'Got a book there, I see.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Fond of reading?'
'Yes, sir.'
'I suppose you have a good deal of leisure with Mrs Gedge away?'
'Yes, sir.'
The Senator began to like this girl more and more. Most attractive, her nice deferential manner.
'And what are we reading?' he asked, in a voice which was practically tantamount to a pat on the hand. 'Some love story?'
'No, sir.'
'Don't you like love stories?'
'No, sir. I don't believe in them. Men,' said Medway, with the first touch of feeling she had shown, 'aren't sincere. Them and their love!' said Medway, now quite bitterly.
The Senator shrank from probing the tragedy at which her words and manner hinted.
'A mystery story, eh?' he said, catching a glimpse of the book's jacket, which revealed a muscular gentleman with a mask on his face apparently engaged in jiu-jitsu with a large-eyed girl, the pair of them seemingly unaware that a hand holding a revolver was protruding from behind a curtain in the background. 'One of those thrillers?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Well, don't let me keep you. I dare say you've just got to the most exciting part?'
'Yes, sir. It's where these criminals are trying to burgle a safe in a country house, little knowing that the girl they think is a maid is really Janice Devereux, the detective. Good afternoon, sir.'
She passed on her way, moving gracefully over the turf. But it was not mere aesthetic pleasure at her gracefulness that caused Senator Opal to stand gazing after her until she was out of sight. A sudden monstrous suspicion had come to him.
'Goosh!' he soliloquized.
A gay clatter of voices broke in on his fevered meditation. His daughter Jane had come on to the terrace, accompanied by that young fellow Franklyn.
3
The slight feeling of embarrassment which at first had militated against an easy flow of conversation between Jane and Packy had not lasted long. They were now on excellent terms, and Senator Opal, listening to their carefree chatter, thought he had never heard a more revolting sound.
'Hey!' he called sharply. He resented cheerfulness at such a moment.
Their voices died away. The fact that he was undergoing some upheaval of the soul was one which nobody, at such close range, could fail to observe. Jane was concerned, for she loved her father. Packy was surprised, because it was a revelation to him that the Senator could look like that. He had always supposed him a man of blood and iron, impervious to the weaker emotions.
'Whatever is the matter, Father?'
The Senator glanced about him conspiratorially. Except for a frog which had come out of the bushes and was sitting staring in that odd, apoplectic way frogs have, as if wondering what to do next, they were alone. Nevertheless, he lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper.
'Listen! We've got to watch out.'
'I'm watching,' said Packy airily. 'Leave everything to me, everything to me. Old P. ("Reliable") Franklyn. I have the situation well in hand.'
'Don't talk like a damned fool.'
'Father!'
'And don't you say "Father!" Do you know what's just happened?'
And, still speaking in that low, bronchial voice, Senator Opal proceeded to relate his story. He told of the purposeful dash for the Venetian Suite, the successful discovery of the safe, the subsequent sensation of triumph and exhilaration, the walk on the terrace with chest out and chin up.
Then the recital passed into a minor key. He spoke of Med-way and cigars, of Medway and enigmatic looks, of Medway and mystery novels, of Medway and parting words, which if they weren't sinister – well, what were they?
'It's where these criminals try to burgle a safe in a country house, little knowing that the blasted maid is a detective in disguise. Those were her very words, and I wish you could have seen the sort of flick of the eye she gave me when she said them. If she had told me straight out that she was a private detective, she couldn't have made it any plainer. I went all cold.'
Jane was an optimist.
'Oh, she can't be.'
The Senator was a pessimist.
'She is, I tell you.'
Packy held the scales between the two.
'It is quite possible, of course, that Mrs Gedge may have engaged a detective to look after her belongings,' he conceded. 'But what this girl said was nothing but a coincidence, if you ask me.'
'I don't ask you.'
Jane said it was no use being a gump and losing your temper. The Senator said he was not a gump and had not lost his temper.
'I am quite calm, perfectly unruffled. I am merely placing the facts before you, so that we may debate upon them and explore every avenue. All I am trying to get at is what we are going to do if this woman is a detective, and when I was a young man girls did not speak to their fathers like that.'
Resisting an impulse to ask him to tell them all about when he was a young man, Packy frowned thoughtfully.
'I agree with you that it is a thing which we ought to know for certain before starting operations,' he said. This colleague of mine, of whom I have spoken, is a tough bozo, but I suppose even tough bozos prefer not to work in the dark. It would scarcely be fair to ask him to do his stuff in a state of uncertainty as to whether or not a female dick was likely to pop up out of a trap and make a flying tackle the moment he got action. Grateful though he is to me, it might pique him if we let him in for anything like that.'
'He means the man might find it awkward if there was a detective in the house,' explained Jane.
The Senator said he was aware that that was what Packy had meant. He also threw the butt of his cigar at the frog, hitting it on the nose and removing all its dubiousness as to what it proposed to do next. It made the bushes in two jumps, and Packy, who had employed the interval in tense thought, advanced a suggestion.
'Our first move,' he said, 'must be to find out about this girl. We must institute a probe or quiz and make her come clean.'
The Senator asked how the devil they were to do that.
'The problem,' said Packy, ignoring his slight brusqueness, 'is not so much "How?" That part of it is simple. Obviously, somebody has got to ingratiate himself with her – not to mince matters, flirt with her – make love to her – worm his way into her confidence and get the truth from her. The question is – Who?'
He looked at the Senator so meaningly that the latter asked if Packy seriously intended to suggest that he, a pillar of the United States Government, should go about organizing petting-parties with ladies' maids.
'You wouldn't have to do much,' urged Packy.
'Of course you wouldn't,' said Jane.
'Just a kindly word or two and an occasional squeeze of the hand.'
'He could kiss her.'
'He might kiss her. Yes, that would help.'
'I don't believe he would have any trouble at all. Father's got quite a lot of It. You'd be surprised.'
'I am,' said Packy
The Senator uttered a sharp cry. For an instant, Packy supposed it to indicate the advent of one of those fits of Berserk rage to which he was so unfortunately subject, and he backed a little to be ready for the rush. With a man like Senator Opal, you could never be quite sure when you might not be compelled to put in some shifty footwork.
But it was not fury that had caused the other's emotion. The cry had denoted inspiration.
'Eggleston!'
'Eh?'
'Eggleston,' said Senator Opal, 'is the man to do it. That infernal, ugly, idle, lop-eared valet of mine. Everything points to Eggleston.'
4
If he had expected this ingenious solution of the problem to meet with unanimous approval, he was disappointed. Packy, it is true, saw its merits immediately. Apart from the fact that it was high time he started doing something constructive for the Cause, Blair Eggleston was ideally situated for the purpose they had in mind. He had endless opportunities of foregathering with this Medway, and wha
t could be more suitable than that a valet should pass the time flirting with a lady's-maid? There was a sort of artistic inevitability about it. It seemed somehow to round off the picture. As far as Packy was concerned, the Senator had got one vote.
Jane was less enthusiastic. During her sojourn at the Château she had had plenty of time to observe Medway, and the thought of Blair on chummy terms with one so attractive jarred on her sensibilities.
'Oh, but, Father!'
'Now what?'
'He wouldn't do it.'
'Of course he would do it. If he has any fidelity or sense of duty in his system, he will jump at the chance. I've always treated the man with unremitting kindness, and if he won't do a little thing like this for me, I'll kick his spine up through his hat.'
And in accordance with his customary method of summoning his personal attendant Senator Opal threw his head back and began to howl like a timber-wolf, and continued to howl until Blair Eggleston came running round the corner of the house with a clothes-brush in his hand. He had been some little distance away, but his master's voice was a carrying one.
'Come on! Come on! Come on!'
The sharp dash which he had just taken had left Blair Eggleston short of breath. He stood panting like a Marathon runner at the winning-post until the Senator, who liked his valets alert, took him by the shoulders and gave him a hearty shake to stimulate his faculties. It nearly removed the young novelist's head from its moorings, but it had the effect of securing his attention.
'Now listen, you pop-eyed defective,' said the Senator.
The task of explaining to your valet that you wish him to make love to your hostess's lady's-maid with a view to ascertaining i43 whether she is a detective in disguise is not an easy one. It might have baffled an ordinary man. Senator Opal was not an ordinary man. He did it in about sixty-five words.
'So there you are,' he concluded. 'Go to it.'
'But...'
'Did you say "But"?' asked the Senator dangerously.
Jane felt compelled to intervene.
'I'm sure,' she said with an apologetic smile, 'you must think it an odd request....'
The Senator would have none of this truckling.
'Never mind what he thinks. Let him go and do it. And what do you mean, "request"?'
'But, Father...'
'Can't waste the whole day talking. If there's anything the poor half-wit doesn't understand, explain it to him.' He turned to Packy. 'I want a word with you,' he said. 'Kiss Jane and come along.'
There are few things which call for so nice an exhibition of tact as the kissing of a girl in the presence of her fiancé. Packy did his best to perform the feat in a manner calculated to cause the minimum of disapproval, but he was haunted by a suspicion that he had not quite got the sympathy of his audience.
Abstaining from glancing at young Mr Eggleston, for, after all, he knew what he looked like, he followed the Senator off the terrace.
5
In suspecting that Blair Eggleston might find matter for criticism in his recent performance, Packy had not erred. In the novelist's manner, as he now gazed at Jane, there was a quite definite suggestion of Othello. He breathed heavily and was, indeed, so overcome by emotion that he even passed the clothes-brush absently through his hair.
'What,' he asked throatily, 'is all this?'
Jane was soothing.
'I know it must have sounded odd, darling. But Father has got it into his head that Mrs Gedge's maid...'
Blair Eggleston waved the clothes-brush impatiently.
'I am not referring to that. This fellow Franklyn.'
'Oh, that. Well, that's a long story. He has come here pretending to be the Vicomte de Blissac....'
'Never mind what he's pretending to be. He kissed you!'
If Jane had been soothing before, she was oil and honey now.
'Yes, I wanted to explain that. It's most unfortunate, but Father seems to think he is the man I'm in love with.'
'I am not surprised, if you are in the habit of behaving towards him as you did just now.'
'But, Blair, don't you see...?'
'He kissed you!'
'Yes. Father insisted. You don't suppose I enjoyed it, do you?'
'I am not so sure.'
'Blair!'
'I certainly did not receive the impression that you had any strong objection.'
'Well, what could I do, with Father looking on? Did you expect me to scream for help? Or perhaps you would have liked me to tell Father that it's really you....'
The remark had a sedative effect. The stern, accusing look in Blair Eggleston's eye, which would have recalled to a reader of the poetry of the late Lord Tennyson the celebrated scene of King Arthur's interview with Guinevere in the convent, gave i45 place to one of positive alarm. An able student of psychology, like all Bloomsbury novelists, Blair had long since read his employer's character like a book. And what he had seen in that book did not encourage him to support any such suggestion.
'On no account!' he said hastily, turning a little green at the mere idea. His relations with Senator Opal had not been of such a nature as to lead him to suppose that the latter would receive with gratification the news that he was engaged to his daughter. 'Do nothing of the kind!'
'Well, then!'
'All the same...' said Blair Eggleston.
He twirled the clothes-brush thoughtfully. With his other hand he endeavoured also to twirl his moustache, his invariable policy when in a dilemma. But there was no moustache to be twirled. In deference to his employer's outspoken statement that he did not propose to have a valet hanging around him festooned with fungus and snorting at him all the time from behind a great beastly soupstrainer (for thus coarsely had the Senator alluded to that neatest of little lip-ornaments), he had regretfully shaved the treasured possession.
Its loss had cost him a good deal of mental pain, but it seemed to amuse his betrothed.
'Oh, Blair!' said Jane. 'You do look a scream without it.'
And yet, even as she spoke, she was aware subconsciously that the matter went deeper than that. The world is full of men who ought never to shave their upper lip, and Blair Eggleston was one of them. Coming out into the open, as it were, like this, he had revealed himself the possessor of a not very good mouth. A peevish mouth. The sort of mouth that bred doubts in a girl.
He stiffened. He had enough to endure these days without having to listen to girlish persiflage.
'I am glad that you are amused!'
'I was only kidding.'
'I see.'
'Can't you take a joke?'
'I have never,' began Blair weightily, 'been accused of being deficient in a sense of humour....'
'Oh, all right. Let it go. It was only a remark, anyway. Just a random crack. For goodness' sake, let's not quarrel.'
'I have no desire to quarrel....'
'Nor have I. So that's fine.'
There was a pause. Then, abruptly, it became apparent to Blair Eggleston that without any desire on his part to change the subject the main topic of debate had been adroitly sidetracked.
'All the same,' he said, 'I strongly object to this kissing.'
'Well, what can I do?'
'There can be no necessity for it whatever.'
'Can't there? You should have been there the first time. Father was all set to strike Packy with some blunt instrument if he had jibbed.'
'So you have got to Christian names?'
'Oh, Blair!'
Blair Eggleston was not to be checked by any exhibition of feminine irritability. He swelled a little, and waved the clothes-brush with a certain cold dignity.
'I do not think I can be said to be unduly exacting when I complain of this – er – of what is going on. And on one thing I must insist, that you see as little of this man Franklyn as possible. Personally, I am at a loss to understand what he is doing here at all.'
'He has come to try to help me.'
'Why?'
'Because he feels I need help,
I suppose.'
'Oddly altruistic behaviour in one who is virtually a complete stranger.'
Pinkness, like the first faint flush of a summer dawn, had come upon Jane Opal.
'You needn't suggest...'
'I am suggesting nothing.'
'What on earth is the sense of saying you're suggesting nothing when you're suggesting it with every word you say?' demanded Jane heatedly. She was a straightforward girl, who disliked evasions. 'That's just the sort of silly, idiotic thing people are always saying in your books.'
'I am sorry if the characters in my books appear to you to be lacking in intelligence.'
'Anyway, you're all wrong. I don't mean a thing to Packy... oh, all right, to Mr Franklyn. Can't you understand that he's the sort of man who comes into a business like this just for the fun of the thing? Besides, he's engaged. You were there when he was telling us about it.'
Blair Eggleston had forgotten this. He looked a little taken aback. He recognized that the fact weakened his position.
'So you see! Now perhaps you realize what a chump you've been.'
Blair could not go as far as this.
'It is possible that I may have allowed myself to become unnecessarily...'
'Anyway, I should have thought you could have trusted me. I'm trusting you.'
'In what way?'
'Letting you go off and flirt with this Medway girl.' The greater urgency of ventilating his grievance in the matter of Packy had caused Blair Eggleston momentarily to forget that he was a man with a mission.
'What is all that?' he asked, with agitation.
'It's quite simple. We think Medway may be a detective. And Mr Franklyn said the only way to find out was for someone to make love to her and win her confidence.'
'It would be Franklyn!'
'It was Father's idea that you should be the one to do it.'
Blair Eggleston choked. He had his personal views on Senator Opal and would have enjoyed giving them at some length.
'Well, I won't do it.'
'You must!'
'I positively and definitely refuse.'
'You've got to do it, Blair. You simply must. It's absolutely vital that we should find out about this girl. I do think you might do something to help. You've been about as much good so far as a sick headache.'
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