The rain cascaded as they came out of the station and Boule, who, like all Florence's secretaries, appeared to be suffering from an advanced case of nerves, bundled, as it seemed, all the passengers from the train into a shooting brake, a small car and two Daimlers. Before they drove off Campion looked around with some dismay at Florence's Christmas bag. She had surpassed herself. There were more than half a dozen celebrities, a brace of political high-lights, an angry-looking lady novelist, Nadja from the ballet, a startled academician and Victor Preen, and others who looked as if they might belong to art, sport, money, or might even be mere relations.
Mr Campion had been separated from Lance and was looking for him when he saw him in one of the cars, with the novelist on one side and the girl with the brandy ball eyes on the other. Victor Preen made up the ill-assorted four.
As Campion was an unassuming sort of person he had been relegated to the brake with Boule himself, the shy young man and all the luggage.
Boule introduced them awkwardly and collapsed into a seat, wiping the beads from his forehead with relief that was a little too blatant to be tactful.
From the introduction Campion learnt that the shy young man's name was Peter Groome. Throughout the uncomfortable journey they talked in a desultory fashion and Mr Campion gathered that young Groome was in his father's firm of solicitors, that he was engaged to be married to the girl with the brandy ball eyes, that her name was Patricia, and that he thought Christmas was a waste of time.
"I hate it," Peter said with a sudden passionate intensity which startled even his mild companion. "All this sentimental good-will-to-all-men business, it's false and sickening. There's no such thing as good will. The world's rotten."
No sooner had he spoken than he bit his lip and turned away to the streaming landscape. "I'm sorry," he murmured, "but all this bogus Dickensian stuff makes me writhe."
Mr Campion made no direct comment. Instead, with affable in consequence, he murmured, "Was that young Victor Preen I saw in the other car?"
Peter Groome turned his head and regarded Campion with the steady stare of the willfully obtuse. "I was introduced to someone with a name like that, I think," he said carefully. "He was a little baldish man, wasn't he?"
"No, that's Sir George." The secretary leaned across the luggage to support him. "Preen is the tall young man, rather good-looking. He's the Preen, you know." He sighed. "Millionaires get younger every day, don't they?"
"Obscenely so," said Peter Groome abruptly, and returned to his despairing contemplation of the rain-washed landscape.
Under hill was en fete to receive them, and as soon as Campion observed the preparations his sympathy for young Groome increased, for to a jaundiced eye Florence's display might well have proved as dispiriting as Preen's bank balance. As she herself said in a loud voice, even while she linked her arm through Campion's, clutched the academician with a free hand and captured Lance with a bright birdlike eye, we've gone all Dickens. The great Jacobean house was festooned with holly. An eighteen-foot tree stood in the hall. Yule logs blazed on iron dogs in the hearths and already the atmosphere was thick with that curious Christmas smell which is part cigar-smoke and part roasting food.
Philip Cookham stood receiving his guests with pathetic bewilderment. Every now and again his features broke into a smile as he greeted some face he knew. He was a distinguished-looking man with a fine head and eyes permanently worried by his country's troubles.
"My dear boy, delighted to see you. Delighted," he said, grasping Campion's hand. "I'm afraid you've been put over in the dower house. Did Florence tell you? She said you wouldn't mind, but I insisted that Feering went over with you, and also young Peter Groome." He sighed, and brushed away Mr Campion's hasty reassurance. "I don't know why the dear girl never feels she has a party unless the house is so overcrowded that our best friends have to sleep in the annexe," he said sadly.
The dear girl, looking not more than fifty-five of her sixty years, was clinging to the arm of the lady novelist and the two women were emitting mirthless parrot-cries at each other. Cookham smiled.
"She's happy, you know," he said indulgently. "She enjoys this sort of thing. Unfortunately I have a certain amount of urgent work to do this weekend, but we'll get in a chat, Campion, some time over the holiday. I want to hear your news. You're a lucky fellow. You can tell your adventures." Mr Campion made a face. "More secret sessions, sir?" he inquired.
The Cabinet Minister threw up his hands in a comic but expressive little gesture before he turned to greet the next guest.
As he dressed for dinner in his comfortable room in the small Georgian dower house across the park, Campion was inclined to congratulate himself on his quarters. Under hill itself was just a little too much of the ancient monument for strict comfort.
He had reached the tie stage when Lance appeared. He came in, very elegant indeed and highly pleased with himself. Campion diagnosed the symptoms immediately and remained deliberately and irritatingly incurious.
Lance sat down before the fire and stretched his sleek legs.
"It's not even as if I were a good-looking blighter, you know," he observed invitingly when the silence had become irksome to him. "In fact, Campion, when I consider myself I simply can't understand it. Did I so much as speak to the girl?"
"I don't know," said Campion, concentrating on his tie. "Did you?"
"No." Lance's denial was passionate. "Not a word. That hard-faced female with the inky fingers and the walrus mustache was telling me her life story all the way here in the car. The dear little poppet with the eyes was nothing more than a warm bundle at my side. I give you my dying oath on that. And yet well, it's extraordinary isn't it?"
Mr Campion did not turn round. He could see the artist quite well through the mirror in front of him. Lance had a sheet of notepaper in his hand and was regarding it with that mixture of feigned amusement and secret delight that was typical of his eternally youthful spirit.
"Extraordinary," he repeated, glancing at Campion's unresponsive back. "She does have nice eyes. Like licked brandy-balls."
"Exactly," agreed the lean man at the dressing-table. "I thought she seemed much taken up with her fiance, young Master Groome," he added tactlessly.
"Well, I noticed that, you know," Lance admitted, forgetting his professions of disinterest. "She hardly recognized my existence in the train.. Still, there's absolutely no accounting for women. I've studied 'em all my life and never understood 'em yet. I mean to say, take this case. The girl ignored me, avoided me, looked through me. And yet, look at this. I found it in my room when I came up to change just now."
Mr Campion took the note with a certain amount of distaste. Lovely women were invariably stooping to folly, but even so he couldn't accustom himself to the spectacle.
The message was very brief. He read it at a glance and for the first time that day he was conscious of that old familiar flicker down the spine as his experienced nose smelt trouble. He reread the four lines:
There is a sundial on a stone pavement just off the drive. We saw it from the car. I'll wait ten minutes there for you half an hour after the party breaks up tonight.
There was neither signature nor initial, and the summons broke off as baldly as it had begun. "Amazing, isn't it?" Lance had the grace to look shamefaced. "Astonishing," Campion's tone was flat. "Indeed, staggering old boy. Er fishy."
"Fishy?"
"Yes, fishy, don't you think so?" Campion was turning over the single sheet thoughtfully and there was no amusement in the pale eyes behind his horn-rimmed spectacles. "How did it arrive? In a plain van?"
"In an unaddressed envelope. I don't suppose she caught my name. After all, there must be some people who don't know it yet." Now Lance was grinning impudently. "She's batty, of course. Not safe out and all the rest of it. But I like her eyes and she's very young."
Campion perched himself on the edge of the table. He was still very serious. "It's disturbing, isn't it?" he said. "Not good. Makes one wonder
."
"Oh, I don't know." Lance retrieved his property and tucked it into his pocket. "She's young and foolish and it's Christmas."
Campion did not appear to have heard him. "I wonder," he said again. "I should keep the appointment, I think. It may be unwise to interfere, but yet I rather think I should."
"You're telling me." Lance was laughing. "I may be wrong, of course," he said defensively, "but I think that's a cry for help. The poor lass evidently saw that I looked a dependable sort of chap and-er having her back against the wall for some reason or other she turned instinctively to the stranger with the kind face. Isn't that how you read it?"
"Since you press me, no. Not exactly," said Campion, and as they walked over to the house together he remained thoughtful and irritatingly uncommunicative.
That evening Florence Cookham excelled herself. She exhorted her guests to be young again, with the inevitable result that long before midnight Under hill contained a company of ruffled and exhausted people.
It was one of Florence's more erroneous beliefs that she was a born organizer and that the secret for good entertaining was to give everyone something to do. Thus it was that Lance and the academician now even more startled-looking than ever before found themselves superintending the decoration of the great tree while the girl with the brandy ball eyes acted as Mistress of Ceremonies for a small informal dance in the drawing-room, while the lady novelist scowled over the bridge table and the ballerina steadily refused to organize amateur theatricals.
Only two of Florence's party remained exempt from her tyranny. One was Cookham himself; he looked in now and again, but whenever his wife pounced on him he was ready with the excuse that he had more urgent work waiting for him in his study. The other was Campion; he had work to do on his own account and he had long-since mastered the difficult art of self-effacement. Experience had taught him that half the secret of this man oeuvre is to keep discreetly on the move; he strolled from one party to another, always ready to look as if he belonged should his hostess's eye come to rest on him inquiringly.
For once his task was comparatively simple. Florence was in her element. She rushed about surrounded by breathless assistants and at one time the very air in her vicinity was thick with colored paper, yards of ribbon and a snowstorm of address tickets as she directed the packing of the presents for the school-children's tree, a second arboreal monster which stood in the ornamental barn beyond the kitchens.
Campion left Lance to his fate which promised to be, at the most modest estimate, three or four hours' hard labor and continued his purposeful meandering. His lean figure drifted among the company with an apparent aimlessness which was utterly deceptive. There was, in fact, hidden urgency in his lazy movements and the pale eyes behind his spectacles were alert and unhappy.
He found Patricia dancing with young Preen, and paused to watch them. The man was in somewhat flamboyant mood, flashing his smile and his noisy witticisms about him, but the girl was far from content. As Campion caught sight of her pale face his eyebrows rose. For an instant he almost believed in Lance's unlikely suggestion. The girl really did look as if she had her back to the wall. She watched the doorway nervously, her shiny eyes full of fear.
Campion looked about him for the other young man, but Peter Groome was not in the room, nor in the hall, nor yet among the bridge-tables, and even half an hour later he had not put in an appearance.
Campion was himself in the hall when he saw Patricia slip into the anteroom which led to Philip's private study, that holy of holies which even Florence treated with wholesome awe. Campion had paused to enjoy the spectacle of Lance, wild-eyed and tight-lipped, wrestling with the last of the blue glass balls on the guests' tree, when he saw Patricia disappearing round the familiar doorway under the branch of the double staircase.
It was what he had been waiting for and yet, when it came, his disappointment was unexpectedly acute. He liked her smile and her brandy ball eyes. Patricia had left the door ajar and Mr Campion pushed it open an inch or so further, pausing on the threshold to consider the scene within. The girl was on her knees before a paneled door which led into the inner room and she was trying, somewhat ineffectively, to peer through the keyhole.
Campion stood looking at her regretfully and he did not move when she straightened and paused to listen, with every line of her young body taut with the effort of concentration.
Philip's voice amid the noisy chatter startled him and he swung round to see the Minister talking to a group on the other side of the room. A moment later the girl brushed past him and hurried away.
Campion went quietly into the anteroom. The study door was still closed and he moved over to the period fireplace beside it. This fireplace, with its carved and painted front, its wrought-iron dogs and deeply recessed inglenooks, was one of the showplaces of Under hill.
The fire had died down and the interior of the cavern was dark, warm and inviting. Campion stepped in and sat down on the oak settle, where the shadows swallowed him. He had no intention of being unduly officious but his quick ears had caught a faint sound from the study and Philip's private sanctum was no place for furtive movements when its master was out of the way.
Mr Campion did not have to wait long. The study door opened quietly and someone came out. The newcomer moved across the room with a nervous, unsteady tread, and paused abruptly with his back to the quiet figure in the inglenook. Campion recognized Peter Groome and his thin mouth narrowed. The younger man stood irresolute, his hands behind him and one of them holding a flamboyant parcel wrapped in the colored paper and scarlet ribbon that littered the house. A sound from the hall flustered him and he spun around and thrust the parcel into the inglenook, the first hiding-place to present itself, and turned to face the new arrival.
It was Patricia. She came slowly across the room, her hands outstretched and her face raised to Peter's.
Mr Campion thought it best to stay where he was, and indeed he had no time to do anything else for Patricia was speaking urgently, passionately.
"Peter, I've been looking for you. Darling, there's something I've got to say and if I'm making an idiotic mistake then you've got to forgive me. You wouldn't go and do anything silly, would you? Would you, Peter? Look at me!"
Peter had his arms round her and his laugh was unsteady and not very convincing. "What on earth are you talking about?"
She drew back from him and peered earnestly into his face.
"You wouldn't would you? Not even if it meant an awful lot. Not even if, for some reason or other, you felt you had to. Would you?" He turned from her helplessly, great weariness in the lines of his sturdy back, but she drew him round, forcing him to face her.
"Would he what, my dear?" Florence's arch inquiry from the doorway separated them so hurriedly that she laughed delightedly as she came briskly into the room, her hairstyle a trifle disheveled and her draperies flowing.
"Too divinely young. I love it!" Florence said devastatingly.
"I must kiss you both. Christmas is the time for love and youth and all the other charming things, isn't it? That's why I adore it so. But, my dears, not here. Not in this silly, poky, little room. Come along and help me, both of you, and then you can slip away and dance together as much as you like, but don't come in this room. This is Philip's dull part of the house. Now, come along this minute. Have you seen the precious tree? Too incredibly distinguished, my darlings, with two great artists at work on it. You shall both tie on a candle. Come along!"
Like an avalanche she swept them away and no protest was possible. Peter shot a single horrified glance towards the fireplace, but Florence was gripping his arm; he was thrust out into the hall and the door closed firmly behind them.
Campion was left in his corner, and the parcel on the opposite bench. not a dozen feet away. He moved over and picked it up. It was a long flat package wrapped in holly printed tissue. It was unexpectedly heavy and the ends were unbound.
Wrestling with a strong disinclination to interfere,
Mr Campion turned it over once or twice but a vivid recollection of the girl with the brandy ball eyes in the silver dress, her small pale face alive with anxiety, made up his mind for him. He sighed and pulled the ribbon.
The typewritten folder which fell onto his knees surprised him. It was not at all what he expected, and neither was its title, Report on Messrs Anderson & Coleridge, Messrs Saunders, Duval & Berry and Messrs Birmingham & Rose, immediately enlightening, and when he opened it at random a column of incomprehensible figures confronted him.
It was a scribbled penciled note in a precise hand at the bottom of one of the pages which gave him his first clue: "These figures are estimated by us to be a reliable forecast of this firm's full working capacity." Mr Campion's face was grim.
Two hours later when Mr Campion picked his way cautiously along the clipped grass verge down to the sundial walk, it was bitterly cold in the garden and a thin white mist hung over the dark shrubbery which lined the drive. Behind him the gabled roofs of Under hill were shadowy against a frosty sky. There were still a few lights shining in the upper windows, but below stairs the entire place was in darkness.
Mr Campion huddled his greatcoat around him and plodded on, unwonted severity in the lines of his thin face. He came at last to the sundial walk and there he paused, straining his eyes to see through the mist. He could make out a figure standing by the stone column and heaved a sigh of relief as he recognized the jaunty shoulders of the Christmas-tree decorator. Lance's incurable romanticism was going to be useful at last, he reflected with wry amusement.
Campion did not join his friend but instead withdrew into the shadows of a clump of rhododendrons where he composed himself to wait. He disliked the situation in which he found himself. Apart from the extreme physical discomfort involved he had a natural aversion towards the project in hand, but little fair-haired girls with shiny eyes can be very appealing and Mr Campion had once been a very young man himself.
The Return of Mr Campion Page 3
