Hot Water (10 page)

Packy did not reply. He had come into the room and was now closing the door with every circumstance of wariness and caution. It was as if he had been the janitor at an emergency meeting of the Black Hand to whom had been assigned the task of making sure that the coast was clear.

The Vicomte watched him with growing distaste.

'What do you doing?' he asked.

"St!' said Packy.

The Vicomte sat down on the bed and put his head between his hands. He was in no mood for this sort of thing.

Looking up a moment later, he found that Packy was regarding him with a kind of anxious concern.

'Veek!'

'Mo?'

'Brace yourself up, old man.'

'Why?'

'Because I've some rather bad news for you.'

A shooting pain passed through the Vicomte's head. All this was making him exercise his brain, and it was imperative that for some little time to come he should think as sparingly as possible.

'Bad news.'

'About poor Gedge.'

'Gedge? What about Gedge?'

'It seems very doubtful if he will recover.'

The Vicomte blinked.

'He has obtained an accident, then?'

'Veek,' said Packy reproachfully, I'm your friend. What on earth is the sense of bluffing with me? I'm not the police.'

'Police?'

Packy went to the door and opened it quickly. Apparently reassured, he returned to the bed and put a brotherly hand on his companion's shoulder.

There's only one thing to be done,' he said. 'You must lie low here till the hue and cry has died down.'

'But I do not understand.'

Packy's eyebrows rose.

'You're kidding.'

'I have not understood at all what you are saying.'

'But you surely can't have forgotten having the fight with Gedge?'

'What about it?'

'What
about
it? Well, you practically killed the man.'

The Vicomte had leaped from the bed, and was staring wide-eyed.

'But, my Packy, it was nothing but a tiny little turn-up on the floor such as almost always occurs. You cannot mean this what you say that I injured seriously this Gedge? Why, we sat together and had some drinks after and he was as well as a violin.'

'You are speaking now of the first fight?'

'Do not tell me we had another?'

Packy patted his shoulder and turned away.

'What happened?' demanded the Vicomte pallidly.

'Don't ask me.'

'But when...?'

'No, don't ask. If you've forgotten, it is much better that you shouldn't know. Otherwise, you might worry.'

'Worry!'

'There is just a chance that you will be all right if you lie low. It was darned good luck that you happened to be wearing that lizard costume. The beak hid your face. I don't suppose really that anybody would be able actually to identify you. But it's no good taking chances. You mustn't stir from this room for several days. You understand that, of course?'

'But, my Packy, I am engaged to arrive at the Château!'

He gazed at Packy in deep agitation. It was plain to him from the expression on his face that his friend had forgotten this.

'That's true,' said Packy thoughtfully. 'Yes, of course.'

'I do not arrive, suppose, and what occurs? These Gedges telegraph to my mamma....'

'Mr Gedge, I'm afraid, will hardly be in a condition to telegraph to anyone for a long while. If ever. He's written his last telegram, poor chap, I very much fear.'

Packy remained plunged in thought.

'Veek,' he said suddenly, 'there's only one way out. Obviously you can't go to the Château. A nice thing that would be – you arriving and being shown to your room and stopping suddenly on the stairs and saying to the butler: "What was that curious sound I just heard? Is somebody playing the castanets?" and him replying: "That was Mr Gedge's death-rattle, sir, thank you, sir." It wouldn't do. You can see that for yourself. No, the only thing to be done is for me to go in your place. I wouldn't do it for everybody, but you're a pal and I'd like to help you in this jam.
I
will go to the Château.'

'But...'

'Mrs Gedge has never seen you. Mr Gedge has seen you, but is in no condition to meet company. I could get away with it nicely.'

A moment's reflection, and the Vicomte was convinced. It hurt his head to do so, but he burst into a torrent of broken thanks. Packy waved his gratitude aside.

'There isn't much I wouldn't do to help a pal like you, Veek,' he said with emotion. 'Now, you go to bed and have a nice long sleep, and in the morning you tell them that you've got a slight chill and will require your meals sent up till further notice.'

'Yes, Packy.'

'Don't stir from this room on any account.'

'No, Packy.'

'And you'd better give me that beastly costume of yours. The cops are probably scouring the town for its owner at this very moment. I'll take it back to my boat and drop it overboard. And I hope,' said Packy, a little priggishly, perhaps, but the subject was one on which he felt deeply, 'that this will be a lesson to you not to go to fancy-dress balls as a lizard. If fewer people went about the place pretending to be lizards,' said Packy, 'this would be a better and a sweeter world.'

Mr Gedge, as he lay on the sofa in the drawing-room of the Château Blissac at two o'clock on the following afternoon, was not at the peak of his form. He was conscious of a dark sepia taste in his mouth and a general disinclination for any kind of thought or action. Outside, the birds were singing merrily, and he wished they wouldn't.

His recollections of the previous night were hazy in the extreme. He could remember broadly passing through an experience such as he had not had since the Shriners met in Los Angeles, but as regards the details he was shaky. His only outstanding recollection was of having had a fight with someone.

And then suddenly the picture grew clearer, and he sat up with an anguished start. He had just remembered that his adversary in that combat had been a young man brightly dressed as a lizard, and as the only celebrant at the festivities so costumed had been the Vicomte de Blissac, the battler consequently must have been he. Mr Gedge was not at his most nimble-witted this afternoon, but he could reason out a simple thing like that.

He was appalled. The Vicomte was due to arrive at the Château to-day for an indeterminate visit, and the problem of what is the correct attitude for a host to adopt towards a guest of honour whom on the previous night he has earnestly endeavoured to throttle was more than he could solve.

He was still wrestling with it when the door opened and the butler's voice, announcing the Vicomte de Blissac, brought him to his feet as if the sofa had exploded under him.

A moment later, in walked Packy with outstretched hand.

'Good afternoon, good afternoon, good afternoon!' said Packy. 'What a day, what a day! The lark's on the wing; the snail's on the thorn; God's in his heaven; all's right with the world; and how are
you,
Mr Gedge?'

Mr Gedge regarded him with a cold, shuddering hostility. To a man who disliked snails and was not any too sold on larks, such jovial effusiveness at such a moment, even if exhibited by a personal friend, must inevitably have proved distasteful. And Packy was not a personal friend. Mr Gedge could not remember exactly why, but he knew that he objected to him strongly.

And, in addition to reciting poetry at him at a time when even the lightest prose would scarcely have been endurable, this offensive young fellow was frivolously claiming to be the Vicomte de Blissac. Foggy though Mr Gedge might be about some of the minutiae of the proceedings of the previous night, he did know who had been the Vicomte de Blissac and who hadn't. He decided to take a very short way with this sort of thing.

'What the devil are you doing here?'

'I've come to stay.'

Mr Gedge gave him one look and moved to the bell.

'I wouldn't,' said Packy.

'What do you mean?'

'I just wouldn't.'

'I'm going to ring for my butler and have you thrown out.'

'I wouldn't.'

'You muscle in here, pretending to be the Vicomte de Blissac....'

'I have a very good reason for pretending to be the late Vicomte de Blissac. Ah, Gedge, Gedge,' said Packy, 'you don't know your own strength.'

Mr Gedge stared.

'What on earth are you talking about?'

'Surely you have not forgotten the fight you had with the Vicomte?'

Mr Gedge seemed to be trying to swallow his Adam's apple. He did not succeed, for it was still plainly to be seen bobbing up and down.

'But I never touched the fellow.'

'That is not the view the police take. They have put out a drag-net and are combing the countryside for a small but burly assassin last seen wearing a sort of Oriental costume with a scarf-turban round his head.'

Mr Gedge quivered.

'I mean, I hardly laid a hand on him.'

'You are speaking now of the first encounter – what I might call the preliminary skirmish?'

'First?'

'Then you have forgotten the second one?'

'Holy mackerel!' said Mr Gedge.

He searched desperately in the recesses of a maddeningly defective memory for even the smallest detail of the affair. He found nothing.

'You don't mean we had another battle?'

'And how!'

'And you say this bird is in bad shape?'

'You could hardly say he was in any shape. And I thought the only thing to do was to come here in his place. Of course, looking at it in a narrow, technical way, I am not the Vicomte de Blissac. But I think you will be making a great mistake if you don't accept me as such. If Mrs Gedge returns and finds no Vicomte at the Château, don't you think she will start making enquiries?'

Mr Gedge had sunk into a chair and was kneading his forehead. To believe or not to believe?

One portion of his mind was telling him that it was simply absurd to suppose that a man could have a desperate fight round about supper time and not remember anything about it on the following afternoon. And then, stealing back, there came the unnerving thought that Packy might be speaking the truth. In which case, to expel him from the Château would be disaster.

And thus the native hue of resolution – Mr Gedge's resolution – was sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought (Mr Gedge's), and enterprises of great pith and moment – such as ringing the bell and telling the butler to show Packy the door – with this regard their currents turned awry and lost the name of action. Few men in alpaca coats and striped flannel trousers had ever so closely resembled Hamlet as did Mr Gedge at this moment.

'Well, it beats me,' he groaned. 'I don't see how I could have forgotten. Why, the time the Shriners met at Los Angeles I remembered everything the next day. I distinctly recalled having socked a fellow of the name of Weinstein. Red-haired man in the Real Estate business. He made a crack about the Californian climate. It all came back to me.'

'I hadn't the pleasure of being with you when the Shriners met at Los Angeles, but I don't think you can have been quite so boiled then as you were last night. I don't know when I've seen a man so boiled. I dare say you've forgotten socking me?'

Mr Gedge's eyes bulged.

'Did I?'

'You certainly did. Just one dirty look and then –
zingo!'

Mr Gedge was convinced at last. If he could have forgotten committing assault and battery on a man of Packy's physique, he could have forgotten, he argued, anything.

'So where do we go from here?' asked Packy. 'All I am trying to do is to save you unpleasantness. If you wish me to leave, of course I'll leave at once. But in that case how about Mrs Gedge? Won't she write to the Vicomtesse asking what has become of her son? Of course she will. The whole story will then come out, and I don't see how the police can fail to track you down. And after that... Well, you can say what you like about the guillotine – the only known cure for dandruff and so on – but nobody's going to persuade me that you will enjoy it. So how about it? Do I stay or go?'

Mr Gedge shot from his chair. He clutched feverishly at Packy's coat.

'Don't you dream of going!'

'On reflection, you wish me to remain?'

'You're dern tooting I wish you to remain!'

'I think you're wise.'

Mr Gedge mopped his forehead. He looked at Packy adoringly. It amazed him to think that there could ever have been a time when he had not liked – nay, worshipped – this sterling young man.

'I don't know how to thank you, honestly I don't.'

'Quite all right. A pleasure.'

'It's white of you. That's what it is. White.'

'No, no, really. The merest trifle.'

A belated memory of the night before returned to Mr Gedge.

'Say, listen,' he said. 'I seem to recall saying something at that Festival about Yale couldn't play football.'

'Oh, never mind that.'

'But I do mind that,' said Mr Gedge earnestly. 'I admire Yale football. I think it's swell.' He hesitated a moment, then, as if feeling that the supreme sacrifice must be made, went on. Ask me, I should say Yale was better than University of Southern California by around three touch-downs.'

'Not three?'

'Yessir. Three.'

'One at the most.'

'Well, call it two,' said Mr Gedge, making a concession.

I
N
every chronicle of the rather intricate nature of the one which is here being related, there occurs a point where the conscientious historian finds it expedient to hold a sort of parade or inspection of the various actors in the drama which he is unfolding. It serves to keep the records straight, and is a convenience to a public to whom he wants to do the square thing – affording as it does a bird's-eye view of the position of affairs to those of his readers who, through no fault of their own, are not birds.

Here, then, is where everybody was at the moment of Packy Franklyn's
arrival at the Château Blissac. And this is what, being there, they were
doing.

Mrs Gedge was in the office of her lawyer in London. His operations on her behalf in the matter of evasion of English Income Tax had dissatisfied her, and she was talking pretty straight to him.

Lady Beatrice Bracken was in the garden of her father's seat, Worbles, in Dorsetshire. She was reading for the third time Packy's letter announcing his departure for St Rocque. Well knowing that resort to be a hot-bed of gambling and full of the most undesirable characters, notably the Vicomte de Blissac, she thoroughly disapproved of his choice of destination. As she read, she frowned. As she frowned, she tapped her foot. And as she tapped she said 'H'm!' And she meant it, too. At lunch that day her aunt Gwendolyn had once more expressed the opinion that Packy was a flippertygibbet, and Beatrice found herself in complete agreement with the old fossil.

Mr Gordon Carlisle, looking more gentlemanly than ever in a new hat, new shoes, a new suit, and a gardenia, was standing on the deck of the steam-packet
Antelope,
watching the red roofs of St Rocque grow more and more distinct as the vessel approached them in the afternoon sunlight. The new suit-case which lay beside him bore a label on which a keen-sighted bystander might have read the legend 'M. le Duc de Pont-Andemer'.

Soup Slattery was at the Casino. His overnight experiences had made his head a little heavy first thing in the morning, but a pick-me-up of his own invention had soon put that right and he was now feeling fine. He was punting cautiously at one of the
chemin-de-fer
tables and, if the matter is of any interest, was slightly ahead of the game.

The Vicomte de Blissac was not in quite such good shape. As he lay in bed in his room at the Hotel des Etrangers, staring at the ceiling and starting convulsively whenever a footstep approached his door, he was suffering a good deal of discomfort through the activities of some unseen person who would persist in running white-hot skewers through his eyeballs. This, taken in conjunction with the fact that at any moment he was expecting the door to burst open and the Arm of the Law to reach in and haul him off to prison on a capital charge, was having rather a depressing effect on the unfortunate young man.

Mr Gedge had returned to the drawing-room sofa. He was groaning a little.

Senator Opal was taking a brisk walk in the grounds.

Blair Eggleston was in the servants' quarters of the Château, broodingly brushing the spacious seat of the Senator's dress trousers. He was not happy. But then Senator Opal's valets never were. The first thing a valet in the employment of the Senator had to learn was that life is stern and earnest and that we are not sent into this world merely to enjoy ourselves.

Miss Putnam, Mrs Gedge's social secretary, was in the library doing a crossword puzzle, a form of mental exercise to which she was much addicted.

The cook was asleep.

The butler was writing to his mother.

Medway, Mrs Gedge's maid, was busy about her duties. When these were concluded, she proposed to go and relax down by the lake with the mystery novel which she had begun reading on the previous evening.

Packy was looking for Jane.

And Jane was standing on the rustic path which wound its way
along the hillside on which the Château was situated, gazing thoughtfully
down at the harbour.

It was not, as has already been hinted, a big day for larks and snails. The fact that the former were on the wing and the latter on the thorn had brought little comfort to Mr Gedge. Equally small was the solace it conveyed to Jane Opal. As she stood scanning the view beneath her, her heart was troubled. To-day, for the first time since sudden love had thrown them into each other's arms, she had found herself beginning to wonder if her Blair was quite the godlike superman she had supposed. There even flashed through her mind a sinister speculation as to whether, when you came right down to it, he wasn't something of a pill.

The thought did no more than pop out of her subconsciousness and back again in an instant, but it had been there and it left her vaguely uneasy. Its lightning entrance and exit had tarnished the sunshine and taken at least forty per cent off the entertainment value of the blue sky and the carolling birds.

In these last few days, Blair Eggleston had undoubtedly not been showing himself at his best. Constant association with Senator Opal had induced in him a rather unattractive peevishness. Querulousness and self-pity had marked him for their own. At their stolen meetings, when Jane would have preferred to talk of love, he showed a disposition to turn the conversation to the subject of his personal misfortunes and keep it there. And it is trying for a sensitive and romantic girl, when she comes flitting through the laurels in the quiet evenfall to join her lover, to find that all he proposes to discuss is her father's habit of throwing oatmeal at him in the bedroom.

All this, however, Jane could have forgiven, had he but come through with a red-hot scheme for retrieving the fateful letter from Mrs Gedge. But if it is true that the Hour produces the Man, it is also true that it remorselessly reveals the wash-out. As a schemer, Blair Eggleston had proved entirely negligible. He had no constructive policy of any kind to put forward. He might just as well not have been there.

Reluctantly, Jane came to the conclusion that what she needed in a predicament like this was somebody more on the lines of Packy Franklyn. There, she felt, was a man of action, a man who could be relied on at least to try to start something instead of just loafing about and wasting his time complaining because somebody had thrown a little oatmeal at him. She thought wistfully of Packy. With a sudden whole-hearted intensity she wished that he were here now, and, looking up, saw that he was. He was at that very moment coming down the path towards her. Quick service, decided Jane, and jumped perhaps two inches and a quarter in her astonishment at this miracle. She felt a little as Aladdin might have done if he had rubbed his lamp by accident.

'You!'

She had said the same word to him on a previous occasion. Then it had had something of the effect of a Mills bomb. Now it brought to his face a gratified smile. A connoisseur of 'You's!' Packy had recognized this one for what it was, a welcoming, even an ecstatically welcoming 'You!', the sort of 'You!' it did a fellow good to hear.

'What... Why...What...'

Packy was pressing her little hand. A purist might have said that for an engaged man he was pressing it perhaps just the slightest shade too fondly.

'It's quite all right.'

In a few simple words he explained the situation. He related the interview with the Vicomte de Blissac, the more recent interview with Mr Gedge. Forestalling any possible question as to how, now that he was in the Château, he proposed to open a locked safe, he spoke of Mr Slattery and Mr Slattery's gratitude, showing that he had a skilled assistant who would do all that sort of thing for him. All that had to be done, he pointed out, was to wait till Mrs Gedge returned and then leave a handy window open, and Mr Slattery would do the rest.

'So there you are,' said Packy.

Jane Opal breathed deeply. If she had not been an exceptionally pretty girl, one might have said that she snorted. There was a light in her eyes which Packy had not seen there before. It was a light he liked, and once more he was aware of a feeling of regret that a girl like this was throwing herself away on a man so obviously one of Nature's prunes as Blair Eggleston.

'But how splendid of you!'

'Oh, no, really.'

There was no necessity for him to have taken her hand again and pressed it, but he did so.

'But why should you be doing this for me?'

She had touched on a point which from time to time had a little perplexed Packy himself It was, of course, absurd to suppose that any slight physical attraction which this girl might possess could have had any influence on a man who was engaged to Lady Beatrice Bracken. He was compelled to put it down to some innately noble quality in his character. You came across fellows like that occasionally – fine, big-hearted, selfless altruists, men who with no motive of personal gain simply raced about the place doing good to all and sundry. He supposed he was one of them.

Too modest to advance this theory, he waved a deprecating hand.

'Well, it struck me that you might be needing a little help. I rather gathered from what you said over the telephone that evening that you weren't expecting very solid results from Eggleston.'

Jane sighed.

'Blair's been no good at all.'

'I feared as much.'

'He can't seem to take his mind off that oatmeal.'

'What oatmeal?'

'Well, it was like this. It happened the first morning we were here. Father wanted his breakfast in bed, so Blair brought him his breakfast in bed, and naturally the cook, knowing Father was American, took it for granted he would want oatmeal, so she fixed oatmeal. And then it turned out that oatmeal was a thing Father doesn't like.'

'Many people don't.'

'Yes, but he didn't just say so. That wouldn't be Father. No! He waited till Blair had put the tray down by his bed, and then he lifted the cover off the dish and said, "What is this? Oatmeal?" and Blair said, "Yes, oatmeal," and Father said in quite a mild, gentle sort of way, "Ah! Oatmeal?" and Blair started to leave the room and suddenly something hot and squashy hit him on the back of the head, and there was Father sitting up in bed, digging the spoon in the oatmeal; and Blair was just wondering what it was all about, because the back of his head was all covered with oatmeal, when Father dug the spoon out again and it was full of oatmeal, and Father held it at the bottom with his left hand and at the top with two fingers, and then he let fly rather like one of those old catapults you read about in stories where ancient towns are besieged, and Blair got it all – in the face this time.'

A slight shudder shook Packy's wiry frame. He was recalling that incident of the hair-cutting and realizing the risks which he, a gay, heedless boy, had so recklessly taken with this oatmeal-jerking Senator. He shivered to think what Ambrose Opal could have done on that occasion had he had a blanc-mange or a couple of bowls of soup handy.

'So there was Blair with oatmeal on the back of his head and oatmeal all over his face, practically a mass of oatmeal, you might say, and then Father smiled a quiet, affectionate kind of smile and said, "I don't like oatmeal." And the whole thing has rather preyed on Blair's mind. He's a little cross about it, I'm afraid. He says I ought to have warned him what he was letting himself in for when he became Father's valet.'

'I don't see how you could have known.'

'Well, Father did tell me his valets never stayed with him more than a week or so, but he said he thought it must be due to this Bolshevist spirit that you see springing up on all sides. It's a great pity, of course, because it has made Blair a little peevish, and I don't think he's very happy.'

'I can quite see how he might not be. Personally, I'd sooner be somebody living in Chicago that Al Capone didn't much like than your father's valet.'

He would have gone on to develop this theme, but at this moment there was a puffing noise and round the corner came Senator Opal in person.

On seeing Packy, the Senator halted abruptly. A look of concern came into his face. He had been much worried of late, and worry, he knew, breeds hallucinations. Then he saw that this phantasm was holding his daughter's hand and that she appeared to be aware of his presence, and he felt a little reassured. And when the girl turned to him and said, 'Oh, hullo, Father. Here's Mr Franklyn!' his last doubts disappeared and what had been the chill of apprehension turned into righteous wrath.

'Only' proceeded Jane, as his colour began gradually to deepen and memories of old hair-cuts lit the flame in the eyes which he was fixing on Packy, 'you must remember to call him the Vicomte de Blissac.'

Nothing, as Shakespeare appreciated, is more tedious than a twice-told tale, but in Jane's demeanour as Packy for the second time related the events which had led up to his being at the Château in another's name there was no suggestion of boredom. She stood there with sparkling eyes, interjecting an occasional 'Isn't that great!' and from time to time a 'Get this, Father, it's good!'

Nor was the Senator an unemotional audience. Gradually, as he listened, the purple flush faded from his face and into it came that awed, reverential look which had come a short while before into the face of his daughter and a short while before that into the face of Mr Gedge. As the story drew to its conclusion, he stood for a while puffing. Then he gave tongue with the air of one who now saw all things clearly.

'So this is the fellow!'

'What, Father?'

'This is the fellow you were telling me about in London. Fellow you want to marry.'

A little gasp escaped Jane. The mistake was a natural, even an inevitable one, but this made it none the less disconcerting. She looked at Packy, her face reddening.

In Packy's gaze, also, there was a certain embarrassment. But he winked quickly, a wink that said, 'Humour him. It is better so.' To explain, he realized, would merely be to introduce the Blair Eggleston
motif,
and his intuition told him, as Jane's had told her on an earlier occasion, that to do this would not be wise.

'Yessir,' he said, with a faint echo of Mr Gedge. 'That's right.'