29 Three Men and a Maid

by Unknown

  He rose from his bench, and, going back to the hotel to enquire about trains, observed a familiar figure in the lobby. Eustace Hignett was leaning over the counter, in conversation with the desk-clerk.

  “Hullo, Eustace!” said Sam.

  “Hullo, Sam!” said Eustace.

  There was a brief silence. The conversational opening had been a little unfortunately chosen, for it reminded both men of a painful episode in their recent lives.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Eustace.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Sam.

  “I came to see you,” said Eustace, leading his cousin out of the lobby and onto the bleak esplanade. A fine rain had begun to fall, and Bingley looked, if possible, worse than ever. “I asked for you at your club, and they told me you had come down here.”

  “What did you want to see me about?”

  “The fact is, old man, I’m in a bit of a hole.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s rather a long story,” said Eustace deprecatingly.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Have a dash at starting at the beginning.”

  Eustace stared gloomily at a stranded crab on the beach below. The crab stared gloomily back.

  “Well, you remember my telling you about the girl I met on the boat?”

  “Jane Something?”

  “Jane Hubbard,” said Eustace reverently. “Sam, I love that girl.”

  “I know. You told me.”

  “But I didn’t tell her. I tried to muster up the nerve, but we got to Southampton without my having clicked. What a dashed difficult thing a proposal is to bring off, isn’t it! I didn’t bring it off, and it began to look to me as though I was in the soup. And then she told me something which gave me an idea. She said the Bennetts had invited her to stay with them in the country when she got to England, Old Mr. Bennett and his pal Mortimer, Bream’s father, were trying to get a house somewhere which they could share. Only so far they hadn’t managed to find the house they wanted. When I heard that, I said ‘Ha!’”

  “You said what?” asked Sam.

  “I said ‘Ha!’”

  “Why?”

  “Because I had an idea. Don’t interrupt, old man, or you’ll get me muddled. Where was I?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I remember. I’d just got the idea. I happened to know, you see, that Bennett and Mortimer were both frightfully keen on getting Windles for the summer, but my mother wouldn’t hear of it and gave them both the miss-in-baulk. It suddenly occurred to me that mother was going to be away in America all the summer, so why shouldn’t I make a private deal, let them the house, and make it a stipulation that I was to stay there to look after things? And, to cut a long story short, that’s what I did.”

  “You let Windles?”

  “Yes. Old Bennett was down on the dock at Southampton to meet Wilhelmina, and I fixed it up with him then and there. He was so bucked at the idea of getting the place that he didn’t kick for a moment at the suggestion that I should stick on at the house. Said he would be delighted to have me there, and wrote out a fat check on the spot. We hired a car and drove straight over—it’s only about twenty miles from Southampton, you know,—and we’ve been there ever since. Bennett sent a wire to Mortimer, telling him to join us, and he came down next day.”

  He paused, and looked at Sam as though desiring comment. Sam had none to offer.

  “Why do you say you’re in a hole?” he asked. “It seems to me as though you had done yourself a bit of good. You’ve got the check, and you’re in the same house with Miss Hubbard. What more do you want?”

  “But suppose mother gets to hear about it?”

  “Well?”

  “She’d be sorer than a sunburned neck.”

  “Probably. But why should she hear of it?”

  “Ah! I’m coming to that.”

  “Is there some more of the story?”

  “Quite a lot.”

  “Charge on,” said Sam resignedly.

  Eustace Hignett fixed a despondent gaze on the shingle, up which the gray waves were crawling with their usual sluggish air of wishing themselves elsewhere. A rain-drop fell down the back of his neck, but he did not notice it.

  “It was the weather that really started it,” he said.

  “Started what?”

  “The trouble. What sort of weather have you been having here?”

  “I haven’t noticed.”

  “Well, down at Windles it has been raining practically all the time, and after about a couple of days it became fairly clear to me that Bennett and Mortimer were getting a bit fed. I mean to say, having spent all their lives in America, don’t you know, they weren’t used to a country where it rained all the time, and pretty soon it began to get on their nerves. They started quarrelling. Nothing bad at first, but hotting up more and more, till at last they were hardly on speaking terms. Every little thing that happened seemed to get the wind up them. There was that business of Smith, for instance.”

  “Who’s Smith?”

  “Mortimer’s bulldog. Old Bennett is scared of him, and wants him kept in the stables, but Mortimer insists on letting him roam about the house. Well, they scrapped a goodish bit about that. And then there was the orchestrion. You remember the orchestrion?”

  “I haven’t been down at Windles since I was a kid.”

  “That’s right. I forgot that. Well, my pater had an orchestrion put in the drawing-room. One of these automatic things you switch on, you know. Makes a devil of a row. Bennett can’t stand it, and Mortimer insists on playing it all day. Well, they hotted up a goodish bit over that.”

  “Well, I don’t see how all this affects you. If they want to scrap, why not let them?”

  “Yes, but, you see, the most frightful thing has happened. At least, it hasn’t happened yet, but it may any day. Bennett’s talking about taking legal advice to see if he can’t induce Mortimer to cheese it by law as he can’t be stopped any other way. And the deuce of it is, your father’s Bennett’s legal representative over in England, and he’s sure to go to him.”

  “Well, that’ll do the pater a bit of good. Legal fees.”

  Eustace Hignett waved his arms despairingly at his cousin’s obtuseness.

  “But don’t you see? If Bennett goes to your father about this binge, your father will get onto the fact that Windles has been let, and he’ll nose about and make enquiries, and the first thing that’ll happen will be that mother will get to hear of it, and then where shall I be?”

  Sam pondered.

  “Yes, there’s that,” he admitted.

  “Well, now you see what a hole I’m in.”

  “Yes, you are. What are you going to do about it?”

  “You’re the only person who can help me.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Why, your father wants you to join the firm, doesn’t he? Well, for goodness sake, buck up and join it. Don’t waste a minute. Dash up to London by the next train, and sign on. Then, if Bennett does blow in for advice, you can fix it somehow that he sees you instead of your father, and it’ll be all right. You can easily work it. Get the office-boy or somebody to tell Bennett that your father’s engaged, but that you are on the spot. He won’t mind so long as he sees somebody in the firm.”

  “But I don’t know anything about the law. What shall I say to him?”

  “That’s all right. I’ve been studying it up a bit. As far as I can gather, this legal advice business is quite simple. Anything that isn’t a tort is a misdemeanour. You’ve simply got to tell old Bennett that in your opinion the whole thing looks jolly like a tort.”

  “What’s the word again?”

  “Tort.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know. Probably nobody knows. But it’s a safe card to play. Tort. Don’t forget it.”

  “Tort. Right ho!”

  “Well, then, come along and pack y
our things. There’s a train to London in about an hour.”

  They walked back to the hotel. Sam gulped once or twice.

  “Oh, by the way,” he said, “Er—how is—er—Miss Bennett?”

  “Oh, she’s all right.” Eustace Hignett hummed a gay air. Sam’s ready acquiescence in his scheme had relieved his apprehensive mind.

  “Going strong?” said Sam, after a pause.

  “Oh, absolutely. We’re quite good friends again now. No use being in the same house and not being on speaking terms. It’s rummy how the passage of time sort of changes a fellow’s point of view. Why, when she told me about her engagement, I congratulated her as cheerfully as dammit! And only a few weeks ago….”

  “Her engagement!” exclaimed Sam, leaping like a stricken blanc-mange. “Her en-gug-gug-gagement!”

  “To Bream Mortimer, you know,” said Eustace Hignett. “She got engaged to him the day before yesterday.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The offices of the old-established firm of Marlowe, Thorpe, Prescott, Winslow and Appleby are in Ridgeway’s Inn, not far from Fleet Street. If you are a millionaire beset by blackmailers or anyone else to whose comfort the best legal advice is essential, and have decided to put your affairs in the hands of the ablest and discreetest firm in London, you proceed through a dark and grimy entry and up a dark and grimy flight of stairs; and, having felt your way along a dark and grimy passage, you come at length to a dark and grimy door. There is plenty of dirt in other parts of Ridgeway’s Inn, but nowhere is it so plentiful, so rich in alluvial deposits, as on the exterior of the offices of Marlowe, Thorpe, Prescott, Winslow and Appleby. As you tap on the topmost of the geological strata concealing the ground-glass of the door, a sense of relief and security floods your being. For in London grubbiness is the gauge of a lawyer’s respectability.

  The brass plate, let into the woodwork of this door, is misleading. Reading it, you get the impression that on the other side quite a covey of lawyers await your arrival. The name of the firm leads you to suppose that there will be barely standing-room in the office. You picture Thorpe jostling you aside as he makes for Prescott to discuss with him the latest case of demurrer, and Winslow and Appleby treading on your toes, deep in conversation on replevin. But these legal firms dwindle. The years go by and take their toll, snatching away here a Prescott, there an Appleby, till before you know where you are, you are down to your last lawyer. The only surviving member of the firm of Marlowe, Thorpe—what I said before—was, at the time with which this story deals, Sir Mallaby Marlowe, son of the original founder of the firm and father of the celebrated black-faced comedian, Samuel of that ilk; and the outer office, where callers were received and parked till Sir Mallaby could find time for them, was occupied by a single clerk.

  When Sam, reaching the office after his journey, opened the door, this clerk, John Peters by name, was seated on a high stool, holding in one hand a half-eaten sausage, in the other an extraordinary large and powerful revolver. At the sight of Sam he laid down both engines of destruction and beamed. He was not a particularly successful beamer, being hampered by a cast in one eye which gave him a truculent and sinister look; but those who knew him knew that he had a heart of gold and were not intimidated by his repellent face. Between Sam and himself there had always existed terms of cordiality, starting from the time when the former was a small boy, and it had been Jno. Peters’ mission to take him now to the Zoo, now to the train back to school.

  “Why, Mr. Samuel!”

  “Hullo, Peters!”

  “We were expecting you back a week ago. So you got back safe?”

  “Safe? Why, of course,”

  Peters shook his head.

  “I confess that, when there was this delay in your coming here, I sometimes feared something might have happened to you. I recall mentioning it to the young lady who recently did me the honour to promise to become my wife.”

  “Ocean liners aren’t often wrecked nowadays.”

  “I was thinking more of the brawls on shore. America’s a dangerous country. But perhaps you were not in touch with the underworld?”

  “I don’t think I was.”

  “Ah!” said Jno. Peters, significantly.

  He took up the revolver, gave it a fond and almost paternal look, and replaced it on the desk.

  “What on earth are you doing with that thing?” asked Sam.

  Mr. Peters lowered his voice.

  “I’m going to America myself in a few days’ time, Mr. Samuel. It’s my annual holiday, and the guvnor’s sending me over with papers in connection with The People v. Schultz and Bowen. It’s a big case over there. A client of ours is mixed up in it, an American gentleman. I am to take these important papers to his legal representative in New York. So I thought it best to be prepared.”

  The first smile that he had permitted himself in nearly two weeks flitted across Sam’s face.

  “What on earth sort of place do you think New York is?” he asked. “It’s safer than London.”

  “Ah, but what about the underworld? I’ve seen these American films that they send over here, Mr. Samuel. Every Saturday night regular I take my young lady to a cinema, and, I tell you, they teach you something. Did you ever see ‘Wolves of the Bowery’? There was a man in that in just my position, carrying important papers, and what they didn’t try to do to him! No, I’m taking no chances, Mr. Samuel!”

  “I should have said you were, lugging that thing about with you.”

  Mr. Peters seemed wounded.

  “Oh, I understand the mechanism perfectly, and I am becoming a very fair shot. I take my little bite of food in here early and go and practice at the Rupert Street Rifle Range during my lunch hour. You’d be surprised how quickly one picks it up. When I get home at night I try how quick I can draw. You have to draw like a flash of lightning, Mr. Samuel. If you’d ever seen a film called ‘Two-Gun-Thomas’ you’d realise that. You haven’t time to be loitering about.”

  “I haven’t,” agreed Sam. “Is my father in? I’d like to see him if he’s not busy.”

  Mr. Peters, recalled to his professional duties, shed his sinister front like a garment. He picked up a speaking tube and blew down it.

  “Mr. Samuel to see you, Mr. Mallaby. Yes, sir, very good. Will you go right in, Mr. Samuel?”

  Sam proceeded to the inner office, and found his father dictating into the attentive ear of Miss Milliken, his elderly and respectable stenographer, replies to his morning mail.

  The grime which encrusted the lawyer’s professional stamping ground did not extend to his person. Sir Mallaby Marlowe was a dapper little man, with a round, cheerful face and a bright eye. His morning coat had been cut by London’s best tailor, and his trousers perfectly creased by a sedulous valet. A pink carnation in his buttonhole matched his healthy complexion. His golf handicap was twelve. His sister, Mrs. Horace Hignett, considered him worldly.

  “Dear Sirs: We are in receipt of your favour and in reply beg to state that nothing will induce us … will induce us … where did I put that letter? Ah! … nothing will induce us … oh, tell ‘em to go to blazes, Miss Milliken.”

  “Very well, Sir Mallaby.”

  “That’s that. Ready? Messrs. Brigney, Goole and Butterworth. What infernal names these people have. Sirs, on behalf of our client … oh, hullo, Sam!”

  “Good morning, father.”

  “Take a seat. I’m busy, but I’ll be finished in a moment. Where was I, Miss Milliken?”

  “On behalf of our client….”

  “Oh, yes. On behalf of our client, Mr. Wibblesley Eggshaw…. Where these people get their names I’m hanged if I know. Your poor mother wanted to call you Hyacinth, Sam. You may not know it, but in the ‘nineties, when you were born, children were frequently christened Hyacinth. Well, I saved you from that.”

  His attention was now diverted to his son, Sir Mallaby seemed to remember that the latter had just returned from a long journey, and that he had not seen him for many weeks. He inspe
cted him with interest.

  “Very glad to see you’re back, Sam. So you didn’t win?”

  “No, I got beaten in the semi-finals.”

  “American amateurs are a very hot lot: the best ones. I suppose you were weak on the greens, I warned you about that. You’ll have to rub up your putting before next year.”

  At the idea that any mundane pursuit as practising putting could appeal to his broken spirit now, Sam uttered a bitter laugh. It was as if Dante had recommended some lost soul in the Inferno to occupy his mind by knitting jumpers.

  “Well, you seem to be in great spirits,” said Sir Mallaby approvingly. “It’s pleasant to hear your merry laugh again, isn’t it, Miss Milliken?”

  “Extremely exhilarating,” agreed the stenographer, adjusting her spectacles and smiling at Sam, for whom there was a soft spot in her heart.

  A sense of the futility of life oppressed Sam. As he gazed in the glass that morning, he had thought, not without a certain gloomy satisfaction, how remarkably pale and drawn his face looked. And these people seemed to imagine that he was in the highest spirits. His laughter, which had sounded to him like the wailing of a demon, struck Miss Milliken as exhilarating.

  “On behalf of our client, Mr. Wibblesley Eggshaw,” said Sir Mallaby, swooping back to duty once more, “we beg to state that we are prepared to accept service … sounds like a tennis match, eh, Sam? It isn’t, though. This young ass, Eggshaw … what time did you dock this morning?”

  “I landed nearly a week ago.”

  “A week ago! Then what the deuce have you been doing with yourself? Why haven’t I seen you?”

  “I’ve been down at Bingley-on-the-Sea.”

  “Bingley! What on earth were you doing at that Godforsaken place?”

  “Wrestling with myself,” said Sam with simple dignity.

  Sir Mallaby’s agile mind had leaped back to the letter which he was answering.

  “We should be glad to meet you…. Wrestling, eh! Well, I like a boy to be fond of manly sports. Still, life isn’t all athletics. Don’t forget that. Life is real! Life is … how does it go, Miss Milliken?”

  Miss Milliken folded her hands and shut her eyes, her invariable habit when called upon to recite.