In the end Campion sat down and worked it out for him.
3
The Hat Trick
MR CAMPION RECEIVED the hat as a sentimental tribute. Mrs Wynyard pressed it into his hand at her farewell party at the Braganza on the night before she sailed home to New York.
‘I want you to have it,’ she said, her curly white head held on one side and her plump hand resting lightly on the sleeve of his tail coat. ‘It’s exclusive. I got it from old Wolfgarten in one of those cute little streets off Bond Street, and he gave me his solemn word by everything he feels to be holy that it’s quite unique. There’s not another one in the world, and I want you to keep it to remind you of me and Mr Honeyball and the grand times we’ve had this trip.’
Hubert Wynyard, who was so good-humoured that he let his wife call him anything, even ‘Mr Honeyball’, winked at Campion across his glass.
‘So now you know,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about a speech of thanks. Time’s short. Where’s that confounded wine waiter?’
So Campion pocketed the hat, which was less than half an inch high and made of onyx, with a cunningly carved agate where the opening for the head should have been, and thought no more about it.
He found it again next time he put on full war paint, which was for the first night of Lorimer’s Carry Over at the Sovereign Theatre. The occasion was so smart that he was beginning to feel that ‘sticky’ might be the term for it when the curtain descended on the second act and someone touched him on the shoulder. It turned out to be Peter Herrick, looking a trifle pink and disconcerted, which was unusual in one normally so very elegantly at ease.
‘I say, old man, I need a spot of support,’ he muttered. ‘Can you come?’
There was a note of genuine supplication in the plea, and Campion excused himself from his party and joined him.
‘What’s up? Going to start a fight?’
His whisper was respectfully amused as they pressed their way through the noisy, perfumed crowd in the corridor.
‘I hope not. As a matter of fact that’s what I’m trying to avoid. It’s social support I need.’
Peter had edged into a convenient corner between a gilt settee and an enormous basket of hydrangeas. He was a trifle red about the ears and his vivid blue eyes, which lent his young face most of its charm, were laughing but embarrassed.
‘I suddenly caught sight of you,’ he said, ‘and I realised you were probably the one man in the world of whom one could ask such a damn silly thing and not get cut for the rest of one’s life. Come and back me up like a good bloke. You couldn’t look like a duke or something, could you?’
‘I don’t see why not.’ Mr Campion’s lean face took on an even more vacant expression. ‘What’s the idea? Whom do I impress?’
‘You’ll see.’ Peter was grim. ‘I’m suspect, old boy. I’m not the thing. Not – er – quite it, don’t you know. I think someone’s spread it around that my old man’s a bobby.’
Campion’s eyebrows appeared above his horn-rimmed spectacles and he began to laugh. Major Herrick was well known to him as one of the Assistant Commissioners and one of the more poker-backed of his acquaintances, while Peter’s worst enemy, if he had one, which seemed unlikely, could scarcely accuse him of being unpresentable. The whole situation seemed to Campion to have the elements of humour and he said so, delicately.
‘But also very charming,’ he added cheerfully. ‘All olde worlde and young-man-what-are-your-intentions. Must you bother about the woman? There is a woman, I take it?’
Peter shot a revealing glance at him.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘but you wait until you see her. I met her on a boat and then I lost her. Now I’ve found her again at last, and there’s this insane old father and the incredible tick of a fellow they’re touting around with them. Come on, old boy, do your stuff. I’m out of my depth altogether. Prudence is embarrassed, and the other two have to be seen to be believed.’
A trifle under two minutes later Campion was inclined to agree with half the final statement. Old Mr Thomas K. Burns was not unbelievable, Norman Whitman was. As for Prudence Burns, he took one look at her slender red-headed loveliness and was prepared to sympathise with any enthusiasm which Peter might evince. The girl was a raving beauty of the modern type. She sat on her gold chair in Box B and smiled up at him with humour and intelligence as well as embarrassment in her brown eyes.
Her escorts were far less pleasant to meet. Old Mr Burns was a plain man in every sense of the word who had made an enormous amount of money in South Africa. He was in the midst of recounting these two obvious facts to Campion immediately after their introduction when a warning frown from the third member of his party silenced him as though a hand had been placed over his mouth, leaving him deflated and at sea. He turned helplessly, with an appealing flicker in his small grey eyes.
‘This ’ere – I should say, this gentleman is Mr Norman Whitman,’ he said, and paused for the name to take effect.
Entirely because he felt it was expected of him, Campion looked interested, while Norman Whitman favoured him with a supercilious stare. Campion was puzzled. He saw a plumpish, consequential little person with sleek hair and a pale face in which the eyeglass was a definite mistake. He was well dressed, not to say natty, and from the toes of his shoes to the highlight on his prominent white forehead he was polished until he shone. His voice, which was high, was so carefully modulated as to sound affected, and altogether he exuded an atmosphere of conceit and self-importance which was quite insufferable.
‘I have not had the pleasure of meeting you before,’ he said, making the announcement sound like an accusation. ‘Not very good acting, is it? I’m afraid poor Emily is a sad disappointment.’
Campion had thought that Dame Emily Storm’s performance was well up to its usual standard of polished perfection, and said so.
‘She always says she’s very nervous on first nights,’ he added.
‘Oh, do you know her?’ There was real excitement and hero-worship in Prudence Burns’s inquiry, and a quality of youthful naîveté in her eagerness which made Campion like her.
‘My dear child, not the stage!’ Norman Whitman shook an admonishing finger at the girl and she stared at him blankly, as did they all save old Mr Burns, who said somewhat hurriedly, ‘I should think not. Not likely,’ and assumed a virtuous expression which was patently false and ill suited to his round, red face.
The incredible Norman leant over the side of the box.
‘Isn’t that the Countess?’ he exclaimed suddenly. ‘Is it? Why, of course. Yes, it is. You must all excuse me a moment. I really must go and say “Hello”.’
He bustled off and Mr Burns moved into his place and looked down at the frothing pool of clothes and their owners in the stalls below. There was something almost pathetic in his interest, a quality of small-boyishness which Campion found disarming. Peter was less sympathetic. He looked scandalised and crossed over to the girl at once. It seemed only charitable to give him a moment or so, and Campion gallantly concentrated on the father.
Mr Burns glanced up at him and looked away again.
‘He’s not there yet,’ he said and hesitated, adding abruptly because of his embarrassment, ‘do you see her?’
‘Who?’
‘The Countess,’ said Mr Burns, lowering his voice to a respectful whisper.
Campion became a little embarrassed also. His fingers deep in his pockets found the onyx hat, and he began to play with it, taking it out and letting it roll idly in his hand. He was standing up in the box, a little behind the old man, who seemed in danger of falling out altogether in his eagerness.
‘There he is.’ Mr Burns’s voice rose in his excitement. ‘That’s her, is it? You don’t recognise her, do you?’
‘No, I’m afraid I don’t,’ said Campion helplessly as he glanced at the large lady in the crimson cloak who had paused to speak to Norman Whitman in the crowd below. Mr Burns nodded gloomily as though he had feared as much, and Campion wa
s aware that both he and Peter had lost caste. Having stared his fill, the old man straightened himself and stepped back.
‘Better not let him catch us,’ he remarked, and coughed explosively but a trifle too late to cover the ill-advised statement. For the first time he was able to give Campion his attention.
‘You’re in business, I suppose?’ he inquired, regarding him morosely.
The tall thin man in the horn-rimmed spectacles grinned unhappily. The bourgeois gentilhomme is an age-old character who moves some people to laughter, but others are apt to find his wistful gaucherie a little dispiriting, and Campion was of the latter category. He was so anxious not to hurt in any way that he hesitated over his answer.
‘Not exactly,’ he said, casually, and flicked the little hat into the air, catching it again and rolling it over between his fingers. The gesture was so idle that he was scarcely aware that he had made it, so that Mr Burns’s reaction came as a complete surprise to him.
All he saw at first was that the old man’s eyes were positively bulging and that there were pale patches in the mottled crimson of his cheeks. The next moment Prudence’s father’s entire attitude towards his new acquaintance underwent a complete change. His depression vanished and he became more than merely friendly. Within two minutes he had offered Campion a cigar, told him his hotel, begged him to visit him, and imparted a tip for the Stock Exchange which his somewhat startled visitor happened to know was a good one. Even the young people, who were engrossed in themselves, were aware of the change in front. Indeed, Campion felt that the entire theatre must notice it. Old Mr Burns was not subtle.
In the midst of his expansiveness he glanced at Peter and, returning to Campion, jerked his head at the young man.
‘Known him long?’ he inquired with husky confiding.
‘A great many years,’ Campion assured him.
‘Oh, he’s all right then, is he?’ The red face was very serious.
‘He’s one of my best friends.’ Campion had no intention of sounding severe, but the question was bewildering and in spite of himself the words came coldly.
Mr Burns took the rebuke. ‘That’s all right then,’ he said, sighing. ‘To tell you the honest truth, I’m not exactly in my place yet. A bit out of touch.’
He glanced up shyly to see how this confidence had been received and, noting that Campion remained affable if blank, added in a conspiratorial whisper: ‘You’ve no idea what a weight off my mind that is.’
Campion began to feel that the weight on his own mind was considerable, and he was on the point of launching out into a minor campaign of discreet inquiry when the curtain bell rang and he was forced to rejoin his own party. Mr Burns let him go with great reluctance but consoled himself a little when Peter accepted his invitation to remain.
Campion hurried down the corridor in a state of complete mystification. He was used to being a success but not a riot, and the single startled glance which Peter had turned upon him at parting made him laugh whenever he thought of it, but he was thankful he had not been pressed for an explanation.
On the stairs he passed Norman Whitman. The little man was bustling back to his seat and puffing consequentially as he hurried. He glanced at Campion and nodded to him.
‘She spared me a word, the dear thing,’ he said, as if the intelligence was good news of the highest importance, and trotted on out of sight. Campion glanced after him and somewhere in the far depths of his memory something stirred only to be lost again immediately.
There are few things more irritating than an elusive impression that one has seen someone or something before, and as he went on down the staircase and re-entered the now darkened auditorium Campion walked slowly, his forehead wrinkled. Somewhere, some time had he seen that plump little figure waddling along; but where and when escaped him utterly. It was most tantalising.
He did not see Peter again that evening, but the following morning the boy telephoned while Campion was still in bed.
‘I say,’ the young voice sounded enthusiastic over the wire, ‘that was pretty sensational, wasn’t it? How did you do it?’
‘Did it last?’ Campion inquired cautiously.
‘Rather! We’re all going off to the races this morning. I’m more than grateful to you. I knew you were remarkable in many ways but I wasn’t prepared for a miracle. I’m still bewildered. Do you realise that I’d had the cold shoulder with icicles on it until you arrived? But now I’m the old man’s white-headed boy. What did you say?’
With pardonable weakness, Campion was loth to cast down his laurels.
‘Nothing much,’ he said truthfully. ‘I talked through my hat a bit, you know.’
‘I have no doubt you did, old boy,’ Peter agreed laughing, ‘but what did you actually say? Hang it all, you’ve altered the man’s entire attitude.’
‘I scarcely spoke,’ said Campion, regretting that this exactitude was hardly convincing. ‘How about the “gentleman friend”? Did you cut much ice with him?’
‘No,’ Peter’s tone carried unutterable contempt. ‘I’m afraid I scarcely noticed the little twirp. I say, you might let me know how to work the oracle.’
Since he had no idea at all and could therefore hardly be helpful, Campion thought it best to change the subject.
‘A very pretty girl,’ he ventured.
Peter rose to the bait like a salmon to a fly.
‘Amazing,’ he said warmly. ‘I don’t mind telling you I’m not coherent on the subject.’
It was nearly ten minutes later when Campion was at last allowed to hang up the receiver and he re-settled himself, grinning. Peter had under-estimated himself.
Thinking over the entire incident, Campion was inclined to wash his hands of the whole affair, putting it down as one of those odd things that do sometimes occur. There are degrees of oddness, however, and the next time the onyx hat came under his serious consideration it was in circumstances which could hardly be disregarded.
The following Wednesday was the seventeenth and on the seventeenth of September, whenever he was in London, Campion took his Aunt Eva to dinner after the Dahlia Show. This was one of those family fixtures which begin as a graceful gesture in commemoration of past favours in the way of timely financial assistance in mid-term, and may very well end as awful responsibilities; but Aunt Eva might easily have been worse. She was a spry little old lady in brown velvet and bangles, and her mind was almost entirely devoted to horticulture, whereas, of course, it might easily have been Pekinese or other people’s love affairs.
It was a time-honoured arrangement between them that she should choose the restaurant and, because of her preference for flower names, they sometimes dined well and sometimes appallingly, which was why Campion was not particularly astonished when he arrived at her hotel to find her all set, in garnets and gold galloon, to visit the Gillyflower.
‘I warn you it may be expensive,’ she said, settling herself in the taxi, ‘but I remembered poor Marchant left you all that money in the spring, so I dare say you can afford it. Don’t hesitate to mention it, my dear boy, if you’d rather not.’
‘Darling, I can’t think of a place in which I should enjoy seeing you more,’ he assured her, and spoke with a certain amount of truth, for the Gillyflower was an exotic bloom and he was interested to see what she would make of it.
He had visited the place once himself about three months before, just after it opened, and had found it flashy, exorbitant and badly staffed, but there had been an air of ultra-smart sophistication about it which he thought might possibly strike a new note after the homely sobriety of the Manor House dining-room.
They found the place noisy but not crowded. It did not yet exude the cold depression of failure, but neither was there the cheerful blare of assured success. Aunt Eva was able to choose a table with an excellent view of the floral display round the band platform, although it gave her only an oblique angle on the cabaret. All the same the meal was not one of their triumphs. The staff still left much to be de
sired and the food, although quite extraordinarily pretentious, was certainly not cooked by a master.
The quality of the service began to irritate Campion about half-way through the meal. A dirty plate, a forgotten order, a leaking ice-pail, two delays, and impossibly cold coffee reduced him by slow stages to a state of politely repressed irritation, and he was relieved that Aunt Eva was too happily engrossed in her subject for the evening, which appeared to be the merits of ground bones as a fertiliser, to notice the many defects in the meal.
However, what with one thing and another it was a trying experience for Campion, and while he was waiting patiently for the second brew of coffee and the wine waiter his fingers encountered the onyx hat and he took it out and began to play with it, rolling it over and over upon the table-cloth.
The first thing that happened was that the waiter spilt the coffee. Campion drew back wearily and looked up to receive his second surprise. He was prepared for some sort of apology but not for abnegation. The unfortunate man was green. He grovelled. He all but wept, and from that moment the Gillyflower appeared to belong to Mr Campion.
The change was astounding. The head waiter appeared at his elbow in solicitous friendliness, myrmidons arrived on all sides showering little attentions like so many sallow amorelli, Aunt Eva received a bouquet of Lady Forteviot roses, and Campion was tempted with a Napoleon fine from a bottle which certainly looked as though it had seen Paris, if not the siege. There was no doubt at all about their sudden rise to importance as guests of the Gillyflower and Campion’s eyes grew thoughtful behind his spectacles as he turned the charm over and over.
‘That’s a nice little hat,’ remarked Aunt Eva, smiling over her roses.
‘Isn’t it?’ said Campion. ‘A smart little hat, not to say clever.’
Just how clever it was, however, lay as yet unrevealed. That surprise came later when the lady went off to collect her old-fashioned sables and Campion glanced down at a bill for three pounds, seventeen shillings and one penny. On his nod of acceptance the waiter took the bill away. There was no charge, of course, he said, and seemed hurt that the guest should suggest it. ‘But naturally,’ no charge at all.
Mr Campion & Others Page 6