Too well-bred to comment on this, Joss opened the conversation with a civil "Good evening."
"We meet again, Mrs Chavender."
"We do, young Weatherby."
"You are doubtless surprised—"
"No, I'm not. Sally Fairmile told me you were here. Arid I know— Sh!" said Mrs Chavender, breaking off her remarks.
"There's someone coming."
"There always is in this house. It's the Claines Hall curse."
"Meet me in the library."
"Where is it?"
"Along the passage. I want to talk with you, young man. Yes, Chibnall?"
The butler was entering, bowed down beneath the weight of blankets and pillows. Though all enthusiasm to begin this vigil of his, he had taken time out to go to his room and collect the materials for making himself as comfortable as possible.
"Mrs Steptoe desired me to pass the remainder of the night in here, madam."
"Why on earth?"
"One of the windows has become broken, madam, and Mrs.
Steptoe is uneasy about having it left. It is possible," said Chibnall darkly, "that there may be suspicious characters about."
"Oh, well, sooner you than me. Good night."
Good night, madam.
Mrs Chavender sailed from the room, and Chibnall looked at Joss coldly.
"Still here?"
"Just going. Tell me, my dear Chibnall, would you describe this as one of Claines Hall's ordinary nights? I merely want to know what to expect."
.
"Took you quite a time to close that window."
"No, no. I did it like a flash. But I was then engaged in conversation by the lady who has just left us. Are you really going to sleep in here?"
"I am."
''I'll bet you're not. You won't get a wink. I've tried dossing in chairs myself. No, what you ought to do, my dear fellow," said Joss winningly, "is to toddle back to your little bed and curl up your pink toes. Nobody will know."
"Thank you. I prefer to do my duty."
"Oh. Well, in that case, good night."
"Good night."
As Joss made his way to the library he was finding the atmosphere too heavily charged with mystery for comfort. Chibnall had been mysterious. So had Mrs Chavender. Mrs Chavender's mysteriousness would no doubt shortly be explained, but there seemed no hope of penetrating the inscrutability of the butler. At the Rose and Crown that morning and right through the day Chibnall had been all that was cordial and friendly, and now he was a changed man, curt in his speech and showing a tendency to shoot sharp, sidelong glances. Joss found it puzzling.
The enigmatic attitude of Chibnall, however, could wait. The immediate subject on the agenda paper was the enigmatic attitude of Mrs Chavender. It was with a lively desire for enlightenment that he entered the library.
"Oh, there you are," said Mrs Chavender. "Shut the door."
Joss shut the door.
"Sit down."
Joss sat down.
"Now where were we?" said Mrs Chavender.
Joss was able to refresh her memory.
"You had begun by saying that you were not surprised to find me on the premises because Miss Fairmile had told you I was here. Is her name really Sally? Capital, capital. A delightful name.
One of my favourites. It's positively amazing," said Joss, warming to his subject, "how everything seems to be working out, as if I had had it done to my specifications. She's beautiful. She has a lovely voice. And her name's Sally. Not a flaw in the setup as far as I can see."
Mrs Chavender seemed perplexed.
"Would you mind telling me what, if anything, you're talking about?"
"I should have mentioned," Joss explained, "that I love this young Fairmile. It hit me like the kick of a mule the instant I saw her. Romeo had the same experience. And Chibnall."
"Oh. Well, we can go into that later."
"Any time that suits you," said Joss courteously. "Well, after saying that you were not surprised to find he here you added the words : 'And I know . . .' At that point you· heard Chibnall coming and switched off. You never did get around to telling me what it was that you knew."
"Well, I'll tell you now. I know why you're here. Jimmy Duff sent you to swipe that portrait."
"What an extraordinary idea."
"Is it? Well, let me tell you I've had the whole story from an authoritative source. Mrs Steptoe told me that Jimmy had made an offer for the thing and she had turned him down. And the next thing that happens is that you sneak into the place."
"Not sneak. I bowled up to the front door in my car."
"You being Jimmy's-what did you say you were?"
"Best friend and severest critic?"
"That was it. Well, it's all pretty plain, isn't it? Can you beat it?" said Mrs Chavender, her voice softening. "After fifteen years Jimmy's still that way about me. I'm darned if I'd have thought he had that much sentiment in him. It looks as if I'd been getting him wrong all this time. When you told me he was still a bachelor I supposed he had stayed one because he liked it. And all the time it was because he was so crazy about me that he couldn't look at anybody else. And the way he figures it out is that even if he has lost me he can still have my portrait to remember me by. If you don't think that's sweet and lovely and touching and wonderful maybe you'll tell me what is."
It was not for Joss to destroy this gossamer fabric of romance with the acid cleaning fluid of truth. He nodded sympathetically.
"Yes, he's a rare soul. He reminds me a little of Sir Galahad.
But he didn't send me down here. At the moment when I signed on at Claines Hall there existed between J. B. and myself a slight coolness. He had fired me."
"What did you do to him?"
"Not a thing, except sling him out of his office."
"I don't get this. You aren't going to tell me that when I came into that room just now you weren't starting to cut the portrait out of its frame."
"Quite true, I was."
"Well, then?"
"But J. B. had got in touch with me since my arrival here. This affair is a lot more complicated than you think it. All sorts of dark currents are running beneath the quiet surface of life at Claines Hall. May I speak confidentially?"
"Shoot."
"This will go no further?"
"Not through me."
"Well, then, I am acting not only for J. B. but for Mr Steptoe."
"Howard. Steptoe?"
"Yes. It was he who brought J. B. and me together. He needs the stuff, and it was his original intention to put the deal through by himself. Finding, however, that he required moral support, he called me in."
"Well, listen," said Mrs Chavender vehemently. ''I'm in on this too. I don't mind giving Howard Steptoe his cut, but when Jimmy starts paying out five hundred pounds has got to be earmarked for me. You say Howard Steptoe needs the stuff. Well, take a look at someone else who does."
Joss was astounded.
"You?''
"Me."
"But I thought you were a millionairess."
"So I was till about a year ago. Remember the Battersby crash?''
"Were you in that?"
"Up to the eyebrows. I lost my chemise. When the accountants had finished raking over the ashes I found I'd just about enough left to pay Patricia's license and a modest annual dress bill."
"Well, well, well," said Joss. "Well, well, well, well, well."
There was a silence. Mrs Chavender was wrestling with an obviously powerful emotion.
"Got a cigarette?" she said.
''I'm afraid not."
"Then I'll have to have one of my own. And I hate them. I was hoping you might have something better."
Joss was adjusting his faculties to this sensational revelation.
"You've kept it pretty dark. The servants' hall knows nothing of this. Mrs Barlow was saying to me only this evening that you were a female creosote."
Mrs Chavender puffed at her cigarette in silence for a moment.
"You bet I kept it dark. And I'll tell you why. You've met Mabel?"
"You mean Sally?"
"I don't mean Sally. I mean Mabel. Mabel Steptoe."
"Oh, Mrs Steptoe, yes, of course. A. delightful woman. She held me spellbound with her views on Corot."
"Did she mention her views on poor relations?"
"No, we didn't get around to those."
"Well, keep your eye on young Sally Fairmile, and you'll soon know what they are. She believes in treating them rough. Talk about oppressed minorities."
The library swam before Joss.
"You mean she bullies that sweet girl?"
"Well, she doesn't beat her and she doesn't starve her, but that's about all you can say. No, that's not fair. She's quite kind to her really, I suppose. Put it this way. Young Sally's position in the house is about that of an unpaid lady's maid."
"Monstrous!"
"What mine would be, if it ever came out that I was broke, I don't know. A sort of female butler without portfolio, I guess.
Mabel has her points—l'm very fond of her-but she's one of those women who can't help taking it out of the underdog. You daren't let her get on top of you. You've got to keep her under your thumb.
That's what I've been doing this last year since I came to live with her. Thank God for giving me a curling lip and a commanding eye.
Not that they would be any good if she didn't think I had a weak heart and all the money in the world and was going to hand in my dinner pail at any moment and leave my millions to her."
"The woman is a ghoul."
"No, she's not. She's all right, provided you're in a position to sit on her head. And so far I have been. But, oh baby, if I can't raise that five hundred pounds!"
This second mention of that specific sum interested Joss.
"Why do you want that exact amount?"
"It's a debt I've got to pay. One of these debts of honour. And if I can't get the money any other way I shall have to ask Mabel for it, and then the whole facts about my financial position will come out and I shall sink to the level of a fifth-rate power. Say, have you ever presented the prizes at a girls' school?"
Joss said that he had never had that experience.
"Well, don't," said Mrs Chavender and relapsed into a pensive silence. She seemed to be reliving a scene which, if the frown on her fine forehead was to be taken as evidence, had not been an agreeable one. Her eyes, as she drew at her cigarette, were clouded.
"Don't you do it," she said at length. "There's something about the atmosphere that does something to you. There they are, all those shining young faces looking eagerly up at you, and you think of the time when you were that age, with the world before you, and it's as if you had gone on a bender and got full to the gills of vintage champagne. I presented the prizes at a girls' school yesterday."
"Yes, I remember you telling me that you were going to. You wanted something to say to the inmates, and I suggested, 'Hullo, girls,' which you seemed to feel would be inadequate. Did you think of something better on the way down?"
"Did I! I made the speech of a lifetime. I had them tearing up the seats and rolling in the aisles."
"Good," said Joss.
"Not so good," said Mrs Chavender. "Because I hadn't the sense to stop there and take a bow and get off. I had to go and overdo it.
Shall I tell you what happened?"
"I'm all agog."
"Well, I must begin by mentioning that the warden of this seashore Sing-Sing, in her few words of introduction, had spoken of a new gymnasium or some damn thing which they were planning to build and had hoped that all parents would contribute generously to this very deserving cause, as the school expected to be punched in the pocketbook for at least two thousand of the best and brightest. She then said that Mrs Chavender would now address you on Ideals and the Future Life, and I spat out my lozenge and advanced to the footlights. And, as I say, I wowed them. And then, when the applause had died down and I could hear myself speak, I heard myself speak. And do you know what I was saying? I was saying that I would give five hundred pounds towards their blasted gymnasium if three others would do the same."
"Ah!" said Joss.
"You may well say 'Ah!' Mark you, even though my eloquence had reduced me to a condition where I could have walked straight into any inebriates' home and no questions I asked, I thought I was playing it pretty safe. I remembered the gloomy silence which had greeted that gag about contributing generously, and while the room re-echoed to the salvos of applause and the dust went up from the stamping of six hundred girlish feet I kept saying to myself: 'All may yet be well, old sport. I think so. I hope so.' And would you believe it, a couple of minutes later two nitwits with criminal faces had sprung forward with tears in their eyes, shouting that they were with me. And a moment later another certifiable idiot had said the same. So there I was. The best I could do, which wasn't much, was to say I had left my chequebook at home but that they would hear from me in due course. So now, young Weatherby, you know why I want five hundred pounds."
Her admirably clear exposition of the facts had left Joss in no doubt on that point.
"You must certainly have it," he said. "As I see it, we form a syndicate. About how much do you think J. B. would go to?"
"Apparently Mabel didn't let him get as far as talking figures.
But I think a thousand pounds would be cheap in the circumstances, don't you?"
"Dirt cheap. An absolutely authentic Weatherby-his Palm Beach period-should fetch that and more."
"Would five hundred be enough for you and Howard Steptoe to split?"
"Don't worry about me. I don't come in on the money end of it.
What I want is my job back, or possibly I may stand out for being made head of the art department. I shall have to think it over."
"I'd stand out."
"Yes, perhaps I will. I'm not thinking of myself. It would be such a grand, thing for the firm to have a head of the art department like me.
"Then what's the procedure? Do I run up to London and see Jimmy?"
"He's at the inn at Loose Chippings."
"That's convenient. I'll look in there."
"And now to form a plan of campaign. How do we act for the best? It's not going to be easy. Did you notice anything about Chibnall just now?"
"His pyjamas?'
"No, though I agree that they were striking. Somehow one always pictures a butler in a nightshirt. I was referring to his manner. I didn't like it. He's stopped calling me 'Sir.' Also, his eye was cold.''
"You think he suspects?"
''I'm convinced of it."
"You can outsmart him. Just choose a time when he isn't prowling. And I'll tell you when that'll be. During the garden party."
"Of course. I suppose a butler has to buttle like nobody's business during a garden party."
"He won't have a free minute. And there's another thing. All the nobility and gentry for miles around will be at the garden party. The place will become practically a thieves' kitchen. This will distribute suspicion.''
"You think of everything."
From somewhere in the distance there sounded a shrill, impatient bark. Mrs Chavender rose hurriedly.
"I must go. That's Patricia what-the-helling. She doesn't like being left alone."
"Your bloodhound?"
"My Peke, God bless her."
"Is that the one Miss Fairmile brushes?"
"It's one of the ones she brushes. She's an admirable dog brusher.
Tactful and soothing. All right, my angel rabbit, mother's coming.
By the way," said Mrs Chavender, pausing at the door, "did I understand you to say you loved Sally?"
"That's right."
"Well, I don't know how it's going to affect your plans, but she told me this morning, when we were driving to Lewes, that she was engaged to this Lord Holbeton you may have seen pottering about the place. All r
ight, all right, all right," said Mrs Chavender, as the imperious summons sounded once more from above. ''I'm coming, I tell you. The way these darned Pekes keep you on the jump you'd think they thought you went around in spiked shoes and running shorts."
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