht got back yesterday. Peter, I have something of the
+utmost importance to speak to you about.' She glanced at Jarvis
+the chauffeur, leaning back in his seat with the air, peculiar to
+chauffeurs in repose, of being stuffed. 'Walk down the drive with
+me.'
+
+I helped her out of the car, and we set off in silence. There was
+a suppressed excitement in my companion's manner which interested
+me, and something furtive which brought back all my old dislike of
+her. I could not imagine what she could have to say to me that had
+brought her all these miles.
+
+'How _do_ you come to be down here?' she said. 'When Cynthia
+told me you were here, I could hardly believe her. Why are you a
+master at this school? I cannot understand it!'
+
+'What did you want to see me about?' I asked.
+
+She hesitated. It was always an effort for her to be direct. Now,
+apparently, the effort was too great. The next moment she had
+rambled off on some tortuous bypath of her own, which, though it
+presumably led in the end to her destination, was evidently a long
+way round.
+
+'I have known you for so many years now, Peter, and I don't know of
+anybody whose character I admire more. You are so generous--quixotic
+in fact. You are one of the few really unselfish men I have ever
+met. You are always thinking of other people. Whatever it cost you,
+I know you would not hesitate to give up anything if you felt that
+it was for someone else's happiness. I do admire you so for it.
+One meets so few young men nowadays who consider anybody except
+themselves.'
+
+She paused, either for breath or for fresh ideas, and I took
+advantage of the lull in the rain of bouquets to repeat my
+question.
+
+'What _did_ you want to see me about?' I asked patiently.
+
+'About Cynthia. She asked me to see you.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+'You got a letter from her.'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Last night, when she came home, she told me about it, and showed
+me your answer. It was a beautiful letter, Peter. I'm sure I cried
+when I read it. And Cynthia did, I feel certain. Of course, to a
+girl of her character that letter was final. She is so loyal, dear
+child.'
+
+'I don't understand.'
+
+As Sam would have said, she seemed to be speaking; words appeared
+to be fluttering from her; but her meaning was beyond me.
+
+'Once she has given her promise, I am sure nothing would induce
+her to break it, whatever her private feelings. She is so loyal.
+She has such character.'
+
+'Would you mind being a little clearer?' I said sharply. 'I really
+don't understand what it is you are trying to tell me. What do you
+mean about loyalty and character? I don't understand.'
+
+She was not to be hustled from her bypath. She had chosen her
+route, and she meant to travel by it, ignoring short-cuts.
+
+'To Cynthia, as I say, it was final. She simply could not see that
+the matter was not irrevocably settled. I thought it so fine of
+her. But I am her mother, and it was my duty not to give in and
+accept the situation as inevitable while there was anything I
+could do for her happiness. I knew your chivalrous, unselfish
+nature, Peter. I could speak to you as Cynthia could not. I could
+appeal to your generosity in a way impossible, of course, for her.
+I could put the whole facts of the case clearly before you.'
+
+I snatched at the words.
+
+'I wish you would. What are they?'
+
+She rambled off again.
+
+'She has such a rigid sense of duty. There is no arguing with her.
+I told her that, if you knew, you would not dream of standing in
+her way. You are so generous, such a true friend, that your only
+thought would be for her. If her happiness depended on your
+releasing her from her promise, you would not think of yourself.
+So in the end I took matters into my own hands and came to see
+you. I am truly sorry for you, dear Peter, but to me Cynthia's
+happiness, of course, must come before everything. You do
+understand, don't you?'
+
+Gradually, as she was speaking, I had begun to grasp hesitatingly
+at her meaning, hesitatingly, because the first hint of it had
+stirred me to such a whirl of hope that I feared to risk the shock
+of finding that, after all, I had been mistaken. If I were
+right--and surely she could mean nothing else--I was free, free
+with honour. But I could not live on hints. I must hear this thing
+in words.
+
+'Has--has Cynthia--' I stopped, to steady my voice. 'Has Cynthia
+found--' I stopped again. I was finding it absurdly difficult to
+frame my sentence. 'Is there someone else?' I concluded with a
+rush.
+
+Mrs Drassilis patted my arm sympathetically.
+
+'Be brave, Peter!'
+
+'There is?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+The trees, the drive, the turf, the sky, the birds, the house, the
+automobile, and Jarvis, the stuffed chauffeur, leaped together for
+an instant in one whirling, dancing mass of which I was the
+centre. And then, out of the chaos, as it separated itself once
+more into its component parts, I heard my voice saying, 'Tell me.'
+
+The world was itself again, and I was listening quietly and with a
+mild interest which, try as I would, I could not make any
+stronger. I had exhausted my emotion on the essential fact: the
+details were an anticlimax.
+
+'I liked him directly I saw him,' said Mrs Drassilis. 'And, of
+course, as he was such a friend of yours, we naturally--'
+
+'A friend of mine?'
+
+'I am speaking of Lord Mountry.'
+
+'Mountry? What about him?' Light flooded in on my numbed brain.
+'You don't mean--Is it Lord Mountry?'
+
+My manner must have misled her. She stammered in her eagerness to
+dispel what she took to be my misapprehension.
+
+'Don't think that he acted in anything but the most honourable
+manner. Nothing could be farther from the truth. He knew nothing
+of Cynthia's engagement to you. She told him when he asked her to
+marry him, and he--as a matter of fact, it was he who insisted on
+dear Cynthia writing that letter to you.'
+
+She stopped, apparently staggered by this excursion into honesty.
+
+'Well?'
+
+'In fact, he dictated it.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+'Unfortunately, it was quite the wrong sort of letter. It was the
+very opposite of clear. It can have given you no inkling of the
+real state of affairs.'
+
+'It certainly did not.'
+
+'He would not allow her to alter it in any way. He is very
+obstinate at times, like so many shy men. And when your answer
+came, you see, things were worse than before.'
+
+'I suppose so.'
+
+'I could see last night how unhappy they both were. And when
+Cynthia suggested it, I agreed at once to come to you and tell you
+everything.'
+
+She looked at me anxiously. From her point of view, this was the
+climax, the supreme moment. She hesitated. I seemed to see her
+marshalling her forces, the telling sentences, the persuasive
+adjectives; rallying them together for the grand assault.
+
+But through the trees I caught a glimpse of Audrey, walking on the
+lawn; and the assault was never made.
+
+'I will write to Cynthia tonight,' I said, 'wishing her
+happiness.'
+
+'Oh, Peter!' said Mrs Drassilis.
+
+'Don't mention it,' said I.
+
+Doubts appeared to mar her perfect contentment.
+
+'You are sure you can convince her?'
+
+'Convince her?'
+
+'And--er--Lord Mountry. He is so determined not to do
+anything--er--what he would call unsportsmanlike.'
+
+'Perhaps I had better tell her I am going to marry some one else,'
+I suggested.
+
+'I think that would be an excellent idea,' she said, brightening
+visibly. 'How clever of you to have thought of it.'
+
+She permitted herself a truism.
+
+'After all, dear Peter, there are plenty of nice girls in the
+world. You have only to look for them.'
+
+'You're perfectly right,' I said. 'I'll start at once.'
+
+A gleam of white caught my eye through the trees by the lawn. I
+moved towards it.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Nugget, by P. G. Wodehouse
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE NUGGET ***
+
+***** This file should be named 6683.txt or 6683.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/6/6/8/6683/
+
+Produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Tom Allen, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+  www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809
+North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email
+contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
+Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/old/old-2025-04-01/6683.zip b/old/old-2025-04-01/6683.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a84c8d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old-2025-04-01/6683.zip