Her altruism was a revelation to him. He had always been fond of her in that brotherly way of his, but it had never occurred to him to bother much about probing any hidden depths she might have. It now became apparent that brotherly affection was inadequate and would have to be fortified by respect, and admiration, both of the deepest. His thoughts turning to this man she had said she loved, he hoped the fortunate fellow would prove to be worthy of her.
A soft knock on a door on the second floor produced Ivor Llewellyn. His face was gloomy, but at the sight of Sandy's burden it lit up as though it were being done in glorious technicolor.
'What?' he gasped. 'What? What? What?'
'For you,' said Sandy. 'As you see, a spoon goes with it. And I'm off to bed.' Like a self-respecting Girl Guide she required no thanks for her day's good deed. It was enough to spread a little happiness as she passed by.
'Good night,, all,' she said, and vanished with her customary abruptness.
Monty, starting to follow her, was arrested by the descent on his shoulder of a heavy hand.
'Don't go, Bodkin,' said Ivor Llewellyn, speaking a little thickly, for his mouth was full of Bavarian cream. 'Wanna word with you.'
He conducted Monty to a chair, dumped him into it, and stood over him, his attitude that of a father about to have a man-to-man talk with a favourite son. Monty received the impression that he was about to be informed of the facts of life and was on the point of saying that he already knew about the bees and the birds, when Mr. Llewellyn proceeded.
'This girl of yours that you were shooting your head off about that day at Barribault's. Tell me about her. All I know is that her father says you can't get married till you've earned your living for a year. Silly idea.'
'Very.'
'Must be a damned fool.'
'He is.'
'Sort of man I wouldn't trust with a Western B picture, if I had him at Llewellyn City. He'd have the bad guy shooting the sheriff. Well, fill me in, Bodkin, fill me in. What's the girl like?'
'You saw her on the boat.'
'I've forgotten her. And anyway I don't mean what's she like, I mean what's she like? What sort of girl is she?'
'The out-door type, I suppose you would call her.'
'Tip-toes through the tulips? That sort of thing?'
'Not so much tip-toes through the tulips. More energetic than that. Plays hockey.'
'Oh, a skater?'
'Not hockey on ice. English hockey. They play it on a field. She's very good at hockey. She's one of the All England women's team. That's how she came to be on that boat.'
'I remember her now. Big beefy girl. Large feet.'
Monty winced. He was familiar with his companion's reputation in Hollywood as a man who called a spade a spade, and had he merely done that now, he would have had nothing to complain of. He had no objection to Mr. Llewellyn describing spades as spades, but he keenly resented his reference to Gertrude Butterwick as a beefy girl with large feet.
'I wouldn't call her that,' he said coldly.
'I would.’ said Mr. Llewellyn. 'She reminded me of my first wife, who was a strong woman in vaudeville. Wore pink tights and lifted weights. I was a mere callow lad at the time, and she fascinated me. After she married me and retired from business she put on so much weight that she could hardly lift herself. It's the sort of thing that always happens with these muscular women. This girl of yours would go the same way, once she stopped playing hockey. But that's not why I'm warning you to kiss her goodbye and tie a can to her.’
'Are you warning me to kiss her goodbye and tie a can to her?' asked Monty, surprised.
'You bet I'm warning you to kiss her goodbye and tie a can to her. Never marry anyone who makes conditions and says she won't sign on the dotted line unless you do something or other. Like when I was in Wales—I was born in Wales—and fell in love with the local school teacher. Do you know what she wanted me to do or she wouldn't marry me?'
'I was just wondering.’
'You'll never guess.'
'Probably not.'
'She said no contract until I'd got what she called a thorough grounding in English literature. That was the school marm in her coming out. English literature, you know what that means—Shakespeare, Milton and all those. See what I'm driving at, she made conditions.'
'So what did you do?'
'I spilled my guts studying English literature, and I was getting so that I could pretty well tell one of the damned poets from another, when I suddenly realised that I didn't want to marry her after all. To put it in a nutshell, I couldn't stand the sight of her. So I skipped out of town and came to America and got a job with Joe Fishbein, who was a big noise in pictures at that time, and one day discovered where he had buried the body, and of course after that I never looked back. I was like a son to him. So that sequence ended happily, but you can't rely on that sort of luck every time, and that is why I say to you, Bodkin, sever relations with this condition-making hockey-knocker of yours. You'll never regret it.'
'It wasn't she who made the conditions, it was her father.'
'Same thing. She agreed to them, didn't she? No, Bodkin, you don't want to go messing about with a dumb broad who lets her father tell her what to do and what not to do. The girl you ought to marry is that little Miller half-portion. There's a ministering angel if you want one. Brings me Bavarian cream at the risk of her life . . . well, practically. The imagination boggles at the thought of what Grayce would have done if she'd caught her.'
He paused, and Monty could see that his imagination was boggling. His own was in much the same condition. Mr. Llewellyn's suggestion that he ought to marry Sandy had startled him as he had seldom been startled before.
'But she's in love with someone,' he said, feeling dizzy. 'She came to England because he was here.’
'Oh, I didn't know. She told you that, did she?'
'Yes, she told me herself.'
'You couldn't have misunderstood her?'
'No.'
'A pity. What sort of a fellow is he?'
'I haven't met him.'
'I'll make enquiries. We can't have a girl like that throwing herself away on some ghastly weed with side-whiskers. My God, for all we know he may be a movie actor. I'll certainly check up. What's the time?'
'I don't know.'
'Getting late, anyway. You ought to be in bed. Get the hell out of here, Bodkin. Good night.'
Monty withdrew, but he did not go to bed immediately. Having descended the stairs, he opened the front door and stood there listening to the nightingale of which Sandy had spoken. Its programme had been a long one, but it continued in fine voice. A few moments later it paused, possibly to clear its throat or to try to remember how that next song went, and all was still.
There is something very soothing in the atmosphere of an old country house in the small hours when all is still, but this is so only as long as all stays still. The whole effect is spoiled if, as you stand there soaking the old-world peace into your system, a form looms up in front of you and a voice, speaking abruptly, says 'Stick 'em up' and the muzzle of a .38 Colt Special is thrust against your solar plexus.
Happening to Monty at this juncture, it gave him quite a start. He stuck them up, as desired, and stood there speechless. An easy conversationalist as a general rule, he found it impossible to think of anything to say.
The speaker was a stalwart young woman shaped in a manner which made her look as if, when at her best, she could give the current champion stiff competition for the welterweight title. She had eyes like those of the Medusa of Greek mythology, one glance from whom was sufficient to convert those she met into blocks of stone, and the pistol in her hand added a great deal to these gifts of Nature. It had the unmistakeable appearance of a pistol likely to go off at any moment.
Many girls in her position might have hesitated as to what to do next, but she had everything cut and dried.
'In there,' she said.
The 'there' of which she spoke was the familiar fe
ature of the halls of all English country houses, the downstairs cupboard. Each of these in a sort of Sargasso Sea into which drift all the objects which over the ages have outgrown their usefulness and are no longer needed in the daily life of the home. The one to which Monty was being invited already contained, among other things, a cracked vase, a broken decanter, a lamp shade with a hole in it, several empty bottles, some galoshes and part of a rusty lawn mower. It was on the last named that he barked his shin as he entered, and his cry of agony might have drawn comment from the girl behind the gun, had she not been closing the door at the moment and turning the key in the lock, leaving the world, as the poet Gray would have said, to darkness and to him.
Monty had always been a great reader of novels of suspense, and he had often wondered what had been the emotions of the characters in them who kept getting locked up in cellars under the river by sinister men in Homburg hats and raincoats. He knew now how they had felt. True, in his present little nest there was no water dripping from the ceiling, but when you had said that you had said everything. As he had suspected, the whole thing was most unpleasant. There was, for instance, the smell, to which the galoshes contributed largely.
Time passed, and as so often happens when a man has been standing for some minutes rigid and motionless Monty felt the urge to stretch. He stretched, accordingly, and dislodged from an upper shelf two bottles and the lamp shade with the hole in it. Their descent on his head caused him to leap back. He became involved with the lawn mower again, and the noise resulting from those activities came through loud and clear to the ears of Mr. Llewellyn, who happened to be passing, giving him the momentary illusion that his heart, leaping into his mouth, had dislodged two of his front teeth.
Before this shock to his nervous system Mr. Llewellyn had been what the compiler of a book of synonyms would have described as elated, flushed with success, exhilarated, exultant, exalted and in high spirits. He had taken the dish which had once contained Bavarian cream back to the kitchen, thus destroying all evidence of his crime, and he was returning to his room feeling like a trusted messenger who has carried important papers through the enemy lines.
The task had been a fearsome one, for his stepdaughter Mavis had telephoned before dinner that she would be arriving late in her car, and the thought that he might meet her on the stairs with the dish in his hands had been a paralysing one.
Fortunately the disaster had not occurred, but he was still in a mood to jump at sudden noises. The noise of Monty's embroilment with the bottles, the lamp shade and the lawn mower had been very sudden, and he had jumped perhaps six inches. His initial impulse was to gallop up the stairs at a speed as rapid as his build would allow, but curiosity is an even stronger emotion than fear. Somebody was in that cupboard, and he had to ascertain who. Putting his lips to the door, he said:
'Hi.’
The effect of the word on Monty was much the same as that of the skirl of the Highland pipes on the girl in Cawnpore at the conclusion of the siege of that town during the Indian Mutiny. She had welcomed those skirling pipes with the utmost enthusiasm, and it was with equal enthusiasm that he greeted Mr. Llewellyn's 'Hi'. Even when speaking in monosyllables the other's voice was a distinctive one, and he had no difficulty in recognizing it, and the knowledge that he had found a friend and sympathiser sent the red corpuscles racing through his veins as if he had drained a glass of one of those patent mixtures containing iron which tone up the system and impart a gentle glow. Wasting no time in speculation as to what his rescuer was doing there, he detached the lawn mower from his leg and the lamp shade from his hair, pressed his lips against the door, only of course on his side of it, and said: 'What ho!'
'Speak up.’ said Mr. Llewellyn. 'I can't hear you. What did you say?'
'Let me out.’
'No, you didn't. It was something quite different. Who is that?'
'Me. Bodkin.’
'Did you say Bodkin?'
'Yes.'
'The Bodkin I was talking to just now?'
'That's right. Monty Bodkin.'
'What are you doing in there? Fill me in, boy, fill me in.'
'I was put.'
'Who put you?'
'The burglar.’
'What burglar?'
'There's a girl burgling the house.’
'You don't say.'
'Yes, I do.'
'What sort of girl?'
'Most unpleasant type.'
'I ask.’ said Mr. Llewellyn, 'because we are expecting my step-daughter Mavis tonight, and she said she would be late.’
'I wish you would let me out.’
'Of course, my dear fellow, of course, certainly. Why didn't you ask me before? Now the first problem that confronts us is to find the key.’
'It's in the door.'
'So it is. Then everything is simple. Tell me.’ said Mr. Llewellyn, having performed what in a Superba-Llewellyn treatment would have been called 'Business with key' and watched Monty emerge like a cork out of a bottle, 'about this burglar of yours. Was she tall?'
'Tallish.'
'Blonde?'
'I couldn't see. There wasn't enough light.’
'But you were probably able to observe her eyes. Were they like a rattlesnake's?'
'Very like.'
'And her manner? Supercilious? Bossy? Domineering?'
'All three.’
'Abrupt, would you say?'
'The very word.’
'It must have been Mavis. I suppose she's gone up to see her mother.'
'At this time of night?'
'Well, she must have thought you were a burglar, or she wouldn't have locked you in the cupboard, and she would naturally want to tell her mother about it and get her to phone the police.’
'The police !'
'She's probably doing it now. If I were you, I'd go to bed.’
'I will.’
'They won't think of looking for you there. What actually happened?' asked Mr. Llewellyn as they mounted the stairs.
'I was listening to the nightingale, and suddenly there she was.'
'And—'
'She said "Stick 'em up".’
'Upon which?'
'I stuck 'em. Then she put me in the cupboard.'
'Couldn't you have done something?'
'Such as?'
'Well, broken her neck or something.'
'No, because she had produced a whacking great pistol and was shoving it into my stomach.'
'She did that?'
'Just that.'
Mr. Llewellyn clicked his tongue disapprovingly. 'The things they teach these girls at Vassar!' he said.
4
Mrs. Grayce Llewellyn was one of those fortunate people who find it easy to drop off to sleep, and as a rule the sandman began his benevolent work on her as soon as she had plastered the night's mud pack on her face and got into bed. But there were things that could interfere with her slumbers, and one of these was the abrupt bursting into her room of her daughter Mavis—come, as Mr. Llewellyn had predicted, to talk about burglars.
Mavis, true to form, had not bothered to knock on the door, and it had flown open with a bang, causing Grayce in her first waking moments to think that something had exploded. For an instant hot words trembled on her lips. Then she identified her visitor and this had a calming effect. Long experience had taught her that if you spoke hot words to Mavis, you got back others that were even hotter. Prudence made her opening speech a pacific one.
'Is that you, Mavis dear? You're very late.'
'My car broke down. I thought I'd never get here.’
'Are you staying long?'
'No, I'm off early tomorrow. Those people in Shropshire. I only came to pick up some things. And I'm leaving you this.’ said Mavis, exhibiting the .38 Colt which had made such a powerful impression on Monty. 'My bet is that you'll find it comes in handy.’
Grayce regarded the weapon with repulsion. Panther women in times of crisis rely on personal magnetism rather than firearms, and object
s like the one Mavis was laying on the bed made her nervous. She had never been at her ease with pistols since her first husband, giving her a preview of the role he was playing in his next picture, an epic of the West, had shot himself in the foot. The mud pack quivered on her face as she cried:
'Take it away! I don't want it.’
'That's what you think,' said Mavis. 'No home should be without one, especially a home like this, miles away from the nearest neighbour. I warned you that burglars would soon be pouring in. Well, they've started pouring.’
'What!'
'Found one in the hall on my arrival.’
'Good gracious!'
'But all's well. I locked him in the downstairs cupboard.’
'He'll suffocate!'
'Probably. And a good thing, too. Nasty-looking fellow with a hangdog expression and butter-coloured hair.’
'Butter-coloured hair!'
'It looked butter-coloured to me. It stood on end when I thrust the gat into his abdomen.’
'But didn't he say anything? Didn't he explain?'
'Not a word. He had no conversation. How do you mean explain?'
'That he was Mr. Bodkin? It must have been Mr. Bodkin. He has butter-coloured hair.’
'Who's Mr. Bodkin?'
'Your step-father's secretary. I told you I was getting a secretary to help with that book about the studio.'
'So you did. I remember. Well, that'll teach him not to open front doors and stand looking out in the small hours. Naturally I thought the worst. But if you know all about him, I suppose he's all right. I'll leave you the gun, anyway. No knowing when it'll come in useful. You might want to shoot Jumbo with it.'
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin Page 6