CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SAM HEARS BAD NEWS
SAM uttered a cry of exceeding bitterness. Nothing is more galling to your strategist than to find that some small, unforeseen accident has occurred and undone all his schemes. The one thing for which he had omitted to allow was the possibility of some trousered caller wandering in during his absence and supplying Mr. Molloy with the means of escape.
“So he’s gone, I suppose?” he said morosely.
“No, he’s still here,” said Mr. Braddock. “In the drawing-room.”
“The man, I mean.”
“What man?”
“The other man.”
“What other man?” asked Mr. Braddock, whose exacting afternoon had begun to sap his mental powers.
“Oh, never mind,” said Sam impatiently. “What did Lord Tilbury want, coming down here, confound him?”
“Came to see you about something, I should think,” surmised Mr. Braddock.
“Didn’t he tell you what it was?”
“No. As a matter of fact, we’ve been chatting mostly about trousers. You haven’t got a spare pair in the house by any chance, have you?”
“Of course I have—upstairs.”
“Then I wish,” said Mr. Braddock earnestly, “that you would dig them out and give them to the old boy. He’s been trying for the last ten minutes to get me to lend him mine, and it simply can’t be done. I’ve got to be getting back to town soon to dress for dinner, and you can say what you like, a fellow buzzing along in a two-seater without any trousers on looks conspicuous.”
“Darn that fool, coming down here at just this time!” said Sam, still aggrieved. “What exactly happened?”
“Well, he’s a bit on the incoherent side; but as far as I can make out, that man of yours, the chap who called me brother, seems to have gone completely off his onion. Old Tilbury rang the front doorbell, and there was a bit of a pause, and then this chap opened the door and old Tilbury went in, and then he happened to look at him and saw that he hadn’t any trousers on.”
“That struck him as strange, of course.”
“Apparently he hadn’t much time to think about it, for the bloke immediately proceeded to hold him up with a gun.”
“He hadn’t got a gun.”
“Well, old Tilbury asserts that he was shoving something against his pocket from inside.”
“His finger, or a pipe.”
“No, I say, really!” Mr. Braddock’s voice betrayed the utmost astonishment and admiration. “Would that be it? I call that clever.”
“Well, he hadn’t a gun when I caught him or he would have used it on me. What happened then?”
“How do you mean—caught him?”
“I found him burgling the house.”
“Was that chap who called me brother a burglar?” cried Mr. Braddock, amazed. “I thought he was your man.”
“Well, he wasn’t. What happened next?”
“The bloke proceeded to de-bag old Tilbury. Then shoving on the trousers, he started to leg it. Old Tilbury at this juncture appears to have said ‘Hi! What about me?’ or words to that effect; upon which the bloke replied, ‘Use your own judgment!’ and passed into the night. When I came in, old Tilbury was in the drawing-room, wearing the evening paper as a sort of kilt and not looking too dashed pleased with things in general.”
“Well, come along and see him.”
“Not me,” said Mr. Braddock. “I’ve had ten minutes of him and it has sufficed. Also, I’ve got to be buzzing up to town. I’m dining out. Besides, it’s you he wants to see, not me.”
“I wonder what he wants to see me about.”
“Must be something important to bring him charging down here. Well, I’ll be moving, old boy. Mustn’t keep you. Thanks for a very pleasant afternoon.”
Willoughby Braddock took his departure; and Sam, having gone to his bedroom and found a pair of grey flannel trousers, returned to the lower regions and went into the drawing-room.
He had not expected to find his visitor in anything approaching a mood of sunniness, but he was unprepared for the red glare of hate and hostility in the eyes which seared their way through him as he entered. It almost seemed as if Lord Tilbury imagined the distressing happenings of the last quarter of an hour to be Sam’s fault.
“So there you are!” said Lord Tilbury.
He had been standing with an air of coyness behind the sofa; but now, as he observed the trousers over Sam’s arm, he swooped forward feverishly and wrenched them from him. He pulled them on, muttering thickly to himself; and this done, drew himself up and glared at his host once more with that same militant expression of loathing in his eyes.
He seemed keenly alive to the fact that he was not looking his best. Sam was a long-legged man, and in the case of Lord Tilbury, Nature, having equipped him with an outsize in brains, had not bothered much about his lower limbs. The borrowed trousers fell in loose folds about his ankles, brushing the floor. Nor did they harmonise very satisfactorily with the upper portion of a morning suit. Seeing him, Sam could not check a faint smile of appreciation.
Lord Tilbury saw the smile, and it had the effect of increasing his fury to the point where bubbling rage becomes a sort of frozen calm.
“You are amused,” he said tensely.
Sam repudiated the dreadful charge.
“No, no! Just thinking of something.”
“Cor!” said Lord Tilbury.
Sam perceived that a frank and soothing explanation must be his first step. After that, and only after that, could he begin to institute inquiries as to why His Lordship had honoured him with this visit.
“That fellow who stole your trousers——”
“I have no wish to discuss him,” said Lord Tilbury with hauteur. “The fact that you employ a lunatic manservant causes me no surprise.”
“He wasn’t my manservant. He was a burglar.”
“A burglar? Roaming at large about the house? Did you know he was here?”
“Oh, yes. I caught him and I made him take his trousers off, and then I went next door to tea.”
Lord Tilbury expelled a long breath.
“Indeed? You went next door to tea?”
“Yes.”
“Leaving this—this criminal——”
“Well, I knew he couldn’t get away. Oh, I had reasoned it all out. Your happening to turn up was just a bit of bad luck. Was there anything you wanted to see me about?” asked Sam, feeling that the sooner this interview terminated the pleasanter it would be.
Lord Tilbury puffed out his cheeks and stood smouldering for a moment. In the agitation of the recent occurrences, he had almost forgotten the tragedy which had sent him hurrying down to Mon Repos.
“Yes, there was,” he said. He sizzled for another brief instant. “I may begin by telling you,” he said, “that your uncle, Mr. Pynsent, when he sent you over here to join my staff, practically placed me in loco parentis with respect to you.”
“An excellent idea,” said Sam courteously.
“An abominable idea! It was an iniquitous thing to demand of a busy man that he should take charge of a person of a character so erratic, so undisciplined, so—er—eccentric as to border closely upon the insane.”
“Insane?” said Sam. He was wounded to the quick by the injustice of these harsh words. From first to last, he could think of no action of his that had not been inspired and guided throughout by the dictates of pure reason. “Who, me?”
“Yes, you! It was a monstrous responsibility to give any man, and I consented to undertake it only because—er——”
“I know. My uncle told me,” said Sam, to help him out. “You had some business deal on, and you wanted to keep in with him.”
Lord Tilbury showed no gratitude for this kindly prompting.
“Well,” he said bitterly, “it may interest you to know that the deal to which you refer has fallen through.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” said Sam sympathetically. “That’s tough luck. I’m afraid my uncle is a queer sort of fellow to do business with.”
“I received a cable from him this afternoon, informing me that he had changed his mind and would be unable to meet me in the matter.”
“Too bad,” said Sam. “I really am sorry.”
“And it is entirely owing to you, you may be pleased to learn.”
“Me? Why, what have I done?”
“I will tell you what you have done. Mr. Pynsent’s cable was in answer to one from me, in which I informed him that you were in the process of becoming entangled with a girl.”
“What?”
“You need not trouble to deny it. I saw you with my own eyes lunching together at the Savoy, and I happen to know that this afternoon you took her to the theatre.”
Sam looked at him dizzily.
“You aren’t—you can’t by any chance be referring to Miss Derrick?”
“Of course I am referring to Miss Derrick.”
So stupendous was Sam’s amazement that anybody could describe what was probably the world’s greatest and most beautiful romance as “becoming entangled with a girl” that he could only gape.
“I cabled to Mr. Pynsent, informing him of the circumstances and asking for instructions.”
“You did what?” Sam’s stupor of astonishment had passed away, whirled to the four winds on a tempestuous rush of homicidal fury. “You mean to tell me that you had the—the nerve—the insolence——” He gulped. Being a young man usually quick to express his rare bursts of anger in terms of action, he looked longingly at Lord Tilbury, regretting that the latter’s age and physique disqualified him as a candidate for assault and battery. “Do you mean to tell me——” He swallowed rapidly. The thought of this awful little man spying upon Kay and smirching her with his loathly innuendoes made mere words inadequate.
“I informed Mr. Pynsent that you were conducting a clandestine love affair and asked him what I was to do.”
To Sam, like some blessed inspiration, there came a memory of a scene that had occurred in his presence abaft the fiddley of the tramp steamer Araminta when that vessel was two days out of New York. A dreamy able-bodied seaman, thoughts of home or beer having temporarily taken his mind off his job, had chanced to wander backward onto the foot of the bos’n while the latter was crossing the deck with a full pot of paint in his hands. And the bos’n, recovering his breath, had condensed his feelings into two epithets so elastic and comprehensive that, while they were an exact description of the able-bodied seaman, they applied equally well to Lord Tilbury. Indeed, it seemed to Sam that they might have been invented expressly for Lord Tilbury’s benefit.
A moment before he had been deploring the inadequacy of mere words. But these were not mere words. They were verbal dynamite.
“You so-and-so!” said Sam. “You such-and-such!”
Sailors are toughened by early training and long usage to bear themselves phlegmatically beneath abuse. Lord Tilbury had had no such advantages. He sprang backward as if he had been scalded by a sudden jet of boiling water.
“You pernicious little bounder!” said Sam. He strode to the door and flung it open. “Get out!”
If ever there was an occasion on which a man might excusably have said “Sir!” this was it; and no doubt, had he been able to speak, this was the word which Lord Tilbury would have used. Nearly a quarter of a century had passed since he had been addressed in this fashion to his face, and the thing staggered him.
“Get out!” repeated Sam. “What the devil,” he inquired peevishly, “are you doing here, poisoning the air?”
Lord Tilbury felt no inclination to embark upon a battle of words in which he appeared to be in opposition to an expert. Dazedly he flapped out into the hall, the grey flannel trousers swirling about his feet. At the front door, however, it suddenly occurred to him that he had not yet fired the most important shell in his ammunition wagon. He turned at bay.
“Wait!” he cried. “I may add——”
“No, you mayn’t,” said Sam.
“I wish to add——”
“Keep moving!”
“I insist on informing you,” shouted Lord Tilbury, plucking at the trousers with a nautical twitch, “of this one thing: Your uncle said in his cable that you were to take the next boat back to America.”
It had not been Sam’s intention to permit anything to shake the stern steeliness of his attitude, but this information did it. He stopped midway in an offensive sniff designed to afford a picturesque illustration of his view on the other’s air-poisoning qualities and gazed at him blankly.
“Did he say that?”
“Yes, he did.” Sam scratched his chin thoughtfully. Lord Tilbury began to feel a little better. “And,” he continued, “as I should imagine that a young man of your intellectual attainments has little scope for making a living except by sponging on his rich relatives, I presume that you will accede to his wishes. In case you may still suppose that you are a member of the staff of Tilbury House, I will disabuse you of that view. You are not.”
Sam remained silent; and Lord Tilbury, expanding and beginning to realise that there is nothing unpleasant about a battle of words provided that the battling is done in the right quarter, proceeded.
“I only engaged you as a favour to your uncle. On your merits you could not have entered Tilbury House as an office boy. I say,” he repeated in a louder voice, “that, had there been no question of obliging Mr. Pynsent, I would not have engaged you as an office boy.”
Sam came out of his trance.
“Are you still here?” he said, annoyed.
“Yes, I am still here. And let me tell you——”
“Listen!” said Sam. “If you aren’t out of this house in two seconds, I’ll take those trousers back.”
Every Achilles has his heel. Of all the possible threats that Sam could have used, this was probably the only one to which Lord Tilbury, in his dangerously elevated and hostile frame of mind, would have paid heed. For one moment he stood swelling like a toy balloon, then he slid out and the door banged behind him.
A dark shape loomed up before Lord Tilbury as he stood upon the gravel outside the portal of Mon Repos. Beside this shape there frolicked another and a darker one.
“’Evening, sir.”
Lord Tilbury perceived through the gloom that he was being addressed by a member of the force. He made no reply. He was not in the mood for conversation with policemen.
“Bringing your dog back,” said the officer genially. “Found ’er roaming about at the top of the street.”
“It is not my dog,” said Lord Tilbury between set teeth, repelling Amy as she endeavoured in her affable way to climb on to his neck.
“Not a member of the ’ousehold, sir? Just a neighbour making a friendly call? I see. Now I wonder,” said the policeman, “if any of my mates ’ave approached you on the matter of this concert in aid of a charitubulorganisation which is not only most deserving in itself but is connected with a body of men to ’oom you as a nouse’older will——”
“G-r-r-h!” said Lord Tilbury.
He bounded out of the gate. Dimly, as he waddled down Burberry Road, the grey flannel trousers brushing the pavement with a musical swishing sound, there came to him, faint but pursuing, the voice of the indefatigable policeman:
“This charitubulorganisationtowhichIallude——”
Out of the night, sent from heaven, there came a crawling taxicab. Lord Tilbury poured himself in and sank back on the seat, a spent force.