He was an aristocrat, I felt sure; Eton and Christ Church: no ordinary person could have been quite so flavourless. Imbecility like his is only to be attained as the result of long and judicious selection.
He went on gazing in a vacant way at the water below, an ineffectual patrician smile playing feebly round the corners of his mouth meanwhile. Then he turned and stared at me as I lay back in my deck-chair. For a minute he looked me over as if I were a horse for sale. When he had finished inspecting me, he beckoned to somebody at the far end of the quarter-deck.
The somebody sidled up with a deferential air which confirmed my belief in the pea-green young man’s aristocratic origin. It was such deference as the British flunkey pays only to blue blood; for he has gradations of flunkeydom. He is respectful to wealth; polite to acquired rank; but servile only to hereditary nobility. Indeed, you can make a rough guess at the social status of the person he addresses by observing which one of his twenty-seven nicely graduated manners he adopts in addressing him.
The pea-green young man glanced over in my direction, and murmured something to the satellite, whose back was turned towards me. I felt sure, from his attitude, he was asking whether I was the person he suspected me to be. The satellite nodded assent, whereat the pea-green young man, screwing up his face to fix his eye-glass, stared harder than ever. He must be heir to a peerage, I felt convinced; nobody short of that rank would consider himself entitled to stare with such frank unconcern at an unknown lady.
Presently it further occurred to me that the satellite’s back seemed strangely familiar. ‘I have seen that man somewhere, Elsie,’ I whispered, putting aside the wisps of hair that blew about my face.
‘So have I, dear,’ Elsie answered, with a slight shudder. And I was instinctively aware that I too disliked him.
As Elsie spoke, the man turned, and strolled slowly past us, with that ineffable insolence which is the other side of the flunkey’s insufferable self-abasement. He cast a glance at us as he went by, a withering glance of brazen effrontery. We knew him now, of course: it was that variable star, our old acquaintance, Mr. Higginson the courier.
He was here as himself this time; no longer the count or the mysterious faith-healer. The diplomat hid his rays under the garb of the man-servant.
‘Depend upon it, Elsie,’ I cried, clutching her arm with a vague sense of fear, ‘this man means mischief. There is danger ahead. When a creature of Higginson’s sort, who has risen to be a count and a fashionable physician, descends again to be a courier, you may rest assured it is because he has something to gain by it. He has some deep scheme afloat. And we are part of it.’
‘His master looks weak enough and silly enough for anything,’ Elsie answered, eyeing the suspected lordling. ‘I should think he is just the sort of man such a wily rogue would naturally fasten upon.’
‘When a wily rogue gets hold of a weak fool, who is also dishonest,’ I said, ‘the two together may make a formidable combination. But never mind. We’re forewarned. I think I shall be even with him.’
That evening, at dinner in the saloon, the pea-green young man strolled in with a jaunty air and took his seat next to us. The Red Sea, by the way, was kinder than the Mediterranean: it allowed us to dine from the very first evening. Cards had been laid on the plates to mark our places. I glanced at my neighbour’s. It bore the inscription, ‘Viscount Southminster.’
That was the name of Lord Kynaston’s eldest son—Lady Georgina’s nephew; Harold Tillington’s cousin! So this was the man who might possibly inherit Mr. Marmaduke Ashurst’s money! I remembered now how often and how fervently Lady Georgina had said, ‘Kynaston’s sons are all fools.’ If the rest came up to sample, I was inclined to agree with her.
It also flashed across me that Lord Southminster might have heard through Higginson of our meeting with Mr. Marmaduke Ashurst at Florence, and of my acquaintance with Harold Tillington at Schlangenbad and Lungern. With a woman’s instinct, I jumped at the fact that the pea-green young man had taken passage by this boat, on purpose to baffle both me and Harold.
Thinking it over, it seemed to me, too, that he might have various possible points of view on the matter. He might desire, for example, that Harold should marry me, under the impression that his marriage with a penniless outsider would annoy his uncle; for the pea-green young man doubtless thought that I was still to Mr. Ashurst just that dreadful adventuress. If so, his obvious cue would be to promote a good understanding between Harold and myself, in order to make us marry, so that the urbane old gentlemen might then disinherit his favourite nephew, and make a new will in Lord Southminster’s interest. Or again, the pea-green young man might, on the contrary, be aware that Mr. Ashurst and I had got on admirably together when we met at Florence; in which case his aim would naturally be to find out something that might set the rich uncle against me. Yet once more, he might merely have heard that I had drawn up Uncle Marmaduke’s will at the office, and he might desire to worm the contents of it out of me. Whichever was his design, I resolved to be upon my guard in every word I said to him, and leave no door open to any trickery either way. For of one thing I felt sure, that the colourless young man had torn himself away from the mud-honey of Piccadilly for this voyage to India only because he had heard there was a chance of meeting me.
That was a politic move, whoever planned it—himself or Higginson; for a week on board ship with a person or persons is the very best chance of getting thrown in with them; whether they like it or lump it, they can’t easily avoid you.
It was while I was pondering these things in my mind, and resolving with myself not to give myself away, that the young man with the pea-green face lounged in and dropped into the next seat to me. He was dressed (amongst other things) in a dinner jacket and a white tie; for myself, I detest such fopperies on board ship; they seem to me out of place; they conflict with the infinite possibilities of the situation. One stands too near the realities of things. Evening dress and mal-de-mer sort ill together.
As my neighbour sat down, he turned to me with an inane smile which occupied all his face. ‘Good evening,’ he said, in a baronial drawl. ‘Miss Cayley, I gathah? I asked the skippah’s leave to set next yah. We ought to be friends—rathah. I think yah know my poor deah old aunt, Lady Georgina Fawley.’
I bowed a somewhat, freezing bow. ‘Lady Georgina is one of my dearest friends,’ I answered.
‘No, really? Poor deah old Georgey! Got somebody to stick up for her at last, has she? Now that’s what I call chivalrous of yah. Magnanimous, isn’t it? I like to see people stick up for their friends. And it must be a novelty for Georgey. For between you and me, a moah cantankerous spiteful acidulated old cough-drop than the poor deah soul it ‘ud be difficult to hit upon.’
‘Lady Georgina has brains,’ I answered; ‘and they enable her to recognise a fool when she sees him. I will admit that she does not suffer fools gladly.’
He turned to me with a sudden sharp look in the depths of the lack-lustre eyes. Already it began to strike me that, though the pea-green young man was inane, he had his due proportion of a certain insidious practical cunning. ‘That’s true,’ he answered, measuring me. ‘And according to her, almost everybody’s a fool—especially her relations. There’s a fine knack of sweeping generalisation about deah skinny old Georgey. The few people she reahlly likes are all archangels; the rest are blithering idiots; there’s no middle course with her.’
I held my peace frigidly.
‘She thinks me a very special and peculiah fool,’ he went on, crumbling his bread.
‘Lady Georgina,’ I answered, ‘is a person of exceptional discrimination. I would almost always accept her judgment on anyone as practically final.’
He laid down his soup-spoon, fondled the imperceptible moustache with his tapering fingers, and then broke once more into a cheerful expanse of smile which reminded me of nothing so muc
h as of the village idiot. It spread over his face as the splash from a stone spreads over a mill-pond. ‘Now that’s a nice cheerful sort of thing to say to a fellah,’ he ejaculated, fixing his eye-glass in his eye, with a few fierce contortions of his facial muscles. ‘That’s encouraging, don’t yah know, as the foundation of an acquaintance. Makes a good cornah-stone. Calculated to place things at once upon what yah call a friendly basis. Georgey said you had a pretty wit; I see now why she admiahed it. Birds of a feathah: very wise old proverb.’
I reflected that, after all, this young man had nothing overt against him, beyond a fishy blue eye and an inane expression; so, feeling that I had perhaps gone a little too far, I continued after a minute, ‘And your uncle, how is he?’
‘Marmy?’ he inquired, with another elephantine smile; and then I perceived it was a form of humour with him (or rather, a cheap substitute) to speak of his elder relations by their abbreviated Christian names, without any prefix. ‘Marmy’s doing very well, thank yah; as well as could be expected. In fact, bettah. Habakkuk on the brain: it’s carrying him off at last. He has Bright’s disease very bad—drank port, don’t yah know—and won’t trouble this wicked world much longah with his presence. It will be a happy release—especially for his nephews.’
I was really grieved, for I had grown to like the urbane old gentleman, as I had grown to like the cantankerous old lady. In spite of his fussiness and his Stock Exchange views on the interpretation of Scripture, his genuine kindliness and his real liking for me had softened my heart to him; and my face must have shown my distress, for the pea-green young man added quickly with an afterthought: ‘But you needn’t be afraid, yah know. It’s all right for Harold Tillington. You ought to know that as well as anyone—and bettah: for it was you who drew up his will for him at Florence.’
I flushed crimson, I believe. Then he knew all about me! ‘I was not asking on Mr. Tillington’s account,’ I answered. ‘I asked because I have a personal feeling of friendship for your uncle, Mr. Ashurst.’
His hand strayed up to the straggling yellow hairs on his upper lip once more, and he smiled again, this time with a curious undercurrent of foolish craftiness. ‘That’s a good one,’ he answered. ‘Georgey told me you were original. Marmy’s a millionaire, and many people love millionaires for their money. But to love Marmy for himself—I do call that originality! Why, weight for age, he’s acknowledged to be the most portentous old boah in London society!’
‘I like Mr. Ashurst because he has a kind heart and some genuine instincts,’ I answered. ‘He has not allowed all human feeling to be replaced by a cheap mask of Pall Mall cynicism.’
‘Oh, I say; how’s that for preaching? Don’t you manage to give it hot to a fellah, neithah! And at sight, too, without the usual three days of grace. Have some of my champagne? I’m a forgiving creachah.’
‘No, thank you. I prefer this hock.’
‘Your friend, then?’ And he motioned the steward to pass the bottle.
To my great disgust, Elsie held out her glass. I was annoyed at that. It showed she had missed the drift of our conversation, and was therefore lacking in feminine intuition. I should be sorry if I had allowed the higher mathematics to kill out in me the most distinctively womanly faculty.
From that first day forth, however, in spite of this beginning, Lord Southminster almost persecuted me with his persistent attentions. He did all a fellah could possibly do to please me. I could not make out precisely what he was driving at; but I saw he had some artful game of his own to play, and that he was playing it subtly. I also saw that, vapid as he was, his vapidity did not prevent him from being worldly wise with the wisdom of the self-seeking man of the world, who utterly distrusts and disbelieves in all the higher emotions of humanity. He harped so often on this string that on our second day out, as we lolled on deck in the heat, I had to rebuke him sharply. He had been sneering for some hours. ‘There are two kinds of silly simplicity, Lord Southminster,’ I said, at last. ‘One kind is the silly simplicity of the rustic who trusts everybody; the other kind is the silly simplicity of the Pall Mall clubman who trusts nobody. It is just as foolish and just as one-sided to overlook the good as to overlook the evil in humanity. If you trust everyone, you are likely to be taken in; but if you trust no one, you put yourself at a serious practical disadvantage, besides losing half the joy of living.’
‘Then you think me a fool, like Georgey?’ he broke out.
‘I should never be rude enough to say so,’ I answered, fanning myself.
‘Well, you’re what I call a first-rate companion for a voyage down the Red Sea,’ he put in, gazing abstractedly at the awnings. ‘Such a lovely freezing mixture! A fellah doesn’t need ices when you’re on tap. I recommend you as a refrigeratah.’
‘I am glad,’ I answered demurely, ‘if I have secured your approbation in that humble capacity. I’m sure I have tried hard for it.’
Yet nothing that I could say seemed to put the man down. In spite of rebuffs, he was assiduous in running down the companion-ladder for my parasol or my smelling-bottle; he fetched me chairs; he stayed me with cushions; he offered to lend me books; he pestered me to drink his wine; and he kept Elsie in champagne, which she annoyed me by accepting. Poor dear Elsie clearly failed to understand the creature. ‘He’s so kind and polite, Brownie, isn’t he?’ she would observe in her simple fashion. ‘Do you know, I think he’s taken quite a fancy to you! And he’ll be an earl by-and-by. I call it romantic. How lovely it would seem, dear, to see you a countess.’
‘Elsie,’ I said severely, with one hand on her arm, ‘you are a dear little soul, and I am very fond of you; but if you think I could sell myself for a coronet to a pasty-faced young man with a pea-green complexion and glassy blue eyes—I can only say, my child, you have misread my character. He isn’t a man: he’s a lump of putty!’
I think Elsie was quite shocked that I should apply these terms to a courtesy lord, the eldest son of a peer. Nature had endowed her with the profound British belief that peers should be spoken of in choice and peculiar language. ‘If a peer’s a fool,’ Lady Georgina said once to me, ‘people think you should say his temperament does not fit him for the conduct of affairs: if he’s a roué or a drunkard, they think you should say he has unfortunate weaknesses.’
What most of all convinced me, however, that the wishy-washy young man with the pea-green complexion must be playing some stealthy game, was the demeanour and mental attitude of Mr. Higginson, his courier. After the first day, Higginson appeared to be politeness and deference itself to us. He behaved to us both, almost as if we belonged to the titled classes. He treated us with the second best of his twenty-seven graduated manners. He fetched and carried for us with a courtly grace which recalled that distinguished diplomat, the Comte de Laroche-sur-Loiret, at the station at Malines with Lady Georgina. It is true, at his politest moments, I often caught the undercurrent of a wicked twinkle in his eye, and felt sure he was doing it all with some profound motive. But his external demeanour was everything that one could desire from a well-trained man-servant; I could hardly believe it was the same man who had growled to me at Florence, ‘I shall be even with you yet,’ as he left our office.
‘Do you know, Brownie,’ Elsie mused once, ‘I really begin to think we must have misjudged Higginson. He’s so extremely polite. Perhaps, after all, he is really a count, who has been exiled and impoverished for his political opinions.’
I smiled and held my tongue. Silence costs nothing. But Mr. Higginson’s political opinions, I felt sure, were of that simple communistic sort which the law in its blunt way calls fraudulent. They consisted in a belief that all was his which he could lay his hands on.
‘Higginson’s a splendid fellah for his place, yah know, Miss Cayley,’ Lord Southminster said to me one evening as we were approaching Aden. ‘What I like about him is, he’s so doosid intelligent.’
‘Extremely so,’ I answered. Then the devil entered into me again. ‘He had the doosid intelligence even to take in Lady Georgina.’
‘Yaas; that’s just it, don’t you know. Georgey told me that story. Screamingly funny, wasn’t it? And I said to myself at once, “Higginson’s the man for me. I want a courier with jolly lots of brains and no blooming scruples. I’ll entice this chap away from Marmy.” And I did. I outbid Marmy. Oh, yaas, he’s a first-rate fellah, Higginson. What I want is a man who will do what he’s told, and ask no beastly unpleasant questions. Higginson’s that man. He’s as sharp as a ferret.’
‘And as dishonest as they make them.’
He opened his hands with a gesture of unconcern. ‘All the bettah for my purpose. See how frank I am, Miss Cayley. I tell the truth. The truth is very rare. You ought to respect me for it.’
‘It depends somewhat upon the kind of truth,’ I answered, with a random shot. ‘I don’t respect a man, for instance, for confessing to a forgery.’
He winced. Not for months after did I know how a stone thrown at a venture had chanced to hit the spot, and had vastly enhanced his opinion of my cleverness.
‘You have heard about Dr. Fortescue-Langley too, I suppose?’ I went on.
‘Oh, yaas. Wasn’t it real jam? He did the doctor-trick on a lady in Switzerland. And the way he has come it ovah deah simple old Marmy! He played Marmy with Ezekiel! Not so dusty, was it? He’s too lovely for anything!’
The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK ™: 20 Modern and Classic Tales of Female Detectives Page 148