How true this is. It was what we saw happen in the case of Gordon Carlisle, and it had happened with Packy. Immediately on his return to the Château, he had started out on a walk which, lasting as it did for several hours, had caused him to absent himself from the dinner table. The dinner hour had come and gone without his noticing it. If he gave it a thought, it was merely to let his mind rest for an instant on the idea of food and then wince disgustedly away again.
And now, in the small hours, sitting smoking at his window, he was surprised and a little revolted to find that the agony had abated to so noticeable an extent that it was only by prodding his wounded soul that he could still succeed in feeling adequately miserable.
This change of mood puzzled him. It would not have puzzled Schwertfeger.
'The long and muscle-exercising walk concluded,' writes Schwertfeger, 'and the subject having to his room in much physical exhaustion returned, it now frequently happens that he will in a chair with his feet up sit and a pipe light, and in 65.09 per cent of cases examined it has been established that at this point he will with clarity and a sudden falling of scales from the eyes the position of affairs re-examine and to the conclusion will come that he is auge davonkommen' – or, as we should say in English, hazarding a translation of an untranslatable phrase, 'jolly well out of it.'
And it was this stage that Packy had now reached.
For several hours after his parting with Beatrice gloom had enveloped Packy Franklyn like a fog. Now, abruptly, he had begun to feel absolutely fine.
He marshalled the facts. Beatrice had broken off their engagement. There was no getting round that. But – and this was the point, he saw, that hitherto he had overlooked – what of it? The more he examined the thing from this angle, the more clearly did he perceive that, so far from being a tragedy, what had occurred was nothing more nor less than the good, old-fashioned happy ending. For the second time in his career as a wooer, it was plain, Fate had granted him a most fortunate escape. To have become the husband of the present Mrs Scott – or Pott – or even Bott – would have been bad. Would it have been any better to have become the husband of Lady Beatrice Bracken, of Worbles, Dorsetshire?
All that business of enlarging his soul....All those concerts and picture galleries... .That marked tendency of hers to thrust him into the society of the side-whiskered and intellectual. ... Would not these be things which, after the first fire of passion had died down, might make a man consider that in replying in the affirmative to the clergyman's 'Wilt thou?' he had given the wrong and injudicious answer?
Undoubtedly.
And her family – what of them? Was not a man to be congratulated rather than pitied who had escaped a lifetime of the huntin', shootin', and fishin' anecdotes of the Earl of Stableford, the parish gossip of Lady Stableford, the searching eye and nasty cracks of that pre-eminent blister, the Lady Gwendolyn Blinkhorn?
A thousand times yes, felt Packy, and a sudden great peace seemed to descend upon him. It was as if he had taken off a pair of tight shoes.
The fragments of his broken heart came together with a click, as good as new. And at the same moment he became aware of a soft, insistent knocking. The door opened, and Jane Opal came in.
'Sh!' she said.
2
She closed the door.
'Sh!' she said again.
The admonition was unnecessary. Packy could not have spoken. Like Soup Slattery, now softly making his way to the balcony of the Venetian Room, he was in an agony of remorse, and it completely deprived him of speech.
For hours and hours, he realized, he had not given this girl so much as a thought. Concentrated on his own selfish sorrow, he had neglected altogether the consideration of her distress, of the blow she must have received when her father informed her that Soup Slattery had torn up his contract and that there was now no hope of recovering the letter, on the recovery of which her happiness depended. It was a reflection that did not make him think well of himself.
He eyed her mournfully. She was wearing a blue negligee, and in a blue negligee, as the records have already shown, she looked charming. So charming, indeed, that something suddenly seemed to explode inside Packy like a bomb, and remorse was swept away on the tide of another emotion.
Let us turn to Schwertfeger for the last time.
'This stage reached,' writes Schwertfeger, concluding his remarks, 'and the subject being now in this state of earnest, eyes-raised-thankfully-to-heaven gratitude for his fortunate escape, it is extremely probable that he will immediately in love with somebody else fall.'
But Packy would have denied that he had fallen in love. It was his view that he had loved this girl all the time without happening to notice it. He saw now that the Vicomte de Blissac had been right, that Mr Slattery had been right, that Beatrice had been right. Even the Senator had been right, though working on false premises. They had all assumed that he was in love with Jane Opal, and how unerring their instinct had been. Nobody could have been more surprised than himself, but it was a fact – and he recognized it – that Jane, if not the only girl he had ever loved, was most certainly the girl he loved now.
He gazed at her emotionally. He saw wherein her attraction lay. In the past, now this and now that attribute had lured him in the girls he had met. Jane had everything. The vivacity which had been the charm of Mrs Scott (or Pott or Bott)... she had that. The thoroughbred quality of Lady Beatrice Bracken... she had that, too. And in addition there were all the bewitchments that were hers alone. She was a sort of macédoine of everything feminine that he most admired. She was one hundred per cent, the right girl, the only possible girl, the girl he had been looking for all his life. She was absolutely It.
Against all which, however, must be set the fact that she was in love with Blair Eggleston.
It was a jarring thought to intrude on the moment of a man's realization that he has found his soul-mate, but it did intrude, and it sent Packy back into his chair as if he had been hamstrung.
'What's the matter?' asked Jane anxiously.
'Nothing,' said Packy.
Jane had gone to the door and was listening. Satisfied by the quiet without, she came back, her face determined.
'I was talking to Father to-night,' she said.
Packy nodded sadly.
'He told me your friend Mr Slattery had refused to get that letter. And he told me you had told him that Mrs Gedge's room would be empty to-night.'
Packy nodded again.
That,' he said, 'is the bitter thought. I worked like a dog to that end, and now it's all no use.'
'You have been wonderful,' said Jane. 'You've been wonderful all along. I don't think I've ever admired anybody so much.'
Her eyes were shining, and Packy averted his gaze. In the circumstances, he felt, the less he saw of shining eyes, the better. The Honour of the Franklyns was just equal to the task of keeping him from picking this girl up in his arms and kissing her, if he looked the other way. It was best not to put too great a strain upon it. That blue negligee alone had been sufficient to make it wobble.
'And it isn't all no use,' continued Jane, 'because everything's fine.'
This remarkable statement succeeded in overcoming Packy's resolve not to look at her. He looked, and his tortured spirit moaned within him. She was standing with her chin up and her eyes sparkling, and the blue negligee was bluer than ever. He looked away again.
'Because, I mean, when Father told me that, I had an idea. I thought, "Well, darn it, there was a burglary in the house only a couple of nights ago, so she can't think it funny if I'm nervous." So I went to Miss Putnam and told her I wanted to put my brooch and things in Mrs Gedge's safe because I was frightened of having them lying around loose. And she said certainly, of course, and she took me to Mrs Gedge's room and opened the safe and put the things in. And I watched her all the time, and what she did was she sort of twiddled a bit and there was a sound like something dropping, and then she twiddled some more and the door came open. I'm sure I c
an remember how it was done. So what I mean is, why shouldn't we go there now and have a try?'
Packy could not speak. The thought that a girl capable of thinking up a fast one like that should be madly throwing herself away on Blair Eggleston, a man who wore side whiskers and, if the truth were known, was probably a secret beret-wearer as well, was infinitely saddening.
And to secure the Senator's letter would be to remove all obstacles to their union.
He bit the bullet. The Queen could do no wrong. If she wished thus to throw herself away, so be it. And if Fate in its irony insisted that he must be the one to help her do so, the thing had to be faced.
He saw now the part he must play. He must stand by her to the end, and then join her hands to Blair Eggleston's and give them his blessing and wander out into the sunset with a stifled gulp of renunciation. And many years later a white-haired wanderer would peer through the hedge of an old-world garden and see children playing on the lawn with their mother – grey now, but still beautiful – and would wipe away a tear and pluck a rosebud from a bush and place it next his heart and go off and do a lot of good somewhere.
But he wished it had been someone except Blair Eggleston.
Jane misinterpreted his silence.
'Don't you think it's worth trying?'
Packy came to himself with a start.
'Of course, it's worth trying.'
'Then what are we waiting for?'
'We aren't waiting,' said Packy. 'Come on.'
3
Soup Slattery stood gazing at the dim figure, and it is interesting to record that his first emotion on beholding it was one of almost maudlin pity. Unable to distinguish anything for the moment beyond a shapeless outline, he had leaped to the conclusion that Packy, deprived of his professional aid, was trying as a forlorn hope to accomplish something in his blundering amateur way for himself And the pathos of the thing touched his kindly heart. He felt like a father brooding benevolently over his infant son.
Then the figure turned for an instant; the light of the torch disclosed the features of Gordon Carlisle: and Mr Slattery ceased to feel paternal.
Mention has already been made of the dislike Soup Slattery had for trade rivals. For partners and business associates who suddenly displayed themselves in that capacity his antipathy can scarcely be expressed in words. The discovery that Gordon Carlisle, whom he had trusted freely, was attempting to double-cross him was so unnerving that he had to sit down on the balcony wall to assimilate it.
For that this was Mr Carlisle's purpose Soup Slattery had no sort of doubt. Not once had the other given him so much as a hint that he, too, possessed the ability to open safes. Right from the start, therefore, he must have been planning this vile betrayal: and there and then Soup Slattery added another maxim to that little store of wisdom which he had been accumulating in the course of an active life. Never again, he told himself, would he trust Confidence Trick men. They weren't honest.
But this was not the time for moralizing. Action was demanded. He rose and approached the curtains once more, and without a sound drew them apart and stepped into the room. Only when he had tip-toed to within a few feet of Mr Carlisle's bent back did he speak.
His actual observation it is not necessary to record. It was Biblical in its general nature and delivered through clenched teeth. It is sufficient to say that it caused Gordon Carlisle to jump like a Mexican bean.
From the very beginning of this undertaking, Gordon Carlisle had been extremely nervous. This sort of thing was out of his line, and he did not like it. Only the thought of what his Gertie would say if he backed out had been able to steel him to the task. As he twisted the handle of the safe and listened for the falling of the tumblers, not even the knowledge that Gertie was outside in the passage, keeping watch, had been able to soothe his agitation. Subconsciously, he was expecting anything to happen at any moment.
But he had never expected anything like this. In all his mental list of the unpleasant things which might occur he had not included the possible appearance of Soup Slattery. It seemed to him, as he heard the other's voice, that it was only the fact of his teeth having snapped together with his tongue in between them that had prevented his heart leaping out of his mouth.
It was Mr Slattery who for the next few minutes monopolized the conversation. In a stream of well-selected words his opinion of his friend's duplicity rumbled hollowly through the room. The occasion was one when the orator would have preferred to express himself at the full capacity of his lungs, but the circumstances of the encounter precluded that.
Even when whispered, however, Mr Slattery's remarks were effective. After all, when you are calling a man a low-down, horn-swoggling, double-crossing skunk, it is the actual words that count, not the volume of sound.
Gordon Carlisle edged back against the wall. He was not a sensitive man, and mere verbal criticism had never hurt him yet. But what was weighing on his mind was the growing suspicion that all this was mere preamble. All too soon, he feared, the speaker would realize the futility of talk and proceed to action. And he was aware what the word 'action' signified in the simple lexicon of Soup Slattery.
And then suddenly hope dawned. Behind Mr Slattery's menacing form he perceived that his Gertie had stolen silently into the room, and – what was so particularly reassuring – she was carrying in her hand a good, stout vase.
From hard-won experience, Gordon Carlisle knew what his loved one could do with a vase. And this was a particularly large, hard, thick, solid vase, in every way superior to the one which a year ago she had bounced on his head. It was one of those vases which a Zulu chieftain would have been perfectly satisfied to make shift with while his knobkerrie was being cleaned at the club-maker's. The impact of it on a skull even so tough as that of Mr Slattery could scarcely fail to produce results, especially when wielded by one who believed in taking the full Vardon swing and getting plenty of follow-through.
All that was needed was for him to keep the prospective victim's attention engaged for just those few seconds which would enable this Angel of Mercy to gauge the distance and take her stance. And so stimulated was Mr Carlisle by the sight of rescue so close at hand that inspiration descended on him.
'No, no!' he said protestingly. 'You got me wrong, Soup, you got me wrong.'
He saw that the girl behind the vase had stepped on to the tee and had begun her preliminary waggle, and the sight lent him eloquence.
'Surely you don't think I'd double-cross you, Soupie? It was like this. After you told me what had happened that other night – you out on the window-sill and all – I said to myself: "The way it looks to me, poor old Soup may feel he don't want to come visiting here again...."'
Mr Slattery's was a single-track mind.
'Why didn't you wise me up that you could open petes?'
'I can't open petes.' Mr Carlisle's voice was all musical reassurance. 'But some guy once told me that if you listened for the tumblers you could get the combination, and I thought it was worth trying. You see, after what happened that night, it struck me that you might want to wish yourself out of the thing and...'
He had no need to say more. And if he had said more he would have been addressing an inattentive audience. There was a sound like the collision of two heavy pieces of wood, and Soup Slattery slid to the floor. Mr Carlisle expelled a long, whistling breath and passed the sleeve of his coat across his forehead.
''At-a-girl!' he said reverently.
His bride-to-be had no leisure to listen to verbal tributes. She was as brisk as Lady Macbeth giving instructions on what to do with the guest in the spare bedroom.
'Push him under the bed and get a move on,' she said crisply. 'I'll look after the broken china. You've got to work quick, Oily. Somebody may have heard that smash. How long'll it take you getting that thing open?'
'Coupla minutes.'
'Then snap into it. I'll be going down to the car. We may have to run for it any minute now.'
She hurried through the
curtains, and Mr Carlisle, having disposed of his unfortunate friend as directed, returned to the safe.
His boast that only a period of two minutes would be required for its opening was completely justified. Ninety seconds had not gone by when the steel door swung free, revealing the interior.
And it was at this moment that there came to his straining ears the sound of soft footsteps in the passage outside.
Gordon Carlisle was primarily a man of intellect, but he could act. He switched off the torch and joined Mr Slattery under the bed.
He was not in darkness long. A half-minute later, light flooded the room. Somebody had pressed the electric button by the door.
4
It was Packy who had pressed the electric button. Arrived at his destination with the door shut behind him, he saw no reason why the proceedings should not take place with the fullest illumination possible. The house was asleep, and nobody could see through those curtains that the room was lighted.
All seemed quiet on the Venetian front. Despite her haste, the efficient Gertie had gathered up every vestige of the broken vase, and the hangings of the bed, reaching to within an inch of the floor, effectually concealed the Messrs. Slattery and Carlisle. Nevertheless, there came to Packy that same feeling of unreasoning nervousness which had gripped him on his first visit to this room. Now that he had actually met Mrs Gedge, the intimidating atmosphere of this boudoir of hers seemed intensified.
Jane, whose reaction to the vibrations of a woman's room was less pronounced, had hurried to the safe. And now, observing its condition, she uttered a squeak of astonishment.
'Why, it's open!'
Packy, too, had made a discovery.
'So,' he pointed out, 'is the window.'
Jane's eyes met his. He was touched to note that, brave girl though she was, she moved a little closer to him.
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