"What a disgusting idea," said Anne. "I'm sure Mr. Adair is most abstemious."
"Mr. Adair," Jeff pointed out, "has never been tried as high as he seems likely to be at Shipley Hall."
Anne rose.
"Then the only thing we haven't settled is when you are to come."
"When would you like me to come?"
"Mrs. Cork spoke of my bringing you back in the car."
"Excellent."
"But there won't be room. She didn't know I was going to have Uncle George aboard. How long will it take you to pack?"
"Twenty minutes."
"Then there's a good train you can catch quite easily. Are you going to your club, Uncle George?"
" Yerss. I thought I might look in."
"Well, I can give you half an hour. I want to go and see Lionel. I'll call for you."
It was not for Jeff to comment on this desire of hers to visit male acquaintances, but he had a distinct feeling that for the first time a jarring note had been struck. Then, for he was a fair-minded young man, he decided that he need not make too much of the matter. A girl like this would obviously not be lacking in male acquaintances. His task must be to make it clear to her—taking his time over it, of course, and not alarming her by too instant a display of the Miller fire and impetuosity—that these Lionels and what not were a very poor lot compared with some of the men she had met more recently.
"Good-bye," he said, pressing her hand with respectful tenderness.
"Good-bye, Mr. Adair. And thank you for helping us."
"Thank you for giving me the opportunity of helping you," said Jeff.
She hurried out, and Jeff, turning to bid farewell to Lord Uffenham, found that mountainous individual regarding him with an unwinking stare.
"Ha!" said Lord Uffenham. "Ha! Hey, what?"
Jeff inclined his head in courteous interrogation. Lord Uffenham jerked a thumb at the door through which Anne had passed.
"In love with her, ain't yer, hey?"
The question was so sudden and unexpected that Jeff found himself answering with the automatic candour of a hypnotised subject on a platform.
"Yes," he said.
"Thought as much," said Lord Uffenham. "Stuck out a mile. She's like me, that girl."
"Er—in what way?" asked Jeff, who had not been struck by any resemblance.
"No woman has ever been able to resist me," said Lord Uffenham modestly, "and no young feller I've ever seen has been able to resist her."
He navigated laboriously through the door, to reappear like the Cheshire Cat and fix Jeff with that tense, unblinking stare.
"Well, wish yer luck," he said, and disappeared again, this time permanently. And Jeff, after a few moments of profound meditation, made his way slowly down the stairs and went back to Halsey Chambers.
Some minutes later, when it had become absolutely clear to him that he had the office to himself, Chimp Twist emerged from the cupboard, gave his moustache a thoughtful twirl and sat down at the desk to smoke a cigarette.
His brain was working briskly.
CHAPTER VII
Anne Benedick had been waiting in the hall of Lord Uffenham’s club some ten minutes before his lordship finally appeared, descending the broad staircase with one hand glued to the arm of a worried-looking Bishop, with whom he was discussing Supralapsarianism. At the sight of Anne, he relaxed his grip, and the Bishop shot gratefully off in the direction of the Silence Room. Lord Uffenham eyed his niece with a guilty sheepishness which he endeavoured to conceal beneath a bluff exterior.
"Hullo, my dear. Just arrived, hey? Capital. Late, ain't yer?"
"No, I am not late," said Anne, with the severity which she was so often called upon to employ in her dealings with the head of the family. "And I have not just arrived. They took my name up to you a quarter of an hour ago."
"So they did, so they did. I remember now. I was showing some of the boys a trick with matches, and lost track of the time. I'll fetch my hat."
"You've got it on."
"Have I? Then let's go."
"We'd better. I shall have to drive with terrific speed, if I'm to get you back before you're missed."
"Didn't I tell you it was my afternoon out?"
"No, you didn't. Do you mean you've let me fret myself to a shadow, when all the time I needn't have worried?"
"It's this memory of mine. Very uncertain it has become in many respects."
They made their way to where the two-seater stood, and Anne moved back to allow her companion to enter. There had been a time when, sharing a car with him, she would have taken her seat first, but a few experiences of having the vehicle play cup-and-ball with her under the impact of that enormous mass had taught her prudence. It was Lord Uffenham's practice, when he intended to sit, to hover poised for a moment and then, relaxing limply, to come down with a bump, like an avalanche.
Silence fell between them at the outset of the journey. Anne preferred not to talk in London traffic, and Lord Uffenham was thinking of all the good things he could have said to the Bishop, if he had not been so pressed for time. That rigid look came over his face and limbs, and until they had passed through the suburbs he was simply not to be numbered among those present, the impression he conveyed being that he could now be reached only by transatlantic telephone.
"Well?" said Anne, as they came into the smoother waters of the arterial road. She detached a hand from the wheel, in order to prod her relative in the ribs and show him that he was expected to wake up and converse. "How do you feel about it all, my poppet?"
"Hey?"
"This business of having a tame detective to help us. I think it has improved our prospects, don't you?"
"Oh, yerss. Decidedly."
Anne looked wistfully out through the windscreen.
"Something must happen now, don't you think? If it doesn't, it will break my heart. You don't know how sick I am of being a secretary-companion."
"You don't know how sick I am of being a butler."
"Let's hope that Mr. Adair will restore the family fortunes. What did you think of him?"
"Smart young feller."
"That's how he struck me."
"Just like what I was at his age."
"Were you slim and muscular?"
Lord Uffenham considered.
"Muscular, yes. Never very slim. What I mean is that I was the devil of a young chap, and this young chap is the devil of a young chap. Got some go in him. Not like that pestilential poop of a pop-eyed plasterer you've gone and got engaged to."
"I've told you before, darling, that you mustn't call Lionel a poop. His eyes never popped in their lives. And he isn't a plasterer, he's an interior decorator."
"Worse, much worse. I was shocked, when you told me you were going to marry him. Shocked to the core."
"I know you were."
"'What, that chap?' I remember saying. 'That slimy, slithery, moustache-twiddling young slab of damnation? Lord-love-a-duck!'"
"You did, didn't you? But never mind about Lionel. He's a subject we've agreed to differ upon. I'm glad you thought Mr. Adair clever. I must say I was impressed by the quick way he seemed to grasp everything. I suppose detectives are like that."
Lord Uffenham uttered a hoarse, gurgling sound, like-some strong swimmer in his agony. It was his way of chuckling.
"He isn't a detective."
"What?"
"Didn't fool me for a second."
The clearness of the road ahead justified Anne in detaching her gaze from it and turning to stare at her companion. The sight of a sort of film beginning to fall over his eyes indicating to her that he was about to go into another trance, she prodded him in the ribs again.
"What do you mean?"
"What I say. D'yer think I don't know a private detective when I see one? I was brought up on them. When I was a young feller starting out in life, they used to follow me about in droves. Private detectives are shocking bounders. You can tell 'em a mile off. This young chap was just some y
oung chap that happened to be in the office. What did you say, when you went in?"
"I said 'Mr. Adair?' Like that. With an enquiring lilt in my voice."
"To which he replied---"
"Something like 'Definitely,' I think. Or 'Absolutely.'"
"Well, there you are. A real private rozzer would have said 'At your service, madam,' or some greasy remark of that kind, rubbing his grubby hands together and smirking like a waiter. Did this chap smirk?"
"No. He just stared."
"Exactly. And why? Because you had bowled him over. You always do bowl these young fellers over. It's a gift you inherit from my side of the family. I've always bowled women over. It was my great trouble in the old days. I'd start out meaning to be merely ordinarily civil, and before I knew where I was, another home wrecked. That's why I used to be followed about by private detectives."
"I wish your memory was as good about diamonds as it is about your horrible juvenile excesses, my angel."
"So do I. No pleasure to me to remember juvenile excesses," said Lord Uffenham, virtuously.
Anne's gaze had returned to the road. Her eyes were thoughtful, and she pressed a tooth against her lower lip. She was reviewing the facts in the light of this new evidence. And as Lord Uffenham had allowed his mind to float off and engage itself with the problem of why birds sit in rows on telegraph wires, when these must be uncomfortable for the feet and there are plenty of trees handy, the silence lasted till they were approaching their destination.
"But it seems so mad," said Anne, at length.
"Hey?"
"Mr. Adair."
"What about him?"
"I say he must be mad."
"Why?"
"To masquerade like this."
"Nothing mad about it, at all. Dashed sensible thing to do, considering the way he feels. Isn't it natural for him to want to be at your side, when he's fallen head over ears in love with you?"
"In love with me?"
"Certainly. I told you you had bowled him over, didn't I? He fell in love with you at first sight."
"Don't drivel, darling."
"I'm not drivelling."
"He couldn't have fallen in love at first sight."
"Why not?"
"People don't."
"Don't they, by Jove? I'd like to put all the women I've fallen in love with at first sight end to end---"
"Well, you mustn't. I'm sure you're mistaken."
"Had it from his own lips."
"What?"
"Certainly. After you had left, I looked him in the eye and said 'Are you in love with her, hey?'"
Anne gasped. "You didn't!"
"I did."
"But why?"
"I wanted to have my suspicions confirmed by a reliable source. Nothing like going to the fountain head, when you need information."
"And what did he say?"
"He said 'Yerss.'"
"A man of few words."
"You don't need a lot of words to answer a simple question like that. 'Love her, don't yer, hey?' I said. And he said 'Yerss.' So there you are. I'd grab him, if I were you. Splendid young feller. I took to him from the first."
"And what about Lionel, my betrothed?"
"Lionel? Bah! You wouldn't give that poop Lionel Green a second thought, if he hadn't the sort of tailor's-dummy good looks that women seem to be incapable of seeing through, poor misguided creatures. Give me two lumps of coal and a bit of putty, and I'll make you a better man than Lionel Green, any time. Lord-love-a-duck, I'd have liked to have been in court yesterday, and heard that feller putting him through it."
Anne stopped the car. They were only at the entrance of the drive of Shipley Hall, and though it would have been impolitic for the secretary-companion and the butler of the establishment to bowl up to the front door together, there was no need for her to drop him for at least another two hundred yards.
But, unlike Myrtle Shoesmith though she was in every other respect, she shared that disciplinarian's view that males who have behaved badly should be punished.
"Out you get, angel."
"What, already?"
"This minute. And I hope you get bitten by wild snails. You know perfectly well how naughty it is to talk of Lionel like that."
"You wouldn't mind it, if you didn't know in your dashed heart that it was true."
"Out," said Anne. "Really wild snails. Ferocious ones, with long horns."
Lord Uffenham descended like some monarch of the forest felled by a woodman's axe, and Anne drove on. Her eyes were once more pensive, and that tooth was again pressing against her lip. She was thinking how intensely she disliked that fiend in human shape, J. G. Miller. She wondered if it would ever be her good fortune to meet him and tell him just what she thought of him.
She hoped so.
CHAPTER VIII
The shadows of the great trees that flanked the lawns of Shipley Hall had begun to creep across the smooth turf when the station cab, bearing Jeff, pulled up at the front door. The ringing of the bell produced Lord Uffenham, looking extraordinarily official.
"Hullo," said Jeff, greeting him with the warmth of an old crony. "So you got back all right? Listen. Give me ten minutes to fraternise with the Black Man's Burden, and we'll go into the matter of that glass of port you spoke of."
"Sir?"
The frigid monosyllable, and the blank and unrecognising stare which accompanied it, told Jeff that he was in the presence of an artist. Lord Uffenham, when buttling, evidently permitted no echoes from a sociable past to interfere with his conception of his role. When in the public eye, he was Cakebread, the whole Cakebread and nothing but Cakebread. Jeff modified the exuberance of his demeanour, infusing into it something of the other's formality.
"Is Mrs. Cork at home?"
"Yes, sir. What name shall I say?"
"Mr. Adair."
"If you will step this way, sir."
With the same reserved aloofness, in a silence broken only by the sound of his boots, which squeaked, Lord Uffenham conducted the young visitor along a passage, coming to a halt outside a door through which, as he opened it, there proceeded a strong and resonant voice saying something derogatory about rogue elephants. A moment later, Jeff found himself in the presence.
His first emotions on beholding Mrs. Wellesley Cork were rather similar to those experienced by the numerous elks and wapiti which had encountered her in their time. Like them, he felt startled and a little nervous. Mrs. Cork, even when not armed to the teeth, was always a somewhat awe-inspiring spectacle, when seen for the first time in the flesh. She was a large, powerful woman in the middle forties—handsome, if you admired the robuster type of beauty, less attractive if your taste lay in the direction of the more essentially feminine. A series of African summers had tanned her features to the consistency of leather, causing her to look like an older Myrtle Shoesmith who had been sitting out in the sun.
At the desk, Anne Benedick was seated with a notebook on her knee. She appeared to have been taking dictation.
"Yes, Cakebread?"
"Mr. Adair, madam."
"Oh? Come in, Mr. Adair. How do you do? That will be all for to-day, Miss Benedick."
Anne, during these exchanges, had been eyeing Jeff with covert interest. It always interests a girl to reexamine a man, who, so she has been assured since her last meeting with him, has fallen in love with her at first sight. She found herself feeling kindly and well-disposed towards him. She liked people to like her—or, if they preferred it, to love her.
Furthermore, courage in the male was a quality she particularly admired, and there was no question but that this pseudo-Adair, in insinuating himself into the Cork home under false pretences, was displaying heroism of a high order. Most of the young men of her acquaintance, given the choice between indulging in practical pleasantries at Mrs. Wellesley Cork's expense and stirring up a nest of hornets with a short stick, would have chosen the hornets without hesitation.
Less rigid than her uncle in her views on
unbending to old acquaintances, she smiled dazzlingly at him, as she passed from the room, causing him to feel greatly strengthened. After a smile like that, he was able to regard Mrs. Cork as a mere bagatelle, to be taken in his stride.
That dynamic woman was subjecting him to a keen scrutiny.
"Sit down, Mr. Adair. You are very young," she said, finding a flaw in his make-up in the first minute. "I had not expected that you would be so young."
Jeff apologised for being young, considered saying that his father had been the same at his age, thought better of it. Something about his hostess told him that she might not appreciate buzzing.
"Still, you have had plenty of experience?"
"Oh, lots."
"Good. I suppose Miss Benedick explained my reasons for wanting you here?"
“Fully." '
"That was Cakebread who showed you in."
"So I deduced."
"Keep an eye on him."
"I will."
"The man's either a lunatic or a thief, and I want to know which, when I make the strong protest to Lord Uffenham which I intend to make. The idea of putting a clause like that in the lease."
"Unusual."
"I cannot understand why Miss Benedick did not draw my attention to it. By the way, what was your impression of Miss Benedick?"
The theme was one on which Jeff could have become lyrical. Rightly divining, however, that his companion would not desire any poetic rhapsodies, he confined himself to the reply that Anne, in his opinion, had seemed very charming.
"The way she wiggles the tip of her nose," he said, allowing himself a moment's licence. "Most attractive."
Mrs. Cork looked a little blank.
"I have never seen her wiggle the tip of her nose."
"I suppose a detective observes these things."
Mrs. Cork remained for some moments in thought. She seemed to be musing on the mobility of Anne's nose. Then, catching the eye of the antelope on the wall and appearing to read into its glassy stare a suggestion of rebuke, she returned to business.
“I am not easy in my mind about Miss Benedick."
"You mean about Cakebread," said Jeff, genially correcting the slight slip.