Schoolmasters, he knew, are always anxious to build for the future. To them, the infant of to-day is the pupil at so much per of to-morrow. It would strengthen his strategic position enormously if he dangled Bingo’s baby before the man’s eyes and said:
“Upjohn, I can swing a bit of custom your way. My influence with the parents of this child is stupendous. Treat me right, and down it goes on your waiting list.” It would make all the difference.
So, waiting till Bingo’s back and Mrs Bingo’s back were turned, he scooped up Junior and started out. And presently he was ringing the front door bell of St. Asaph’s, the younger generation over his arm, concealed beneath a light overcoat. The parlourmaid showed him into the study, and he was left there to drink in the details of the well-remembered room which he had not seen for so many years.
Now, it so happened that he had hit the place at the moment when the Rev. Aubrey was taking the senior class in Bible history, and when a headmaster has got his teeth into a senior class he does not readily sheathe the sword. There was consequently a longish stage wait, and as the minutes passed Freddie began to find the atmosphere of the study distinctly oppressive.
The last time he had been in this room, you see, the set-up had been a bit embarrassing. He had been bending over a chair, while the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn, strongly posted in his rear, stood measuring the distance with half-closed eyes, preparatory to bringing the old malacca down on his upturned trousers seat. And memories like this bring with them a touch of sadness.
Outside the French window the sun was shining, and it seemed to Freddie that what was needed to dissipate the feeling of depression from which he had begun to suffer was a stroll in the garden with a cigarette. He sauntered out, accordingly, and had paced the length of the grounds and was gazing idly over the fence at the end of them, when he perceived that beyond this fence a certain liveliness was in progress.
He was looking into a small garden, at the back of which was a house. And at an upper window of this house was a girl. She was waving her arms at him.
It is never easy to convey every shade of your meaning by waving your arms at a distance of forty yards, and Freddie not unnaturally missed quite a good deal of the gist. Actually, what the girl was trying to tell him was that she had recently met at the bandstand on the pier a man called George Perkins, employed in a London firm of bookmakers doing business under the trade name of Joe Sprockett; that a mutual fondness for the Overture to Zampa had drawn them together; that she had become deeply enamoured of him; that her tender sentiments had been fully reciprocated; that her father, who belonged to a religious sect which disapproved of bookmakers, had refused to sanction the match or even to be introduced to the above Perkins; that he— her father—had intercepted a note from the devout lover, arranging for a meeting at the latter’s boarding-house (10, Marina Crescent) and a quick wedding at the local registrar’s; and that he —she was still alluding to her father—had now locked her in her room until, in his phrase, she should come to her senses. And what she wanted Freddie to do was let her out. Because good old George was waiting at 10, Marina Crescent with the licence, and if she could only link up with him they could put the thing through promptly.
Freddie, as I say, did not get quite all of this, but he got enough of it to show him that here was a damsel in distress, and he was stirred to his foundations. He had not thought that this sort of thing happened outside the thrillers, and even there he had supposed it to be confined to moated castles. And this wasn’t a moated castle by any means. It was a two-story desirable residence with a slate roof, standing in park-like grounds extending to upwards of a quarter of an acre. It looked the sort of place that might belong to a retired sea captain or possibly a drysalter.
Full of the old knight-errant spirit, for he has always been a pushover for damsels in distress, he leaped the fence with sparkling eyes. And it was only when he was standing beneath the window that he recognized in the girl who was goggling at him through the glass like some rare fish in an aquarium his old acquaintance, the substantial blonde.
The sight cooled him off considerably. He is rather a superstitious sort of chap, and he had begun to feel that this billowy curver wasn’t lucky for him. He remembered now that a gipsy had once warned him to beware of a fair woman, and for a moment it was touch and go whether he wouldn’t turn away and ignore the whole unpleasant affair. However, the old knight-errant spirit was doing its stuff, and he decided to carry on as planned. Gathering from a quick twist of her eyebrows that the key was in the outside of the door, he nipped in through the sitting-room window, raced upstairs and did the needful. And a moment later she was emerging like a cork out of a bottle and shooting down the stairs. She whizzed into the sitting-room and whizzed through the window, and he whizzed after her. And the first thing he saw as he came skimming over the sill was her galloping round the lawn, closely attended by the whiskered bloke who had scooped her out of the car in Marina Crescent. He had a three-pronged fork in his possession and was whacking at her with the handle, getting a bull’s-eye at about every second shot.
It came as a great surprise to Freddie, for he had distinctly understood from the way the girl had twiddled her fingers that her father was at the croquet club, and for a moment he paused, uncertain what to do.
He decided to withdraw. No chivalrous man likes to see a woman in receipt of a series of juicy ones with a fork handle, but the thing seemed to him one of those purely family disputes which can only be threshed out between father and daughter. He had started to edge away, accordingly, when the whiskered bloke observed him and came charging in his direction, shouting the old drysalters’ battle cry. One can follow his train of thought, of course. He supposed Freddie to be George Perkins, the lovelorn bookie, and wished to see the colour of his insides. With a good deal of emotion, Freddie saw that he was now holding the fork by the handle.
Exactly what the harvest would have been, had nothing occurred to interfere with the old gentleman’s plans, it is hard to say. But by great good fortune he tripped over a flower-pot while he was still out of jabbing distance and came an impressive purler. And before he could get right side up again, Freddie had seized the girl, hurled her over the fence, leaped the fence himself and started lugging her across the grounds of St. Asaph’s to his car, which he had left at the front door.
The going had been so good, and the substantial blonde was in such indifferent condition, that even when they were in the car and bowling off little came through in the way of conversation. The substantial blonde, having gasped out a request that he drive her to 10, Marina Crescent, lay back panting, and was still panting when they reached journey’s end. He decanted her and drove off. And it was as he drove off that he became aware of something missing. Something he should have had on his person was not on his person.
He mused.
His cigarette case?
No, he had his cigarette case.
His hat?
No, he had his hat.
His small change?…
And then he remembered. Bingo’s baby. He had left it chewing a bit of indiarubber in the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn’s study.
Well, with his nervous system still all churned up by his recent experiences, an interview with his old preceptor was not a thing to which he looked forward with anything in the nature of ecstasy, but he’s a pretty clear-thinking chap, and he realized that you can’t go strewing babies all over the place and just leave them. So he went back to St. Asaph’s and trotted round to the study window. And there inside was the Rev. Aubrey, pacing the floor in a manner which the most vapid and irreflective observer would have recognized as distraught.
I suppose practically the last thing an unmarried schoolmaster wants to find in his sanctum is an unexplained baby, apparently come for an extended visit; and the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn, on entering the study shortly after Freddie had left it and noting contents, had sustained a shock of no slight order. He viewed the situation with frank concern.
And he
was turning to pace the floor again, when he got another shock. He had hoped to be alone, to think this thing over from every angle, and there was a young man watching him from the window. On this young man’s face there was what seemed to him a sneering grin. It was really an ingratiating smile, of course, but you couldn’t expect a man in the Rev. Aubrey’s frame of mind to know that.
“Oh, hullo,” said Freddie. “You remember me, don’t you?”
“No, I do not remember you,” cried the Rev. Aubrey. “Go away.”
Freddie broadened the ingratiating smile an inch or two.
“Former pupil. Name of Widgeon.”
The Rev. Aubrey passed a weary hand over his brow. One can understand how he must have felt. First this frightful blow, I mean to say, and on top of that the re-entry into his life of a chap he hoped he’d seen the last of years and years ago.
“Yes,” he said, in a low, toneless voice. “Yes, I remember you. Widgeon.”
“F. F.”
“F., as you say, F. What do you want?”
“I came back for my baby,” said Freddie, like an apologetic plumber.
The Rev. Aubrey started.
“Is this your baby?”
“Well, technically, no. On loan, merely. Some time ago, my pal Bingo Little married Rosie M. Banks, the well-known female novelist. This is what you might call the upshot.”
The Rev. Aubrey seemed to be struggling with some powerful emotion.
“Then it was you who left this baby in my study?”
“Yes. You see—’
“Ha!” said the Rev. Aubrey, and went off with a pop, as if suffering from spontaneous combustion.
Freddie tells me that few things have impressed him more than the address to which he now listened. He didn’t like it, but it extorted a grudging admiration. Here was this man, he meant to say, unable as a clerk in Holy Orders to use any of the words which would have been at the disposal of a layman, and yet by sheer force of character rising triumphantly over the handicap. Without saying a thing that couldn’t have been said in the strictest drawing-room, the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn contrived to produce in Freddie the illusion that he had had a falling out with the bucko mate of a tramp steamer. And every word he uttered made it more difficult to work the conversation round to the subject of half-holidays.
Long before he had reached his “thirdly,” Freddie was feeling as if he had been chewed up by powerful machinery, and when he was at length permitted to back out, he felt that he had had a merciful escape. For quite a while it had seemed more than likely that he was going to be requested to bend over that chair again. And such was the Rev. Aubrey’s magnetic personality that he would have done it, he tells me, like a shot.
Much shaken, he drove back to the Bingo residence, and the first thing he saw on arriving there was Bingo standing on the steps, looking bereaved to the gills.
“Freddie,” yipped Bingo, “have you seen Algernon?”
Freddie’s mind was not at its clearest.
“No,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve run across him. Algernon who? Pal of yours? Nice chap?”
Bingo hopped like the high hills.
“My baby, you ass.”
“Oh, the good old baby? Yes, I’ve got him.”
“Six hundred and fifty-seven curses!” said Bingo. “What the devil did you want to go dashing off with him for? Do you realize we’ve been hunting for him all the morning?”
“You wanted him for something special?”
“I was just going to notify the police and have dragnets spread.” Freddie could see that an apology was in order.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Still, all’s well that ends well. Here he is. Oh no, he isn’t,” he added, having made a quick inspection of the interior of the car. “I say, this is most unfortunate. I seem to have left him again.”
“Left him?”
“What with all the talk that was going on, he slipped my mind. But I can give you his address. Care of the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn, St. Asaph’s, Mafeking Road, Bramley-on-Sea. All you have to do is step round at your leisure and collect him. I say, is lunch ready?”
“Lunch?” Bingo laughed a hideous, mirthless laugh. At least, that’s what Freddie thinks it was. It sounded like a bursting tire. “A fat lot of lunch you’re going to get. The cook’s got hysterics, the kitchen-maid’s got hysterics, and so have the parlourmaid and the housemaid. Rosie started having hysterics as early as eleven-thirty, and is now in bed with an ice pack. When she finds out about this, I wouldn’t be in your shoes for a million quid. Two million,” added Bingo. “Or, rather, three.”
This was an aspect of the matter which had not occurred to Freddie. He saw that there was a good deal in it.
“Do you know, Bingo,” he said, “I believe I ought to be getting back to London to-day.”
“I would.”
“Several things I’ve got to do there, several most important things. I dare say, if I whipped back to town, you could send my luggage after me?”
“A pleasure.”
“Thanks,” said Freddie. “You won’t forget the address, will you? St. Asaph’s, Mafeking Road. Mention my name, and say you’ve come for the baby I inadvertently left in the study. And now, I think, I ought to be getting round to see Mavis. She’ll be wondering what has become of me.”
He tooled off, and a few minutes later was entering the lobby of the Hotel Magnifique. The first thing he saw was Mavis and her father standing by a potted palm.
“Hullo, hullo,” he said, toddling up.
“Ah, Frederick,” said old Bodsham.
I don’t know if you remember, when I was telling you about that time in New York, my mentioning that at a rather sticky point in the proceedings Freddie had noticed that old Bodsham was looking like a codfish with something on its mind. The same conditions prevailed now.
“Frederick,” proceeded the Bod, “Mavis has been telling me a most unpleasant story.”
Freddie hardly knew what to say to this. He was just throwing a few sentences together in his mind about the modern girl being sound at heart despite her freedom of speech, and how there isn’t really any harm in it if she occasionally gets off one from the smoking room—tolerant, broad-minded stuff, if you know what I mean—when old Bodsham resumed.
“She tells me you have become entangled with a young woman with golden hair.”
“A fat young woman with golden hair,” added Mavis, specifying more exactly.
Freddie waved his arms passionately, like a semaphore.
“Nothing in it,” he cried. “Nothing whatever. The whole thing greatly exaggerated. Mavis,” he said, “I am surprised and considerably pained. I should have thought that you would have had more trust in me. Kind hearts are more than coronets and simple faith than Norman blood,” he went on, for he had always remembered that gag after having to write it out two hundred times at school for loosing off a stink bomb in the form-room. “I told you she was a total stranger.”
“Then how does it happen that you were driving her through the streets of Bramley in your car this morning?” said old Bedsham.
“Yes,” said Mavis. “That is what I want to know.”
“It is a point,” said old Bodsham, “upon which we would both be glad to receive information.”
Catch Freddie at a moment like this, and you catch him at his best. His heart, leaping from its moorings, had loosened one of his front teeth, but there was absolutely nothing in his manner to indicate it. His eyes, as he stared at them, were those of a spotless bimbo cruelly wronged by a monstrous accusation.
“Me?” he said incredulously.
“You,” said old Bodsham.
“I saw you myself,” said Mavis.
I doubt if there is another member of this club who could have uttered at this juncture the light, careless laugh that Freddie did.
“What an extraordinary thing,” he said. “One can only suppose that there must be somebody in this resort who resembles me so closely in appearance that the keenest e
ye is deceived. I assure you, Bod—I mean, Lord Bodsham—and you, Mavis—that my morning has been far too full to permit of my giving joy rides to blondes, even if the mere thought of doing so wouldn’t have sickened me to the very soul. The idea having crossed my mind that little Wilfred would appreciate it, I went to St. Asaph’s to ask the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn to give the school a half-holiday. I want no thanks, of course. I merely mention the matter to show how ridiculous this idea of yours is that I was buzzing about with blondes in my two-seater. The Rev. Aubrey will tell you that I was in conference with him for the dickens of a time. After which, I was in conference with my friend, Bingo Little. And after that I came here.”
There was a silence.
“Odd,” said the Bod.
“Very odd,” said Mavis.
They were plainly rattled. And Freddie was just beginning to have that feeling, than which few are pleasanter, of having got away with it in the teeth of fearful odds, when the revolving door of the hotel moved as if impelled by some irresistible force, and through it came a bulging figure in mauve, surmounted by golden hair. Reading from left to right, the substantial blonde.
“Coo!” she exclaimed, sighting Freddie. “There you are, ducky! Excuse me half a jiff,” she added to Mavis and the Bod, who had rocked back on their heels at the sight of her, and she linked her arm in Freddie’s and drew him aside.
“I hadn’t time to thank you before,” she said. “Besides being too out of breath. Papa is very nippy on his feet, and it takes it out of a girl, trying to dodge a fork handle. What luck finding you here like this. My gentleman friend and I were married at the registrar’s just after I left you, and we’re having the wedding breakfast here. And if it hadn’t been for you, there wouldn’t have been a wedding breakfast. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”
And, as if feeling that actions speak louder than words, she flung her arms about Freddie and kissed him heartily. She then buzzed off to the ladies’ room to powder her nose, leaving Freddie rooted to the spot.
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