Something New, P. G. Wodehouse [the little red hen ebook .TXT] 📗

if you want to. But do you really like this sort of thing, Freddie?"

"Me? Rather! Why—don't you?"

"I don't know. It seems a little—I don't know."

Freddie had become absorbed in his story. Aline did not attempt further analysis of her attitude toward Mr. Quayle; she relapsed into silence.

It was a silence pregnant with thought. For the first time in their relations, she was trying to visualize to herself exactly what marriage with this young man would mean. Hitherto, it struck her, she had really seen so little of Freddie that she had scarcely had a chance of examining him. In the crowded world outside he had always seemed a tolerable enough person. To-day, somehow, he was different. Everything was different to-day.

This, she took it, was a fair sample of what she might expect after marriage. Marriage meant—to come to essentials—that two people were very often and for lengthy periods alone together, dependent on each other for mutual entertainment. What exactly would it be like, being alone often and for lengthy periods with Freddie? Well, it would, she assumed, be like this.

"It's all right," said Freddie without looking up. "He did get out! He had a bomb on him, and he threatened to drop it and blow the place to pieces unless the blighters let him go. So they cheesed it. I knew he had something up his sleeve."

Like this! Aline drew a deep breath. It would be like this—forever and ever and ever—until she died. She bent forward and stared at him.

"Freddie," she said, "do you love me?" There was no reply. "Freddie, do you love me? Am I a part of you? If you hadn't me would it be like trying to go on living without breathing?"

The Honorable Freddie raised a flushed face and gazed at her with an absent eye.

"Eh? What?" he said. "Do I—Oh; yes, rather! I say, one of the blighters has just loosed a rattlesnake into Gridley Quayle's bedroom through the transom!"

Aline rose from her seat and left the room softly. The Honorable
Freddie read on, unheeding.

* * *

Ashe Marson had not fallen far short of the truth in his estimate of the probable effect on Mr. Peters of the information that his precious scarab had once more been removed by alien hands and was now farther from his grasp than ever. A drawback to success in life is that failure, when it does come, acquires an exaggerated importance. Success had made Mr. Peters, in certain aspects of his character, a spoiled child.

At the moment when Ashe broke the news he would have parted with half his fortune to recover the scarab. Its recovery had become a point of honor. He saw it as the prize of a contest between his will and that of whatever malignant powers there might be ranged against him in the effort to show him that there were limits to what he could achieve. He felt as he had felt in the old days when people sneaked up on him in Wall Street and tried to loosen his grip on a railroad or a pet stock. He was suffering from that form of paranoia which makes men multimillionaires. Nobody would be foolish enough to become a multimillionaire if it were not for the desire to prove himself irresistible.

Mr. Peters obtained a small relief for his feelings by doubling the existing reward, and Ashe went off in search of Joan, hoping that this new stimulus, acting on their joint brains, might develop inspiration.

"Have any fresh ideas been vouchsafed to you?" he asked. "You may look on me as baffled."

Joan shook her head.

"Don't give up," she urged. "Think again. Try to realize what this means, Mr. Marson. Between us we have lost ten thousand dollars in a single night. I can't afford it. It is like losing a legacy. I absolutely refuse to give in without an effort and go back to writing duke-and-earl stories for Home Gossip."

"The prospect of tackling Gridley Quayle again—"

"Why, I was forgetting that you were a writer of detective stories. You ought to be able to solve this mystery in a moment. Ask yourself, 'What would Gridley Quayle have done?'"

"I can answer that. Gridley Quayle would have waited helplessly for some coincidence to happen to help him out."

"Had he no methods?"

"He was full of methods; but they never led him anywhere without the coincidence. However, we might try to figure it out. What time did you get to the museum?"

"One o'clock."

"And you found the scarab gone. What does that suggest to you?"

"Nothing. What does it suggest to you?"

"Absolutely nothing. Let us try again. Whoever took the scarab must have had special information that Peters was offering the reward."

"Then why hasn't he been to Mr. Peters and claimed it?"

"True! That would seem to be a flaw in the reasoning. Once again: Whoever took it must have been in urgent and immediate need of money."

"And how are we to find out who was in urgent and immediate need of money?"

"Exactly! How indeed?"

There was a pause.

"I should think your Mr. Quayle must have been a great comfort to his clients, wasn't he?" said Joan.

"Inductive reasoning, I admit, seems to have fallen down to a certain extent," said Ashe. "We must wait for the coincidence. I have a feeling that it will come." He paused. "I am very fortunate in the way of coincidences."

"Are you?"

Ashe looked about him and was relieved to find that they appeared to be out of earshot of their species. It was not easy to achieve this position at the castle if you happened to be there as a domestic servant. The space provided for the ladies and gentlemen attached to the guests was limited, and it was rarely that you could enjoy a stroll without bumping into a maid, a valet or a footman; but now they appeared to be alone. The drive leading to the back regions of the castle was empty. As far as the eye could reach there were no signs of servants—upper or lower. Nevertheless, Ashe lowered his voice.

"Was it not a strange coincidence," he said, "that you should have come into my life at all?"

"Not very," said Joan prosaically. "It was quite likely that we should meet sooner or later, as we lived on different floors of the same house."

"It was a coincidence that you should have taken that room."

"Why?"

Ashe felt damped. Logically, no doubt, she was right; but surely she might have helped him out a little in this difficult situation. Surely her woman's intuition should have told her that a man who has been speaking in a loud and cheerful voice does not lower it to a husky whisper without some reason. The hopelessness of his task began to weigh on him.

Ever since that evening at Market Blandings Station, when he realized that he loved her, he had been trying to find an opportunity to tell her so; and every time they had met, the talk had seemed to be drawn irresistibly into practical and unsentimental channels. And now, when he was doing his best to reason it out that they were twin souls who had been brought together by a destiny it would be foolish to struggle against; when he was trying to convey the impression that fate had designed them for each other—she said, "Why?" It was hard.

He was about to go deeper into the matter when, from the direction of the castle, he perceived the Honorable Freddie's valet—Mr. Judson—approaching. That it was this repellent young man's object to break in on them and rob him of his one small chance of inducing Joan to appreciate, as he did, the mysterious workings of Providence as they affected herself and him, was obvious. There was no mistaking the valet's desire for conversation. He had the air of one brimming over with speech. His wonted indolence was cast aside; and as he drew nearer he positively ran. He was talking before he reached them.

"Miss Simpson, Mr. Marson, it's true—what I said that night.
It's a fact!"

Ashe regarded the intruder with a malevolent eye. Never fond of Mr. Judson, he looked on him now with positive loathing. It had not been easy for him to work himself up to the point where he could discuss with Joan the mysterious ways of Providence, for there was that about her which made it hard to achieve sentiment. That indefinable something in Joan Valentine which made for nocturnal raids on other people's museums also rendered her a somewhat difficult person to talk to about twin souls and destiny. The qualities that Ashe loved in her—her strength, her capability, her valiant self-sufficingness—were the very qualities which seemed to check him when he tried to tell her that he loved them.

Mr. Judson was still babbling.

"It's true. There ain't a doubt of it now. It's been and happened just as I said that night."

"What did you say? Which night?" inquired Ashe.

"That night at dinner—the first night you two came here. Don't you remember me talking about Freddie and the girl he used to write letters to in London—the girl I said was so like you, Miss Simpson? What was her name again? Joan Valentine. That was it. The girl at the theater that Freddie used to send me with letters to pretty nearly every evening. Well, she's been and done it, same as I told you all that night she was jolly likely to go and do. She's sticking young Freddie up for his letters, just as he ought to have known she would do if he hadn't been a young fathead. They're all alike, these girls—every one of them."

Mr. Judson paused, subjected the surrounding scenery to a cautious scrutiny and resumed.

"I took a suit of Freddie's clothes away to brush just now; and happening"—Mr. Judson paused and gave a little cough—"happening to glance at the contents of his pockets I come across a letter. I took a sort of look at it before setting it aside, and it was from a fellow named Jones; and it said that this girl, Valentine, was sticking onto young Freddie's letters what he'd written her, and would see him blowed if she parted with them under another thousand. And, as I made it out, Freddie had already given her five hundred.

"Where he got it is more than I can understand; but that's what the letter said. This fellow Jones said he had passed it to her with his own hands; but she wasn't satisfied, and if she didn't get the other thousand she was going to bring an action for breach. And now Freddie has given me a note to take to this Jones, who is stopping in Market Blandings."

Joan had listened to this remarkable speech with a stunned amazement. At this point she made her first comment:

"But that can't be true."

"Saw the letter with my own eyes, Miss Simpson."

"But——"

She looked at Ashe helplessly. Their eyes met—hers wide with perplexity, his bright with the light of comprehension.

"It shows," said Ashe slowly, "that he was in immediate and urgent need of money."

"You bet it does," said Mr. Judson with relish. "It looks to me as though young Freddie had about reached the end of his tether this time. My word! There won't half be a kick-up if she does sue him for breach! I'm off to tell Mr. Beach and the rest. They'll jump out of their skins." His face fell. "Oh, Lord, I was forgetting this note. He told me to take it at once."

"I'll take it for you," said Ashe. "I'm not doing anything."

Mr. Judson's gratitude was effusive.

"You're a good fellow, Marson," he said. "I'll do as much for you another time. I couldn't hardly bear not to tell a bit of news like this right away. I should burst or something."

And Mr. Judson, with shining face, hurried off to the housekeeper's room.

"I simply can't understand it," said Joan at length. "My head is going round."

"Can't understand it? Why, it's perfectly clear. This is the coincidence for which, in my capacity of Gridley Quayle, I was waiting. I can now resume inductive reasoning. Weighing the evidence, what do we find? That young sweep, Freddie, is the man. He has the scarab."

"But it's all such a muddle. I'm not holding his letters."

"For Jones' purposes you are. Let's get this Jones element in the affair straightened