"Pure white!" said Ashe.
"Eh?"
"My soul! And this"--he thumped the left section of his waistcoat--"solid gold. You may fire when ready, Gridley. Proceed, professor."
"I don't know where to begin."
"Without presuming to dictate, why not at the beginning?"
"It's all so darned complicated that I don't rightly know which is the beginning. Well, see here... I collect scarabs. I'm crazy about scarabs. Ever since I quit business, you might say that I have practically lived for scarabs."
"Though it sounds like an unkind thing to say of anyone," said Ashe. "Incidentally, what are scarabs?" He held up his hand. "Wait! It all comes back to me. Expensive classical education, now bearing belated fruit. Scarabaeus--Latin; noun, nominative--a beetle. Scarabaee--evocative--O you beetle! Scarabaeum-- accusative--the beetle. Scarabaei--of the beetle. Scarabaeo--to or for the beetle. I remember now. Egypt--Rameses--pyramids-- sacred scarabs! Right!"
"Well, I guess I've gotten together the best collection of scarabs outside the British Museum, and some of them are worth what you like to me. I don't reckon money when it comes to a question of my scarabs. Do you understand?"
"Sure, Mike!"
Displeasure clouded the little man's face.
"My name is not Mike."
"I used the word figuratively, as it were."'
"Well, don't do it again. My name is J. Preston Peters, and Mr. Peters will do as well as anything else when you want to attract my attention."
"Mine is Marson. You were saying, Mr. Peters--?"
"Well, it's this way," said the little man.
Shakespeare and Pope have both emphasized the tediousness of a twice-to1d tale; the Episode Of the Stolen Scarab need not be repeated at this point, though it must be admitted that Mr. Peters' version of it differed considerably from the calm, dispassionate description the author, in his capacity of official historian, has given earlier in the story.
In Mr. Peters' version the Earl of Emsworth appeared as a smooth and purposeful robber, a sort of elderly Raffles, worming his way into the homes of the innocent, and only sparing that portion of their property which was too heavy for him to carry away. Mr. Peters, indeed, specifically described the Earl of Emsworth as an oily old second-story man.
It took Ashe some little time to get a thorough grasp of the tangled situation; but he did it at last.
Only one point perplexed him.
"You want to hire somebody to go to this castle and get this scarab back for you. I follow that. But why must he go as your valet?"
"That's simple enough. You don't think I'm asking him to buy a black mask and break in, do you? I'm making it as easy for him as possible. I can't take a secretary down to the castle, for everybody knows that, now I've retired, I haven't got a secretary; and if I engaged a new one and he was caught trying to steal my scarab from the earl's collection, it would look suspicious. But a valet is different. Anyone can get fooled by a crook valet with bogus references."
"I see. There's just one other point: Suppose your accomplice does get caught--what then?"
"That," said Mr. Peters, "is the catch; and it's just because of that I am offering good pay to my man. We'll suppose, for the sake of argument, that you accept the contract and get caught. Well, if that happens you've got to look after yourself. I couldn't say a word. If I did it would all come out, and so far as the breaking off of my daughter's engagement to young Threepwood is concerned, it would be just as bad as though I had tried to get the thing back myself.
"You've got to bear that in mind. You've got to remember it if you forget everything else. I don't appear in this business in any way whatsoever. If you get caught you take what's coming to you without a word. You can't turn round and say: 'I am innocent. Mr. Peters will explain all'--because Mr. Peters certainly won't. Mr. Peters won't utter a syllable of protest if they want to hang you.
"No; if you go into this, young man, you go into it with your eyes open. You go into it with a full understanding of the risks--because you think the reward, if you are successful, makes the taking of those risks worth while. You and I know that what you are doing isn't really stealing; it's simply a tactful way of getting back my own property. But the judge and jury will have different views."
"I am beginning to understand," said Ashe thoughtfully, "why you called the job delicate and dangerous."
Certainly it had been no overstatement. As a writer of detective stories for the British office boy, he had imagined in his time many undertakings that might be so described, but few to which the description was more admirably suited.
"It is," said Mr. Peters; "and that is why I'm offering good pay. Whoever carries this job through gets one thousand pounds."
Ashe started.
"One thousand pounds--five thousand dollars!"
"Five thousand."
"When do I begin?"
"You'll do it?"
"For five thousand dollars I certainly will."
"With your eyes open?"
"Wide open!"
A look of positive geniality illuminated Mr. Peters' pinched features. He even went so far as to pat Ashe on the shoulder.
"Good boy!" he said. "Meet me at Paddington Station at four o'clock on Friday. And if there's anything more you want to know come round to this address."
There remained the telling of Joan Valentine; for it was obviously impossible not to tell her. When you have revolutionized your life at the bidding of another you cannot well conceal the fact, as though nothing had happened. Ashe had not the slightest desire to conceal the fact. On the contrary, he was glad to have such a capital excuse for renewing the acquaintance.
He could not tell her, of course, the secret details of the thing. Naturally those must remain hidden. No, he would just go airily in and say:
"You know what you told me about doing something new? Well, I've just got a job as a valet."
So he went airily in and said it.
"To whom?" said Joan.
"To a man named Peters--an American."
Women are trained from infancy up to conceal their feelings. Joan did not start or otherwise express emotion.
"Not Mr. J. Preston Peters?"
"Yes. Do you know him? What a remarkable thing."
"His daughter," said Joan, "has just engaged me as a lady's maid."
"What !"
"It will not be quite the same thing as three years ago," Joan explained. "It is just a cheap way of getting a holiday. I used to know Miss Peters very well, you see. It will be more like traveling as her guest."
"But--but--" Ashe had not yet overcome his amazement.
"Yes?"
"But what an extraordinary coincidence!"
"Yes. By the way, how did you get the situation? And what put it into your head to be a valet at all? It seems such a curious thing for you to think of doing."
Ashe was embarrassed.
"I--I--well, you see, the experience will be useful to me, of course, in my writing."
"Oh! Are you thinking of taking up my line of work? Dukes?"
"No, no--not exactly that."
"It seems so odd. How did you happen to get in touch with Mr. Peters?"
"Oh, I answered an advertisement."
"I see."
Ashe was becoming conscious of an undercurrent of something not altogether agreeable in the conversation. It lacked the gay ease of their first interview. He was not apprehensive lest she might have guessed his secret. There was, he felt, no possible means by which she could have done that. Yet the fact remained that those keen blue eyes of hers were looking at him in a peculiar and penetrating manner. He felt damped.
"It will be nice, being together," he said feebly.
"Very!" said Joan.
There was a pause.
"I thought I would come and tell you."
"Quite so."
There was another pause.
"It seems so funny that you should be going out as a lady's maid."
"Y
es?"
"But, of course, you have done it before."
"Yes."
"The really extraordinary thing is that we should be going to the same people."
"Yes."
"It--it's remarkable, isn't it?"
"Yes."
Ashe reflected. No; he did not appear to have any further remarks to make.
"Good-by for the present," he said.
"Good-by."
Ashe drifted out. He was conscious of a wish that he understood girls. Girls, in his opinion, were odd.
When he had gone Joan Valentine hurried to the door and, having opened it an inch, stood listening. When the sound of his door closing came to her she ran down the stairs and out into Arundel Street. She went to the Hotel Mathis.
"I wonder," she said to the sad-eyed waiter, "if you have a copy of the Morning Post?"
The waiter, a child of romantic Italy, was only too anxious to oblige youth and beauty. He disappeared and presently returned with a crumpled copy. Joan thanked him with a bright smile.
Back in her room, she turned to the advertisement pages. She knew that life was full of what the unthinking call coincidences; but the miracle of Ashe having selected by chance the father of Aline Peters as an employer was too much of a coincidence for her. Suspicion furrowed her brow.
It did not take her long to discover the advertisement that had sent Ashe hurrying in a taxicab to the offices of Messrs. Mainprice, Mainprice & Boole. She had been looking for something of the kind.
She read it through twice and smiled. Everything was very clear to her. She looked at the ceiling above her and shook her head.
"You are quite a nice young man, Mr. Marson," she said softly; "but you mustn't try to jump my claim. I dare say you need that money too; but I'm afraid you must go without. I am going to have it--and nobody else!"
CHAPTER V
The four-fifteen express slid softly out of Paddington Station and Ashe Marson settled himself in the corner seat of his second-class compartment. Opposite him Joan Valentine had begun to read a magazine. Along the corridor, in a first-class smoking compartment, Mr. Peters was lighting a big black cigar. Still farther along the corridor, in a first-class non-smoking compartment, Aline Peters looked through the window and thought of many things.
In English trains the tipping classes travel first; valets, lady's maids, footmen, nurses, and head stillroom maids, second; and housemaids, grooms, and minor and inferior stillroom maids, third. But for these social distinctions, the whole fabric of society, would collapse and anarchy stalk naked through the land--as in the United States.
Ashe was feeling remarkably light-hearted. He wished he had not bought Joan that magazine and thus deprived himself temporarily of the pleasure of her conversation; but that was the only flaw in his happiness. With the starting of the train, which might be considered the formal and official beginning of the delicate and dangerous enterprise on which he had embarked, he had definitely come to the conclusion that the life adventurous was the life for him. He had frequently suspected this to be the case, but it had required the actual experiment to bring certainty.
Almost more than physical courage, the ideal adventurer needs a certain lively inquisitiveness, the quality of not being content to mind his own affairs; and in Ashe this quality was highly developed. From boyhood up he had always been interested in things that were none of his business. And it is just that attribute which the modern young man, as a rule, so sadly lacks.
The modern young man may do adventurous things if they are thrust on him; but left to himself he will edge away uncomfortably and look in the other direction when the goddess of adventure smiles at him. Training and tradition alike pluck at his sleeve and urge him not to risk making himself ridiculous. And from sheer horror of laying himself open to the charge of not minding his own business he falls into a stolid disregard of all that is out of the ordinary and exciting. He tells himself that the shriek from the lonely house he passed just now was only the high note of some amateur songstress, and that the maiden in distress whom he saw pursued by the ruffian with a knife was merely earning the salary paid her by some motion-picture firm. And he proceeds on his way, looking neither to left nor right.
Ashe had none of this degenerate coyness toward adventure. Though born within easy distance of Boston and deposited by circumstances in London, he possessed, nevertheless, to a remarkable degree, that quality so essentially the property of the New Yorker--the quality known, for want of a more polished word, as rubber. It is true that it had needed the eloquence of Joan Valentine to stir him from his groove; but that was because he was also lazy. He loved new sights and new experiences. Yes; he was happy. The rattle of the train shaped itself into a lively march. He told himself that he had found the right occupation for a young man in the Spring.
Joan, meantime, intrenched behind her magazine, was also busy with her thoughts. She was not reading the magazine; she held it before her as a protection, knowing that if she laid it down Ashe would begin to talk. And just at present she had no desire for conversation. She, like Ashe, was contemplating the immediate future, but, unlike him, was not doing so with much pleasure. She was regretting heartily that she had not resisted the temptation to uplift this young man and wishing that she had left him to wallow in the slothful peace in which she had found him.
It is curious how frequently in this world our attempts to stimulate and uplift swoop back on us and smite us like boomerangs. Ashe's presence was the direct outcome of her lecture on enterprise, and it added a complication to an already complicated venture.
She did her best to be fair to Ashe. It was not his fault that he was about to try to deprive her of five thousand dollars, which she looked on as her personal property; but illogically she found herself feeling a little hostile.
She glanced furtively at him over the magazine, choosing by ill chance a moment when he had just directed his gaze at her. Their eyes met and there was nothing for it but to talk; so she tucked away her hostility in a corner of her mind, where she could find it again when she wanted it, and prepared for the time being to be friendly. After all, except for the fact that he was her rival, this was a pleasant and amusing young man, and one for whom, until he made the announcement that had changed her whole attitude toward him, she had entertained a distinct feeling of friendship--nothing warmer.
There was something about him that made her feel that she would have liked to stroke his hair in a motherly way and straighten his tie, and have cozy chats with him in darkened rooms by the light of open fires, and make him tell her his inmost thoughts, and stimulate him to do something really worth while with his life; but this, she held, was merely the instinct of a generous nature to be kind and helpful even to a comparative stranger.
"Well, Mr. Marson," she said, "Here we are!"
"Exactly what I was thinking," said Ashe.
He was conscious of a marked increase in the exhilaration the starting of the expedition had brought to him. At the back of his mind he realized there had been all along a kind of wistful resentment at the change in this girl's manner toward him. During the brief conversation when he had told her of his having secured his present situation, and later, only a few minutes back, on the platform of Paddington Station, he had sensed a coldness, a certain hostility--so different from her pleasant friendliness at their first meeting.
She had returned now to her earlier manner and he was surprised at the difference it made. He felt somehow younger, more alive. The lilt of the train's rattle changed to a gay ragtime. This was curious, because Joan was nothing more than a friend. He was not in love with her. One does not fall in love with a girl whom one has met only three times. One is attracted--yes; but one does not fall in love.
A moment's reflection enabled him to diagnose his sensations correctly. This odd impulse to leap across the compartment and kiss Joan was not love. It was merely the natural desire of a good-hearted young man to be decently chummy with his species.
"Well, wha
t do you think of it all, Mr. Marson?" said Joan. "Are you sorry or glad that you let me persuade you to do this perfectly mad thing? I feel responsible for you, you know. If it had not been for me you would have been comfortably in Arundel Street, writing your Wand of Death."
"I'm glad."
"You don't feel any misgivings now that you are actually committed to domestic service?"
"Not one."
Joan, against her will, smiled approval on this uncompromising attitude. This young man might be her rival, but his demeanor on the eve of perilous times appealed to her. That was the spirit she liked and admired--that reckless acceptance of whatever might come. It was the spirit in which she herself had gone into the affair and she was pleased to find that it animated Ashe also--though, to be sure, it had its drawbacks. It made his rivalry the more dangerous. This reflection injected a touch of the old hostility into her manner.
"I wonder whether you will continue to feel so brave."
"What do you mean?"
Joan perceived that she was in danger of going too far. She had no wish to unmask Ashe at the expense of revealing her own secret. She must resist the temptation to hint that she had discovered his.
"I meant," she said quickly, "that from what I have seen of him Mr. Peters seems likely to be a rather trying man to work for."
Ashe's face cleared. For a moment he had almost suspected that she had guessed his errand.
"Yes. I imagine he will be. He is what you might call quick-tempered. He has dyspepsia, you know."
"I know."
"What he wants is plenty of fresh air and no cigars, and a regular course of those Larsen Exercises that amused you so much."
Joan laughed.
"Are you going to try and persuade Mr. Peters to twist himself about like that? Do let me see it if you do."
"I wish I could."
"Do suggest it to him."
"Don't you think he would resent it from a valet?"
"I keep forgetting that you are a valet. You look so unlike one."
"Old Peters didn't think so. He rather complimented me on my appearance. He said I was ordinary-looking."
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