CHAPTER XXIV.
"KUK-KUK-KUK-KATIE."
Soft, even light filled the wide entrance hall of No. -- Park Lane.
The single, expressionless footman appeared almost hopeful, knowing hisrelease was near; for the time was only twenty minutes short ofmidnight.
The road between the front door and the park railings was almost aspeaceful as the houses on its one side, and the grass and trees on theother. Hardly a hoof on the wood, and but a rare motor rushing, atintervals, with soft, apologetic speed over the thoroughfare from northto south.
But there came at last a taxi--Charles, in spite of thick door andperfect roadway, recognised its venal characteristics--a taxi whichhesitated, stopped, started again, and came to rest at the very door ofNo. --.
Though his ears could scarce believe it on that Saturday night, whenthere was not within earshot any function or reception going on, therecame feet up those splendid, shallow steps--feet which seemed to halt,and even vacillate beneath a swaying body.
The mere suspicion was shocking; but even worse, to that cultivated ear,was the clamour of the bell which followed.
But when, having opened the door, Charles examined the ringer, he wasastounded, not to say appalled.
The man, though his eyes were heavy and his voice that of one drivinghimself to the limit of his strength, was certainly not intoxicated; forin that matter, Charles the footman knew and trusted the nicety of hisown judgment. But the condition of the dress, the cut cheek-bone, thepuffy eye above it, the dirty hands with raw knuckles, and the pocketsgrotesquely bulging, made a picture so painfully in contrast with thehouse and its quarter, that the footman's face lost its habitualexpression of restrained good-humour under a mask of severity altogethertragic.
For a moment he hesitated: to ask this scarecrow his business wouldconcede him the right to exist; and the ruffian's undamaged eye and hisassured carriage were plain warning against any concession whatsoever.
The visitor, therefore, spoke first, even as if he had been respectable.
"I want to see Mr. Bruffin," he said.
"Not at home," replied Charles, trying to boom like a butler.
"Then I'll wait till he comes," said Dick Bellamy, taking a step forwardin spite of the door and the footman's hand upon it.
"Impossible to see Mr. Bruffin to-night--sir," said Charles. "I'm afraidI must ask you to step outside."
His vision of what might be in those bloated pockets was only a littleless alarming than the reality.
But Dick felt he had only a drop or so of physical energy left; and so,lest they should trickle from him, he used them now.
And Charles, lifted most disconcertingly by the slack of his breechesand the stiffness of his resisting neck, was shifted quickly andpainfully to the doorstep, to hear the door close upon him before hecould turn to face it.
The house was new, even to its owners. Its rebuilding and exquisiterefitting had been a marvel for the magpie chorus of the occasionalcolumn. The public already knew more of his new house than GeorgeBruffin could ever forget.
But Dick, who never read more of a newspaper than he must, knew only itsaddress and the day when George and his wife should go into residence.This, he had remembered, was the first day of their second week, and,even if George had already learned his way to his own study, Dick mustfind means to reach him more expeditious than geographical exploration.
He looked about him, and his eye fell upon a thing of which George hadtold him with pride almost boyish; a framework of shell-cases, graduatedfrom the slender treble of a shortened soizante-quinze to the deepestbase of a full-length monster from some growling siege-gun.
For George had done his portion of fighting and had collected thismaterial for a dinner gong, on which one might play with padded stickanything from the "Devil's Tattoo" to "Caller Herrin'" or the "WeddingMarch."
From the doorstep, the frantic Charles, with eyes rolling, saw the taxi.What was in it he could not see, for the chauffeur stood blocking theopen window, watching, it appeared, whatever the cab might contain--wildBolshevists with bombs, perhaps, or soft litters of pedigree pups.
From Apsley House to Marble Arch, he felt, was never a policeman. Hecould have embraced the hoariest of specials.
The service entrance was too far round. Before he could reach it allmight be over.
So, forgetting the bell, he turned and beat, with fists none too hard,upon the door that was anything but soft. And cursed, as he had nevercursed man before, the architect whose enlightened scheme had found noplace for a knocker.
And with his first blow there burst out in the hall the wild, indecorousstrains of "Kuk-kuk kuk-Katie," pealing out louder and ever louder asthe musician found confidence.
With his left hand supporting half his tired weight on the frame ofthese bells, translated by some twentieth-century Tubal Cain to a musicso strangely different from the first they had uttered, Dick wasabsorbed in his rendering of such bars of the vulgar melody as he couldremember, when he heard, far behind him, a slow, unimpassioned voice.
"What's all this hell's delight?" it asked.
A confused chorus of protesting explanation, interwoven with the yappingcries and hysterical laughter of women, was all his answer.
In a fresh surge of enthusiasm "Katie" drowned it.
Then George Bruffin shouted--almost, the servants felt, as if he mightsome day lose his temper.
"How did this freak minstrel get in?" he roared.
"Don't know, sir."
"Who was on duty here?"
"Charles, sir," chimed the chorus.
"Where is he?"
The music died in a last tinkling "Kuk-kuk." And then, as the minstrelswung round to face his audience, the whole company heard the beating onthe great door.
"That," said Dick with a wave of his baton towards it, "is Charles."
While George stared heavily at the intruder's battle-worn visage, thesecond footman flung open the door.
With a face livid and distorted by passion, Charles made a rush at hisenemy--to be brought up short by the sight of his master, wringing therascal's hand and patting his disgraceful shoulder.
"You silly goat," were all the words George could find for his laughter.
"I had to see you," said Dick. "And I do."
"Why couldn't you have me fetched decently?"
The chorus had vanished; they two were alone, with Charles, abashed.
"Your man wanted to put me out. I'm all in, George, so I just put himout, and rang the bells for you." He sighed wearily, and added: "Anyhow,it worked."
George turned a heavy face on the footman, but Dick spoke first.
"Charles is a damned good servant," he said. "I know what I look like.He was in the right, so I had to evict."
"What's your trouble, Dick?" asked George, speaking, thought theservant, as if this Dick were the first of all Dicks and all men.
"I've got a girl in a cab out there. She's worse beat than I am, George.I want you and Liz to look after her till to-morrow."
Bruffin turned to his servant.
"Lady Elizabeth is in my study," he said. "Ask her to come to me here."Then, to Dick, "Sit down," he went on, and disappeared, to returnquickly with a tumbler in his hand.
With half-closed eyes, Dick continued as if the other man had never lefthim.
"She's mounting guard," he said, "with the shuvver to help, over ourcatch--the worst blackguard unhung."
A handsome woman of some thirty years, with masses of darkest haircunningly disposed, neck and shoulders beautiful beyond criticism, anddressed in a peignoir of delicate simplicity, came to her husband with arush smooth as the full-sailed speed of a three-masted schooner.
Charles, with recovered dignity, followed in her wake.
"George! What is it, George?" she exclaimed, before she had even time toget her eyes focused upon his companion.
"That," answered George, with a derisive gesture.
"Why, it's--oh, _Dick_!" she cried.
Wit
h her long, slender hands on his shoulders, she peered close andeagerly into the battered countenance.
"Oh, Dickie dear, whatever have they been doing to its good old face?"she demanded, with tenderness for the one, and anger for the manymingling in her voice.
"Nothing to what they got from him, Betsy--unless I'm an ass. But he'lltell us when that whisky's worked in his veins a bit. He's got a ladyout there, waiting. Shall I fetch her in--or you?"
Dick half rose from his chair. But Lady Elizabeth Bruffin pushed himback into it.
"I will, of course," she said, and made for the front door so quicklythat Charles only just had it open in time.
As he told the butler before he slept that night, "It'd've done yourkind heart good, Mr. Baldwin, to see how they were eating 'im with theireyes. His word law, you know, and do what he wanted, almost before hecould say what it was, and it might be an hour before he could tell 'emwhy. And the terrible object he was--but with something strong andcompelling, one might say, underneath."
He was thinking, perhaps of the hand which had lifted him over thethreshold.
Charles had followed his mistress to the taxi.
The driver, turning on her approach, stood back, touching his cap;amazed by this condescension of jewels and silk to beauty ill-clothed,draggled, dirty and exhausted.
Suddenly Lady Elizabeth remembered that she did not know even the girl'sname.
"Open the door, please," she said to the driver. And then, to Amaryllis,"My dear, you're to come in," and stretched her hands out with a motionso inviting that the girl laid her own in them, taking all their supportto rise and get out on the pavement.
"Take my arm. Poor little thing, you're tired to death," said LadyElizabeth, with what the girl called a coo in her voice.
"You don't even know my name----" began Amaryllis.
"I know something better--you're Dick Bellamy's friend. That is apassport and an introduction, my dear."
Charles followed them up the steps. On the third his mistress stoppedand turned. Charles halted on the second step.
"There's a man in the taxi?" said Lady Elizabeth interrogatively.
"Yes," replied the girl. "We're keeping him. He's drunk."
"Charles," said Lady Elizabeth, "assist the driver in keeping the personinside from getting out."
"Yes, my lady," said Charles; and, feeling that haply he was mixing ingreat matters, he went back to the cab and stood sentry very loftilyover its further exit.
When they were inside, Lady Elizabeth shut the big door.
"George!" she said; and Bruffin took his eyes from Dick, to see his wifeleading towards them a pale-faced, tear-smudged girl, with a batteredsun-bonnet flung back on her shoulders and a great halo of untidy redhair topping a graceful, weary figure habited in clothes which, in theirpresent state, would have disgraced the woman they had come from.
George took a step forward, and Dick half rose in courtesy.
"This is Miss ----" said Lady Elizabeth, and stuck.
"Oh, Liz!" cried Dick. "Beginning an introduction, when you haven't beenintroduced yourself! Lady Elizabeth Bruffin, you have on your arm MissCaldegard, daughter of the eminent Professor Caldegard. George, youbehold the same. Miss Caldegard, Lady Elizabeth Bruffin, and herhusband, Mr. George Bruffin. He is famous for immeasurable wealth whichhe can't use and a few brains which he uses in all sorts of queer ways,and hasn't yet spent."
He limped towards the two women.
"Liz, dear," he went on, "please put her to bed. She's had the deuce andall of a day. She'll tell you, only don't let her talk too much."
Lady Elizabeth nodded.
"Would you like to go to bed now, dear?" she asked.
A smile, radiant on the tired face, illuminated Amaryllis.
"Oh, please, yes. I can see it--all white!" she answered.
And without a word from any of the four, the women left the men standingin the hall.
It was empty when Lady Elizabeth returned. She found George in hisstudy.
Her eyes shone with a kind of maternal satisfaction, but she looked ather husband without speaking.
"How's the young woman?" he asked. "She looked about done in."
"She's had a bath. Suzanne's done her hair. She's in bed, so sleepy thatI left Suzanne with her to keep her from spilling her bouillon and toastbefore she's finished it. Oh, George, she's a ripper--perfectly lovely,without all those horrid clothes."
George took his cigar from his mouth.
"I shouldn't wonder," he said.
Lady Elizabeth ignored the interruption.
"And I _believe_ she's Dick's," she went on. "Who is this ProfessorCaldegard?"
"Scientific--coal-tar--big bug of the first magnitude," answeredBruffin. "Some day he'll synthesize albumen, and then all the farmers'llgo into the workhouse."
"But are they--what sort of people are they? It's _Dick_, George."
"You've seen the girl, Betsy."
"Yes," admitted Lady Elizabeth.
"And when you catch Dick Bellamy making a break over a man, a horse, adog or a woman, Bet, p'r'aps you'll let me know."
Lady Elizabeth sighed contentedly, as if he had removed the last doubtfrom a happy mind.
"That's quite true," she said. Then she looked round the room. "Is he inyour bath-room, or in bed, or where? You oughtn't to leave him alone."
"He's left me," replied George. "Wouldn't stay a moment after he knewMiss Caldegard was in your clutches. He's gone off with his intoxicatedcaptive. He's made a conquest of Charles by pitching him out of thehouse, and the taxi-man would help him do murders."
"Is he coming back to bed here?"
"Didn't ask."
"Oh, George, why not?"
"He'll come if he wants to."
"Didn't he tell you where he was taking his prisoner?"
"Only said, 'Must get a move on. Got a man to be hanged,' and went."
"Then it's Scotland Yard," said Lady Elizabeth.
"I don't think that's where they turn 'em off, Betsy, but perhaps youknow best."
"I do, this time. Have a car out at once and drive there. Somebody's gotto look after him. And, if you get on the track of the father, tell himabout Amaryllis----"
"Amaryllis!" echoed George, reflectively weighing the word.
"And bring him along too, if he wants to have just a peep at her."
George nodded and rang the bell.