Hot Water (21 page)

'What the devil are you talking about?'

Packy's mind cleared. He saw that he had been on the verge of imparting to this white-haired old Nosey Parker the inner history of a tragedy too sacred and intimate for human ear. With a little difficulty, for Gustave of the Hotel des Etrangers mixes a pretty potent Special, he detached himself from the bar.

'Good-bye,' he said.

'Here, wait!'

But Packy had gone. He had passed to where beyond these voices there was peace – or if not peace, at any rate uninterrupted leisure for musing in solitude on his fractured heart. As he made his way back to the jetty where he had moored the motor-boat, he wondered a little why Senator Opal should have been so interested in Beatrice's letter. Putting it down to mere idle curiosity, he dismissed the matter from his mind.

He started the motor-boat and, laying a somewhat zigzag course, drove it to the Château Blissac's boathouse. He was now completely distrait and unable to contemplate any mundane phenomena.

This was the reason why the faint gurgle which Blair Eggle-ston, lying tied hand and foot in a dark corner of the boathouse, contrived to cause to filter through the gag in his mouth, made no impression on his consciousness. If he heard it, he gave it no attention. He moored the motor-boat and walked up to the house, brooding.

Several hours later, when darkness had settled upon St Rocque, a lissom form might have been observed emerging stealthily from the Hotel des Etrangers and making its way with equal furtiveness towards the harbour.

Enforced detention in his room had long since started to prey upon the nervous system of Maurice, Vicomte de Blissac. He was a young man who all his life had liked mirth and gaiety, and there are few things less mirthful and gay than a protracted sojourn in a French hotel bedroom.

To-night, he had suddenly cracked under the strain. Days of contemplation of the ceiling, the wash-hand stand, the armchair, the other chair, the flowered wall-paper and the steel engraving of the Huguenot's Farewell had reduced him to a state of desperation when he was prepared to take any risk, no matter how fearful. Like the heroine of a modern play, he wanted to get away from it all.

And it was as he wrestled with this mood of recklessness that there came to him what he recognized as quite the brightest idea he had ever had in his life.

Why should he not steal off under cover of darkness to Packy's boat and in the name of their ancient friendship implore Packy to up anchor and take him over to England out of the jurisdiction of the
gendarmerie
of St Rocque?

The more he contemplated the idea, the better it looked. He wondered why he had not thought of it before. There would, of course, be a certain amount of danger in the passage of the streets that led to the jetty, but he scoffed at danger. All he wanted was to be away from that ceiling, that wash-hand stand, that arm-chair, that other chair, that flowered wallpaper and that steel engraving of the Huguenot's Farewell.

So here he was now, sidling with infinite caution through the crooked little streets that wound down to the harbour.

Luck was with him. No stern official voice bade him halt, no hard official hand descended on his shoulder. He reached the jetty, found a boat, climbed in, loosened the rope and rowed off. It was a task of some little difficulty to discover the
Flying Cloud
among all the craft that rocked at anchor on the incoming tide, but he managed it at last.

He called Packy's name cautiously, but there was no answer. Packy, it seemed, was on shore. He decided to go aboard and wait for him.

Arriving on deck, he recollected something very vital which he had learned on his previous visit to the yawl – the location of the cupboard where Packy kept his whisky. He made for it at his best speed. His whole soul was crying out for a restorative.

It was some moments later that he discovered that he was not the only person on board who had been thinking along these lines. The first thing he saw as he charged into the main cabin was a little man of tubby build whose fingers clutched a brimming beaker of the right stuff. His back was to the Vicomte, but at the sound of the latter's footsteps he sprang up in a flurry of arms and legs, spilling the contents of his glass over the tinned tongue which had constituted his modest dinner.

The Vicomte found himself looking into the protruding eyes of J. Wellington Gedge, the man whom, he had been informed by a usually reliable source, he had murdered three nights ago at the Festival of the Saint.

It was some four hours later, when the hands of a watch which he had stolen in Cincinnatti were pointing to twenty-five minutes after midnight, that Soup Slattery's better self, which had been stirring uneasily within him ever since Packy's departure, suddenly sprang to life and took charge.

He saw now that he had been within an ace of committing the sin which had the distinction of being almost the only one which his elastic code recognized as such – the unforgivable sin of refusing help to a buddy in trouble. A pal had given him the distress sign and he had ignored it.

There were many things about Soup Slattery at which a moralist would have pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. His views on the sanctity of personal property were fundamentally unsound, and he was far too prone to substitute a left hook to the jaw for that soft answer which the righteous recommend. But there was one thing, he had always flattered himself, which nobody could say of him, and that was that he had ever let a friend down in his hour of need.

He burned with shame and remorse. In spite of Packy's statement that only the purest altruism animated him in his desire to assist Jane Opal, he had read between the lines and come to the conclusion that love was the motivating force. Packy, he was convinced, was that way about this squab, and he, Soup Slattery, just because he was at outs with the squab's old man, had been planning to throw sand in the gear-box. As he put on his trousers and reached for his little kit of tools, Soup Slattery was groaning in spirit.

It was with the inward glow of a penitent, the quiet elation of one who at the eleventh hour has seen the light, that he left the hotel some ten minutes later and started to walk up the hill to the Château Blissac.

This time, he knew, there would be no open window waiting for him, but he anticipated no difficulty in climbing on to that balcony which had so immediately won his approval on the occasion of his first visit. Nor did he find any. The thing might have been placed there purely for the convenience of the visiting heist-guy. He negotiated it noiselessly in a matter of seconds. And it was as he stood there, breathing a little heavily, for he was past his first youth, that he noticed that the window of the room was open.

This puzzled him. Packy had assured him that the Venetian Suite would be unoccupied that night. He crept closer and was further mystified to see that there was a light behind the curtains. Odd, felt Mr Slattery, and parted the heavy folds sufficiently to enable him to inspect the interior.

There was an electric torch lying on a table, so placed that its rays fell on the safe. And over the safe, fiddling with the handle, was bending a dim figure.

P
ACKY FRANKLYN
had retired to his room early that night. But he had not gone to bed. To one in his state of mental upheaval sleep was out of the question. At the advanced hour when Mr Slattery was setting out with his little bag of tools, he was still in a chair at his open window, fully clothed, gazing over the moonlit grounds with a pipe between his teeth and in his eye that strange, goofy gleam which had been its predominant expression ever since Beatrice had terminated the engagement.

In that world-famous brochure of his, to which we have already referred, Schwertfeger of Berlin writes as follows:

'Having round the corner nipped and the good, stiff drink taken,' says Schwertfeger – he is still on the theme of the young man disappointed in love – 'the subject will now all food-nourishment refuse and in 87.06 per cent of cases will for a long and muscle-exercising walk along the high road or across country at a considerable rate of speed and in much soul-agitation go.'

How true this is. It was what we saw happen in the case of Gordon Carlisle, and it had happened with Packy. Immediately on his return to the Château, he had started out on a walk which, lasting as it did for several hours, had caused him to absent himself from the dinner table. The dinner hour had come and gone without his noticing it. If he gave it a thought, it was merely to let his mind rest for an instant on the idea of food and then wince disgustedly away again.

And now, in the small hours, sitting smoking at his window, he was surprised and a little revolted to find that the agony had abated to so noticeable an extent that it was only by prodding his wounded soul that he could still succeed in feeling adequately miserable.

This change of mood puzzled him. It would not have puzzled Schwertfeger.

'The long and muscle-exercising walk concluded,' writes Schwertfeger, 'and the subject having to his room in much physical exhaustion returned, it now frequently happens that he will in a chair with his feet up sit and a pipe light, and in 65.09 per cent of cases examined it has been established that at this point he will with clarity and a sudden falling of scales from the eyes the position of affairs re-examine and to the conclusion will come that he is
auge davonkommen'
– or, as we should say in English, hazarding a translation of an untranslatable phrase, 'jolly well out of it.'

And it was this stage that Packy had now reached.

For several hours after his parting with Beatrice gloom had enveloped Packy Franklyn like a fog. Now, abruptly, he had begun to feel absolutely fine.

He marshalled the facts. Beatrice had broken off their engagement. There was no getting round that. But – and this was the point, he saw, that hitherto he had overlooked – what of it? The more he examined the thing from this angle, the more clearly did he perceive that, so far from being a tragedy, what had occurred was nothing more nor less than the good, old-fashioned happy ending. For the second time in his career as a wooer, it was plain, Fate had granted him a most fortunate escape. To have become the husband of the present Mrs Scott – or Pott – or even Bott – would have been bad. Would it have been any better to have become the husband of Lady Beatrice Bracken, of Worbles, Dorsetshire?

All that business of enlarging his soul....All those concerts and picture galleries... .That marked tendency of hers to thrust him into the society of the side-whiskered and intellectual. ... Would not these be things which, after the first fire of passion had died down, might make a man consider that in replying in the affirmative to the clergyman's 'Wilt thou?' he had given the wrong and injudicious answer?

Undoubtedly.

And her family – what of them? Was not a man to be congratulated rather than pitied who had escaped a lifetime of the huntin', shootin', and fishin' anecdotes of the Earl of Stableford, the parish gossip of Lady Stableford, the searching eye and nasty cracks of that pre-eminent blister, the Lady Gwendolyn Blinkhorn?

A thousand times yes, felt Packy, and a sudden great peace seemed to descend upon him. It was as if he had taken off a pair of tight shoes.

The fragments of his broken heart came together with a click, as good as new. And at the same moment he became aware of a soft, insistent knocking. The door opened, and Jane Opal came in.

'Sh!' she said.

She closed the door.

'Sh!' she said again.

The admonition was unnecessary. Packy could not have spoken. Like Soup Slattery, now softly making his way to the balcony of the Venetian Room, he was in an agony of remorse, and it completely deprived him of speech.

For hours and hours, he realized, he had not given this girl so much as a thought. Concentrated on his own selfish sorrow, he had neglected altogether the consideration of her distress, of the blow she must have received when her father informed her that Soup Slattery had torn up his contract and that there was now no hope of recovering the letter, on the recovery of which her happiness depended. It was a reflection that did not make him think well of himself.

He eyed her mournfully. She was wearing a blue negligee, and in a blue negligee, as the records have already shown, she looked charming. So charming, indeed, that something suddenly seemed to explode inside Packy like a bomb, and remorse was swept away on the tide of another emotion.

Let us turn to Schwertfeger for the last time.

'This stage reached,' writes Schwertfeger, concluding his remarks, 'and the subject being now in this state of earnest, eyes-raised-thankfully-to-heaven gratitude for his fortunate escape, it is extremely probable that he will immediately in love with somebody else fall.'

But Packy would have denied that he had fallen in love. It was his view that he had loved this girl all the time without happening to notice it. He saw now that the Vicomte de Blissac had been right, that Mr Slattery had been right, that Beatrice had been right. Even the Senator had been right, though working on false premises. They had all assumed that he was in love with Jane Opal, and how unerring their instinct had been. Nobody could have been more surprised than himself, but it was a fact – and he recognized it – that Jane, if not the only girl he had ever loved, was most certainly the girl he loved now.

He gazed at her emotionally. He saw wherein her attraction lay. In the past, now this and now that attribute had lured him in the girls he had met. Jane had everything. The vivacity which had been the charm of Mrs Scott (or Pott or Bott)... she had that. The thoroughbred quality of Lady Beatrice Bracken... she had that, too. And in addition there were all the bewitchments that were hers alone. She was a sort of
macédoine
of everything feminine that he most admired. She was one hundred per cent, the right girl, the only possible girl, the girl he had been looking for all his life. She was absolutely It.

Against all which, however, must be set the fact that she was in love with Blair Eggleston.

It was a jarring thought to intrude on the moment of a man's realization that he has found his soul-mate, but it did intrude, and it sent Packy back into his chair as if he had been hamstrung.

'What's the matter?' asked Jane anxiously.

'Nothing,' said Packy.

Jane had gone to the door and was listening. Satisfied by the quiet without, she came back, her face determined.

'I was talking to Father to-night,' she said.

Packy nodded sadly.

'He told me your friend Mr Slattery had refused to get that letter. And he told me you had told him that Mrs Gedge's room would be empty to-night.'

Packy nodded again.

That,' he said, 'is the bitter thought. I worked like a dog to that end, and now it's all no use.'

'You have been wonderful,' said Jane. 'You've been wonderful all along. I don't think I've ever admired anybody so much.'

Her eyes were shining, and Packy averted his gaze. In the circumstances, he felt, the less he saw of shining eyes, the better. The Honour of the Franklyns was just equal to the task of keeping him from picking this girl up in his arms and kissing her, if he looked the other way. It was best not to put too great a strain upon it. That blue negligee alone had been sufficient to make it wobble.

'And it isn't all no use,' continued Jane, 'because everything's fine.'

This remarkable statement succeeded in overcoming Packy's resolve not to look at her. He looked, and his tortured spirit moaned within him. She was standing with her chin up and her eyes sparkling, and the blue negligee was bluer than ever. He looked away again.

'Because, I mean, when Father told me that, I had an idea. I thought, "Well, darn it, there was a burglary in the house only a couple of nights ago, so she can't think it funny if I'm nervous." So I went to Miss Putnam and told her I wanted to put my brooch and things in Mrs Gedge's safe because I was frightened of having them lying around loose. And she said certainly, of course, and she took me to Mrs Gedge's room and opened the safe and put the things in. And I watched her all the time, and what she did was she sort of twiddled a bit and there was a sound like something dropping, and then she twiddled some more and the door came open. I'm sure I can remember how it was done. So what I mean is, why shouldn't we go there now and have a try?'

Packy could not speak. The thought that a girl capable of thinking up a fast one like that should be madly throwing herself away on Blair Eggleston, a man who wore side whiskers and, if the truth were known, was probably a secret beret-wearer as well, was infinitely saddening.

And to secure the Senator's letter would be to remove all obstacles to their union.

He bit the bullet. The Queen could do no wrong. If she wished thus to throw herself away, so be it. And if Fate in its irony insisted that he must be the one to help her do so, the thing had to be faced.

He saw now the part he must play. He must stand by her to the end, and then join her hands to Blair Eggleston's and give them his blessing and wander out into the sunset with a stifled gulp of renunciation. And many years later a white-haired wanderer would peer through the hedge of an old-world garden and see children playing on the lawn with their mother – grey now, but still beautiful – and would wipe away a tear and pluck a rosebud from a bush and place it next his heart and go off and do a lot of good somewhere.

But he wished it had been someone except Blair Eggleston.

Jane misinterpreted his silence.

'Don't you think it's worth trying?'

Packy came to himself with a start.

'Of course, it's worth trying.'

'Then what are we waiting for?'

'We aren't waiting,' said Packy. 'Come on.'

Soup Slattery stood gazing at the dim figure, and it is interesting to record that his first emotion on beholding it was one of almost maudlin pity. Unable to distinguish anything for the moment beyond a shapeless outline, he had leaped to the conclusion that Packy, deprived of his professional aid, was trying as a forlorn hope to accomplish something in his blundering amateur way for himself And the pathos of the thing touched his kindly heart. He felt like a father brooding benevolently over his infant son.

Then the figure turned for an instant; the light of the torch disclosed the features of Gordon Carlisle: and Mr Slattery ceased to feel paternal.

Mention has already been made of the dislike Soup Slattery had for trade rivals. For partners and business associates who suddenly displayed themselves in that capacity his antipathy can scarcely be expressed in words. The discovery that Gordon Carlisle, whom he had trusted freely, was attempting to double-cross him was so unnerving that he had to sit down on the balcony wall to assimilate it.

For that this was Mr Carlisle's purpose Soup Slattery had no sort of doubt. Not once had the other given him so much as a hint that he, too, possessed the ability to open safes. Right from the start, therefore, he must have been planning this vile betrayal: and there and then Soup Slattery added another maxim to that little store of wisdom which he had been accumulating in the course of an active life. Never again, he told himself, would he trust Confidence Trick men. They weren't honest.

But this was not the time for moralizing. Action was demanded. He rose and approached the curtains once more, and without a sound drew them apart and stepped into the room. Only when he had tip-toed to within a few feet of Mr Carlisle's bent back did he speak.

His actual observation it is not necessary to record. It was Biblical in its general nature and delivered through clenched teeth. It is sufficient to say that it caused Gordon Carlisle to jump like a Mexican bean.

From the very beginning of this undertaking, Gordon Carlisle had been extremely nervous. This sort of thing was out of his line, and he did not like it. Only the thought of what his Gertie would say if he backed out had been able to steel him to the task. As he twisted the handle of the safe and listened for the falling of the tumblers, not even the knowledge that Gertie was outside in the passage, keeping watch, had been able to soothe his agitation. Subconsciously, he was expecting anything to happen at any moment.

But he had never expected anything like this. In all his mental list of the unpleasant things which might occur he had not included the possible appearance of Soup Slattery. It seemed to him, as he heard the other's voice, that it was only the fact of his teeth having snapped together with his tongue in between them that had prevented his heart leaping out of his mouth.

It was Mr Slattery who for the next few minutes monopolized the conversation. In a stream of well-selected words his opinion of his friend's duplicity rumbled hollowly through the room. The occasion was one when the orator would have preferred to express himself at the full capacity of his lungs, but the circumstances of the encounter precluded that.

Even when whispered, however, Mr Slattery's remarks were effective. After all, when you are calling a man a low-down, horn-swoggling, double-crossing skunk, it is the actual words that count, not the volume of sound.

Gordon Carlisle edged back against the wall. He was not a sensitive man, and mere verbal criticism had never hurt him yet. But what was weighing on his mind was the growing suspicion that all this was mere preamble. All too soon, he feared, the speaker would realize the futility of talk and proceed to action. And he was aware what the word 'action' signified in the simple lexicon of Soup Slattery.