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+Project Gutenberg's A Man of Means, by P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
+
+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: A Man of Means
+
+Author: P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
+
+Release Date: August, 2005 [EBook #8713]
+Posting Date: July 27, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MAN OF MEANS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The United States Members of the Blandings E-Group
+
+
+
+
+
+A MAN OF MEANS
+
+A SERIES OF SIX STORIES
+
+
+By Pelham Grenville Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
+
+From the _Pictorial Review_, May-October 1916
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE EPISODE OF THE LANDLADY'S DAUGHTER
+
+THE EPISODE OF THE FINANCIAL NAPOLEON
+
+THE EPISODE OF THE THEATRICAL VENTURE
+
+THE EPISODE OF THE LIVE WEEKLY
+
+THE DIVERTING EPISODE OF THE EXILED MONARCH
+
+THE EPISODE OF THE HIRED PAST
+
+
+
+
+
+THE EPISODE OF THE LANDLADY'S DAUGHTER
+
+First of a Series of Six Stories [First published in _Pictorial Review_,
+May 1916]
+
+
+When a seed-merchant of cautious disposition and an eye to the main
+chance receives from an eminent firm of jam-manufacturers an extremely
+large order for clover-seed, his emotions are mixed. Joy may be said to
+predominate, but with the joy comes also uncertainty. Are these people,
+he asks himself, proposing to set up as farmers of a large scale, or do
+they merely want the seed to give verisimilitude to their otherwise bald
+and unconvincing raspberry jam? On the solution of this problem
+depends the important matter of price, for, obviously, you can charge
+a fraudulent jam disseminator in a manner which an honest farmer would
+resent.
+
+This was the problem which was furrowing the brow of Mr. Julian
+Fineberg, of Bury St. Edwards, one sunny morning when Roland Bleke
+knocked at his door; and such was its difficulty that only at the
+nineteenth knock did Mr. Fineberg raise his head.
+
+"Come in--that dashed woodpecker out there!" he shouted, for it was his
+habit to express himself with a generous strength towards the junior
+members of his staff.
+
+The young man who entered looked exactly like a second clerk in a
+provincial seed-merchant's office--which, strangely enough, he chanced
+to be. His chief characteristic was an intense ordinariness. He was a
+young man; and when you had said that of him you had said everything.
+There was nothing which you would have noticed about him, except the
+fact that there was nothing to notice. His age was twenty-two and his
+name was Roland Bleke.
+
+"Please, sir, it's about my salary."
+
+Mr. Fineberg, at the word, drew himself together much as a British
+square at Waterloo must have drawn itself together at the sight of a
+squadron of cuirassiers.
+
+"Salary?" he cried. "What about it? What's the matter with it? You get
+it, don't you?"
+
+"Yes, sir, but----"
+
+"Well? Don't stand there like an idiot. What is it?"
+
+"It's too much."
+
+Mr. Fineberg's brain reeled. It was improbable that the millennium could
+have arrived with a jerk; on the other hand, he had distinctly heard
+one of his clerks complain that his salary was too large. He pinched
+himself.
+
+"Say that again," he said.
+
+"If you could see your way to reduce it, sir----"
+
+It occurred to Mr. Fineberg for one instant that his subordinate was
+endeavoring to be humorous, but a glance at Roland's face dispelled that
+idea.
+
+"Why do you want it reduced?"
+
+"Please, sir, I'm going to be married."
+
+"What the deuce do you mean?"
+
+"When my salary reaches a hundred and fifty, sir. And it's a hundred and
+forty now, so if you could see your way to knocking off ten pounds----"
+
+Mr. Fineberg saw light. He was a married man himself.
+
+"My boy," he said genially, "I quite understand. But I can do you better
+than that. It's no use doing this sort of thing in a small way. From now
+on your salary is a hundred and ten. No, no, don't thank me. You're an
+excellent clerk, and it's a pleasure to me to reward merit when I find
+it. Close the door after you."
+
+And Mr. Fineberg returned with a lighter heart to the great clover-seed
+problem.
+
+The circumstances which had led Roland to approach his employer may
+be briefly recounted. Since joining the staff of Mr. Fineberg, he had
+lodged at the house of a Mr. Coppin, in honorable employment as porter
+at the local railway-station. The Coppin family, excluding domestic
+pets, consisted of Mr. Coppin, a kindly and garrulous gentleman of
+sixty, Mrs. Coppin, a somewhat negative personality, most of whose life
+was devoted to cooking and washing up in her underground lair, Brothers
+Frank and Percy, gentleman of leisure, popularly supposed to be engaged
+in the mysterious occupation known as "lookin' about for somethin',"
+and, lastly, Muriel.
+
+For some months after his arrival, Muriel had been to Roland Bleke
+a mere automaton, a something outside himself that was made only for
+neatly-laid breakfast tables and silent removal of plates at dinner.
+Gradually, however, when his natural shyness was soothed by use
+sufficiently to enable him to look at her when she came into the room,
+he discovered that she was a strikingly pretty girl, bounded to the
+North by a mass of auburn hair and to the South by small and shapely
+feet. She also possessed what, we are informed--we are children in these
+matters ourselves--is known as the R. S. V. P. eye. This eye had met
+Roland's one evening, as he chumped his chop, and before he knew what he
+was doing he had remarked that it had been a fine day.
+
+From that wonderful moment matters had developed at an incredible speed.
+Roland had a nice sense of the social proprieties, and he could not
+bring himself to ignore a girl with whom he had once exchanged easy
+conversation about the weather. Whenever she came to lay his table, he
+felt bound to say something. Not being an experienced gagger, he found
+it more and more difficult each evening to hit on something bright,
+until finally, from sheer lack of inspiration, he kissed her.
+
+If matters had progressed rapidly before, they went like lightning then.
+It was as if he had touched a spring or pressed a button, setting vast
+machinery in motion. Even as he reeled back stunned at his audacity, the
+room became suddenly full of Coppins of every variety known to science.
+Through a mist he was aware of Mrs. Coppin crying in a corner, of
+Mr. Coppin drinking his health in the remains of sparkling limado,
+of Brothers Frank and Percy, one on each side trying to borrow
+simultaneously half-crowns, and of Muriel, flushed but demure, making
+bread-pellets and throwing them in an abstracted way, one by one, at the
+Coppin cat, which had wandered in on the chance of fish.
+
+Out of the chaos, as he stood looking at them with his mouth open, came
+the word "bans," and smote him like a blast of East wind.
+
+It is not necessary to trace in detail Roland's mental processes from
+that moment till the day when he applied to Mr. Fineberg for a
+reduction of salary. It is enough to say that for quite a month he was
+extraordinarily happy. To a man who has had nothing to do with women, to
+be engaged is an intoxicating experience, and at first life was one
+long golden glow to Roland. Secretly, like all mild men, he had always
+nourished a desire to be esteemed a nut by his fellow men; and his
+engagement satisfied that desire. It was pleasant to hear Brothers
+Frank and Percy cough knowingly when he came in. It was pleasant to walk
+abroad with a girl like Muriel in the capacity of the accepted wooer.
+Above all, it was pleasant to sit holding Muriel's hand and watching the
+ill-concealed efforts of Mr. Albert Potter to hide his mortification.
+Albert was a mechanic in the motor-works round the corner, and hitherto
+Roland had always felt something of a worm in his presence. Albert was
+so infernally strong and silent and efficient. He could dissect a car
+and put it together again. He could drive through the thickest traffic.
+He could sit silent in company without having his silence attributed to
+shyness or imbecility. But--he could not get engaged to Muriel Coppin.
+That was reserved for Roland Bleke, the nut, the dasher, the young man
+of affairs. It was all very well being able to tell a spark-plug from a
+commutator at sight, but when it came to a contest in an affair of the
+heart with a man like Roland, Albert was in his proper place, third at
+the pole.
+
+Probably, if he could have gone on merely being engaged, Roland would
+never have wearied of the experience. But the word marriage began to
+creep more and more into the family conversation, and suddenly panic
+descended upon Roland Bleke.
+
+All his life he had had a horror of definite appointments. An invitation
+to tea a week ahead had been enough to poison life for him. He was one
+of those young men whose souls revolt at the thought of planning out any
+definite step. He could do things on the spur of the moment, but plans
+made him lose his nerve.
+
+By the end of the month his whole being was crying out to him in
+agonized tones: "Get me out of this. Do anything you like, but get me
+out of this frightful marriage business."
+
+If anything had been needed to emphasize his desire for freedom, the
+attitude of Frank and Percy would have supplied it. Every day they made
+it clearer that the man who married Muriel would be no stranger to them.
+It would be his pleasing task to support them, too, in the style to
+which they had become accustomed. They conveyed the idea that they went
+with Muriel as a sort of bonus.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Coppin family were at high tea when Roland reached home. There was
+a general stir of interest as he entered the room, for it was known that
+he had left that morning with the intention of approaching Mr. Fineberg
+on the important matter of a rise in salary. Mr. Coppin removed his
+saucer of tea from his lips. Frank brushed the tail of a sardine from
+the corner of his mouth. Percy ate his haddock in an undertone. Albert
+Potter, who was present, glowered silently.
+
+Roland shook his head with the nearest approach to gloom which his
+rejoicing heart would permit.
+
+"I'm afraid I've bad news."
+
+Mrs. Coppin burst into tears, her invariable practise in any crisis.
+Albert Potter's face relaxed into something resembling a smile.
+
+"He won't give you your raise?"
+
+Roland sighed.
+
+"He's reduced me."
+
+"Reduced you!"
+
+"Yes. Times are bad just at present, so he has had to lower me to a
+hundred and ten."
+
+The collected jaws of the family fell as one jaw. Muriel herself seemed
+to be bearing the blow with fortitude, but the rest were stunned. Frank
+and Percy might have been posing for a picture of men who had lost their
+fountain pens.
+
+Beneath the table the hand of Albert Potter found the hand of Muriel
+Coppin, and held it; and Muriel, we regret to add, turned and bestowed
+upon Albert a half-smile of tender understanding.
+
+"I suppose," said Roland, "we couldn't get married on a hundred and
+ten?"
+
+"No," said Percy.
+
+"No," said Frank.
+
+"No," said Albert Potter.
+
+They all spoke decidedly, but Albert the most decidedly of the three.
+
+"Then," said Roland regretfully, "I'm afraid we must wait."
+
+It seemed to be the general verdict that they must wait. Muriel said she
+thought they must wait. Albert Potter, whose opinion no one had asked,
+was quite certain that they must wait. Mrs. Coppin, between sobs, moaned
+that it would be best to wait. Frank and Percy, morosely devouring
+bread and jam, said they supposed they would have to wait. And, to end a
+painful scene, Roland drifted silently from the room, and went up-stairs
+to his own quarters.
+
+There was a telegram on the mantel.
+
+"Some fellows," he soliloquized happily, as he opened it, "wouldn't
+have been able to manage a little thing like that. They would have given
+themselves away. They would----"
+
+The contents of the telegram demanded his attention.
+
+For some time they conveyed nothing to him. The thing might have been
+written in Hindustani.
+
+It would have been quite appropriate if it had been, for it was from the
+promoters of the Calcutta Sweep, and it informed him that, as the holder
+of ticket number 108,694, he had drawn Gelatine, and in recognition of
+this fact a check for five hundred pounds would be forwarded to him in
+due course.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Roland's first feeling was one of pure bewilderment. As far as he
+could recollect, he had never had any dealings whatsoever with these
+open-handed gentlemen. Then memory opened her flood-gates and swept him
+back to a morning ages ago, so it seemed to him, when Mr. Fineberg's
+eldest son Ralph, passing through the office on his way to borrow money
+from his father, had offered him for ten shillings down a piece of
+cardboard, at the same time saying something about a sweep. Partly
+from a vague desire to keep in with the Fineberg clan, but principally
+because it struck him as rather a doggish thing to do, Roland had passed
+over the ten shillings; and there, as far as he had known, the matter
+had ended.
+
+And now, after all this time, that simple action had borne fruit in the
+shape of Gelatine and a check for five hundred pounds.
+
+Roland's next emotion was triumph. The sudden entry of checks for five
+hundred pounds into a man's life is apt to produce this result.
+
+For the space of some minutes he gloated; and then reaction set in. Five
+hundred pounds meant marriage with Muriel.
+
+His brain worked quickly. He must conceal this thing. With trembling
+fingers he felt for his match-box, struck a match, and burnt the
+telegram to ashes. Then, feeling a little better, he sat down to think
+the whole matter over. His meditations brought a certain amount of balm.
+After all, he felt, the thing could quite easily be kept a secret. He
+would receive the check in due course, as stated, and he would bicycle
+over to the neighboring town of Lexingham and start a bank-account with
+it. Nobody would know, and life would go on as before.
+
+He went to bed, and slept peacefully.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was about a week after this that he was roused out of a deep sleep
+at eight o'clock in the morning to find his room full of Coppins. Mr.
+Coppin was there in a nightshirt and his official trousers. Mrs.
+Coppin was there, weeping softly in a brown dressing-gown. Modesty had
+apparently kept Muriel from the gathering, but brothers Frank and Percy
+stood at his bedside, shaking him by the shoulders and shouting. Mr.
+Coppin thrust a newspaper at him, as he sat up blinking.
+
+These epic moments are best related swiftly. Roland took the paper, and
+the first thing that met his sleepy eye and effectually drove the sleep
+from it was this head-line:
+
+   ROMANCE OF THE CALCUTTA SWEEPSTAKES
+
+And beneath it another in type almost as large as the first:
+
+   POOR CLERK WINS L40,000
+
+His own name leaped at him from the printed page, and with it that of
+the faithful Gelatine.
+
+Flight! That was the master-word which rang in Roland's brain as day
+followed day. The wild desire of the trapped animal to be anywhere
+except just where he was had come upon him. He was past the stage when
+conscience could have kept him to his obligations. He had ceased to
+think of anything or any one but himself. All he asked of Fate was to
+remove him from Bury St. Edwards on any terms.
+
+It may be that some inkling of his state of mind was wafted
+telepathically to Frank and Percy, for it can not be denied that their
+behavior at this juncture was more than a little reminiscent of the
+police force. Perhaps it was simply their natural anxiety to keep an eye
+on what they already considered their own private gold-mine that made
+them so adhesive. Certainly there was no hour of the day when one or the
+other was not in Roland's immediate neighborhood. Their vigilance
+even extended to the night hours, and once, when Roland, having tossed
+sleeplessly on his bed, got up at two in the morning, with the wild idea
+of stealing out of the house and walking to London, a door opened as he
+reached the top of the stairs, and a voice asked him what he thought he
+was doing. The statement that he was walking in his sleep was accepted,
+but coldly.
+
+It was shortly after this that, having by dint of extraordinary strategy
+eluded the brothers and reached the railway-station, Roland, with his
+ticket to London in his pocket and the express already entering the
+station, was engaged in conversation by old Mr. Coppin, who appeared
+from nowhere to denounce the high cost of living in a speech that lasted
+until the tail-lights of the train had vanished and Brothers Frank and
+Percy arrived, panting.
+
+A man has only a certain capacity for battling with Fate. After this
+last episode Roland gave in. Not even the exquisite agony of hearing
+himself described in church as a bachelor of this parish, with the grim
+addition that this was for the second time of asking, could stir him to
+a fresh dash for liberty.
+
+Altho the shadow of the future occupied Roland's mind almost to the
+exclusion of everything else, he was still capable of suffering a
+certain amount of additional torment from the present; and one of the
+things which made the present a source of misery to him was the fact
+that he was expected to behave more like a mad millionaire than a sober
+young man with a knowledge of the value of money. His mind, trained from
+infancy to a decent respect for the pence, had not yet adjusted itself
+to the possession of large means; and the open-handed role forced upon
+him by the family appalled him.
+
+When the Coppins wanted anything, they asked for it; and it seemed to
+Roland that they wanted pretty nearly everything. If Mr. Coppin had
+reached his present age without the assistance of a gold watch, he might
+surely have struggled along to the end on gun-metal. In any case, a man
+of his years should have been thinking of higher things than mere gauds
+and trinkets. A like criticism applied to Mrs. Coppin's demand for a
+silk petticoat, which struck Roland as simply indecent. Frank and Percy
+took theirs mostly in specie. It was Muriel who struck the worst blow by
+insisting on a hired motor-car.
+
+Roland hated motor-cars, especially when they were driven by Albert
+Potter, as this one was. Albert, that strong, silent man, had but one
+way of expressing his emotions, namely to open the throttle and shave
+the paint off trolley-cars. Disappointed love was giving Albert a good
+deal of discomfort at this time, and he found it made him feel better
+to go round corners on two wheels. As Muriel sat next to him on these
+expeditions, Roland squashing into the tonneau with Frank and Percy, his
+torments were subtle. He was not given a chance to forget, and the only
+way in which he could obtain a momentary diminution of the agony was to
+increase the speed to sixty miles an hour.
+
+It was in this fashion that they journeyed to the neighboring town of
+Lexingham to see M. Etienne Feriaud perform his feat of looping the loop
+in his aeroplane.
+
+It was Brother Frank's idea that they should make up a party to go and
+see M. Feriaud. Frank's was one of those generous, unspoiled natures
+which never grow _blase_ at the sight of a fellow human taking a
+sporting chance at hara-kiri. He was a well-known figure at every wild
+animal exhibition within a radius of fifty miles, and M. Feriaud drew
+him like a magnet.
+
+"The blighter goes up," he explained, as he conducted the party into the
+arena, "and then he stands on his head and goes round in circles. I've
+seen pictures of it."
+
+It appeared that M. Feriaud did even more than this. Posters round the
+ground advertised the fact that, on receipt of five pounds, he would
+take up a passenger with him. To date, however, there appeared to have
+been no rush on the part of the canny inhabitants of Lexingham to avail
+themselves of this chance of a breath of fresh air. M. Feriaud, a small
+man with a chubby and amiable face, wandered about signing picture cards
+and smoking a lighted cigaret, looking a little disappointed.
+
+Albert Potter was scornful.
+
+"Lot of rabbits," he said. "Where's their pluck? And I suppose they call
+themselves Englishmen. I'd go up precious quick if I had a five-pound
+note. Disgrace, I call it, letting a Frenchman have the laugh of us."
+
+It was a long speech for Mr. Potter, and it drew a look of respectful
+tenderness from Muriel. "You're so brave, Mr. Potter," she said.
+
+Whether it was the slight emphasis which she put on the first word, or
+whether it was sheer generosity that impelled him, one can not say; but
+Roland produced the required sum even while she spoke. He offered it to
+his rival.
+
+Mr. Potter started, turned a little pale, then drew himself up and waved
+the note aside.
+
+"I take no favors," he said with dignity.
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Why don't you do it." said Albert, nastily. "Five pounds is nothing to
+you."
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"Ah! Why should you?"
+
+It would be useless to assert that Mr. Potter's tone was friendly. It
+stung Roland. It seemed to him that Muriel was looking at him in an
+unpleasantly contemptuous manner.
+
+In some curious fashion, without doing anything to merit it, he had
+apparently become an object of scorn and derision to the party.
+
+"All right, then, I will," he said suddenly.
+
+"Easy enough to talk," said Albert.
+
+Roland strode with a pale but determined face to the spot where M.
+Feriaud, beaming politely, was signing a picture post-card.
+
+Some feeling of compunction appeared to come to Muriel at the eleventh
+hour.
+
+"Don't let him," she cried.
+
+But Brother Frank was made of sterner stuff. This was precisely the sort
+of thing which, in his opinion, made for a jolly afternoon.
+
+For years he had been waiting for something of this kind. He was
+experiencing that pleasant thrill which comes to a certain type
+of person when the victim of a murder in the morning paper is an
+acquaintance of theirs.
+
+"What are you talking about?" he said. "There's no danger. At least, not
+much. He might easily come down all right. Besides, he wants to. What do
+you want to go interfering for?"
+
+Roland returned. The negotiations with the bird-man had lasted a little
+longer than one would have expected. But then, of course, M. Feriaud was
+a foreigner, and Roland's French was not fluent.
+
+He took Muriel's hand.
+
+"Good-by," he said.
+
+He shook hands with the rest of the party, even with Albert Potter. It
+struck Frank that he was making too much fuss over a trifle--and, worse,
+delaying the start of the proceedings.
+
+"What's it all about?" he demanded. "You go on as if we were never going
+to see you again."
+
+"You never know."
+
+"It's as safe as being in bed."
+
+"But still, in case we never meet again----"
+
+"Oh, well," said Brother Frank, and took the outstretched hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The little party stood and watched as the aeroplane moved swiftly along
+the ground, rose, and soared into the air. Higher and higher it rose,
+till the features of the two occupants were almost invisible.
+
+"Now," said Brother Frank. "Now watch. Now he's going to loop the loop."
+
+But the wheels of the aeroplane still pointed to the ground. It grew
+smaller and smaller. It was a mere speck.
+
+"What the dickens?"
+
+Far away to the West something showed up against the blue of the
+sky--something that might have been a bird, a toy kite, or an aeroplane
+traveling rapidly into the sunset.
+
+Four pairs of eyes followed it in rapt silence.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE EPISODE OF THE FINANCIAL NAPOLEON
+
+Second of a Series of Six Stories [First published in _Pictorial
+Review_, June 1916]
+
+
+Seated with his wife at breakfast on the veranda which overlooked the
+rolling lawns and leafy woods of his charming Sussex home, Geoffrey
+Windlebird, the great financier, was enjoying the morning sun to the
+full. His chubby features were relaxed in a smile of lazy contentment;
+and his wife, who liked to act sometimes as his secretary, found it
+difficult to get him to pay any attention to his morning's mail.
+
+"There's a column in to-day's _Financial Argus_," she said, "of which
+you really must take notice. It's most abusive. It's about the Wildcat
+Reef. They assert that there never was any gold in the mine, and that
+you knew it when you floated the company."
+
+"They will have their little joke."
+
+"But you had the usual mining-expert's report."
+
+"Of course we had. And a capital report it was. I remember thinking at
+the time what a neat turn of phrase the fellow had. I admit he depended
+rather on his fine optimism than on any examination of the mine. As a
+matter of fact, he never went near it. And why should he? It's down in
+South America somewhere. Awful climate--snakes, mosquitoes, revolutions,
+fever."
+
+Mr. Windlebird spoke drowsily. His eyes closed.
+
+"Well, the Argus people say that they have sent a man of their own out
+there to make inquiries, a well-known expert, and the report will be in
+within the next fortnight. They say they will publish it in their next
+number but one. What are you going to do about it?"
+
+Mr. Windlebird yawned.
+
+"Not to put too fine a point on it, dearest, the game is up. The
+Napoleon of Finance is about to meet his Waterloo. And all for twenty
+thousand pounds. That is the really bitter part of it. To-morrow we sail
+for the Argentine. I've got the tickets."
+
+"You're joking, Geoffrey. You must be able to raise twenty thousand.
+It's a flea-bite."
+
+"On paper--in the form of shares, script, bonds, promissory notes, it
+is a flea-bite. But when it has to be produced in the raw, in flat, hard
+lumps of gold or in crackling bank-notes, it's more like a bite from a
+hippopotamus. I can't raise it, and that's all about it. So--St. Helena
+for Napoleon."
+
+Altho Geoffrey Windlebird described himself as a Napoleon of Finance, a
+Cinquevalli or Chung Ling Soo of Finance would have been a more accurate
+title. As a juggler with other people's money he was at the head of his
+class. And yet, when one came to examine it, his method was delightfully
+simple. Say, for instance, that the Home-grown Tobacco Trust, founded by
+Geoffrey in a moment of ennui, failed to yield those profits which the
+glowing prospectus had led the public to expect. Geoffrey would appease
+the excited shareholders by giving them Preference Shares (interest
+guaranteed) in the Sea-gold Extraction Company, hastily floated to meet
+the emergency. When the interest became due, it would, as likely as not,
+be paid out of the capital just subscribed for the King Solomon's Mines
+Exploitation Association, the little deficiency in the latter being
+replaced in its turn, when absolutely necessary and not a moment before,
+by the transfer of some portion of the capital just raised for yet
+another company. And so on, ad infinitum. There were moments when it
+seemed to Mr. Windlebird that he had solved the problem of Perpetual
+Promotion.
+
+The only thing that can stop a triumphal progress like Mr. Windlebird's
+is when some coarse person refuses to play to the rules, and demands
+ready money instead of shares in the next venture. This had happened
+now, and it had flattened Mr. Windlebird like an avalanche.
+
+He was a philosopher, but he could not help feeling a little galled that
+the demand which had destroyed him had been so trivial. He had handled
+millions--on paper, it was true, but still millions--and here he was
+knocked out of time by a paltry twenty thousand pounds.
+
+"Are you absolutely sure that nothing can be done?" persisted Mrs.
+Windlebird. "Have you tried every one?"
+
+"Every one, dear moon-of-my-delight--the probables, the possibles, the
+highly unlikelies, and the impossibles. Never an echo to the minstrel's
+wooing song. No, my dear, we have got to take to the boats this time.
+Unless, of course, some one possessed at one and the same time of twenty
+thousand pounds and a very confiding nature happens to drop from the
+clouds."
+
+As he spoke, an aeroplane came sailing over the tops of the trees beyond
+the tennis-lawn. Gracefully as a bird it settled on the smooth turf, not
+twenty yards from where he was seated.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Roland Bleke stepped stiffly out onto the tennis-lawn. His progress
+rather resembled that of a landsman getting out of an open boat in
+which he has spent a long and perilous night at sea. He was feeling more
+wretched than he had ever felt in his life. He had a severe cold. He had
+a splitting headache. His hands and feet were frozen. His eyes smarted.
+He was hungry. He was thirsty. He hated cheerful M. Feriaud, who had
+hopped out and was now busy tinkering the engine, a gay Provencal air
+upon his lips, as he had rarely hated any one, even Muriel Coppin's
+brother Frank.
+
+So absorbed was he in his troubles that he was not aware of Mr.
+Windlebird's approach until that pleasant, portly man's shadow fell on
+the turf before him.
+
+"Not had an accident, I hope, Mr. Bleke?"
+
+Roland was too far gone in misery to speculate as to how this genial
+stranger came to know his name. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Windlebird,
+keen student of the illustrated press, had recognized Roland by his
+photograph in the Daily Mirror. In the course of the twenty yards' walk
+from house to tennis-lawn she had put her husband into possession of
+the more salient points in Roland's history. It was when Mr. Windlebird
+heard that Roland had forty thousand pounds in the bank that he sat up
+and took notice.
+
+"Lead me to him," he said simply.
+
+Roland sneezed.
+
+"Doe accident, thag you," he replied miserably. "Somethig's gone wrong
+with the worgs, but it's nothing serious, worse luck."
+
+M. Feriaud, having by this time adjusted the defect in his engine, rose
+to his feet, and bowed.
+
+"Excuse if we come down on your lawn. But not long do we trespass. See,
+_mon ami_," he said radiantly to Roland, "all now O. K. We go on."
+
+"No," said Roland decidedly.
+
+"No? What you mean--no?"
+
+A shade of alarm fell on M. Feriaud's weather-beaten features. The
+eminent bird-man did not wish to part from Roland. Toward Roland he
+felt like a brother, for Roland had notions about payment for little
+aeroplane rides which bordered upon the princely.
+
+"But you say--take me to France with you----"
+
+"I know. But it's all off. I'm not feeling well."
+
+"But it's all wrong." M. Feriaud gesticulated to drive home his point.
+"You give me one hundred pounds to take you away from Lexingham. Good.
+It is here." He slapped his breast pocket. "But the other two hundred
+pounds which also you promise me to pay me when I place you safe in
+France, where is that, my friend?"
+
+"I will give you two hundred and fifty," said Roland earnestly, "to
+leave me here, and go right away, and never let me see your beastly
+machine again."
+
+A smile of brotherly forgiveness lit up M. Feriaud's face. The generous
+Gallic nature asserted itself. He held out his arms affectionately to
+Roland.
+
+"Ah, now you talk. Now you say something," he cried in his impetuous
+way. "Embrace me. You are all right."
+
+Roland heaved a sigh of relief when, five minutes later, the aeroplane
+disappeared over the brow of the hill. Then he began to sneeze again.
+
+"You're not well, you know," said Mr. Windlebird.
+
+"I've caught cold. We've been flying about all night--that French ass
+lost his bearings--and my suit is thin. Can you direct me to a hotel?"
+
+"Hotel? Nonsense." Mr. Windlebird spoke in the bluff, breezy voice which
+at many a stricken board-meeting had calmed frantic shareholders as
+if by magic. "You're coming right into my house and up to bed this
+instant."
+
+It was not till he was between the sheets with a hot-water bottle at his
+toes and a huge breakfast inside him that Roland learned the name of his
+good Samaritan. When he did, his first impulse was to struggle out of
+bed and make his escape. Geoffrey Windlebird's was a name which he had
+learned, in the course of his mercantile career, to hold in something
+approaching reverence as that of one of the mightiest business brains of
+the age.
+
+To have to meet so eminent a man in the capacity of invalid, a nuisance
+about the house, was almost too much for Roland's shrinking nature. The
+kindness of the Windlebirds--and there seemed to be nothing that they
+were not ready to do for him--distressed him beyond measure. To have a
+really great man like Geoffrey Windlebird sprawling genially over
+his bed, chatting away as if he were an ordinary friend, was almost
+horrible. Such condescension was too much.
+
+Gradually, as he became convalescent, Roland found this feeling replaced
+by something more comfortable. They were such a genuine, simple, kindly
+couple, these Windlebirds, that he lost awe and retained only gratitude.
+He loved them both. He opened his heart to them. It was not long before
+he had told them the history of his career, skipping the earlier years
+and beginning with the entry of wealth into his life.
+
+"It makes you feel funny," he confided to Mr. Windlebird's sympathetic
+ear, "suddenly coming into a pot of money like that. You don't seem
+hardly able to realize it. I don't know what to do with it."
+
+Mr. Windlebird smiled paternally.
+
+"The advice of an older man who has had, if I may say so, some little
+experience of finance, might be useful to you there. Perhaps if you
+would allow me to recommend some sound investment----"
+
+Roland glowed with gratitude.
+
+"There's just one thing I'd like to do before I start putting my money
+into anything. It's like this."
+
+He briefly related the story of his unfortunate affair with Muriel
+Coppin. Within an hour of his departure in the aeroplane, his conscience
+had begun to trouble him on this point. He felt that he had not acted
+well toward Muriel. True, he was practically certain that she didn't
+care a bit about him and was in love with Albert, the silent mechanic,
+but there was just the chance that she was mourning over his loss; and,
+anyhow, his conscience was sore.
+
+"I'd like to give her something," he said. "How much do you think?"
+
+Mr. Windlebird perpended.
+
+"I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll send my own lawyer to her with--say,
+a thousand pounds--not a check, you understand, but one thousand golden
+sovereigns that he can show her--roll about on the table in front of her
+eyes. That'll console her. It's wonderful, the effect money in the raw
+has on people."
+
+"I'd rather make it two thousand," said Roland. He had never really
+loved Muriel, and the idea of marrying her had been a nightmare to him;
+but he wanted to retreat with honor.
+
+"Very well, make it two thousand, if you like. Tho I don't quite know
+how old Harrison is going to carry all that money."
+
+As a matter of fact, old Harrison never had to try. On thinking it
+over, after he had cashed Roland's check, Mr. Windlebird came to the
+conclusion that seven hundred pounds would be quite as much money as it
+would be good for Miss Coppin to have all at once.
+
+Mr. Windlebird's knowledge of human nature was not at fault. Muriel
+jumped at the money, and a letter in her handwriting informed Roland
+next morning that his slate was clean. His gratitude to Mr. Windlebird
+redoubled.
+
+"And now," said Mr. Windlebird genially, "we can talk about that money
+of yours, and the best way of investing it. What you want is something
+which, without being in any way what is called speculative, nevertheless
+returns a fair and reasonable amount of interest. What you want is
+something sound, something solid, yet something with a bit of a kick to
+it, something which can't go down and may go soaring like a rocket."
+
+Roland quietly announced that was just what he did want, and lit another
+cigar.
+
+"Now, look here, Bleke, my boy, as a general rule I don't give tips--But
+I've taken a great fancy to you, Bleke, and I'm going to break my rule.
+Put your money--" he sank his voice to a compelling whisper, "put every
+penny you can afford into Wildcat Reefs."
+
+He leaned back with the benign air of the Alchemist who has just
+imparted to a favorite disciple the recently discovered secret of the
+philosopher's stone.
+
+"Thank you very much, Mr. Windlebird," said Roland gratefully. "I will."
+
+The Napoleonic features were lightened by that rare, indulgent smile.
+
+"Not so fast, young man," laughed Mr. Windlebird. "Getting into Wildcat
+Reefs isn't quite so easy as you seem to think. Shall we say that you
+propose to invest thirty thousand pounds? Yes? Very well, then. Thirty
+thousand pounds! Why, if it got about that you were going to buy Wildcat
+Reefs on that scale the market would be convulsed."
+
+Which was perfectly true. If it had got about that any one was going to
+invest thirty thousand pounds--or pence--in Wildcat Reefs, the market
+would certainly have been convulsed. The House would have rocked with
+laughter. Wildcat Reefs were a standing joke--except to the unfortunate
+few who still held any of the shares.
+
+"The thing will have to be done very cautiously. No one must know. But I
+think--I say I think--I can manage it for you."
+
+"You're awfully kind, Mr. Windlebird."
+
+"Not at all, my dear boy, not at all. As a matter of fact, I shall be
+doing a very good turn to another pal of mine at the same time." He
+filled his glass. "This--" he paused to sip--"this pal of mine has a
+large holding of Wildcats. He wants to realize in order to put the money
+into something else, in which he is more personally interested." Mr.
+Windlebird paused. His mind dwelt for a moment on his overdrawn current
+account at the bank. "In which he is more personally interested," he
+repeated dreamily. "But of course you couldn't unload thirty pounds'
+worth of Wildcats in the public market."
+
+"I quite see that," assented Roland.
+
+"It might, however, be done by private negotiation," he said. "I
+must act very cautiously. Give me your check for the thirty thousand
+to-night, and I will run up to town to-morrow morning, and see what I
+can do."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He did it. What hidden strings he pulled, what levers he used, Roland
+did not know. All Roland knew was that somehow, by some subtle means,
+Mr. Windlebird brought it off. Two days later his host handed him twenty
+thousand one-pound shares in the Wildcat Reef Gold-mine.
+
+"There, my boy," he said.
+
+"It's awfully kind of you, Mr. Windlebird."
+
+"My dear boy, don't mention it. If you're satisfied, I'm sure I am."
+
+Mr. Windlebird always spoke the truth when he could. He spoke it now.
+
+It seemed to Roland, as the days went by, that nothing could mar the
+pleasant, easy course of life at the Windlebirds. The fine weather, the
+beautiful garden, the pleasant company--all these things combined to
+make this sojourn an epoch in his life.
+
+He discovered his mistake one lovely afternoon as he sat smoking idly
+on the terrace. Mrs. Windlebird came to him, and a glance was enough to
+show Roland that something was seriously wrong. Her face was drawn and
+tired.
+
+A moment before, Roland had been thinking life perfect. The only
+crumpled rose-leaf had been the absence of an evening paper. Mr.
+Windlebird would bring one back with him when he returned from the city,
+but Roland wanted one now. He was a great follower of county cricket,
+and he wanted to know how Surrey was faring against Yorkshire. But even
+this crumpled rose-leaf had been smoothed out, for Johnson, the groom,
+who happened to be riding into the nearest town on an errand, had
+promised to bring one back with him. He might appear at any moment now.
+
+The sight of his hostess drove all thoughts of sport out of his mind.
+She was looking terribly troubled.
+
+It flashed across Roland that both his host and hostess had been
+unusually silent at dinner the night before; and later, passing Mr.
+Windlebird's room on his way to bed, he had heard their voices, low and
+agitated. Could they have had some bad news?
+
+"Mr. Bleke, I want to speak to you."
+
+Roland moved like a sympathetic cow, and waited to hear more.
+
+"You were not up when my husband left for the city this morning, or he
+would have told you himself. Mr. Bleke, I hardly know how to break it to
+you."
+
+"Break it to me!"
+
+"My husband advised you to put a very large sum of money in a mine
+called Wildcat Reefs."
+
+"Yes. Thirty thousand pounds."
+
+"As much as that! Oh, Mr. Bleke!"
+
+She began to cry softly. She pressed his hand. Roland gaped at her.
+
+"Mr. Bleke, there has been a terrible slump in Wildcat Reefs. To-day,
+they may be absolutely worthless."
+
+Roland felt as if a cold hand had been laid on his spine.
+
+"Wor-worthless!" he stammered.
+
+Mrs. Windlebird looked at him with moist eyes.
+
+"You can imagine how my husband feels about this. It was on his advice
+that you invested your money. He holds himself directly responsible. He
+is in a terrible state of mind. He is frantic. He has grown so fond of
+you, Mr. Bleke, that he can hardly face the thought that he has been the
+innocent instrument of your trouble."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Roland felt that it was an admirable comparison. His sensations were
+precisely those of a leading actor in an earthquake. The solid earth
+seemed to melt under him.
+
+"We talked it over last night after you had gone to bed, and we came to
+the conclusion that there was only one honorable step to take. We must
+make good your losses. We must buy back those shares."
+
+A ray of hope began to steal over Roland's horizon.
+
+"But----" he began.
+
+"There are no buts, really, Mr. Bleke. We should neither of us know a
+minute's peace if we didn't do it. Now, you paid thirty thousand pounds
+for the shares, you said? Well"--she held out a pink slip of paper to
+him--"this will make everything all right."
+
+Roland looked at the check.
+
+"But--but this is signed by you," he said.
+
+"Yes. You see, if Geoffrey had to sign a check for that amount, it would
+mean selling out some of his stock, and in his position, with every
+movement watched by enemies, he can not afford to do it. It might ruin
+the plans of years. But I have some money of my own. My selling out
+stock doesn't matter, you see. I have post-dated the check a week,
+to give me time to realize on the securities in which my money is
+invested."
+
+Roland's whole nature rose in revolt at this sacrifice. If it had
+been his host who had made this offer, he would have accepted it.
+But chivalry forbade his taking this money from a woman. A glow of
+self-sacrifice warmed him. After all, what was this money of his? He had
+never had any fun out of it. He had had so little acquaintance with it
+that for all practical purposes it might never have been his.
+
+With a gesture which had once impressed him very favorably when
+exhibited on the stage by the hero of the number two company of "The
+Price of Honor," which had paid a six days' visit to Bury St. Edwards a
+few months before, he tore the check into little pieces.
+
+"I couldn't accept it, Mrs. Windlebird," he said. "I can't tell you how
+deeply I appreciate your wonderful kindness, but I really couldn't. I
+bought the shares with my eyes open. The whole thing is nobody's fault,
+and I can't let you suffer for it. After the way you have treated me
+here, it would be impossible. I can't take your money. It's noble and
+generous of you in the extreme, but I can't accept it. I've still got a
+little money left, and I've always been used to working for my living,
+anyway, so--so it's all right."
+
+"Mr. Bleke, I implore you."
+
+Roland was hideously embarrassed. He looked right and left for a way of
+escape. He could hardly take to his heels, and yet there seemed no other
+way of ending the interview. Then, with a start of relief, he perceived
+Johnson the groom coming toward him with the evening paper.
+
+"Johnson said he was going into the town," said Roland apologetically,
+"so I asked him to get me an evening paper. I wanted to see the lunch
+scores."
+
+If he had been looking at his hostess then, an action which he was
+strenuously avoiding, he might have seen a curious spasm pass over her
+face. Mrs. Windlebird turned very pale and sat down suddenly in the
+chair which Roland had vacated at the beginning of their conversation.
+She lay back in it with her eyes closed. She looked tired and defeated.
+
+Roland took the paper mechanically. He wanted it as a diversion to
+the conversation merely, for his interest in the doings of Surrey and
+Yorkshire had waned to the point of complete indifference in competition
+with Mrs. Windlebird's news.
+
+Equally mechanically he unfolded it and glanced at front page; and, as
+he did do, a flaring explosion of headlines smote his eye.
+
+Out of the explosion emerged the word "WILD-CATS".
+
+"Why!" he exclaimed. "There's columns about Wild-cats on the front page
+here!"
+
+"Yes?" Mrs. Windlebird's voice sounded strangely dull and toneless. Her
+eyes were still closed.
+
+Roland took in the headlines with starting eyes.
+
+       THE WILD-CAT REEF GOLD-MINE
+
+            ANOTHER KLONDIKE
+
+    FRENZIED SCENES ON THE STOCK EXCHANGE
+
+         BROKERS FIGHT FOR SHARES
+
+              RECORD BOOM
+
+      UNPRECEDENTED RISE IN PRICES
+
+Shorn of all superfluous adjectives and general journalistic exuberance,
+what the paper had to announce to its readers was this:
+
+    The "special commissioner" sent out by The _Financial Argus_ to
+    make an exhaustive examination of the Wild-cat Reef Mine--with
+    the amiable view, no doubt, of exploding Mr. Geoffrey Windlebird
+    once and for all with the confiding British public--has found,
+    to his unbounded astonishment, that there are vast quantities of
+    gold in the mine.
+
+    The discovery of the new reef, the largest and richest, it is
+    stated, since the famous Mount Morgan, occurred with dramatic
+    appropriateness on the very day of his arrival. We need scarcely
+    remind our readers that, until that moment, Wild-cat Reef shares
+    had reached a very low figure, and only a few optimists retained
+    their faith in the mine. As the largest holder, Mr. Windlebird
+    is to be heartily congratulated on this new addition to his
+    fortune.
+
+    The publication of the expert's report in The _Financial Argus_ has
+    resulted in a boom in Wild-cats, the like of which can seldom have
+    been seen on the Stock Exchange. From something like one shilling
+    and sixpence per bundle the one pound shares have gone up to nearly
+    ten pounds a share, and even at this latter figure people were
+    literally fighting to secure them.
+
+The world swam about Roland. He was stupefied and even terrified. The
+very atmosphere seemed foggy. So far as his reeling brain was capable
+of thought, he figured that he was now worth about two hundred thousand
+pounds.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Windlebird," he cried, "It's all right after all."
+
+Mrs. Windlebird sat back in her chair without answering.
+
+"It's all right for every one," screamed Roland joyfully. "Why, if I've
+made a couple of hundred thousand, what must Mr. Windlebird have netted.
+It says here that he is the largest holder. He must have pulled off the
+biggest thing of his life."
+
+He thought for a moment.
+
+"The chap I'm sorry for," he said meditatively, "is Mr. Windlebird's
+pal. You know. The fellow whom Mr. Windlebird persuaded to sell all his
+shares to me."
+
+A faint moan escaped from his hostess's pale lips. Roland did not hear
+it. He was reading the cricket news.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE EPISODE OF THE THEATRICAL VENTURE
+
+Third of a Series of Six Stories [First published in _Pictorial Review_,
+July 1916]
+
+
+It was one of those hard, nubbly rolls. The best restaurants charge you
+sixpence for having the good sense not to eat them. It hit Roland Bleke
+with considerable vehemence on the bridge of the nose. For the moment
+Roland fancied that the roof of the Regent Grill-room must have fallen
+in; and, as this would automatically put an end to the party, he was not
+altogether sorry. He had never been to a theatrical supper-party before,
+and within five minutes of his arrival at the present one he had
+become afflicted with an intense desire never to go to a theatrical
+supper-party again. To be a success at these gay gatherings one must
+possess dash; and Roland, whatever his other sterling qualities, was a
+little short of dash.
+
+The young man on the other side of the table was quite nice about it.
+While not actually apologizing, he went so far as to explain that it was
+"old Gerry" whom he had had in his mind when he started the roll on
+its course. After a glance at old Gerry--a chinless child of about
+nineteen--Roland felt that it would be churlish to be angry with a young
+man whose intentions had been so wholly admirable. Old Gerry had one of
+those faces in which any alteration, even the comparatively limited
+one which a roll would be capable of producing, was bound to be for the
+better. He smiled a sickly smile and said that it didn't matter.
+
+The charming creature who sat on his assailant's left, however, took a
+more serious view of the situation.
+
+"Sidney, you make me tired," she said severely. "If I had thought you
+didn't know how to act like a gentleman I wouldn't have come here with
+you. Go away somewhere and throw bread at yourself, and ask Mr. Bleke to
+come and sit by me. I want to talk to him."
+
+That was Roland's first introduction to Miss Billy Verepoint.
+
+"I've been wanting to have a chat with you all the evening, Mr. Bleke,"
+she said, as Roland blushingly sank into the empty chair. "I've heard
+such a lot about you."
+
+What Miss Verepoint had heard about Roland was that he had two hundred
+thousand pounds and apparently did not know what to do with it.
+
+"In fact, if I hadn't been told that you would be here, I shouldn't have
+come to this party. Can't stand these gatherings of nuts in May as a
+general rule. They bore me stiff."
+
+Roland hastily revised his first estimate of the theatrical profession.
+Shallow, empty-headed creatures some of them might be, no doubt, but
+there were exceptions. Here was a girl of real discernment--a thoughtful
+student of character--a girl who understood that a man might sit at a
+supper-party without uttering a word and might still be a man of parts.
+
+"I'm afraid you'll think me very outspoken--but that's me all over. All
+my friends say, 'Billy Verepoint's a funny girl: if she likes any one
+she just tells them so straight out; and if she doesn't like any one she
+tells them straight out, too.'"
+
+"And a very admirable trait," said Roland, enthusiastically.
+
+Miss Verepoint sighed. "P'raps it is," she said pensively, "but I'm
+afraid it's what has kept me back in my profession. Managers don't like
+it: they think girls should be seen and not heard."
+
+Roland's blood boiled. Managers were plainly a dastardly crew.
+
+"But what's the good of worrying," went on Miss Verepoint, with a brave
+but hollow laugh. "Of course, it's wearing, having to wait when one has
+got as much ambition as I have; but they all tell me that my chance is
+bound to come some day."
+
+The intense mournfulness of Miss Verepoint's expression seemed to
+indicate that she anticipated the arrival of the desired day not less
+than sixty years hence. Roland was profoundly moved. His chivalrous
+nature was up in arms. He fell to wondering if he could do anything to
+help this victim of managerial unfairness. "You don't mind my going on
+about my troubles, do you?" asked Miss Verepoint, solicitously. "One so
+seldom meets anybody really sympathetic."
+
+Roland babbled fervent assurances, and she pressed his hand gratefully.
+
+"I wonder if you would care to come to tea one afternoon," she said.
+
+"Oh, rather!" said Roland. He would have liked to put it in a more
+polished way but he was almost beyond speech.
+
+"Of course, I know what a busy man you are----"
+
+"No, no!"
+
+"Well, I should be in to-morrow afternoon, if you cared to look in."
+
+Roland bleated gratefully.
+
+"I'll write down the address for you," said Miss Verepoint, suddenly
+businesslike.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Exactly when he committed himself to the purchase of the Windsor
+Theater, Roland could never say. The idea seemed to come into existence
+fully-grown, without preliminary discussion. One moment it was not--the
+next it was. His recollections of the afternoon which he spent drinking
+lukewarm tea and punctuating Miss Verepoint's flow of speech with
+"yes's" and "no's" were always so thoroughly confused that he never knew
+even whose suggestion it was.
+
+The purchase of a West-end theater, when one has the necessary cash,
+is not nearly such a complicated business as the layman might imagine.
+Roland was staggered by the rapidity with which the transaction was
+carried through. The theater was his before he had time to realize that
+he had never meant to buy the thing at all. He had gone into the offices
+of Mr. Montague with the intention of making an offer for the lease for,
+say, six months; and that wizard, in the space of less than an hour, had
+not only induced him to sign mysterious documents which made him sole
+proprietor of the house, but had left him with the feeling that he had
+done an extremely acute stroke of business. Mr. Montague had dabbled in
+many professions in his time, from street peddling upward, but what he
+was really best at was hypnotism.
+
+Altho he felt, after the spell of Mr. Montague's magnetism was
+withdrawn, rather like a nervous man who has been given a large baby
+to hold by a strange woman who has promptly vanished round the corner,
+Roland was to some extent consoled by the praise bestowed upon him by
+Miss Verepoint. She said it was much better to buy a theater than to
+rent it, because then you escaped the heavy rent. It was specious,
+but Roland had a dim feeling that there was a flaw somewhere in the
+reasoning; and it was from this point that a shadow may be said to have
+fallen upon the brightness of the venture.
+
+He would have been even less self-congratulatory if he had known the
+Windsor Theater's reputation. Being a comparative stranger in the
+metropolis, he was unaware that its nickname in theatrical circles
+was "The Mugs' Graveyard"--a title which had been bestowed upon it not
+without reason. Built originally by a slightly insane old gentleman,
+whose principal delusion was that the public was pining for a constant
+supply of the Higher Drama, and more especially those specimens of
+the Higher Drama which flowed practically without cessation from the
+restless pen of the insane old gentleman himself, the Windsor Theater
+had passed from hand to hand with the agility of a gold watch in a
+gathering of race-course thieves. The one anxiety of the unhappy man who
+found himself, by some accident, in possession of the Windsor Theater,
+was to pass it on to somebody else. The only really permanent tenant it
+ever had was the representative of the Official Receiver.
+
+Various causes were assigned for the phenomenal ill-luck of the theater,
+but undoubtedly the vital objection to it as a Temple of Drama lay in
+the fact that nobody could ever find the place where it was hidden.
+Cabmen shook their heads on the rare occasions when they were asked to
+take a fare there. Explorers to whom a stroll through the Australian
+bush was child's-play, had been known to spend an hour on its trail and
+finish up at the point where they had started.
+
+It was precisely this quality of elusiveness which had first attracted
+Mr. Montague. He was a far-seeing man, and to him the topographical
+advantages of the theater were enormous. It was further from a
+fire-station than any other building of the same insurance value in
+London, even without having regard to the mystery which enveloped its
+whereabouts. Often after a good dinner he would lean comfortably back
+in his chair and see in the smoke of his cigar a vision of the Windsor
+Theater blazing merrily, while distracted firemen galloped madly all
+over London, vainly endeavoring to get some one to direct them to the
+scene of the conflagration. So Mr. Montague bought the theater for a
+mere song, and prepared to get busy.
+
+Unluckily for him, the representatives of the various fire offices with
+which he had effected his policies got busy first. The generous fellows
+insisted upon taking off his shoulders the burden of maintaining the
+fireman whose permanent presence in a theater is required by law.
+Nothing would satisfy them but to install firemen of their own and pay
+their salaries. This, to a man in whom the instincts of the phoenix
+were so strongly developed as they were in Mr. Montague, was distinctly
+disconcerting. He saw himself making no profit on the deal--a thing
+which had never happened to him before.
+
+And then Roland Bleke occurred, and Mr. Montague's belief that his race
+was really chosen was restored. He sold the Windsor Theater to Roland
+for twenty-five thousand pounds. It was fifteen thousand pounds more
+than he himself had given for it, and this very satisfactory profit
+mitigated the slight regret which he felt when it came to transferring
+to Roland the insurance policies. To have effected policies amounting
+to rather more than seventy thousand pounds on a building so notoriously
+valueless as the Windsor Theater had been an achievement of which Mr.
+Montague was justly proud, and it seemed sad to him that so much earnest
+endeavor should be thrown away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Over the little lunch with which she kindly allowed Roland to entertain
+her, to celebrate the purchase of the theater, Miss Verepoint outlined
+her policy.
+
+"What we must put up at that theater," she announced, "is a revue.
+A revue," repeated Miss Verepoint, making, as she spoke, little
+calculations on the back of the menu, "we could run for about fifteen
+hundred a week--or, say, two thousand."
+
+Saying two thousand, thought Roland to himself, is not quite the same as
+paying two thousand, so why should she stint herself?
+
+"I know two boys who could write us a topping revue," said Miss
+Verepoint. "They'd spread themselves, too, if it was for me. They're in
+love with me--both of them. We'd better get in touch with them at once."
+
+To Roland, there seemed to be something just the least bit sinister
+about the sound of that word "touch," but he said nothing.
+
+"Why, there they are--lunching over there!" cried Miss Verepoint,
+pointing to a neighboring table. "Now, isn't that lucky?"
+
+To Roland the luck was not quite so apparent, but he made no demur to
+Miss Verepoint's suggestion that they should be brought over to their
+table.
+
+The two boys, as to whose capabilities to write a topping revue Miss
+Verepoint had formed so optimistic an estimate, proved to be well-grown
+lads of about forty-five and forty, respectively. Of the two, Roland
+thought that perhaps R. P. de Parys was a shade the more obnoxious,
+but a closer inspection left him with the feeling that these fine
+distinctions were a little unfair with men of such equal talents.
+Bromham Rhodes ran his friend so close that it was practically a dead
+heat. They were both fat and somewhat bulgy-eyed. This was due to the
+fact that what revue-writing exacts from its exponents is the constant
+assimilation of food and drink. Bromham Rhodes had the largest appetite
+in London; but, on the other hand, R. P. de Parys was a better drinker.
+
+"Well, dear old thing!" said Bromham Rhodes.
+
+"Well, old child!" said R. P. de Parys.
+
+Both these remarks were addressed to Miss Verepoint. The talented pair
+appeared to be unaware of Roland's existence.
+
+Miss Verepoint struck the business note. "Now you stop, boys," she said.
+"Tie weights to yourselves and sink down into those chairs. I want you
+two lads to write a revue for me."
+
+"Delighted!" said Bromham Rhodes; "but----"
+
+"There is the trifling point to be raised first----" said R. P. de
+Parys.
+
+"Where is the money coming from?" said Bromham Rhodes.
+
+"My friend, Mr. Bleke, is putting up the money," said Miss Verepoint,
+with dignity. "He has taken the Windsor Theater."
+
+The interest of the two authors in their host, till then languid,
+increased with a jerk. "Has he? By Jove!" they cried. "We must get
+together and talk this over."
+
+It was Roland's first experience of a theatrical talking-over, and he
+never forgot it. Two such talkers-over as Bromham Rhodes and R. P. de
+Parys were scarcely to be found in the length and breadth of theatrical
+London. Nothing, it seemed, could the gifted pair even begin to think of
+doing without first discussing the proposition in all its aspects. The
+amount of food which Roland found himself compelled to absorb during the
+course of these debates was appalling. Discussions which began at lunch
+would be continued until it was time to order dinner; and then, as
+likely as not, they would have to sit there till supper-time in order to
+thrash the question thoroughly out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The collection of a cast was a matter even more complicated than the
+actual composition of the revue. There was the almost insuperable
+difficulty that Miss Verepoint firmly vetoed every name suggested. It
+seemed practically impossible to find any man or woman in all England
+or America whose peculiar gifts or lack of them would not interfere
+with Miss Verepoint's giving a satisfactory performance of the principal
+role. It was all very perplexing to Roland; but as Miss Verepoint was an
+expert in theatrical matters, he scarcely felt entitled to question her
+views.
+
+It was about this time that Roland proposed to Miss Verepoint. The
+passage of time and the strain of talking over the revue had to a
+certain extent moderated his original fervor. He had shaded off from
+a passionate devotion, through various diminishing tints of regard for
+her, into a sort of pale sunset glow of affection. His principal reason
+for proposing was that it seemed to him to be in the natural order of
+events. Her air towards him had become distinctly proprietorial. She now
+called him "Roly-poly" in public--a proceeding which left him with mixed
+feelings. Also, she had taken to ordering him about, which, as everybody
+knows, is an unmistakable sign of affection among ladies of the
+theatrical profession. Finally, in his chivalrous way, Roland had
+begun to feel a little apprehensive lest he might be compromising Miss
+Verepoint. Everybody knew that he was putting up the money for the
+revue in which she was to appear; they were constantly seen together at
+restaurants; people looked arch when they spoke to him about her. He had
+to ask himself: was he behaving like a perfect gentleman? The answer was
+in the negative. He took a cab to her flat and proposed before he could
+repent of his decision.
+
+She accepted him. He was not certain for a moment whether he was glad
+or sorry. "But I don't want to get married," she went on, "until I have
+justified my choice of a profession. You will have to wait until I have
+made a success in this revue."
+
+Roland was shocked to find himself hugely relieved at this concession.
+
+The revue took shape. There did apparently exist a handful of artistes
+to whom Miss Verepoint had no objection, and these--a scrubby but
+confident lot--were promptly engaged. Sallow Americans sprang from
+nowhere with songs, dances, and ideas for effects. Tousled-haired scenic
+artists wandered in with model scenes under their arms. A great cloud of
+chorus-ladies settled upon the theater like flies. Even Bromham Rhodes
+and R. P. de Parys--those human pythons--showed signs of activity. They
+cornered Roland one day near Swan and Edgar's, steered him into the
+Piccadilly Grill-room and, over a hearty lunch, read him extracts from
+a brown-paper-covered manuscript which, they informed him, was the first
+act.
+
+It looked a battered sort of manuscript and, indeed, it had every right
+to be. Under various titles and at various times, Bromham Rhodes' and R.
+P. de Parys' first act had been refused by practically every responsible
+manager in London. As "Oh! What a Life!" it had failed to satisfy the
+directors of the Empire. Re-christened "Wow-Wow!" it had been rejected
+by the Alhambra. The Hippodrome had refused to consider it, even under
+the name of "Hullo, Cellar-Flap!" It was now called, "Pass Along,
+Please!" and, according to its authors, was a real revue.
+
+Roland was to learn, as the days went on, that in the world in which he
+was moving everything was real revue that was not a stunt or a corking
+effect. He floundered in a sea of real revue, stunts, and corking
+effects. As far as he could gather, the main difference between these
+things was that real revue was something which had been stolen from some
+previous English production, whereas a stunt or a corking effect was
+something which had been looted from New York. A judicious blend of
+these, he was given to understand, constituted the sort of thing the
+public wanted.
+
+Rehearsals began before, in Roland's opinion, his little army was
+properly supplied with ammunition. True, they had the first act, but
+even the authors agreed that it wanted bringing up-to-date in parts.
+They explained that it was, in a manner of speaking, their life-work,
+that they had actually started it about ten years ago when they were
+careless lads. Inevitably, it was spotted here and there with smart
+topical hits of the early years of the century; but that, they said,
+would be all right. They could freshen it up in a couple of evenings; it
+was simply a matter of deleting allusions to pro-Boers and substituting
+lines about Marconi shares and mangel-wurzels. "It'll be all right,"
+they assured Roland; "this is real revue."
+
+In times of trouble there is always a point at which one may say,
+"Here is the beginning of the end." This point came with Roland at the
+commencement of the rehearsals. Till then he had not fully realized
+the terrible nature of the production for which he had made himself
+responsible. Moreover, it was rehearsals which gave him his first clear
+insight into the character of Miss Verepoint.
+
+Miss Verepoint was not at her best at rehearsals. For the first time, as
+he watched her, Roland found himself feeling that there was a case to
+be made out for the managers who had so consistently kept her in the
+background. Miss Verepoint, to use the technical term, threw her weight
+about. There were not many good lines in the script of act one of "Pass
+Along, Please!" but such as there were she reached out for and
+grabbed away from their owners, who retired into corners, scowling and
+muttering, like dogs robbed of bones. She snubbed everybody, Roland
+included.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Roland sat in the cold darkness of the stalls and watched her,
+panic-stricken. Like an icy wave, it had swept over him what marriage
+with this girl would mean. He suddenly realised how essentially domestic
+his instincts really were. Life with Miss Verepoint would mean perpetual
+dinners at restaurants, bread-throwing suppers, motor-rides--everything
+that he hated most. Yet, as a man of honor, he was tied to her. If the
+revue was a success, she would marry him--and revues, he knew, were
+always successes. At that very moment there were six "best revues in
+London," running at various theaters. He shuddered at the thought that
+in a few weeks there would be seven.
+
+He felt a longing for rural solitude. He wanted to be alone by
+himself for a day or two in a place where there were no papers with
+advertisements of revues, no grill-rooms, and, above all, no Miss Billy
+Verepoint. That night he stole away to a Norfolk village, where, in
+happier days, he had once spent a Summer holiday--a peaceful, primitive
+place where the inhabitants could not have told real revue from a
+corking effect.
+
+Here, for the space of a week, Roland lay in hiding, while his quivering
+nerves gradually recovered tone. He returned to London happier, but a
+little apprehensive. Beyond a brief telegram of farewell, he had not
+communicated with Miss Verepoint for seven days, and experience had
+made him aware that she was a lady who demanded an adequate amount of
+attention.
+
+That his nervous system was not wholly restored to health was borne in
+upon him as he walked along Piccadilly on his way to his flat; for,
+when somebody suddenly slapped him hard between the shoulder-blades, he
+uttered a stifled yell and leaped in the air.
+
+Turning to face his assailant, he found himself meeting the genial
+gaze of Mr. Montague, his predecessor in the ownership of the Windsor
+Theater.
+
+Mr. Montague was effusively friendly, and, for some mysterious reason,
+congratulatory.
+
+"You've done it, have you? You pulled it off, did you? And in the
+first month--by George! And I took you for the plain, ordinary mug of
+commerce! My boy, you're as deep as they make 'em. Who'd have thought
+it, to look at you? It was the greatest idea any one ever had and
+staring me in the face all the time and I never saw it! But I don't
+grudge it to you--you deserve it my boy! You're a nut!"
+
+"I really don't know what you mean."
+
+"Quite right, my boy!" chuckled Mr. Montague. "You're quite right to
+keep it up, even among friends. It don't do to risk anything, and the
+least said soonest mended."
+
+He went on his way, leaving Roland completely mystified.
+
+Voices from his sitting-room, among which he recognized the high note of
+Miss Verepoint, reminded him of the ordeal before him. He entered with
+what he hoped was a careless ease of manner, but his heart was beating
+fast. Since the opening of rehearsals he had acquired a wholesome
+respect for Miss Verepoint's tongue. She was sitting in his favorite
+chair. There were also present Bromham Rhodes and R. P. de Parys, who
+had made themselves completely at home with a couple of his cigars and
+whisky from the oldest bin.
+
+"So here you are at last!" said Miss Verepoint, querulously. "The valet
+told us you were expected back this morning, so we waited. Where on
+earth have you been to, running away like this, without a word?"
+
+"I only went----"
+
+"Well, it doesn't matter where you went. The main point is, what are you
+going to do about it?"
+
+"We thought we'd better come along and talk it over," said R. P. de
+Parys.
+
+"Talk what over?" said Roland: "the revue?"
+
+"Oh, don't try and be funny, for goodness' sake!" snapped Miss
+Verepoint. "It doesn't suit you. You haven't the right shape of head.
+What do you suppose we want to talk over? The theater, of course."
+
+"What about the theater?"
+
+Miss Verepoint looked searchingly at him. "Don't you ever read the
+papers?"
+
+"I haven't seen a paper since I went away."
+
+"Well, better have it quick and not waste time breaking it gently,"
+said Miss Verepoint. "The theater's been burned down--that's what's
+happened."
+
+"Burned down?"
+
+"Burned down!" repeated Roland.
+
+"That's what I said, didn't I? The suffragettes did it. They left copies
+of 'Votes for Women' about the place. The silly asses set fire to two
+other theaters as well, but they happened to be in main thoroughfares
+and the fire-brigade got them under control at once. I suppose they
+couldn't find the Windsor. Anyhow, it's burned to the ground and what we
+want to know is what are you going to do about it?"
+
+Roland was much too busy blessing the good angels of Kingsway to reply
+at once. R. P. de Parys, sympathetic soul, placed a wrong construction
+on his silence.
+
+"Poor old Roly!" he said. "It's quite broken him up. The best thing we
+can do is all to go off and talk it over at the Savoy, over a bit of
+lunch."
+
+"Well," said Miss Verepoint, "what are you going to do--rebuild the
+Windsor or try and get another theater?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The authors were all for rebuilding the Windsor. True, it would take
+time, but it would be more satisfactory in every way. Besides, at this
+time of the year it would be no easy matter to secure another theater at
+a moment's notice.
+
+To R. P. de Parys and Bromham Rhodes the destruction of the Windsor
+Theater had appeared less in the light of a disaster than as a direct
+intervention on the part of Providence. The completion of that tiresome
+second act, which had brooded over their lives like an ugly cloud, could
+now be postponed indefinitely.
+
+"Of course," said R. P. de Parys, thoughtfully, "our contract with you
+makes it obligatory on you to produce our revue by a certain date--but I
+dare say, Bromham, we could meet Roly there, couldn't we?"
+
+"Sure!" said Rhodes. "Something nominal, say a further five hundred on
+account of fees would satisfy us. I certainly think it would be better
+to rebuild the Windsor, don't you, R. P.?"
+
+"I do," agreed R. P. de Parys, cordially. "You see, Roly, our revue has
+been written to fit the Windsor. It would be very difficult to alter it
+for production at another theater. Yes, I feel sure that rebuilding the
+Windsor would be your best course."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"What do you think, Roly-poly?" asked Miss Verepoint, as Roland made no
+sign.
+
+"Nothing would delight me more than to rebuild the Windsor, or to take
+another theater, or do anything else to oblige," he said, cheerfully.
+"Unfortunately, I have no more money to burn."
+
+It was as if a bomb had suddenly exploded in the room. A dreadful
+silence fell upon his hearers. For the moment no one spoke. R. P. de
+Parys woke with a start out of a beautiful dream of prawn curry and
+Bromham Rhodes forgot that he had not tasted food for nearly two hours.
+Miss Verepoint was the first to break the silence.
+
+"Do you mean to say," she gasped, "that you didn't insure the place?"
+
+Roland shook his head. The particular form in which Miss Verepoint had
+put the question entitled him, he felt, to make this answer.
+
+"Why didn't you?" Miss Verepoint's tone was almost menacing.
+
+"Because it did not appear to me to be necessary."
+
+Nor was it necessary, said Roland to his conscience. Mr. Montague had
+done all the insuring that was necessary--and a bit over.
+
+Miss Verepoint fought with her growing indignation, and lost. "What
+about the salaries of the people who have been rehearsing all this
+time?" she demanded.
+
+"I'm sorry that they should be out of an engagement, but it is scarcely
+my fault. However, I propose to give each of them a month's salary. I
+can manage that, I think."
+
+Miss Verepoint rose. "And what about me? What about me, that's what I
+want to know. Where do I get off? If you think I'm going to marry you
+without your getting a theater and putting up this revue you're jolly
+well mistaken."
+
+Roland made a gesture which was intended to convey regret and
+resignation. He even contrived to sigh.
+
+"Very well, then," said Miss Verepoint, rightly interpreting this
+behavior as his final pronouncement on the situation. "Then everything's
+jolly well off."
+
+She swept out of the room, the two authors following in her wake like
+porpoises behind a liner. Roland went to his bureau, unlocked it and
+took out a bundle of documents. He let his fingers stray lovingly among
+the fire insurance policies which energetic Mr. Montague had been at
+such pains to secure from so many companies.
+
+"And so," he said softly to himself, "am I."
+
+
+
+
+
+THE EPISODE OF THE LIVE WEEKLY
+
+Fourth of a Series of Six Stories [First published in _Pictorial
+Review_, August 1916]
+
+
+It was with a start that Roland Bleke realized that the girl at the
+other end of the bench was crying. For the last few minutes, as far
+as his preoccupation allowed him to notice them at all, he had been
+attributing the subdued sniffs to a summer cold, having just recovered
+from one himself.
+
+He was embarrassed. He blamed the fate that had led him to this
+particular bench, but he wished to give himself up to quiet deliberation
+on the question of what on earth he was to do with two hundred and fifty
+thousand pounds, to which figure his fortune had now risen.
+
+The sniffs continued. Roland's discomfort increased. Chivalry had always
+been his weakness. In the old days, on a hundred and forty pounds
+a year, he had had few opportunities of indulging himself in this
+direction; but now it seemed to him sometimes that the whole world was
+crying out for assistance.
+
+Should he speak to her? He wanted to; but only a few days ago his eyes
+had been caught by the placard of a weekly paper bearing the title of
+'Squibs,' on which in large letters was the legend "Men Who Speak
+to Girls," and he had gathered that the accompanying article was a
+denunciation rather than a eulogy of these individuals. On the other
+hand, she was obviously in distress.
+
+Another sniff decided him.
+
+"I say, you know," he said.
+
+The girl looked at him. She was small, and at the present moment had
+that air of the floweret surprized while shrinking, which adds a good
+thirty-three per cent. to a girl's attractions. Her nose, he noted, was
+delicately tip-tilted. A certain pallor added to her beauty. Roland's
+heart executed the opening steps of a buck-and-wing dance.
+
+"Pardon me," he went on, "but you appear to be in trouble. Is there
+anything I can do for you?"
+
+She looked at him again--a keen look which seemed to get into Roland's
+soul and walk about it with a searchlight. Then, as if satisfied by the
+inspection, she spoke.
+
+"No, I don't think there is," she said. "Unless you happen to be the
+proprietor of a weekly paper with a Woman's Page, and need an editress
+for it."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Well, that's all any one could do for me--give me back my work or give
+me something else of the same sort."
+
+"Oh, have you lost your job?"
+
+"I have. So would you mind going away, because I want to go on crying,
+and I do it better alone. You won't mind my turning you out, I hope, but
+I was here first, and there are heaps of other benches."
+
+"No, but wait a minute. I want to hear about this. I might be able--what
+I mean is--think of something. Tell me all about it."
+
+There is no doubt that the possession of two hundred and fifty thousand
+pounds tones down a diffident man's diffidence. Roland began to feel
+almost masterful.
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"Why shouldn't you?"
+
+"There's something in that," said the girl reflectively. "After all,
+you might know somebody. Well, as you want to know, I have just been
+discharged from a paper called 'Squibs.' I used to edit the Woman's
+Page."
+
+"By Jove, did you write that article on 'Men Who Speak----'?"
+
+The hard manner in which she had wrapped herself as in a garment
+vanished instantly. Her eyes softened. She even blushed. Just a becoming
+pink, you know!
+
+"You don't mean to say you read it? I didn't think that any one ever
+really read 'Squibs.'"
+
+"Read it!" cried Roland, recklessly abandoning truth. "I should jolly
+well think so. I know it by heart. Do you mean to say that, after
+an article like that, they actually sacked you? Threw you out as a
+failure?"
+
+"Oh, they didn't send me away for incompetence. It was simply because
+they couldn't afford to keep me on. Mr. Petheram was very nice about
+it."
+
+"Who's Mr. Petheram?"
+
+"Mr. Petheram's everything. He calls himself the editor, but he's really
+everything except office-boy, and I expect he'll be that next week.
+When I started with the paper, there was quite a large staff. But it got
+whittled down by degrees till there was only Mr. Petheram and myself. It
+was like the crew of the 'Nancy Bell.' They got eaten one by one, till
+I was the only one left. And now I've gone. Mr. Petheram is doing the
+whole paper now."
+
+"How is it that he can't get anything better to do?" Roland said.
+
+"He has done lots of better things. He used to be at Carmelite House,
+but they thought he was too old."
+
+Roland felt relieved. He conjured up a picture of a white-haired elder
+with a fatherly manner.
+
+"Oh, he's old, is he?"
+
+"Twenty-four."
+
+There was a brief silence. Something in the girl's expression stung
+Roland. She wore a rapt look, as if she were dreaming of the absent
+Petheram, confound him. He would show her that Petheram was not the only
+man worth looking rapt about.
+
+He rose.
+
+"Would you mind giving me your address?" he said.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"In order," said Roland carefully, "that I may offer you your former
+employment on 'Squibs.' I am going to buy it."
+
+After all, your man of dash and enterprise, your Napoleon, does have
+his moments. Without looking at her, he perceived that he had bowled
+her over completely. Something told him that she was staring at him,
+open-mouthed. Meanwhile, a voice within him was muttering anxiously, "I
+wonder how much this is going to cost."
+
+"You're going to buy 'Squibs!'"
+
+Her voice had fallen away to an awestruck whisper.
+
+"I am."
+
+She gulped.
+
+"Well, I think you're wonderful."
+
+So did Roland.
+
+"Where will a letter find you?" he asked.
+
+"My name is March. Bessie March. I'm living at twenty-seven Guildford
+Street."
+
+"Twenty-seven. Thank you. Good morning. I will communicate with you in
+due course."
+
+He raised his hat and walked away. He had only gone a few steps, when
+there was a patter of feet behind him. He turned.
+
+"I--I just wanted to thank you," she said.
+
+"Not at all," said Roland. "Not at all."
+
+He went on his way, tingling with just triumph. Petheram? Who was
+Petheram? Who, in the name of goodness, was Petheram? He had put
+Petheram in his proper place, he rather fancied. Petheram, forsooth.
+Laughable.
+
+A copy of the current number of 'Squibs,' purchased at a book-stall,
+informed him, after a minute search to find the editorial page, that the
+offices of the paper were in Fetter Lane. It was evidence of his exalted
+state of mind that he proceeded thither in a cab.
+
+Fetter Lane is one of those streets in which rooms that have only just
+escaped being cupboards by a few feet achieve the dignity of offices.
+There might have been space to swing a cat in the editorial sanctum of
+'Squibs,' but it would have been a near thing. As for the outer office,
+in which a vacant-faced lad of fifteen received Roland and instructed
+him to wait while he took his card in to Mr. Petheram, it was a mere
+box. Roland was afraid to expand his chest for fear of bruising it.
+
+The boy returned to say that Mr. Petheram would see him.
+
+Mr. Petheram was a young man with a mop of hair, and an air of almost
+painful restraint. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and the table before
+him was heaped high with papers. Opposite him, evidently in the act of
+taking his leave was a comfortable-looking man of middle age with a
+red face and a short beard. He left as Roland entered and Roland was
+surprized to see Mr. Petheram spring to his feet, shake his fist at
+the closing door, and kick the wall with a vehemence which brought down
+several inches of discolored plaster.
+
+"Take a seat," he said, when he had finished this performance. "What can
+I do for you?"
+
+Roland had always imagined that editors in their private offices were
+less easily approached and, when approached, more brusk. The fact was
+that Mr. Petheram, whose optimism nothing could quench, had mistaken him
+for a prospective advertiser.
+
+"I want to buy the paper," said Roland. He was aware that this was an
+abrupt way of approaching the subject, but, after all, he did want to
+buy the paper, so why not say so?
+
+Mr. Petheram fizzed in his chair. He glowed with excitement.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me there's a single book-stall in London which has
+sold out? Great Scott, perhaps they've all sold out! How many did you
+try?"
+
+"I mean buy the whole paper. Become proprietor, you know."
+
+Roland felt that he was blushing, and hated himself for it. He ought to
+be carrying this thing through with an air. Mr. Petheram looked at him
+blankly.
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Roland. He felt the interview was going all
+wrong. It lacked a stateliness which this kind of interview should have
+had.
+
+"Honestly?" said Mr. Petheram. "You aren't pulling my leg?"
+
+Roland nodded. Mr. Petheram appeared to struggle with his conscience,
+and finally to be worsted by it, for his next remarks were limpidly
+honest.
+
+"Don't you be an ass," he said. "You don't know what you're letting
+yourself in for. Did you see that blighter who went out just now? Do you
+know who he is? That's the fellow we've got to pay five pounds a week to
+for life."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"We can't get rid of him. When the paper started, the proprietors--not
+the present ones--thought it would give the thing a boom if they had
+a football competition with a first prize of a fiver a week for life.
+Well, that's the man who won it. He's been handed down as a legacy from
+proprietor to proprietor, till now we've got him. Ages ago they tried
+to get him to compromise for a lump sum down, but he wouldn't. Said he
+would only spend it, and preferred to get it by the week. Well, by the
+time we've paid that vampire, there isn't much left out of our profits.
+That's why we are at the present moment a little understaffed."
+
+A frown clouded Mr. Petheram's brow. Roland wondered if he was thinking
+of Bessie March.
+
+"I know all about that," he said.
+
+"And you still want to buy the thing?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But what on earth for? Mind you, I ought not to be crabbing my own
+paper like this, but you seem a good chap, and I don't want to see you
+landed. Why are you doing it?"
+
+"Oh, just for fun."
+
+"Ah, now you're talking. If you can afford expensive amusements, go
+ahead."
+
+He put his feet on the table, and lit a short pipe. His gloomy views on
+the subject of 'Squibs' gave way to a wave of optimism.
+
+"You know," he said, "there's really a lot of life in the old rag yet.
+If it were properly run. What has hampered us has been lack of capital.
+We haven't been able to advertise. I'm bursting with ideas for booming
+the paper, only naturally you can't do it for nothing. As for editing,
+what I don't know about editing--but perhaps you had got somebody else
+in your mind?"
+
+"No, no," said Roland, who would not have known an editor from an
+office-boy. The thought of interviewing prospective editors appalled
+him.
+
+"Very well, then," resumed Mr. Petheram, reassured, kicking over a heap
+of papers to give more room for his feet. "Take it that I continue as
+editor. We can discuss terms later. Under the present regime I have been
+doing all the work in exchange for a happy home. I suppose you won't
+want to spoil the ship for a ha'porth of tar? In other words, you would
+sooner have a happy, well-fed editor running about the place than a
+broken-down wreck who might swoon from starvation?"
+
+"But one moment," said Roland. "Are you sure that the present
+proprietors will want to sell?"
+
+"Want to sell," cried Mr. Petheram enthusiastically. "Why, if they know
+you want to buy, you've as much chance of getting away from them without
+the paper as--as--well, I can't think of anything that has such a poor
+chance of anything. If you aren't quick on your feet, they'll cry on
+your shoulder. Come along, and we'll round them up now."
+
+He struggled into his coat, and gave his hair an impatient brush with a
+note-book.
+
+"There's just one other thing," said Roland. "I have been a regular
+reader of 'Squibs' for some time, and I particularly admire the way in
+which the Woman's Page----"
+
+"You mean you want to reengage the editress? Rather. You couldn't do
+better. I was going to suggest it myself. Now, come along quick before
+you change your mind or wake up."
+
+Within a very few days of becoming sole proprietor of 'Squibs,' Roland
+began to feel much as a man might who, a novice at the art of steering
+cars, should find himself at the wheel of a runaway motor. Young Mr.
+Petheram had spoken nothing less than the truth when he had said that
+he was full of ideas for booming the paper. The infusion of capital into
+the business acted on him like a powerful stimulant. He exuded ideas at
+every pore.
+
+Roland's first notion had been to engage a staff of contributors. He was
+under the impression that contributors were the life-blood of a weekly
+journal. Mr. Petheram corrected this view. He consented to the purchase
+of a lurid serial story, but that was the last concession he made.
+Nobody could accuse Mr. Petheram of lack of energy. He was willing, even
+anxious, to write the whole paper himself, with the exception of the
+Woman's Page, now brightly conducted once more by Miss March. What he
+wanted Roland to concentrate himself upon was the supplying of capital
+for ingenious advertising schemes.
+
+"How would it be," he asked one morning--he always began his remarks
+with, "How would it be?"--"if we paid a man to walk down Piccadilly in
+white skin-tights with the word 'Squibs' painted in red letters across
+his chest?"
+
+Roland thought it would certainly not be.
+
+"Good sound advertising stunt," urged Mr. Petheram. "You don't like it?
+All right. You're the boss. Well, how would it be to have a squad of
+men dressed as Zulus with white shields bearing the legend 'Squibs?' See
+what I mean? Have them sprinting along the Strand shouting, 'Wah! Wah!
+Wah! Buy it! Buy it!' It would make people talk."
+
+Roland emerged from these interviews with his skin crawling with modest
+apprehension. His was a retiring nature, and the thought of Zulus
+sprinting down the Strand shouting "Wah! Wah! Wah! Buy it! Buy it!" with
+reference to his personal property appalled him.
+
+He was beginning now heartily to regret having bought the paper, as
+he generally regretted every definite step which he took. The glow of
+romance which had sustained him during the preliminary negotiations had
+faded entirely. A girl has to be possessed of unusual charm to continue
+to captivate B, when she makes it plain daily that her heart is the
+exclusive property of A; and Roland had long since ceased to cherish any
+delusion that Bessie March was ever likely to feel anything but a
+mild liking for him. Young Mr. Petheram had obviously staked out an
+indisputable claim. Her attitude toward him was that of an affectionate
+devotee toward a high priest. One morning, entering the office
+unexpectedly, Roland found her kissing the top of Mr. Petheram's head;
+and from that moment his interest in the fortunes of 'Squibs' sank to
+zero. It amazed him that he could ever have been idiot enough to have
+allowed himself to be entangled in this insane venture for the sake
+of an insignificant-looking bit of a girl with a snub-nose and a poor
+complexion.
+
+What particularly galled him was the fact that he was throwing away good
+cash for nothing. It was true that his capital was more than equal to
+the, on the whole, modest demands of the paper, but that did not alter
+the fact that he was wasting money. Mr. Petheram always talked buoyantly
+about turning the corner, but the corner always seemed just as far off.
+
+The old idea of flight, to which he invariably had recourse in any
+crisis, came upon Roland with irresistible force. He packed a bag, and
+went to Paris. There, in the discomforts of life in a foreign country,
+he contrived for a month to forget his white elephant.
+
+He returned by the evening train which deposits the traveler in London
+in time for dinner.
+
+Strangely enough, nothing was farther from Roland's mind than his
+bright weekly paper, as he sat down to dine in a crowded grill-room near
+Piccadilly Circus. Four weeks of acute torment in a city where nobody
+seemed to understand the simplest English sentence had driven 'Squibs'
+completely from his mind for the time being.
+
+The fact that such a paper existed was brought home to him with the
+coffee. A note was placed upon his table by the attentive waiter.
+
+"What's this?" he asked.
+
+"The lady, sare," said the waiter vaguely.
+
+Roland looked round the room excitedly. The spirit of romance gripped
+him. There were many ladies present, for this particular restaurant
+was a favorite with artistes who were permitted to "look in" at their
+theaters as late as eight-thirty. None of them looked particularly
+self-conscious, yet one of them had sent him this quite unsolicited
+tribute. He tore open the envelope.
+
+The message, written in a flowing feminine hand, was brief, and Mrs.
+Grundy herself could have taken no exception to it.
+
+"'Squibs,' one penny weekly, buy it," it ran. All the mellowing effects
+of a good dinner passed away from Roland. He was feverishly irritated.
+He paid his bill and left the place.
+
+A visit to a neighboring music-hall occurred to him as a suitable
+sedative. Hardly had his nerves ceased to quiver sufficiently to allow
+him to begin to enjoy the performance, when, in the interval between two
+of the turns, a man rose in one of the side boxes.
+
+"Is there a doctor in the house?"
+
+There was a hush in the audience. All eyes were directed toward the box.
+A man in the stalls rose, blushing, and cleared his throat.
+
+"My wife has fainted," continued the speaker. "She has just discovered
+that she has lost her copy of 'Squibs.'"
+
+The audience received the statement with the bovine stolidity of an
+English audience in the presence of the unusual.
+
+Not so Roland. Even as the purposeful-looking chuckers-out wended their
+leopard-like steps toward the box, he was rushing out into the street.
+
+As he stood cooling his indignation in the pleasant breeze which had
+sprung up, he was aware of a dense crowd proceeding toward him. It was
+headed by an individual who shone out against the drab background like a
+good deed in a naughty world. Nature hath framed strange fellows in her
+time, and this was one of the strangest that Roland's bulging eyes had
+ever rested upon. He was a large, stout man, comfortably clad in a suit
+of white linen, relieved by a scarlet 'Squibs' across the bosom. His
+top-hat, at least four sizes larger than any top-hat worn out of a
+pantomime, flaunted the same word in letters of flame. His umbrella,
+which, tho the weather was fine, he carried open above his head, bore
+the device "One penny weekly".
+
+The arrest of this person by a vigilant policeman and Roland's dive into
+a taxicab occurred simultaneously. Roland was blushing all over. His
+head was in a whirl. He took the evening paper handed in through
+the window of the cab quite mechanically, and it was only the strong
+exhortations of the vendor which eventually induced him to pay for it.
+This he did with a sovereign, and the cab drove off.
+
+He was just thinking of going to bed several hours later, when it
+occurred to him that he had not read his paper. He glanced at the
+first page. The middle column was devoted to a really capitally written
+account of the proceedings at Bow Street consequent upon the arrest
+of six men who, it was alleged, had caused a crowd to collect to the
+disturbance of the peace by parading the Strand in the undress of Zulu
+warriors, shouting in unison the words "Wah! Wah! Wah! Buy 'Squibs.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Young Mr. Petheram greeted Roland with a joyous enthusiasm which the
+hound Argus, on the return of Ulysses, might have equalled but could
+scarcely have surpassed.
+
+It seemed to be Mr. Petheram's considered opinion that God was in His
+Heaven and all was right with the world. Roland's attempts to correct
+this belief fell on deaf ears.
+
+"Have I seen the advertisements?" he cried, echoing his editor's first
+question. "I've seen nothing else."
+
+"There!" said Mr. Petheram proudly.
+
+"It can't go on."
+
+"Yes, it can. Don't you worry. I know they're arrested as fast as we
+send them out, but, bless you, the supply's endless. Ever since the
+Revue boom started and actors were expected to do six different parts in
+seven minutes, there are platoons of music-hall 'pros' hanging about
+the Strand, ready to take on any sort of job you offer them. I have a
+special staff flushing the Bodegas. These fellows love it. It's meat and
+drink to them to be right in the public eye like that. Makes them feel
+ten years younger. It's wonderful the talent knocking about. Those
+Zulus used to have a steady job as the Six Brothers Biff, Society
+Contortionists. The Revue craze killed them professionally. They cried
+like children when we took them on.
+
+"By the way, could you put through an expenses cheque before you go?
+The fines mount up a bit. But don't you worry about that either. We're
+coining money. I'll show you the returns in a minute. I told you we
+should turn the corner. Turned it! Blame me, we've whizzed round it on
+two wheels. Have you had time to see the paper since you got back? No?
+Then you haven't seen our new Scandal Page--'We Just Want to Know, You
+Know.' It's a corker, and it's sent the circulation up like a rocket.
+Everybody reads 'Squibs' now. I was hoping you would come back soon. I
+wanted to ask you about taking new offices. We're a bit above this sort
+of thing now."
+
+Roland, meanwhile, was reading with horrified eyes the alleged corking
+Scandal Page. It seemed to him without exception the most frightful
+production he had ever seen. It appalled him.
+
+"This is awful," he moaned. "We shall have a hundred libel actions."
+
+"Oh, no, that's all right. It's all fake stuff, tho the public doesn't
+know it. If you stuck to real scandals you wouldn't get a par. a week.
+A more moral set of blameless wasters than the blighters who constitute
+modern society you never struck. But it reads all right, doesn't it? Of
+course, every now and then one does hear something genuine, and then it
+goes in. For instance, have you ever heard of Percy Pook, the bookie? I
+have got a real ripe thing in about Percy this week, the absolute limpid
+truth. It will make him sit up a bit. There, just under your thumb."
+
+Roland removed his thumb, and, having read the paragraph in question,
+started as if he had removed it from a snake.
+
+"But this is bound to mean a libel action!" he cried.
+
+"Not a bit of it," said Mr. Petheram comfortably. "You don't know Percy.
+I won't bore you with his life-history, but take it from me he doesn't
+rush into a court of law from sheer love of it. You're safe enough."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But it appeared that Mr. Pook, tho coy in the matter of cleansing his
+scutcheon before a judge and jury, was not wholly without weapons of
+defense and offense. Arriving at the office next day, Roland found a
+scene of desolation, in the middle of which, like Marius among the ruins
+of Carthage, sat Jimmy, the vacant-faced office boy. Jimmy was
+reading an illustrated comic paper, and appeared undisturbed by his
+surroundings.
+
+"He's gorn," he observed, looking up as Roland entered.
+
+"What do you mean?" Roland snapped at him. "Who's gone and where did he
+go? And besides that, when you speak to your superiors you will rise and
+stop chewing that infernal gum. It gets on my nerves."
+
+Jimmy neither rose nor relinquished his gum. He took his time and
+answered.
+
+"Mr. Petheram. A couple of fellers come in and went through, and there
+was a uproar inside there, and presently out they come running, and I
+went in, and there was Mr. Petheram on the floor knocked silly and the
+furniture all broke, and now 'e's gorn to 'orspital. Those fellers 'ad
+been putting 'im froo it proper," concluded Jimmy with moody relish.
+
+Roland sat down weakly. Jimmy, his tale told, resumed the study of his
+illustrated paper. Silence reigned in the offices of 'Squibs.'
+
+It was broken by the arrival of Miss March. Her exclamation of
+astonishment at the sight of the wrecked room led to a repetition of
+Jimmy's story.
+
+She vanished on hearing the name of the hospital to which the stricken
+editor had been removed, and returned an hour later with flashing eyes
+and a set jaw.
+
+"Aubrey," she said--it was news to Roland that Mr. Petheram's name was
+Aubrey--"is very much knocked about, but he is conscious and sitting up
+and taking nourishment."
+
+"That's good."
+
+"In a spoon only."
+
+"Ah!" said Roland.
+
+"The doctor says he will not be out for a week. Aubrey is certain it was
+that horrible book-maker's men who did it, but of course he can prove
+nothing. But his last words to me were, 'Slip it into Percy again this
+week.' He has given me one or two things to mention. I don't understand
+them, but Aubrey says they will make him wild."
+
+Roland's flesh crept. The idea of making Mr. Pook any wilder than he
+appeared to be at present horrified him. Panic gave him strength, and
+he addressed Miss March, who was looking more like a modern Joan of Arc
+than anything else on earth, firmly.
+
+"Miss March," he said, "I realize that this is a crisis, and that we
+must all do all that we can for the paper, and I am ready to do anything
+in reason--but I will not slip it into Percy. You have seen the effects
+of slipping it into Percy. What he or his minions will do if we repeat
+the process I do not care to think."
+
+"You are afraid?"
+
+"Yes," said Roland simply.
+
+Miss March turned on her heel. It was plain that she regarded him as a
+worm. Roland did not like being thought a worm, but it was infinitely
+better than being regarded as an interesting case by the house-surgeon
+of a hospital. He belonged to the school of thought which holds that it
+is better that people should say of you, "There he goes!" than that they
+should say, "How peaceful he looks".
+
+Stress of work prevented further conversation. It was a revelation to
+Roland, the vigor and energy with which Miss March threw herself into
+the breach. As a matter of fact, so tremendous had been the labors of
+the departed Mr. Petheram, that her work was more apparent than real.
+Thanks to Mr. Petheram, there was a sufficient supply of material in
+hand to enable 'Squibs' to run a fortnight on its own momentum. Roland,
+however, did not know this, and with a view to doing what little he
+could to help, he informed Miss March that he would write the Scandal
+Page. It must be added that the offer was due quite as much to prudence
+as to chivalry. Roland simply did not dare to trust her with the Scandal
+Page. In her present mood it was not safe. To slip it into Percy would,
+he felt, be with her the work of a moment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Literary composition had never been Roland's forte. He sat and stared at
+the white paper and chewed the pencil which should have been marring its
+whiteness with stinging paragraphs. No sort of idea came to him.
+
+His brow grew damp. What sort of people--except book-makers--did things
+you could write scandal about? As far as he could ascertain, nobody.
+
+He picked up the morning paper. The name Windlebird [*] caught his eye.
+A kind of pleasant melancholy came over him as he read the paragraph.
+How long ago it seemed since he had met that genial financier. The
+paragraph was not particularly interesting. It gave a brief account of
+some large deal which Mr. Windlebird was negotiating. Roland did not
+understand a word of it, but it gave him an idea.
+
+[*] He is a character in the Second Episode, a fraudulent financier.
+
+Mr. Windlebird's financial standing, he knew, was above suspicion. Mr.
+Windlebird had made that clear to him during his visit. There could be
+no possibility of offending Mr. Windlebird by a paragraph or two about
+the manners and customs of financiers. Phrases which his kindly host had
+used during his visit came back to him, and with them inspiration.
+
+Within five minutes he had compiled the following
+
+    WE JUST WANT TO KNOW, YOU KNOW
+
+    WHO is the eminent financier at present engaged upon one of his
+    biggest deals?
+
+    WHETHER the public would not be well-advised to look a little
+    closer into it before investing their money?
+
+    IF it is not a fact that this gentleman has bought a first-class
+    ticket to the Argentine in case of accidents?
+
+    WHETHER he may not have to use it at any moment?
+
+After that it was easy. Ideas came with a rush. By the end of an hour
+he had completed a Scandal Page of which Mr. Petheram himself might have
+been proud, without a suggestion of slipping it into Percy. He felt that
+he could go to Mr. Pook, and say, "Percy, on your honor as a British
+book-maker, have I slipped it into you in any way whatsoever?" And Mr.
+Pook would be compelled to reply, "You have not."
+
+Miss March read the proofs of the page, and sniffed. But Miss March's
+blood was up, and she would have sniffed at anything not directly
+hostile to Mr. Pook.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A week later Roland sat in the office of 'Squibs,' reading a letter. It
+had been sent from No. 18-A Bream's Buildings, E.C., but, from Roland's
+point of view, it might have come direct from heaven; for its contents,
+signed by Harrison, Harrison, Harrison & Harrison, Solicitors, were to
+the effect that a client of theirs had instructed them to approach him
+with a view to purchasing the paper. He would not find their client
+disposed to haggle over terms, so, hoped Messrs. Harrison, Harrison,
+Harrison & Harrison, in the event of Roland being willing to sell, they
+could speedily bring matters to a satisfactory conclusion.
+
+Any conclusion which had left him free of 'Squibs' without actual
+pecuniary loss would have been satisfactory to Roland. He had conceived
+a loathing for his property which not even its steadily increasing sales
+could mitigate. He was around at Messrs. Harrison's office as soon as a
+swift taxi could take him there. The lawyers were for spinning the thing
+out with guarded remarks and cautious preambles, but Roland's methods of
+doing business were always rapid.
+
+"This chap," he said, "this fellow who wants to buy 'Squibs,' what'll he
+give?"
+
+"That," began one of the Harrisons ponderously, "would, of course,
+largely depend----"
+
+"I'll take five thousand. Lock, stock, and barrel, including the present
+staff, an even five thousand. How's that?"
+
+"Five thousand is a large----"
+
+"Take it or leave it."
+
+"My dear sir, you hold a pistol to our heads. However, I think that our
+client might consent to the sum you mention."
+
+"Good. Well, directly I get his check, the thing's his. By the way, who
+is your client?"
+
+Mr. Harrison coughed.
+
+"His name," he said, "will be familiar to you. He is the eminent
+financier, Mr. Geoffrey Windlebird."
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DIVERTING EPISODE OF THE EXILED MONARCH
+
+Fifth of a Series of Six Stories [First published in _Pictorial Review_,
+September 1916]
+
+
+The caoutchouc was drawing all London. Slightly more indecent than the
+Salome dance, a shade less reticent than ragtime, it had driven the
+tango out of existence. Nor, indeed, did anybody actually caoutchouc,
+for the national dance of Paranoya contained three hundred and
+fifteen recognized steps; but everybody tried to. A new revue, "Hullo,
+Caoutchouc," had been produced with success. And the pioneer of the
+dance, the peerless Maraquita, a native Paranoyan, still performed it
+nightly at the music-hall where she had first broken loose.
+
+The caoutchouc fascinated Roland Bleke. Maraquita fascinated him more.
+Of all the women to whom he had lost his heart at first sight, Maraquita
+had made the firmest impression upon him. She was what is sometimes
+called a fine woman.
+
+She had large, flashing eyes, the physique of a Rugby International
+forward, and the agility of a cat on hot bricks.
+
+There is a period of about fifty steps somewhere in the middle of the
+three hundred and fifteen where the patient, abandoning the comparative
+decorum of the earlier movements, whizzes about till she looks like a
+salmon-colored whirlwind.
+
+That was the bit that hit Roland.
+
+Night after night he sat in his stage-box, goggling at Maraquita and
+applauding wildly.
+
+One night an attendant came to his box.
+
+"Excuse me, sir, but are you Mr. Roland Bleke? The Senorita Maraquita
+wishes to speak to you."
+
+He held open the door of the box. The possibility of refusal did not
+appear to occur to him. Behind the scenes at that theater, it was
+generally recognized that when the Peerless One wanted a thing, she got
+it--quick.
+
+They were alone.
+
+With no protective footlights between himself and her, Roland came to
+the conclusion that he had made a mistake. It was not that she was any
+less beautiful at the very close quarters imposed by the limits of
+the dressing-room; but he felt that in falling in love with her he had
+undertaken a contract a little too large for one of his quiet, diffident
+nature. It crossed his mind that the sort of woman he really liked was
+the rather small, drooping type. Dynamite would not have made Maraquita
+droop.
+
+For perhaps a minute and a half Maraquita fixed her compelling eyes on
+his without uttering a word. Then she broke a painful silence with this
+leading question:
+
+"You love me, _hein_?"
+
+Roland nodded feebly.
+
+"When men make love to me, I send them away--so."
+
+She waved her hand toward the door, and Roland began to feel almost
+cheerful again. He was to be dismissed with a caution, after all. The
+woman had a fine, forgiving nature.
+
+"But not you."
+
+"Not me?"
+
+"No, not you. You are the man I have been waiting for. I read about you
+in the paper, Senor Bleke. I see your picture in the 'Daily Mirror!' I
+say to myself, 'What a man!'"
+
+"Those picture-paper photographs always make one look rather weird,"
+mumbled Roland.
+
+"I see you night after night in your box. Poof! I love you."
+
+"Thanks awfully," bleated Roland.
+
+"You would do anything for my sake, _hein_? I knew you were that kind
+of man directly I see you. No," she added, as Roland writhed uneasily
+in his chair, "do not embrace me. Later, yes, but now, no. Not till the
+Great Day."
+
+What the Great Day might be Roland could not even faintly conjecture. He
+could only hope that it would also be a remote one.
+
+"And now," said the Senorita, throwing a cloak about her shoulders, "you
+come away with me to my house. My friends are there awaiting us. They
+will be glad and proud to meet you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After his first inspection of the house and the friends, Roland came to
+the conclusion that he preferred Maraquita's room to her company. The
+former was large and airy, the latter, with one exception, small and
+hairy.
+
+The exception Maraquita addressed as Bombito. He was a conspicuous
+figure. He was one of those out-size, hasty-looking men. One suspected
+him of carrying lethal weapons.
+
+Maraquita presented Roland to the company. The native speech of Paranoya
+sounded like shorthand, with a blend of Spanish. An expert could
+evidently squeeze a good deal of it into a minute. Its effect on the
+company was good. They were manifestly soothed. Even Bombito.
+
+Introductions in detail then took place. This time, for Roland's
+benefit, Maraquita spoke in English, and he learned that most of those
+present were marquises. Before him, so he gathered from Maraquita, stood
+the very flower of Paranoya's aristocracy, driven from their native land
+by the Infamy of 1905. Roland was too polite to inquire what on earth
+the Infamy of 1905 might be, but its mention had a marked effect on the
+company. Some scowled, others uttered deep-throated oaths. Bombito
+did both. Before supper, to which they presently sat down, was over,
+however, Roland knew a good deal about Paranoya and its history. The
+conversation conducted by Maraquita--to a ceaseless _bouche pleine_
+accompaniment from her friends--bore exclusively upon the subject.
+
+Paranoya had, it appeared, existed fairly peacefully for centuries under
+the rule of the Alejandro dynasty. Then, in the reign of Alejandro the
+Thirteenth, disaffection had begun to spread, culminating in the Infamy
+of 1905, which, Roland had at last discovered, was nothing less than the
+abolition of the monarchy and the installation of a republic.
+
+Since 1905 the one thing for which they had lived, besides the
+caoutchouc, was to see the monarchy restored and their beloved Alejandro
+the Thirteenth back on his throne. Their efforts toward this end
+had been untiring, and were at last showing signs of bearing fruit.
+Paranoya, Maraquita assured Roland, was honeycombed with intrigue. The
+army was disaffected, the people anxious for a return to the old order
+of things.
+
+A more propitious moment for striking the decisive blow was never likely
+to arrive. The question was purely one of funds.
+
+At the mention of the word "funds," Roland, who had become thoroughly
+bored with the lecture on Paranoyan history, sat up and took notice.
+He had an instinctive feeling that he was about to be called upon for
+a subscription to the cause of the distressful country's freedom.
+Especially by Bombito.
+
+He was right. A moment later Maraquita began to make a speech.
+
+She spoke in Paranoyan, and Roland could not follow her, but he gathered
+that it somehow had reference to himself.
+
+As, at the end of it, the entire company rose to their feet and extended
+their glasses toward him with a mighty shout, he assumed that Maraquita
+had been proposing his health.
+
+"They say 'To the liberator of Paranoya!'" kindly translated the
+Peerless One. "You must excuse," said Maraquita tolerantly, as a bevy
+of patriots surrounded Roland and kissed him on the cheek. "They are so
+grateful to the savior of our country. I myself would kiss you, were it
+not that I have sworn that no man's lips shall touch mine till the royal
+standard floats once more above the palace of Paranoya. But that will be
+soon, very soon," she went on. "With you on our side we can not fail."
+
+What did the woman mean? Roland asked himself wildly. Did she labor
+under the distressing delusion that he proposed to shed his blood on
+behalf of a deposed monarch to whom he had never been introduced?
+
+Maraquita's next remarks made the matter clear.
+
+"I have told them," she said, "that you love me, that you are willing
+to risk everything for my sake. I have promised them that you, the
+rich Senor Bleke, will supply the funds for the revolution. Once more,
+comrades. To the Savior of Paranoya!"
+
+Roland tried his hardest to catch the infection of this patriotic
+enthusiasm, but somehow he could not do it. Base, sordid, mercenary
+speculations would intrude themselves. About how much was a good,
+well-furnished revolution likely to cost? As delicately as he could, he
+put the question to Maraquita.
+
+She said, "Poof! The cost? La, la!" Which was all very well, but hardly
+satisfactory as a business chat. However, that was all Roland could get
+out of her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next few days passed for Roland in a sort of dream. It was the kind
+of dream which it is not easy to distinguish from a nightmare.
+
+Maraquita's reticence at the supper-party on the subject of details
+connected with the financial side of revolutions entirely disappeared.
+She now talked nothing but figures, and from the confused mass which
+she presented to him Roland was able to gather that, in financing
+the restoration of royalty in Paranoya, he would indeed be risking
+everything for her sake.
+
+In the matter of revolutions Maraquita was no niggard. She knew how the
+thing should be done--well, or not at all. There would be so much for
+rifles, machine-guns, and what not: and there would be so much for the
+expense of smuggling them into the country. Then there would be so much
+to be laid out in corrupting the republican army. Roland brightened a
+little when they came to this item. As the standing army of Paranoya
+amounted to twenty thousand men, and as it seemed possible to corrupt
+it thoroughly at a cost of about thirty shillings a head, the obvious
+course, to Roland's way of thinking was to concentrate on this side of
+the question and avoid unnecessary bloodshed.
+
+It appeared, however, that Maraquita did not want to avoid bloodshed,
+that she rather liked bloodshed, that the leaders of the revolution
+would be disappointed if there were no bloodshed. Especially Bombito.
+Unless, she pointed out, there was a certain amount of carnage, looting,
+and so on, the revolution would not achieve a popular success. True, the
+beloved Alejandro might be restored; but he would sit upon a throne
+that was insecure, unless the coronation festivities took a bloodthirsty
+turn. By all means, said Maraquita, corrupt the army, but not at the
+risk of making the affair tame and unpopular. Paranoya was an emotional
+country, and liked its revolutions with a bit of zip to them.
+
+It was about ten days after he had definitely cast in his lot with the
+revolutionary party that Roland was made aware that these things were a
+little more complex than he had imagined. He had reconciled himself to
+the financial outlay. It had been difficult, but he had done it. That
+his person as well as his purse would be placed in peril he had not
+foreseen.
+
+The fact was borne in upon him at the end of the second week by the
+arrival of the deputation.
+
+It blew in from the street just as he was enjoying his after-dinner
+cigar.
+
+It consisted of three men, one long and suave, the other two short,
+stout, and silent. They all had the sallow complexion and undue
+hairiness which he had come by this time to associate with the native of
+Paranoya.
+
+For a moment he mistook them for a drove of exiled noblemen whom he
+had not had the pleasure of meeting at the supper-party; and he waited
+resignedly for them to make night hideous with the royal anthem. He
+poised himself on his toes, the more readily to spring aside if they
+should try to kiss him on the cheek.
+
+"Mr. Bleke?" said the long man.
+
+His companions drifted toward the cigar-box which stood open on the
+table, and looked at it wistfully.
+
+"Long live the monarchy," said Roland wearily. He had gathered in the
+course of his dealings with the exiled ones that this remark generally
+went well.
+
+On the present occasion it elicited no outburst of cheering. On the
+contrary, the long man frowned, and his two companions helped themselves
+to a handful of cigars apiece with a marked moodiness.
+
+"Death to the monarchy," corrected the long man coldly. "And," he added
+with a wealth of meaning in his voice, "to all who meddle in the affairs
+of our beloved country and seek to do it harm."
+
+"I don't know what you mean," said Roland.
+
+"Yes, Senor Bleke, you do know what I mean. I mean that you will be
+well advised to abandon the schemes which you are hatching with the
+malcontents who would do my beloved land an injury."
+
+The conversation was growing awkward. Roland had got so into the habit
+of taking it for granted that every Paranoyan he met must of necessity
+be a devotee of the beloved Alejandro that it came as a shock to him
+to realize that there were those who objected to his restoration to
+the throne. Till now he had looked on the enemy as something in the
+abstract. It had not struck him that the people for whose correction
+he was buying all these rifles and machine-guns were individuals with a
+lively distaste for having their blood shed.
+
+"Senor Bleke," resumed the speaker, frowning at one of his companions
+whose hand was hovering above the bottle of liqueur brandy, "you are a
+man of sense. You know what is safe and what is not safe. Believe me,
+this scheme of yours is not safe. You have been led away, but there
+is still time to withdraw. Do so, and all is well. Do not so, and your
+blood be upon your own head."
+
+"My blood!" gasped Roland.
+
+The speaker bowed.
+
+"That is all," he said. "We merely came to give the warning. Ah, Senor
+Bleke, do not be rash. You think that here, in this great London of
+yours, you are safe. You look at the policeman upon the corner of the
+road, and you say to yourself 'I am safe.' Believe me, not at all so is
+it, but much the opposite. We have ways by which it is of no account the
+policeman on the corner of the road. That is all, Senor Bleke. We wish
+you a good night."
+
+The deputation withdrew.
+
+Maraquita, informed of the incident, snapped her fingers, and said
+"Poof!" It sometimes struck Roland that she would be more real help in a
+difficult situation if she could get out of the habit of saying "Poof!"
+
+"It is nothing," she said.
+
+"No?" said Roland.
+
+"We easily out-trick them, isn't it? You make a will leaving your money
+to the Cause, and then where are they, _hein_?"
+
+It was one way of looking at it, but it brought little balm to Roland.
+He said so. Maraquita scanned his face keenly.
+
+"You are not weakening, Roland?" she said. "You would not betray us
+now?"
+
+"Well, of course, I don't know about betraying, you know, but still----.
+What I mean is----"
+
+Maraquita's eyes seemed to shoot forth two flames.
+
+"Take care," she cried. "With me it is nothing, for I know that your
+heart is with Paranoya. But, if the others once had cause to suspect
+that your resolve was failing--ah! If Bombito----"
+
+Roland took her point. He had forgotten Bombito for the moment.
+
+"For goodness' sake," he said hastily, "don't go saying anything to
+Bombito to give him the idea that I'm trying to back out. Of course you
+can rely on me, and all that. That's all right."
+
+Maraquita's gaze softened. She raised her glass--they were lunching at
+the time--and put it to her lips.
+
+"To the Savior of Paranoya!" she said.
+
+"Beware!" whispered a voice in Roland's ear.
+
+He turned with a start. A waiter was standing behind him, a small, dark,
+hairy man. He was looking into the middle distance with the abstracted
+air which waiters cultivate.
+
+Roland stared at him, but he did not move.
+
+That evening, returning to his flat, Roland was paralyzed by the sight
+of the word "Beware" scrawled across the mirror in his bedroom. It had
+apparently been done with a diamond. He rang the bell.
+
+"Sir?" said the competent valet. ("Competent valets are in attendance at
+each of these flats."--_Advt._)
+
+"Has any one been here since I left?"
+
+"Yes, sir. A foreign-looking gentleman called. He said he knew you, sir.
+I showed him into your room."
+
+The same night, well on in the small hours, the telephone rang. Roland
+dragged himself out of bed.
+
+"Hullo?"
+
+"Is that Senor Bleke?"
+
+"Yes. What is it?"
+
+"Beware!"
+
+Things were becoming intolerable. Roland had a certain amount of
+nerve, but not enough to enable him to bear up against this sinister
+persecution. Yet what could he do? Suppose he did beware to the extent
+of withdrawing his support from the royalist movement, what then?
+Bombito. If ever there was a toad under the harrow, he was that toad.
+And all because a perfectly respectful admiration for the caoutchouc
+had led him to occupy a stage-box several nights in succession at the
+theater where the peerless Maraquita tied herself into knots.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was an air of unusual excitement in Maraquita's manner at their
+next meeting.
+
+"We have been in communication with Him," she whispered. "He will
+receive you. He will give an audience to the Savior of Paranoya."
+
+"Eh? Who will?"
+
+"Our beloved Alejandro. He wishes to see his faithful servant. We are to
+go to him at once."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"At his own house. He will receive you in person."
+
+Such was the quality of the emotions through which he had been passing
+of late, that Roland felt but a faint interest at the prospect of
+meeting face to face a genuine--if exiled--monarch. The thought did flit
+through his mind that they would sit up a bit in old Fineberg's office
+if they could hear of it, but it brought him little consolation.
+
+The cab drew up at a gloomy-looking house in a fashionable square.
+Roland rang the door-bell. There seemed a certain element of the prosaic
+in the action. He wondered what he should say to the butler.
+
+There was, however, no need for words. The door opened, and they were
+ushered in without parley. A butler and two footmen showed them into a
+luxuriously furnished anteroom. Roland entered with two thoughts
+running in his mind. The first was that the beloved Alejandro had got an
+uncommonly snug crib; the second that this was exactly like going to see
+the dentist.
+
+Presently the squad of retainers returned, the butler leading.
+
+"His Majesty will receive Mr. Bleke."
+
+Roland followed him with tottering knees.
+
+His Majesty, King Alejandro the Thirteenth, on the retired list, was a
+genial-looking man of middle age, comfortably stout about the middle
+and a little bald as to the forehead. He might have been a prosperous
+stock-broker. Roland felt more at his ease at the very sight of him.
+
+"Sit down, Mr. Bleke," said His Majesty, as the door closed. "I have
+been wanting to see you for some time."
+
+Roland had nothing to say. He was regaining his composure, but he had a
+long way to go yet before he could feel thoroughly at home.
+
+King Alejandro produced a cigaret-case, and offered it to Roland,
+who shook his head speechlessly. The King lit a cigaret and smoked
+thoughtfully for a while.
+
+"You know, Mr. Bleke," he said at last, "this must stop. It really must.
+I mean your devoted efforts on my behalf."
+
+Roland gaped at him.
+
+"You are a very young man. I had expected to see some one much older.
+Your youth gives me the impression that you have gone into this affair
+from a spirit of adventure. I can assure you that you have nothing to
+gain commercially by interfering with my late kingdom. I hope, before
+we part, that I can persuade you to abandon your idea of financing this
+movement to restore me to the throne.
+
+"I don't understand--er--your majesty."
+
+"I will explain. Please treat what I shall say as strictly confidential.
+You must know, Mr. Bleke, that these attempts to re-establish me as a
+reigning monarch in Paranoya are, frankly, the curse of an otherwise
+very pleasant existence. You look surprized? My dear sir, do you know
+Paranoya? Have you ever been there? Have you the remotest idea what sort
+of life a King of Paranoya leads? I have tried it, and I can assure
+you that a coal-heaver is happy by comparison. In the first place, the
+climate of the country is abominable. I always had a cold in the head.
+Secondly, there is a small but energetic section of the populace whose
+sole recreation it seems to be to use their monarch as a target for
+bombs. They are not very good bombs, it is true, but one in, say, ten
+explodes, and even an occasional bomb is unpleasant if you are the
+target.
+
+"Finally, I am much too fond of your delightful country to wish to leave
+it. I was educated in England--I am a Magdalene College man--and I have
+the greatest horror of ever being compelled to leave it. My present life
+suits me exactly. That is all I wished to say, Mr. Bleke. For both our
+sakes, for the sake of my comfort and your purse, abandon this scheme of
+yours."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Roland walked home thoughtfully. Maraquita had left the royal residence
+long before he had finished the whisky-and-soda which the genial monarch
+had pressed upon him. As he walked, the futility of his situation came
+home to him more and more. Whatever he did, he was bound to displease
+somebody; and these Paranoyans were so confoundedly impulsive when they
+were vexed.
+
+For two days he avoided Maraquita. On the third, with something of the
+instinct which draws the murderer to the spot where he has buried the
+body, he called at her house.
+
+She was not present, but otherwise there was a full gathering. There
+were the marquises; there were the counts; there was Bombito.
+
+He looked unhappily round the crowd.
+
+Somebody gave him a glass of champagne. He raised it.
+
+"To the revolution," he said mechanically.
+
+There was a silence--it seemed to Roland an awkward silence. As if he
+had said something improper, the marquises and counts began to drift
+from the room, till only Bombito was left. Roland regarded him with some
+apprehension. He was looking larger and more unusual than ever.
+
+But to-night, apparently, Bombito was in genial mood. He came forward
+and slapped Roland on the shoulder. And then the remarkable fact came to
+light that Bombito spoke English, or a sort of English.
+
+"My old chap," he said. "I would have a speech with you."
+
+He slapped Roland again on the shoulder.
+
+"The others they say, 'Break it with Senor Bleke gently.' Maraquita say
+'Break it with Senor Bleke gently.' So I break it with you gently."
+
+He dealt Roland a third stupendous punch. Whatever was to be broken
+gently, it was plain to Roland that it was not himself. And suddenly
+there came to him a sort of intuition that told him that Bombito was
+nervous.
+
+"After all you have done for us, Senor Bleke, we shall seem to you
+ungrateful bounders, but what is it? Yes? No? I shouldn't wonder,
+perhaps. The whole fact is that there has been political crisis in
+Paranoya. Upset. Apple-cart. Yes? You follow? No? The Ministry have
+been--what do you say?--put through it. Expelled. Broken up. No more
+ministry. New ministry wanted. To conciliate royalist party, that is
+the cry. So deputation of leading persons, mighty good chaps, prominent
+merchants and that sort of bounder, call upon us. They offer me to be
+President. See? No? Yes? That's right. I am ambitious blighter, Senor
+Bleke. What about it, no? I accept. I am new President of Paranoya. So
+no need for your kind assistance. Royalist revolution up the spout. No
+more royalist revolution."
+
+The wave of relief which swept over Roland ebbed sufficiently after an
+interval to enable him to think of some one but himself. He was not fond
+of Maraquita, but he had a tender heart, and this, he felt, would kill
+the poor girl.
+
+"But Maraquita----?"
+
+"That's all right, splendid old chap. No need to worry about Maraquita,
+stout old boy. Where the husband goes, so does the wife go. As you say,
+whither thou goes will I follow. No?"
+
+"But I don't understand. Maraquita is not your wife?"
+
+"Why, certainly, good old heart. What else?"
+
+"Have you been married to her all the time?"
+
+"Why, certainly, good, dear boy."
+
+The room swam before Roland's eyes. There was no room in his mind
+for meditations on the perfidy of woman. He groped forward and found
+Bombito's hand.
+
+"By Jove," he said thickly, as he wrung it again and again, "I knew you
+were a good sort the first time I saw you. Have a drink or something.
+Have a cigar or something. Have something, anyway, and sit down and tell
+me all about it."
+
+
+
+
+
+THE EPISODE OF THE HIRED PAST
+
+Final Story of the Series [First published in _Pictorial Review_,
+October 1916]
+
+
+"What do you mean--you can't marry him after all? After all what? Why
+can't you marry him? You are perfectly childish."
+
+Lord Evenwood's gentle voice, which had in its time lulled the House
+of Peers to slumber more often than any voice ever heard in the
+Gilded Chamber, had in it a note of unwonted, but quite justifiable,
+irritation. If there was one thing more than another that Lord Evenwood
+disliked, it was any interference with arrangements already made.
+
+"The man," he continued, "is not unsightly. The man is not conspicuously
+vulgar. The man does not eat peas with his knife. The man pronounces his
+aitches with meticulous care and accuracy. The man, moreover, is worth
+rather more than a quarter of a million pounds. I repeat, you are
+childish!"
+
+"Yes, I know he's a very decent little chap, Father," said Lady Eva.
+"It's not that at all."
+
+"I should be gratified, then, to hear what, in your opinion, it is."
+
+"Well, do you think I could be happy with him?"
+
+Lady Kimbuck gave tongue. She was Lord Evenwood's sister. She spent a
+very happy widowhood interfering in the affairs of the various branches
+of her family.
+
+"We're not asking you to be happy. You have such odd ideas of happiness.
+Your idea of happiness is to be married to your cousin Gerry, whose only
+visible means of support, so far as I can gather, is the four hundred
+a year which he draws as a member for a constituency which has every
+intention of throwing him out at the next election."
+
+Lady Eva blushed. Lady Kimbuck's faculty for nosing out the secrets of
+her family had made her justly disliked from the Hebrides to Southern
+Cornwall.
+
+"Young O'Rion is not to be thought of," said Lord Evenwood firmly. "Not
+for an instant. Apart from anything else, his politics are all
+wrong. Moreover, you are engaged to this Mr. Bleke. It is a sacred
+responsibility not lightly to be evaded. You can not pledge your
+word one day to enter upon the most solemn contract known to--ah--the
+civilized world, and break it the next. It is not fair to the man. It is
+not fair to me. You know that all I live for is to see you comfortably
+settled. If I could myself do anything for you, the matter would be
+different. But these abominable land-taxes and Blowick--especially
+Blowick--no, no, it's out of the question. You will be very sorry if you
+do anything foolish. I can assure you that Roland Blekes are not to be
+found--ah--on every bush. Men are extremely shy of marrying nowadays."
+
+"Especially," said Lady Kimbuck, "into a family like ours. What with
+Blowick's scandal, and that shocking business of your grandfather
+and the circus-woman, to say nothing of your poor father's trouble in
+'85----"
+
+"Thank you, Sophia," interrupted Lord Evenwood, hurriedly. "It is
+unnecessary to go into all that now. Suffice it that there are adequate
+reasons, apart from all moral obligations, why Eva should not break her
+word to Mr. Bleke."
+
+Lady Kimbuck's encyclopedic grip of the family annals was a source of
+the utmost discomfort to her relatives. It was known that more than one
+firm of publishers had made her tempting offers for her reminiscences,
+and the family looked on like nervous spectators at a battle while
+Cupidity fought its ceaseless fight with Laziness; for the Evenwood
+family had at various times and in various ways stimulated the
+circulation of the evening papers. Most of them were living down
+something, and it was Lady Kimbuck's habit, when thwarted in her
+lightest whim, to retire to her boudoir and announce that she was not
+to be disturbed as she was at last making a start on her book. Abject
+surrender followed on the instant.
+
+At this point in the discussion she folded up her crochet-work, and
+rose.
+
+"It is absolutely necessary for you, my dear, to make a good match, or
+you will all be ruined. I, of course, can always support my declining
+years with literary work, but----"
+
+Lady Eva groaned. Against this last argument there was no appeal.
+
+Lady Kimbuck patted her affectionately on the shoulder.
+
+"There, run along now," she said. "I daresay you've got a headache or
+something that made you say a lot of foolish things you didn't mean.
+Go down to the drawing-room. I expect Mr. Bleke is waiting there to say
+goodnight to you. I am sure he must be getting quite impatient."
+
+Down in the drawing-room, Roland Bleke was hoping against hope that Lady
+Eva's prolonged absence might be due to the fact that she had gone to
+bed with a headache, and that he might escape the nightly interview
+which he so dreaded.
+
+Reviewing his career, as he sat there, Roland came to the conclusion
+that women had the knack of affecting him with a form of temporary
+insanity. They temporarily changed his whole nature. They made him feel
+for a brief while that he was a dashing young man capable of the
+highest flights of love. It was only later that the reaction came and he
+realized that he was nothing of the sort.
+
+At heart he was afraid of women, and in the entire list of the women of
+whom he had been afraid, he could not find one who had terrified him so
+much as Lady Eva Blyton.
+
+Other women--notably Maraquita, now happily helping to direct the
+destinies of Paranoya--had frightened him by their individuality. Lady
+Eva frightened him both by her individuality and the atmosphere of
+aristocratic exclusiveness which she conveyed. He had no idea whatever
+of what was the proper procedure for a man engaged to the daughter of
+an earl. Daughters of earls had been to him till now mere names in the
+society columns of the morning paper. The very rules of the game were
+beyond him. He felt like a confirmed Association footballer suddenly
+called upon to play in an International Rugby match.
+
+All along, from the very moment when--to his unbounded astonishment--she
+had accepted him, he had known that he was making a mistake; but he
+never realized it with such painful clearness as he did this evening.
+He was filled with a sort of blind terror. He cursed the fate which had
+taken him to the Charity-Bazaar at which he had first come under the
+notice of Lady Kimbuck. The fatuous snobbishness which had made him leap
+at her invitation to spend a few days at Evenwood Towers he regretted;
+but for that he blamed himself less. Further acquaintance with Lady
+Kimbuck had convinced him that if she had wanted him, she would have got
+him somehow, whether he had accepted or refused.
+
+What he really blamed himself for was his mad proposal. There had been
+no need for it. True, Lady Eva had created a riot of burning emotions in
+his breast from the moment they met; but he should have had the sense to
+realize that she was not the right mate for him, even tho he might have
+a quarter of a million tucked away in gilt-edged securities. Their lives
+could not possibly mix. He was a commonplace young man with a fondness
+for the pleasures of the people. He liked cheap papers, picture-palaces,
+and Association football. Merely to think of Association football in
+connection with her was enough to make the folly of his conduct
+clear. He ought to have been content to worship her from afar as some
+inaccessible goddess.
+
+A light step outside the door made his heart stop beating.
+
+"I've just looked in to say good night, Mr.--er--Roland," she said,
+holding out her hand. "Do excuse me. I've got such a headache."
+
+"Oh, yes, rather; I'm awfully sorry."
+
+If there was one person in the world Roland despised and hated at that
+moment, it was himself.
+
+"Are you going out with the guns to-morrow?" asked Lady Eva languidly.
+
+"Oh, yes, rather! I mean, no. I'm afraid I don't shoot."
+
+The back of his neck began to glow. He had no illusions about himself.
+He was the biggest ass in Christendom.
+
+"Perhaps you'd like to play a round of golf, then?"
+
+"Oh, yes, rather! I mean, no." There it was again, that awful phrase. He
+was certain he had not intended to utter it. She must be thinking him a
+perfect lunatic. "I don't play golf."
+
+They stood looking at each other for a moment. It seemed to Roland that
+her gaze was partly contemptuous, partly pitying. He longed to tell her
+that, tho she had happened to pick on his weak points in the realm of
+sport, there were things he could do. An insane desire came upon him
+to babble about his school football team. Should he ask her to feel his
+quite respectable biceps? No.
+
+"Never mind," she said, kindly. "I daresay we shall think of something
+to amuse you."
+
+She held out her hand again. He took it in his for the briefest possible
+instant, painfully conscious the while that his own hand was clammy from
+the emotion through which he had been passing.
+
+"Good night."
+
+"Good night."
+
+Thank Heaven, she was gone. That let him out for another twelve hours at
+least.
+
+A quarter of an hour later found Roland still sitting, where she had
+left him, his head in his hands. The groan of an overwrought soul
+escaped him.
+
+"I can't do it!"
+
+He sprang to his feet.
+
+"I won't do it."
+
+A smooth voice from behind him spoke.
+
+"I think you are quite right, sir--if I may make the remark."
+
+Roland had hardly ever been so startled in his life. In the first place,
+he was not aware of having uttered his thoughts aloud; in the second, he
+had imagined that he was alone in the room. And so, a moment before, he
+had been.
+
+But the owner of the voice possessed, among other qualities, the
+cat-like faculty of entering a room perfectly noiselessly--a fact which
+had won for him, in the course of a long career in the service of the
+best families, the flattering position of star witness in a number of
+England's raciest divorce-cases.
+
+Mr. Teal, the butler--for it was no less a celebrity who had broken in
+on Roland's reverie--was a long, thin man of a somewhat priestly cast of
+countenance. He lacked that air of reproving hauteur which many butlers
+possess, and it was for this reason that Roland had felt drawn to him
+during the black days of his stay at Evenwood Towers. Teal had been
+uncommonly nice to him on the whole. He had seemed to Roland, stricken
+by interviews with his host and Lady Kimbuck, the only human thing in
+the place.
+
+He liked Teal. On the other hand, Teal was certainly taking a liberty.
+He could, if he so pleased, tell Teal to go to the deuce. Technically,
+he had the right to freeze Teal with a look.
+
+He did neither of these things. He was feeling very lonely and very
+forlorn in a strange and depressing world, and Teal's voice and manner
+were soothing.
+
+"Hearing you speak, and seeing nobody else in the room," went on the
+butler, "I thought for a moment that you were addressing me."
+
+This was not true, and Roland knew it was not true. Instinct told him
+that Teal knew that he knew it was not true; but he did not press the
+point.
+
+"What do you mean--you think I am quite right?" he said. "You don't know
+what I was thinking about."
+
+Teal smiled indulgently.
+
+"On the contrary, sir. A child could have guessed it. You have just
+come to the decision--in my opinion a thoroughly sensible one--that your
+engagement to her ladyship can not be allowed to go on. You are quite
+right, sir. It won't do."
+
+Personal magnetism covers a multitude of sins. Roland was perfectly well
+aware that he ought not to be standing here chatting over his and Lady
+Eva's intimate affairs with a butler; but such was Teal's magnetism that
+he was quite unable to do the right thing and tell him to mind his own
+business. "Teal, you forget yourself!" would have covered the situation.
+Roland, however, was physically incapable of saying "Teal, you forget
+yourself!" The bird knows all the time that he ought not to stand
+talking to the snake, but he is incapable of ending the conversation.
+Roland was conscious of a momentary wish that he was the sort of man who
+could tell butlers that they forgot themselves. But then that sort
+of man would never be in this sort of trouble. The "Teal, you forget
+yourself" type of man would be a first-class shot, a plus golfer, and
+would certainly consider himself extremely lucky to be engaged to Lady
+Eva.
+
+"The question is," went on Mr. Teal, "how are we to break it off?"
+
+Roland felt that, as he had sinned against all the decencies in allowing
+the butler to discuss his affairs with him, he might just as well go
+the whole hog and allow the discussion to run its course. And it was an
+undeniable relief to talk about the infernal thing to some one.
+
+He nodded gloomily, and committed himself. Teal resumed his remarks with
+the gusto of a fellow-conspirator.
+
+"It's not an easy thing to do gracefully, sir, believe me, it isn't.
+And it's got to be done gracefully, or not at all. You can't go to her
+ladyship and say 'It's all off, and so am I,' and catch the next train
+for London. The rupture must be of her ladyship's making. If some
+fact, some disgraceful information concerning you were to come to her
+ladyship's ears, that would be a simple way out of the difficulty."
+
+He eyed Roland meditatively.
+
+"If, for instance, you had ever been in jail, sir?"
+
+"Well, I haven't."
+
+"No offense intended, sir, I'm sure. I merely remembered that you had
+made a great deal of money very quickly. My experience of gentlemen who
+have made a great deal of money very quickly is that they have generally
+done their bit of time. But, of course, if you----. Let me think. Do you
+drink, sir?"
+
+"No."
+
+Mr. Teal sighed. Roland could not help feeling that he was disappointing
+the old man a good deal.
+
+"You do not, I suppose, chance to have a past?" asked Mr. Teal, not very
+hopefully. "I use the word in its technical sense. A deserted wife? Some
+poor creature you have treated shamefully?"
+
+At the risk of sinking still further in the butler's esteem, Roland was
+compelled to answer in the negative.
+
+"I was afraid not," said Mr. Teal, shaking his head. "Thinking it all
+over yesterday, I said to myself, 'I'm afraid he wouldn't have one.' You
+don't look like the sort of gentleman who had done much with his time."
+
+"Thinking it over?"
+
+"Not on your account, sir," explained Mr. Teal. "On the family's. I
+disapproved of this match from the first. A man who has served a family
+as long as I have had the honor of serving his lordship's, comes to
+entertain a high regard for the family prestige. And, with no offense to
+yourself, sir, this would not have done."
+
+"Well, it looks as if it would have to do," said Roland, gloomily. "I
+can't see any way out of it."
+
+"I can, sir. My niece at Aldershot."
+
+Mr. Teal wagged his head at him with a kind of priestly archness.
+
+"You can not have forgotten my niece at Aldershot?"
+
+Roland stared at him dumbly. It was like a line out of a melodrama. He
+feared, first for his own, then for the butler's sanity. The latter was
+smiling gently, as one who sees light in a difficult situation.
+
+"I've never been at Aldershot in my life."
+
+"For our purposes you have, sir. But I'm afraid I am puzzling you. Let
+me explain. I've got a niece over at Aldershot who isn't much
+good. She's not very particular. I am sure she would do it for a
+consideration."
+
+"Do what?"
+
+"Be your 'Past,' sir. I don't mind telling you that as a 'Past' she's
+had some experience; looks the part, too. She's a barmaid, and you would
+guess it the first time you saw her. Dyed yellow hair, sir," he went on
+with enthusiasm, "done all frizzy. Just the sort of young person that a
+young gentleman like yourself would have had a 'past' with. You couldn't
+find a better if you tried for a twelvemonth."
+
+"But, I say----!"
+
+"I suppose a hundred wouldn't hurt you?"
+
+"Well, no, I suppose not, but----"
+
+"Then put the whole thing in my hands, sir. I'll ask leave off to-morrow
+and pop over and see her. I'll arrange for her to come here the day
+after to see you. Leave it all to me. To-night you must write the
+letters."
+
+"Letters?"
+
+"Naturally, there would be letters, sir. It is an inseparable feature of
+these cases."
+
+"Do you mean that I have got to write to her? But I shouldn't know what
+to say. I've never seen her."
+
+"That will be quite all right, sir, if you place yourself in my hands. I
+will come to your room after everybody's gone to bed, and help you write
+those letters. You have some note-paper with your own address on it?
+Then it will all be perfectly simple."
+
+When, some hours later, he read over the ten or twelve exceedingly
+passionate epistles which, with the butler's assistance, he had
+succeeded in writing to Miss Maud Chilvers, Roland came to the
+conclusion that there must have been a time when Mr. Teal was a good
+deal less respectable than he appeared to be at present. Byronic was
+the only adjective applicable to his collaborator's style of amatory
+composition. In every letter there were passages against which Roland
+had felt compelled to make a modest protest.
+
+"'A thousand kisses on your lovely rosebud of a mouth.' Don't you think
+that is a little too warmly colored? And 'I am languishing for the
+pressure of your ivory arms about my neck and the sweep of your silken
+hair against my cheek!' What I mean is--well, what about it, you know?"
+
+"The phrases," said Mr. Teal, not without a touch of displeasure, "to
+which you take exception, are taken bodily from correspondence (which I
+happened to have the advantage of perusing) addressed by the late Lord
+Evenwood to Animalcula, Queen of the High Wire at Astley's Circus. His
+lordship, I may add, was considered an authority in these matters."
+
+Roland criticized no more. He handed over the letters, which, at Mr.
+Teal's direction, he had headed with various dates covering roughly a
+period of about two months antecedent to his arrival at the Towers.
+
+"That," Mr. Teal explained, "will make your conduct definitely
+unpardonable. With this woman's kisses hot upon your lips,"--Mr. Teal
+was still slightly aglow with the fire of inspiration--"you have the
+effrontery to come here and offer yourself to her ladyship."
+
+With Roland's timid suggestion that it was perhaps a mistake to overdo
+the atmosphere, the butler found himself unable to agree.
+
+"You can't make yourself out too bad. If you don't pitch it hot and
+strong, her ladyship might quite likely forgive you. Then where would
+you be?"
+
+Miss Maud Chilvers, of Aldershot, burst into Roland's life like one
+of the shells of her native heath two days later at about five in the
+afternoon.
+
+It was an entrance of which any stage-manager might have been proud
+of having arranged. The lighting, the grouping, the lead-up--all were
+perfect. The family had just finished tea in the long drawing-room.
+Lady Kimbuck was crocheting, Lord Evenwood dozing, Lady Eva reading, and
+Roland thinking. A peaceful scene.
+
+A soft, rippling murmur, scarcely to be reckoned a snore, had just
+proceeded from Lord Evenwood's parted lips, when the door opened, and
+Teal announced, "Miss Chilvers."
+
+Roland stiffened in his chair. Now that the ghastly moment had come, he
+felt too petrified with fear even to act the little part in which he had
+been diligently rehearsed by the obliging Mr. Teal. He simply sat and
+did nothing.
+
+It was speedily made clear to him that Miss Chilvers would do all the
+actual doing that was necessary. The butler had drawn no false picture
+of her personal appearance. Dyed yellow hair done all frizzy was but one
+fact of her many-sided impossibilities. In the serene surroundings of
+the long drawing-room, she looked more unspeakably "not much good" than
+Roland had ever imagined her. With such a leading lady, his drama
+could not fail of success. He should have been pleased; he was merely
+appalled. The thing might have a happy ending, but while it lasted it
+was going to be terrible.
+
+She had a flatteringly attentive reception. Nobody failed to notice her.
+Lord Evenwood woke with a start, and stared at her as if she had been
+some ghost from his trouble of '85. Lady Eva's face expressed sheer
+amazement. Lady Kimbuck, laying down her crochet-work, took one look at
+the apparition, and instantly decided that one of her numerous erring
+relatives had been at it again. Of all the persons in the room, she
+was possibly the only one completely cheerful. She was used to these
+situations and enjoyed them. Her mind, roaming into the past, recalled
+the night when her cousin Warminster had been pinked by a stiletto in
+his own drawing-room by a lady from South America. Happy days, happy
+days.
+
+Lord Evenwood had, by this time, come to the conclusion that the festive
+Blowick must be responsible for this visitation. He rose with dignity.
+
+"To what are we----?" he began.
+
+Miss Chilvers, resolute young woman, had no intention of standing there
+while other people talked. She shook her gleaming head and burst into
+speech.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know I've no right to be coming walking in here among a lot
+of perfect strangers at their teas, but what I say is, 'Right's right
+and wrong's wrong all the world over,' and I may be poor, but I have
+my feelings. No, thank you, I won't sit down. I've not come for the
+weekend. I've come to say a few words, and when I've said them I'll go,
+and not before. A lady friend of mine happened to be reading her Daily
+Sketch the other day, and she said 'Hullo! hullo!' and passed it on to
+me with her thumb on a picture which had under it that it was Lady Eva
+Blyton who was engaged to be married to Mr. Roland Bleke. And when I
+read that, I said 'Hullo! hullo!' too, I give you my word. And not being
+able to travel at once, owing to being prostrated with the shock, I came
+along to-day, just to have a look at Mr. Roland Blooming Bleke, and ask
+him if he's forgotten that he happens to be engaged to me. That's all. I
+know it's the sort of thing that might slip any gentleman's mind, but I
+thought it might be worth mentioning. So now!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Roland, perspiring in the shadows at the far end of the room, felt that
+Miss Chilvers was overdoing it. There was no earthly need for all this
+sort of thing. Just a simple announcement of the engagement would have
+been quite sufficient. It was too obvious to him that his ally was
+thoroughly enjoying herself. She had the center of the stage, and did
+not intend lightly to relinquish it.
+
+"My good girl," said Lady Kimbuck, "talk less and prove more. When did
+Mr. Bleke promise to marry you?"
+
+"Oh, it's all right. I'm not expecting you to believe my word. I've got
+all the proofs you'll want. Here's his letters."
+
+Lady Kimbuck's eyes gleamed. She took the package eagerly. She never
+lost an opportunity of reading compromising letters. She enjoyed them
+as literature, and there was never any knowing when they might come in
+useful.
+
+"Roland," said Lady Eva, quietly, "haven't you anything to contribute to
+this conversation?"
+
+Miss Chilvers clutched at her bodice. Cinema palaces were a passion with
+her, and she was up in the correct business.
+
+"Is he here? In this room?"
+
+Roland slunk from the shadows.
+
+"Mr. Bleke," said Lord Evenwood, sternly, "who is this woman?"
+
+Roland uttered a kind of strangled cough.
+
+"Are these letters in your handwriting?" asked Lady Kimbuck, almost
+cordially. She had seldom read better compromising letters in her life,
+and she was agreeably surprized that one whom she had always imagined a
+colorless stick should have been capable of them.
+
+Roland nodded.
+
+"Well, it's lucky you're rich," said Lady Kimbuck philosophically. "What
+are you asking for these?" she enquired of Miss Chilvers.
+
+"Exactly," said Lord Evenwood, relieved. "Precisely. Your sterling
+common sense is admirable, Sophia. You place the whole matter at once on
+a businesslike footing."
+
+"Do you imagine for a moment----?" began Miss Chilvers slowly.
+
+"Yes," said Lady Kimbuck. "How much?"
+
+Miss Chilvers sobbed.
+
+"If I have lost him for ever----"
+
+Lady Eva rose.
+
+"But you haven't," she said pleasantly. "I wouldn't dream of standing in
+your way." She drew a ring from her finger, placed it on the table, and
+walked to the door. "I am not engaged to Mr. Bleke," she said, as she
+reached it.
+
+Roland never knew quite how he had got away from The Towers. He had
+confused memories in which the principals of the drawing-room scene
+figured in various ways, all unpleasant. It was a portion of his life
+on which he did not care to dwell. Safely back in his flat, however, he
+gradually recovered his normal spirits. Indeed, now that the tumult and
+the shouting had, so to speak, died, and he was free to take a broad
+view of his position, he felt distinctly happier than usual. That Lady
+Kimbuck had passed for ever from his life was enough in itself to make
+for gaiety.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was humming blithely one morning as he opened his letters; outside
+the sky was blue and the sun shining. It was good to be alive. He opened
+the first letter. The sky was still blue, the sun still shining.
+
+    "Dear Sir," (it ran).
+
+    "We have been instructed by our client, Miss Maud Chilvers, of the
+    Goat and Compasses, Aldershot, to institute proceedings against
+    you for Breach of Promise of Marriage. In the event of your being
+    desirous to avoid the expense and publicity of litigation, we are
+    instructed to say that Miss Chilvers would be prepared to accept
+    the sum of ten thousand pounds in settlement of her claim against
+    you. We would further add that in support of her case our client
+    has in her possession a number of letters written by yourself to
+    her, all of which bear strong prima facie evidence of the alleged
+    promise to marry: and she will be able in addition to call as
+    witnesses in support of her case the Earl of Evenwood, Lady
+    Kimbuck, and Lady Eva Blyton, in whose presence, at a recent
+    date, you acknowledged that you had promised to marry our client.
+
+    "Trusting that we hear from you in the course of post.
+           We are, dear Sir,
+                   Yours faithfully,
+                            Harrison, Harrison, Harrison, & Harrison."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Man of Means, by P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
+
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