"Yes."
"Then I shall look forward to seeing you tomorrow, and we will take up this subject where we left off. There was some famous fellow who fell in love at first sight. Not Chibnall. Somebody else.
Where do you stroll in the mornings?"
"I don't stroll. I work."
"Work?"
"Yes. I see the cook—"
"Don't take her on at craps."
"And I do the flowers and I brush the dog-"
"I'll help you brush the dog."
"No, you won t."
"Why not?"
"It would excite remark."
"I being a humble valet?"
"You being a humble valet."
"What a curse these social distinctions are. They ought to be abolished. I remember saying that to Karl Marx once, and he thought there might be an idea for a book in it. Romeo! That's the name I was trying to think of."
"What about him?"
"He fell in love at first sight, like Chibnall and—"
"Good night," said Sally.
Chapter X
IT WAS ON A TUESDAY that Mr Duff had conferred with Sally in his office. Wednesday morning found him in the bar parlour of the Rose and Crown, sipping a small gin and ginger.
J. B. Duff was not a man who procrastinated. He thought on his feet and let no grass grow under them,. Sally had returned to Claines Hall at half-past four on the previous afternoon, charged with the task of opening negotiations with Lord Holbeton for the removal of Mrs Chavender's portrait. At seven Mr Duff was alighting at Loose Chippings station, all ready to be on the spot the moment anything broke. But one glance out of the Window, as his cab rolled up the· High Street, had been enough to tell him that this was not the place of his dreams. As ' he sipped his gin and ginger he was feeling homesick.
Towns like Loose Chippings ( Population 4916 ) are all right if you are fond of towns with Populations of 4916, but Mr Duff's tastes had always been metropolitan. And now, although it was so brief a time ago that his arrival had made the Population 4917,
it seemed to him that he had been here ever since he was a small boy, getting more bored every minute. Like some minstrel of Tin Pan Alley, he was wishing that he could go back, back, back to the place where he was born, which was Greater New York—or, failing that, to his adopted city of London.
There is never a great deal doing in the bar parlour of a country inn at eleven o'clock in the morning. It is only later in the day that it becomes the hub of the neighbourhood's social life, attracting all that is gayest and wittiest for miles around. The only other occupant of the room at this moment was the girl with coppercoloured hair who sat behind the counter reading a mystery story.
Vera Pym, barmaid, the affianced of Chibnall, the butler.
The first thing any regular client would have noticed, had he entered, was that Miss Pym was strangely silent. As a rule when she found herself alone with a customer she felt it her duty to be the hostess, and it was her practice to chat with great freedom, ranging vivaciously from politics and the weather to darts gossip and the new films. But now she had not spoken for nearly ten minutes. She sat reading her book and from time to time shooting quick, sidelong glances in Mr Duff's direction. There was nervousness in these glances and a sort of shocked horror.
This, as we say, would have mystified the regular client. But her taciturnity may be readily explained. What was causing it was the fact that Mr Duff was wearing on his upper lip a large moustache of the soup-strainer type. It lent to his aspect a strange and rather ghastly menace. Who knew, the observer felt as he saw it, what sinister things might not be lurking within that undergrowth, waiting to spring out and pounce?
That was what Miss Pym was feeling as she eyed it with those quick, sidelong glances. She had a complex about moustaches. So many of the worst bounders in the crime fiction to which she was addicted had affected them. The mysterious leper and the man with the missing toe were examples that leaped to her mind. In both these instances the shrubbery had proved to be as false as its wearer's heart, and the more she eyed Mr Duff's the surer she became that it was not a natural disfigurement but had been stuck on with glue.
It was no idle whim that had led Mr Duff to bar his features to the general public in this manner. Prudence and foresight had guided his actions. In coming to Loose Chippings, only a stone's throw from the residence of Mrs Chavender, he had never lost sight of the fact that he was entering a danger zone. At any moment he might run into his old love, and the thought of such an encounter was one that froze the grand old bachelor's blood. False moustaches cost money, but he had considered it money well spent.
He finished his gin and ginger and got up.
"Say," he said, and Miss Pym leaped like a rising trout. A most impossible outsider, who went about shooting people with a tommy gun, had just said "Say" in the story she was reading.
"Sir?'' she faltered.
"How do you get to a place called Claines Hall?''
"Turn to the left as you leave the inn and straight along the road," said Miss Pym faintly.
"Thanks," said Mr Duff and, making for the door, collided with Chibnall, who was entering at the moment, accompanied by Joss.
"Pardon," said Chibnall.
"Grrh," said Mr Duff.
Joss looked after him, puzzled. Mr Duff reminded him in an odd sort of way of someone he had met somewhere, possibly in a nightmare. He found himself, however, unable to place him and came back to the present to find that Chibnall was presenting him to his betrothed.
"Mr Weatherby is Mr Steptoe's new personal attendant."
"How do you do, Mr Weatherby?''
"How do you do?" said Joss. He submitted Miss Pym to a quick inspection and was able to assure Chibnall with a swift lift of the right eyebrow that ill his opinion the other's judgment had been sound. A girl well fitted to be the butler's bride was Joss's verdict.
Gratified by this, Chibnall talked easily and well, and for some minutes it seemed that a perfect harmony was to prevail.
Then he struck what was to prove to be a discordant note.
"Who was the walrus?" he asked, for he was always interested in new faces in the bar parlour.
Miss Pym polished a glass thoughtfully. Her manner, which had been animated, had become grave.
"I've never seen him before."
"I thought I had," said Joss. "His face seemed somehow familiar."
"He's staying at the inn," said Miss Pym. "And if you want to know what I think, Sidney-"
Chibnall laughed amusedly, as one who has heard this before and knows what is coming. To Joss, who had a sensitive ear, it seemed that there was far too strong a note of "Silly little woman"
for she bridled visibly.
"All right. You can laugh as much as you like, but if you want to know what I think, I believe he's a crook."
Chibnall laughed again, once more with offensive masculine superiority.
"You and your crooks. What's gone and put that idea into your head?"
"I think it's suspicious, him being at the inn. He's not an artist; he's not a commercial; and he hasn't come for the fishing, because he's not brought any rods and things."
"He may be one of these writers, come down here to work where it's quiet."
"Well, what's he wearing a false moustache for?"
"How do you know it's falser'
"I have a feeling."
"Pooh!"
"Pooh to you!" retorted Miss Pym.
It seemed to Joss that he was becoming involved in a lovers' quarrel. This, and the fact that he had promised to meet Mr Steptoe in the stable yard at noon and give him a craps lesson, decided him to finish his half of bitter and leave. He excused himself and went out, and Chibnall, lighting a cigarette, took up the discussion where it had been broken off.
"If you want to know what's the matter with you, my girl, you read too many of these trashy detective stories."
"Better than reading silly novelettes."
"May I ask why
you call novelettes silly?"
Because they are.
"Mere abuse is no criticism."
"Well, they're full of things happening that don't happen."
Such as?
"Well, what we were talking about the other day. Whoever heard of a young fellow being buzzed out of his home because his father wanted him to marry somebody and he wouldn't?"
Chibnall blew an airy smoke ring. With subtle cunning he had contrived to work the conversation round to the exact point where he wanted it. His love, deep though it was, had never blinded him to the fact that what the modern young woman needed, for the discipline of her soul, was to be properly scored off and put in her place from time to time.
"You will doubtless be surprised to learn," he said with quiet satisfaction, "that a case of that very nature has come under my own personal notice. I allude to Mr Weatherby, who has just left us."'
"I suppose he's the son of a duke, who gave him the push for not marrying the girl he had picked out for him?"
"He did not specify a duke—he merely referred to a titled father—but that, substantially, was the story he told."
"He was pulling your leg."
"Not at all. I had spotted already that he was no ordinary valet.
You should have seen him turning up his nose at his room and insisting on something more like what he'd been accustomed to."
"What cheek! Didn't you tell him off?"
"Certainly not. I wouldn't have taken the liberty."
Miss Pym polished a glass, derision in every flick of the cloth.
"And then, of course, he tried to borrow money from you?"
"On the contrary, he tipped me ten pounds. A little more of that sort of thing and I'll have enough saved to buy that pub I've got my eye on, and we'll be able to put up the banns."
Miss Pym had lowered the glass. There was horror in her eyes.
"Ten pounds?"·
"Ten pounds."
"Ten pounds?"
"I thought you'd be surprised."
"Surprised? I'm scared stiff. I suppose you know what this fellow is?"
"Is he a crook too?"
"Of course he is. He must be. Don't you ever go to the pictures?
He's one of these gangsters that's just pulled off a big thing and is using the Hall as a hideout. Where would a chap whose father had bunged him out get ten pounds to tip people with?"
Chibnall frowned. He did not like this feverish imagination of hers. He thought it unwholesome.
"Pooh!" he said.
"Pooh to you!" said Miss Pym. "Oh well, I don't suppose there's a hope of opening your eyes to the realities of life, but everybody except you knows that that sort of thing is happening all the time.
You read your News of the World, don't you? You've heard of Mayfair Men, haven't you? But you can talk to some people till you're blue in the face."
"Don't you go getting blue in the face. It wouldn't suit you.
Oh well," said Chibnall, looking at his watch, "back to the old job, I suppose. You'll be round for tea tomorrow?"
The question was purely a perfunctory one, Tomorrow was Miss Pym's afternoon off, and on these occasions she always came to his pantry for a cosy cup of tea. To his amazement she was evasive.
''I'll ring you up.'' ·
"How do you mean, ring me up?"
"Just possible," said Miss Pym, who had been deeply piqued by her loved one's scepticism, "that I may be engaged.''
The butler froze.
"Oh, very well," he said aloofly. "If I'm not in, leave a message.''
He stalked out, hurt and offended. As he made his way along the road all those old doubts which Joss's soothing reasoning had dispelled came back to gnaw at his heart. The image of that commercial traveller rose before his eyes. In speaking of this butler we must speak of one that loved not wisely but too well, of one not easily jealous but being wrought perplexed in the extreme.
Dark suspicions came flooding in on Sidney Chibnall as he walked, and he writhed freely.
Mr Duff, meanwhile, was approaching Claines Hall.
In the light of what has been said about his apprehensions concerning a chance meeting with Mrs Chavender it might seem that a madness had fallen upon this ham distributor, robbing him of his usual calm judgment. But he had the situation well in hand.
It was not his intention to penetrate to the Hall's front door-he was not so reckless as that-he merely intended to prowl about in the vicinity on the chance of getting a· word with Lord Holbeton.
He was intensely anxious to establish contact with that young man at the first possible moment, in order to learn from him how prospects looked for an early delivery of the portrait. The sooner he could get away from the Rose and Crown, whose eccentric cooking had already begun to give him the feeling that sinister things were happening inside him, the better he would be pleased.
The distance from the inn door to the main entrance of the Hall was just under a mile, and he had covered the greater part of it when he perceived that this was his lucky morning. Just ahead of him, turning in at the gate, was the very man he sought. Though not fond of active exercise, he broke into a clumsy gallop, at the same time shouting that favourite word of his—"Hey!"
It was in order to ponder over the future that Lord Holbeton had gone for his solitary walk. He found in this future much food for meditation.
Sally, in assigning to him the task of snipping portraits out their frames in a house where he was an honoured guest, had seemed to take it for granted that he would leap at it without hesitation.
He found himself unable to share her sunny enthusiasm.
All crooners are nervous men—the twiddly bits seem to affect their moral stamina—and Lord Holbeton was no exception. Only the reflection of how much he needed the money had enabled him even to contemplate the venture as a possibility. And the more he contemplated it the less of a possibility did it seem. As he started to walk up the drive he had just begun to toy with the thought of what would happen if Mrs Steptoe caught him in the act.
The shout and the sound of pursuing footsteps in his rear came to him, consequently, at a moment when he was not feeling at the peak of his form. He turned and was aware of a densely moustached stranger galloping up, shouting , "Hey! "
The attitude of people towards densely moustached strangers who are galloping up, shouting , "Hey!" varies a good deal according to the individual. Joss Weatherby in such circumstances would have stood his ground and investigated the phenomenon. So, probably, would Napoleon, Joe Louis and Attila the Hun. Lord Holbeton was made of more neurotic stuff. The spectacle, ac ting upon his already enfeebled morale, was too much for him. Directing at the other a single, horrified glance, he was off up the drive with a briskness which would have put him immediately out of range of anything that was not a jackrabbit. And even a jackrabbit would have been extended.
J. B. Duff gave up the chase and came o a halt, panting. He mopped his forehead, and broken words, unworthy of a lea ding provision merchant, fell from his trembling lips.
He felt profoundly discouraged. He ha d never thought highly of Lord Holbeton as an agent, and this extraordinary behaviour on his part convinced him that the fellow was a broken reed. Like so many heavily moustached men, Mr Duff was unaware of the spiritual shock , akin to that experienced by Macbeth on witnessing the approach of the forest of Dunsinane, which the fungus had on nervous parsons who saw it suddenly on its way towards them.
All he felt was that, in hoping that a total loss like the sprinter who ha d just left him would be capable of the dashing act of purloining the Cha vender portrait, he had been guilty of wishful thinking of the worst type.
Yet, failing him, to whom could he look for assistance?
Just when it was that a voice whispered in his ear that homely saw: "If you want a thing well done do it yourself," he could not have said. One moment the idea was not there; the next it was, and he was examining it carefully with a growing feeling that he had got something.
Mrs Cha vender gave Mr Duff an uninterested glance in passing , evidently taking him for just another of the strange fauna which are always drifting up and down the drives of country houses. He, on his side, gasped quickly and reeled a little, like an African explorer who sees a rhinoceros pass by without having had its attention drawn to him. The luck of the Duffs, he felt, was in the ascendant. The coast was now clear, and he could carry on with an easy mind.
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