Well, this, of course, fitted in quite neatly with his plans. He much preferred to nip in and help himself rather than explain everything at length to someone who might very easily be one of those goops who are not quick at grasping situations. Observing that the door was not locked, accordingly he pushed in and toddled up the stairs to the bedroom on the first floor.
Everything was fine. There was a cupboard by the bed, and in it an assortment of clothes which left him a wide choice. He fished out a neat creation in checked tweed, located a shirt, a tie, and a sweater in the chest of drawers and, stripping off his wet things, began to dress.
As he did so, he continued to muse on this mystery of the child Prudence. He wondered what Sherlock Holmes would have made of it, or Lord Peter Wimsey, for that matter. The one thing certain was that the moment he was clothed he must buzz out and scour the countryside for her. So with all possible speed he donned the shirt, the tie, and the sweater, and had just put on a pair of roomy but serviceable shoes when his eye, roving aimlessly about the apartment, fell upon a photograph on the mantelpiece.
It represented a young man of powerful physique seated in a chair in flimsy garments. On his face was a rather noble expression, on his lap a massive silver cup, and on his hands boxing-gloves. And in spite of the noble expression he had no difficulty in recognizing the face as that of his formidable acquaintance, Captain Bradbury.
And at this moment, just as he had realized that Fate, after being tolerably rough with him all day, had put the lid on it by leading him into his rival’s lair, he heard a sound of footsteps in the garden below. And, leaping to the window, he found his worst fears confirmed. The Captain, looking larger and tougher than ever, was coming up the gravel path to the front door. And that door, Freddie remembered with considerable emotion, he had left open.
Well, Freddie, as you know, has never been the dreamy meditative type. I would describe him as essentially the man of action. And he acted now as never before. He tells me he doubts if a chamois of the Alps, unless at the end of a most intensive spell of training, could have got down those stairs quicker than he did. He says the whole thing rather resembled an effort on the part of one of those Indian fakirs who bung their astral bodies about all over the place, going into thin air in Bombay and reassembling the parts two minutes later in Darjheeling. The result being that he reached the front door just as Captain Bradbury was coming in, and slammed it in his face. A hoarse cry, seeping through the woodwork, caused him to shoot both bolts and prop a small chair against the lower panel.
And he was just congratulating himself on having done all that man could do and handled a difficult situation with energy and tact, when a sort of scrabbling noise to the south-west came to his ears, and he realized with a sickening sinking of the heart what it means to be up against one of these Indian Army strategists, trained from early youth to do the dirty on the lawless tribes of the North-Western Frontier. With consummate military skill, Captain Bradbury, his advance checked at the front door, was trying to outflank him by oozing in through the sitting-room window.
However, most fortunately it happened that whoever washed and brushed up this house had left a mop in the hall. It was a good outsize mop, and Freddie whisked it up in his stride and shot into the sitting-room. He arrived just in time to see a leg coming over the sill. Then a face came into view, and Freddie tells me that the eyes into which he found himself gazing have kept him awake at night ever since.
For an instant, they froze him stiff, like a snake’s. Then reason returned to her throne and, recovering himself with a strong effort, he rammed the mop home, sending his adversary base over apex into a bed of nasturtiums. This done, he shut the window and bolted it.
You might have thought that with a pane of glass in between them Captain Bradbury’s glare would have lost in volume. This, Freddie tells me, was not the case. As he had now recognized his assailant, it had become considerably more above proof. It scorched Freddie like a death ray.
But the interchange of glances did not last long. These Indian Army men do not look, they act. And it has been well said of them that, while you may sometimes lay them a temporary stymie, you cannot baffle them permanently. The Captain suddenly turned and began to gallop round the corner of the house. It was plainly his intention to resume the attack from another and a less well-guarded quarter. This, I believe, is a common manœuvre on the North-West Frontier. You get your Afghan shading his eyes and looking out over the maidan, and then you sneak up the pabar behind him and catch him bending.
This decided Freddie. He simply couldn’t go on indefinitely, leaping from spot to spot, endeavouring with a mere mop to stem the advance of a foe as resolute as this Bradbury. The time had come for a strategic retreat. Not ten seconds, accordingly, after the other had disappeared, he was wrenching the front door open.
He was taking a risk, of course. There was the possibility that he might be walking into an ambush. But all seemed well. The Captain had apparently genuinely gone round to the back, and Freddie reached the gate with the comfortable feeling that in another couple of seconds he would be out in the open and in a position to leg it away from the danger zone.
All’s well that ends well, felt Freddie.
It was at this juncture that he found that he had no trousers on.
I need scarcely enlarge upon the agony of spirit which this discovery caused poor old Freddie. Apart from being the soul of modesty, he is a chap who prides himself on always being well and suitably dressed for both town and country. In a costume which would have excited remark at the Four Arts Ball in Paris, he writhed with shame and embarrassment. And he was just saying: ‘This is the end!’ when what should he see before him but a two-seater car, which he recognized as the property of his late host.
And in the car was a large rug.
It altered the whole aspect of affairs. From neck to waist, you will recall, Freddie was adequately, if not neatly, clad. The garments which he had borrowed from Captain Bradbury were a good deal too large, but at least they covered the person. In a car with that rug over his lap his outward appearance would be virtually that of the Well-Dressed Man.
He did not hesitate. He had never pinched a car before, but he did it now with all the smoothness of a seasoned professional. Springing into the driving-seat, he tucked the rug about his knees, trod on the self-starter, and was off.
His plans were all neatly shaped. It was his intention to make straight for the Blue Lion. Arrived there, a swift dash would take him through the lobby and up the stairs to his room, where no fewer than seven pairs of trousers awaited his choice. And as the lobby was usually deserted except for the growing boy who cleaned the knives and boots, a lad who could be relied on merely to give a cheery guffaw and then dismiss the matter from his mind, he anticipated no further trouble.
But you never know. You form your schemes and run them over in your mind and you can’t see a flaw in them, and then something happens out of a blue sky which dishes them completely. Scarcely had Freddie got half a mile down the road when a girlish figure leaped out of some bushes at the side, waving its arms, and he saw that it was April Carroway.
If you had told Freddie only a few hours before that a time would come when he would not be pleased to see April Carroway, he would have laughed derisively. But it was without pleasure that he looked upon her now. Nor, as he stopped the car and was enabled to make a closer inspection of the girl, did it seem as if she were pleased to see him. Why this should be so he could not imagine, but beyond a question she was not looking chummy. Her face was set, and there was an odd, stony expression in her eyes.
‘Oh, hullo!’ said Freddie. ‘So you got away from your lunch party all right.’
‘Yes.’
Freddie braced himself to break the bad news. The whole subject of the kid Prudence and her mysterious disappearance was one on which he would have preferred not to touch, but obviously it had to be done. I mean, you can’t go about the place mislaying girls’ sisters and jus
t not mention it. He coughed.
‘I say,’ he said, ‘a rather rummy thing has occurred. Odd, you might call it. With the best intentions in the world, I seem to have lost your sister Prudence.’
‘So I gathered. Well, I’ve found her.’
‘Eh?’
At this moment, a disembodied voice suddenly came from inside one of the bushes, causing Freddie to shoot a full two inches out of his seat. He tells me he remembered a similar experience having happened to Moses in the Wilderness, and he wondered if the prophet had taken it as big as he had done.
‘I’m in here!’
Freddie gaped. ‘Was that Prudence?’ he gurgled.
‘That was Prudence,’ said April coldly.
‘But what’s she doing there?’
‘She is obliged to remain in those bushes, because she has nothing on.’
‘Nothing on? No particular engagements, you mean?’
‘I mean no clothes. The horse kicked hers into the river.’
Freddie blinked. He could make nothing of this.
‘A horse kicked the clothes off her?’
‘It didn’t kick them off me,’ said the voice. ‘They were lying on the bank in a neat bundle. Miss Maitland always taught us to be neat with our clothes. You see, I was playing Lady Godiva, as you advised me to.’
Freddie clutched at his brow. He might have known, he told himself, that the moment he dropped off for a few minutes refreshing sleep this ghastly kid would be up to something frightful. And he might also have known, he reflected, that she would put the blame on him. He had studied Woman, and he knew that when Woman gets into a tight place her first act is to shovel the blame off on to the nearest male.
‘When did I ever advise you to play Lady Godiva?’
‘You told me I couldn’t go wrong in imitating any of Tennyson’s heroines.’
‘You appear to have encouraged her and excited her imagination,’ said April, giving him a look which, while it was of a different calibre from Captain Bradbury’s, was almost as unpleasant to run up against. ‘I can’t blame the poor child for being carried away.’
Freddie did another spot of brow-clutching. No wooer, he knew, makes any real progress with the girl he loves by encouraging her young sister to ride horses about the countryside in the nude.
‘But, dash it . . .’
‘Well, we need not go into that now. The point is that she is in those bushes with only a small piece of sacking over her, and is likely to catch cold. Perhaps you will be kind enough to drive her home?’
‘Oh, rather. Of course. Certainly.’
‘And put that rug over her,’ said April Carroway. ‘It may save her from a bad chill.’
The world reeled about Freddie. The voice of a donkey braying in a neighbouring meadow seemed like the mocking laughter of demons. The summer breeze was still murmuring through the tree-tops and birds still twittered in the hedgerows, but he did not hear them.
He swallowed a couple of times.
‘I’m sorry . . .’
April Carroway was staring at him incredulously. It was as if she could not believe her ears.
‘You don’t mean to say that you refuse to give up your rug to a child who is sneezing already?’
‘I’m sorry . . .’
‘Do you realize . . .’
‘I’m sorry . . . Cannot relinquish rug . . . Rheumatism . . . Bad . . . In the knee-joints . . . Doctor’s orders . . .’
‘Mr Widgeon,’ said April Carroway imperiously, ‘give me that rug immediately!’
An infinite sadness came into Frederick Widgeon’s eyes. He gave the girl one long, sorrowful look – a look in which remorse, apology, and a lifelong devotion were nicely blended. Then, without a word, he put the clutch in and drove on, out into the sunset.
Somewhere on the outskirts of Wibbleton-in-the-Vale, when the dusk was falling and the air was fragrant with the evening dew, he managed to sneak a pair of trousers from a scarecrow in a field. Clad in these, he drove to London. He is now living down in the suburbs somewhere, trying to grow a beard in order to foil possible pursuit from Captain Bradbury.
And what he told me to say was that, if anybody cares to have an only slightly soiled copy of the works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, at a sacrifice price, he is in the market. Not only has he taken an odd dislike to this particular poet, but he had a letter from April Carroway this morning, the contents of which have solidified his conviction that the volume to which I allude is of no further use to owner.
4 THE AMAZING HAT MYSTERY
A BEAN WAS in a nursing-home with a broken leg as the result of trying to drive his sports-model Poppenheim through the Marble Arch instead of round it, and a kindly Crumpet had looked in to give him the gossip of the town. He found him playing halma with the nurse, and he sat down on the bed and took a grape, and the Bean asked what was going on in the great world.
‘Well,’ said the Crumpet, taking another grape, ‘the finest minds in the Drones are still wrestling with the great Hat mystery.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You don’t mean you haven’t heard about it?’
‘Not a word.’
The Crumpet was astounded. He swallowed two grapes at once in his surprise.
‘Why, London’s seething with it. The general consensus of opinion is that it has something to do with the Fourth Dimension. You know how things go. I mean to say, something rummy occurs and you consult some big-brained bird and he wags his head and says “Ah! The Fourth Dimension!” Extraordinary nobody’s told you about the great Hat mystery.’
‘You’re the first visitor I’ve had. What is it, anyway? What hat?’
‘Well, there were two hats. Reading from left to right, Percy Wimbolt’s and Nelson Cork’s.’
The Bean nodded intelligently.
‘I see what you mean. Percy had one, and Nelson had the other.’
‘Exactly. Two hats in all. Top hats.’
‘What was mysterious about them?’
‘Why, Elizabeth Bottsworth and Diana Punter said they didn’t fit.’
‘Well, hats don’t sometimes.’
‘But these came from Bodmin’s.’
The Bean shot up in bed. ‘What?’
‘You mustn’t excite the patient,’ said the nurse, who up to this point had taken no part in the conversation.
‘But, dash it, nurse,’ cried the Bean, ‘you can’t have caught what he said. If we are to give credence to his story, Percy Wimbolt and Nelson Cork bought a couple of hats at Bodmin’s – at Bodmin’s, I’ll trouble you – and they didn’t fit. It isn’t possible.’
He spoke with strong emotion, and the Crumpet nodded understandingly. People can say what they please about the modern young man believing in nothing nowadays, but there is one thing every right-minded young man believes in, and that is the infallibility of Bodmin’s hats. It is one of the eternal verities. Once admit that it is possible for a Bodmin hat not to fit, and you leave the door open for Doubt, Schism, and Chaos generally.
‘That’s exactly how Percy and Nelson felt, and it was for that reason that they were compelled to take the strong line they did with E. Bottsworth and D. Punter.’
‘They took a strong line, did they?’
‘A very strong line.’
‘Won’t you tell us the whole story from the beginning?’ said the nurse.
‘Right ho,’ said the Crumpet, taking a grape. ‘It’ll make your head swim.’
‘So mysterious?’
‘So absolutely dashed uncanny from start to finish.’
You must know, to begin with, my dear old nurse (said the Crumpet), that these two blokes, Percy Wimbolt and Nelson Cork, are fellows who have to exercise the most watchful care about their lids, because they are so situated that in their case there can be none of that business of just charging into any old hattery and grabbing the first thing in sight. Percy is one of those large, stout, outsize chaps with a head like a water-melon, while Nelson is built more on the lines of a mi
nor jockey and has a head like a peanut.
You will readily appreciate, therefore, that it requires an artist hand to fit them properly and that is why they have always gone to Bodmin. I have heard Percy say that his trust in Bodmin is like the unspotted faith of a young curate in his Bishop and I have no doubt that Nelson would have said the same, if he had thought of it.
It was at Bodmin’s door that they ran into each other on the morning when my story begins.
‘Hullo,’ said Percy. ‘You come to buy a hat?’
‘Yes,’ said Nelson. ‘You come to buy a hat?’
‘Yes.’ Percy glanced cautiously about him, saw that he was alone (except for Nelson, of course) and unobserved, and drew closer and lowered his voice. ‘There’s a reason!’
‘That’s rummy,’ said Nelson. He, also, spoke in a hushed tone. ‘I have a special reason, too.’
Percy looked warily about, and lowered his voice another notch.
‘Nelson,’ he said, ‘you know Elizabeth Bottsworth?’
‘Intimately,’ said Nelson.
‘Rather a sound young potato, what?’
‘Very much so.’
‘Pretty.’
‘I’ve often noticed it.’
‘Me, too. She is so small, so sweet, so dainty, so lively, so viv—what’s-the-word? – that a fellow wouldn’t be far out in calling her an angel in human shape.’
‘Aren’t all angels in human shape?’
‘Are they?’ said Percy, who was a bit foggy on angels. ‘Well, be that as it may,’ he went on, his cheeks suffused to a certain extent, ‘I love that girl, Nelson, and she’s coming with me to the first day of Ascot, and I’m relying on this new hat of mine to do just that extra bit that’s needed in the way of making her reciprocate my passion. Having only met her so far at country-houses, I’ve never yet flashed upon her in a topper.’
Young Men in Spats Page 7