The Golf Omnibus (54 page)

“So,” said William, and the words seemed forced like drops of vitriol from between his clenched teeth, “I find you here, dash it!”

Jane choked convulsively. Years ago, when an innocent child, she had seen a conjuror produce a rabbit out of a top-hat which an instant before had been conclusively proved to be empty. The sudden apparition of William affected her with much the same sensations as she had experienced then.

“How-ow-ow⎯?” she said.

“I beg your pardon?” said William, coldly.

“How-ow-ow⎯?”

“Explain yourself,” said William.

“How-ow-ow did you get here? And who-oo-oo are these men?”

William seemed to become aware for the first time of the presence of his two companions. He moved a hand in a hasty gesture of introduction.

“Mr. Reginald Brown and Mr. Cyril Delancey—my wife,” he said, curtly.

The two men bowed slightly and raised their bowler hats.

“Pleased to meet you,” said one.

“Most awfully charmed,” said the other.

“They are detectives,” said William.

“Detectives!”

“From the Quick Results Agency,” said William. “When I became aware of your clandestine intrigue, I went to the agency and they gave me their two best men.”

“Oh, well,” said Mr. Brown, blushing a little.

“Most frightfully decent of you to put it that way,” said Mr. Delancey.

William regarded Jane sternly.

“I knew you were going to be here at four o'clock,” he said. “I overheard you making the assignation on the telephone.”

“Oh, William!”

“Woman,” said William, “where is your paramour?”

“Really, really,” said Mr. Delancey, deprecatingly.

“Keep it clean,” urged Mr. Brown.

“Your partner in sin, where is he? I am going to take him and tear him into little bits and stuff him down his throat and make him swallow himself.”

“Fair enough,” said Mr. Brown.

“Perfectly in order,” said Mr. Delancey.

Jane uttered a stricken cry.

“William,” she screamed, “I can explain all.”

“All?” said Mr. Delancey.

“All?” said Mr. Brown.

“All,” said Jane.

“All?” said William.

“All,” said Jane.

William sneered bitterly.

“I'll bet you can't,” he said.

“I'll bet I can,” said Jane.

“Well?”

“I came here to save Anastatia.”

“Anastatia?”

“Anastatia.”

“My sister?”

“Your sister.”

“His sister Anastatia,” explained Mr. Brown to Mr. Delancey in an undertone.

“What from?” asked William.

“From Rodney Spelvin. Oh, William, can't you understand?”

“No, I'm dashed if I can.”

“I, too,” said Mr. Delancey, “must confess myself a little fogged. And you, Reggie?”

“Completely, Cyril,” said Mr. Brown, removing his bowler hat with a puzzled frown, examining the maker's name, and putting it on again.

“The poor child is infatuated with this man.”

“With the bloke Spelvin?”

“Yes. She is coming here with him at four o'clock.”

“Important,” said Mr. Brown, producing a notebook and making an entry.

“Important, if true,” agreed Mr. Delancey.

“But I heard you making the appointment with the bloke Spelvin over the phone,” said William.

“He thought I was Anastatia. And I came here to save her.”

William was silent and thoughtful for a few moments.

“It all sounds very nice and plausible,” he said, “but there's just one thing wrong. I'm not a very clever sort of bird, but I can see where your story slips up. If what you say is true, where is Anastatia?”

“Just coming in now,” whispered Jane. “Hist!”

“Hist, Reggie!” whispered Mr. Delancey.

They listened. Yes, the front door had banged, and feet were ascending the staircase.

“Hide!” said Jane, urgently.

“Why?” said William.

“So that you can overhear what they say and jump out and confront them.”

“Sound,” said Mr. Delancey.

“Very sound,” said Mr. Brown.

The two detectives concealed themselves in the alcove. William retired behind the curtains in front of the window. Jane dived behind the Chesterfield. A moment later the door opened.

Crouching in her corner, Jane could see nothing, but every word that was spoken came to her ears; and with every syllable her horror deepened.

“Give me your things,” she heard Rodney say, “and then we will go upstairs.”

Jane shivered. The curtains by the window shook. From the direction of the alcove there came a soft scratching sound, as the two detectives made an entry in their notebooks.

For a moment after this there was silence. Then Anastatia uttered a sharp, protesting cry.

“Ah, no, no! Please, please!”

“But why not?” came Rodney's voice.

“It is wrong—wrong.”

“I can't see why.”

“It is, it is! You must not do that. Oh, please, please don't hold so tight.”

There was a swishing sound, and through the curtains before the window a large form burst. Jane raised her head above the Chesterfield.

William was standing there, a menacing figure. The two detectives had left the alcove and were moistening their pencils. And in the middle of the room stood Rodney Spelvin, stooping slightly and grasping Anastatia's parasol in his hands.

“I don't get it,” he said. “Why is it wrong to hold the dam' thing tight?” He looked up and perceived his visitors. “Ah, Bates,” he said, absently. He turned to Anastatia again. “I should have thought that the tighter you held it, the more force you would get into the shot.”

“But don't you see, you poor zimp,” replied Anastatia, “that you've got to keep the ball straight. If you grip the shaft as if you were a drowning man clutching at a straw and keep your fingers under like that, you'll pull like the dickens and probably land out of bounds or in the rough. What's the good of getting force into the shot if the ball goes in the wrong direction, you cloth-headed goof?”

“I see now,” said Rodney, humbly. “How right you always are!”

“Look here,” interrupted William, folding his arms. “What is the meaning of this?”

“You want to grip firmly but lightly,” said Anastatia.

“Firmly but lightly,” echoed Rodney.

“What is the meaning of this?”

“And with the fingers. Not with the palms.”

“What is the meaning of this?” thundered William. “Anastatia, what are you doing in this man's rooms?”

“Giving him a golf lesson, of course. And I wish you wouldn't interrupt.”

“Yes, yes,” said Rodney, a little testily. “Don't interrupt, Bates, there's a good fellow. Surely you have things to occupy you elsewhere?”

“We'll go upstairs,” said Anastatia, “where we can be alone.”

“You will not go upstairs,” barked William.

“We shall get on much better there,” explained Anastatia. “Rodney has fitted up
the top-floor back as an indoor practising room.”

Jane darted forward with a maternal cry.

“My poor child, has the scoundrel dared to delude you by pretending to be a golfer? Darling, he is nothing of the kind.”

Mr. Reginald Brown coughed. For some moments he had been twitching restlessly.

“Talking of golf,” he said, “it might interest you to hear of a little experience I had the other day at Marshy Moor. I had got a nice drive off the tee, nothing record-breaking, you understand, but straight and sweet. And what was my astonishment on walking up to play my second to find⎯”

“A rather similar thing happened to me at Windy Waste last Tuesday,” interrupted Mr. Delancey. “I had hooked my drive the merest trifle, and my caddie said to me, ‘You're out of bounds.' ‘I am not out of bounds,' I replied, perhaps a little tersely, for the lad had annoyed me by a persistent habit of sniffing. ‘Yes, you are out of bounds,' he said. ‘No, I am not out of bounds,' I retorted. Well, believe me or believe me not, when I got up to my ball⎯”

“Shut up!” said William.

“Just as you say, sir,” replied Mr. Delancey, courteously.

Rodney Spelvin drew himself up, and in spite of her loathing for his villainy Jane could not help feeling what a noble and romantic figure he made. His face was pale, but his voice did not falter.

“You are right,” he said. “I am not a golfer. But with the help of this splendid girl here, I hope humbly to be one some day. Ah, I know what you are going to say,” he went on, raising a hand. “You are about to ask how a man who has wasted his life as I have done can dare to entertain the mad dream of ever acquiring a decent handicap. But never forget,” proceeded Rodney, in a low, quivering voice, “that Walter J. Travis was nearly forty before he touched a club, and a few years later he won the British Amateur.”

“True,” murmured William.

“True, true,” said Mr. Delancey and Mr. Brown. They lifted their bowler hats reverently.

“I am thirty-three years old,” continued Rodney, “and for fourteen of these thirty-three years I have been writing poetry—aye, and novels with a poignant sex-appeal, and if ever I gave a thought to this divine game it was but to sneer at it. But last summer I saw the light.”

“Glory! Glory!” cried Mr. Brown.

“One afternoon I was persuaded to try a drive. I took the club with a mocking, contemptuous laugh.” He paused, and a wild light came into his eyes. “I brought off a perfect pip,” he said, emotionally. “Two hundred yards and as straight as a whistle. And, as I stood there gazing after the ball, something seemed to run up my spine and bite me in the neck. It was the golf-germ.”

“Always the way,” said Mr. Brown. “I remember the first drive I ever made. I
took a nice easy stance⎯”

“The first drive I made,” said Mr. Delancey, “you won't believe this, but it's a fact, was a full⎯”

“From that moment,” continued Rodney Spelvin, “I have had but one ambition—to somehow or other, cost what it might, get down into single figures.” He laughed bitterly. “You see,” he said, “I cannot even speak of this thing without splitting my infinitives. And even as I split my infinitives, so did I split my drivers. After that first heavenly slosh I didn't seem able to do anything right.”

He broke off, his face working. William cleared his throat awkwardly.

“Yes, but dash it,” he said, “all this doesn't explain why I find you alone with my sister in what I might call your lair.”

“The explanation is simple,” said Rodney Spelvin. “This sweet girl is the only person in the world who seems able to simply and intelligently and in a few easily understood words make clear the knack of the thing. There is none like her, none. I have been to pro. after pro. but not one has been any good to me. I am a temperamental man, and there is a lack of sympathy and human understanding about these professionals which jars on my artist soul. They look at you as if you were a half-witted child. They click their tongues. They make odd Scotch noises. I could not endure the strain. And then this wonderful girl, to whom in a burst of emotion I had confided my unhappy case, offered to give me private lessons. So I went with her to some of those indoor practising places. But here, too, my sensibilities were racked by the fact that unsympathetic eyes observed me. So I fixed up a room here where we could be alone.”

“And instead of going there,” said Anastatia, “we are wasting half the afternoon talking.”

William brooded for a while. He was not a quick thinker.

“Well, look here,” he said at length, “this is the point. This is the nub of the thing. This is where I want you to follow me very closely. Have you asked Anastatia to marry you?”

“Marry me?” Rodney gazed at him, shocked. “Have I asked her to marry me? I, who am not worthy to polish the blade of her niblick! I, who have not even a thirty handicap, ask a girl to marry me who was in the semi-final of last year's Ladies' Open! No, no, Bates, I may be a
vers-libre
poet, but I have some sense of what is fitting. I love her, yes. I love her with a fervour which causes me to frequently and for hours at a time lie tossing sleeplessly upon my pillow. But I would not dare to ask her to marry me.”

Anastatia burst into a peal of girlish laughter.

“You poor chump!” she cried. “Is that what has been the matter all this time? I couldn't make out what the trouble was. Why, I'm crazy about you. I'll marry you any time you give the word.”

Rodney reeled.

“What!”

“Of course I will.”

“Anastatia!”

“Rodney!”

He folded her in his arms.

“Well, I'm dashed,” said William. “It looks to me as if I had been making rather a lot of silly fuss about nothing. Jane, I wronged you.”

“It was my fault.”

“No, no!”

“Yes, yes!”

“Jane!”

“William!”

He folded her in his arms. The two detectives, having entered the circumstances in their notebooks, looked at one another with moist eyes.

“Cyril!” said Mr. Brown.

“Reggie!” said Mr. Delancey.

Their hands met in a brotherly clasp.

“And so,” concluded the Oldest Member, “all ended happily. The storm-tossed lives of William Bates, Jane Packard, and Rodney Spelvin came safely at long last into harbour. At the subsequent wedding William and Jane's present of a complete golfing outfit, including eight dozen new balls, a cloth cap, and a pair of spiked shoes, was generally admired by all who inspected the gifts during the reception.

“From that time forward the four of them have been inseparable. Rodney and Anastatia took a cottage close to that of William and Jane, and rarely does a day pass without a close foursome between the two couples. William and Jane being steady tens and Anastatia scratch and Rodney a persevering eighteen, it makes an ideal match.”