Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 44).djvu/233

 "If you ask my opinion," I said—I was feeling pretty sore about it—"that blighted blighter Florence is an absolute blighter."

"My dear Mr. Pepper, I wouldn't have dreamt of asking your opinion on such a delicate subject. But I'm glad to have it. Thank you very much. Do I strike you as a vindictive woman, Mr. Pepper?"

"I don't think you do," I said.

"By nature I don't think I am. But I'm feeling a little vindictive just at present."

She stopped suddenly.

"I don't know why I'm boring you like this, Mr. Pepper," she said. "For goodness' sake, let's be cheerful. Say something bright."

I was going to have a dash at it, but she collared the conversation and talked all the rest of the way. She seemed to have cheered up a whole lot.

She left next day. I gather she pushed Percy as per schedule, for the old boy looked distinctly brighter, and Florence wore an off-duty expression and was quite decently civil. Mrs. Darrell bore up all right. She avoided Percy, of course, and put in most of the time talking to Edwin. He evidently appreciated it, for I had never seen him look so nearly happy before.

I popped back to London directly afterwards, and I hadn't been there much more than a week when a most remarkably rum thing happened. Turning in at the Empire for half an hour one evening, whom should I meet but brother Edwin, quite fairly festive, with a fat cigar in his mouth.

"Halloa, Reggie!" he said. "What-ho, my lad!"

"What are you doing here?" I said.

"I had to come up to London to look up a life of Hilary de Whyttange at the British Museum. I believe the old buffer was a sort of connection."

"This isn't the British Museum."

"I was beginning to suspect as much. The difference is subtle, but well marked."

It struck me that there was another difference that was subtle but well marked, and that was the difference between the Edwin I'd left messing about over his family history a week before and the jovial buck who was blowing smoke in my face now.

"As a matter of fact," he said, "the British Museum would be all the better for a little of this sort of thing. It's too conservative. That's what's the trouble with the British Museum. What's the matter with having a ballet and a few performing dogs in the reading-room? It would brighten the place up and attract custom. Reggie, you're looking fatigued. There's a place at the end of that corridor expressly designed for supplying first-aid to the fatigued. Let me lead you to it."

I'm not given to thinking much as a rule, but I couldn't help pondering a bit over this meeting with Edwin. It's hard to make you see the remarkableness of the whole thing for, of course, if you look at it in one way, there's nothing so frightfully rackety in smoking a cigar and drinking a whisky and soda. But then you have never seen Edwin. There are degrees in everything, don't you know. For Edwin to behave as he did with me that night was simply nothing more nor less than a frightful outburst, and it disturbed me. Not that I cared what Edwin did, as a rule, but I couldn't help feeling a sort of what-d'you-call-it?—a presentiment—that somehow, in some way I didn't understand, I was mixed up in it, or was soon going to be. I think the whole fearful family had got on my nerves to such an extent that the mere sight of any of them made me jumpy.

And, by Jove, I was perfectly right, don't you know. In a day or two along came the usual telegram from Florence, telling me to come to Eaton Square.

I was getting about full up with Eaton Square, and I made up my mind I wouldn't go near the place. But of course I did. When it came to the point I simply hadn't the common manly courage to keep away.

Florence was there in the drawing-room as before.

"Reginald," she said, "I think I shall go raving mad."

This struck me as a jolly happy solution of everybody's troubles, but I felt it was too good to be true.

"Over a week ago," she went on, "my brother Edwin came up to London to consult a book in the British Museum. I anticipated that this would occupy perhaps an afternoon, and was expecting him back by an early train next day. He did not arrive. He sent an incoherent telegram. But even then I suspected nothing." She paused. "Yesterday morning," she said, "I had a letter from my Aunt Augusta."

She paused again. She seemed to think I ought to be impressed.

"Very jolly," I said.

Her eyes tied a bow-know in my spine.

"Jolly! Let me read you her letter. No, I will tell you its contents. Aunt Augusta