“My links? Stolen? Absurd!”
“Well, Nannie says she was tidying your room just now and couldn’t find them anywhere.”
Bingo was himself again.
“Nannie Byles,” he said sternly, “is temperamentally incapable of finding a brass drum in a telephone booth. You are familiar with my views on that gibbering old fathead. Don’t listen to a word she says.”
“Then you wouldn’t advise sending for the police?”
“Certainly not. The police are busy men. It is not fair to waste their time.”
“Nannie says they would go round and make enquiries at all the pawnshops.”
“Exactly. And while they were doing it, what would happen? About fifty murders would be taking place and not a rozzer on duty to attend to them. One wishes sometimes that these Nannies had the rudiments of a civic conscience. Don’t you worry about those links. I can tell you just where they are. They are… no, I’ve forgotten. But it’ll come back. Well, pip-pip, light of my life,” said Bingo, and rang off.
His first act on replacing the receiver was, you will scarcely be surprised to learn, to grab his hat and nip round to the Drones for a quick one; for despite the intrepid front he had put up the news that the A.W.O.L.ness of those links had been discovered had shaken him to his foundations, and he was feeling a little like some Eliza who, crossing the ice, heard the baying of the pursuing bloodhounds.
But with the first sip of the restorative Reason returned to its throne, assuring him that there was absolutely no cause for alarm. The Darts tourney, Reason pointed out, was to take place to-morrow morning. He had the Horace Davenport ticket on his person. It followed then as doth the night the day, concluded Reason, that he would be able to restore the missing trinkets the moment he got home to-morrow afternoon.
He was just musing affectionately on Horace Davenport and feeling how fortunate he was in holding all rights to a dart hurler of his incomparable skill, when his attention was attracted by a deep sigh in his vicinity, and looking up he saw Horace approaching. And with a sudden sharp alarm he noted that something seemed to have gone wrong with the Davenport works. The other’s face was pale and drawn and the eyes behind their tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses were like those of a dead fish.
“Stap my vitals, Horace,” he cried, deeply concerned, for naturally what he would have liked to see on the eve of the Darts tournament was a rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed Horace Davenport, full of pep, ginger and the will to win. “You look a bit down among the wines and spirits. What’s the matter?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Horace Davenport. “You know Valerie Twistleton.”
“Yes.”
“You know I’m engaged to her.”
“Yes.”
“Well, that is where you make your ruddy error,” said Horace Davenport. “I’m not. We have parted brass rags.”
“Why on earth?”
“Well, if you ask me, I think she loves another.”
“What rot!”
“I don’t agree with you. We quarrelled about a mere trifle, and I maintain that no girl would have handed a man his hat for a trifle as mere as that, unless she had already decided to hitch on elsewhere and was looking out for a chance of giving him the gate.”
Bingo’s tender heart was touched, of course, but he could not forget Horace’s great mission.
“Too bad,” he said. “But you mustn’t brood on it, old man, or you’ll go putting yourself off your stroke.”
“My stroke?”
“For the Darts binge to—morrow.”
“Oh, that? I shall not be competing,” said Horace dully. “I’m going to scratch.”
Bingo uttered a quick howl like that of a Labrador timber wolf which has stubbed its toe on a jagged rock.
“Sker-ratch?”
“Exactly what Oofy Prosser said when I told him, in the same agitated voice. But I’m dashed if I can see why you’re all so surprised,” said Horace. “Is it likely, after what has happened, that I would be in any mood for bunging darts?”
A blinding light had flashed upon Bingo. I doubt if there are half-a-dozen fellows in the club, or ten at the outside, more capable than he of detecting funny business when such is afoot. He remembered now, what he ought to have remembered before, that Oofy, despite his colossal wealth, had always been a man who would walk ten miles in tight shoes to pick up even the meanest sum that was lying around loose.
At the thought of how the subtle schemer had chiselled him out of that flyer his soul blazed in revolt, and it was with an eloquence of which he had not supposed himself capable that he now began to plead with Horace Davenport to revise his intention of scratching for the Darts tournament. And so moving were the words in which he pictured the ruin which must befall him, should the other remove his name from the list of competitors, that Horace’s better self awakened.
“This opens up a new line of thought,” said Horace. “I didn’t know Oofy had sold you that ticket. Well, to oblige you, Bingo, I will go through the hollow formality of entering the arena. But build no hopes on that. You can’t aim darts when your heart is broken. My eyes will be so dim with unshed tears that I doubt if I’ll be able to get a single double.”
As if the word “double” had touched a chord in his mind, he moved off in the direction of the bar, and Bingo, clutching his head in both hands, started to think more tensely than he had ever thought in his puff.
There is no gainsaying the truth of Horace’s parting words. If there is one thing calculated to take the edge off a fellow’s form in an athletic contest, it is unrequited love. He recalled the time in his own bachelor days when a hopeless yearning for a girl whose name he had forgotten had ruined his putting touch for several weeks. What was needed here first and foremost, therefore, was some scheme for reconciling these two sundered hearts. The re-insertion of the love light in Valerie Twistleton’s eyes would put Horace Davenport right back in mid-season form and the ticket bearing his name would once more be worth thirty-three quid of the best and brightest.
And it ought not, he felt, to be so dashed difficult to get that love light resuming work at the old stand. What Horace had said about Valerie having given him the air because she loved another he regarded as the purest apple-sauce. Honoured from time to time with the girl’s confidence, he knew that she looked on the Darts wizard as a king among men. Obviously what had occurred was what is technically known as a lovers’ tiff, and this he was convinced could be set right by a few well-chosen words from a polished man of the world.
Why, then, should he not get Valerie on the ‘phone, ask her out for a bite of supper, and having lushed her up as far as his modest resources would permit plead with her to forgive and forget?
Bingo is a chap who knows a ball of fire when he sees one, and that this idea was a ball of fire he had no doubts whatever. He sped to the telephone booth, established communication, and a few minutes later the deal had been clinched. The girl checked up immediately on his proposition of a slab of supper, and suggested Mario’s popular restaurant as the mise en scène.
“Okay, Valerie, old crumpet,” said Bingo, infinitely relieved. “Eleven-fifteen at Mario’s then.”
So far so good. A smooth bit of work. But it did not take Bingo long to realise that before the revels could begin there was one rather tricky hurdle to be surmounted. Nannie Byles, like the night, had a thousand eyes, and some pretty adroit manoeuvring would be required if he was to get out of the house without her spotting him. He had no desire to be called upon to explain to Mrs Bingo on her return what he had been doing oozing off the premises in the soup and fish at half-past ten p.m. The statement that he had been on his way to give Valerie Twistleton a morsel of supper in her absence would, he felt, not go any too well.
Thinking quick, he saw the policy to pursue. Immediately upon arrived he touched the bell and desired the parlourmaid to inform La Byles that he would be glad of a word with her. And when the latter hove alongside, she found him lying on the sofa, a limp, i
nteresting figure.
“Oh, Nannie,” he said, speaking faintly, “I think I had better not come and hobnob with Algernon Aubrey to-night. I have a strange all-overish feeling, accompanied by floating spots before the eyes, and it may be catching. Explain the circumstances to him, give him my best and say I shall hope to see him to-morrow.
I, meanwhile, will be popping straight up to bed and turning in.” Well, of course, the Byles wanted to ‘phone Mrs Bingo and summon medical aid and all that, but he managed to head her off and they eventually settled for a basin of gruel and a hot-water bottle. When these had been delivered at the bedside, Bingo said, still speaking faintly, that he didn’t want to be disturbed again as his aim was to get a refreshing sleep.
After that everything was pretty smooth. At about ten-thirty he got up, hopped out of the window, eased himself down the water-pipe, was fortunate enough after waiting a short while at the garden gate to grab a passing taxi, and precisely at eleven-fifteen he alighted at the door of Mario’s. And a few minutes later along blew Valerie Twistleton looking charming in some soft, clinging substance which revealed the slender lines of her figure, and the show was on.
Since the days when he had kissed her under the mistletoe at the Wilkinson’s Christmas party there had come to exist between Bingo and this girl one of those calm, platonic friendships which so often occur when the blood has cooled and passion waned. Their relations now were such that he would be able to talk to her like a kindly elder brother. And as soon as he had headed her off from ordering champagne by persuading her that this wine is better avoided, causing as it does acidity and often culminating in spots, it was like a kindly elder brother that he jolly well intended to talk to her.
On his way to the restaurant he had debated whether to lead up to the subject of Horace by easy stages, but when they were seated at their table with a bottle of sound and inexpensive hock between them he decided to skip preliminaries and snap straight into the agenda.
“Well, I met your future bread-winner at the Drones this morning,” he said. “We might drink a toast to him, what, with a hey nonny nonny and a hot cha-cha. Horace Davenport,” said Bingo, raising his glass.
A quick frown disfigured Valerie Twistleton’s delicate brow. The state of Bingo’s finances had precluded the serving of oysters, but had these been on the bill of fare you would have supposed from her expression and manner that the girl had bitten into a bad one.
“Don’t mention that sub-human gargoyle’s name in my presence,” she replied with considerable evidence of feeling.
“And don’t allude to him as my future bread-winner. The wedding is off. I am through with Horace Pendlebury-by-golly-Davenport, and if he trips on a banana skin and breaks his bally neck, it will be all right with me.”
Bingo nodded. With subtle skill he had got the conversation just where he wanted it.
“Yes, he rather gave me to understand that there had been a certain modicum of rift-within-the-lute-ing, but he did not go into details. What seemed to be the trouble?”
A brooding look came into Valerie Twistleton’s eyes. She gnashed her teeth slightly.
“I’ll tell you,” she said. “He had come round to our house and we were in the drawing-room chatting of this and that, and I happened to ask him to lie down on the floor and let Cyril, my cocker spaniel, nibble his nose, which the little angel loves. He said he wouldn’t, and I said, ‘Oh, come on. Be a sport’, and he said ‘No, he was blowed if he was going to be a stooge for a cocker spaniel’. It ended with my digging out his letters and presents and handing them to him, together with the ring and his hat.”
Bingo t’ck-t’ck-t’ck-ed, and the girl asked him what he was t’ck-t’ck-t’ck-ing about.
“Wasn’t I right?” she demanded passionately. “Wasn’t I ethically justified?”
Bingo started to be the kindly elder brother.
“We must always strive,” he urged, “to look at these things from the other chap’s point of view. Horace’s, you must remember, is a sensitive, high strung nature. Many sensitive, high strung natures dislike being the supporting cast for cocker spaniels. Consider for a moment what his position would have been had he agreed to your proposal. The spaniel would have hogged all the comedy, leaving him to all intents and purposes painted on the back drop. Not a pleasant situation for a proud man.”
If Valerie Twistleton had been a shade less pretty, one would say that she snorted.
“As if that was the trouble! Do you think I can’t read between the lines? He just grabbed at that spaniel sequence as a pretext for severing diplomatic relations. Obviously what has happened is that he has gone and fallen in love with another girl and has been dying for an excuse to get rid of me. I wish you wouldn’t laugh like a pie-eyed hyæna.”
Bingo explained that his reason for laughing like a pie-eyed hyæna was that he had been tickled by an amusing coincidence. Horace Davenport, he said, had made precisely the same charge against her.
“His view is that your affections are engaged elsewhere and that your giving him the bum’s rush on account of his civil disobedience in re the cocker spaniel was simply a subterfuge. I happened to jot down his words, if you would care to hear them. ‘I maintain,’ said Horace, ‘that no girl would have handed a man his hat for a trifle as mere as that, unless she had already decided to hitch on elsewhere and was looking out for a chance of giving him the gate’.”
The girl stared, wide-eyed.
“He must be crazy. ‘Decided to hitch on elsewhere’, forsooth. If I live a million years, I shall never love anyone but Horace. From the very moment we met I knew he was what the doctor had ordered. I don’t chop and change. When I give my heart, it stays given. But he’s not like me. He is a flitting butterfly and a two-timing Casanova. I’m sure there’s another girl.”
“Your view, then, is that he is tickled pink to be freed from his obligations?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Then why,” said Bingo, whipping the ace of trumps from his sleeve, “was he looking this morning when I met him at the Drones like a living corpse out of Edgar Allan Poe?”
Valerie Twistleton started.
“Was he?”
“You bet he was. And talking about his heart being broken. Have you ever seen those ‘before taking’ pictures in the patent medicine advertisements?”
“Yes.”
“Horace,” said Bingo. “He looked like a stretcher case in the last stages of lumbago, leprosy, galloping consumption and the botts.”
He paused, and noted that a misty film had dimmed the incandescence of his companion’s eyes. Valerie Twistleton’s lips were trembling, and the bit of chicken which she had been raising to her mouth fell from her listless fork.
“The poor old slob,” she murmured.
Bingo saw that the moment had come to sew up the contract. Striking while the iron is hot is, I believe, the expression.
“Then you will forgive him?”
“Of course.”
“All will be as it was before?”
“If anything, more so.”
“Fine,” said Bingo. “I’ll go and call him up and tell him. No doubt he will be round here with his foot in his hand within ten minutes of getting the glad news.”
He had sprung to his feet and was about to dash to the telephone but the girl stopped him.
“No,” she said.
Bingo goggled.
“No?” he repeated. “How do you mean, no?”
She explained.
“He must have at least a couple of days in which to brood and yearn. So that the lesson can sink in, if you see what I mean. What one aims at is to get it firmly into his nut that he can’t go chucking his weight about whenever he feels like it. I love him more than words can tell, but we must have discipline.”
Bingo was now stepping around like a cat on hot bricks. His agony was, as you may imagine, considerable.
“But the Darts tournament is to-morrow morning.”
“What Darts tourna
ment?”
“The Drones Club’s annual fixture. For a Horace with his mind at rest it is a sitter, but for a heartbroken Horace not a hope. If you don’t believe me, let me quote his own words. ‘You can’t aim darts when your heart is broken,’ he said, and I wish you could have heard the pain and anguish in his voice. ‘My eyes will be so dim with unshed tears’, he said, ‘that I doubt if I’ll be able to get a single double’.”
“Well, what does a potty Darts tournament matter?”
And Bingo was just drawing a deep breath before starting into explain to her in moving words just how much this Darts tournament mattered to him, when the top of his head suddenly came off and shot up to the ceiling.
That is to say, he felt as if it had done so. For at this moment there came to his ears, speaking loudly and authoritatively from the direction of the door, a voice.
“Don’t talk to me, young man,” it was saying. “I keep telling you that Master Richard is in here somewhere, and I insist on seeing him. He has a nasty feverish cold and I have brought him his woolly muffler.”
And there on the threshold stood Nannie Byles. She was holding in her hand a woolly muffler bearing the colours of the Drones Club and looking in an unfriendly way at some sort of assistant head waiter who was endeavouring to bar her progress into the restaurant.
I don’t know if you ever came across a play of Shakespeare’s called Macbeth? If you did, you may remember that this bird Macbeth bumps off another bird named Banquo and gives a big dinner to celebrate, and picture his embarrassment when about the first of the gay throng to show up is Banquo’s ghost, all merry and bright, covered in blood. It gave him a pretty nasty start, Shakespeare does not attempt to conceal.
But it was nothing to the start Bingo got on observing Nannie Byles in his midst. He felt as if he had been lolling in the electric chair at Sing-Sing and some practical joker had suddenly turned on the juice. How the dickens she had tracked him here he was at a loss to imagine. It could scarcely have been by the sense of smell, and yet there didn’t seem any other explanation.