The Adventures of Sally, P. G. Wodehouse [interesting novels in english txt] 📗

on an impersonal subject. He, too, though his face had shown no trace of it, had been embarrassed in the opening stages of the conversation. The sound of his voice restored him.

“I have been visiting Chicago,” he said after a brief travelogue.

“Oh!”

“A wonderful city.”

“I've never seen it. I've come from Detroit.”

“Yes, I heard you were in Detroit.”

Sally's eyes opened.

“You heard I was in Detroit? Good gracious! How?”

“I—ah—called at your New York address and made inquiries,” said Mr. Carmyle a little awkwardly.

“But how did you know where I lived?”

“My cousin—er—Lancelot told me.”

Sally was silent for a moment. She had much the same feeling that comes to the man in the detective story who realizes that he is being shadowed. Even if this almost complete stranger had not actually come to America in direct pursuit of her, there was no disguising the fact that he evidently found her an object of considerable interest. It was a compliment, but Sally was not at all sure that she liked it. Bruce Carmyle meant nothing to her, and it was rather disturbing to find that she was apparently of great importance to him. She seized on the mention of Ginger as a lever for diverting the conversation from its present too intimate course.

“How is Mr. Kemp?” she asked.

Mr. Carmyle's dark face seemed to become a trifle darker.

“We have had no news of him,” he said shortly.

“No news? How do you mean? You speak as though he had disappeared.”

“He has disappeared!”

“Good heavens! When?”

“Shortly after I saw you last.”

“Disappeared!”

Mr. Carmyle frowned. Sally, watching him, found her antipathy stirring again. There was something about this man which she had disliked instinctively from the first, a sort of hardness.

“But where has he gone to?”

“I don't know.” Mr. Carmyle frowned again. The subject of Ginger was plainly a sore one. “And I don't want to know,” he went on heatedly, a dull flush rising in the cheeks which Sally was sure he had to shave twice a day. “I don't care to know. The Family have washed their hands of him. For the future he may look after himself as best he can. I believe he is off his head.”

Sally's rebellious temper was well ablaze now, but she fought it down. She would dearly have loved to give battle to Mr. Carmyle—it was odd, she felt, how she seemed to have constituted herself Ginger's champion and protector—but she perceived that, if she wished, as she did, to hear more of her red-headed friend, he must be humoured and conciliated.

“But what happened? What was all the trouble about?”

Mr. Carmyle's eyebrows met.

“He—insulted his uncle. His uncle Donald. He insulted him—grossly. The one man in the world he should have made a point of—er—”

“Keeping in with?”

“Yes. His future depended upon him.”

“But what did he do?” cried Sally, trying hard to keep a thoroughly reprehensible joy out of her voice.

“I have heard no details. My uncle is reticent as to what actually took place. He invited Lancelot to dinner to discuss his plans, and it appears that Lancelot—defied him. Defied him! He was rude and insulting. My uncle refuses to have anything more to do with him. Apparently the young fool managed to win some money at the tables at Roville, and this seems to have turned his head completely. My uncle insists that he is mad. I agree with him. Since the night of that dinner nothing has been heard of Lancelot.”

Mr. Carmyle broke off to brood once more, and before Sally could speak the impressive bulk of Fillmore loomed up in the aisle beside them. Explanations seemed to Fillmore to be in order. He cast a questioning glance at the mysterious stranger, who, in addition to being in conversation with his sister, had collared his seat.

“Oh, hullo, Fill,” said Sally. “Fillmore, this is Mr. Carmyle. We met abroad. My brother Fillmore, Mr. Carmyle.”

Proper introduction having been thus effected, Fillmore approved of Mr. Carmyle. His air of being someone in particular appealed to him.

“Strange you meeting again like this,” he said affably.

The porter, who had been making up berths along the car, was now hovering expectantly in the offing.

“You two had better go into the smoking room,” suggested Sally. “I'm going to bed.”

She wanted to be alone, to think. Mr. Carmyle's tale of a roused and revolting Ginger had stirred her.

The two men went off to the smoking-room, and Sally found an empty seat and sat down to wait for her berth to be made up. She was aglow with a curious exhilaration. So Ginger had taken her advice! Excellent Ginger! She felt proud of him. She also had that feeling of complacency, amounting almost to sinful pride, which comes to those who give advice and find it acted upon. She had the emotions of a creator. After all, had she not created this new Ginger? It was she who had stirred him up. It was she who had unleashed him. She had changed him from a meek dependent of the Family to a ravening creature, who went about the place insulting uncles.

It was a feat, there was no denying it. It was something attempted, something done: and by all the rules laid down by the poet it should, therefore, have earned a night's repose. Yet, Sally, jolted by the train, which towards the small hours seemed to be trying out some new buck-and-wing steps of its own invention, slept ill, and presently, as she lay awake, there came to her bedside the Spectre of Doubt, gaunt and questioning. Had she, after all, wrought so well? Had she been wise in tampering with this young man's life?

“What about it?” said the Spectre of Doubt.

3

Daylight brought no comforting answer to the question. Breakfast failed to manufacture an easy mind. Sally got off the train, at the Grand Central station in a state of remorseful concern. She declined the offer of Mr. Carmyle to drive her to the boarding-house, and started to walk there, hoping that the crisp morning air would effect a cure.

She wondered now how she could ever have looked with approval on her rash act. She wondered what demon of interference and meddling had possessed her, to make her blunder into people's lives, upsetting them. She wondered that she was allowed to go around loose. She was nothing more nor less than a menace to society. Here was