‘I don’t imagine that we shall find that too hard,’ undertook Mr Carrados. ‘By the way, won’t you join our modest picnic, Mr Tilehurst? I’m afraid that there’s very little marmalade left by now but the cheese is there and the inner part of this loaf is reasonably edible. As you see, we aren’t standing on ceremony.’
‘Thanks very much, but I’m not particularly hungry,’ he replied. ‘Of course I haven’t had any breakfast yet but it must be pretty early still, I should say. If you don’t mind I think I’ll wait for something more—er, regular.’
‘You aren’t particularly hungry!’ For a moment Nora actually laid down her slice of bread and marmalade. ‘Geoffrey: when did you last have anything—er, regular?’
‘Why, yesterday,’ he replied. ‘Though, as a matter of fact, it was a bit out of the routine. Something went different it seems, but old Chou looked in and foraged me a supply from somewhere. Very decent sort, that Chink; he often came down to bring me things and pass the time in one way or another. And that reminds me, by the by. I wonder if either of you would mind lending me a couple of pounds to settle with him until I get back home? You see, I taught him poker yesterday and somehow or other—’
‘Uncle Max! You hear that? Why didn’t we have—er, something regular?’
Mr Carrados looked slightly apologetic.
‘I begin to suspect that Won Chou can’t quite like me,’ he suggested. ‘You naturally come in too on the Chinese family principle.’
‘And he was here and about yesterday,’ she went on unsparingly, ‘and you can hear the slightest footfall! Oh, Uncle Max, after all I’ve been led to believe—’
‘Human, my dear,’ he sought to plead, ‘human footsteps. That logically excludes panthers, Chinamen and fairies as they are constitutionally inaudible. Against that you may put how I have always maintained that Tilehurst would not be badly used—’
‘Yes, you did,’ she admitted; ‘but now what about the dreadful state he was in on Wednesday?’
‘That brings us to the point. Mr Tilehurst, one question please—hypothetical let us say. If a woman—Nora, we will suppose—could save you from a course of torture by submitting herself in your place, how would you decide if it rested with you?’
‘Surely you can scarcely ask me that, sir? How could I—or any decent fellow for that matter—accept such a sacrifice from a woman? Especially, as you put it, from one whom he—’
Geoffrey broke off looking ingenuously embarrassed, finding it too emotional to explain the added restriction.
‘You see, Nora,’ demonstrated Mr Carrados, ‘it wouldn’t have worked. Our friend here would have hurled back the—er, dastardly proposal.’
‘Of course,’ added Geoffrey, anxious not to take too much credit for this heroic pose, ‘it’s difficult to say what mightn’t happen under harsh conditions. You have no idea what it feels like merely to be shut up in a mouldy cellar for days—’
‘No, perhaps not,’ conceded Max Carrados tolerantly, ‘but I daresay we can faintly imagine the sensation.’
‘But Geoffrey,’ insisted Nora, not to be sidetracked from the main issue, ‘either you or I are certainly a bit dotty. On Wednesday night they brought you up here—’
‘One moment, Nora,’ struck in Carrados with his suavest tone; ‘forgive me—but before you impugn the sanity of either. You say you saw Geoffrey here.’ He smiled significantly across at her as he underlined the point. ‘Did you notice his finger-nails then?’
‘Did I notice—?’ Revelation came with a crash. ‘Oh, my gosh! Again! Do you mean he was—? But why—? How—?’
‘Why not? It was essential to the plan that you should adopt a certain course and, as we have heard, Mr Tilehurst here was useless for persuasion. Tapsfield is not too far away. The double was free to come and go, and playing the part he could make just the points that would weigh with you.’
‘Look here,’—Geoffrey Tilehurst claimed his turn to speak and addressed himself solely to Mr Carrados’s attention. ‘Most of this is pretty nearly Greek to me but there seems to be one thing that’s really important. Did she—that is, was Nora—I mean to say, has your niece come to this infernal house because I—in order to be—well, with some intention of helping me if you understand what I’m driving at?’
‘I think I may have a rough idea,’ was the genial admission. ‘But as to that, Mr Tilehurst, who can say what a young woman does anything for nowadays, if, indeed, most of them have any reason? I can only tell you this—it may help you. When I guessed something of the mad project my niece was embarking on, I said—for of course I felt it my duty to warn her—“You are risking your head inside a lion’s mouth.” What was her reply? “Uncle Max,” she said without turning a hair, “what do I care about that? Isn’t Geoffrey’s there already?”’
‘And if that doesn’t do it,’ thought Mr Carrados, as he averted his face with the appearance of being moved, ‘all I can say is—curse you!’
‘Uncle Max!’ shrieked Nora at this romantic disclosure, ‘I am sure I never did—’ but the time for such maidenly affectations was past. Geoffrey had taken the bit of irresolution firmly between his wisdom teeth and was bolting.
‘Oh, you darling darling, did you really care so much?’ he demanded hoarsely. ‘Why, my precious treasure, I’d gladly go through a dozen lions’ mouths to hear that!’
‘Why, naturally I cared, Geoffrey dear,’ she replied, with infinitely more composure. ‘I thought we’d settled all that long ago—but of course it’s just as well to ask me.’
‘Isn’t it simply wonderful, sweetheart’—by this time he has taken possession of her and was demonstrating his affection regardless of the bread and marmalade involved in the process—‘isn’t it simply wonderful that of all the people in the world just we two should be here—?’
‘Yes, dearest,’ she tactfully hastened to agree, ‘it is. Still you really must remember that there’s Uncle Max over there as well and—’
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ apologised Geoffrey, ‘but you see—’
‘No,’ amended Carrados sympathetically, ‘on this occasion I don’t. Never mind us, children,’ he added benignly, ‘we are both, rest assured, quite blind.’
‘Both!’ exclaimed two rather startled voices.
‘Who—?’
‘I mean the somewhat underdressed little fellow over there with the bow and arrows,’ he explained, nodding vaguely. ‘I think he must have crept in after you two … My dears, try to keep him with you always.’
THE END
THE BUNCH OF VIOLETS
AN EPISODE IN THE WAR-TIME ACTIVITIES OF MAX CARRADOS
WHEN Mr J. Beringer Hulse, in the course of one of his periodical calls at the War Office, had been introduced to Max Carrados he attached no particular significance to the meeting. His own business there lay with Mr Flinders, one of the quite inconspicuous departmental powers so lavishly produced by a few years of intensive warfare: business that was more confidential than exacting at that stage and hitherto carried on à deux. The presence on this occasion of a third, this quiet, suave, personable stranger, was not out of line with Mr Hulse’s open-minded generalities on British methods: ‘A little singular, perhaps, but not remarkable,’ would have been the extent of his private comment. He favoured Max with a hard, entirely friendly, American stare, said, ‘Vurry pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr Carrados,’ as they shook hands, and went on with his own affair.
Of course Hulse was not to know that Carrados had been brought in especially to genialise with him. Most of the blind man’s activities during that period came within the ‘Q-class’ order. No one ever heard of them, very often they would have seemed quite meaningless under description, and generally they were things that he alone could do—or do as effectively at all events. In the obsolete phraseology of the day, they were his ‘bit’.
‘There’s this man Hulse,’ Flinders had proceeded, when it came to the business on which Carrados had been asked to call at Whitehall. ‘Ne
edless to say, he’s no fool or Jonathan wouldn’t have sent him on the ticket he carries. If anything, he’s too keen—wants to see everything, do anything and go everywhere. In the meanwhile he’s kicking up his heels here in London with endless time on his hands and the Lord only knows who mayn’t have a go at him.’
‘You mean for information—or does he carry papers?’ asked Carrados.
‘Well, at present, information chiefly. He necessarily knows a lot of things that would be priceless to the Huns, and a clever man or woman might find it profitable to nurse him.’
‘Still, he must be on his guard if, as you say, he is. No one imagines that London in 1917 is a snakeless Eden or expects that German agents today are elderly professors who say, “How vos you?” and “Ja, ja!”’
‘My dear fellow,’ said Flinders sapiently, ‘every American who came to London before the war was on his guard against a pleasant-spoken gentleman who would accost him with, “Say, stranger, does this happen to be your wallet lying around here on the sidewalk?” and yet an unending procession of astute, long-headed citizens met him, exactly as described, year after year, and handed over their five hundred or five thousand pounds on a tale that would have made a common or Michaelmas goose blush to be caught listening to.’
‘It’s a curious fact,’ admitted Carrados thoughtfully. ‘And this Hulse?’
‘Oh, he’s quite an agreeable chap, you’ll find. He may know a trifle more than you and be a little wider awake and see further through a brick wall and so on, but he won’t hurt your feelings about it. Well, will you do it for us?’
‘Certainly,’ replied Carrados. ‘What is it, by the way?’
Flinders laughed his apologies and explained more precisely.
‘Hulse has been over here a month now, and it may be another month before the details come through which he will take on to Paris. Then he will certainly have documents of very special importance that he must carry about with him. Well, in the meanwhile, of course, he is entertained and may pal up with anyone or get himself into Lord knows what. We can’t keep him here under lock and key or expect him to make a report of every fellow he has a drink with or every girl he meets.’
‘Quite so,’ nodded the blind man.
‘Actually, we have been asked to take precautions. It isn’t quite a case for the C.I.D.—not at this stage, that is to say. So if I introduce him to you and you fix up an evening for him or something of the sort and find out where his tastes lie, and—and, in fact, keep a general shepherding eye upon him—He broke off abruptly, and Carrados divined that he had reddened furiously and was kicking himself in spirit. The blind man raised a deprecating hand.
‘Why should you think that so neat a compliment would pain me, Flinders?’ he asked quietly. ‘Now if you had questioned the genuineness of some of my favourite tetradrachms I might have had reason to be annoyed. As it is, yes, I will gladly keep a general shepherding ear on J. Beringer as long as may be needful.’
‘That’s curious,’ said Flinders, looking up quickly. ‘I didn’t think that I had mentioned his front name.’
‘I don’t think that you have,’ agreed Carrados.
‘Then how—? Had you heard of him before?’
‘You don’t give an amateur conjurer much chance,’ replied the other whimsically. ‘When you brought me to this chair I found a table by me, and happening to rest a hand on it my fingers had “read” a line of writing before I realised it—just as your glance might as unconsciously do,’ and he held up an envelope addressed to Hulse.
‘That is about the limit,’ exclaimed Flinders with some emphasis. ‘Do you know, Carrados, if I hadn’t always led a very blameless life I should be afraid to have you around the place.’
Thus it came about that the introduction was made and in due course the two callers left together.
‘You’ll see Mr Carrados down, won’t you?’ Flinders had asked, and, slightly puzzled but not disposed to question English ways, Hulse had assented. In the passage Carrados laid a light hand on his companion’s arm. Through some subtle perception he read Hulse’s mild surprise.
‘By the way, I don’t think that Flinders mentioned my infirmity,’ he remarked. ‘This part of the building is new to me and I happen to be quite blind.’
‘You astonish me,’ declared Hulse, and he had to be assured that the statement was literally exact. ‘You don’t seem to miss much by it, Mr Carrados. Ever happen to hear of Laura Bridgman?’
‘Oh, yes,’ replied Carrados. ‘She was one of your star cases. But Laura Bridgman’s attainments really were wonderful. She was also deaf and dumb, if you remember.’
‘That is so,’ assented Hulse. ‘My people come from New Hampshire not far from Laura’s home, and my mother had some of her needlework framed as though it was a picture. That’s how I come to know of her, I reckon.’
They had reached the street meanwhile and Carrados heard the door of his waiting car opened to receive him.
‘I’m going on to my club now to lunch,’ he remarked with his hand still on his companion’s arm. ‘Of course we only have a wartime menu, but if you would keep me company you would be acting the Good Samaritan,’ and Beringer Hulse, who was out to see as much as possible of England, France and Berlin within the time—perhaps, also, not uninfluenced by the appearance of the rather sumptuous vehicle—did not refuse.
‘Vurry kind of you to put it in that way, Mr Carrados,’ he said, in his slightly business-like, easy style. ‘Why, certainly I will.’
During the following weeks Carrados continued to make himself very useful to the visitor, and Hulse did not find his stay in London any less agreeably varied thereby. He had a few other friends—acquaintances rather—he had occasion now and then to mention, but they, one might infer, were either not quite so expansive in their range of hospitality or so pressing for his company. The only one for whom he had ever to excuse himself was a Mr Darragh, who appeared to have a house in Densham Gardens (he was a little shrewdly curious as to what might be inferred of the status of a man who lived in Densham Gardens), and, well, yes, there was Darragh’s sister, Violet. Carrados began to take a private interest in the Darragh household, but there was little to be learned beyond the fact that the house was let furnished to the occupant from month to month. Even during the complexities of war that fact alone could not be regarded as particularly incriminating.
There came an evening when Hulse, having an appointment to dine with Carrados and to escort him to a theatre afterwards, presented himself in a mixed state of elation and remorse. His number had come through at last, he explained, and he was to leave for Paris in the morning. Carrados had been most awfully, most frightfully—Hulse became quite touchingly incoherent in his anxiety to impress upon the blind man the fullness of the gratitude he felt, but, all the same, he had come to ask whether he might cry off for the evening. There was no need to inquire the cause. Carrados raised an accusing finger and pointed to the little bunch of violets with which the impressionable young man had adorned his button-hole.
‘Why, yes, to some extent,’ admitted Hulse, with a facile return to his ingenuous, easy way. ‘I happened to see Miss Darragh down town this afternoon. There’s a man they know whom I’ve been crazy to meet for weeks, a Jap who has the whole ju-jitsu business at his finger-ends. Best ju-jitsuist out of Japan, Darragh says. Mighty useful thing, ju-jitsu, nowadays, Carrados.’
‘At any time, indeed,’ conceded Carrados. ‘And he will be there tonight?’
‘Certain. They’ve tried to fix it up for me half-a-dozen times before, but this Kuromi could never fit it in. Of course this will be the only chance.’
‘True,’ agreed the blind man, rather absent-mindedly. ‘Your last night here.’
‘I don’t say that in any case I should not have liked to see Violet—Miss Darragh—again before I went, but I wouldn’t have gone back on an arranged thing for that,’ continued Hulse virtuously. ‘Now this ju-jitsu I look on more in the light of business.’
&
nbsp; ‘Rather a rough-and-tumble business one would think,’ suggested Carrados. ‘Nothing likely to drop out of your pockets in the process and get lost?’
Hulse’s face displayed a rather more superior smile than he would have permitted himself had his friend been liable to see it and be snubbed thereby.
‘I know what you mean, of course,’ he replied, getting up and going to the blind man’s chair, ‘but don’t you worry about me, Father William. Just put your hand to my breast pocket.’
‘Sewn up,’ commented Carrados, touching the indicated spot on his guest’s jacket.
‘Sewn up: that’s it; and since I’ve had any important papers on me it always has been sewn up, no matter how often I change. No fear of anything dropping out now—or being lifted out, eh? No, sir; if what I carry there chanced to vanish, I guess no excuses would be taken and J.B.H. would automatically drop down to the very bottom of the class. As it is, if it’s missing I shall be missing too, so that won’t trouble me.’
‘What time do you want to get there?’
‘Darragh’s? Well, I left that open. Of course I couldn’t promise until I had seen you. Anyway, not until after dinner, I said.’
‘That makes it quite simple, then,’ declared Carrados. ‘Stay and have dinner here, and afterwards we will go on to Darragh’s together instead of going to the theatre.’
‘That’s most terribly kind of you,’ replied Hulse. ‘But won’t it be rather a pity—the tickets, I mean, and so forth?’
‘There are no tickets as it happens,’ said Carrados. ‘I left that over until tonight. And I have always wanted to meet a ju-jitsu champion. Quite providential, isn’t it?’
*
It was nearly nine o’clock, and seated in the drawing-room of his furnished house in Densham Gardens, affecting to read an evening paper, Mr Darragh was plainly ill at ease. The strokes of the hour, sounded by the little gilt clock on the mantelpiece, seemed to mark the limit of his patience. A muttered word escaped him and he looked up with a frown.
The Bravo of London Page 25
