Spring Fever

18

Stanwood Cobbold sat up in bed and switched on the light. He looked at his watch. The hour was some minutes after two.

Stanwood was a young man whom prolonged association with football coaches had trained to obey orders, and when Mike had told him to go to bed and stay there he had done so without demur. It had pained him to be excluded from the night's doings, but he was fair-minded and could quite appreciate the justice of his friend's statement that, if permitted to be present, he would infallibly gum the game. Looking back on his past, he realized that he always had gummed such games as he had taken part in, and there seemed no reason to suppose that he would not gum this one.

But now that he had woken at this particular moment, he could see no possible harm in getting up and stepping along to the library in order to ascertain if all had gone according to plan. By now, if they had run to schedule, the operations must be concluded, and he was consumed with curiosity as to how it had all come out. He also wanted to get a flash of Augustus Robb. A lit-up Augustus Robb should, he considered, provide a spectacle which nobody ought to miss.

He knew where the library was. It was thither that the little guy with the nose glasses had taken him after dinner to talk about stamps. Slipping on a dressing gown, he made his way down a flight of stairs and along a passage. A chink of light beneath the door told him that the room was still occupied, and he entered expecting to find a full gathering—a little apprehensive, too. lest that full gathering might turn on him and give him hell for intruding. His mental attitude, as he went in, resembled that of a large, wet dog which steals into a drawing room, unable to resist the gregarious urge to join the party but none too sure of its welcome.

He was relieved to find only Terry present. She was sitting in a deep chair, apparently wrapped in thought.

"Hiya," he said in what, if questioned, he would have described as a cautious whisper.

Terry came out of her meditations with a leap and a squeak. She had stayed on after Mike had left to take the basin and plate back to the kitchen.

She had promised him that she would go to bed immediately, but she had not done so, for she was loathe to break the magic spell which was upon her. Stanwood's voice, which was like the sudden blaring of a radio when you turn the knob too far, gave her a painful shock.

"Stanwood!" she said severely. "What do you mean by yelling like that?"

"I was whispering," said Stanwood, aggrieved.

"Well, whisper a bit more piano. Come and sit on the sofa and murmur in my ear."

Stanwood tripped over a rug and upset a small table and came to rest at her side.

"Everything okay?" he murmured hoarsely.

"Yes, wonderful," said Terry, with shining eyes.

Stanwood was well pleased. The success or non-success of the expedition could not affect him personally, but it had had his sympathy and support.

"That's good. Then Augustus brought home the bacon all right?"

"What?"

"He got the stamp?"

"Oh, the stamp?" It came to Stanwood as a passing thought that his companion seemed a little distrait. "No, he didn't. There was a hitch."

"A hitch?"

"Yes: You see that broken window? Mr. Robb threw his tools through it, and they are now at the bottom of the moat."

Stanwood inspected the window. He had been thinking he felt a draft, but had put it down to his imagination.

"What made him do that?" he asked, interested.

"Fretfulness. Mike spoke crossly to him, and it hurt his feelings."

"Gee! He must have been sozzled."

"He was."

"I wish I'd seen him."

"It was a very impressive spectacle."

Stanwood found a variety of emotions competing for precedence within him—pity for Lord Shortlands, who had not got his stamp; regret that he himself should have come too late to see Augustus Robb with so spectacular a bun on; but principally bewilderment. He could not square this record of failure with the speaker's ecstatic mood and her statement that conditions were wonderful.

"But you said everything was okay."

"So it is. Have you ever felt that you were floating on a pink cloud over an ocean of bliss?"

"Sure," said Stanwood. This illusion had come to him twice in his life: once when Eileen Stoker, knocking the ash off her cigarette, had told him that she would be his, and once, a few years earlier, on the occasion when his inspired place kick had enabled his university to beat Notre Dame 7-6 in the last half minute.

"Well, that's how I'm feeling. I'm going to marry Mike, Stanwood."

"You are? But I thought—"

"So did I. But I changed my mind."

"Good for you."

"You're pleased?"

"You betcher."

There was silence. Terry, floating on that pink cloud, was thinking her own thoughts with a light in her eyes and a smile on her parted lips, and Stanwood was experiencing once again the surge of relief which had swept over him on the morning when Augustus Robb had first revealed Mike Cardinal's love for a girl who was not Eileen Stoker. As then, he felt that a great weight had been removed from his mind.

"I'm tickled to death," he said, resuming the conversation after time out for silent rejoicing. "And I'll tell you why. This removes old Mike from circulation. Great relief, that is."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know how it is when a guy that's as good-looking as he is is knocking around. You get uneasy."

"Why?"

"Well, you never know what may not happen, I had the idea that he was making a play for Eileen."

The pink cloud failed to support Terry. It shredded away beneath her, and she plunged into the ocean. And it was not, as she had supposed, an ocean of bliss, but a cold, stinging ocean, full of horrible creatures which were driving poisoned darts into her.

"Don't be an idiot," she said, and her voice sounded strange and unfamiliar in her ears.

Stanwood proceeded. He was feeling fine.

"It was at that party of mine that I first got thinking that way. I gave a party for Eileen when she hit London, and Mike was there with his hair in a braid, and he seemed to me to be giving her quite a rush. I don't know if you've ever noticed that way he's got of looking at girls? I'd call it a sort of melting look ...Yes?"

"Nothing."

"I thought you spoke."

"No."

"Well, he seemed to me to be giving her that look a good deal during the doings, and I didn't like it much. Of coarse he had known her in Hollywood—"

"Were they great friends?"

"Oh, sure. Well, that was that, and when she sprang that thing on me—"

"What thing?" said Terry dully.

"Didn't I tell you about that? Why, no, of course, I didn't get the chance. She suddenly told me she wasn't going to marry me unless I could get me some money. Said she'd tried it before, marrying guys with no money, and it hadn't worked out so good. So it was all off, she said, if I couldn't deliver. Well, that sounded straight enough, but tonight, as I was dropping off to sleep, it suddenly struck me that maybe it was just a bit of boloney."

"Boloney?"

"The old army game," explained Stanwood. "I thought she might be simply playing me up. You see, I remembered her and Mike at that party, and I knew what Mike's like with girls, and I sort of wondered if they mightn't have fallen for each other and this was just her way of easing me out. That's why it's so great to hear that you and he have fixed it up. Because if he's that way with you, he can't be that way with her, can he?"

Terry found herself unable to subscribe to this simple creed. It appeared to satisfy Stanwood, who had an honest and guileless mind, but she shivered. There had risen before her eyes the wraith of Geoffrey Harvest, that inconstant juvenile. He, though ostensibly "that way" with her, had never experienced the slightest difficulty in being "that way" with others. Something seemed to stab at her heart, and with a little cry she buried her face in her hands.

"Here! Hey!" said Stanwood. "What goes on?"

The minds of men like Stanwood Cobbold run on conventional lines. Certain actions automatically produce in them certain responses. When, for instance, they find themselves in the society of an old crony of the opposite sex and that crony suddenly gives a gurgle like a dying duck and buries her face in her hands, the Stanwood Cobbolds know what to do. They say "Here! Hey! What goes on?," and place their arm in a brotherly fashion about her waist.

It was as Stanwood was adjusting this brotherly arm that a voice spoke in his rear.

"Mr. ROSSITER!"

Lady Adela Topping was standing in the doorway, surveying the scene with what was only too plainly a disapproving eye.

When a woman of strict views comes into her library at half-past two in the morning to inspect the damage created there by a supposedly inebriated father and finds her youngest sister, towards whom she has always felt like a mother, seated on the sofa in pajamas and a kimono with a young man in pajamas and a dressing gown; and when this young man has his arm, if not actually around her waist, as nearly so as makes no matter, it is understandable that she should speak like Mrs. Grundy at her most censorious. It was thus that Lady Adela had spoken, and Stanwood, who until her voice rang out had been unaware that she was a pleasant visitor, rose from his seat as if a charge of trinitrotoluol had been touched off under him.

"Gosh!" he exclaimed.

It was a favorite monosyllable of his, but never had he spoken it with such a wealth of emphasis. His emotions were almost identical with those which he had experienced one November afternoon when an opposing linesman, noticing that the referee was looking the other way, had driven a quick fist into his solar plexus. For an instant he was incapable of further speech, or even of connected thought. Then, his brain clearing, he saw what he had to do.

In the code of the Stanwood Cobbolds of this world there is a commandment which stands out above all others, written in large letters, and those letters of gold. It is the one that enacts that if by his ill-considered actions the man of honour has compromised a lady he must at once proceed, no matter what the cost, to de-compromise her.

He did not hesitate. Tripping over the skirt of his dressing gown and clutching at a pedestal bearing a bust of the late Mr. Gladstone and bringing pedestal and bust with a crash to the ground, he said with quiet nobility:

"It's all right, ma'am. We're engaged!"

As a general rule, given conditions such as prevailed in the library of Beevor Castle at two-thirty on this May morning, no better thing than this can be said. Such a statement clears the air and removes misunderstandings. It smoothes the frown from the knitted brow of censure and brings to the tightened lips of disapproval the forgiving smile. But on this occasion something went wrong with the system, and what caused this hitch was Lady Adela's practical, common-sense outlook.

"Engaged?" she echoed, not in the least soothed; in fact, looking more like Mrs. Grundy than ever. "Don't talk nonsense. How can you be engaged? You met my sister for the first time at dinner tonight."

Then, suddenly, as she paused for a reply, there came to her the recollection of certain babblings which Desborough had inflicted upon her in the privacy of her bedroom that night, while she was creaming her face. Some story about this Mr. Rossiter of Spink's being an impostor; a view, if she recollected rightly, which he had based on the fact that the other had displayed an ignorance about stamps.

At the time she had scouted the notion, it being her habit to scout practically all her husband's notions. But now, gazing at Stanwood, she found herself inclining to a theory which at the time when it was placed before her she had dismissed as absurd. A moment later she was not merely inclining, she had become that theory's wholehearted supporter. Foreign though it was to her policy to admit that Desborough could ever be right about anything, she knew that in this single instance he had not erred.

Nearly a year had passed since, in exile at Harrogate, she had read the second of those reports which she had ordered Mervyn Spink to send her each month, telling of the progress of events at the castle during her absence, but now a sentence in it came vividly to her mind. Mervyn Spink, in his running commentary, had stated that, owing to having broken his spectacles and so rendered it difficult for him to see where he was going, young Mr. Rossiter had had the misfortune to collide with and destroy the large Chinese vase in the hall.

His spectacles!

She fixed Stanwood with a burning eye, which, much as he would have preferred to do so, he could not avoid.

"Where are your spectacles?" she demanded.

"Ma'am?"

"Do you wear spectacles?"

"No, ma'am."

"Then WHO ARE YOU?"

"Stanwood Cobbold, ma'am," said Stanwood, even as Mike had predicted. Beneath that eye he was incapable of subterfuge.

Lady Adela gasped. Whatever she had expected to hear, it was not this.

"Stanwood Cobbold?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Lady Adela, as so often happens in these knotty cases, decided to take a second opinon.

Is this Mr. Cobbold, Terry?"

"Yes."

"Then who-WHO-is the other one?"

"He is a friend of Stanwood's. His name is Cardinal."

A bright flush came into Lady Adela's face. No hostess can be expected to enjoy this sort of thing, and she was the type of hostess who enjoys it least.

"Then why did he come here, saying he was you?" she demanded, turning that incandescent eye upon Stanwood again.

Stanwood cleared his throat. He untied the knot of the cord of his dressing gown and retied it. He passed a hand over his chin, then ran it down the back of his head.

"Well, it was this way—" he began, and so evident was it to Terry that he was about to relate in full detail the story of Lord Shortlands and his cook that she intervened hurriedly.

"Stanwood had some very important business that kept him in London—"

"Yay," said Stanwood, grateful for this kind assistance.

"—so he couldn't come, and—Mr. Cardinal made a sort of bet that he could come instead—"

"Yay," said Stanwood, well pleased with the way the story was shaping.

"—and not be found out. . ."

She paused. It may have been owing to Stanwood's interpolations, but the story sounded to her thin. She passed it under swift review. Yes, thin.

"It was a sort of joke," she said lamely.

Earls' daughters do not snort, but Lady Adela came very near to doing so.

"A joke!"

"And then Stanwood found that he was able to come, after all..."

Terry paused again.

"So he came," she said.

To her amazement she saw that her sister's stony gaze was softening. It was as if a sweeter, kindlier Lady Adela Topping had been substituted for that forbidding statue of sternness and disapproval. The chatelaine of Beevor Castle was actually smiling.

"I think I can guess why he did that," she said archly, and again Terry marvelled. She had never seen Adela arch before. "You found you couldn't keep away from Terry, Mr. Cobbold? Wasn't that it?" that it?"

Stanwood was in poor shape, but he was still equal to saying "Yay," so he said it.

"And Spink suggested your pretending to be Mr. Rossiter?"

"Yay."

"I shall speak to Spink in the morning," said Lady Adela, with a return of her earlier manner. "And this Mr. Cardinal, too. Well, I ought to be very angry with you, Mr. Cobbold."

"Yay."

"But I feel I can't be. And now you had better go to bed."

"Yay."

"I would like a word with Terry. Good night."

"Yay," said Stanwood, and withdrew in disorder.

The word his hostess had with Terry was brief.

"Well, really, Terry!" she said.

Terry did not speak.

"You are the most extraordinary girl. Behaving like this. Still, I won't scold you. I'm so delighted."

Lady Adela folded her sister in a loving embrace. She gave her a long, lingering, congratulatory kiss.

"Desborough says his father's worth MILLIONS!" she said.

19

The sunshine of another balmy day gilded the ancient walls of Beevor Castle. Nine mellow chimes sounded from the clock over the stables. And Lord Shortlands, entering the breakfast room, heaved a silent sigh as he saw Desborough Topping seated at the table. He had hoped for solitude. Sombre though his thoughts were, he wanted to be alone with them.

"Oh, hello," said Desborough Topping. "Good morning."

"Good morning," said Lord Shortlands.

He spoke dully. He was pale and leaden-eyed and looked like a butler who has come home with the milk, for he had had little sleep. Few things are less conducive to slumber than the sudden collapse of all one's hopes and dreams round about bedtime, and when Augustus Robb in that unfortunate moment of pique had hurled his bag of tools into the moat, he had ruined the fifth earl's chances of a good night's rest. From two o'clock onwards the unhappy peer had tossed on his pillow, dozing only in snatches and waking beyond hope of further repose at about the hour when the knowledgeable bird is starting wormwards.

"Nice day," said Desborough Topping. "Don't touch the bacon,'" he advised. "That girl's scorched it again."

"Oh?" said Lord Shortlands. A tragedy to his son-in-law, who liked his bit of bacon of a morning, the misadventure left him cold.

"To a cinder, darn her. Thank goodness Mrs. Punter comes back this afternoon."

A look of infinite sadness came into Lord Shortlands' eyes. He was aware of Mrs. Punter's imminent return, and last night had hoped to have been able to greet her with the news that he had become a man of capital. Augustus Robb had shattered that dream. He helped himself to coffee—black coffee, but no blacker than his thoughts of Augustus Robb.

Breakfast at Beevor Castle was a repast in the grand old English manner, designed for sturdy men who liked to put their heads down and square their elbows and go to it. It was open to Lord Shortlands, had he so desired, to start with porridge, proceed to kippers, sausages, scrambled eggs and cold ham, and wind up with marmalade: and no better evidence of his state of mind can be advanced than the fact that he merely took a slice of dry toast, for he was a man who, when conditions were right, could put tapeworms to the blush at the morning meal. His prowess with knife and fork had often been noted by his friends. "Shortlands," they used to say, "may have his limitations, but he can breakfast."

He finished his coffee and refilled his cup. Desborough Topping, who had been fortifying himself with scrambled eggs, rose and helped himself to ham from the sideboard.

"Young Cobbold just left," he said, returning to the table.

"Oh?"

"Yes. Hurried through his breakfast. Said he had to get in to London early."

"Oh?"

"Probably wanted to have that eye of his seen to."

Lord Shortlands was not a quick-witted man, but even he could see that he must know nothing of Mike's eye.

"What eye?"

"He has a black eye."

"How did he get that?"

"AR, that's what I'd like to know, but he didn't tell me. I said to him That's a nasty eye you've got,' and he said 'Into each life some nasty eye must fall.' Evasive."

"Perhaps he bumped into something."

"Maybe."

Desborough Topping applied himself to his ham in silence for a space.

"But what?"

"What?"

"That's what I said—What? What could he have bumped into?"

Lord Shortlands tried to think of some of the things with which a man's eye could collide.

"A door?"

"Then why not say so?"

"I don't know."

"Nor me. Mysterious."

"Most."

"There's a lot of things going on in this house that want explaining. Did you hear a crash in the night?"

"A crash?"

"It woke me up."

Lord Shortlands was in a condition when he would have found any breakfast-table conversation trying, but he found this one particularly so.

"No. I—ah—heard nothing."

"Well, there was a crash. Around two in the morning. A sort of crashing sound, as if something had—er—crashed. I heard it distinctly. And that's not the only thing I'd like to have explained. Look," said Desborough Topping, peering keenly through his pince-nez like Scotland Yard on the trail, "what do you make of that guy that calls himself Rossiter?"

Lord Shortlands licked his lips. This is a phrase that usually denotes joy. In this instance, it did not. He prayed for something to break up this tete-a-tete, and his prayer was answered. The voice of Cosmo Blair, raised in song, sounded from without. The door opened, and Clare entered, followed by the eminent playwright.

"Ah, my dear Shortlands."

"Good morning, Father."

"Good morning," said Lord Shortlands, feeling like the man who, having got rid of one devil, was immediately occupied by seven others, worse than the first. When he had prayed for something to interrupt his chat with Desborough Topping, he had not been thinking of Cosmo Blair.

His spirits drooped still further. Those of Cosmo Blair, on the other hand, appeared to be soaring. Lord Shortlands had never seen the fellow so effervescent.

"Did you hear a crash last night?" asked Desborough Topping.

"I am in no mood to talk of crashes, my dear Topping," said Cosmo Blair. "This, my dear Topping and my dear Shortlands, is the happiest day of my life." He advanced to the table, and rested his hands on the cloth. "My lords, ladies and gentlemen, pray silence. Charge your coffee cups and drink to the health of the young couple."

"Cosmo and I are engaged, Father," said Clare in her direct way.

"My God!" said Lord Shortlands. "I mean, are you?"

Cosmo Blair placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

"I think I know what is in your mind, my dear Shortlands. You fear that you are about to lose a daughter. Have no anxiety. You are merely gaining a son."

"We're going to live at the castle," explained Clare.

"So that's all right," said Cosmo Blair. He was a kindly man at heart, and it gave him pleasure to relieve his future father-in-law's apprehensions. "We shall both be with you."

There came upon Lord Shortlands an urgent desire to get away from it all. Cosmo Blair's society often had this effect on him. He yearned for Terry. A moment before, he had been thinking of having a third cup of coffee, but now he decided to lose no time in going to her room, where he presumed her to be breakfasting. Terry was always the best medicine for a bruised soul.

He rose, accordingly, and Desborough Topping cocked a surprised eye at him.

"Finished?"

"Yes."

"Not going to eat anything?"

"No appetite."

"Too bad."

"A liver pill, my dear Shortlands," said Cosmo Blair. "That's what you want. Take it in a little water."

"Oh, by the way, Father," said Clare, "Adela would like a word with you later on."

Lord Shortlands started.

"Adela? What about?"

"She didn't say. I just poked my head in at her door and said Cosmo and I were engaged, and she told me to tell you."

It was a pensive Lord Shortlands who made his way to Terry's room. The news that he was to have Cosmo Blair with him for apparently the rest of his life had shaken him deeply, but not more so than the announcement that Adela wanted a word with him. It too often happened that, when his eldest daughter had a word with him, that word stretched itself into several thousand words, all unpleasant, and in his present low state of mind he felt unequal to anything but the kindest and gentlest treatment.

But he quickly recovered his poise. On occasions like this what a man needs above all else is a clean conscience, and his, on examination, proved to be as clean as a whistle. Except for wanting to marry her cook, introducing impostors into her home and inciting ex-burglars to break open her safe, of all of which peccadilloes she was of course ignorant, he had done absolutely nothing to invite Adela's censure. If Adela wanted a word with him, he told himself, it was no doubt on some trifling matter of purely domestic interest.

As he knocked on Terry's door, he was conscious of that moral strength which comes to fathers on whom their daughters have not got the goods.

Desborough Topping, meanwhile, had finished his ham and had gone up to see his wife, his dutiful habit at this time of day. He found her propped up among the pillows with a bed table across her knees, and was pleased to note that she seemed in excellent humour.

"Good morning, honey."

"Good morning, dear. Have you seen Clare?"

"Just left her. You mean this engagement of hers? She was telling me about that. You're pleased, I guess."

"Delighted. I like Cosmo so much."

"Got the stuff, too."

"Yes. And isn't it extraordinary that the two things should have happened almost at the same time?"

"Eh?"

"Don't you know? Terry's engaged to Stanwood Cobbold."

"You don't say!"

"Yes. It's .really wonderful. He seems so nice, and of course Mr. Cobbold has millions."

"Yes, old Ellery's well fixed. When did it happen?"

"I heard about it early this morning."

"Funny he didn't say anything to me about it. He came in and rushed through his breakfast and dashed off. So they're engaged, are they? He looks as if he'd been having a barroom scrap instead of getting engaged. Got a peach of a black eye. I'd like to know who gave him that."

An austere look came into Lady Adela's face.

"I can tell you. It was Father."

"Father?"

"'He was disgracefully intoxicated last night. I went to his room this morning, and it was littered with bottles."

Desborough Topping was visibly impressed. He had never supposed his father-in-law capable of such spirited behaviour. He also learned with surprise that he packed so spectacular a punch.

"Gee!" he said feelingly. "I'm glad he didn't take it into his head to haul off and sock me. I thought he looked a little peaked this morning. Well, say, he must have been pretty bad. I was discussing Cobbold's eye with him, just now, and he'd forgotten all about it."

"I will refresh his memory," said Lady Adela coldly. "But that wasn't Stanwood Cobbold that Father hit. It was a friend of his, a Mr. Cardinal. Mr. Rossiter is really Stanwood Cobbold."

Desborough Topping sat down on the bed. His air was that of one who is being tried too high.

"I don't get this."

"Well, I must admit that I am not very clear about it all myself. According to Terry, Stanwood found himself unable to come here, and this Mr. Cardinal made a bet that he could come instead of him and not be found out."

"Sounds crazy."

"Very. I intend to have a word with Mr. Cardinal."

"He's gone to London."

"When he gets back, then."

"But you say Cobbold couldn't come, and he did come."

"Oh, that part of it is easy enough to understand. After a day or two he found he was able to, and he couldn't keep away from Terry. So he came to the inn, and I suppose Spink told him he could get into the castle by pretending to be Mr. Rossiter."

Desborough Topping whistled.

"Then Spink—"

"Exactly. It was a deliberate plot on Spink's part to get possession of that stamp. I shall give him notice immediately."

"I would. The guy's a crook. These thriller fellows are right. Butlers want watching. I remember in Murder at Murslow Grange ... What are you planning to do with the stamp?"

"I've been thinking about that. We shall never know now whom it really belongs to. I think you had better have it."

"Me?"

"Well, nobody claims it, and it's about time you had some sort of return for all you've done for us. After all, you have been supporting the whole family for years."

Desborough Topping was moved. He bent over and kissed his wife.

"I call that mighty good of you, honey. I'll add it to my collection. It isn't every day that one gets the chance of laying one's hands on a Spanish dos reales unused, with an error in colour. But tell me more about the old man. Sozzled, was he?"

"Disgustingly."

"Did you see him?"

"No, I did not actually see him. I heard a crash in the early morning—"

"Oh, there was a crash? I thought so."

"It seemed to come from the library, so I started to go there, and I had nearly reached the door when Mr. Cardinal came rushing out with his eye all swollen. He told me that Father was in there in a terrible state. He said he had broken a window and hit him in the eye, but that I wasn't to worry, because he could get him to bed all right."

"Gee!"

"So I decided to leave everything to him. I am very angry with Mr. Cardinal, but I must say he seems a capable young man. He must have managed, for I heard nothing else. Then, some time later, I thought I would go to the library again and see what damage had been done, and there was

Terry sitting on the sofa with Stanwood Cobbold. At half-past two in the morning!"

"Gosh!"

"He had his arm around her waist."

"Well, I'll be darned!"

"When he saw me, he jumped up, of course, and it suddenly struck me that he was not wearing spectacles."

"Eh?"

"What you had told me of your suspicions had made me doubtful about him, and then I remembered that Spink in one of his letters, when the Rossiters had the castle, had mentioned that the son wore spectacles. So I asked him who he was, and he said he was Stanwood Cobbold. And then he told me that he and Terry were engaged."

"But what were they doing in the library?"

"I suppose they both heard the noise and went to see what had happened, and then they sat down for a talk before going to bed again. Just imagine! At half-past two in the morning! Terry really is the most reckless child. Thank heaven she's going to be married."

"And to a fellow who'll have all the money on earth, if his father loosens up. Which he will, of course. Old Ellery will be tickled stiff about this."

"You had better send him a cable, telling him what has happened. A nice, cordial cable, coming from an old friend. Go and do it now."

"Yes, dear."

"And find Father and tell him I want to see him."

"You wouldn't let him have his hangover in peace?"

"Certainly not."

"Just as you say, dear."

It was some little time before Desborough Topping returned.

"I've sent the cable. I said, 'Well comma Ellery comma old socks comma how's every little thing stop. Your son Stanwood just got engaged to Lady Teresa Cobbold stop. Charming girl stop. Congratulations and all the best stop.' Was that all right?"

"Splendid. Did you find Father?"

"I hunted everywhere. That's what kept me. But I couldn't locate him. Then I met Clare, and she told me that he and Terry had gone off to London. She met them starting out to make the train. She said they were planning to lunch somewhere."

"But Father hasn't any money. I gave him five pounds on his birthday, but he must have spent that when he went to London to meet Stanwood. Where could he have got any more?"

"Ah," said Desborough Topping guardedly. "There's an interesting piece in the paper this morning about the Modern Girl," he said, hastily changing a subject that threatened to become embarrassing. "I'll fetch it for you."

20

Lord Shortlands' decision to visit London that morning had been one of those instantaneous decisions which men take in sudden crises. No sooner had he learned from Terry of the ingenious ruse whereby Mike some seven hours earlier had succeeded in checking his daughter Adela's advance on the library than the idea of absenting himself from Beevor Castle for a while had come to him in a flash.

It was with mixed feelings that he had listened to her story. A fair-minded man, he admitted that it had been essential for Mike, confronted with that menacing figure, to say something that would ease the strain, but he made no secret of his regret that he had not said something else. Within thirty seconds of the conclusion of the recital he was urging Terry to get dressed as quickly as possible and accompany him to the metropolis while the going was good.

This craven flight would, of course, merely postpone the impending doom, but he had a feeling that he would be able to face Adela with more hardihood after a lunch at Barribault's or some similar establishment, and he had not forgotten that he still had in his possession the greater part of the ten pounds which Desborough Topping had given him on his birthday. His frame of mind was somewhat similar to that of the condemned man who on the morning of his execution makes a hearty breakfast.

They took the eleven-three train, stopping only at Sevenoaks, and their arrival at the terminus found the fifth earl still gloomy and, in addition, extremely bewildered. It may have been because his mind, with so much on it, was not at its brightest, but he had found himself quite unable to follow Terry's tale of her matrimonial commitments. There were moments when he received the impression that she was going to marry young Cardinal, others when it seemed that she was going to marry Stanwood Cobbold, and still others when she appeared to be contemplating marrying both of them.

All very obscure and involved, felt Lord Shortlands, and not at all the sort of thing which a dutiful daughter should have inflicted on a father who had had about an hour and half's sleep. The one fact that emerged clearly was that if ever there was a time for hastening to his club and calling for the wine list, this was it, and he proceeded to do so, arranging with Terry, as before, to meet him in the lobby of Barribault's Hotel at one-thirty. This done, he sped like an arrow to the Senior Buffers.

Terry, for her part, went off to saunter through the streets, to eye the passers-by, to think opalescent thoughts and to pause from time to time to breathe on the shopwindows, particularly those which displayed hats, shoes, toilet soaps and jewellery. All these things she did with a high heart, for she was feeling—and, in the opinion of many who saw her, looking—like the Spirit of Springtime. She lacked the money this time to buy a new hat, but found in her crippled finances no cause for dejection. Hers was a mood of effervescent happiness which did not require the artificial stimulus of new hats. She floated through a world of sunshine and roses.

Joy, it has been well said, cometh in the morning. Whatever doubts and misgivings may have disturbed Terry in the darkness, they had vanished in the light of the new day. She was now able to appraise at their true value those babblings of Stanwood Cobbold which had seemed so sinister in the small hours. After what had passed between her and Mike in the library last night, it was ridiculous to suppose for an instant that he did not love her, and her alone. Stanwood Cobbold, in suggesting that his fancy might rove towards motion-picture stars, had shown that he simply had no grasp of his subject.

She found herself blaming Stanwood Cobbold. Nobody, of course, who enjoyed the pleasure of intimacy with him, expected him to talk anything but nonsense, but he need not, she felt, have descended to such utter nonsense as that of which he had been guilty last night. She had just decided that she would be rather cold to him on her return, when she saw that there would be no need to wait till then.

An hour's aimless rambling through London's sunlit streets had taken Terry to Berkeley Square, and she had paused to survey it and to think with regret how they had ruined this pleasant oasis with their beastly Air Ministries and blocks of flats, when she was aware of a bowed figure clumping slowly towards her on leaden feet. It was Stanwood in person, and so dejected was his aspect that all thought of being cold left her.

"Stanwood," she cried, and he looked up like one coming out of a trance.

"Hiya," he said hollowly.

He made no reference to the circumstances of their last meeting. Presumably he had not forgotten them, but more recent happenings had relegated them to the category of things that do not matter. He gazed at Terry dully, like a hippopotamus that has had bad news.

"Hello," he said. "What are you doing here?"

"Shorty and I broke out of the Big House and came in to have lunch. What are you?"

Stanwood's attention seemed to wander. A blank expression came into his eyes. It was necessary for Terry, in order to recall him to the present, to kick him on the ankle.

"Ouch!" said Stanwood. He passed a hand across his forehead. "What did you say?"

"I asked what you were doing in London."

A look of pain contorted the young man's face.

"I came to see Eileen."

"How is she?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen her."

"Oh? What train did you catch?"

"I came by car. Hired it at the inn. Terry, I'm feeling shot to pieces."

"Poor old Stanwood. Has something gone wrong?" Terry looked at her watch. "Hullo, I must be getting along. I'm meeting Shorty at Barribault's at half-past one. I'd ask you to join us, but I know he wants to be alone with me. He's feeling rather low today."

"I'll bet he's not feeling as low as I am. A worm would have to pin its ears back to get under me. I couldn't lunch, anyway. Simply couldn't swallow the stuff."

"Well, walk along with me, and tell me all about it. What's the trouble?"

"It started with this letter," said Stanwood, falling into step at her side. "This letter from Eileen that I found at the inn."

"Addressed to you?"

"Yay."

"You mean you registered at the inn under your own name?"

"Sure."

"God bless you, Stanwood! Not that it matters now, of course."

"Nothing matters now," said the stricken man.

It seemed to Terry ironical that on this day of days it should be her fate to associate with none but the crushed in spirit, and she found herself thinking wistfully of Mike. Mike might have his faults—her sister Adela by now had probably discovered dozens—but he was not depressing.

"Cheer up," she urged.

"Cheer up?" said Stanwood, with a hollow, rasping laugh. "Swell chance I've got of cheering up. For two pins I'd go and bump myself off."

They walked on in silence. Stanwood seemed to be enveloped in a murky cloud, and his gloom, for misery is catching, was communicating itself to Terry. In spite of herself, those doubts and misgivings were beginning to vex her once more. There was about Stanwood in his present mood something that chilled the spirit and encouraged morbidity of thought. It was as if she had had for a companion the Terry Cobbold in mittens and spectacles of whom she had spoken to Lord Shortlands, and that this mittened Terry Cobbold were whispering, as she had so often whispered, that no good ever comes of getting entangled with Greek gods.

"All alike," this Prudent Self seemed to be murmuring. "They're all alike, these good-looking young men. Remember how you felt about Geoffrey Harvest at the beginning. You thought him perfect. And what a flippertygibbet he turned out to be!"

She wrenched her mind free from these odious reflections. She refused to think of Geoffrey Harvest of abominable memory. Mike was not Geoffrey Harvest. She could trust Mike.

"Well, tell me about the letter," she said. "Why was it so shattering?"

"It was in answer to one I had written her, begging her for Pete's sake to tie a can to that crazy notion of hers about not marrying me because I've no money. I told you about that?"

"Yes, I remember."

"She said she still stuck to it."

"But didn't you expect her to? She wouldn't change her mind right away. I don't see why that letter should worry you. Why did it?"

"Because I read between the lines. There's more to it than meets the eye. Have a look at it," said Stanwood, and thrust a hand into his breast pocket. "You'll see what I mean."

There was nothing of Augustus Robb about Terry. She had no desire to read other people's letters even when invited to, and she was just about to say so when the hand emerged, brandishing before her face a large white envelope, and there floated to her nostrils a wave of scent.

There are certain scents which live up to the advertiser's slogan "Distinctively individual." That affected by Miss Eileen Stoker was one of these. It was a heavy, languorous, overpowering scent, probably answering to one of those boldly improper names which manufacturers of perfume think up with such deplorable readiness, a scent calculated to impress itself on the least retentive memory. It had impressed itself on Terry's memory the day before, when she had first made its acquaintance on Mike's sleeve. They had turned into Duke Street now, and Barribault's Hotel loomed up before them, a solid mass of stone and steel, but not so solid that it did not seem to sway drunkenly before Terry's eyes.

As if in a dream she heard Stanwood speaking.

"Remember what I was saying last night about the old army game? How I thought all that boloney about the money was just Eileen's way of easing me out because she was stuck on someone else? And remember what I told you about Mike and her at that party of mine? Remember me saying I thought he was making a play for her? Well, look. When I got to London, I called her, and she hung up before I'd had time to say a couple of words. And when I rushed around to her hotel, she wouldn't see me. And that's not the half of it. Listen. You've not heard anything yet. I was in the small bar at Barribault's just now, and Aloysius McGuffy told me that she and Mike were lunching there yesterday. What do you know about that?"

Terry forced herself to speak. Her voice sounded strange to her.

"There's no harm in people lunching together."

Stanwood was not prepared to accept this easy philosophy.

"Yes, there is."

"I used to lunch with you."

"That's not the same thing. There are lunches and lunches."

"It doesn't mean anything."

"Yes, it does. It means that they're that way."

"Why?" said Terry, fighting hard.

They had reached the sidewalk outsid,e Barribault's Hotel, and Stanwood halted. His face was earnest, and he emphasized his words with wide gestures.

"I look on that lunch as a what-d'you-call-it; a straw showing which way the wind is blowing. If it wasn't, why was Mike so cagey about it? Did he mention it to you? Of course he didn't. Nor to me. Not a yip out of him. Kept it right under his hat. And why? Because it was a—"

Stanwood paused. A light wind had sprung up, and a straw which showed which way it was blowing had lodged itself in his throat, momentarily preventing speech. And before he could remove this obstacle to eloquence and resume his remarks, there occurred an interruption so dramatic that he could only stand and stare, horror growing in his eyes.

On the sidewalk outside the main entrance of Barribault's Hotel there is posted a zealous functionary about eight feet in height, dressed in what appears to be the uniform of an admiral in the Ruritanian navy, whose duty it is to meet cars and taxis, open the door for their occupants and assist them to alight. This ornamental person had just swooped down upon a taxi which was drawing up at the curb.

In addition to being eight feet high, the admiral was also some four feet in width, and his substantial body for a moment hid from view the couple whom he was scooping from the cab's interior. Then, moving past him, they came in sight.

No member of the many Boost for Eileen Stoker clubs which flourished both in America and Great Britain would have failed to recognize the female of the pair, and neither Terry nor Stanwood had any difficulty in identifying her escort. Mike Cardinal passed them without a glance, his whole attention riveted on his fair companion. He was talking earnestly to her in a low, pleading voice, one hand on her arm, and as they paused for an instant at the swing door his eyes met hers and he gave her a Look. Lord Shortlands, had he been present instead of at the moment turning the corner of the street, would have been able to classify that look. It was of the kind known as melting.

Duke Street swam about Terry, wrapped in a flickering mist. From somewhere in the heart of this mist she was vaguely aware of the hoarse cry of a strong man in his agony, and when some little while later the visibility improved she found that she was alone.

She stood where she was, pale and rigid. The life of London went on around her. but she gave it no attention. "Fool!" she was saying to herself. "Fool!" And the Terry Cobbold in spectacles and mittens sighed and said "I told you so."

She was aware of a voice speaking her name.

"Ah, there you are, Terry. Not late, am I?"

It was a new and improved edition of Lord Shortlands that pawed the sidewalk outside Barribault's Hotel with his spatted feet. His childlike faith in his club's champagne had not been betrayed. He had trusted it to buck him up, and it had done so. His manner now was cheerful, almost exuberant. He had no reason to suppose that the meeting with his daughter Adela, when at length he returned to the castle, would be in any sense an agreeable one, but he faced it with intrepidity. This was due not merely to the champagne, which had been excellent, but to the fact that he had just had an inspiration, and that had been excellent, too.

If Terry was going to marry this young Cardinal, he told himself—and a careful review of their conversation in the train had left him with the conclusion that this was what she had said she was going to do—why should not young Cardinal, admittedly a man of substance, lend him that two hundred pounds?

Lord Shortlands, as a panhandler, was a man who had his code. It was a code which forbade the putting of the bite on those linked to him by no close ties. Acquaintances were safe from the fifth earl. They could flaunt their bank rolls in his face, and he would not so much as hint at a desire to count himself in. But let those acquaintances become prospective sons-in-law, and only by climbing trees and pulling them up after them could they hope to escape him. Unless, of course, like Desborough Topping, they had taken the mad step of having joint accounts with Adela. He regarded the financial transaction which he had sketched out as virtually concluded, and this gave to his deportment a rare bonhomie.

"Come along," he said jovially. Abstention from breakfast had sharpened his appetite, and he was looking forward with keen pleasure to testing the always generous catering of Barribault's Hotel.

Terry did not move.

"Let's go somewhere else, Shorty."

"Eh? Why?"

"I'd rather."

"Just as you say. The Ritz?"

"All right."

"Hey, taxi," said Lord Shortlands, and the admiral sprang to do his bidding. "Ritz," said Lord Shortlands to the admiral.

"Ritz," said the admiral to the chauffeur.

"Ritz," said the chauffeur, soliloquizing.

Lord Shortlands produced largesse. The admiral touched his hat. The chauffeur did grating things with his gears. The cab rolled off.

"Terry," said Lord Shortlands.

"Shorty," said Terry simultaneously.

Lord Shortlands, who had been about to say "Do you think that young man of yours would lend me two hundred pounds?", gave way courteously.

"Yes?"

"Oh, sorry, Shorty, you were saying something?"

"After you, my dear."

Thus generously given precedence, Terry hesitated. She had an idea that what she was about to say might cast a cloud on her companion's mood of well-being. Shorty, she knew, thought highly of Mike.

"I've made a mistake, Shorty."

Lord Shortlands looked sympathetic. He often made mistakes himself.

"A mistake?"

Terry forced herself to her distasteful task.

"I'm not going to marry Mike."

"What!"

"No," said Terry.

Lord Shortlands sank back in his seat, a broken man. The day was still as fair as ever, but it seemed to him that the sun had suddenly gone out with a pop.

21

Butlers, like clams, hide their emotions well. In the demeanour of Mervyn Spink, as he drooped gracefully over the telephone in Lord Shortlands' study at four o'clock that afternoon, there was nothing to indicate that vultures were gnawing at his bosom. Sherlock Holmes himself could not have deduced from his deportment that he had recently been deprived of his portfolio after a scene which—on the part, at least, of Lady Adela Topping, his employer—had been stormy and full of wounding personalities. Outwardly, he remained his old calm elegant self, and his voice, as he spoke into the instrument, was quiet and controlled.

"Hullo?" he said. "Are you there? The office of the Kentish Times? Could you inform me what won the three-thirty at Kempton? ... Thank you."

He hung up, his face an impassive mask. It was impossible to tell from it whether the news he had received had been good news or bad news. He left the study, and made his stately way to the hall. There was always some little task to be done in the hall—ash trays to be emptied, papers to be put tidy and the like—and though under sentence of dismissal, he was not the man to shirk his duties. "You leave tomorrow!" Lady Adela had said, putting a good deal of stomp into the words, and he was leaving tomorrow. But while he remained on the premises, his motto was Service.

As a rule, at four in the afternoon he could count on having the hall to himself and being able to scrounge his customary half dozen cigarettes from the silver box on the centre table, but today it had two occupants. Lord Shortlands, looking as if the rescue party had dumped him there after a train accident, was reclining bonelessly in one of the armchairs. Terry sitting in another. She looked up as the butler entered. Her face was pale and set.

"Is Mr. Cobbold back, Spink?"

"Yes, m'lady. I fancy he is in his room."

"Will you give him this note, please."

"Very good, m'lady."

Lord Shortlands came to life.

"Spink."

"M'lord?"

"Has—ah—has Mrs. Punter arrived?"

"Yes, m'lord."

"Ha!"

Mervyn Spink waited respectfully for further observations but, finding that the other had gone off the air, withdrew, and Lord Shortlands turned to Terry. His voice was low and hoarse, like that of a bandit in an old-fashioned comic opera.

"Terry!"

"Yes?"

"Did you notice anything?"

"How do you mean?"

"About that viper. The man Spink. Did you see a sort of gleam in his eye?"

"No."

"I did. A distinct gleam. As if he had got something up his sleeve. You heard what he said? Mrs. Punter's back."

"Yes."

"Horrible gloating way he said it. I suppose he's been smarming round her ever since she arrived. That's where he scores, being a butler. No barriers between him and the cook. There he is, right on the spot, able to fuss over her to his heart's content. Probably told her she must be feeling tired after her journey, and insisted on her having a drop of sherry. Just the sort of little attention that wins a woman's heart. Not that it matters much now," said Lord Shortlands heavily. "If you aren't going to marry this young Cardinal, I'm dished, anyway."

Terry sighed. At lunch and during the return in the train and subsequently while she was writing that note, the fifth earl had gone into the matter of her broken engagement rather fully, and it seemed that the topic was to come up again.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"I still can't understand why you're giving the chap the push."

"I explained."

"Well, I don't see it. Why shouldn't he lunch with this woman? Old friends, apparently."

"I told you. It was the way he looked at her."

"Pooh!"

"And after what I went through with Geoffrey—"

"Pooh, pooh!"

A single "Pooh!" is trying enough to a girl whose heart is feeling as if it had been split in half, but Terry, by clenching her fists and biting her lip, had contrived to endure it. The double dose was too much for her.

"Oh, for goodness sake do let's stop talking about it, Shorty."

Lord Shortlands heaved himself out of his chair. He could make allowances for a daughter's grief, but her tone had hurt him.

"I shall go for a stroll," he said.

"Yes, do. Much better than sitting here, waiting."

At the thought of what he was waiting for, Lord Shortlands shivered.

"I shall go for a stroll around the moat. The moat!" he said broodingly. "Might drown myself in it," he went on, brightening a little at the thought. But the animation induced by this reflection soon waned. "I wonder where Adela's got to."

"She's probably gardening."

"Well, this suspense is awful. I'm in such a state of mind that I almost hope I'll run into her," said Lord Shortlands, and went out, and a few moments later Terry was aroused from her thoughts by the entry of Stanwood Cob-bold. Stanwood was looking tense and grave, as became a man whose heart was broken. To him, as to Terry, that glilmpse of Mike and Eileen Stoker at the door of Barribault's Hotel had come as a shattering blow, withering hopes and destroying dreams.

"Oh, there you are," he said sepulchrally. "Spink gave me your note."

"What! But it was meant for Mike."

"Sure, I know. But Spink got mixed. You can't blame him. He's just been fired, he tells me, and I guess it's preying on his mind. So you've given Mike the razz?"

"Yes."

"Quite right," said Stanwood warmly. "Show him where he gets off. Later on, when I'm feeling sort of brighter, I'm going to write Eileen a letter, telling her where she gets off. Who was that female in the Bible whose work was always so raw?"

"Delilah?"

"Jezebel," said Stanwood, remembering. "I've heard Augustus Robb mention her. That's how I shall begin. 'Jezebel!' I shall begin. That'll make her sit up. And there's a Scarlet Woman of Babylon that Augustus sometimes wisecracks about. I shall work her in, too. The great question now is, Do I or do I not poke Mike in the snoot?"

"No!"

"Maybe you're right," said Stanwood.

He relapsed into a brooding silence. Terry was wishing that he would go away and leave her to her misery, but as it was evident that he was determined to remain and talk, she sought in her mind for something to talk about which would not make her feel as if jagged knives were being thrust through her heart.

"Have you seen Adela?" she asked.

"Her Nibs? No. Why?" said Stanwood, in sudden alarm. "Is she looking for me?"

"Not that I know of."

"Thank God! If I never meet that dame again, it'll be soon enough for me. Why did you ask if I'd seen her?"

"I don't know."

"Well, I wish you wouldn't. You gave me goose prickles. Some party, that, last night."

"Yes. I never knew you had such ready resource."

"Eh?"

"'It's all right, ma'am. We're engaged.'"

"Oh, that? Well, I had to say something."

"I suppose so."

"And it worked. Gosh!" said Stanwood, starting. It was plain that an idea of some kind had agitated the brain behind that brow of bone. "Golly! You've given me a thought there. Look! Why shouldn't we?"

"Why shouldn't we what?"

"Be engaged."

Terry gasped.

"You mean really?"

"Sure."

"Are you choosing this moment to ask me to marry you?"

"You betcher, and I'll tell you why. You want to show Mike where he gets off. I want to show Eileen where she gets off. You're feeling licked to a splinter. I'm feeling licked to a splinter. Let's merge."

"Oh, Stanwood!" said Terry, and began to laugh.

Stanwood eyed her askance. He did not like this mirth. Her laughter was musical, but he soon began to entertain the idea that there was something of hysteria in it, and at the thought of being alone with a hysterical girl his stout soul wilted. He was none too sure of the procedure. Did you burn feathers under their noses? Or just slap them on the back?

"Hey!" he cried. "Pipe down!"

"I can't. It's too funny."

Stanwood began to be conscious of a certain pique. He had offered this girl a good man's—well, not love, perhaps, but at any rate affection, and he could see no reason why a good man's affection should be given the horse's laugh. His manner became stiff.

"I can't see what's so darned funny about it."

And Terry, suddenly sobered, found that she, too, was unable to do so.

"I'm sorry I laughed," she said. "But you startled me. You'll admit you were a little sudden. Are you really serious?"

"Sure."

Terry was looking at Stanwood, thoughtfully, weighing him up. She liked him, she told herself. She had always liked him. He made her feel motherly. And he was a man you could trust. She could think of many worse things that the future could hold than marriage with Stanwood Cobbold. To marry Stanwood would be to put into snug harbour out of the storm. Perhaps this was what Fate had designed for her from the start, a quiet, unromantic union with no nonsense about it, solidly based on friendship.

It would mean, too, that she would be able to leave the castle, to go out into the wide world where there might be a chance of forgetting, and she realized now how vitally this mattered to her. I can't do it, she had been saying to herself in a hopeless, trapped way. I can't go on living all alone in this awful place where everything will always remind me of Mike. She saw that she was being offered release from prison.

"If it's the money end you're worrying about," said Stanwood, "that's all right. Father will cough up, when he hears it's you I'm marrying."

"I'm not worrying about that, my pet," said Terry. "I'm worrying about you and what you're letting yourself in for."

"If it's okay by you, it's okay by me."

"Sure?"

"Sure."

"Quite sure?"

"Absolutely sure. You betcher. Why not?"

"I'm afraid I shall always love Mike," said Terry, with a little choke in her voice.

"And I shall always love Eileen, darn her gizzard. But what does it matter? Don't talk to me about love," said Stanwood, plainly contemptuous of the divine emotion. "Love's a mess. Look at all the bimbos you see that start out thinking they're crazy about each other. For the first couple of months they can't quit holding hands and feeding each other with their spoons, and after that they're off to the lawyer to fix up the divorce so quick you can't see them for dust. To hell with love. Feed it to the birds. I want no piece of it."

"Friendship is the thing, you think?"

"Sure. If a fellow and a girl are just buddies, they stay buddies."

"There's something in that."

"And we've always got along together like a couple of gobs on shore leave. We'll have a swell time. It's like that song I remember—'Turnty tumty tumty tumty, I was looking for a pal like you.'"

Terry sighed.

"Well, all right, Stanwood."

"Check?"

"Yes."

"Swell. I'll kiss you, shall I?"

He did, and there followed a silence not untinged with embarrassment. To each of the plighted pair it seemed a little difficult to know what to say next. It was a relief to both when Lord Shortlands reappeared, back from his stroll round the moat.

The moat, as always, had lowered his spirits dangerously. It was a sheet of water on which he never looked without despondency. His manner was so dejected that Terry lost no time in imparting news which she felt sure would bring the sparkle back to his eyes.

"Adela has given Spink the sack, Shorty."

For an instant, as she had foreseen, the words acted as a tonic. But, like the one which Stanwood was accustomed to imbibe in his dark hours, its effects, powerful at first, were evanescent. What did it profit, Lord Shortlands was asking himself, that Beevor Castle should be freed from Spinks, if he himself remained unable to acquire that two hundred pounds?

"And Stanwood and I are engaged," said Terry.

The fifth earl clutched his forehead. That feeling of bewilderment, of having an insufficient grasp on the trend of things, which had come to him in the train, was troubling him once more.

"You and Stanwood?"

"Yes."

"Not you and young Cardinal?"

"No."

"But you and Stanwood?" said Lord Shortlands, feeling his way carefully.

"Yes."

Lord Shortlands' face cleared. He had got it at last.

"I hope you'll be very happy," he said. "Stanwood, my boy, I have only this to say—Be good to my little girl, and can you lend me two hundred pounds?"

If Stanwood was surprised, he did not show it.

"Sure," he said agreeably.

"My dear fellow!"

"At least, when I say 'Sure,'" said Stanwood, correcting himself. "I mean I can't."

"You can't?" moaned Lord Shortlands, in the depths.

"Not yet, what I mean. I don't have it. Father cabled me a thousand bucks the other day, but most of it's gone, so you'll have to wait till I can pop it across him again."

Hope stirred feebly in Lord Shortlands' bosom.

"And when do you anticipate that you will be able to—ah—pop it across him?"

Stanwod reflected.

"Well, I usually find it best to give him about a month to sort of simmer."

"A month?" With Mervyn Spink out of the place and unable to exert his fatal fascination, a month seemed to Lord Shortlands no time at all. "Why, that will be admirable. In a month from now, you think—"

"Oh, sure. Maybe less."

Lord Shortlands closed his eyes. As on a former occasion, he seemed to be praying. When he opened them again, it was to observe that Spink had shimmered silently in.

"New York wishes to speak to you on the telephone, sir," he said, addressing Stanwood.

"New York?"

"Yes, sir."

"Gosh, that must be Father," said Stanwood, and hurried out.

Lord Shortlands found himself filled with an ungenerous desire to triumph over a fallen rival.

"I hear you're leaving us, Spink," he said, with unction.

"Yes, m'lord."

"Too bad."

"Thank you, m'lord. I shall be sorry to terminate my association with the castle. I have been extremely happy here."

"Made some nice friends, eh?"

"Yes, m'lord."

"You'll miss them."

"Yes, m'lord. But there are consolations."

"Eh?"

"I have been fortunate in a recent investment on the turf, m'lord. Silver King in the three-thirty race at Kempton Park this afternoon at a hundred to eight. What a beauty!" said Mervyn Spink, momentarily allowing his human side to come uppermost, a thing which butlers seldom do unless they are leaving tomorrow.

Lord Shortlands' jaw had begun to droop slowly, as if pulled by an invisible spring. He spoke in a hushed voice, in keeping with the solemnity of the moment.

"How much did you have on?"

"Fifty pounds, m'lord."

"Fifty pounds! At a hundred to eight?"

"I felt that it was not a moment for exercising caution, m'lord. I invested my entire savings."

Mervyn Spink withdrew, unnoticed as far as Lord Shortlands was concerned, for the latter had leaped to the writing table and was doing sums with a pencil and a piece of paper.

Presently he raised an ashen face.

"Six hundred and twenty-five quid! That viper has trousered six hundred and twenty-five quid! I told you that one of these days he would strike a long-priced winner, but you wouldn't listen to me." He paused, and mopped his furrowed brow. "I'm going to the library to lie down!" he said. "Adela won't think of looking for me there. If you meet her, tell her you haven't seen me."

He tottered out. He had been gone perhaps two minutes, when there was a cheerful sound of whistling without, and Mike came in.

22

From the first moment of his entry it was abundantly evident that Mike was feeling pleased with himself. His whistling had suggested this, and his attitude confirmed it. He exuded lightheartedness and bien-être, and the thought of anyone being pleased with Mycroft Cardinal, the Emperor of the flippertygibbets, was so revolting to Terry that she stiffened and drew herself up coldly. Her bearing, as she faced him, was that of a Snow Queen. Icicles seemed to be forming on her upper slopes.

This, however, appeared to have escaped Mike's notice, for, swooping down on her, he kissed her fondly; then, placing a hand on either side of her waist, picked her up and waved her about for a while, concluding by lowering her into her chair and kissing her again. His manner was entirely free from any suggestion of diffidence or uncertainty as to his welcome.

"My angel! My seraph! My dream kitten!" he said. "I feel as if I hadn't seen you in years. And yet you don't look a day older."

Terry did not reply. It is not easy for a girl who has been intending to be distant and aloof to think of anything good to say under such conditions.

"Notice the eye?" said Mike.

Terry directed what she had hoped was a chilling and indifferent glance at the eye. She had already observed that its sombre hues had vanished.

"I had it painted out at a painting-out shop. For your sake. Augustus Robb warned me that girls didn't like men with bunged-up eyes, and you can always go by him. And now, my child, I have news. Where's Shorty?"

"In the library, I believe."

"I have tidings for him that will bring the sparkle back to his eyes and make him skip like the high hills. Augustus is in again!"

Terry did not understand him, and signified this by raising her eyebrows coldly.

"Yes, Augustus has started functioning once more. He is going to carry on from where he left off last night. I sought him out this morning and grovelled. I said that it was merely strained nerves that had caused me to kick him, and begged him to take the big, broad view. His manner was a little stiff at first, but eventually he relented. If I would go to his gentleman friend in Seven Dials and borrow his tools, he said, he would do the rest. 'Tell him,' he said, 'that Gus wants the old persuaders.' So I called on the gentleman friend—a charming fellow, whose only fault, if you call it a fault, was that his eyes were a bit close together—and gave him the password, and I've just seen Augustus and handed over the old persuaders. He promised to get to work immediately. Your sister Adela, I have ascertained, is out in the garden, no doubt making the lives of the local snails a hell on earth, and Desborough Topping is in his room, having an indoor Turkish bath for his lumbago, so the coast is clear. If Shorty's in the library, he's probably caddying for Augustus at this very moment with a song in his heart, realizing, as you will have realized, that he will soon be sitting on top of the world. Augustus guarantees to bust that pete in five minutes.

He paused. A duller man than he would have noted that Terry was not responsive.

"I had anticipated a certain amount of girlish joy," he said.

"Oh, I'm delighted."

"Then why aren't you squeaking? I should have thought such news would have been well worth a squeak or two." Mike paused again, and sniffed. "Odd smell in here," he said. "Can it be I?"

Terry's lip curled. The smell to which he alluded had not escaped her.

"You've probably not noticed it," she said coldly, "but you are reeking of scent."

"Am I? So I am. Tut, tut."

His reaction to a discovery which should have bathed him in shame and confusion seemed to Terry entirely inadequate. Would nothing, she was asking herself, stir this man's conscience?

"And I'm not surprised," she said bitterly. "Did you enjoy your lunch?"

Mike seemed perplexed.

"How have we got on to the subject of lunch? We were talking of scent."

Terry bit her lip. It was showing a disposition to tremble, and she would have preferred to die the most horrible death rather than shed tears.

"Why lunch?" asked Mike.

"I happened to see you going to lunch today."

"I didn't know you were in London."

"No."

"Were you at Barribault's?"

"I was on the pavement outside."

"And you saw me going in?"

"Yes."

"Then you saw me at my best," said Mike. "Yous saw me in the act of giving a prospect the works, and that is the moment to catch me."

"What do you mean?"

"I've got La Stoker signed up on the dotted line. From now on, for a period of five years, the dear old firm will peddle her at ten per cent of her stupendous salary. It's an ironclad contract, and if she attempts to slide out of it she'll get bitten to death by wild lawyers. And I did it. I, Cardinal. I'm good, I tell you. Good, good, good!"

Terry gasped. Her heart, which she had supposed crushed and dead, gave a sudden leap. There shot through her a suspicion, growing with the moments, that the Lady Teresa Cobbold had made a fool of herself. And at the same time, tentatively at first but rapidly gaining in strength as the purport of his words came home to her, soft music began to play in the recesses of her soul.

"Oh, Mike!" she said.

"I should have begun by telling you that in that cable of his recalling me to the office my boss mentioned that La Stoker had severed relations with her agent before leaving Hollywood and had made no new commitments, and he urged me to get in touch with her and secure her custom. 'Give her the old oil,' he pleaded, in effect, and I gave it her abundantly. I laid the foundations of my brilliant campaign yesterday with a lunch which set the office back about twenty bucks and had her rocking on her French heels, and today I took her out again and polished her off. But it was in no sense a walkover. The Stoker is one of those dumb females whose impulse, if you ask them to do something, is to say 'Well, I dunno' and do the opposite, and there were times, I confess, when I felt like giving the thing up and getting what small consolation I could from beating her over the head with a bottle. Still, I triumphed in the end, and why on earth you're not leaping about and fawning on me is more than I can understand. What's the matter with you?"

Terry choked. Odd things were happening inside her. Carried away, no doubt, by that soft music, her heart appeared now to have parted completely from its moorings and to be going into a sort of adagio dance.

"Was that really it?"

"Was what really what?"

"Was it really just a business lunch?"

"Strictly business."

"Oh, Mike!"

"You may well say 'Oh, Mike!' I was superb. I played on that goofy dame as on a stringed instrument. I gave her everything I'd got: the whispered compliment, the gentle pressure of the hand, the smile that wins, the melting look—"

Terry laughed shakily.

"I saw the melting look."

"You did? Good Lord, I hope you didn't think—"

"That's exactly what I did think. I thought it was Geoffrey Harvest all over again. Well, you never said a word to me about it," said Terry defensively.

"The Cardinals don't talk. They act."

"And you sneaked off at dawn—"

"It wasn't at dawn. I took the nine-forty-five. And I didn't sneak off. I strode from the house with my chin up and my chest out, twirling my clouded cane. So you thought I was a flippertygibbet?"

"Yes. Flitting from flower to flower."

"Is that what flippertygibbets do?"

"Yes. They're very like butterflies in their habits. And it's no good looking at me in that reproachful way, as if you were King Arthur and I was Guinevere—"

"It isn't exactly reproachful. Sadness was what I was trying to register. You must know that you're the only girl in the world I could possibly love, and that only an absolute nitwit would go flitting elsewhere if he'd got you. Don't you ever look in the glass?"

"Well, I stick to it that it was a perfectly natural mistake to make. There were you, devouring this woman with your eyes—"

"I was thinking of that ten per cent."

"—and generally behaving like Great Lovers through the Ages. Anyone would have been misled. Stanwood was."

"Stanwood."

"He was among the spectators."

"Egad! What did he think?"

"The worst. Well, when I tell you that he spoke of writing a letter to Miss Stoker calling her the Scarlet Woman of Babylon—"

"Where on earth did Stanwood ever hear of the Scarlet Woman of Babylon?"

"Apparently Mr. Robb chats with him about her sometimes. And then he came to me and asked me to marry him."

"To—what?"

"To marry him. And I said I would."

Mike tottered.

"You said you would?"

"Yes. It was his idea. He said it would show you where you got off."

Mike drew a deep breath.

"If Shorty kicks at paying three guineas to have your head examined," he said feelingly, "I'll put up the money myelf. Let me tell you something for your files. You're not marrying any blasted Stanwoods. You're marrying me."

"Yes, I see that now."

"Got it quite clear in your little nut, have you?"

"Quite."

"It's a pity you were ever uncertain on the point, for look what you have done. Playing with hearts, I call it. Now I have the unpleasant task of telling an old friend that if he doesn't lay off, I'll push his face in. And what makes it so extremely awkward is that I don't believe I can push Stanwood's face in, unless I seize a happy moment when he's looking the other way."

"Will you really tell him?"

"Of course."

"Oh, Mike, how noble of you. I was wondering how I could do it."

"Where is this home-wrecker?"

"Telephoning. His father rang him up from New York."

"Well, here's something that may comfort you. I doubt if we shall have much moaning at the bar when we break it to him that the deal is off. Towards the end of lunch, when the main business details had been settled, I worked like a beaver in his interests, and La Stoker is now prepared to marry him any time he says the word. I might perhaps have mentioned that earlier."

"You might."

"My old trouble. Playing for suspense. But let's not talk about Stanwood. His romance is merely a side issue. Ours is what matters."

"Yes."

"Have you any objection to getting married like lightning?"

"Not if it's to you."

"'At's the way to talk! It will be. I'll see to that. Well, that's what we'll have to do, because time is running short. I've got to sail next week."

"How pleased all the girls in Hollywood will be to see you again."

"Are there girls in Hollywood?"

"Stanwood says so."

"I don't suppose I shall so much as notice them."

"How about if they come squealing 'Oh, Mike, darling'?"

"There is such a thing as police protection, I presume. But I was saying. About getting swiftly off the mark. It must be a simple ceremony at the registry office for us."

"Beak Street?"

"Or Greek Street. For goodness' sake don't go to the wrong place, like Augustus Robb's girl. And now to tackle Stanwood. Ah," said Mike, as a thunder of large feet approached along the corridor, "here, if I mistake not, Watson, is our client now."

Stanwood Cobbold came charging into the room, as if bucking an invisible line.

23

That his conversation on the telephone had been one fraught with interest and of the most agreeable nature was manifest at once in Stanwood's whole appearance. His eyes were starting, his hair ruffled where he had clutched it with an excited hand and his face as nearly like the Soul's Awakening as it was possible for it to look. Picture a hippopotamus that has just learned that its love is returned by the female hippopotamus for which it has long entertained feelings deeper and warmer than those of ordinary friendship, and you have Stanwood Cobbold at this important moment in his life.

"S-s-s-s-s—" he began, like a soda-water syphon, and Mike rapped the table, calling for order. One has to be pretty sharp on this sort of thing at the outset.

"Spit," he advised.

Stanwood did not spit; but he swallowed once or twice, and seemed to get a grip on his emotion. His voice, when he started again, was calmer.

"Say, I've just been talking to Eileen."

"It's a small point, but you mean your father."

"No, I don't mean my father. I mean Eileen. I called her up after I was through with Father. It's all right. She's going to marry me."

"Marry you?"

"Sure."

Mike frowned.

"Just a minute."

"Can't stop," said Stanwood, exhibiting restiveness. "I've got to rush to the inn and hire that car again and go in and see her."

"Nevertheless," said Mike, "I repeat. Just a minute. You say you're going to marry La Stoker?"

"Sure."

"That wasn't the story I heard. The way I got it was that you were going to marry Terry."

"Oh, gosh!" said Stanwood, pausing. He seemed disconcerted. It was plain that Terry had to some extent slipped his memory.

"Yes, what about me?" said Terry. "Are you proposing to throw this eager heart aside like an old tube of tooth paste?"

Stanwood reflected. It was not long before he reached his decision.

"You betcher. You don't mind, do you?"

"Not a bit," said Terry.

"Swell," said Stanwood.

"It's just as well that you've got that settled," said Mike, "because Terry is going to marry me, and the last thing we wanted was you clumping up the aisle, shouting 'I forbid the banns!'"

Stanwood gaped.

"She's going to marry you?"

"Yes."

"What, even after—"

"Mike has explained everything, Stanwood," said Terry.

A look of awe came into Stanwood's face. He regarded his friend with reverence. If Mike had explained everything, that look seemed to say, then Mike, as the latter had so often had occasion to point out himself, was good. He shook Mike's hand, and said that that was dandy.

"He turns out to be as pure as the driven snow."

"Rather purer, if anything," said Mike. "Your foul suspicions were entirely unfounded, my dear Stanwood. Ask your girl friend, when you see her, and she will tell you that I was merely signing her up in my capacity of junior partner in the firm of Schwartz and Cardinal, ham purveyors of Hollywood. The whole thing was a simple business transaction, entirely free from all taint of sex. There is absolutely nothing between your darned Stoker and me, and there never has been anything. For your information, I wouldn't touch her with a barge pole."

"Oh, say," said Stanwood, wounded, and Terry asked if that was not a little severe. Mike considered.

"Yes," he agreed. "I'm sorry. I went too far. I would touch her with a barge pole, provided it was a good long one."

"Thanks, o' man."

"Not at all."

"So that's all right," said Terry. "I'm so glad everything's settled, Stanwood."

"Yes," said Mike. "One likes to see the young folks happy."

"How sensible of her not to mind about you having no money."

"Eh?" said Stanwood. "Oh, but I do have some money. I forgot to tell you. Seems that the little guy with the nose glasses cabled Father that I was engaged to you, and Father was so tickled that he's deposited a hundred and fifty thousand smackers to my account. That's what he called up about. So I'm nicely fixed," said Stanwood, and without further words dived through the door, en route for the inn and the car that was for hire.

He left behind him a rather stunned silence.

"Well!" said Terry, and Mike agreed that "Well!" about summed it up.

"I hope he'll be happy," said Terry doubtfully.

"As a lark," said Mike. "Not in the sense that we shall be, of course. Nobody could be. But I see quite a bright and prosperous future for the lad. The Stoker's all right. A little apt to turn the conversation to the subject of her last picture, but he'll enjoy that."

"I don't like the scent she uses."

"Stanwood does. He often told me so."

"She isn't a flippertygibbet?"

"Not in the least. A quiet little homebody, never happier than among her books. I've read interviews with her that stressed that. And she often puts on a simple gingham apron and cooks a bite of dinner for herself."

"I'd hate Stanwood to be unhappy."

"Don't you worry. They're the ideal mates. She's solid ivory from the frontal bone to the occiput, and so is Stanwood. Ah, my dear Shorty," said Mike, breaking off and addressing Lord Shortlands, who had just entered.

A glance was enough to tell that this was a very different Lord Shortlands from the crushed martyr who had tottered out to go and he down in the library. It was a near thing, but he looked a little more like the Soul's Awakening than Stanwood Cobbold had done.

Terry glanced questioningly at Mike.

"Shall we tell him at once, or break it gently?"

"At once, I think."

"All right. Shorty, darling, shake hands—"

"Mitt."

"Yes, much better. Mitt Mr. Cardinal, Shorty. We're going to be married."

The unmistakable look of the man who feels that the strain is becoming too much for him came into Lord Shortlands' face. He gave the impression of having definitely given up the attempt to cope with things.

"Married?" he said feebly.

"Yes."

"You and Cardinal?"

"Yes."

"Not you and Stanwood?"

"No."

"But you and Cardinal?"

"Yes."

"My God!" murmured Lord Shortlands, passing a hand across his brow.

"The fact is, my dear Shorty," said Mike, "things have been getting a little mixed, and it has taken some time to straighten them out. There had been mistakes and misunderstandings, not unlike those which occured in Vol. Two of Percy's Promise, a work which you may or may not have read. By Marcia Huddlestone (Popgood and Grooly, 1869). These, however, are now at an end, so brush up the old top hat and get ready for the wedding. The bells of the little village church—or, rather, the little Beak Street registry office—are soon to peal out in no uncertain manner. You may take this as official. Have you seen Augustus?"

The Soul's Awakening expression, which had been temporarily erased, came back into Lord Shortlands' face. After what had occurred on the previous night, he had never expected the name of Augustus Robb to be music to his ears, but this was what it now was. Augustus Robb stood very high on the list of men he liked and respected.

"I have, indeed. I've just left him."

"Why didn't you stay and watch?"

"He wouldn't let me. Said it made him nervous. Very temperamental chap. I told him he would find me here when he was finished."

"How was he coming along?"

"He appeared entirely confident."

"Then very shortly ... Ah!"

Augustus Robb had come into the room, jauntily, like an artist conscious of having done a good piece of work. He had an excellent reception.

"Augustus!" cried Mike.

"Mr. Robb!" cried Terry.

"Did you get it?" cried Lord Shortlands.

"'Ullo, cocky. 'Ullo, ducky. Yus, chum, I got it," said Augustus Robb, replying to them in rotation. "But—"

An unforeseen interruption forced him to leave the sentence uncompleted. "Ah!" said a voice, and they turned to see Lady Adela in the doorway.

Lady Adela was wearing gardening gloves and carrying the shears which had so intimidated Mike at their first meeting. Her eyes, as they rested upon Lord Shortlands, had in them the stern gleam that is seen in those of a tigress which prepares to leap upon the goat which it has marked down for the evening meal. Her righteous indignation, denied expression by his craven flight to London, had been banking up within her since half-past nine that morning, and it was plain that she welcomed the imminent bursting of the dam.

"Ah!" she said. "I would like to speak to you, Father." She looked at the assembled company, and added the word "Alone." What she had to say was not for the ears of others.

Augustus Robb was always the gentleman. His social sense was perfect. Besides, he intended to listen at the door.

"Want us to shift, ducky?" he said agreeably. "Right ho."

Lady Adela, who had never been called "ducky" before and did not like the new experience, raised her eyebrows haughtily. It began to seem as if Augustus Robb was going to get his before Lord Shortlands.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Name of Robb, dearie. Augustus Robb."

"He's Stanwood's valet," said Terry.

"Oh?" said Lady Adela, and left unspoken the words that had been trembling on her lips. Vassals and retainers of Stanwood Cobbold were immune from her wrath. Later on, perhaps, she would suggest to the dear boy that his personal attendant was a little lacking in the polish which one likes to see in personal attendants, but for the moment this chummy servitor must be spared. All she did, accordingly, was to catch his eye.

It was enough. Blinking, as if he had been struck by lightning, Augustus Robb withdrew, followed by Mike and Terry, and Lady Adela turned to Lord Shortlands.

"Father!" she said.

"Well?" said Lord Shortlands.

In the word "Well?", as inscribed on the printed page, there is little to cause the startled stare and the quick catch of the breath. It seems a mild and innocuous word. But hear it spoken in a loud, rasping, defiant voice by a man with his chin protruding and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and the effect is vastly different. Proceeding like a bullet from Lord Shortlands' lips, it left Lady Adela silent and gaping, her feelings closely resembling those which would have come to the above-mentioned tigress had the goat on the bill of fare suddenly turned and bitten it in the leg.

Of all moral tonics there is none that so braces a chronically impecunious earl as the knowledge that he is fifteen hundred pounds on the right side of the ledger. Lord Shortlands had Augustus Robb's assurance that that stamp, for which he had gone through so much, was now as good as in his pocket, and the thought lent him a rare courage. Ancestors of his had been tough nuts on the field of Hastings and devils of fellows among the paynim, and their spirit had descended upon him. He seemed to be clad in mail and brandishing a battle-ax.

"Well? What is it? It's no good you trying to come bullying me, Adela," he said, though perhaps Flaubert would have preferred the word "thundered." "I've put up with that sort of thing long enough."

Lady Adela was a woman of mettle. She tried hard to shake off the illusion that somebody had hit her between the eyes with a wet fish.

"Father!"

Lord Shortlands snorted. One of the main planks in the platform of those ancestors, whose spirit had descended upon him, had always been a rugged disinclination to take any lip from their womenfolk.

"Don't stand there saying 'Father!' No sense in it. I tell you I'm not going to put up with it any longer. I may mention that I have very much disliked your manner on several occasions. In my young days daughters were respectful to their fathers."

This would, of course, have been a good opportunity for Lady Adela to say that they had probably had a different kind of father, but that strange, sandbagged sensation held her dumb, and Lord Shortlands proceeded with his remarks.

"I've decided to leave this bally castle," he said. "Leave it immediately. I have been able to lay my hands on a large sum of money, and there's nothing to keep me. I'm sick and tired of seeing that damned moat and that blasted wing built in 1259 and all the rest of the frightful place. If it interests you to hear my plans, I'm going to buy a public house."

"Father!"

"Will you stop saying 'Father!' Are you a parrot?"

Lady Adela's mind was now so disordered that she could scarcely have said what she was. Whatever it might be, it was something with a swimming head. The only point on which she was actually clear was that she had been swept into the vortex of an upheaval of the same nature as, but on rather bigger lines than, the French Revolution.

"Oh, and by the way," added Lord Shortlands, "I'm going to marry Mrs. Punter."

It is proof of the chaotic condition to which Lady Adela's faculties had been reduced that for an instant the name suggested nothing to her. Mrs. Punter? she was asking herself dazedly. Did she know a Mrs. Punter? A member of the Dorsetshire Punters, would it be? Or perhaps one of the Essex lot?

"Punter?" she whispered.

"Yes, Punter, Punter, Punter. You know perfectly well who Mrs. Punter is. The cook."

"The cook?" screamed Lady Adela.

"Yes, the cook," said Lord Shortlands. "And don't shout like that."

When she spoke again, Lady Adela did not shout. Horror made her words come out in a dry whisper, preceded by an odd, crackling sound which it would have taken a very sharp-eared medical man to distinguish from a death rattle.

"You can't marry the cook, Father!"

"Can't I?" said Lord Shortlands, thrusting his thumbs deeper into the armholes of his waistcoat and waggling his fingers. "Watch me!"

It seemed to Lady Adela, for it was evident that nothing was to be gained by arguing with this unbridled man, that the only course open to her was to fly to Mrs. Punter, whom she had always found a reasonable woman, and appeal to her sense of what was fitting. She proceeded to put this plan into action with such promptness that she was gone before Lord Shortlands realized that she had started. One quick leap, a whizzing sound, and she had vanished. And a moment later Augustus Robb re-entered, wearing the unmistakable air of a man who has had his ear to the keyhole.

"Coo, m'lord," said Augustus Robb admiringly. "That was telling her!"

"Ha!" said Lord Shortlands, still very much above himself. He strode masterfully about the room, waggling his fingers.

"And I've got something to tell you, chum," said Augustus Robb. "It's like this."

He broke off, for Mike and Terry had come in. Terry seemed a little agitated, and Mike was patting her hand.

"Your daughter Teresa," he said, "has been suffering a good deal of filial agony on your behalf, my dear Shorty. She was offering me eight to one that we should find you chewed into fragments, and I must say I was anticipating that I should have to dig down for the price of a wreath and a bunch of lilies. But at a hasty glance you appear to be still in one piece."

Lord Shortlands said that he was quite all right, never better, and Augustus Robb endorsed the statement.

"He put it all over her. Ticked her off, he did. Proper."

Terry was amazed.

"Shorty! Did you?"

"Certainly," said Lord Shortlands, and if there was in his manner a touch of pomposity, this was only to be expected after so notable a victory. Wellington was probably a little pompous after Waterloo. "I have been too lenient with Adela in the past, far too lenient, and she has taken advantage of my good nature. It was high time that I asserted myself. As Mr. Robb so nghtly says, I—ah—ticked her off proper. She's gone away with a flea in her ear, I can assure you. Ha! You should have seen her face when I said I was going to marry Alice Punter."

The man was lost to all shame.

"You said that?"

"Certainly."

"To Adela?"

"You betcher. 'Oh, and by the way,' I said. 'I'm going to marry Mrs. Punter.'"

"But you ain't, chum," said Augustus Robb mildly. "That's what I was starting to tell you."

"Eh?" Lord Shortlands glared formidably. He was under an obligation to this buster of petes, but gratitude was not going to make him put up with this sort of thing. "Who says so?"

Augustus Robb removed his horn-rimmed spectacles, gave them a polish and replaced them.

"Well, I do, cocky, for one, and she does, for another. Because the 'ole thing is, you see, she's going to marry me."

"What!"

"Yus. It's a long story," said Augustus Robb. "I was telling Mr. Cardinal and his little bit about it last night. We ought to have got married years ago, only she inadvertently went and waited for me at the Meek Street registry office when I was waiting for 'er at the Beak Street registry office. Shouldn't wonder if that sort of thing didn't often occur."

Terry gasped.

"Then—"

"Yus, ducky. She's the woman I loved and lorst. You could have knocked me down with a feather," said Augustus Robb. "I come out of that library after getting that there stamp, and I was doing a quiet shift-ho to my room to hide the blinking thing, when I see someone coming along the passage, and it was 'Er!"

"Good heavens!"

"You may well say 'Good heavens!', ducky. It was a fair staggerer. 'Alice!' I says, knocked all of a heap. 'Gus!' she says, pressing of a 'and to 'er 'eart. 'Is it you?' I says. 'Yus, it is,' she says, 'and you're a nice cup of tea, you are,' she says. 'What 'ave you got to say for yourself?' she says. Whereupon explanations ensued, as the expression is, and the upshot of it all is that we're off to Beak Street registry office next week—together, this time."

"You'll probably find us in the waiting room," said Mike. "My heartiest congratulations, Augustus."

"Thanks, cocky."

"If there's one thing I like, it is to see two loving hearts come together after long separation, particularly in springtime. But have you considered one rather important point? Mrs. Punter's ideals are pretty high. The man who wins her must have two hundred pounds to buy a pub."

"I've got it, and more."

"Been robbing a bank?"

"No, I 'ave not been robbing a bank. But there's a little bit of money coming to me from a source I'm not at liberty to mention. I could buy 'er 'arf a dozen pubs."

A faint groan greeted this statement. It proceeded from Lord Shortlands, who at the beginning of the recital had sunk into a chair and was lying in it in that curious boneless manner which he affected in moments of keen emotion. Terry looked at him remorsefully. Augustus Robb's human-interest story had caused her to forget that what was jam for him was gall and wormwood to a loved father.

"Oh, Shorty, darling!" she cried. "I wasn't thinking of you."

"It's all right," said Mike. "He still has us."

"Yes, Shorty, you still have us."

"And the stamp," said Mike.

Lord Shortlands stirred. He half rose in his chair like a corpse preparing to step out of the coffin. He had forgotten the stamp. Reminded of it, he showed signs of perking up a little.

"Gimme," he said feebly.

"Give him the stamp, Augustus," said Mike.

Something in the trend events had taken seemed to be embarrassing Augustus Robb. He shifted from one foot to the other, looking coy.

"Now, there's something I was intending to touch on," he said. "Yus, I was going to mention that. I'm sorry to tell you, chums, that there's been a somewhat regrettable occurrence. You see, when I come out of that liberry, I put that there stamp in me mouth, to keep it safe like, and what with the excitement and what I might call agitation of meeting 'Er, I—"

"What?" cried Lord Shortlands, for the speaker had paused. He had risen completely from his chair now, and was pawing the air feverishly. "What?"

"I swallered it, cocky," said Augustus Robb, and Lord Shortlands' blood pressure leaped to a new high as if somebody had cried "Hoop-la!" to it. "Last thing I'd 'ave wanted to 'ave 'appen, but there you are. That's Life, that's what that is. Well, good-bye, all," said Augustus Robb, and was gone. Lady Adela herself had not moved quicker.

The first of a stunned trio to comment on the situation was Lord Shortlands.

"It's a ramp!" he shouted passionately. "It's a swindle! I don't believe a word of it. He's gone off with the thing in his pocket."

Mike nodded sympathetically. The same thought had occurred to him.

"I fear so, Shorty. One should have reflected, before enlisting Augustus's services, that he is a man of infinite guile. One begins to see now why he spoke so loftily about having enough money to buy half a dozen pubs."

"I'll sue him! I'll fight the case to the House of Lords!"

"H'm," said Mike. And Lord Shortlands, on reflection, said "H'm" too.

A moment later he was uttering a cry so loud and agonized that Terry leaped like a jumping bean, and even Mike was disconcerted. The fifth earl was staring before him with bulging eyes. He reminded Mike of a butler discovering beetles in his glass of port.

"What the devil am I to do?" he wailed, writhing visibly. "I've gone and told Adela about Mrs. Punter!"

"So you have!" said Mike. "If I may borrow Augustus's favorite expression, Coo! But have no alarm—"

"She'll make my life a hell! I'll never have another peaceful moment. My every movement will be watched for the rest of my life. Why, dash it, it'll be like being a prisoner in a bally chain gang."

Terry's eyes grew round.

"Oh, Shorty!" she cried, but Mike patted him on the back.

"It's quite all right," he said. "You heard me say 'Have no alarm.' Will the public never learn that if they have Mycroft Cardinal in their corner, Fate cannot touch them?"

"You have a plan?" said Terry.

"I have a plan. Shorty will accompany us to Dottyville-on-the-Pacific."

"Of course!"

"I must try to break you of that habit of yours of saying 'Of course!' when

I put forward one of my brilliant solutions, as if you had been on the point of thinking of it yourself."

"Sorry, my king."

"Okey-doke, my queen."

"Where is Dottyville-on-the-Pacific?" asked Lord Shortlands.

"A little west of Los Angeles," said Mike. "It is sometimes known as Hollywood. We shall be starting thither almost any day now. Just got to get married and fix up your passport and so on. Pack a few necessaries and sneak off to your club and wait there for further instructions. I will attend to all the financial arrangements."

"My dear boy!"

"What an organizer! He thinks of everything, doesn't he?" said Terry.

"He does, indeed," said Lord Shortlands.

"And when we get to Hollywood," said Mike, "if you feel like making a little spending money, I think I can put you in the way of it. I don't know if you ever noticed it, my dear Shorty, but you are a particularly good butler type."

"A butlei type?"

Terry squeaked.

"All these years," she said, "I've been trying to think what Shorty reminded me of, and now I know. Of course, darling, you look exactly like a butler."

"Do I?" said Lord Shortlands.

"Exactly," said Terry.

"And for such," proceeded Mike, "there is a constant demand. I cannot hold out hope of stardom, of course; just a nice, steady living. Say 'Very good, m'lord.'"

"Very good, m'lord."

"Perfect. What artistry! You will be a great asset to the silver screen. And now we must leave you. My future wife wishes to show me the rose garden."

"Haven't you seen it?"

"Not with her," said Mike.

For some moments after he found himself alone, Lord Shortlands stood motionless, gazing into the golden future. Then, walking jerkily, for he was still enfeebled, he moved to the mirror and peered into it.

"Very good, m'lord," he said, extending his elbows at right angles. "Very good, m'lord."

A look of satisfaction came into his face. Butler parts would be pie.

Mervyn Spink came silently in, and Lord Shortlands, seeing him in the mirror, turned. As these two strong men, linked by the bond of thwarted love, faced each other, there was a silence. Mervyn Spink was feeling that Lord Shortlands was not such a bad old buster, after all, and Lord Shortlands was feeling strangely softened towards Mervyn Spink.

"You have heard, m'lord?"

Lord Shortlands nodded.

"A nasty knock, m'lord."

"Very nasty."

"We must face it like men, m'lord."

"You betcher. Be British."

Mervyn Spink coughed.

"If your lordship would care for a drop of something to take your lordship's mind off it, I have the materials in my pantry."

Lord Shortlands moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. The suggestion was a very welcome one. It astounded him to think that he could ever have disliked this St. Bernard dog among butlers.

"Lead me to it, Spink."

"This way, m'lord."

"Don't call me 'm'lord.'"

"This way, Shortlands."

"Don't call me 'Shortlands,'" said the fifth earl. "Call me Shorty."

He put his hand in his new friend's arm, and they went out.