'Yes, I do. I think Ann has met somebody else.'
'Don't say such awful things, Vera!'
'Well, I really do believe that is what has happened. She gave me the impression of a girl who was wondering about something. And what would she have to wonder about except whether she had made a mistake in accepting Godfrey and wouldn't be doing better to break the engagement and leave herself free to marry this new man?'
Lord Hoddesdon fought stoutly against a sea of fears.
'Don't talk of "this new man", as if he really existed. You can't know. You're only guessing.'
'I have a woman's intuition, George. Besides . . .'
'But who could it be? Where would she have met him? I know she goes out to lunches and dinners and dances every day and meets a thousand men, but they're all exactly like Godfrey. I can't tell these modern young fellows apart. Nobody can. They all look alike and think alike and talk alike. It's absurd to suppose that any one of them could suddenly exercise an overwhelming spell over her. If she had been to a prize-fight or something and had conceived a sudden passion for some truck-horse of a chap just because his muscles bulged, I could understand it. But why should a girl want to change one Biskerton for another Biskerton? When I said just now she might be thinking of breaking the engagement, it never occurred to me that she could be planning to marry anybody else. I simply feared that she might give Godfrey his congeé and go back to America.'
'Well, let me tell you a very curious thing, George. You remember the day you took Ann to lunch at the Berkeley?'
'What about it?'
'I happened to meet Lady Venables that night, and she asked me who the young man was that she saw driving along Piccadilly with Ann in her car. She said it was nobody she knew, and she knows every young man in London.'
'What!'
'A very good-looking man, she said, with a strong, handsome face. She was certain he wasn't anybody she had ever met. And, as I say, Lady Venables gives so many parties, trying to get Harriet off, poor dear, that by this time in the Season there isn't a single young man anywhere in Mayfair that she doesn't at least know by sight. She takes a regular census and works through it. So, if she really did see Ann with anyone, it must have been somebody no one knows anything about – this prize-fighter of yours, for instance.'
Lord Hoddesdon had been pacing the floor. He sat down abruptly.
'You're making my flesh creep, Vera!'
'I'm sorry. I'm simply telling you.'
'And Godfrey supposed to be in bed with mumps! What are we to do?'
'The first thing is obviously to see Godfrey and tell him of the risk he is running by staying away of losing Ann altogether. I think that, tradesmen or no tradesmen, he ought to come back.'
'How can he come back? The girl thinks he's ill in bed.'
'He could say that the doctor found he had made a mistake. Lots of things look like mumps at first. Toothache makes your face swell.'
'A chill in the facial muscles,' said Lord Hoddesdon, inspired.
'Yes, that would do.'
'But what about all these fellows who want to County- Court him?'
'Something could be arranged about that. Surely, now that they know that he is engaged to the daughter of a millionaire . . .'
'Yes, that's true.'
'Well, he must at least get in touch with Ann again, and immediately. So that he can at any rate write to her. Perhaps if she kept getting letters from him it would help. I think he ought to tell her that he has had to go to Paris. Perhaps he might really go to Paris, and then she could go to Paris, too.'
'Where's the money to come from?'
'I could manage that.'
'You could?' said Lord Hoddesdon, eagerly. 'Then, while we are on the subject . . .'
'No,' said Lady Vera firmly. 'I said I could manage enough to send Godfrey to Paris, but I refuse to subsidize you, George.'
'I only want twenty pounds.'
'When you leave this flat, you will still be wanting it.'
'It isn't much,' said Lord Hoddesdon wistfully. 'Twenty pounds.'
'It is twenty pounds more than you are going to get out of me,' replied his sister.
'All right,' said his lordship. 'All right. No harm in asking, was there?'
'I am always delighted to have you ask, George,' said Lady Vera. 'At any time. Whenever you want money, I hope you will always ask me. You won't get it, of course.'
Lord Hoddesdon took a pull at his moustache.
'Then, shelving that for the moment,' he said, 'you think I ought to go and see Godfrey?'
'I consider it essential. Ann is a very impulsive girl, and even now it may be too late.'
'I wish you wouldn't talk like that, Vera,' said Lord Hoddesdon irritably. 'You seem to take a joy in looking on the dark side. Very well, then. I will go down to this infernal suburb. Or shall I write him a letter?'
'No. You express yourself so badly in letters. He would never understand how vital the thing was. Go down to Valley Fields at once and see him personally.'
'And the money for the taxi?'
'What taxi?' said Lady Vera.
She found a railway time-table and began to turn its pages briskly. Lord Hoddesdon watched her with a growing dislike. He had his own rigid, old-fashioned ideas of how a sister should behave to a brother, and Lady Vera outraged them. He was just letting his mind drift off into a reverie in which there figured a wonderful dream-sister whose leading qualities were a big bank-balance, a cheque-book, an intense fondness for her brother and scribbling-itch, when he was called back to the sternly practical by the sound of her voice.
'"Frequent trains from Victoria,"' read Lady Vera. 'So you had better start at once. And do contrive, if you can possibly manage it, not to bungle the thing. The fare, first class, is one and a penny.'
'Oh? You're sure,' said Lord Hoddesdon bitterly, 'you wouldn't rather I went third class?'
'You must please yourself entirely, George,' said Lady Vera equably. 'You will be paying for the ticket.'
II
The manifold beauties of Valley Fields, which had so impressed his son and heir on his first introduction to them, made a weaker appeal to the sixth Earl of Hoddesdon. Lord Hoddesdon's outlook on life, from the very start of his expedition, had been a jaundiced one, and Valley Fields did nothing to change it. Indeed, his first move on alighting from the train was to give Valley Fields an extremely nasty look. Then, having inquired of the porter at the station the way to Mulberry Grove, he set out thither, thinking dark thoughts.
Berry Conway, when at the peak of his form, could do the distance from Mulberry Grove to Valley Fields station in about eighty-three seconds. Lord Hoddesdon, a slower mover, took longer. However, pausing at frequent intervals to remove his grey top-hat and dab his forehead with a handkerchief, for the day was warm, he eventually reached Benjafield Road, at the corner of which stands the public-house which had exercised so powerful an attraction for Lord Biskerton on the day of his arrival. Here, having by now completely forgotten the instructions given to him at the station, he came to a halt, feeling lost.
From the spot where Lord Hoddesdon was standing to the gates of Peacehaven was, as it happened, a matter of a few dozen yards. Unaware of this, he looked about him for guidance and observed, his powerful shoulders shoring up the wall of the public- house, a man in a cloth cap. He was sucking thoughtfully at an empty pipe, and he regarded Lord Hoddesdon, as he approached, with a rather unpleasant expression. The fact was, he had taken an instant dislike to his social superior's grey top-hat.
Nothing in the life of a great city is more complex than the rules that govern the selection of the correct headgear for use in the various divisions of that city. In Bond Street, or Piccadilly, a grey top-hat is chic, de rigueur, and le dernier cri. In Valley Fields, less than seven miles distant, it is outré and, one might almost say, farouche. The Royal Enclosure at Ascot would have admired Lord Hoddesdon's hat. The cloth-capped man, in a muzzy, beery sort of way, took it almost as a persona
l affront. It was as if he felt that his manhood and self-respect had been outraged by this grey topper.
Between Lord Hoddesdon and the cloth-capped man, therefore, there may be said to have existed an imperfect sympathy from the very start.
'I want to go to Mulberry Grove,' said Lord Hoddesdon.
The man, without shifting his position, rolled an inflamed eye at him. He stared in silence for a while. Then he gave a curt nod.
'Awright,' he said. 'Don't be long.'
Lord Hoddesdon endeavoured to make himself clearer.
'Can you – ah – direct me to Mulberry Grove?'
The eye rolled round once more. It travelled over Lord Hoddesdon's person searchingly, from head to foot and back again. Reaching the head, it paused.
'What sort of a hat do you call that you've got on?' asked the man coldly. 'A nice sort of hat, I don't think.'
Lord Hoddesdon was in no mood to chat of hats. In spite of the sunshine, the world was still looking loathsome to him. He had been fermenting steadily from the moment of leaving his sister Vera's door.
'Never mind my hat!' he said austerely.
The man, however, continued to toy with the theme. Indeed, he harped on it.
'The way you City clurks get yourselves up nowadays,' he said with evident disapproval, ' 's enough to make a man sick. They wouldn't 'ave none of that in Moscow. No, nor in Leningrad. The Burjoisy, that's what you are, for all your top-'ats. Do you know what would happen to you in Moscow? Somebody – as it might be Stayling – would come along and 'e'd look at that 'at and 'e'd say "What are you doing, you Burjoise, swanking round in a 'at like that?", and he'd . . .'
Lord Hoddesdon moved away. He lost thereby some probably very valuable and interesting information about the manners and customs of Moscow, but he gained release from the society of one on whom he could never look as a friend. There was a small boy standing by the horse-trough in front of the public-house, and to him he now addressed his questioning.
'Which is the way to Mulberry Grove, my little fellow?' he asked, quite amiably for a man with murder in his heart and a blood-pressure well above the normal. 'I should be much obliged if you would inform me.'
Civility met with civility. His little fellow stopped dabbling his fingers in the water and pointed.
'Dahn there, sir, and first to the left,' he said politely.
'Thank you,' said Lord Hoddesdon. 'Thank you. Thank you.'
He moved off in the direction indicated, casting at the cloth-capped man as he went a look of censure. It is not easy to express very much in a look, but what Lord Hoddesdon wished to convey was that he hoped the cloth-capped man had been listening in on this scene and had been properly impressed by the exemplary attitude of one who, though so many years his junior, might well be taken by him as a model of deportment. A vague idea of returning and giving the suave lad a penny passed through his mind, to be abandoned immediately in favour of the far more sensible and businesslike step of going on and doing nothing of the kind. However, he had almost decided to look back and smile at the little fellow, when something exceptionally hard struck him suddenly between the shoulder blades. It was a flint. And, spinning round, he perceived the youthful Chesterfield in full flight up the road.
Lord Hoddesdon was dumbfounded. What had occurred seemed to him for an instant incredible. If he had been aware that the polite stripling and the man in the cloth cap were son and father, he would have divined that the same hatred of grey top-hats which animated the father ran also in the blood of the son. It was a simple case of hereditary instinct. But he did not know this. All he thought about the blood of the son was that he wanted to have it, and with this end in view he got smartly off the mark and, though he had not run for years, was soon pelting up the road at an excellent pace – a pace far too gruelling for the little fellow, whom he overtook in the first ten yards.
There are two schools of thought concerning the correct method of dealing with small boys who throw stones at their elders and betters in the public street. Some say they should be kicked, others that they should be smacked on the head. Lord Hoddesdon, no bigot, did both. And for a man who had not smacked head or kicked trouser-seat since his early days at Eton he acquitted himself remarkably well. For the space of about half a minute he worked vigorously; then, turning, somewhat out of breath, he retraced his steps and resumed the trek to Mulberry Grove.
He felt strangely elated. It was as if some healing balm had been applied to his bruised soul. For the first time that afternoon he was conscious of being quietly happy. As the result of this burst of exercise, venom had gone out of him. An urge came upon him to whistle, and he was just pursing his lips to do so, when a voice spoke at his side.
''Oy!' said the voice.
It was the cloth-capped man. He had put his pipe away, and was walking by Lord Hoddesdon's side, smelling strongly of mixed ales. His eyes were bulging and had in them a red gleam, like fire seen through smoke. From the recent battlefield there came shrilly the wailings of the wounded.
'What did you want to hit the nipper for?' asked the cloth-capped man.
Lord Hoddesdon made no reply. It was not that the conundrum baffled him, for he had an excellent answer. But he disliked the idea of making this person a confidant. He walked on in silence.
'What did you want to hit my young 'Erbert for?'
Lord Hoddesdon started a little uneasily. My young 'Erbert? This was the first intimation he had received that ties of relationship linked these two. What had seemed at first merely the inquisitiveness of a stranger took on a more sinister significance when it became the muttered outpourings of a father's heart. From the corner of his eye he flashed a glance at his companion, and wished that it had not been so easy to see him. There was, he perceived, a great deal of this man.
He quickened his steps. He had become now uneasily aware of the deserted nature of the ground he was covering. There was not a policeman in sight. In a place like this, he reflected bitterly, there would probably be only one policeman and he would probably be asleep somewhere instead of doing his duty and busying himself in the interests of the public weal. For a moment, in his shrinking mind, Lord Hoddesdon became rather mordant about the police force of the suburbs.
But he was not able to think long about anything except this unpleasant-looking man who continued to walk step by step with him. Incoherent mutterings had now begun to proceed from this person. His lordship caught the words 'City clurk' and 'Burjoisy', repeated far too often for his peace of mind. In any circumstances, for he was a man of haughty spirit, he would have resented being taken for a City clerk: but the misapprehension was particularly disquieting now, for his companion was only too obviously a man who entertained a strong dislike for City clerks. This became sickeningly manifest when he began to speak with a sort of gloating note in his voice of knocking their heads off and stamping them into the mud, even if – or, perhaps, even more strongly because – they went swanking about in grey top-hats. That, as far as Lord Hoddesdon was able to follow his remarks, was, it appeared, the way Stayling would have behaved in Moscow, and what was good enough for Stayling was, the cloth-capped man frankly admitted, good enough for him.
It was at the point where the other, struck with a new idea, had begun to waver between stamping him into the mud and impaling him on the railings which decorated the further side of the pavement that Lord Hoddesdon, who for some little time had been covering the ground in a style which would certainly have led to his disqualification in a walking-race, definitely and undisguisedly broke into a run. They had turned the corner now, and had come in sight of houses: and it seemed to him that inside one of those houses sanctuary might be obtained.
With a sudden, swift movement Lord Hoddesdon's rapid walk turned into a gallop.
It is curious to reflect how often in life Fate chooses the same object as a means toward two quite opposite ends. It was Lord Hoddesdon's grey top-hat which had placed him in this very delicate situation, and it was this same top-hat w
hich now for the moment extricated him from it. For, even as he started to run, it leaped from his head and rolled across the road, and his companion, sternly set though his mind was on the Holy War before him, was humanly frail enough not to be able to resist the lure. The hat went bouncing away, and the cloth-capped man, after but a second's hesitation, charged in pursuit.
He cornered the hat in the gutter and kicked it. He followed it to where it lay and kicked it again. Finally, he jumped upon it with both feet and then kicked it for the third time. This done, he looked round and was aware of its owner's coat-tails vanishing at a considerable speed through the gate of the last house down the road. Following swiftly, he passed through the gate, which bore upon it the word 'Castlewood', and, finding nothing of interest in the front garden, hastened round to the back.
Here, too, he found only empty space. He paused awhile in thought.
In moments of extreme peril the mind moves rapidly. In the beginning, Lord Hoddesdon had planned to walk with as great a dignity as he could achieve to one of these front doors, to ring the bell, to ask to see the master of the house, to inform the master of the house that he was being followed in a threatening manner by a ruffian who appeared to be worse for drink, to be invited into the drawing-room, and to remain there in a comfortable chair while his host telephoned for aid to the police-station. And the entire programme had had to be scrapped at a moment's notice.
Obviously, there was no time for leisurely ringing of bells. An alternative scheme had to be planned out. This alternative scheme Lord Hoddesdon had not been able to shape at the moment of his entry into the garden of Castlewood, but it came to him as he rounded the angle of the house and perceived on the ground floor an open window. Through this window he dived with an adroitness which would have given a rabbit, had one been an eye-witness, an idea or two for the brushing-up of its technique: and, when his pursuer also entered the garden, he was lurking on all fours inside the room.
And there for a moment the matter rested.
How long it would have gone on resting, it is difficult to say. The cloth-capped man was a slow thinker, and it might have been some little while before he would have been able to observe and deduce. As it happened, however, an irresistible urge came over Lord Hoddesdon at this moment to raise his head and peer out of the window, to see what was happening in the great world outside. The first thing he saw was his pursuer, and his pursuer most unfortunately chanced to be looking in that very direction.
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