Mr. Zero

IX

Giles and Linda Westgate lived in a flat which consisted of one large room and several darkish cupboards euphemistically labelled bedroom No. I, bedroom No. 2, kitchen, and bathroom. Linda had done her best by painting each one a different colour and in the brightest possible shade. Her cupboard was a brilliant jade, Giles’ canary-yellow, the bathroom emerald, and the kitchen a cheerful orange. The large room she had left alone. It had cream walls, a parquet floor, and no furniture except piles of cushions, a collapsible table, and a dozen chromium-plated chairs. Their brittle, angular brightness reminded Algy of some insect’s legs-grasshopper, dragonfly, mantis.

Linda furnished her room with people. There were eight of them for dinner, and a crowd afterwards. She wore scarlet velvet, which went very well with her cream skin and her cream walls. She had black hair which never stayed where it was put, and dancing eyes with a dark, malicious sparkle in them-a vivid creature, decorative and talkative as a parrot and quite as indiscreet. Giles, a budding barrister, talked nearly as much as she did, and could be witty. They had a great many friends, and spared none of them.

Algy, coming into the room, was aware of a sudden silence which seemed so abnormal in any room of Linda’s as to make him positive that they had been talking about him. If he flinched he contrived not to show it, and in a moment Linda was hanging on his arm and chattering at him.

“Algy darling, we were talking about you. Didn’t you hear us all stop dead?” (Clever to take the bull by the horns like that.) “Would you like to know what we were saying?”

Algy said, “Very much.” But he thought he knew already, and he thought that he wouldn’t be very likely to hear the truth, or to like it if he did.

There were four people there besides the Westgates. Two of them laughed, and two made rather a lamentable failure of an attempt to appear quite easy and comfortable. Algy looked round, said how do you do to the friend of Linda’s who had been asked to balance a friend of Giles’-pretty girl with red hair; dark young man with a superiority complex-and to James and Mary Craster, whom he liked. It was James and Mary who had been embarrassed, and the other two who had laughed.

“And what were you saying about me?” he said, and saw Mary blush and Linda twinkle maliciously.

“Darling Algy, you are the scandal of the moment. Did you know? Half everybody is saying you’ve sold all Monty’s secrets to the Bolshevists, and that you’re going to be shot at dawn in the Tower-and, darling, if you are, you will see about my having a front seat, won’t you? Because what’s the good of being a relation if it doesn’t give you a pull?”

Algy laughed.

“I’ll make a point of it. What are the other half saying?”

“That you’re as pure as the driven snow,” said Linda. “Algy, darling, do, do please tell us all about it. And if you did sell them, do tell me how, and where, and what you got for them, because I might try and collect something myself-I’m most awfully hard up. If I got Monty in the melting mood, I might get something out of him.”

“Not you,” said Giles-“he hates you like sin.”

“Does he hate sin?” said the dark young man.

Algy said, “Apparently.” He owed Linda something, and was always ready to pay.

“Yes, isn’t it a shame?” she said. “And all because someone told him I said that it gave me the jitters to think of ever having another horse’s neck-after meeting Maud, you know. And I adored them before, and someone told Monty, and he’s been dead cuts with me ever since. Not my fault that Maud is the dead spit and image of a mare in the knacker’s yard-now is it? But, Algy my angel, you haven’t confided in us. Did you sell Monty, or didn’t you? And what did you get for it? And are they going to shoot you at dawn?”

“The sentence has been commuted to an evening with you, my dear. Death by tongue-pricks-a nasty lingering affair. Be kind and get it over. Perhaps Giles will tell me what I am supposed to have done.”

Fatal for Giles to hesitate, but he did-almost but not quite imperceptibly. Then he came in with a gay,

“You would be the last to hear about it. It’s the most marvellous tale-all the Cabinet secrets gone down the drain, and your’s the hand that loosed the plug.”

There was no hesitation about Algy’s laughter. If you didn’t laugh at a thing like this, if you couldn’t laugh at it, then you would go down under it and be dead, and damned, and done for. But Algy had no intention of being done for. He threw back his head and laughed, and it took him all he knew, but quite suddenly in the middle of it there came a strange rushing conviction that he was going to come out on top. He linked his arm with Mary Craster’s and said,

“Marvellous! Poor Monty-has anyone broken it to him?”

Linda hung affectionately on his other arm.

“Darling, will he have to come and see you shot? In the front row. With Maud. He’ll simply hate it-won’t he? So humanitarian. But I suppose he’ll have to. Home Secretaries do, don’t they?”

“Too much imagination, my dear,” said Algy. “Go and write a dime novel.”

Linda shook her head.

“No, I’m going to do an anonymous autobiography. You know, Malice in Mayfair, or Velvet and Venom, or-”

“Lispings of a Liar,” said Giles rudely.

“Jealous!” said Linda. “He won’t be jealous about me, but he’d hate me to write a book-wouldn’t you, darling?”

“Well, I’d have to settle up for the libel actions. And if you don’t stop making love to Algy I shall probably break his head. Woman, your guests arrive. Behave!”

“It’ll be Sylvia Colesborough,” said Linda.

The front door of the flat opened and shut again. The maid announced, “Lady Colesborough and Mr. Rooster.”

Sylvia came in without hurry. She wore a pale gold frock. She had a radiance. The lights shone on her. Cyril Brewster, thin, dark, and earnest, followed her into the room. Linda surveyed him with surprise.

“Oh, Linda darling!” Sylvia kissed her. “I do hope you don’t mind, but Francis couldn’t come. He got a telephone call-from Birmingham, I think-they’re generally from Birmingham-and he had to rush off. I do think being in business is a bore. But, darling, I’m afraid I’ve made rather a muddle, because I’d written you down for tomorrow, so I was going to dine with Mr. Brewster, but when Francis said he couldn’t come I remembered-you know how one does all of a sudden-so I thought if I brought him along it wouldn’t put your table out.”

Mr. Brewster looked decidedly unhappy. The soul of correctness, he was being placed in a position which was irregular if not actually incorrect. The lady’s husband had been asked. He was not the lady’s husband. Far from it. He had only met her three times, and she had really given him no choice, she had simply brought him. Instead of her husband. And now it appeared that her husband hadn’t been asked either. Lady Colesborough had always known he was going to be away.

“You said so all along, Sylvia-you know you did,” said Linda, with an edge on her voice. Because really Sylvia was the limit, and the table could just be got to hold eight, but definitely wouldn’t take nine. Well, it had got to-that was all. And anyhow it would make a frightfully good story, Sylvia trailing in about twenty minutes late with that awful stick Cyril and apologizing for Francis who hadn’t been asked. She pushed aside Cyril’s painstaking politeness with a laugh.

“The more the merrier, and if there isn’t enough to go round, it shall be Giles. Or he and Algy can take it by turns. There’s going to be too much of both of them if they don’t watch it.”

Amid indignant protests the door opened. Food began to come in, and they sorted themselves. The table stretched, as tables do, and there was plenty to eat, as there always was in Linda’s house. She adored food, and could have lived on cream and potatoes without ever putting on a quarter of an ounce. Gay, racketing talk went to and fro. The red-haired girl, whose name was Muriel, told them she had been staying in a nudist colony and had felt an urge towards crinolines and large Victorian shawls ever since. She was wearing a shawl now, bright green and Spanish, and her very full black taffeta skirts swept the floor. Giles’ friend with the superiority complex looked moody and said nothing. His name was Cedric, and his infatuation for lively red-haired Muriel had reached a point of which it was a fiery torment to himself and a source of extreme boredom to everyone else. Muriel’s reactions those of the eternal feminine-a desire to prod, to poke, to stir the fire, and drop fresh fuel on the flame. Giles was hating her, and Linda despising him. The talk leapt flashing to and fro from pointed tongues.

Nobody said anything more about Algy. He was grateful, but he wondered why, discerning ultimately a queer substratum of loyalty that closed the ranks-and the tongues-against the outsider. Because Brewster-well there he was, just Brewster, Monty’s Industrious Apprentice, not quite one of themselves. Algy would be thrown only to his own wolf pack to rend. And who said dog didn’t eat dog? Wait and see.