The Incredible Crime

by Lois Austen-Leigh

  “I assure you,” replied Temple earnestly, “I always pay her very particular court; I invariably see her when I pass her in the street, and take off my hat.”

  “Yes, my dear fellow,” said Thomas Skipwith helplessly, “but don’t you do that for every lady you know? There’s nothing particular in that.”

  “Every lady I know!” exclaimed Temple, in undisguised surprise, and not a little indignation; “if I took off my hat to every woman I have met in Cambridge, I should never have done. No,” he added firmly, “I simply don’t see the others.”

  No, thought Skipwith, I can well believe it. But what was he to say?

  “I even went further than that the other day,” Professor Temple went on, nervously trying to help his embarrassment by being busy with his pipe. “I met her struggling against wind and rain in the backs and offered to hold her umbrella for her…I did think of offering her my arm,” looking anxiously at Skipwith, “but I hardly liked to go as far as that,” he added humbly.

  “Good God, Temple!” exclaimed Skipwith, suddenly moved to indignation and pity.

  This man who had done, and was doing, invaluable work for the human race, who was consulted and sought after by savants from all over the world, to be behaving like a helpless child, and throwing away his attention on some probably quite worthless girl. The thought of it made Skipwith feel really angry, though quite with whom he would have been puzzled to say.

  “I am not the man to help you, but if you would only let her, my wife would. You know you need never tell her who the girl—lady,” he hastily corrected himself, “is, and I am quite sure she hasn’t the least idea,” added the guileless man.

  Professor Temple pulled at his pipe for some time without speaking; then he finally said: “I could rely in that case on your wife not speaking of it to anyone?”

  “Yes,” said Skipwith. “If my wife gives you her word, you can rely on it, and I think she really might help you.”

  “I am due at a wine-tasting lunch at St. Asaph’s. Would Mrs. Skipwith be at home about four o’clock?” And so they arranged it.

  Skipwith went off with a sigh of relief. Never, never, he thought, had he felt more helpless. Temple, of all men in the world! It was outrageous that a man of his weight and intellect should take so humble a line about a girl. Whoever she was, she would be very lucky to get him; but it was a situation he felt Susan could cope with better than himself. Susan thought so too when he finally broke the news to her, but there their opinions ceased to coincide.

  “What are you doing this afternoon?” her husband had said to her at lunch.

  “It’s my afternoon at the Art School,” she replied.

  “Well, do you think you could get out of it?”

  “Why should I?”

  “The fact of the matter is, Temple wants to come and call on you this afternoon. He—”

  “Professor Temple!” exclaimed Susan in extreme surprise. “Well, it’ll be the first time in his life he ever has called on me, though he’s dined here often enough.”

  “Be reasonable, Susan. You know you can’t expect a man like…”

  “No, darling, I don’t expect, but what does he want with me this afternoon?”

  And then Skipwith told her.

  “Poor, poor old fellow,” drawled Susan slowly and very kindly.

  “Here, less of that ‘old,’” said her husband in some indignation; “he’s only two or three years senior to me.”

  “I know, dear, but it’s quite impossible to believe as long as he looks as he does, and…well…as far as age goes, it wouldn’t be quite impossible.”

  “How can you possibly know? It’s probably some disgusting little flapper he’s proposing to throw himself away on; men of his age generally do.”

  “It’s not a disgusting flapper, Thomas,” said Susan, “and she certainly won’t look at him!”

  “Woman,” said her husband, “do you mean to tell me you know who it is?”

  “Learned old stupid, I do. I still enjoy the use of my wits, and, to a limited extent, of my eyes, and I don’t go about the world with them shut, as you do. You might have seen all I have, if you had chosen to look.”

  “Susan,” reiterated Thomas, “tell me who it is.”

  His wife would have liked to delay the information a little longer while she expressed her mean opinion of the Professor, but seeing that her husband was really anxious to know, she relented and told him.

  “Prudence!” he exclaimed, entirely surprised. “Prudence!…Good God!…Who’d have thought it? I hadn’t a notion at all.”

  “No,” said his wife dryly, “I am sure you had not.”

  “Has she any idea, do you think? Because I gathered from poor Temple his difficulty was that she hadn’t.”

  “No,” said Susan, “I am sure the idea has not occurred to her. What with her position and good looks, she is used to a good deal of attention, and has probably never given old Temple a thought. Oh, well, all right, then, not old! To tell you the truth,” she added, “I have only just noticed it myself.”

  “Are you sure it’s Prudence?”

  “Yes. The other night, when we were dining out, I noticed he was watching her the whole time, even when he was talking to other people.”

  “Well,” said Thomas, getting up and standing in front of the fire, while he rattled his money in his pockets, “it wouldn’t be such a bad thing—a slight disparity in age certainly, but community of interests, and the Master is getting an old man; he can’t live for ever.”

  “Thomas,” exclaimed his wife in real indignation. “That horrid old man; there’s not a single advantage in it for Prudence; she’s too independent now to marry.”

  “So she may be, but that’s Temple’s look-out. If a fine man like him wants her, she ought to be only too thankful.”

  “If you are going to talk like that, I shall leave the room.”

  Skipwith laughed. “Seriously, you women go far too much by looks. What does his appearance matter when you think of his intellect? He began with getting the Newcastle from Eton, and he’s won every honour that came in his way ever since.”

  “If I think too much about his appearance, you think far too much about his brains. His hands aren’t clean, and I doubt if his heart is pure. That’s really the trouble, I am not sure I like his character.”

  “His character is all right, my dear,” said Thomas soberly; “but if you feel you can’t help him, let him down gently. He’s very much in earnest.” And with that Thomas took his departure; and being blest with more native shrewdness than his wife gave him credit for, went off feeling pretty certain that Temple’s helplessness would before long win Susan over to his side.

  Susan cheerfully abandoned any idea of the Art School for that afternoon, and, having given instructions that she was at home to no one but Professor Temple, sat down to consider the situation. To begin with, she must not let him guess that she knew who it was; that would be awkward, but she must pour cold water very firmly on the whole idea. That was very certain, and it would be the kindest thing from his point of view to do. If he was his usual conceited, didactic self, it should not be difficult. A snub would do the great man no harm, thought Susan. The idea of his lifting his eyes to Prudence! Why…At this moment her meditations were interrupted by the door being opened and “Professor Temple” announced.

  Chapter XV

  In a very short time Susan decided that the Professor was not showing his usual air of conceited detachment; he even showed signs of nervousness. They talked at some length about the weather; then Temple’s eye was caught by some fine embroidery in a frame which Susan was engaged on, and he praised it with real discrimination and interest, so that Susan suddenly found that there was something really likable in the man after all. From this they passed on somehow to the prospects of the ’Varsity Rugger XV, and Susan found her o
pinions being deferred to with unusual attention. Feeling a good deal softened towards him, she recalled what Thomas had told her about his interview, and thought the time had come when she must bring him firmly to the point.

  “Yes, my husband has gone up to the match this afternoon, but he told me you were coming here to call on me about a special matter.”

  “You and your husband are my very good friends, and I take it as particularly good in you, Mrs. Skipwith, to trouble yourself in this matter. Goodness knows I need your help!” This was not at all the attitude of mind Susan was expecting. “And if I could only make up my mind to confess to you who my lady is, I should have your sympathy even more.”

  “Good Lord,” thought Susan, who was weakening fast. “How am I to pour cold water on this?” Aloud she merely assured the Professor, with perfect truth, that it was quite unnecessary for him to tell her the lady’s name.

  “Can you tell me something about her?” asked Susan, wishing to appear sympathetic and not knowing quite what line to take.

  “I have known her on and off for something like twenty years,” said the over-accurate man. “Latterly we have lived in the same place, and I have watched her with pleasure and admiration for a good many years now. Lately I found that the thoughts of her have been getting between me and my work. I think of her as I saw her last,” he said after a pause.

  Susan’s hostility had completely vanished. The only question that worried her now was, how to convey most kindly and without any sort of a snub that she thought it hopeless.

  “She is very beautiful,” added the poor man, “in face as well as in character.”

  “Has she any idea of your feelings, do you suppose?”

  “None at all; that is my trouble, and I don’t know what is the most fitting way of conveying them without being too—er—er—abrupt.”

  “He means something short of actually proposing by that, I suppose,” thought Susan.

  And so they skirted round the subject, Temple giving very little away and Susan afraid of saying too much. Her feelings had completely changed. She no longer wished to take him down, or snub him; but what was she to say? She had never seen the great man so human and so diffident before, and it had quite put her out of her stride. After a longer pause than before, Temple said, “I realized how serious a case I was in when I diagnosed two symptoms in myself. The first was a positive desire to murder another man,” and he frowned into the fire with his most disagreeable air; “and the second an unaccustomed, but not perhaps misplaced, humility about myself. Do you know, Mrs. Skipwith, the things I have prided myself on most seem of no account, looked at in this new light,” and he looked up with a most disarming smile.

  Susan was completely won over. “They are the best symptoms in the world!” she exclaimed impulsively, “and I will do anything I can to help you.” She looked at the man in front of her and thought she had never seen him appear so pleasant. There was a something about him that had escaped even her observant eye hitherto. She even felt that she might perhaps have been over-critical; had she possibly done as Thomas had accused her, and condemned him too hastily on his appearance, and paid no attention to the man himself? Well, it should be different now.

  “If you have your pipe with you, won’t you light it?” she said, and the Professor, with a grateful smile, did so.

  “Any advice you will be good enough to give me shall have my most earnest consideration, Mrs. Skipwith,” he said, and with his beloved pipe in his hand, and a certain feeling of tension gone from between them, the Professor began to feel a good deal less nervous.

  But not so poor Susan, who was going to give the sort of advice that needed tact and care, and she felt she didn’t know quite the best way to do it. She lit a cigarette herself to make it easier.

  “Well, first of all, I must confess I have guessed who is your lady, and she is one of my dearest friends, is it not so?”

  Temple bowed.

  “And now for the advice,” said Susan, pulling at her cigarette, “and though I know exactly what I want to say, it’s not so easy to say it…”

  “My dear lady,” began the Professor.

  “You’ll bear in mind,” interrupted Susan, “I am not taking liberties; I am really wishing to help you by what I say.”

  “It is I who am taking the liberty in bringing my troubles to you,” he said, with a courtly grace of which she had not believed him capable.

  “Well, then, Professor, first of all, you must get your hair cut, and then you must shave off your whiskers.”

  The astonishment with which he regarded her sent Susan off into a hearty peal of laughter, in which after a moment Temple joined.

  “I had no notion you were going to say that,” said he with a chuckle.

  “No, I am sure you hadn’t,” said Susan, feeling much better after the laugh. “You’ve simply no idea at all of the value of personal appearance…just think for a moment how you value Prudence’s good looks.”

  “Ah,” said Temple, “but that is a very different matter.”

  “No, it isn’t,” said Susan, “and you must do the best you can with your appearance. Cut your hair, and always shave every morning,” said Susan, gaining in courage. “You’ve no idea of the trouble I have with Thomas in that direction,” added she untruthfully. “There’s something else, almost more important than all, that I should like to say…but I don’t think I can…” eyeing the Professor speculatively. “I think I’ll send Thomas to say it to you.”

  “Perhaps I can guess,” said Temple, with a grim smile at his pipe. “You are sharpening my wits a good deal, Mrs. Skipwith, I think,” still looking at his pipe. “You want to tell me what my dentist has been saying for some years…”

  “Yes,” interrupted Susan with great relief, “I am sure it’s the same. How nice of you to guess so soon.”

  “I will attend to everything you say,” he said.

  “Do you know first of all I was dead against the thought of a marriage between you and Prudence; but somehow you’ve made me change my mind completely, and I am going to help you as much as I can.”

  “Good,” said the Professor; and then, looking at Susan with a gleam of humour in his eyes, he added: “But though altering my appearance considerably will, I am sure, be of assistance, yet even my self-esteem is hardly sufficient to make me feel that it’s enough!”

  Susan laughed. “No, it isn’t. I think you might give a dinner-party, rather for Prudence, you know.”

  “Yes,” said Temple, “I could manage that very well; but she is away so much this term; in fact, the Master told me she would be away till Christmas. She’s staying with my kinsman, Ben Wellende, for hunting,” and he drew his eyebrows together with an unpleasant expression.

  “He’s jealous,” thought Susan. “I wonder if that was the man he once felt like murdering!” and added aloud, “Yes, but I’ve had a letter from her this morning; she’s got to come to Cambridge for a few days for the honorary degrees. Write to her and ask her if she and her father will dine with you one night then.”

  “I will,” said Temple, fumbling in his pocket for a small diary he carried, and making a note, “and, of course, I can count on you and Skipwith coming too?”

  Susan got up and went to her writing-table and consulted her pad of engagements.

  “Yes,” she said, “we are disengaged just then, only I shall have a girl staying with me. Might I bring her too?”

  “By all means,” said Temple. “An extra lady will be particularly welcome.”

  “And now,” said Susan, “I am going to give you some really valuable advice: pay rather particular attention to Miss Boyd, whom I am bringing with me.”

  Temple looked frankly puzzled. “But it’s to Prudence I wish to pay particular attention…”

  “Oh, Professor,” interrupted Susan, “with all your brains, have you no worldly guile?”r />
  Temple relaxed into a smile.

  “I will see Beryl Boyd doesn’t misunderstand you all right; she is a particularly fascinating person, and for dear Prudence to see you for once paying some attention to a girl like Beryl will do your cause more good than anything; you really must trust me in this.”

  “I’ll think it over,” said Temple, getting up. “I have trusted you so far, and met with such kindness, I expect I’ll follow your advice right through,” and they parted company feeling a warm friendship for each other which neither would have believed possible a couple of hours ago.

  Chapter XVI

  That same afternoon, Thomas Skipwith with his car went up to the University Rugger ground, to watch the match against the United Medicos. This was a particularly interesting match, as the ’Varsity were playing what would probably be their full side against Oxford.

  Thomas went in, and found a place with some difficulty in the already full pavilion. He sat down next an old Rugger international.

  “What sort of side are the United Medicos playing?” he asked.

  “Pretty strong,” was the reply. “Their pack is said to be very good, fast and active in the open and well together in the scrummage.”

  Thomas grunted. “It ought to be a good game, then.”

  As soon as the ball was kicked off, it was apparent to the watching crowd that they were in for something special. The game started fast, and the pace was sustained for a quarter of an hour, then the United Medicos scored a try which they did not convert. After this, Cambridge seemed to play up even harder, and every inch of the ground was fought over. Whenever one of the home side had the ball there rose the low rumbling roar of “’Var-a-arsity! ’Va-a-arsity!” from the crowd, and when finally one small, square-looking, filthy figure, in what had once been white shorts and vest, ran like a snipe’s flight through the field, finally breaking into the open with two more dirty figures after him, the roar increased tremendously, “’Var-a-arsity! ’Va-a-arsity!” and then a long-drawn-out howl, as three figures in a tangled mass fell over the touch-line together.