Hot Water (19 page)

'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.'

S
OME
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.'

'All straight?'

'All straight.'

'Then shoot,' said Mr Carlisle.

I
T
was the fact that the Château Blissac was being run on lines of the strictest teetotalism that had taken Senator Opal to the town this lovely afternoon. Accustomed as he was in private life to deviate somewhat from those principles which he upheld so eloquently in public, the Château's aridity had occasioned him a good deal of inconvenience, necessitating as it did a tiresome series of daily visits to the cocktail bar of the Hotel des Etran-gers, where more liberal views prevailed. It had become a practice of his to drop in there of an evening for the modest refresher which his system demanded, and it was thither that he had repaired after leaving Mr Carlisle.

As a rule, it was his habit to pass through the lobby to his destination at the speed and with something of the look of a steer approaching a water-hole in the Painted Desert; but this afternoon his progress was arrested by the sudden appearance of Packy. The latter, having stowed Mr Gedge away on the
Flying Cloud
and moored the motor-boat to the jetty, had proceeded to the Hotel to communicate the latest developments to Soup Slattery. His arrival in the lobby coincided with that of the Senator.

The Senator, who preferred to be alone on these occasions, was not too pleased at the encounter.

Ah, Franklyn,' he said with a touch of reserve.

'Hullo, Senator,' said Packy. 'What brings you here?'

'I have just remembered an important cable which must be dispatched to New York without delay. I came down here to send it.'

'I've come to see Soup.'

'Soup?'

'My colleague. Mr Slattery. The man who's going to bust the safe for us.'

Senator Opal brightened.

'Capital! Have you – ah – made any plans?'

'Oh, yes. Everything's fine. Nobody will be sleeping in Mrs Gedge's room. The coast will be quite clear. You'll have that letter to-morrow.'

It was not only indignation that had the power to turn Senator Opal's face purple. Sudden joy could do it. As he extended his right hand to clasp Packy's and laid the other affectionately on his shoulder, rather in the manner of the president of the firm in a magazine advertisement congratulating a promising junior on having had the resourcefulness to take a Correspondence Course of Business Training, he was mauve to the roots of his hair.

'My dear boy!'

'I thought you'd be pleased.'

'Is this man in the hotel?'

'Yes. I'd better go and ask for him at the desk. I'll tell you all about everything later.'

'Quite right. Do not waste a moment.'

With feelings too deep for words, he watched Packy approach the clerk. A fear that he had had that on a fine afternoon like this the expert of whom he was in search might not be at home, vanished as he saw the young man cross the lobby towards the elevator. Feeling that if ever an occasion justified an extra cocktail this was it, Senator Opal was turning to resume his journey when a voice spoke behind him.

'I beg your pardon.'

The Senator wheeled round, and for a space stood breathless. The voice had been a musical one, but it had not prepared him for its owner's overwhelming beauty. This was the loveliest girl Senator Opal had ever seen, and in an instant he was all courtliness and gallantry. Thirty years had passed since he had been really at the top of his form with beautiful girls, but in the flourish with which he removed his hat and the polished reverence of his bow there was a good deal of the old pep.

'I saw you talking to Mr Franklyn. Can you tell me where he is staying? They say at the desk that he is not at the hotel.'

If anybody had told Senator Opal a moment before that he would shortly be regretting having met this outstandingly handsome girl, he would have ridiculed the idea. Yet, as he heard these words, there did come to him a definite feeling that he was sorry their paths had crossed. The last thing he desired at this very critical point in his affairs was the arrival of persons aware of Packy's identity.

He choked a little. Then, recovering, he prepared to lie stoutly.

'Mr Franklyn?'

'You were talking to him just now.'

'Not to any Mr Franklyn, my dear young lady. To the best of my recollection, I do not know anyone of the name of Franklyn. My recent companion was the Vicomte de Blissac.'

'What!'

The Vicomte de Blissac,' said the Senator firmly. A very old French family.'

The girl was staring at him, and he was sorry to observe that her stare was the stare of incredulity However, he stuck to it bravely

'These close resemblances are, I believe, not uncommon. Everyone has had experience of them from time to time. I myself... I remember once in Washington...'

The duty of a chronicler to his readers is to sift and select. Whatever of his material is not, in his opinion, of potential interest he must exclude. Out, therefore,
in toto
goes the story of what Senator Opal remembered in Washington. It would not grip. It was very long and inexpressibly tedious. Its only merit was that it served to give his narrator the breathing-space he so sorely needed. By the time it had wound to its conclusion, the mere sound of his own voice had made him his calm, comfortably pompous self once more.

'And that sort of thing,' he concluded, 'is happening all the time. I have no doubt that there must exist a very striking resemblance between the Vicomte and your friend, Mr Franklyn, but I can assure you that the young man you have just seen is the Vicomte and no other. I am in a position, I may add, to speak authoritatively on the point, for he is engaged to be married to my daughter.'

'Engaged to your daughter!'

'Precisely.'

'Are you sure?'

Of all the remarks which she could have made, this struck Senator Opal as perhaps the silliest. He chuckled fatly.

'You would not ask that if you had seen them together. It is beautiful in these cynical modern days to witness affection like theirs. They are completely wrapped up in one another. Never seem to be happy unless they are kissing one another all the time. And I like to see it,' said Senator Opal warmly. 'If two young people are in love, let them conduct themselves accordingly. That's what I say. I'm sick to death of this idiotic fashion that seems to be the thing nowadays of engaged couples behaving as if they were bored to extinction with one another. There's nothing of that about my daughter and the Vicomte.'

'It must be charming.'

'It is charming.'

'Well, I seem to have made a mistake. I must apologize.'

'My dear young lady!'

'I wonder if you could tell me where the writing-room is? I suppose there would be no objection to my writing a letter there?'

'None whatever. It is through those curtains.'

'Thank you.'

She bowed slightly and left him. Senator Opal, with a faint yearning pang for the years that were no more – years when he would certainly not have permitted a girl like that to pass out of his life without a struggle, proceeded on his way to seek that source of consolation which the philanthropic Monsieur Gus-tave affords to men who, even if they have passed the age when Love is king, can still swallow.

Soup Slattery was sitting up in bed, reading
Alice in Wonderland.
As Packy entered, he sneezed and turned to refresh himself from a glass of hot whisky.

'Hello,' he said. He held the book up. 'Ever read this?'

'Often. Where did you get it?'

'Found it downstairs in the lobby. Must belong to someone, I guess. Say, perhaps you can tell me. This White Rabbit. I don't get him. What's his racket?'

'Wasn't he going to tea with the Queen, or something?'

'But he's wearing a business suit and carrying a clock.'

'Yes.'

'Well,' said Mr Slattery, shaking his head, 'it don't seem possible to me.'

He sneezed again, and Packy looked at him with some concern.

'You've caught cold.'

'I certainly have.'

'I'm sorry,' said Packy. 'This complicates matters. I came to tell you that I wanted you to bust that safe for me to-night.'

Mr Slattery was of Spartan mould.

'Cheese!' he said lightly. 'You don't think a little thing like a cold is going to stop me? Sure, I'll bust it for you. Then you got the Gedge dame out of that room?'

'Not only that, but Gedge won't be there, either.'

'Good enough. How did you work it?'

'Oh, it's a long story,' said Packy deprecatingly. 'I showed extraordinary sagacity and resource. If you care to call it genius, it will be all right with me. Mrs Gedge will be in Mr Gedge's room, and Mr Gedge is in dead storage elsewhere. I'll leave the drawing-room window open for you, and all you'll have to do is walk in and collect. A soft job.'

'Well,' confessed Mr Slattery, 'they can't come too soft for me nowadays. Used to be the tougher an evening's work was the better I'd like it. Julia would razz me about it sometimes. All for a quiet life now. Getting old, I guess. If I could grab me a little bit of capital, enough to buy a farm, I'd retire. There's something about a farm. All those cows and chickens.'

He mused wistfully. Then some unpleasant thought seemed to intrude itself on his dreams, for his eye kindled.

'Say, I've been meaning to ask you. About that Chatty-o.'

'What about it?'

'Who would a guy up there be with white hair and black eyebrows? Sort of thick-set bird.'

'Oh, have you met him? That's Senator Opal.'

Packy paused, surprised. A whistling breath had escaped his companion. It might be pneumonia, but it had sounded much more like a strong man's wrath.

'What's the matter?'

Mr Slattery was still breathing in that odd, laboured way.

'Senator Opal? The fellow you want to get this copperizing letter for?'

'That's the man.'

'Brother,' said Mr Slattery, 'the whole thing's off. I won't do it.'

'What!'

'No, sir, not even to oblige you. Me get that white-haired bird out of a jam? Say, the worse jam he's in, the better it suits me. If he was drowning, the only thing I'd throw him would be a flat-iron.'

Packy was bewildered. He could make nothing of this startlingly unexpected display of feeling.

'But...'

'No, sir,' repeated Mr Slattery firmly. 'If that guy's in a spot, I'm glad of it. After what he done to me...'

And in crisp, telling sentences, to which an occasional sneeze merely lent additional impressiveness, he proceeded to relate the story of his night in the open. He told it well. You could see the window-sill, hear the cold breeze whistling about his dangling ankles. Packy, listening, found hopelessness creeping over him. After what had occurred, it was plainly not going to be easy to mollify this injured man.

'Tough,' he agreed.

'Tough,' said Mr Slattery, sneezing moodily, 'is right.'

'But surely you aren't going to get sore at a little thing like that?'

'Did you,' asked Mr Slattery, 'say "little thing"?'

'It was just his fun.'

'I don't like that sort of fun.'

Packy felt that he had tried the wrong line of reasoning. He struck a more personal note.

'But think of me. You wouldn't let me down, would you?'

Mr Slattery seemed to be puzzled.

'Say, just where do you come in on this? It's had me guessing right along. Why are you so steamed up about it? If this palooka has been writing letters he shouldn't have written, it's his funeral, not yours. I can't see what you're doing in the act.'

'Senator Opal has a daughter. She is naturally very much upset about this thing. I want to help her.'

'Are you stuck on her?'

'Certainly not,' said Packy.

It annoyed him that the purely Platonic friendliness which he felt towards Jane Opal should be so consistently misinterpreted. He himself knew, of course, that there was nothing between them except, on his side, a chivalrous desire to be of assistance to a distressed acquaintance and, on hers, a natural gratitude for such assistance. True, once or twice he had had occasion to pat her hand and, indeed, to hold it for a brief moment or two; but that had been the merest civility, such as he would have shown towards an aunt, had he had an aunt in trouble.

He endeavoured to impress this upon Mr Slattery now

'Nothing of the kind. I'm just sorry for her.'

'Well, you'd best be sorry for old Opal.'

'Then you won't help us out?'

'No, sir.'

Packy regarded him reproachfully.

'I can't believe it is really Soup Slattery – good, trusty old Soup Slattery – who is talking like this.'

'It is,' Mr Slattery assured him.

'You really refuse?'

'Yes, sir.'

Packy turned to the door. He knew when he was beaten.

'Well,' he said with infinite sadness, 'this has broken me all up. I don't suppose I shall ever have another shock like this in my life.'

He was wrong. He had one almost immediately. It occurred when he stepped out of the elevator into the lobby and recognized in the lovely girl who advanced towards him his
fiancée,
Lady Beatrice Bracken.

The emotions of a young man who, separated from the beautiful girl to whom his troth is plighted, suddenly finds himself quite unexpectedly reunited to her ought to be unmix-edly ecstatic. Packy's could scarcely have been so described. In a situation which has furnished a congenial theme for more than one poet, he merely felt as if some muscular acquaintance had just punched him solidly on the nose.

Beatrice was the first to speak.

'Well,' she said. 'You don't seem very pleased to see me.'

The words had the effect of causing Packy's stunned faculties in a certain measure to function again. He was still feeling far from tranquil, but Reason, limping back to her throne, told him that he ought to be exhibiting at least a modicum of hearty rapture. He endeavoured to do so. His brain was still numbed by this unbelievable disaster, but he contrived to smile tenderly.

'I'm tickled to death,' he said. 'It's simply wonderful, seeing you. But I didn't expect... I mean, I hadn't a notion

'No. I suppose you hadn't.'

'When did you arrive?'