Deprived of his fountain-pen, however, Blair was rather timid with women. He had never actually found himself alone in an incense-scented studio with a scantily-clad princess reclining on a tiger-skin, but in such a situation he would most certainly have taken a chair as near to the door as possible and talked about the weather. And in his recent tête-à-tête with Medway by the lake it was only the knowledge that Senator Opal was listening-in that had lent any real warmth to his remarks.
So now, in response to Packy's question, he winced reminiscently.
'I can't think what to say to the damned girl,' he said with a burst of candour forced from him by the recollection of his sufferings.
Packy was surprised.
'But I thought you modern novelists were such devils with the beazels.'
Another point struck him.
'What are you doing here, anyway? Your place is by her side.'
'She sent me to get some cigarettes and a bottle of wine. She says she's thirsty.'
'Is there wine in this house?' asked Packy, interested. 'I haven't seen any.'
'It's locked up. But the butler can get at it.'
'My gosh, how I am going to cultivate that butler! This is worth knowing.'
He returned to the point at issue.
'Cigarettes? Wine? Why, this looks great. It's the old Omar Khayyam stuff. You must have been going better than you thought. You're probably one of those fellows who don't say much but do it all with the eyes. I shouldn't worry about not being able to think of things to say. Just continue swinging that alluring eye-ball of yours, and you can't lose.'
A sort of febrile spasm of fury stirred Blair Eggleston from his limp despondency.
'I've a dashed good mind to chuck the whole thing.'
'No, no. This is not your true self speaking. Think how we are all relying on you.'
'I have. A dashed good mind! I consider I have been very badly treated. I have been placed in a most unpleasant and undignified position, and I'm sick and tired of it. I feel...'
Blair Eggleston was a man of whom Packy could never have brought himself to be really fond. At their first meeting he had sized him up as a pretty noxious sort of pustule, and as a pretty noxious sort of pustule he still had him listed. And a hundred times he had marvelled what a girl like Jane Opal could possibly see in him. Nevertheless, he had no wish to let him suffer unnecessarily. The inspiration which had carried him so triumphantly through his recent interview with Mrs Gedge had put him in a position to show Blair Eggleston the way out.
'Well, if you don't like making love to her,' he said, 'I can offer an alternative suggestion. Tell her you're a detective yourself
'What!'
'I have tested this ruse personally, and it works like magic. It carries the full Franklyn guarantee. Simply tell her that you are a detective in the employment of the London, Paris and New York Insurance Company, who have sent you here to keep an eye on Mrs Gedge's jewellery, and the results should be immediate. If she's in the same line of business, she will instantly give you the grip and say so. If she isn't, she will probably be so overawed that you won't be able to come within a mile of her again. Either way, you win out.'
If Packy had distributed in the last few days a certain amount of trouble and anxiety among these new acquaintances of his, he was certainly doing much this afternoon to restore the balance. He had just brightened Mr Gedge's whole outlook on life. He was about to bring tidings of great joy to Mr Slattery After that, his revelations would have a tonic effect on Senator Opal and Jane. And now he had evidently taken an immense load off the mind of Blair Eggleston. After the first struggle to adjust his faculties to the suggestion, Blair Eggleston was plainly finding in it the source of infinite comfort and relief. His eyes lit up, and he seemed to be on the point of putting his approval into words, when there was a sound of panting and Mr Gedge came trotting up with a small suit-case in his hand.
'So you will do that, Eggleston?' said Packy.
'Very good, sir,' said Blair Eggleston.
He proceeded on his way to the house.
'Do what?' asked Mr Gedge.
'I was just giving him a word of advice on how to act so as to please Senator Opal.'
'I wouldn't be old Opal's valet,' said Mr Gedge, 'not if you gave me a million dollars. No, sir! Come on, let's go.'
CHAPTER 15
SOME few minutes before the meeting of Packy and Blair Eggleston, there had appeared, limping across the lawn of the Château Blissac, a dusty and travel-stained figure. It was Gordon Carlisle returning from his country walk. We have already stated that Mr Carlisle was not fond of country walks, and his latest experience of this form of exercise had done nothing to change his views. He had a blister on his heel and he was feeling red-hot.
He made wearily for the house. It was his purpose to collect the bathing-suit which he had bought on the previous day and to go down to the lake and enjoy a swim in its healing waters.
He went indoors, gathered up suit and towel, and presently emerged and started down the rustic path which led to his destination. Half-way there, he observed someone coming up it and saw that it was Senator Opal.
The Senator greeted him cheerily. What he had observed from his hiding-place had left him well content. The fellow Eggleston had seemed to be making excellent progress with the girl Medway. and he felt that his watching eye was needed no longer.
'Hello, there, Duke,' said Senator Opal. 'I'm just going to stroll down to the town. You off swimming?'
'Yais.'
'Well, take care where you undress. That maid of Mrs Gedge's is down by the lake.'
Mr Carlisle's eyes gleamed.
'Yais?'
'Yes. Flirting with that man of mine, Eggleston.'
'What!'
'Saw 'em at it just now,' chuckled the Senator, and passed on.
Mr Carlisle stood for a moment, rigid. Then he drew a deep breath and resumed his journey.
It was a red-eyed and tight-lipped Gordon Carlisle who some few minutes later burst through the bushes at the end of the rustic path and charged like an avenging fury into the clearing by the side of the lake. The blood of the Carlisles was up. A brief inspection of Blair Eggleston on the previous evening had satisfied him that the latter was just about the size he liked people to be on whom he planned committing assault and battery, and he was full of fight.
Having expected to interrupt a sentimental scene and having in the course of his brief walk keyed himself up to immediate action, he was not a little disconcerted to find only Medway standing there. She was throwing bits of stick into the water in the apparent hope of beaning a small water-fowl, an innocent occupation at which the most jealous of lovers could scarcely have cavilled. Wondering if by any chance he could have been misinformed, Mr Carlisle halted. Then he remembered those parting words of hers on the drive, those cruel, taunting words each syllable of which was graven on his heart, and he was firm again.
Medway had turned. He glowered at her sternly.
'Well,' he said with menace, 'where is he?'
Medway's eye was cold.
'What are you doing here, may I enquire, Mr Carlisle?'
'Where is he?'
'Where is who?'
'That guy Eggleston. They told me he was down here with you.'
'They did, did they?'
'Yes, and they told me something else. You've been flirting with him.'
Medway yawned.
'What of it?'
There was pain mingled with the sternness of Mr Carlisle's gaze.
'Necking with the help! I wouldn't have thought it of you, Gertie.'
'Mr Eggleston,' replied the girl with hauteur, 'is a gentleman in every sense of the word. I can't help it if he likes me, can I?'
A slight grating noise intruded itself on the quiet of the afternoon. Gordon Carlisle grinding his teeth.
'He seems to have taken quite a fancy to me,' proceeded Medway with a light, careless laugh. 'Most attentive he is being. He has nice eyes, and,
funnily enough, he seems to think I have, too.'
The grating noise increased in volume.
'He was telling me about them when I sent him up to the house. He ought to be back any moment. Then he'll tell me some more, maybe.'
'He'd better let me hear him!'
'You'd do a lot, wouldn't you?'
'I'd break his neck.'
'Yeah? You and who else?'
The truculence of Mr Carlisle's manner gave way to a pleading softness.
'Don't do it, baby! Don't be this way.'
'I'll be any way I please. And perhaps you'll kindly lay off that "baby" stuff.'
'Is there any harm in saying "baby"?' protested Mr Carlisle, pained.
'Yes, there is. If you want to know how you stand with me, we're pf' f' ft, and don't you forget it. After you craw-fishing the way you did night before last. Not having the nerve to beat that guy up.'
'I explained that.'
And after what happened a year ago.'
'I explained that too.'
'Yes, you did! Ankling into the hospital and eating my grapes with that woman's kisses hot upon your lips!'
'They were not hot upon my lips. I never kissed her in my life. It was nothing but a simple, straight forward business association. She happened to know a young canned-sardine millionaire, and I was trying to get her to quote her lowest terms for steering him into a card-game with me. Don't you believe me?'
'I wouldn't believe you even if I knew you were telling the truth. A nice sort of banana-split you turned out to be! If I'd had any sense, I'd of had you pegged for a wrong number the first day I met you.'
A sigh escaped Mr Carlisle.
'You'll be sorry for this, Gertie. One of these days you'll realize how you've misjudged me.'
'Well, when I do, I'll drop you a line. I can easily find out which prison you're at.'
Mr Carlisle stiffened. He loved this girl, but she had gone too far. She had insulted him in his capacity of Artist. The thing on which he had always prided himself was that great skill of his which kept him from making those blunders which brought inferior operators behind prison bars; and she had sneered at this skill. The slur was one he could not overlook. He raised his hat coldly.
'After that crack,' he said with quiet dignity, 'I will leave you.'
'Do,' said Medway. 'And if you never come back that'll be too soon.'
'Good-bye,' said Mr Carlisle.
Gentlemanly to the last, he raised his hat again and stepped haughtily into the bushes.
He had intended to retrace his steps up the rustic path, but just as he was about to do so he heard someone coming down it and paused. The next moment, Blair Eggleston came in view.
Mr Carlisle drew back into the shrubbery. He had changed his mind about leaving. Wounded pride had given place once more to the old jealous fury. His Gertie had given him the bird – what his friend Soup Slattery had so feelingly described on a previous occasion as the Bronx Cheer – and he no longer hoped for a reconciliation. But there still remained vengeance.
He stood there seething, and Blair Eggleston passed him and came out into the clearing. Mr Carlisle shifted his position to obtain a better view, and watched him with burning eyes.
It was unfortunate for Blair Eggleston that Packy's well-meant advice had had the effect of putting him in excellent spirits. His smiling face, taken in conjunction with the bottle of wine which he carried, conveyed to Gordon Carlisle the definite picture of a libertine operating on all six cylinders. It seemed to Mr Carlisle that he was about to be the spectator of an orgy.
The orgy, if such it was, began at quite a moderate tempo. Blair Eggleston uncorked the bottle, filled the lady's glass, filled his own, gave her a cigarette, took a cigarette himself, and sat down on the turf. His manner so far had been unexceptionable. And then, his words coming to Mr Carlisle only as a faint murmur, he began to talk.
For some moments, whatever he was saying appeared to be innocuous. Medway smoked her cigarette without exhibiting any of the emotion which a girl listening to the conversation of a libertine might be expected to display. And then suddenly the scene changed. To Mr Carlisle's ears there came the sharp sound of a woman's gasp. The cigarette fell from Medway's fingers. She stared at her companion as if what he had just said had shocked her maidenly modesty to the core. Distant though he was, Mr Carlisle could discern quite clearly the horrified expression in her eyes, and he waited no longer.
Gertie, he knew, was no prude. If this man had said something to make her look like that, it must have been something raw beyond the ordinary and it was high time for him to interfere. Glowing with the fervour which comes to men about to chastise libertines smaller than themselves, he burst from the bushes.
To Blair Eggleston, who had seen Mr Carlisle pottering about the Château and knew him to be the Duc de Pont-Andemer, a guest of Mrs Gedge, the spectacle of him advancing now did not immediately suggest danger. He was surprised to see him, because he had not known he was there, but he felt no apprehension. His first intimation that the new-comer's intentions were hostile was the latter's sudden spring. Something solid hit him in the eye, and for the next few moments the world became for Blair Eggleston a sort of nightmare knockabout sketch.
Your literary man is generally supposed to be a dreamy, absent-minded person, unequal to keeping his head in circumstances which call for practical common sense. Blair Eggleston was not this type of writer. He was capable of swift thought, and he thought swiftly now. And what he thought was that the soundest policy for a man of his physique, suddenly assaulted by an apparently insane Duc, was to remove himself as quickly as possible.
To attempt escape in an inshore direction was not feasible. Mr Carlisle, like Apollyon, was straddling right across the way. Making a sudden dash, accordingly, and choosing a moment when his assailant seemed to have paused for breath, Blair Eggleston galloped to the waterside and, hurling himself in, swam clumsily but vigorously to a small island which lay some fifty yards from the shore. Scrambling on to this, he stood panting. He was ankle deep in mud, for this sanctuary of his was covered twice a day by the tide, but at least he was alone.
Meanwhile, on the mainland, a tender scene was in progress. In Blair Eggleston, watching it, this scene increased the already definite conviction that everybody had gone suddenly mad, but to Gordon Carlisle's bruised heart it brought nothing but balm. Medway, who during the recent exchanges had been hovering on the fringe of the battle like some maiden of the Middle Ages for whose favours two knights are jousting, now flung her arms impulsively about Mr Carlisle's neck and with words appropriate to the gesture gave him to understand that the past was dead.
'Oily' she said, 'you're a wow! I didn't know you had it in you. I take it all back.'
The cave-woman in her had been deeply stirred. She had always been aware that when it was a question of conjuring cash out of the pockets of his fellow-men her mate had no superior, but her doubts of his physical courage had done much to neutralize the admiration excited by his professional skill. These doubts he had now set at rest, and also her doubts as to the sincerity of his love.
She kissed Mr Carlisle. Mr Carlisle kissed her. The little episode did not impress itself on Blair Eggleston as idyllic, but idyllic it undoubtedly was.
'Oily!' breathed Medway.
'Gertie!' murmured Mr Carlisle.
And then, for in these practical modern days the business note is never far away even from lovers' reconciliations, Gordon Carlisle began to talk what he would have called turkey.
'Listen, baby,' said Mr Carlisle. 'We've got to get busy. There's no sense in wasting time hanging around. I'm going to open that safe to-night. Around one in the morning would be the best time. Do you think you can get one of the cars out of the garage?'
'Sure.'
'Then we'll have it waiting in the drive with the engine running. I'll drop down off the balcony with the stuff, and we'll be off to Paris.'
'You won't hurt yourself, sweetie?'
; 'Sure not. It ain't only a drop of a few feet. And let me tell you something. That letter I was telling you about that you wouldn't listen when I was telling you.'
In a few brief words he related the burden of what Mr Slattery had told him. Medway's eyes sparkled enthusiastically. She, too, had the business sense, and she could understand how admirable an asset to a young couple just starting housekeeping a compromising letter of Senator Opal's authorship would be.
Then a graver look came into her face. There was something which in the emotion of the recent reconciliation she had forgotten.
'Oily,' she said, 'there's something we'll have to watch out for. That bird over there is a dick!'
'A dick!'
'That's what he just told me. Employed by the London, Paris and New York Insurance Company to watch over Mrs Gedge's ice.'
Blair Eggleston, dripping on his island, was concerned to observe his late assailant turn and direct at him a stare which, despite the distance which separated them, was so unpleasant that he wished they could have been even further apart.
'He is, is he!' said Mr Carlisle tautly.
'What'll we do?'
'There's only one thing to do. Tie him up and park him somewheres till we've made our getaway.'
'But how will we get at him?'
Mr Carlisle surveyed the waste of waters with a thoughtful eye.
'Isn't there a boat anywheres around this pond?'
'There's a boathouse along there past those trees.'
Mr Carlisle became brisk.
'Baby' he said, as Napoleon might have said to one of his Marshals when instructing him in his latest plan of campaign, 'I'll wait here and watch him so he don't get away, and you trot along to that boathouse and get you a boat and come back here and pick me up. Then we row along to that island and prod him with the boat-hook. He jumps into the wet and we haul him aboard. Then we tie him up and leave him in the boathouse and send the folks a wire from Paris to-morrow where to find him. Get me?'
'I got you.'