Hot Water (9 page)

T
HE
moon which had collaborated with the fairy lanterns in the illumination of the Public Amusement Gardens had the lighting of the sand-dunes by the harbour to look after alone, and was making a half-hearted job of it. Packy, who had strolled on to the dunes for a pipe before returning to his boat, found himself in a world of shadows, and after one or two stumbles on the uncertain pathway he decided to sit down and stroll no more.

In the matter of alcoholic stimulants, Packy had lagged behind his fellow-revellers both during dinner and after it, wishing to keep his head clear for the fascinating of Mr Gedge. He reaped the reward of his abstinence now in a heightened appreciation of the beauties of the night.

It was a warm, soft, silky night, restfully silent. From time to time there came from the direction of the Amusement Gardens the noise of Gallic mirth, but it was too faint to compete with the musical splash of the waves on the shore below. Little breezes whispered about his ears. Shy moths fluttered to and fro. In short, taken by and large, the setting and surroundings were ideal for a good, long lover's reverie.

But Packy, oddly enough, was not thinking of Beatrice. It was the picture of the girl Jane Opal which filled his mind. And as he thought of Jane Opal remorse began to grip him.

He could not conceal it from himself that he had failed the poor child. In the hour of her need, when a little tact might have put him in a position to serve her, he had let her down with a bump. Stung by the other's sneers, he had definitely parted brass-rags with Mr Gedge, with the result that however large and varied the house-party at the Château Blissac might be it could never now include Packy Franklyn in its ranks. He should have persevered with Mr Gedge, he realized too late. He should have been patient and long-suffering with him. He should not have permitted a few derogatory observations on the quality of the football played at Yale to divert him from his purpose.

He had just arrived at this conclusion and had risen, intending to make for the jetty where he had moored the
Flying Cloud's
dinghy, when abruptly through the night there came to him the sound of running footsteps. Somebody in a hurry was heading his way.

The next moment the moon, peeping from behind a cloud, shone weakly down on the well-remembered form of Mr Soup Slattery.

Mr Slattery was cutting out a good pace, but it was apparent as he reached the little knoll where Packy stood that sprinting was not his forte. He was panting heavily. He came galloping along, sighted Packy, recognized him, waved an agitated arm in the direction from which he had come, shot at him one brief, concentrated look of appeal, then, leaping to the left with the last remnants of energy in him, sank with a gurgle behind the knoll. And for some moments nothing was to be heard but his muffled gasping.

And then once more running feet became audible, and almost immediately there burst in view a posse of St Rocque's able
gendarmerie.
They, too, appeared a little touched in the wind, and it was plainly with a certain relief that they accepted Packy as an excuse to stop and ask questions.

Packy was not a French scholar, and even if he had been, he would certainly have been unable to follow the constabulary remarks, sounding as they did like water rushing over a weir. But his special knowledge enabled him to make a guess at what they wanted to know and he pointed with animation along the path beyond him.

The pursuit rolled off in that direction. Only when the last footstep had died away did the head of Mr Slattery emerge from behind the knoll like that of a diffident turtle.

'Zowie!' was Mr Slattery's comment on the affair, and the fact that he had regained sufficient breath to say even as much as that told Packy that he was once more in a condition to travel. Not pausing to ask for explanations, he seized his arm and hurried him down the slope. A few minutes' earnest cross-country work brought them to the jetty. He thrust the hunted man into the dinghy and pulled out.

The distance to the
Flying Cloud
was not great, and during the journey Mr Slattery made only two remarks. One was 'Boy!' the other 'Give me Chicago!' Arriving on the deck of the yawl, he became more expansive.

'Brother,' said Mr Slattery, sinking on a pile of rope and taking off his shoes, 'if I live a hundred years, I'll never forget this night and what you done for me!'

Packy waved away his gratitude modestly.

'What happened? Did you murder somebody?'

'No, sir. I didn't murder nobody. But...'

'I'll get you a drink,' said Packy, remembering his obligations as a host.

'Boy!' said Mr Slattery, passing a long tongue over his lips.

Returning with the materials for a night-cap, Packy found his guest a good deal restored. He had put his shoes on again, and his breathing was easier. He accepted the proffered glass and drained it with relish.

'Boy, could I write a book!' he said.

He was so evidently convalescent that Packy felt there would now be nothing inhuman in asking for details of the affair.

'Tell me all,' he said. 'What were the events leading up to the tragedy? Why the gendarmes?'

'The what?'

'The cops. What had you done to annoy them?'

'Me singing – that was the start of it.'

'Can they arrest you for singing in France?'

'Well, what I mean, I was breaking the table, too.'

'I see. That may have been partly the trouble. Why were you breaking the table?'

'Why not?' said Mr Slattery reasonably.

'Of course,' said Packy, seeing his point.

Mr Slattery refreshed himself again.

'Well, anyways, there I am, cutting up and having a good time, and all of a sudden a bunch of fellows dressed as French cops come up and start pushing me around. Well, hell!' said Mr Slattery with feeling, 'nobody can say I'm not a good sport. You don't find me beefing if a party gets a little bright. Give and take, that's me. So when they push me, I push them. And so on back and forth.'

'Quite right.'

'Wait!' said Mr Slattery. 'You don't know nothin' yet. It wasn't more than about half a minute when one of these palookas suddenly pulls out a young carving-knife and sticks me in the wish-bone with it. Good and hard he sticks me, and it got me plenty sore. And I say to myself, "Well, here, come now, what the hell?"'

'You could hardly have said less.'

'"Well, what the hell?" I say to myself. "Fun's fun, but there's a limit." I warn him first, mind you. I say, "Brother, don't go letting that party spirit run away with you, brother," I say. "You get rough, me I can get rough, too." But no, he has to stick me again, and that burns me up and I cut loose. Two, three of those guys I must of poked in the schnozzle, and I'm just beginning to go nice when all of a sudden ... Ever been struck by lightning?'

Packy said he had not.

'Well, it was like that. Because right in a sort of flash it dawns on me that these fellows ain't just party hounds made up for cops. They're real cops. And, what's more, French cops. And one thing you learn over on this side is that France ain't America. Back home, what I mean, a cop knows how to take a joke and don't hardly even notice it if you sock him on the beezer. But gee! in this darned country a man might get sent to Devil's Island or somewheres for hitting a what-was-it-you-said. So I don't wait to apologize. I beat it, with the whole bunch after me. And where I'd of ended up if I hadn't of run into you and you steered them off of me, I wouldn't like to say. You're aces, boy, and you can write home and tell the folks Soup Slattery said so.'

'Soup?' said Packy. 'Is that your name?'

'It's what they call me back in Chi. On account me being an expoit safe-blower,' explained Mr Slattery modestly.

Packy started.

'A safe-blower? Do you mean you know how to open safes?'

'Do I know how to open safes? Do
I
know how to open
safes?
Ask the boys back home if Soup Slattery knows how to open safes! Why, is there any little job in that line you want doing?' asked Mr Slattery, noting the oddness of his companion's expression. If there is, say the word.'

Packy groaned in spirit. Life's dreadful irony was saddening him. What he had wanted from the very start of this expedition of his was a kindly friend who knew how to open safes, and now that he had found him it was too late. He mourned once more over that foolish pride which had caused him to sever relations with Mr Gedge and so render an invitation to the Château impossible.

'No,' he sighed. 'Not at the moment, I'm afraid.'

He crushed down these fruitless repinings over what might have been.

'Tell me,' he said. 'What happened to the others?'

'Gedge and D. Blissac?'

'Yes. I left early.'

Mr Slattery rumbled like a semi-extinct volcano. It seemed to be his way of expressing amusement.

'Boy you missed somethin'! A circus. No less.'

He indulged in another deep rumble.

'Get this,' he said. 'Me, back at the table, see? And here's this Gedge bird, acting kind of ugly.'

'He was that way when I left.'

'Well, he hadn't gotten no sunnier, believe me. He was muttering to himself, what I mean, and throwing things. And after a while he turns to me and starts in rolling the fat about the plumbing at this Chatty-o place which he's rented. Claimed it was terrible.'

'Leaky cisterns?'

That and a raft of other things. And he's just beginnin' to go good when this D. Blissac guy, that's been dancing by himself out in the middle somewheres, gets tired of it and comes back to the table for a snootful. And just as he pulls in, here's this Gedge bird shoutin' about the plumbing of this Chatty-o and not saying it with flowers, neither.'

'Good situation,' agreed Packy 'Dramatic.'

'Well, sir, this here now Blissac he sort of draws himself up and calls him. "What's that?" he says. "What's what?" says the Gedge bird. "What's that you're saying about our plumbing?" says this Blissac, very high-hat. "It's rotten," says the Gedge bird. "Say that again," says D. Blissac. And this Gedge he says it again, and the next thing you know they're rolling on the floor, and me acting as referee and telling them to break. Boy, it was a couple of minutes before I could get 'em unstuck.'

Packy's sympathies were entirely pro-Vicomte. No man of spirit will lightly endure strictures on the plumbing of his boyhood home. He said as much.

'Me, too,' agreed Mr Slattery. 'And that's what I tell this Gedge when I'd unsorted him. "Is it nice," I say, "giving the razz to a fellow's home plumbing? Is that a system?" He seen it, too, because he started crying into some fruit salad. And then I argue with this Blissac, trying to make him take the big, broad view. And presently we're all hotsy-totsy again, and from then till they suddenly passed out cold on me you wouldn't have wanted to see a happier little bunch than the three of us.'

Pausing at this point, Mr Slattery regarded Packy with surprise and not a little pique. He considered that he had been telling a good story well. Yet here was his companion apparently in a trance, not listening. He was standing rigid, gazing out into the night.

'Of course, if you ain't interested....'

Packy turned. His eyes gleamed strangely.

'You say they passed out?'

'Stiff. Just turned up their toes and lay there.'

'What became of the bodies?'

'I attended to that. I put D. Blissac in a cab and shipped him off to the hotel.'

'And Gedge?'

'I put him in another and sent him up to the Chatty-o. I told the chauffeur to ring the front door bell and go on ringing till somebody answered it and then hand in the corpse and tell them to put it on ice and come away.'

Mr Slattery paused a little complacently. He seemed to be feeling that, left
in loco parentis
to two fellow-human beings in circumstances of some embarrassment, he had acquitted himself well.

Once more he perceived that his audience's attention had wandered.

'Maybe you don't think that was smooth?' he said, aggrieved.

Packy started apologetically.

'I'm sorry. I was thinking. I've just had an idea, and I don't often get them. When I do, they knock me endways.'

'Idea?'

'A sort of idea.'

'What?'

'Oh, just an idea. Just something that had been bothering me a good deal, and now I think I see my way. A bright light has shone upon me. Look here, are you feeling equal to making the trip ashore? Because, if so, I'll row you in. I would rather like to have a word with the Veek.'

'Who's he?'

'Your old friend, V. D. Blissac. You sent him back to the hotel, you said. Would there be any chance of his having come to life yet?'

'Maybe. What do you want to see him about?'

'Oh, just something. Just something that happened to occur to me while you were talking.'

'Well, I don't know as I'm not about ready to hit the hay.'

'Fine. Then we'll start at once. By the way, that offer of yours to crack a safe for me, if desired, still holds good?'

'Brother,' said Mr Slattery with fervour, 'after what you done for me to-night, I'd bust the National City Bank for you.'

There was good stuff in the Vicomte de Blissac. Many men in his condition would have remained where they had been dumped, inert, till the following morning. But it was scarcely an hour after the pall-bearers had laid him on the bed in his room at the Hotel des Etrangers before he was, in a manner of speaking, up and about. That is to say, he had so far regained the mastery of his faculties as to be able to totter to the wash-hand stand, drink perhaps a pint and a half of water out of the pitcher which stood thereon, and fill a sponge and press it to his burning head.

He had just renewed the contents of this sponge and was passing it gently across his brow once more when he became aware of a knocking on the door, and, limping to open it, discovered on the threshold his friend Packy Franklyn.

''Allo,' said the Vicomte in a weak voice. He was not sure if he was quite pleased at the other's arrival. For some reason there had stolen over him an odd, languid feeling and a desire for repose and solitude.