'I see. Well, I hope you'll be very happy.'
'Oh, I shall,' the Biscuit assured her.
'I think I'll be going,' said Ann.
The Biscuit held up a compelling hand.
'Wait!' he said. 'Just one moment. I want to get to the bottom of this business of old Berry.'
'I don't want to talk about him.'
'This lovers' tiff . . .'
'It wasn't a lovers' tiff.'
'Then what was it? Good heavens!' said the Biscuit, warming to his subject. 'If ever there were a couple of birds made for one another, it's you and Berry. I mean to say, you're one of the sweetest things on earth, and he's a corker. His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world "This was a man!" I always remember that bit,' said the Biscuit. 'Had to write it out a hundred times at school for bunging an orange at a contemporary and catching my form-master squarely in the eyeball, he happening to come unexpectedly into the room at the moment. If you've really gone and given old Berry the push, you must be cuckoo. It's no good telling yourself that there'll be another one along in a minute, because there won't. You won't find another fellow like Berry in a million years. He's all right. And what they think of him in the Secret Service!' added the Biscuit, belatedly remembering. 'The blokes up top have got their eye on him all right. I can tell you!'
Ann laughed shortly.
'Secret Service!'
'Why,' asked the Biscuit, 'do you say "Secret Service" in that nasty, tinkling voice?'
'I know all about him, thanks,' said Ann. 'There's no need for you to lie to me. He did all of that that was necessary.'
'Oh?' said the Biscuit reflectively. 'Oh, ah! Ah! Oh!'
He began to understand.
'He's my uncle's secretary,' said Ann, with scorn.
'In a measure,' admitted the Biscuit reluctantly, 'yes. But,' he went on, brightening, 'what of it?'
'What of it?'
'What difference does it make?'
Ann's eyes blazed.
'You don't think it makes any difference? You don't think that a girl's feelings are likely to change towards a man when she finds he has been lying to her and making a fool of her and pretending to be fond of her just because . . .' She choked. '. . . just because she happens to be rich?'
The Biscuit was shocked.
'My dear young prune,' he said, 'you aren't asking me to believe that you think that a fellow like Berry was after your money?'
'Yes, I am. Lady Vera said he was.'
'Admitting,' said the Biscuit, 'that what my Aunt Vera doesn't know about cash-chivvying isn't worth knowing, I deny it in toto. Aunt Vera was talking through her hat. Listen, you poor mutt. I was at school with old Berry for a matter of five years, and I know him from caviare to nuts. He's the squarest bird on earth. And that's official. You don't suppose a man can be mistaken about another man after five years at school with him, do you? Berry's all right.'
'Then why did he lie to me?'
'I'll tell you about that,' said the Biscuit. 'Give you a good laugh, this will. He saw you at the Berkeley that day and fell in love with you, and then he saw you in your car, and the only way he could think of to get to know you was to jump in and say he was a Secret Service man. That's the sort of chap he is. Weak in the head, but fizzing with romance. And in re his being your uncle's secretary. You don't imagine he stuck on as secretary to old Pop Frisby because he enjoyed it, do you? He was left without a penny in the world, and some lawyer cove lent him a couple of hundred quid to give him a start, and he had to get a job and hold it down till he had paid the stuff back. And all the time he was yearning to roll to 'Rio or go to Arizona and do something or other to rocks – he told me what it was, but I've forgotten. Blackjacking, it sounded like. And, talking of Arizona, let me tell you something, and you'll see what a young muttonhead you've been to think that it was your money he was after. He's got money himself, thousands and thousands of pounds of it. Or he will have tomorrow. Me, too. We've come into a fortune.'
Ann was silent. Then she drew her breath in with a long sigh.
'I see,' she said.
'It's no good saying you see. What are you going to do about it?'
'I've made a fool of myself,' said Ann.
'You've made a gosh-awful fool of yourself,' agreed the Biscuit enthusiastically. 'You've acted like a poop and a pip-squeak. What steps, then, do you propose to take?'
'Shall I write to him?'
'Not a bad idea.'
'I'll go home and do it now.'
'Excellent.'
'Well, I'll be going, Godfrey.'
'Perhaps it would be as well,' said the Biscuit. 'I mean, delighted you were about to come, and so on, but you know how it is.'
'I suppose I ought to try to thank you,' said Ann, at the front door.
'Not a bit necessary. Only too pleased if any little thing I may have said has been instrumental. . . .'
'Well, good-bye.'
'Good-bye,' said the Biscuit. 'I shall watch your future career with considerable interest. Hullo, who's this bird?'
The bird alluded to was the redoubtable Captain Kelly, who had suddenly manifested himself out of the darkness and intruded on this farewell.
'Just a moment,' said Captain Kelly.
Ann stared at him, alarmed. With his hat pulled down over his eyes, the Captain was a disquieting figure.
'All hawkers, bottles, and street cries should go round to the back door,' said the Biscuit, with a householder's austerity. 'Unless, by any chance,' he said, an alternative theory crossing his mind, 'you're the Vicar?'
'I'm not the Vicar.'
'Then who are you?'
'Never mind who I am,' said Captain Kelly shortly. 'All I want to say is that you don't leave here tonight, and this young lady doesn't leave here tonight.'
'What!' cried the Biscuit.
'What!' cried Ann.
'See this?' said the Captain.
The light from the hall shone on a businesslike-looking revolver. Ann and the Biscuit gazed at it, fascinated.
'I'll be waiting outside if you try any funny business,' said Captain Kelly.
'But what's it all about?' demanded the Biscuit.
'You know what it's all about,' said the Captain, briefly. 'In you get now, and don't try to come out, unless you want the top of your head blown off. I mean it.'
Inside the hall, the Biscuit stared at the closed door as if he were trying to see through it.
'The suburbs for excitement!' he said.
Ann uttered an exclamation.
'But I can't stay here all night!' she cried.
The Biscuit quivered as if an electric shock had passed through him.
'You jolly well bet you can't!' he agreed vehemently. 'I don't know if you happen to know it, but poor little Kitchie's faith in Man is pretty wobbly these days. She had a bad shock not long ago, administered by a worm of the name of Merwyn Flock. If she finds that you and I have been camping out here. . . . My gosh!' groaned the Biscuit, 'all will be over. No wedding-bells for me. She's as likely as not to go into a convent or something.'
'But what's to be done? Who is that man?'
'I don't know. No pal of mine.'
'He must be mad.'
'He's absolutely potty. But that doesn't make it any better. Did you see that gun?'
'Well, what are you going to do?'
'Take another small snort.'
'What's the good of that?'
'I'll tell you what's the good of it,' said the Biscuit. 'It will clear my mind, enable me to grapple more freely with a problem to which as yet I can see no answer. I'm a pretty quick fellow, as a rule, but when it comes to homicidal lunatics in the front garden, I am not ashamed to confess myself temporarily baffled. The one thing certain is that somehow or other, by what means I cannot say, you have got to be eased out of here as soon as possible.'
He led the way back to the sitting-room, and reached abstractedly for the decanter. He was think
ing . . . thinking.
III
In a prosaic age like the one in which we live anything that seems to border on eccentricity is always judged harshly. We look askance at it, and draw damaging conclusions. Deviate ever so little from the normal behaviour of the ordinary man, and you meet inevitably with head-shakings and suspicion from a censorious world.
The actions of both Captain Kelly and J. B. Hoke had been, as we have seen, dictated by careful and reasonable reflection. They were based on solid common-sense. Yet, just as Ann and the Biscuit, in the sitting-room of Peacehaven, had come to the conclusion that the Captain was unbalanced and even potty, so now did Berry and Lord Hoddesdon, on the other side of the partition, take a snap judgement and condemn Mr Hoke on the same grounds.
Lord Hoddesdon was the first to clothe this thought in words. He had been watching Mr Hoke's pistol with a fascinated eye and a sagging jaw, and now he spoke.
'Who is this lunatic?' he asked.
Berry was more soothing.
'It's quite all right, Mr Hoke,' he said. 'You're among friends. You remember me, don't you? Conway?'
'The man's a raving madman,' proceeded Lord Hoddesdon. 'Keep your dashed finger off that trigger, sir, confound you!' he added, with growing concern. 'The thing will be going off in a minute.'
'Hands up,' said Mr Hoke, muzzily.
'Our hands are up,' said Berry, still with that same elder-brotherly sweetness. 'You can see they're up, can't you? Look! Right up here.'
And, to emphasize the point, he twiddled his fingers. Mr Hoke stared at them, with an air of dislike, blinked, and rose to a point of order.
'Hey!' he observed. 'Quit that!'
'Quit what?'
'That twiddling,' said Mr Hoke. 'I don't like it.'
It reminded him somehow of spiders, and he did not wish to think of spiders.
'I'll tell you what,' said Berry. 'Put that pistol away and just sit back quite quietly, and I'll go and make you a nice cup of tea.'
'Tea?'
'A nice, hot, strong cup of tea. And then we'll all sit down and have a good talk, and you shall tell us what it is that's on your mind.'
Mr Hoke regarded him owlishly. He seemed to be considering the suggestion.
'I had a mother once,' he said.
'You did?' said Berry.
'Yes, sir!' said Mr Hoke. 'That's just what I had. A mother.'
'The man's a dashed, drivelling, raving, raging lunatic,' said Lord Hoddesdon.
Mr Hoke started. Something in his lordship's words had caused a monstrous suspicion to form itself in his clouded mind.
It seemed to him, if he had interpreted them rightly, that Lord Hoddesdon was casting doubts on his sanity. He resented this.
He would have been the first to admit that he had taken perhaps one over the eight and that his mental powers had lost, in consequence, something of their usual keen edge: but he was deeply wounded to think that anyone should consider him non compos.
'Think I'm crazy?' he said.
'Not crazy,' said Berry. 'Just . . .'
'He's as mad as a hatter,' insisted Lord Hoddesdon, who objected to paltering with facts and liked to call a spade a spade. 'Will you stop fingering that trigger, sir! Do you want a double murder on your hands?'
'I'm not crazy,' said Mr Hoke. 'No, sir.'
'I'm sure you're not,' said Berry. 'Just the tiniest bit overexcited. Why not lay that pistol down – look, there's a table where it would go nicely – and tell us all about your mother?'
Mr Hoke's mind was still occupied with his grievance. He objected to this attempted side-tracking of the conversation to the topic of mothers. Plenty of time, he felt, to talk about mothers when he had proved to these sceptics that he was as sane as anybody. He proceeded to give his proofs.
'You want to know why I'm acting this way?' he said. 'You don't know, do you? Oh, no, you don't know. Can't imagine, can you? That red-headed pal of yours hasn't been telling you what I told him about the Dream Come True, has he? Oh, no. He hasn't come and handed you the dope, has he? Oh, no. You and your mothers! Don't try to put me off by talking about your mother, because I know what I'm doing, and if your mother doesn't like it, she can do the other thing.'
To Lord Hoddesdon, chafing impotently, these strong remarks on the subject of dreams and mothers seemed but further evidence, if such were needed, that he stood in the presence of one of the most pronounced lunatics who ever qualified for the restraint of a padded cell. Gibbering, pure and simple, his lordship considered Mr Hoke's last speech. But to Berry there came dimly, as through a fog, a sort of meaning.
'What about the Dream Come True?' he asked.
'You don't know, do you?' asked Mr Hoke, witheringly.
He moved cautiously across the room, the better to keep his eye upon his prisoners, and sat with his back against the wall, surveying them keenly.
'You don't know, do you?' he said. 'That red-head didn't tell you, did he? And you weren't listening outside old Frisby's door that day, when him and me were talking about keeping it under our hats that there had been a new reef located? Well, if you think you're going to get up to London tomorrow and start in buying Horned Toad stock, you've another guess coming. You're going to stay right here, that's what you're going to do.'
He turned a glazing eye on Lord Hoddesdon.
'And that goes for you, too, Oil,' he said.
Berry uttered a sharp cry. It was as if a great light had shone upon him. What Mr Hoke's maunderings about the Biscuit meant, he was unable to gather: but from the welter of the other's words there had emerged the broad, basic fact that the Dream Come True had been a valuable property, after all, and that old Frisby and this inebriated viper had known it all along. And they had tricked him into selling it for the mere song its name suggested.
A wave of helpless fury flooded over him.
'So you knew there was copper there?' he cried.
'Knew it all along,' said Mr Hoke. 'And I'm going to clean up big. You'll see Horned Toad up in the hundreds before the end of the week.'
A whistling sigh escaped Lord Hoddesdon. His arms were aching, and this meaningless exchange of remarks was making his head ache still more. Dreams and mothers, and now horned toads. . . . It was too much for a nobleman of limited intellect to be expected to endure with composure.
Berry's hands had begun twitching again, and Mr Hoke commented on the fact.
'Don't twiddle!' he said.
He leaned against the wall, and endeavoured to steady his faithful gat. He did not like the expression on Berry's face. For the matter of that, he did not like the expression on Lord Hoddesdon's face. And he was about to say as much, when without any warning there was a loud, splintering crash and quite a lot of the wall fell on top of his head.
'Hell!' cried Mr Hoke, mystified.
There is always a reason for the most perplexing occurrences. To J. B. Hoke this sudden dissolution of what had appeared to be a solid wall seemed to step straight into the miracle class. He thought, as far as he was capable of thinking at all, of earthquakes.
His mind also toyed for an instant with the theory that possibly this was the end of the world. And all it was, in reality, was Berry's next-door neighbour, Lord Biskerton, endeavouring to take a short cut from Peacehaven to The Nook.
We left the Biscuit, it will be recalled, in the act of thinking. A brain of that calibre cannot go on thinking long without some solid result. Scarcely had the Biscuit swallowed one stiffish whisky and soda and begun another, rather milder, when the solution of the problem with which he was confronted flashed upon him. Suddenly a thought came like a full-blown rose, flushing his brow; and, charging down stairs to the cellar, he came racing up again, armed now with the pick-axe used by suburban householders for breaking coal.
His train of thought may be readily followed. The more he caught the eye of the photograph of his betrothed on the mantelpiece, the more clearly did he perceive that something must be done to dissolve this enforced tête-à-tête between A
nn and himself on the premises of Peacehaven. Captain Kelly's strongly expressed views had shown him that it was impossible for her to leave by the ordinary route, and so he had adopted the only alternative one. Let him get through into Berry's sitting-room, he felt, and the thing would at least become a threesome. Good enough, was the Biscuit's verdict.
He swung his weapon vigorously, and was delighted to find that it met with little resistance. Architects of suburban semidetached villas do not build party-walls with an eye to this sort of treatment. Encouraged, he redoubled his efforts.
Lord Biskerton, as we have said, was delighted. But it is rarely in this world that we find everybody happy at the same time, and it would be idle to pretend that his exhilaration was shared by Mr Hoke. What he was going to do about it, beyond uttering a reproving 'Hey!' Mr Hoke did not know: but he knew that he did not like it.
He backed away from the centre of disturbance with a popeyed stare of concern; and it was at this moment that Berry, grateful for the opportunity, sprang forward and with a dexterous flick of the foot kicked the pistol out of his hand. He and Mr Hoke then went into conference on the floor.
Lord Hoddesdon, lowering his aching arms, possessed himself of a stout chair and stood by the rapidly widening hiatus in the wall, awaiting developments. He was feeling warlike, but not surprised. The rigours of life in the suburbs, experienced first by day and now by night, had hardened Lord Hoddesdon's soul. Just as the traveller to Alaska learns the lesson that there's never a law of God or man runs north of 'fifty-three, so had his lordship become aware that every amenity of civilized life must automatically be considered suspended, once you found yourself in the S.E. 21 postal district of London.
It was not, therefore, Lord Hoddesdon, the well-known clubman, not Lord Hoddesdon, the saunterer round the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, who now stood with raised chair in Berry Conway's sitting-room. It was a throw-back to Lord Hoddesdon's fighting ancestors, a sort of primitive Lord Hoddesdon who, steeled to the realization that in any given house in this infernal suburb a man had got to expect to find homicidal lunatics popping out of every nook and cranny, was prepared to sell his life dearly.
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