The seceders included in their summer programme a series of visits to places of literary interest—“neighbourhoods still peopled with the ghosts of the pioneers; of the rude craftsmen of letters, of the strong sowers of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” as Miss Horsfall-Hughes strikingly expressed it—and they chose to travel by charabanc because of the opportunities afforded by such vehicles for informal discussion (if one’s voice is sufficiently robust), because their new society was of precisely such a size as would comfortably fill a charabanc, and because of the uncertainty of Sunday train-services; Sunday being their favourite day for excursions as Sabbath quiet was one of their favourite jibes at England. It is hardly necessary to say that the present pilgrimage to Downish had not been inspired by Saturday’s poetry. There had been poets in “The Pelican” before Saturday, worse poets by far, and the ghosts of Fabian Metcalf, Philip Goode, and Martin Stout were presently to be disturbed—those three poor poets of the seventeenth century who wrote in the manner (they thought) of Abraham Cowley and sometimes even in the manner of Donne; and who wrote so badly that scarce a scholar had disturbed them, never an editor edited them, nor a commentator commented on them (though in their day a landlord of “The Pelican” listened reverently to their sick-room conceits, their limping camel-like metaphors, and rarely charged them for what they drank). Happy poets, who were contented in their lives and in their deaths were not derided, being already forgotten. But their obscurity, which so long had left their ghosts in peace, had now betrayed them and brought the Giggleswaders to posture about their tombs.
Mr. Sidgwick, the energetic secretary of the Literary Society, explained to Saturday why he had forgotten to warn him of their arrival and order a modest but satisfying lunch for thirty people.
“In Giggleswade, of course, everyone knows our plans as well as we do ourselves,” he said. “The Weekly Gazette always gives us a lot of space and we’re such a general topic of conversation that it’s sometimes difficult to remember that other places—Downish, for example—aren’t equally au fait with our movements. But I suppose you can give us lunch all right? An establishment like this—”
“Naturally,” Saturday answered, and mentioned the price of lunch at “The Pelican”; a price intended to make charabanc parties wince and drive on. Mr. Sidgwick whistled protestingly. But by this time the charabanc had emptied, and Miss Horsfall-Hughes bore down on them.
“Mr. Keith, I presume?” she said. “How interesting to meet you. And still more interesting to think that Fabian Metcalf once stood here. Mr. Sidgwick has told you we want lunch, I suppose?”
“Eight-and-six a head,” whispered Mr. Sidgwick.
“Grossly excessive, of course, but one expects that. When will it be ready, Mr. Keith?”
“In half-an-hour,” said Saturday. “The church where Metcalf is buried is only five minutes’ walk from here.”
The pilgrimage moved off in the direction he indicated, an untidy procession in which the men were outnumbered three to one and the spinsters had a clear majority of nine over the bachelors. Saturday rapidly gave instructions for their entertainment, a task which was made easier by O’Higgins’s report that some dishes remained untouched from the previous night’s dinner. It was a triumph calmly to be able to accept such an incursion, to cater for thirty unexpected visitors, and he was glad that Lady Mercy was there to see how he handled an emergency. She and everybody else living in “The Pelican” had heard the arrival of the “Blue Bird,” and some were a little upset at the contiguity of wayfarers so crude as to go anywhere in a charabanc.…
All morning Nelly Bly had been looking for an opportunity to replace the embarrassing portfolio containing “Tellus Will Proceed,” and all morning, it seemed, there had been a continuous procession past Saturday’s door. Twice she had come down the tortuous staircase from her room with the fat leather envelope under her apron, and twice she had fled upstairs again to hide it beneath her mattress. She was puzzled, too, by the behaviour of Mr. Wesson, who had stayed in his room since breakfast. She had looked through the keyhole and found that, in spite of all that has been written about them, keyholes afford a very poor view. She could see nothing but a portion of the trousers which Mr. Wesson was wearing, and in them she rapidly exhausted her interest.…
Mr. Wesson had looked at his watch every five minutes since packing his attaché case. Sometimes he sat down and tried to read, sometimes he paced his carpet. Neither activity helped time onward in its measured round. Twice Mr. Wesson held the watch to his ear, suspecting it had stopped; but its remorseless, unhurried ticking disproved his hope. He heard the swollen note of a motor-horn, and looked at his watch again. It was one o’clock. He could not face his fellow-guests at lunch. He decided to walk to the station, put his attaché case in the left-luggage room, and go for a stroll till train-time. Mr. Wesson put on his hat, picked up the attaché case, and softly opened the door. For a moment he held it ajar.
Across the narrow opening, soft-footed, stole Nelly Bly. Mr. Wesson was about to close his door again and wait, when he saw to his amazement that she carried what appeared to be van Buren’s black leather portfolio. Two hours before he had put that portfolio in his attaché case. And there it was in Nelly Bly’s hand. Tortured by two hours of waiting, Mr. Wesson’s nerve snapped like one fiddle-string and his common-sense like another. He heard them, quite clearly, snap in his head.
“Here!” he said hoarsely, and stepped into the corridor. “What are you doing with that ring-book?”
Nelly turned and vainly tried to hide the portfolio behind her. Mr. Wesson had startled her as badly as she had startled him.
“That’s none of your business,” she said with a gasp.
“Give it to me,” said Mr. Wesson.
“I shall do nothing of the sort.”
Mr. Wesson took a step towards her. His face, normally so expressionless, looked suddenly hard and dangerous. Nelly handed him the portfolio.
Mr. Wesson took it, stared at her for a moment and opened it.
“Holy Christ!” he said.
“If you’re going to say your prayers,” Nelly began.
Enlightenment suddenly came to Mr. Wesson. Double enlightenment.
“You stole this,” he said.
“What if I did?”
“I ought to give you in charge.”
“But you won’t.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because you have stolen the other one.” A foolish dramatic instinct compelled Nelly to say this. It came pat to her tongue as she knew it would have come pat to the tongue of a young woman in a similar situation on the popular stage. But no sooner had she said it than she regretted her rashness, for Mr. Wesson’s expression, which had relaxed, became dangerous again and loomed like the close-up photograph of a villain in the cinema.
“I don’t understand you,” said Mr. Wesson mendaciously. “You have stolen this”—he opened the portfolio again—“this poetry, which by the name on it is the property of Mr. Keith, and my duty is to give you in charge.”
“Mr. Keith lent it to me.”
Mr. Wesson laughed unpleasantly.
“There’s someone coming,” said Nelly quickly, losing her head at the idea of being caught with Keith’s poem.
Mr. Wesson pushed her, scarcely protesting, into his room and locked the door. Footsteps went past and Mr. Wesson looked at his watch.
“If I let you go without telling Mr. Keith about this,” he said, and paused. “What did you mean by saying that I had stolen ‘the other one’?” he concluded.
“Do you want to make a bargain?” Nelly suggested.
“Yes,” Mr. Wesson agreed.
“You are trying to escape?”
“I am leaving ‘The Pelican.’”
“Then tell me why you stole van Buren’s papers and I’ll do nothing to hinder you.”
“That is very kind of you,” said Mr. Wesson suavely. “But who told you that I had stolen any papers?”
“I saw you take them, and you practically confessed it yourself by mistaking this portfolio for van Buren’s.”
“So I did,” said Mr. Wesson. “You’re a very clever young lady.”
Nelly was inclined to agree with him, for though she could not imagine how the affair was going to end it appeared that she had the upper hand.
“And you know too much for my comfort and far too much for your own,” he continued. “Sit down there, will you?” He pointed to a plain bedroom chair.
“Why?” demanded Nelly.
“Because I tell you to,” said Mr. Wesson, and picked up a small bottle which stood on his dressing-table.
“What’s that?” asked Nelly.
“Vitriol,” replied Mr. Wesson smoothly.
Nelly sat down quickly. Her face was white and she felt a sudden terror which made her fingers limp, her tongue dry, and her knees tremble. All thought of her own cleverness vanished, and the situation became void of any meaning except the threat of scorching acid.
Mr. Wesson took out the cork and set the bottle within easy reach on the dressing-table. He then pulled half-a-dozen ties and a few handkerchiefs from a drawer.
“Please sit quite still,” he said.
Nelly obeyed so far as her trembling knees would let her, and Mr. Wesson tied her securely to the chair with his neckties, some of which were too gaudy for English taste. Carefully he tested the ligatures, and one, he discovered, was a little loose. A pamphlet with the picture of a ship on it lay on his table, and Mr. Wesson doubled and re-doubled it into a wedge which he forced beneath the slack necktie and the chair-leg, so that this fastening became as tight as the others.
“I shall have to gag you, of course,” he continued. “Open your mouth.”
“No!” said Nelly desperately.
Mr. Wesson’s hand went out to the bottle on the dressing-table, and Nelly’s mouth opened wide. Mr. Wesson made a ball of a linen handkerchief and thrust it in, but seeing her shudder he removed it and substituted a silk one. Then he tied in the gag with another handkerchief.
“I’m sorry to have to do this,” he said, “it’s the first time in my life that I have ever insulted a woman. But necessity knows no law. You’ll have to wait here till the morning, when I suppose they’ll find you. Though no one will become suspicious till about mid-day, nor curious enough about my non-appearance to force the door till then. But you’ll be none the worst after a rest, and by that time I shall be on my way to America. I don’t know who you are or what you are, but you know too much for my liking. That’s all I’ve got against you, and I’d like to have you believe that I’m real sorry to treat a woman like this. And now I must go.”
Mr. Wesson picked up his attaché case and turned to the door. Then he remembered the little bottle, and carefully replacing the cork, slipped it into his pocket. He left the room, locked the door, and removed the key.
Nelly, of necessity, sat mute and still as a mummy.
CHAPTER XVII
The Giggleswaders returned from St. Saviour’s having inspected the tombs of Fabian Metcalf and Martin Stout. Philip Goode, of course, was drowned in the Teem, the little river which encloses Downish in a sickle-like bend, and as his last poem had dealt academically with the occasional necessity of suicide, what was left of him had been buried in unconsecrated ground. But Fabian Metcalf had a handsome epitaph in Latin, and Martin Stout one of his own composition in English more difficult by far than any Latin. The Giggleswaders, then, sat down to lunch with an adequate topic of conversation.
Miss Horsfall-Hughes wanted to recall, for the sixth or seventh time, the process of exhaustive reading and intensive research by which she had discovered the now immortal trio, but a strong opposition party arose in Mr. and Mrs. Harringay, Miss Beastly, and Mrs. Duluth, who had recently spent some time abroad and were naturally anxious not only to make other people aware of the advantages of travel, but to discuss with each other the astonishing behaviour of the French and Italians. So that whenever Miss Horsfall-Hughes said anything about the British Museum Mrs. Harringay countered with news from the Rialto, and to enlightened criticism of meta-physical poetry Miss Beastly opposed an anecdote about Mussolini.
Mrs. Harringay had met someone who knew intimately the friend of an Italian princess who had, not long before, married a wealthy American.
“It seems that she did most of the courting,” said Mrs. Harringay.
“Of course, being royal, she would have to,” explained Miss Beastly.
“No, it wasn’t that at all. It was just that she was crazy about him. She used to send him telegrams.”
“Foreigners have no restraint,” said Mr. Harringay. “And what is worse, they’re greedy. Neither in France nor in Italy is there any commercial conscience nowadays. I remember going into a chemist’s shop in Nice to buy a corn-plaster. They were fifteen centimes each. I took one and gave the shop-assistant twenty-five centimes. He put it into the till. I asked him for the change, and he said that he hadn’t got any change. So I said, ‘Well, suppose you give me another plaster?’ Which he did. And do you know, he absolutely insisted on my paying him the odd five centimes?”
“The Germans are still sentimental,” interposed the only really pretty girl in the party.
Miss Horsfall-Hughes looked expressively at Mr. Sidgwick, murmuring, “And we are a literary society!” Mr. Sidgwick, who had the soul of one who shows people into their proper seat at a subscription concert, shrugged his shoulders and tried to look both plaintive and amused at the littleness of life.
“I met him in Venice,” explained the pretty girl, “and he took me out in a gondola. He had been a musician at one time, but he was selling aluminium then. He was very sentimental. He wept because of the moonlight on the canal. And when I told him that my brother was twenty-one, he said, ‘Ah, to be twenty-one!’ and wept a lot more.”
“I wonder if we could arrange for a Downish edition of Metcalf and his friends,” said Mr. Sidgwick. “Not a complete edition, perhaps, but a selection of their works?”
“An idea that I have entertained for some time,” said Miss Horsfall-Hughes.
But the Giggleswaders, having looked at two tombs and puzzled over two obscure epitaphs, were concerned with livelier matters.
“It was the war which ruined these Continental people,” said Mr. Harringay with the mien of a seer and the assurance of a meteorologist.
“And the peace,” added Mrs. Harringay knowingly. “President Wilson and all those foolish discussions in Versailles.”
“My husband knew Wilson intimately,” said Mrs. Duluth, “and thought the world of him. But he still says that he was eaten up with vanity, and because of that everybody could pull the wool over his eyes.”
Miss Beastly had a tripartite reverence for Woodrow Wilson, Lenin and Benito Mussolini.
“That was because President Wilson was too good for them,” she said warmly. “I mean good in its proper sense. He thought that everything was going to be fair and above-board, and it wasn’t.”
“Well, anyway, he was very vain,” persisted Mrs. Duluth. “Do you remember what Clemenceau—I think it was Clemenceau—said about him? Of course he said it in French, and I don’t speak French, but my husband does, naturally, and tells it so funnily. Clemenceau said, ‘What does this man Wilson mean by coming over here with his Fourteen Points? Why, even the good God—le bon Dieu, you know—found Ten sufficient!’ But you should hear it in French. It sounds so much funnier in French, as my husband tells it.”
The lunch pursued its course in a warring atmosphere of literary and cosmopolitan interests, the only apparent union between the two parties being a general though unspoken decision to extract the utmost return from their eight-and-sixpences, and by the time that coffee appeared there was a general air of repletion.
A motor-car went noisily up the High Street.
“I wonder what is going on outside?” said Mrs. Harringay lazily, as she lit her second cigarette.
“The
re seems to be a disturbance of some kind,” remarked the lady to whom no one had paid attention till then.
Everybody listened carefully. There was the sound of hurrying feet in the passage outside, and a subdued tumult of voices abruptly dominated by a man who declared, for some unknown reason, “I’m coming, too!”
“Hurry up then,” replied a deeper voice.
“That sounded like Mr. Keith,” said Miss Horsfall-Hughes.
Mr. Sidgwick and several other Giggleswaders got up and went to the window that gave them a view of Downish High Street and the after part of the “Blue Bird” which, with no concern for the narrowness of the thoroughfare, had been left standing in front of “The Pelican.”
“Why, it’s going!” exclaimed Mr. Sidgwick.
“Motor-car thieves!” said the only pretty girl in something like ecstasy.
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