The House with the Twisted Chimneys/Chapter 4

“Read the name again,” Terry said, controlling his voice.

“Avalesco—the Princess Avalesco.” I felt suddenly frightened. I'd been playing with the public as if people were my puppets. Now I had a vague conviction at the back of my brain that fate had made a puppet of me.

“I thought so. But I couldn't believe my own ears,” said Terry. “Good heavens! What a situation!”

“I don't understand,” I hesitated. “Perhaps you'd rather not have me understand? If so, don't tell me anything.”

“I must tell you!” he said.

“Not unless you wish.”

“I do! We are pals now. You've helped me. Maybe you can go on helping. You'll advise me if there's any way I can use this—this amazing chance.”

I said I'd be glad to help, and then waited for him to make the next move.

Terence Burns sat as if dazed for a few seconds, but presently he asked me to go on with the letter.

I took it up where I'd broken off:

I read fast, and when I'd finished looked up at Terry.

“If you have a secret to tell, I'm ready with advice and sympathy,” said my eyes.

“When the Princess Avalesco was Margaret Revell I was in love with her,” Terry Burns answered them. “I adored her! She was seven or eight years older than I, but the most beautiful thing I ever saw. Of course, she wouldn't look at me! I was about as important as a slum child to her. In America, the Revells were like your royalties. She was a princess even then, without a title. To get one, she sold herself. To think that she should answer that fool advertisement of ours! Heavens! I'm like Tantalus. I see the blessed water I'd give my life to drink held to my lips, only to have it snatched away!”

“Why snatched away?” I questioned,

“Why? Because if there were a moated grange, I could meet her. Her husband's dead. You know he was killed before Roumania'd been fighting a week. Things are very different with me, too, these days. I'm a man, not a boy. And I've come into more money than I ever dreamed I'd have. Not a huge fortune like hers, but a respectable pile. Who knows what might have happened? But there's no moated grange, and so”

“Why shouldn't there be one?” I broke in. And while he stared blankly I hurried on. I reminded him of what I had said yesterday: that there were houses of that description in England, real houses!—my own, for instance, Courtenaye Abbey was out of the question, because it was let to my cousin Jim, and was being shown to the public as a sort of museum, but there were other places. I knew of several. As Captain Burns was so rich, he might hire one and let it to the Princess Avalesco!

For a moment he brightened, but a sudden thought obscured him like a cloud.

“Not places with twisted chimneys!” he groaned.

That brought me up short. I stubbed my brain against the twisted chimney! But when I'd rubbed it—my head, not the chimney—I recovered.

“Yes, places with twisted chimneys! At least, one such place.”

“Ah, Hampton Court. You said the only other twisted chimney was there.”

“The advertisement said that.”

“Well”

“It's a pity,” I admitted, “that I thought of the twisted chimney. It was an unnecessary extravagance, though I meant well. But it never would have occurred to me as an extra lure if I hadn't known about a house where such a chimney exists. The one house of the kind I ever heard of, except Hampton Court.”

Terry sprang to his feet, a changed man, young and vital.

“Can we get it?”

“Ah, if 1 knew! But we can try. If you don't care what you pay.”

“I don't. Not a hang.”

I, too, jumped up, and took from my desk a bulky volume—Burke. This I brought back to my chair, and sat down with it on my lap. Beside me, Terry Burns watched me turn the pages. At “Sc” I stopped, to real aloud all about the Scarletts. But before beginning I warned Terry.

“I never knew any of these Scarletts myself,” I said; “but I've heard my grandmother say they were the wickedest family in England, which meant a lot from her. She wasn't exactly a saint!”

We learned from the book what I had almost forgotten, that Lord Scarlett, the eleventh baron, held the title because his elder brother, Cecil, had died in Australia, unmarried. He himself was married, with one young son, his wife being the daughter of a German wine merchant!

As I read, I remembered gossip heard by my childish ears. “Bertie Scarlett,” as my grandmother had called him, was not only the wickedest, but the poorest peer in England, too poor to live at Dun Moat, his place in Devonshire, my own county. The remedy was marriage with an heiress. He tried America. Nothing doing! The girls he invited to become Lady Scarlett drew the line at anything beneath an earl. Or, perhaps, his reputation was against him. There were many people who knew he was unpopular at court; “unpopular” was the mildest word possible. And he was middle-aged and far from good-looking. So the best he could manage was a homely and obscure heiress named Goldstein, of an age not unsuited to his own. Her father was supposed to be rolling in money, but that was before uncertainties in foreign exchange. The Goldsteins had met Lord Scarlett down at Monte Carlo, where Papa G. was a well-known punter. Luck went wrong with him, and later the financial market became nervous. Altogether, the marriage had failed to accomplish for Bertie Scarlett's pocket and his place what he had hoped from it. And apparently the one appreciable result was a little boy, half of noble blood. There were hopes that, after the war, Mr. Goldstein's business might come up again to something like its old value, in which case the daughter would reap the benefit. Meanwhile, however, if grandmother were right, things were at a low ebb, and Lord Scarlett might snap at an offer for Dun Moat.

Terry was immensely cheered by my story and opinion. But such a ready-made solution of the difficulty seemed too good to be true. He got our advertisement and read it out to me, pausing at each detail of perfection which we had light-heartedly bestowed upon our moated grange.

“The twisted chimney and the moat aren't everything,” he groaned. “Carp and water lilies we might supply, if they don't exist; peacocks, too. Nearly all historic houses are what the agents always call 'rich in old oak.' But what about those 'exquisite oriels,' those famous fireplaces, those stairways, those celebrated ceilings and corbels—whatever they are? No one house, outside our brains, can have them all. If anything's missing in the list, she'll cry off, and call T. B. a fraud.”

“She'll only remember the most exciting things,” I said. “I don't see her walking round the house with the ad in her hand, do you? She'll be captured by the tout ensemble. But the first thing is to catch our hare—I mean our house. You phone to the companion, Mrs. Dobell, at once. Say that before you got her letter you'd practically given the refusal of your place to some one else, but that you met Princess Avalesco years ago, and would prefer to have her as your tenant, if she cares to leave the matter open for a few days. She'll say 'yes!' like a shot. And, meanwhile, I'll be inquiring the state of affairs at Dun Moat.”

“How can you inquire without going there and wasting a day, when we might be getting hold of another place, perhaps, and—and building a twisted chimney to match the ad?” Terry raged, walking up and down the room.

“Quite simple,” I said. “I'll get my forty-fourth cousin, Jim Courtenaye, on long distance at the abbey, where he's had a telephone installed. He doesn't live there, but at Courtenaye Coombe, a village close by. However, I hear he's at the abbey from morn till dewy eve, so I'll ring him up. What he doesn't know about the Scarletts he'll find out so quickly you'll not have time to turn!”

“How do you know he'll be so quick?” persisted Terry. “If he's only your forty-fourth cousin, he may be lukewarm”

I stopped him with a look.

“Whatever else Jim Courtenaye may be, he's not lukewarm,” I said. “He has red hair and black eyes. And he is either my fiercest enemy or my warmest friend, I'm not sure which. Anyhow, he saved my life once at great trouble and danger to himself, so I don't think he'll hesitate at getting a little information for me, if I pay him the compliment of calling him up on long distance.”

“I see!” said Terry. And I believe he did see, perhaps more than I intended him to see. But, at worst, he would in future realize that there were men on earth not so blind to my attractions as he.

While Terry telephoned from the Carstairs flat to the companion of Princess Avalesco, I telephoned from mine to Jim. And I could not help it if my heart beat fast when I, in London, heard his voice answering me from Devonshire. He has one of those nice, drawly American voices that do make a woman's heart beat for a man whether she likes him or hates him!

I explained what I wanted to find out about the Scarletts, and that it must be “quite in confidence.” Jim promised to make inquiries at once. Then I politely said:

“Sorry to give you so much trouble.”

“You needn't let that worry you, my dear!” he replied promptly.

Of course, he had no right to call me his “dear.” I never heard of it being done by the best “forty-fourth cousins.” But, as I was asking a favor of him for Terry Burns' sake, I let it pass.

Those Americans, especially ex-cowboy ones, do seem to act with lightning rapidity! I suppose it comes from having to lasso creatures while going at cinema speed, or else getting out of their way at the same rate of progress! I expected to be called next morning at earliest, but that same evening, just before shutting-up time for post offices, my telephone bell rang. Jim Courtenaye was at the other end, talking from the abbey.

“Lord and Lady Scarlett are living at Dun Moat,” he said, “with their venomous little brute of a boy. They must be dashed hard up, because they have only one servant in their enormous house and not a single gardener on a place that needs a dozen. But it seems that Scarlett has refused several big offers both to sell and let. Heaven knows why! Perhaps the man's mad. Anyhow, that's all I have to tell at present. They say it's no good hoping he'll part. He sticks to the place closer than a leech. But I might find out why he won't accept offers, if that's any use.”

“It isn't,” I answered. “But thanks all the same. How did you get hold of this information so soon?”

“Very simply,” said Jim. “I ran over to the nearest town, Dawlish, in the car, and had a pow-wow with an estate agent, as if 1 were wanting the house myself. I'm just back.”

“You really are good!” I exclaimed grudgingly, for grandmother and I always suffered in changing our opinions of people, as snakes must suffer when they change their skins.

“I'd do a lot more than that for you, you know!” he said.

I did know. He had already done more—much more. But my only response was to ring off. That was safest!

Next morning, Terry Burns and I took the first train to Devonshire, and at Dawlish hired a taxi for Dun Moat, which is about twelve miles from there.

We were going to beard the Scarlett lion in his den.