I
Mrs. Waddington had once read a story in which a series of emotions including fear, horror, amazement, consternation and a sickly dismay were described as “chasing one another” across the face of a dastardly person at the moment of realisation that his villainy had been discovered past concealment: and it was with the expectation of watching a similar parade on the moon-like countenance of Ferris, the butler, that she pressed the bell outside the door of the apartment of Mr. Lancelot Biffen on the ninth floor.
She was disappointed. Ferris, as he appeared in the doorway in answer to her ring, lacked a little of his customary portentous dignity, but that was only because we authors, after a gruelling bout at the desk, are always apt to look a shade frazzled. The butler’s hair was disordered where he had plucked at it in the agony of composition, and there was more ink on the tip of his nose than would have been there on a more formal occasion: but otherwise he was in pretty good shape, and he did not even start on perceiving the identity of his visitor.
“Mr. Biffen is not at home, madam,” said Ferris equably.
“I do not wish to see Mr. Biffen.” Mrs. Waddington swelled with justifiable wrath. “Ferris,” she said, “I know all!”
“Indeed, madam?”
“You have no sick relative,” proceeded Mrs. Waddington, though her tone suggested the opinion that anyone related to him had good reason to be sick. “You are here because you are writing a scurrilous report of what happened this afternoon at my house for a gutter rag called Town Gossip.”
“With which is incorporated ‘Broadway Whispers’ and ‘Times Square Tattle,’ ” murmured the butler, absently.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
Ferris raised his eyebrows.
“I venture to take issue with you, madam. The profession of journalism is an honourable one. Many very estimable men have written for the Press. Horace Greeley,” said Ferris, specifying. “Delane. …”
“Bah!”
“Madam?”
“But we will go into that later.”
“Very good, madam.”
“Meanwhile, I wish you to accompany me to the roof. …”
“I fear I must respectfully decline, madam. I have not climbed since I was a small lad.”
“You can walk up a flight of stairs, can’t you?”
“Oh, stairs? Decidedly, madam. I will be at your disposal in a few moments.”
“I wish you to accompany me now.”
The butler shook his head.
“If I might excuse myself, madam. I am engaged on the concluding passages of the article to which you alluded just now, and I am anxious to complete it before Mr. Biffen’s return.”
Mrs. Waddington caused the eye before which Sigsbee H. had so often curled up and crackled like a burnt feather to blaze imperiously upon the butler. He met it with the easy aplomb of one who in his time has looked at dukes and made them feel that their trousers were bagging at the knees.
“Would you care to step inside and wait, madam?”
Mrs. Waddington was reluctantly obliged to realise that she was quelled. She had shot her bolt. A cyclone might shake this man, but not the human eye.
“I will not step inside.”
“Very good, madam. For what reason do you desire me to accompany you to the roof?”
“I want you to—to look at something.”
“If it is the view, madam, I should mention that I have already visited the top of the Woolworth Building.”
“It is not the view. I wish you to look at a man who is living in open sin.”
“Very good, madam.” There was no surprise in Ferris’s manner, only a courteous suggestion that he was always glad to look at men living in open sin. “I will be at your disposal in a few minutes.”
He closed the door gently, and Mrs. Waddington, full of the coward rage which dares to burn but does not dare to blaze, abandoned her intention of kicking in a panel and stood on the landing, heaving gently. And presently there was borne up to her from the lower levels a cheerful sound of whistling.
Lord Hunstanton came into view.
“Hullo-ullo-ullo!” said Lord Hunstanton exuberantly. “Here I am, here I am, here I am!”—meaning, of course, that there he was.
A striking change had taken place in the man’s appearance since Mrs. Waddington had last seen him. He now wore the carefree and debonair expression of one who has dined and dined well. The sparkle in his eye spoke of clear soup, the smile on his lips was eloquent of roast duck and green peas. To Mrs. Waddington, who had not broken bread since lunchtime, he seemed the most repellant object on which she had ever gazed.
“I trust you have had a good dinner,” she said icily.
His lordship’s sunny smile broadened, and a dreamy look came into his eyes.
“Absolutely!” he replied. “I started with a spruce spoonful of Julienne and passed on by way of a breezy half-lobster on the shell to about as upstanding a young Long Island duckling as I have ever bitten.”
“Be quiet!” said Mrs. Waddington, shaken to the core. The man’s conversation seemed to her utterly revolting.
“Finishing up with. …”
“Will you be quiet! I have no desire to hear the details of your repast.”
“Oh, sorry! I thought you had.”
“You have been away long enough to have eaten half-a-dozen dinners. However, as it happens, you are not too late. I have something to show you.”
“That’s good. Moral turpitude pretty strong on the wing, eh?”
“A few moments ago,” said Mrs. Waddington, leading the way to the roof, “I observed a young woman enter what appears to be some kind of outdoor sleeping-porch attached to George Finch’s apartment, and immediately afterwards I heard her voice in conversation with George Finch within.”
“Turpy,” said his lordship, shaking his head reprovingly. “Very turpy.”
“I came down to fetch Ferris, my butler, as a witness, but fortunately you have returned in time. Though why you were not back half an hour ago I cannot understand.”
“But I was telling you. I dallied with a mouthful of Julienne. …”
“Be quiet!”
Lord Hunstanton followed her, puzzled. He could not understand what seemed to him a morbid distaste on his companion’s part to touch on the topic of food. They came out on the roof, and Mrs. Waddington, raising a silent and beckoning finger, moved on tiptoe towards the sleeping-porch.
“Now what?” inquired his lordship, as they paused before the door.
Mrs. Waddington rapped upon the panel.
“George Finch!”
Complete silence followed the words.
“George Finch!”
“George Finch!” echoed his lordship, conscious of his responsibilities as a chorus.
“Finch!” said Mrs. Waddington.
“George!” cried Lord Hunstanton.
Mrs. Waddington flung open the door. All was darkness within. She switched on the light. The room was empty.
“Well!” said Mrs. Waddington.
“Perhaps they’re under the bed.”
“Go and look.”
“But suppose he bites at me.”
Nothing is truer than that the secret of all successful operations consists in the overlooking of no eventuality, but it was plain that Mrs. Waddington considered that in this instance her ally was carrying caution too far. She turned on him with a snort of annoyance: and, having turned, remained staring frozenly at something that had suddenly manifested itself in his lordship’s rear.
This something was a long, stringy policeman: and, though Mrs. Waddington had met this policeman only once in her life, the circumstances of that meeting had been such that the memory of him had lingered. She recognised him immediately: and, strong woman though she was, wilted like a snail that has just received a handful of salt between the eyes.
“What’s up?” inquired Lord Hunstanton. He, too, turned. “Oh, what ho! the constabulary!”
Officer Garroway was gazing at Mrs. Waddington with an eye from which one of New York’s Bohemian evenings had wiped every trace of its customary mildness. So intense, indeed, was the malevolence of its gleam that, if there had been two such eyes boring into hers, it is probable that Mrs. Waddington would have swooned. Fortunately, the other was covered with a piece of raw steak and a bandage, and so was out of action.
“Ah!” said Officer Garroway.
There is little in the word “Ah!” when you write it down and take a look at it to suggest that under certain conditions it can be one of the most sinister words in the language. But hear it spoken by a policeman in whose face you have recently thrown pepper, and you will be surprised. To Mrs. Waddington, as she shrank back into the sleeping-porch, it seemed a sort of combination of an Indian war-whoop, the Last Trump, and the howl of a pursuing wolf-pack. Her knees weakened beneath her, and she collapsed on the bed.
“Copped you, have I?” proceeded the policeman.
The question was plainly a rhetorical one, for he did not pause for a reply. He adjusted the bandage that held the steak, and continued his remarks.
“You’re pinched!”
It seemed to Lord Hunstanton that all this was very odd and irregular.
“I say, look here, you know, what I mean to say is. …”
“So are you,” said Officer Garroway. “You seem to be in it, too. You’re both pinched. And start any funny business,” concluded the constable, swinging his nightstick in a ham-like fist, “and I’ll bend this over your nut. Get me?”
There followed one of those pauses which so often punctuate the conversation of comparative strangers. Officer Garroway seemed to have said his say. Mrs. Waddington had no observations to make. And, though Lord Hunstanton would have liked to put a question or two, the spectacle of that oscillating nightstick had the effect of driving the words out of his head. It was the sort of nightstick that gave one a throbbing feeling about the temples merely to look at it. He swallowed feebly, but made no remark.
And then from somewhere below there sounded the voice of one who cried “Beamish! Hey, Beamish!” It was the voice of Sigsbee H. Waddington.