“Oh, all right. I’ll remember,” Johnnie assured him.
Jim picked up his own gun, assembled it, and placed it in one of the vacant places in the cabinet.
“It’s a pity I’ve got to get back to town. I’d like to stay for the partridges, but it can’t be done. By the way, Johnnie, send the Governor a brace, will you? Or a couple of brace, say. It would please him, you know. He doesn’t see game once in a blue moon nowadays. Treat for him to get ’em. He’d appreciate it, poor old boy.”
Johnnie nodded his agreement to the suggestion, as he rose to his feet. He put his gun into the cabinet beside his brother’s and then moved towards the door.
“Dinner’ll be pretty soon,” he informed Jim. “I’ve got something to do before then. You know your way about?”
“Yes. All right, see you later,” Jim answered, without showing any desire to follow.
When the door closed behind his brother, Jim Brandon suddenly relaxed from the genial attitude which he had assumed at the end of the interview. His brows knitted angrily and he walked over to the window to watch the sky, which seemed to hint at more rain in the near future.
What was Laxford up to now? He hadn’t taken the cub up to town to get his hair cut, that was plain enough. And he’d given Johnnie the straight tip to keep it dark, whatever it was. And the way he was fooling the young pup to the top of his bent over all these cracked notions of his. Good God! Burling Thorn cut up into allotments! What a scheme. And yet, what was Laxford himself going to get out of it? There must be a snag somewhere, if he knew Laxford. Well, Laxford would find that Jim could put a spike through his scheme no matter what it cost to do it. If the family was going to lose Burling Thorn, they’d have to get something more out of it than the pleasure of providing for slum-dwellers.
Chapter Three
The Snare
AS the four men filed into the long drawing-room after dinner, Una Menteith hastily caught Jim Brandon’s eye, and then made a slight but urgent gesture inviting him to sit beside her on the chesterfield. He skilfully blocked the passage of his fellow-guest, who was making in that direction, and crossed over to join the girl. Hay, finding himself forestalled, gave Jim an ugly look and retired unwillingly to the far end of the room, where Laxford and Johnnie had settled themselves in arm-chairs. Una Menteith’s glance followed him for a moment, and a curious expression of mingled relief and distaste flitted across her expressive face. She turned to Jim with a welcoming smile.
“I hope you enjoyed your food as much as Mr. Hay did,” she said crudely as he took his place beside her.
“Couldn’t say more than that, could one?” he retorted.
There was every excuse for the girl’s lapse into bad taste, he reflected. He had a mental vision of Hay’s close-cropped bullet-head bent low over his plate, the little pale piggish eyes intent on the victuals, the red face congested with the effort of over-swift feeding. A pretty sight. No wonder the girl was disgusted.
But it seemed that there was more behind her dislike for Hay.
“I was afraid he might tack himself on to me after dinner,” Una explained coolly. “He’s rather . . . enterprising.”
Jim nodded understandingly. On the way upstairs to dress, he had surprised Hay embracing a reluctant maid, and had earned a sour look for his adventitious interruption. Apparently the fellow had tried the same trick with the governess. She must have choked him off pretty sharply, Jim surmised from what he had seen. But a man of Hay’s stamp is not easily discouraged. He had evidently meant to force himself on the girl that evening; and even a room full of people might not have been a complete protection—after dinner. She had been wise to avoid trouble by calling Jim to her aid.
“He doesn’t seem to fit in here, somehow,” Jim volunteered in an undertone which established a certain intimacy between himself and the girl at his side.
“Of course he doesn’t,” she agreed contemptuously. “Look at him. His clothes are all right; he goes to a first-class tailor. And yet he manages to look over-dressed even in a short coat and black tie. You’d know there was something wrong, even before he opens his mouth.”
Jim glanced across the room and inwardly admitted the shrewdness of that observation. He himself moved now among people to whom dressing for dinner was an event, and he knew the symptoms. They fumbled in the wrong pockets for their cigarettes or their pince-nez, they groped after diaries or papers they had left at home, or in extreme cases they grew embarrassed in the search for pocket-handkerchiefs. In a dozen different little ways they betrayed that they were clothed in unaccustomed garments. But Hay had none of these troubles. His hand went automatically to his cigar-case when he wanted it. He carried his dinner-jacket as though it were part of his habitual wear. And yet in some subtle way the coat and the man inside it failed to harmonise.
“Another thing,” Una Menteith pointed out. “His manners are imitative and not natural, if you see what I mean. He knows what to do when he can’t help sneezing, for he’s seen well-bred people in that fix, and he copies what he saw them do. The same with shaking hands and not shaking hands. He’s kept his eyes open, and he knows when to do it and when not to. But he swills his drink like . . . like a cow, because that’s natural to him and he probably doesn’t notice that he’s different from his models in that. Or he may be a bit deaf,” she added acidly.
Then, with a gleam of her natural irony, she turned to Jim and put an apparently innocent question:
“Are business men like that?”
“Only some of them,” he countered with a smile. “We have better goods at the next counter, madam.”
He guessed, easily enough, that her question had a second meaning which he was not meant to discuss just then. Was Hay a ‘business man’ at all? And if he were not, why had Laxford tried to pass him off as one?
But the problem of Hay was only one facet on the general situation at Edgehill. Jim Brandon was too much of an egoist to possess much of that mysterious sixth sense which detects and measures the unvoiced ebbs and flows of mood and emotion in alien minds. That insensitiveness to the imponderables made him a bad diplomatist. But to-night even his blunted perception had been enough to warn him that he was moving in a strained atmosphere.
And, rather puzzlingly, it was not the sort of tension which he had anticipated when he made up his mind to come as an unwelcome guest to Edgehill. Laxford had behaved perfectly and had not even taken an attitude of armed neutrality. There had been no sign of hostility, even involuntary.
True enough, when Jim tried to get Johnnie to himself by taking a gun into one of the spinneys after rabbits, Mrs. Laxford had joined the two of them and prevented any intimate talk. It was only near the house, on their return, that they had shaken her off. Una Menteith had come out to meet them with some message which took Laxford’s wife away from them. He had a suspicion that the girl had deliberately contrived that opportunity for him to talk to Johnnie alone; and that was one reason why he had gone to her aid in the drawing-room.
At the dinner-table, Laxford had exerted himself to be pleasant. He had tried to draw Jim out, deferred tactfully to his views, broached subjects which led to easy talk, and avoided any topic on which opinions might differ. His wife had seconded him in his effort to put the intruder at his ease. She was a slim, fair-haired, restless little woman, under thirty, with good looks of a rather hectic type and curiously disturbing hot eyes. She had the gift of an agreeable laugh which she was clever enough to use sparingly.
Johnnie, on her left, was obviously pleased to see his brother and his tutor on apparently amicable terms. From time to time he blundered into that nicely calculated conversation with all the innocent clumsiness of a puppy at play. More than once, in his adolescent earnestness, he began to enlarge on some topic which Laxford wished to dismiss before it grew dangerous. But then, Jim noticed, Johnnie’s flow of eloquence suffered an abrupt check for no obvious reason. It needed little intuition to guess that a pressure of Mrs. Laxford’s tiny Louis-heeled sh
oe had played its unseen part on these occasions.
Miss Menteith had been a courteous but rather detached spectator. She had refrained from taking any initiative in the talk, contenting herself with answering questions addressed directly to her. Yet there had been nothing of the wet blanket about her. She had the knack of seeming a good listener, always with an alert glance for the speaker of the moment and a smile of appreciation for the point he made.
Throughout the meal, Hay had displayed no conversational talent whatever. He devoted himself wholeheartedly to his dinner, speaking only to comment favourably upon some dish which specially pleased him. Over the wine, when the women had left the room, he had grown more expansive. He seemed to have a vast store of personal anecdotes which, in most cases, depended for their points on a complete disregard for all ordinary decencies, moral or financial. He and Johnnie had finally become hotly involved in an argument about free love, which was apparently being continued in lower tones at the far end of the drawing-room.
No, Jim Brandon reflected, this queer tension in the air had nothing to do with his presence. It was not the strain of a suppressed hostility. It was the tension of expectancy. Each of them, even that gross brute Hay, was on tenterhooks, awaiting—something.
Jim’s imperfect comprehension of other people’s mental processes had sharpened his study of behaviour. Noumena meant nothing to him; but he could observe phenomena and draw his inferences. So now, as he made idle conversation with Una Menteith, he racked his memory for significant details at the dinner-table.
A series of pictures rose in his mind. Mrs. Laxford quickening the service from time to time with a low-voiced order, and crumbling her bread with nervous fingers like a high-strung bride at her first dinner-party. Curious behaviour, that, in an experienced hostess. Johnnie, usually a hearty trencherman, toying hastily with his food and refusing to help himself twice to any dish lest he should thus spin out the meal. Hay, that glutton, furtively consulting his wrist-watch between the courses, as though worried by an approaching appointment. Even Una Menteith had betrayed herself once. She had shown a momentary hesitation in answering a direct question, as though her thoughts had been elsewhere just then. And Laxford? Jim glanced across the room at that heavy mouth, the well-marked nose, the narrow forehead sloping too sharply back to the prematurely-silvered hair. Laxford’s face had given nothing away, even when he exchanged glances with his wife. But there had been something arbitrary in the way he had hindered any lingering over the wine. Hay had made a rude protest against being hustled, but Laxford had politely cut him short. And Hay had seemed to understand and had given in, gulping down a last glass as he rose to his feet.
Jim’s train of thought was interrupted by Hay raising his voice at the termination of the argument at the far end of the drawing-room.
“Well, there’s one thing to be said for this Free Love of yours, Mr. Brandon. It ’ud come cheaper, for some of us. I’m all for it, on that side. But human natur’s human natur’—you can take my word for that. A man doesn’t like another man starin’ at his wife’s ankles and wonderin’ if the rest’s up to sample. And he won’t stand for his wife goin’ off on the sly with a fancy Joseph, neither. By no manner of means, I warn you out of my experience. See?”
Laxford seemed amused by Hay’s unexpected vehemence in support of strict matrimony.
“I didn’t know you were married, Hay,” he interjected with a smile.
“Married? Me? You’ll wait a while ’fore you see me enterin’ a filly for the Parson’s Stakes. It’s not personal with me. I’m speakin’ thee-eretically. But it’s so, Mr. Brandon, for all your idees. When a man gets tied up, first thing he does is to hang up a ticket: ‘Hands Off! Don’t Paw the Goods About!’ That’s human natur’. And if you don’t bother about the ticket, you’ve got to pay. It costs you umpteen thou’ in the Divorce Court, if you live in the West End, or a clip on the jaw and a thick ear if you live in the New Cut. Principle’s the same, if the details are different. And quite right too.”
Laxford laughed, not unkindly.
“You’re prehistoric, Hay. People are more broad-minded nowadays. Women aren’t private property as they used to be.”
“Some of ’em are common property, same as they always was,” Hay retorted with a hearty guffaw.
Laxford disregarded this. He leaned forward in his chair and spoke with a certain earnestness.
“Things are changing; one can’t stick to the old lines, merely because they are the old lines. Women are individuals nowadays, not just bits of property. Galsworthy, Wells, and all the rest of them agree on that. This personal jealousy will have to give way to something more civilised. Treaties only hold so long as both parties profit by them. One has to recognise it.”
Hay seemed unimpressed.
“Well, then, there’s a good time comin’ for some people,” he admitted jovially.
Laxford was evidently afraid of Hay going still farther over the score in his reflections, for he hastened to change the subject.
“Talking of poachers on men’s preserves,” he said, “the keeper here seems to think we may lose some birds if we don’t look out. That’s a brand of poaching I do dislike.”
While he seemed to ponder over this, Johnnie struck in, perhaps to show Hay that he bore no malice over the argument.
“Care to have a shot at the rabbits to-morrow morning, Mr. Hay? We can’t touch the partridges yet.”
“I don’t mind,” was Hay’s ungracious form of acceptance.
“You’ll need to get up early,” Johnnie warned him. “I generally start off before breakfast, while they’re at their early-morning feed. Say seven?”
“I don’t mind,” Hay repeated, though without enthusiasm.
“Seven, then. I’ll see you’re knocked up in time.”
“You’re coming, too, Jim?” Johnnie demanded, turning to his brother.
“Very good.”
Laxford showed no signs of disturbance, but he included himself in the projected party.
“I’ll come along also, Johnnie.”
“Right!”
Laxford glanced at his watch and then turned to Hay.
“Care to knock the balls about? Couple of hundred up?”
Hay accepted with alacrity and the two men left the room. Johnnie made no offer to mark for them, but sat down again in his chair.
Jim Brandon had been faintly puzzled by the demeanour of Hay and Laxford during the closing stage of the argument about marriage. There had been occasional hesitations, as though that part of the dialogue had been pre-arranged but not sufficiently rehearsed. Hay, especially, had given the impression of a word-faulty actor who was too slow in picking up his cues. Besides, the idea of that fellow posing as a defender of rigid wedlock! It was laughable. Finally, he and Laxford had made their exit abruptly, like a pair of incompetent minor players huddling themselves off the stage to make way for the principals.
Jim’s glance went round to Mrs. Laxford, over there beside the french window. She had curled herself up on a couch with the lithe grace of a kitten, and she seemed to be engrossed in a book. When the men came into the drawing-room, she had glanced up, but had gone back to her reading with a pretty little gesture of apology.
Yet Jim easily detected that this interest in her novel was the merest pretence. She lifted her eyes from the page too frequently for an attentive reader. The mental tension he had noted at dinner still persisted, and its tell-tale physical reactions were even intensified. From time to time she shifted her attitude, as though on pins and needles, crossed and uncrossed her ankles, smoothed down her skirt mechanically, or toyed restlessly with the string of beads she was wearing. Each of her cigarettes lasted but a few minutes; one followed another in swift succession, as though she had made a bet to smoke them against time; and there was a nervous twitch in her gesture as she flicked the ash into the tray beside her on the arm of the couch. Behind the fence of her book, she seemed feverishly alert, as though chafing in expectation o
f some imminent and decisive call.
She looked up for a moment as the two men left the room, but it was towards Johnnie that she glanced. She bent her eyes to her book again, turned a page, and then, with what might have been an involuntary movement, upset her ashtray on to the carpet. Johnnie was on his feet in an instant, as though he had been watching for a signal. Before Jim could intervene, he had crossed the whole length of the room, retrieved the ashtray, and replaced it. Mrs. Laxford gave Jim a smile of thanks for his unavailing attempt and then, with a natural movement, made a place for Johnnie on the couch beside her, putting her book down as though she were glad to be done with it.
“What sort of a night is it?” she asked. “There seems to be a thundery feeling in the air.”
Jim stepped over to the french window, threw it open, and looked at the sky.
“Cloudy, but quite dry,” he reported. “It does feel a bit close.”
Mrs. Laxford bent over and switched off the reading-lamp she had been using.
“Thunder in the air always affects me,” she explained. “I must be extra sensitive. It seems to sharpen my nerves and make me ready to do the maddest things. Please leave the window open, Mr. Brandon.”
Then, as Jim turned back to Una Menteith, Mrs. Laxford tactfully left him to his own devices and began a low-voiced conversation with Johnnie.
“It’s a new moon just now, isn’t it?” Una inquired carelessly as Jim came back and took his seat beside her on the chesterfield.
“I suppose it is. It’s dark enough, outside.”
He wondered if Una’s remark was another specimen of her irony, a sly dig at Mrs. Laxford for saying she felt off her balance that evening. Was the girl hinting that a full moon would have fitted the case better? It was under the full moon, of course, that lunatics were supposed to work up to a crisis.
It crossed Jim’s mind that there might be something in Mrs. Laxford’s admission. Certain people were undoubtedly sensitive to a supercharge of electricity in the air; and for a moment he was inclined to accept that as a possible explanation of her restlessness; but he dismissed the idea almost as soon as it presented itself. To make it fit the facts, one would have to assume that all of them—except himself—were electrically sensitive and over-stimulated. That was nonsense. Besides, it was not such a thundery evening as all that.
The Ha-Ha Case Page 7
