The Strand Magazine, November 1930

 

 

 

CHAPTER IV.
i.

WITH his usual masterful dash in the last fifty yards, Berry Conway had beaten the eight-forty-five express into Valley Fields station by the split-second margin which was his habit. And it was only after he had taken his seat and regained his breath, and had leisure to look about him, that he realized how particularly pleasant this particular day was.

It was, he perceived, a day for joy and adventure and romance. The sun was shining from a sapphire sky. Under its rays Herne Hill looked quite poetic. So did Loughborough. And the river, as he crossed it, positively laughed up at him. By the time he reached Pudding Lane, he had come definitely to the conclusion that this was a morning which it would be a crime to waste cooped up in a stuffy office.

He had frequently felt like this before, but never had Mr. Frisby appeared to see eye to eye with him. Hard, prosaic stuff had gone to the making of T. Paterson Frisby. You didn’t find him flinging work to the winds, and going out and dancing Morris Dances in Cornhill just because the sun happened to be shining.

But miracles do happen, if one is patient and prepared to wait for them. Just as Berry had finished sorting as dull a collection of letters as ever offended a young man’s sensibilities on a glowing summer day, the door was flung open, and there came in something so extraordinarily effulgent that he had to blink twice before he could focus it.

It was not merely that T. Paterson Frisby was wearing a suit of light grey flannel. It was not even the fact that he had a panama hat on his head and a Brigade of Guards tie round his neck that stupefied the observer. The really amazing thing about him was his air of radiant bonhomie. The man seemed positively roguish. He had gone gay. As Berry stared at him dumbly, a sort of spasm passed over T. Paterson Frisby’s face, causing a hideous distortion. It was a smile.

“ ’Morning, Conway!”

“Good morning, sir,” said Berry, blankly.

“Anything in the mail?”

“Nothing of importance, sir.”

“Well, leave it all till to-morrow.”

“Till to-morrow?”

“Yes. I’m off to Brighton.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You can take the day off.”

“Thank you very much, sir,” said Berry.

He was stunned. Such a thing had never happened before. Not once in the whole course of his association with Mr. Frisby had there ever been even the suggestion of such a thing. He could hardly believe that it was happening now.

“Got to start right away. Motoring. Sha’n’t be back till this evening. Two things I want you to do. Go to Mellon and Pirbright in Bond Street, and get me a couple of gangway seats for some good show to-night. Put them down to my account, and have them sent to my apartment.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell them I want something good. They know what I’ve seen. And then go on to the Berkeley, and book me a table for supper.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Table for two. Not too near the band.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Right. By the way, I knew there was something. I saw that man Hoke last night. I told him about that mine of yours. He’s interested.”

A thrill shot through Berry.

“Is he, sir?”

“Yes. Oddly enough, he happens to know that particular property. Will you be in this evening?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll tell him to run down and see you. Between ourselves—don’t let him know I told you—he will go to five hundred pounds.”

“He will!”

“He told me so. He was going to have tried for less, but I said that that was your lowest figure. So, if you’re satisfied, he’ll bring down all the papers and you can get the thing settled to-night. And I won’t charge you agent’s commission,” said Mr. Frisby, chuckling like a Cheeryble brother, and took his departure.

For some moments after he had gone, Berry remained motionless. Motionless, that is to say, as far as his limbs were concerned. His brain was racing tempestuously.

Five hundred pounds! It was the key to life and freedom. Attwater’s loan—he could repay that. The Old Retainer—he could fix her up so that she would be all right. And, when these honourable duties were performed, he would still have something in pocket to start him off on the path of Adventure.

He drew a deep breath. In body he was still in his employer’s office, but in spirit he was making his way through the streets of a little sun-baked town that lay in the shadow of towering mountains. And as he passed along the natives nudged one another, awed.

“There he goes,” they were saying. “See that man! Hard-Case Conway! They don’t come any tougher.”

 

IT was getting on for lunch-time when Berry, having completed the purchase of the theatre-tickets, sauntered from the emporium of the Messrs. Mellon and Pirbright into the rattle and glitter of Bond Street once more.

The day seemed now to have touched new heights of brilliance. There was sunshine above and sunshine in his heart. A magic ecstasy thrilled the air. He gazed upon Bond Street, fascinated.

It was his practice, when walking in London, to look hopefully about him on the chance of exciting things happening. Nothing of the slightest interest had ever happened yet, and he had sometimes felt discouraged. But Bond Street restored his optimism. This, he felt, was a spot where anything might occur at any moment.

Here, if anywhere, he said to himself, might beautiful women in slinky clothes sidle up to a man and slip into his hand the long envelope containing the Naval Treaty stolen that morning from a worried Foreign Office, mistaking him—on the strength of the carnation in his buttonhole—for Flash Alec, their accomplice. Whereas in Threadneedle Street or Valley Fields you might hang about all your life without drawing so much as a picture-postcard.

Up and down the narrow street expensive automobiles were rolling, and the pavements were full of expensive-looking pedestrians. One of these had just elbowed Berry towards the gutter, when he became aware that a two-seater had stopped beside him. The next moment its occupant was addressing him in a strong foreign accent.

“Pardon me, but is it that you could dee-reckut me to Less-ess-ter Skervare?”

Berry looked up. It was not an exotically perfumed woman. It was a rather shocking-looking bounder with prominent eyebrows and a black beard of ample cut.

“Leicester Square?” he said. “You turn to the left and go across Piccadilly Circus.”

“I tank you, sare.”

 

BERRY stood staring after the car. The man had excited him. True, he had said nothing to suggest that he was not a perfectly respectable citizen, but there was something about him that gave one the idea that his pockets were simply bulging with stolen treaties. So Berry stood, gaping, and might have stood indefinitely, had not a hungry pedestrian, hurrying to his lunch, butted him in the small of the back.

Jerked into the world of practical things again by this shock, he made his way to the Berkeley to order Mr. Frisby’s supper table.

Mr. Frisby was evidently a popular customer at the Berkeley. The mention of his name aroused interest and respect. A head-waiter who looked like an Italian poet assured Berry that all would be as desired. A table for two, not too near the band? Correct.

He then inquired with a charming deference if Berry proposed to take luncheon at the restaurant, indicated temptingly a small table at his side. And Berry was about to reply that such luxuries were not for him, when, turning to look wistfully at the table, he saw a sight that struck the words from his lips.

The bearded bounder was sitting not six feet away, tucking into smoked salmon.

Only for an instant did Berry hesitate. For a man of his straitened means, lunch at a place like this would be a bold, one might almost say a reckless and a devil-may-care adventure. It would hit the privy purse one of the nastiest wallops it had received for many a long day. But Fate had gone out of its way to send him this Man of Mystery, and it would be making a churlish return for Fate’s amiability if he were to reject him on the pusillanimous grounds of economy.

The man interested him. Obviously, he was a suspicious character. Nobody who wasn’t would parade London in a beard like that. Moreover, after being definitely instructed to turn to the left and go across Piccadilly Circus, he had turned to the right and gone to the Berkeley. If that wasn’t sinister, what was?

Berry sat down, and a subordinate waiter swooped on him with the bill-of-fare.

The bearded man was now eating some sort of fish with sauce on it. And Berry, watching him intently, became gripped by a suspicion that grew stronger each moment. That beard, he could swear, was a false one. It was so evidently hampering its proprietor. He was pushing bits of fish through it in the cautious manner of an explorer blazing a trail through a strong forest. In short, instead of being a man afflicted by Nature with a beard, and as such more to be pitied than censured, he was a deliberate putter-on of beards, a self-bearder, a fellow who, for who knew what dark reasons, carried his own private jungle around with him, so that at any moment he could dive into it and defy pursuit. It was childish to suppose that such a man could be up to any good.

And then, as if to confirm this verdict, there suddenly occurred a scene so suggestive that Berry quivered as he watched it.

Into the restaurant there had just strolled a distinguished-looking man of about fifty, stroking a becoming grey moustache. He spoke to the head-waiter, evidently ordering a table. Then, as he turned to go back to the ante-room where hosts at the Berkeley await their guests, his eye fell on the bearded man. He started violently, stared as if he had seen some horrible sight, as indeed he had, and crossed to where the other sat. A short conversation ensued, during which he appeared to be expostulating. Then, plainly shaken, he tottered out.

Berry leaned forward in his seat, thrilled. He had placed the bearded man now. He saw all. Quite obviously this must be the Sniffer, the mysterious head of the great Cocaine Ring which was causing Scotland Yard so much concern. As for the grey-moustached one, he would be an accomplice in high places, a Baronet of good standing, or perhaps a well-thought-of Duke, on whose reputation no suspicion of wrongdoing had ever rested. And his unmistakable agitation must have been caused by the shock of meeting the Sniffer in a place like this, where his beard might come unstuck at any moment and betray him.

“Go back to the underground cellar in Limehouse, where you are known and respected,” he had probably whispered feverishly. And the Sniffer, jeering—Berry had distinctly seen him jeer—had replied that he had already started his lunch and so would have to pay for it, anyway, and, risk or no risk, he was dashed if he intended to leave before he had had his eight bobs’ worth.

Upon which, the other, well knowing his chief’s stubbornness, had given up the argument and gone out, practically palsied.

The daydream was shaping well, and, had nothing occurred to interrupt it, would probably have continued to shape well. But a moment later all thoughts of the Sniffer had been driven from Berry’s mind. The grey-moustached man had re-entered the room, and this time he was not alone.

Walking before him, like a princess making her way through a mob of the proletariat, came a girl. And at the sight of her, Berry’s eyes swelled slowly to the size of golf-balls. His jaw dropped, his heart raced madly, and a potato fell from his trembling fork.

For it was the girl he had been looking for all his life—the girl he had dreamed of on summer evenings when the western sky was ablaze with the glory of the sunset or on spring mornings when birds sang their anthems on dewy lawns. He recognized her immediately. For a long time now he had given up all hope of ever meeting her, and here she was, exactly as he had always pictured her on moonlight nights when fiddles played soft music in the distance.

He sat staring: and, when the waiter broke in upon this holy moment to ask him if he would like a little cheese to follow, found some difficulty in maintaining the Conways’ high standard for courtesy.

 

ii.

IN staring at Ann Margaret, only child of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas L. Moon, of New York City, Berry Conway had no doubt been guilty of a breach of decorum. But it was a breach of which many, many young men had been guilty before him. Ann Moon was the sort of girl at whom young men in restaurants have to summon all their iron will to keep from staring.

We have seen what the knowledgeable editor of the Mangusset Courier-Intelligencer thought of Ann, and it may be stated now officially that his description erred, if at all, on the side of restraint and understatement. Possibly through pressure of space, he had omitted one or two points on which he might well have touched, and on which, to present the perfect portrait, he should have touched. The dimple in her chin, for instance, and the funny way in which that chin wiggled when she laughed. Still, in the matter of the wondrous fascination and the remarkable attractiveness and the disposition as sweet as the odour of flowers, he was absolutely right. Berry had noticed these at once.

Lord Hoddesdon had noticed them, too, and once again there crossed his mind a feeling of dazed astonishment that a girl like this, even under the influence of Edgeling Court in the gloaming, could ever have accepted that son of his who was now sitting two tables away crouched behind his zareba of beard.

However, the main thing on which he was concentrating his mind at the moment was the problem of how to keep Ann’s share of the luncheon down to a reasonable sum. If he could only head her off any girlish excesses in the way of drinks and coffee, the exchequer, as he figured it out, would just run to a cigar and liqueur, for both of which he had a strong man’s silent yearning.

“Something to drink, my dear?” he said, as the waiter approached and hovered.

Ann withdrew her gaze from the middle distance.

“No, thanks. Nothing.”

“Nothing,” said Lord Hoddesdon to the waiter, trying not to sing the word.

“Vichy?” said the waiter.

“Nothing, nothing.”

“St. Galmier? Tonic water? Evian?”

“No, thank you. Nothing.”

“Lemonade?” said the waiter, who was one of those men who never know when to stop.

“Yes, I think I would like a lemonade,” said Ann.

“I wouldn’t,” advised Lord Hoddesdon, earnestly. “I wouldn’t, honestly. Bad stuff. Full of acidity.”

“All right,” said Ann. “Just some plain water, then.”

“Just,” said Lord Hoddesdon, looking the waiter dangerously in the eye, “some plain water.”

He bestowed upon his future daughter-in-law the affectionate smile of a man who is two shillings ahead of the game. Charming, he felt, to find a girl nowadays who did not ruin her complexion and digestion with cocktails and wines and what not.

The smile was wasted on Ann. She did not observe it. She was looking out across the room again. The noise of music and chattering came to her as from a distance. Her father-in-law-to-be on the other side of the table seemed very far away. Once more she had become occupied with the train of thought which this discussion of beverages had interrupted. Ever since she had read in her paper that morning the plain, blunt statement that she was engaged to be married, she had been feeling oddly pensive.

There is about the printed word a peculiar quality which often causes it to exercise a rather disquieting effect on the human mind. It chills. It was only after seeing that announcement set forth in cold type that Ann had come to a full realization of the extreme importance of the step she was about to take and the extreme slightness of her acquaintance with the man with whom she was going to take it.

A sudden thirst for information seized her. She leaned towards her host.

“Tell me about Godfrey,” she said abruptly.

“Eh?” said Lord Hoddesdon, blinking. He, too, had been busy with his thoughts. He had been speculating as to the odds on and against the girl wanting coffee and wondering how a well-judged word about it being bad for the nerves would go. “What about him?”

It was a question which Ann found difficult to answer. “What sort of man is he?” she would have liked to say. But when you have agreed to marry a man, it seems silly to ask what sort of a man he is.

“Well, what was he like as a little boy?” she said, feeling that that was safe. Indeed, the words had a rather pleasantly naive and fiancée-like ring.

 

LORD HODDESDON endeavoured to waft his memory over scenes which he had always preferred to forget.

“Oh, the usual grubby little brute,” he said. “I mean, of course,” he added, hastily, “very charming and lively and—er—boyish.”

He perceived that he had been within an ace of allowing his heart to rule his head, of permitting candour to overcome diplomacy. Greatly as he would have liked to pour a trenchant character-sketch of the young Biskerton into a sympathetic ear, he saw how madly rash such a course would be. Old grievances about jam on the chairs would have to remain unventilated. As his sister had pointed out, this girl and Biskerton were not married yet. It would be insanity to say anything to put her off. Knowing Biskerton as he did, it seemed to him that what she must be needing was encouragement.

“Boyish and vivacious,” he proceeded. “Full of spirits. But always,” he said, impressively, “good.”

“Good?” said Ann, with a slight shiver.

“Always the soul of honour,” said Lord Hoddesdon, solemnly.

Ann shivered again. Clarence Dumphry had been the soul of honour. She had often caught him at it.

“Neither during his boyhood nor since,” went on Lord Hoddesdon, warming to his work and finding the going less sticky as he got into his stride, “has he ever given me a moment’s anxiety.” He glanced over his shoulder with a sudden nervous movement, as if expecting to see the Recording Angel standing there with pen and notebook. Relieved at discovering only a waiter, he resumed. “He was never one of those young men who go about dancing half the night with chorus girls and so forth,” he said. “I don’t think he ever gambled, either.”

“You don’t know that,” said Ann, refusing to abandon hope.

“Yes, I do,” replied Lord Hoddesdon, glibly. “Now I come to think of it, I asked him once, and he told me he didn’t. If he had been in the habit of gambling, he would have said ‘Yes, dad.’ That has always been his way, frank and manly. Whatever I asked him, it would be ‘Yes, dad,’ or ‘No, dad,’ looking me straight in the face. I remember once,” said Lord Hoddesdon, going off the rails a little, “he smeared jam all over my chair in the library.”

“He did?” said Ann, brightening.

“Yes,” said Lord Hoddesdon. “But,” he went on, recovering himself, “he came straight to me and looked me in the face and said, ‘Dad, it was I who put that jam on your chair in the library. I’m sorry. I felt I had to tell you because otherwise somebody else might have been suspected.’ ”

“How old was he then?”

“About ten.”

“And he really said that?”

“He really did.”

“And he’s like that now?”

“Just like that,” said Lord Hoddesdon, doggedly. “A real, true-blue English gentleman, honourable to the core.”

Ann winced slightly, and returned to her reflections. She was thinking now about Edgeling Court, and not too cordially.

In attributing to the glamour of the family’s ancestral seat his fiancée’s acceptance of his proposal of marriage, Lord Biskerton had shown penetration. Edgeling Court had had quite a good deal to do with it. Its old-world charm, Ann was thinking, had undoubtedly weakened that cool, clear judgment on which she had always prided herself—that heaven-sent gift of level-headed criticism which enables girls to pass unscathed among the Clarence Dumphrys of this world. Those bees and doves and rooks, she realized, had conspired together to sap her defences, and here she was, engaged to be married to a true-blue English gentleman.

Ann pulled herself together. She told herself that she must not believe everything she heard. Quite likely Lord Biskerton had never really been a true-blue English gentleman. She had only his father’s word for it. And, if he had been, it was quite possible that he had got over it. She liked him, she assured herself. He amused her. He made her laugh. They would be very happy together—very, very, very happy.

All the same, she wished that he was not quite such a total stranger. And, while it would be too much to say that she actually regretted the step she had taken, she could not help the thought that a girl who had become engaged so recently as she had done ought to be feeling a little more comfortable in her mind. There was no denying that she was not conscious of that complete happiness and content which would have been fitting. She felt doubtful and disturbed—rather like a young author who has just put his signature to a theatrical manager’s contract and is wondering if all is quite well concerning that clause about the motion-picture rights.

 

“YOU’RE very quiet, my dear,” said Lord Hoddesdon.

Ann started.

“I’m so sorry. I was thinking.”

Lord Hoddesdon wavered on the brink of something about lovers’ reveries, but decided not to risk it.

“This chicken’s good,” he said, choosing a safer subject.

“Yes,” said Ann.

“A few more potatoes?”

“No, thank you.”

“You will have a sweet after this?”

“Yes, please.”

“And about coffee,” said Lord Hoddesdon. A grave look came into his clean-cut face. “I don’t know how you feel about coffee, but I always maintain that, containing, as it does, an appreciable quantity of the drug caffeine, it is a thing best avoided. Bad for the nerves. All the doctors say so.”

“I don’t think I will have any coffee. As a matter of fact, I would like to go directly I have finished the sweet. If you don’t mind my leaving you?”

“My dear girl, of course not. Not at all. I will just sit here and listen to the music. I may possibly have a cigar and a liqueur. Got some shopping to do?”

“No—but it’s such a lovely day, I rather wanted to go for a run in my car. I’ve got it outside. I thought I would go down to the river somewhere.”

“Streatley is a charming spot. Or Sonning.”

“I somehow feel as if I want to get away and think to-day.”

“I understand,” said Lord Hoddesdon, paternally. “Naturally. Well, don’t you bother about me. I’ll just sit. I like sitting.”

Ann smiled, and, looking out across the room again, immediately found her eye colliding with that of the young man in brown at the table by the wall—the seventh time this had happened since her arrival.

There were two reasons why Ann Moon, sitting where she did, should have caught Berry Conway’s eye so frequently. One was that when she looked up she had to look in his direction, because in the only other possible direction there was seated a bearded man of such sinister and revolting aspect that, whenever her gaze met his, she recoiled as if she had touched something hot. And he was not only most unpleasant to look at, but in an odd way he reminded her the tiniest little bit of her betrothed, Lord Biskerton, and she found this disturbing.

The other reason was that, rebuke herself for the weakness though she might, she liked catching Berry’s eye. The process definitely gave her pleasure. His eye seemed to her an interesting eye. It had, she noted, a kind of odd, smouldering, hungry sort of gleam in it—a gleam that might have been described as yearning. It was novel to her. None of the men she had met had ever had yearning gleams in their eyes. Clarence Dumphry, the well-known stiff, hadn’t. Nor had the Burwash boy. Nor, for that matter, had Lord Biskerton. And it was a gleam she liked.

He intrigued her, this lean, slim young man with his keen face and fine shoulders. He had the air, she thought, of one who did things. He somehow suggested brave adventures. She could picture herself, for instance, trapped in a burning house and this young man leaping gallantly to the rescue. She could see herself assailed by thugs and this young man felling them with a series of single blows. That was the sort of man he seemed to her.

She wished she knew him.

Berry, at his table, was wishing even more heartily that he knew her. If his eye gleamed yearningly, it had every reason to do so. He was regretting passionately that Fate, having planned that he should feel about a girl the extraordinary flood of mixed emotions which were now making him dizzy, had not arranged that he should feel them about some girl with whom he might conceivably at some time become acquainted. For all the chance he had of ever getting to know her, they might be on different planets.

Ships that pass in the night.

She was leaving now. So, as a matter of fact, was the bearded man. But Berry had ceased to waste thought on him. The bearded man had been eliminated by the pressure of competition. By this time he was to Berry just a bearded man, if that.

It seemed to Berry that he might as well be leaving, too. He called for his bill, and tried not to wince at the sight of it.

 

Out in the sunshine, Ann walked pensively towards her two-seater. She had parked it up near the Square. The bearded man had parked his somewhere up there, too, it appeared, for he now passed her, giving her, as he went, a swift, strange, sinister look. The resemblance to Lord Biskerton was even more striking than it had been at a distance in the restaurant. Seen close to, he might have been Lord Biskerton’s brother who had gone to the bad and taken to growing beards.

The sight of him gave Ann a guilty feeling. In thought, she realized, she had not been altogether true to her Godfrey. She found, examining her soul, that she had been comparing him to his disadvantage with that strong, romantic-looking young man in brown, whose eye had seemed so yearning and who now, as she settled down at the wheel of her two-seater, jumped abruptly in beside her and in a voice that electrified every vertebra in her spine whispered, hoarsely:—

“Follow that car!”

 

iii.

IN addition to galvanizing her spine, this polite request had had the effect of causing Ann to bite her tongue. It was with tear-filled eyes that she turned, and in a voice thickened with anguish that she replied.

“Wock car?” asked Ann.

Berry did not reply immediately. His emotions at the moment were those of one who has just jumped into a pool of icy water and is trying to get used to it. He was still endeavouring to convince himself that it was really he who had behaved in this remarkable manner. Such is often the effect of acting upon impulse.

“Wock car?” said Ann.

Berry pulled himself together. He had started something, and he must go on with it.

“That one,” he said, pointing.

He would have been amazed had he known that his companion was thinking what an attractive voice he had. To his ears, the words had sounded like the croak of an aged frog.

“The one with the bearded man in it?” said Ann.

“Yes,” said Berry. “Follow him wherever he goes.”

“Why?” said Ann.

It is proof that she was no ordinary girl that she had not begun by asking this question.

Berry had not spent much of his valuable time in brooding on the bearded man for nothing. His answer came readily.

“He’s wanted.”

“Who by?”

“The police.”

“Are you a policeman?”

“Secret Service,” said Berry.

Ann stepped on the accelerator. The sun was shining. The birds were singing. She had never felt so happy and excited in her life.

It charmed her to think that her long-range estimate of this young man had not been at fault. She had classed him on sight as one who lived dangerously and dashingly, and she had been right.

She quivered from head to foot, and her chin wiggled. At last, felt Ann Moon, she had met somebody different.

 

iv.

GODFREY, Lord Biskerton, was also feeling in the pink.

“Tra-la!” he carolled, as he steered his car into Piccadilly, and “Tum tum ti-umty-tum” he chanted, turning southwards at Hyde Park Corner. He was filled with the justifiable exhilaration which comes to a man who has made a great and momentous experiment, and has seen that experiment not only come off, but prove an absolute riot from start to finish.

In risking the trial trip of his beard and eyebrows (by Clarkson) at such a familiar haunt of his as the Berkeley, the Biscuit had known that he was applying the acid test. If nobody recognized him there, nobody would recognize him anywhere. Apart from the fact that he would be sitting in the midst of a platoon of his intimates, most of the waiters knew him well. In fact, the head-waiter had always treated him more like a younger brother than a customer.

And what had happened? Neither Ferraro nor any of his assistants had shown in his manner the slightest suggestion of Auld Lang Syne. They might have been saying to themselves “Ha! A distinguished, bearded stranger!” They had certainly not been saying to themselves, “Well, well! What a peculiar appearance jolly old Biskerton has to-day!” Not one of them had spotted him. He had passed the scrutiny with honours.

And Ann. He had given her every opportunity. He had stared meaningly at her in the restaurant, and he had passed within a foot of her when going to de-park his car. But she, too, had failed to penetrate his disguise.

And old Berry. That, he reflected complacently, had been his greatest triumph. “Is it that you can dee-reckut me to Less-ess-ter Skervare?” Right in the open, face to face. And not a tumble out of the man.

To sum up, then. If all these old friends and acquaintances had been utterly unable to recognize him, what hope was there for the bloodsuckers with their judgment summonses—for Jones Bros., Florists, twenty-seven pounds nine and six, or for Galliwell and Gooch, Shoes and Bootings, thirty-four, ten, eight?

A great relief stole over Lord Biskerton. Thanks to this A1 beard and these tried and tested eyebrows, he would be able to remain in London and go freely and without fear about his lawful occasions. Until this afternoon he had doubted whether this were possible. There had been pessimistic moments when he had seen himself having to fly to Bexhill or take cover in Wigan.

For the rest, it was a lovely day: the car was running sweetly; and if he stepped on the gas a bit, he would just be able to get to Sandown Park in time for the three o’clock race. He knew something pretty juicy for the three o’clock at Sandown and, thank Heaven, there were still a brace or so of bookies on the list who, though noticeably short on Norman blood, fully made up for the deficiency by that simple faith which the poet esteems so much more highly.

By the time he reached Esher, the Biscuit was trolling a gay stave. And it was as he approached the Jolly Harvesters, licensed to sell wines, spirits, and tobacco, that there floated into his mind the thought that what the situation called for was a beaker of the best.

He braked the two-seater and went in.

 

v.

IN the car which was following him, there had at first reigned a silence broken only by the whirring of the engine as Ann’s shapely foot bore down on the accelerator. It was not until the Kingston by-pass had been reached that its two occupants substituted talk for meditation. Each had begun the journey borne down by weight of thought, and each had good reason to think.

Ann was a conscientious girl. Indeed, her conscience, the legacy of a long line of New England ancestors, had always had an unpleasant habit of spoiling for her many of the more attractive happenings of life. It had clawed her in the restaurant. It now bit her. It was a conscience that seemed to possess all the least likeable qualities of a wild-cat.

She could not deceive herself. Hers was essentially an honest nature, and she was well aware that, having pledged herself to marry Lord Biskerton, she had limited the scope of her actions. There are certain things which an engaged girl has not the right to do. Or, if she does them, she must not like doing them. As, for instance, catching the eye of strange young men in restaurants. As, for further instance, thinking long and earnestly about a strange young man whose eye she has caught in a restaurant and wishing she could get to know him. And, for a final instance, allowing such a young man to leap into her car and initiate what, despite its grim, official, Secret Service nature, conscience persisted in describing as a joy-ride.

“Don’t talk to me about the call of duty,” said Conscience, in its worst New England manner. “You’re liking it.”

 

AND Ann had to admit that she was. Reluctantly, she was obliged to confess to herself that she had never felt happier since, at the age of fourteen, she had received a signed photograph from John Barrymore.

Nevertheless, it was quite wrong of her—and she knew that it was quite wrong—to feel this extraordinary fluttering sensation. She should either have refused his extraordinary request, or if an excusable desire to assist the Secret Service of Great Britain had led her to comply with it, should have preserved a detached and impersonal attitude, as if she had been a taxi-driver.

So Ann drove on, and her conscience clawed her abominably.

As for Berry, it would be too much to say that anything in the nature of a real reaction had set in from the mood of rash impulsiveness which had spurred him on to take that sudden leap into this car. He still felt he had done the right thing. Looking back, he could find nothing in his conduct to deplore. Behaviour which in other circumstances might possibly have lain open to the charge of being slightly eccentric became on a day like this normal and prudent. Had he not acted as he had done, this wonderful girl would have passed out of his life for ever. To prevent a tragedy so unthinkable, no course of action could be called injudicious.

Nevertheless, he was sufficiently restored to sanity to realize that his position might be described as one of some slight embarrassment. Like an enthusiastic but ill-advised sportsman in the jungles of India who has caught a tiger by the tail, he was feeling that he was all right so far, but that his next move would require a certain amount of careful thought.

And so, wrapped in silence, the car turned into the Kingston by-pass. The other car was bowling rapidly ahead over the smooth concrete. Where its occupant was going it was impossible to guess, but he was certainly on his way.

Berry was the first to break the silence.

“This is most awfully good of you,” he said.

“Oh, no,” said Ann.

“Oh, yes.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, but it is,” said Berry.

“Oh, but it isn’t,” said Ann.

“Well, all I can say,” said Berry, “is that I think it’s most awfully good of you.”

These polite exchanges seemed to diminish the tension. Berry began to breathe again, and Ann went so far as to take an excited eye off the road and flash it at his face. Seen in profile, that face appealed to her strongly. Strenuous exercise and a sober life had given Berry rather a good profile, lean and hard-looking. There were little muscles over his cheekbones and a small white scar in front of the ear which had an attractive and exciting aspect. A bullet-graze, Ann knew, would cause a scar just like that.

“Most girls would have been scared stiff,” said Berry.

“Well, I was.”

“Yes,” said Berry, with rising enthusiasm. “But you didn’t hesitate. You didn’t falter. You took in the situation in a second, and were off like a flash.”

“Who is he?” asked Ann breathlessly, peering through the wind-screen at the flying two-seater. “Or,” she added, “mustn’t you say?”

Berry would have preferred not to say, but there was plainly nothing else to be done. The owner of a commandeered car has certain rights. He felt that it was fortunate that in his meditations in the restaurant he had gone so deeply into this question of the identity of the bearded bird.

“I think,” he said, “he is the Sniffer.”

“The Sniffer?” Ann’s voice was a squeak. “What Sniffer? How do you mean the Sniffer? Who is the Sniffer? Why the Sniffer?”

“The head of the great cocaine ring. They call him the Sniffer. If, that is to say, he is the man I suppose. He may be a perfectly innocent person——”

“Oh, I hope not.”

“——who has the misfortune to resemble one of the most dangerous criminals at present in the country. But I feel sure it’s the man himself.”

There was silence for a moment. Then Ann drew a deep breath.

“I suppose all this seems very ordinary to you,” she said. “But I’m just quivering like an aspen. You take it as just a matter of course, I suppose?”

Young men in Old England do not possess New England consciences. There is the Nonconformist conscience, but Berry was not subject even to that. He replied not only steadily, but with a quiet smile.

“Well, of course, it is all in the day’s work,” he said.

“You mean this sort of thing is happening to you all the time?”

“More or less.”

“Well!” said Ann.

It was a personal question, she felt, but she could keep it in no longer.

“How did you get that scar?” she asked breathlessly.

“Scar?”

“There’s a little white scar just in front of your ear. Was that caused by a bullet that grazed you?”

Berry swallowed painfully. Girls bring these things on themselves, he felt. Look at Othello and Desdemona. Othello hadn’t dreamed of saying all that stuff about moving accidents by flood and field, of hair-breadth ’scapes i’ the imminent deadly breach, until the girl dragged it out of him with her questions. Othello knew perfectly well that when he talked of the Cannibals that each other eat, and the men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, he was piling it on. But what could he do?

And what, in a similar situation, could Berry Conway do?

“It was,” he said, and felt that from now on nothing mattered.

“Goo!” said Ann. “It must have come pretty close.”

“It would have come closer,” said Berry, his better self now definitely dead, “if I had fired a second later.”

“You fired?”

“Well, I had to.”

“Oh, I’m not blaming you,” said Ann.

“I saw his hand go to his pocket——”

“Whose hand?”

“Jack Molloy’s. It was when I was rounding up the Molloy gang.”

“Who were they?”

“A gang of men who went in for arson.”

“Fire-bugs?”

“That’s it,” said Berry, wishing he had thought of the word himself. “They had headquarters in Deptford. The Chief sent me there to spy out the ground, but my beard came off——”

“Were you wearing a beard?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I should like you in a beard,” said Ann, critically.

“I never wear one,” Berry hastened to explain, “unless I’m rounding up a gang.”

“How many gangs have you rounded up?”

“I forget.”

“It must be very interesting work, rounding up gangs.”

“Oh, it is.”

“Look!” said Ann. “The Sniffer’s gone into that inn.”

Berry followed her gaze.

“So he has.”

“What are you going to do?”

This was a point which was perplexing Berry also. In the exhilaration of this ride, he had rather overlooked the fact that sooner or later it would be necessary to do something.

“Well——” he said.

Inspiration came to him, as it had come to Lord Biskerton. The afternoon was of a warmth that turned the thoughts in that direction. He would go in and have a drink.

“Would you mind waiting here,” he said.

“Waiting?”

She saw a stern, cold look come into his face.

“I’m going in after him.”

“Well, can’t I come, too?”

“No. There may be unpleasantness.”

“I like unpleasantness.”

“No,” said Berry, firmly. “Please.”

Ann sighed.

“Oh, very well. Have you got your gun?”

“Yes.”

“Well, have it ready,” said Ann, “and don’t fire till you see the whites of his eyes.”

Berry disappeared. He walked, Ann thought, just like a bloodhound. Leaning back against the warm leather, she gave herself up to delicious meditation. It was the first time anything of this kind had happened to Ann Moon. Never before had she been even in so much as a night-club raid. The only occasion on which she had ever touched lawlessness and crime had been once on the road between New York and Piping Rock, when a motor-cycle policeman had handed her a ticket for exceeding the speed-limit.

And then suddenly in the midst of her ecstasy something hard and sharp dug into the roots of her soul.

“Hey!” said Conscience, unpleasantly, resuming work at the old stand. “Just a moment!”

 

vi.

THE saloon-bar of the Jolly Harvesters at the moment of Lord Biskerton’s entry was unoccupied save by a robust lady in black satin with the sunlight, or something similar, in her hair and a large brooch athwart her bosom with the word “Baby” written across it in silver letters. She stood behind the counter, waiting, like some St. Bernard dog on an Alpine pass, to give aid and comfort to the thirsty. She smiled genially at the Biscuit, and favoured him with a summary of the weather.

“Nice day,” she said.

“Of the best,” agreed the Biscuit, cordially.

A foaming mug changed hands, and they fell into that pleasant, desultory chat which is customary on these occasions.

By the time he had quaffed a quarter of a pint of Surrey ale, relations of cordial intimacy had been established between his hostess and himself. So much that the former at last felt justified in giving the conversation a more personal turn. Right from the start she had had a critical eye on the beard, but until now her natural breeding had kept her from anything in the shape of verbal comment.

“Why ever do you wear that beard?” she asked.

“It’s the only one I’ve got,” said the Biscuit.

“It looks funny.”

“Don’t you like it?”

“Oh, I’ve nothing against it. It looks funny, though.”

“It would look a lot funnier,” argued the Biscuit, “if it was half green and half pink.”

The barmaid considered this, and was inclined to agree.

“Well, it does look funny,” she said.

“Do you know how I got this beard?” asked the Biscuit.

“Grew it, I suppose.”

“Not at all. Far from it. Very much otherwise. It’s a long story, and reflects a good deal of discredit on some of the parties concerned. When I was a baby, you must know, I was a beautiful little girl. But one day my nurse took me out in my perambulator and stopped to talk to a soldier, as nurses will, and when her back was turned a wicked gipsy sneaked out of the bushes, carrying in her arms an ugly little boy with a beard. And do you know what she did? She stole me out of my perambulator and put that ugly little boy with the beard in my place. And ever since then I’ve been an ugly little boy with a beard.”

“Pity she didn’t leave a razor, too.”

“Razors are no use,” said the Biscuit. “They just fall back blunted and discouraged. So do barbed-wire clippers. One doctor I consulted advised me to set fire to the thing. I pointed out that this might possibly destroy the growth, but that I also must inevitably perish in the conflagration. He seemed impressed, and said he had never thought of that. The whole affair is most unpleasant and constitutes a very difficult problem.”

“Well, do you know what I’d have done, if you had come in here a few years ago when everybody was doing it?”

“What?”

“I’d have said ‘Beaver,’ and gone like this.”

She reached out and gave the beard a hearty tweak. As she did so, she chuckled merrily.

It was the last chuckle she was to utter for days and days. Indeed, many people say that she was never quite herself again. Berry, turning the door-handle at that moment, stood transfixed as a piercing scream smote his ears. It sounded like part of a murder. He snatched the door open, and once more stood transfixed. In fact, he was now, if anything, a trifle more transfixed than he had been before.

The spectacle he beheld was enough to transfix anyone. Behind the counter, holding a beard of ample cut in her hand, stood a barmaid. She seemed upset about something. In front of the counter, also ill at ease, stood his old school friend, Lord Biskerton. Berry stared. Many a time had he had nightmares much less weird than this.

The next moment, the picture in still life had dissolved. Snatching the beard from the barmaid, the Biscuit replaced it hurriedly on his face. And the barmaid, uttering a long, whistling sigh, fell over sideways in what appeared to be a ladylike swoon.

The Biscuit, though kindly disposed to the barmaid and ranking her among those whose conversation he enjoyed, was not feeling fond enough of her to remain and apply first aid. He wished to be elsewhere, and that right speedily. He turned, bounded towards the door, saw Berry and stopped in mid-stride.

“Biscuit!” cried Berry.

“Oh, my God!” said Lord Biskerton.

 

WITH no further comment for the moment, Lord Biskerton seized Berry by the arm and hurried him along the passage. Only when they were in the privacy of the stable-yard, concealed from view by a stone wall, did he pause for speech.

“What on earth are you doing here, Berry?”

“What are you?”

“I was on my way to Sandown. What brought you here?”

“I followed you to see what you were up to.”

“How do you mean, up to?”

“Well, dash it,” said Berry, “when you go charging about all over London and the home counties in a long beard——”

The Biscuit was registering deep concern.

“Do you mean to say,” he faltered, shaken, “that you recognized me all along?”

It was not for Berry to dispel this idea. A swift thinker, he saw that he had been given the choice of appearing in the light of a shrewd and lynx-eyed observer and of a gullible chump. He chose the former.

“Of course I recognized you,” he said, stoutly.

“Not in Bond Street?” pleaded the Biscuit.

“Certainly.”

“You mean, right from the start, directly I spoke to you?”

“Of course.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?”

“I was humouring you, you old ass.”

“Humouring me?”

“Yes. I thought you would be disappointed if you didn’t imagine you had fooled me.”

“Gosh!” said the Biscuit, in the depths.

“What was the idea?”

“Berry,” said the Biscuit, his voice shaking, “do you suppose that Ferraro and everybody at the Berkeley knew who I was?”

“I suppose so.”

“Well, all I can say is,” said the Biscuit, “this opens up a new line of thought.”

He followed this line of thought for awhile in silence.

“I bought that beard to deceive my creditors,” he explained at length. “There’s a whole pack of them baying on my trail, and I thought that if I could assume some impenetrable disguise I could go about London undetected. But you say you saw through the thing at once?”

“In a flash.”

“Then what it comes to,” said Lord Biskerton, despondently, “is that I shall have to leave the metropolis after all. I daren’t risk being jerked before a tribunal and having my financial condition X-rayed in the County Court. I must lie low somewhere. Bexhill, perhaps. Southend, possibly. But, good Lord! How am I to explain?”

“Explain?”

“Well, dash it, I shall have to give some explanation of why I’ve suddenly disappeared. I’ve just got engaged to be married. My fiancée will be a little surprised, won’t she, if I vanish off the map without a word?”

“I never thought of that,” said Berry.

“I only just thought of it myself,” admitted the Biscuit, handsomely. “How would it be to write and tell her I’ve broken my leg and am confined to bed? No. She would come and see me, complete with flowers and grapes. Of course she would. Silly of me. Dash it, this is complex.”

“I know,” said Berry. “Mumps.”

“What?”

“Say you’ve got mumps. She won’t come near you then.”

The Biscuit patted his shoulder with a trembling hand.

“Genius,” he said. “Absolute genius, probably inherited from male grandparent. You’ve solved it, old boy. The only thing to decide now is where shall I go? I must go somewhere. I shall sell a few trinkets to obtain a bit of the ready for necessary expenses, and then fly at dead of night to—well, where? It must be somewhere in the wilds. No good a place like Brighton, for instance. Dykes, Dykes, and Pinweed probably spend their week-ends in Brighton. Bexhill? I don’t know. Hawes and Dawes have most likely got bungalows there. I believe Wigan would be safest, after all.”

The history of this summer day has shown already that Berry Conway’s brain was at its nimblest. Ever since Mr. Frisby had breezed into the office and given him the freedom of the city, he had been in a highly stimulated cerebral condition. To this must be attributed the inspiration which seized him now.

“Biscuit,” he said, “I’ve got it. The fellow who lives next door to me—Bolitho, his name is, not that it matters—has had to leave suddenly for Manchester——”

“He been having unpleasantness with his creditors, too?” asked Lord Biskerton, sympathetically.

“He wants to let his house, furnished. You could walk right in. I’ll see him this evening, if you like. Or he may have gone already. Anyway, I could fix things through the house-agent. That’s the thing for you to do. Nobody would ever find you in Mulberry Grove. You could lie low there for the rest of your life. And we should be next door to one another.”

“Prattle across the fence of an evening?” cried the Biscuit, enthusiastically.

“That’s it.”

“Gossip about the neighbours! Borrow each other’s garden roller!”

“Exactly.”

“Berry, old boy,” said Lord Biskerton, “you’ve hit it. That male grandparent of yours must have been a perfect mass of brain-cells. I expect they ran excursion-trains to see him. Fix up the details, and drop me a line at my flat. Drop it dashed soon, mark you, because it’s only a matter of days before I shall feel the hot breath of Dykes, Dykes, and Pinweed on the back of my neck. I’m going to enjoy life in the suburbs. Get a nice rest.”

“I’ll have everything settled to-night.”

“God bless you! A true friend, if ever man had one. And now,” said the Biscuit. “I suppose I had better be getting back to that unfortunate female and explaining that I’m on my way to a fancy-dress garden party or something. She had a severe shock, poor child, when the fungus came away in her hands. But no doubt I shall be able to smooth things over. How did you get down here, by the way?”

“In a car,” said Berry, guardedly.

“Your own?”

“No.”

“Hired, eh? Well, I think I will remain lurking here till you’ve receded a parasang or two. Common prudence suggests the course. I owe a bit here and there at various garages, and your bloke may quite possibly be attached to one of them. So forgive me if I don’t come to see you off.”

“I will.”

“What’s the name of this desirable residence I’m renting?”

“Peacehaven.”

“Peacehaven!” said the Biscuit. “The very sound of the word is balm. In passing, old boy, the fine old crusted title will have to go. I’m afraid. No mention of the Sieur de Biskerton, if you don’t mind. Tell this bird Bolitho that a Mr. Smith wishes to take his shack, with use of bath. One of the Smithfield Smiths. Right. And now to trickle back and comfort Baby. When I left her, poor lamb, she was snorting like a steam-engine and turning blue round the nostrils.”

 

vii.

BERRY came out of the Jolly Harvesters, smiling contentedly. He had his plan of action perfectly shaped. He would tell the girl that the suspect had cleared himself, had proved not to be the Sniffer after all. And then he and she would drive off into Fairyland together and talk together of all those things which suit a perfect summer day.

A good programme, he felt. Even an admirable programme.

But programmes are notoriously subject to alteration without warning. Suddenly, abruptly, as if he had received some deadly stroke, the smile faded from his face, and he stared about him with a fallen jaw.

The car had disappeared.

(To be continued.)

 

---

 

Printer’s error corrected above:
Magazine, p. 496b, had a line break at “Follow him where-|ever he goes.”; corrected to “wherever”.

 

 

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