"Are you mad, Geoffrey?"
The question was one to which a direct answer was difficult. Jeff decided to strike the soothing note.
"I think I know what you mean," he said. "You're referring to the Case, aren't you? I thought you might want to hear all about that. Come along in, and we'll have a long talk about it over a cup of tea."
"I don't want any tea."
"There are rock cakes."
"When I read that report in the Daily Express, I nearly fainted. I couldn't believe my eyes. You must have been insane."
"Well, I admit that I was just the slightest bit carried away and to a certain extent lost my calm judgment. As I was telling Ma Balsam, this man Green turned out to be a fellow who had embittered my youth with foul calumnies. When I recognized him, I saw red. Green, too, of course."
"I don't know what you are talking about."
"I'm trying to explain why I wasn't suave and dignified, as I had intended to be. When this excrescence slunk into the witness box, and I realized that he was Stinker Green---"
"After all the trouble I took to get Father to give you the brief."
"I know, I know. Oh, don't think I don't see your point of view. All I'm trying to make you understand is that this boll-weevil Green---"
"He's furious. He keeps saying 'I told you so.' He pleaded with me to break our engagement."
Jeff quivered from stem to stern. He had not expected this. A thorough cursing, yes. A proper ticking-off, quite. But not a complete remission of sentence. There came into his eyes a sudden wild gleam of hope, such as might have come into the eyes of some wretched man on a scaffold, who, just as the executioner is spitting on his hands with a cheery "Heave ho!" observes a messenger galloping up on a foaming horse, waving a parchment.
"You wouldn't do that?" he said, in a low voice.
There was no weakness in Myrtle Shoesmith. She could see that her words had shaken this man to his foundations, and in a way, despite her justifiable indignation, she was sorry for him. But she was a firm believer in punishment where punishment had been earned. She removed her glove.
"I had already made up my mind to do it, coming up in the train. I am certainly not going to marry a man capable of behaving as you have done. I thought that I might be able to make something of you, but I see that I was mistaken. Here is your ring."
Jeff, twiddling it between thumb and forefinger, was struck by one of those quaint thoughts which so often came to him when he was in joyous mood. With the idea of easing the strain and making the party go, he decided to share it with his companion.
"You know," he said, "this makes me feel like a pawnbroker."
"What on earth do you mean?"
"Your giving me this ring. As if you had brought it in to the old pop shop and were asking me what I could spring on it."
"Good-bye," said Myrtle Shoesmith, rightly revolted, and was off down the stairs before Jeff knew that she had started. She understood now what her father had meant when he had described this young man as unbalanced and flippant.
CHAPTER V
Jeff tottered back into his chair. He was feeling weak and spent. Sudden joy often has this effect, temporarily numbing the faculties. He was dimly aware that Ma Balsam was addressing him, and nodded absently. And from the fact that she went out, with a kindly word about drinking it while it was hot, he gathered that she must have been asking him if he would like his tea. And, sure enough, a few moments later she reappeared, bearing a loaded tray.
He eyed it without enthusiasm. Much has been said by writers through the ages in praise of tea, but there are occasions in a man's life when this pleasant, but mild, beverage, will not serve. Scarcely had Ma Balsam withdrawn, with another kindly word about hoping that he would enjoy the rock cakes, when he perceived that this was one of them.
In this supreme moment, he wanted to celebrate, and it seemed to him that the sort of celebration he had in mind called for something stronger than tea, something more authoritative, something that did not merely cheer without inebriating but bit like a serpent and stung like an adder. And it so happened that in his cupboard he had a bottle of the hell-brew required.
Five minutes later, he was sitting with his feet on the window-sill, a lively glow permeating his entire system, his mood one of bubbling ecstasy. And so, for a space, it remained.
But after a while he found his thoughts taking a graver turn. At a time like this, he saw, it was not enough merely to rejoice. Nor was it enough, he realised, that we should have these great emotional crises in our lives. The important thing was to profit by them, to learn their lesson and act upon it: and he perceived that this wonderful piece of good fortune had been sent to him for a purpose.
It was easy, of course, to see what that purpose was. If he had a fault, it was, he knew, that in his relations with the opposite sex he was inclined to be a little too cordial, just a shade more chummy than was actually necessary. He liked girls. Tall girls, small girls, slim girls, plump girls, blonde girls, dark girls, he liked them all. And too often, when confronted with one, he was apt to start buzzing.
Yes, that was the blemish in his character which this experience had been sent to correct. He was a buzzer. Nature had dowered him with a ready flow of that small-talk which is part badinage and part sentiment, and far too frequently, when assisting at parties, routs and revels, he found himself backing the prettiest girl present into a corner and starting to buzz at her.
He had done it, he recollected with a shudder, even with Myrtle Shoesmith: and this whole Myrtle Shoesmith episode, with its hideous peril averted only at the eleventh hour, had been designed to warn him to watch his step and be a bit more distant with the sex in future.
There and then, he registered a vow that this should be attended to without delay. Girls in the past had spoken of J. G. Miller as "dear old Jeff" and "a scream." Girls from now on would be asking one another in awed whispers who that cold, stern man with the strange, inscrutable face was, who leaned against the wall with folded arms and seemed unaware of their existence.
It was at this point that he happened to look round. His glance fell on the plate of rock cakes, lying untouched on their tray, and the sight brought him back to the present with a jerk.
His immediate thought was that he had never beheld anything so uninviting. The things seemed to be leering at him malevolently. Too many cooks, in baking rock cakes, get misled by the word "rock," and it was into this category that Ma Balsam fell. And even if this had not been so, his stomach, which, though a healthy one, could be pushed just so far, rebelled at the thought of bilious patisserie on top of the generous spirit in which he had been indulging.
And yet it was impossible to leave that heaped-up plateful for Ma Balsam to take away. She was so sensitive, and it so plainly untouched. Jeff was a nice-minded young man, who shrank from giving pain. The feelings of Ma Balsam were sacred to him.
He was faced, accordingly, he saw, by the problem which was always bothering characters in the stories he wrote —viz. How to get rid of the body? And it was as he stood brooding on this that his eye chanced to fall on the room opposite, the one that bore on the upper half of its open window the legend "J. Sheringham Adair," and it was as if a sudden bright light had shone upon him.
From where he was standing, he could see into this room, and it had all the appearance of being empty. The odd little wax-moustached blighter, whom he had sometimes seen sitting at the desk apparently engaged in putting top dressing on his upper lip, was not doing so now. Private Investigator Adair's private investigations had apparently taken him elsewhere for the moment, to a consultation at Scotland Yard perhaps or possibly to Joe the Lascar's opium den in Limehouse in connection with the affair of the Maharajah's Ruby.
Whether this was so or not, on one point Jeff was clear. When Sheringham Adair returned, he might not have the Maharajah's Ruby in his possession, but he was going to be extraordinarily well off for rock cakes. With an accuracy of aim which gave evidence of the clear eye
and the steady hand, he proceeded to hurl the contents of the plate across the courtyard.
It was the fifth and last of the jagged delicacies that hit Chimp Twist. It caught him squarely between the eyes, creating the momentary illusion that the top of his head had parted from its moorings.
For in supposing that Mr. Twist's office was empty, Jeff had erred. Its lessee was there, but a few moments earlier he had gone down on his hands and knees in quest of a dropped sixpence. A curious impression, that the air had suddenly become full of strange flying objects caused him to rise abruptly at precisely the worst time he could have chosen.
An instant's stunned inaction, and he was at the window, rubbing his forehead. His gaze rested on a young man with straw-coloured hair and a contorted face, who seemed to glare at him with an evil, ferocious hostility. And there came to Chimp the feeling that had come to him so often in the course of his dubious career, that things were getting too hot.
Nothing is more regrettable than the frequency with which these misunderstandings occur in life. We, who know the motives which had caused Jeff to throw rock cakes, are aware that his glare was one of horror and remorse. Quite inadvertently, meaning only to spare Ma Balsam's amour propre, he had gone and beaned one of the neighbours, and he stood aghast at his handiwork, too overcome to speak. Nobody, one would have imagined, could have failed to recognise him for what he was, a living statue of contrition.
But Chimp Twist was peculiarly situated. London, like the Chicago which a growing unpopularity had forced him to evacuate some years previously, was full of people who asked nothing more than to take a good poke at him, and his sensitive conscience suggested that Jeff must be one of these.
True, the latter's appearance was not familiar to him, but then one is so apt to forget faces. And the cardinal fact remained that this glarer had just been throwing lethal objects at him, though of what nature he had not yet had leisure to ascertain. Reeling back, he paused for a while in thought.
Jeff, meanwhile, had left his post. He had hurried from the room, and was clattering on his way downstairs to apologise. He was extremely doubtful whether any apology could really meet the case, but it was obvious that one must be offered. No right-thinking young man can sock a complete stranger on the frontal bone with a rock cake and just let the thing go without a word. There is a code in these matters.
And so it came about that when Chimp Twist leaned forth on to the landing, his momentary inaction ended and his whole being intent on making a getaway while the going was good, the first thing he beheld over the banisters was his implacable assailant bounding up the stairs, plainly with the object of renewing hostilities at close quarters. His escape was cut off.
But there was still a way. It was for precisely this sort of emergency that he kept that tall and spacious cupboard on his premises. To dart back into the office and dive for this sanctuary like a homing rabbit was with Chimp Twist the work of a moment. A few seconds later, he was curled up in its interior, breathing very softly through the nostrils, and Jeff, arriving at journey's end, found only an empty room.
There was the desk. There, scattered about the floor, lay his generous donation of rock cakes. But from any sign of wax-moustached little men coldly awaiting explanations the place was entirely free. The theory was one which would have been scouted by anyone at all intimate with Chimp Twist, but it really looked as if he must have been snatched up to heaven in a fiery chariot.
Jeff found himself running what might legitimately be called the gamut of the emotions—first, amazement at what seemed to him either a miracle or a first-rate conjuring trick; then, for he had never enjoyed the prospect of having to frame that apology, relief; and finally interest.
This was the first time he had ever been in the office of a private investigator, and it occurred to him that here was an admirable opportunity of picking up a little atmosphere, which might come in useful when the moment arrived for starting his next novel. He sat down at the desk, noting as Fact One concerning these human bloodhounds, that they apparently liked to work in dusty surroundings, no doubt in order to retain the fingerprints of callers.
And it was as he leaned back thoughtfully in the chair, wishing that a scrupulous sense of honour did not prohibit him from searching through the drawers and reading his absent host's correspondence, that someone knocked at the door, and there entered a girl at the sight of whom his head jerked back as if struck by a rock cake.
"Mr. Adair?" she asked, in a charming voice, soft and musical like sheep bells at sunset.
"Absolutely," said Jeff, coming to one of those instant decisions which were so characteristic of his eager, enthusiastic nature. The idea of not being the man she was looking for seemed to him too silly to be entertained for an instant.
It was true, of course, that he had registered a vow to be cold and distant to all girls, but naturally that had never been intended to apply to special cases like this.
CHAPTER VI
There was a brief pause. Jeff was too fully occupied in taking in the newcomer's many perfections to be capable of speech. His mind was in a sort of emotional welter, to the surface of which, like an egg shell in a maelstrom, there kept bobbing one coherent thought—to wit, that if this was the sort of girl who frequented the offices of private investigators, he had been mad not to have become a private investigator before.
It was true that almost anybody who did not look like Myrtle Shoesmith would have appealed to him at the moment, and Anne Benedick was supremely unlike Myrtle Shoesmith, but the thing went deeper than that. There was something about this visitor that seemed to touch some hidden chord in his being, setting joy bells ringing and torchlight processions parading through the echoing corridors of his soul. Romeo, he fancied, must have experienced a somewhat similar, though weaker, emotion on first beholding Juliet.
As for Anne, her reactions, if less ecstatic, were distinctly favourable. Halsey Court, and particularly the staircase of Halsey Buildings, had prepared her for something pretty outstandingly bad in the way of investigators—something, indeed, very like the Chimp Twist who might so easily have been there to receive her: and this agreeable, clean-cut young man came as a refreshing surprise. She liked his looks. She had also a curious feeling that she had seen him before somewhere.
"Good afternoon," she said, and Jeff pulled himself together with a strong effort. His fervour was still as pronounced as ever, but the first stunned sensation had begun to wane.
"Good afternoon," he replied. "Do sit down, won't you?" He seized a chair and started mopping it vigorously with his coat sleeve, as Sir Walter Raleigh would have done in his place. He regretted that the lax methods of his predecessor's charwoman should have rendered the action so necessary. "Quite a bit of dust in here, I'm afraid."
"There does seem to be a speck or two."
"One gets called away on an important case, and during one's absence the cleaning staff take it easy."
"I suppose they have heard so much about the importance of leaving everything absolutely untouched."
"It may be so. Still, there are too many rock cakes about, far too many rock cakes. I see no reason for anything like this number of rock cakes."
"You don't think they lend a homey touch?"
"Perhaps you are right. Yes, possibly they do brighten the old place up. There," said Jeff, exhibiting his handiwork, "I think that's better."
"Much better. And now would you mind dusting another. My uncle should be arriving in a moment. I thought he was coming up the stairs behind me, but he must have stopped to sniff at something. He has rather an enquiring mind."
As she spoke, there came from outside the door the slow booming of feet on the stone stairs, as if a circus elephant in sabots were picking its way towards the third floor: and as Jeff finished removing the alluvial deposits from a second of Mr. Twist's chairs, the missing member of the party arrived.
"Come in, angel," said Anne. "We were wondering where you had got to. This is Mr. Adair. My uncle. Lord Uffe
nham."
The newcomer, as the sound of his footsteps had suggested, was built on generous lines. In shape, he resembled a pear, reasonably narrow at the top but getting wider and wider all the way down and culminating in a pair of boots of the outsize or violin-case type. Above these great, spreading steppes of body there was poised a large and egglike head, the bald dome of which rose like some proud mountain peak from a foothill fringe of straggling hair. His upper lip was very long and straight, his chin pointed. Two huge, unblinking eyes of the palest blue looked out from beneath rugged brows with a strange fixity.
"How do yer do?" he said. "Haryer? I've been having a dashed interesting talk with a policeman, my dear. I noticed that he was the living image of a feller who took me to Vine Street on Boat Race Night of the year 1909, and I stopped him and asked him if he could account for this in any way. And I'm blowed if he didn't turn out to be my policeman's son. That's what you'd call a link between the generations, what?" He paused, and turned his glassy stare on Jeff, giving the latter the momentary feeling of having been caught in the ray of a searchlight. "You ever been taken to Vine Street?"
Jeff said that he had not had this experience.
"Decent little place, as police stations go," said Lord Uffenham tolerantly.
With which encomium, he lowered himself into a chair, with such an air of complete withdrawal from his surroundings and looking so like something which Gutzon Borglum might have carved on the side of a mountain that Jeff had an odd illusion that he was no longer there. He turned to Anne, to learn from her what was the nature of the business which had put her on J. Sheringham Adair's visiting list, and found her regarding him with a puzzled look.
"I can't help feeling I've seen you before, Mr. Adair."
"Really?" said Jeff. "I wonder where. You---" He paused. He had been about to ask if she had been in court during the trying of the case of Pennefather v. Tarvin, but perceived in time that this would be injudicious. "You never came to Cambridge for May Week, did you?"