Читать книгу The Saving Clause - Herman Cyril McNeile - Страница 5

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Now, as all the world knows, there are places in London where a beneficent County Council permits a man to leave his motor-car for a period of time which renders the concession absolutely futile. In fact, the number of people who have had the last act of a play ruined by the haunting fear of going to prison for over-staying the time-limit has never been accurately ascertained. But it must run the unemployed very close.

And it was in one of these places--to wit, St. James's Square--that a large man was standing at three o'clock on an afternoon in June, engaged in conversation with an obliging attendant.

"But," murmured the large man mildly, "it seems rather ridiculous."

The obliging attendant was understood to say that it was damned foolishness. Or words to that effect.

"I have lunched excellently," went on the large man, "and I now want to do some shopping. Close by here--in Jermyn Street. Yet, you tell me it is necessary for me to get solemnly into my car--drive it to Waterloo Place--and then walk all the way back."

"Two hours, sir," said the man in uniform. "Them's the regulations."

"And after two hours I must remove it from Waterloo Place and bring it back here? Well, well--I suppose it's another step on the road towards perfection."

He felt in his pocket for a coin.

"I am obliged to you for saving me from being shot at dawn," he remarked, and at that moment an electric horn delivered itself with a loud blast from a range of about one yard behind his back.

"Our celebrity returned," cried the driver.

The large man jumped: then a slow grin spread over his face.

"Confound you, Tubby!" he said. "But for the presence of ladies I would take you out and stand you on your head. Monica--how are you?"

He strolled to the side of the car and leaned over the door.

"When did you get back, Jim," cried Monica Marsham.

"Last night," answered the large man, suddenly becoming acutely aware of the third occupant of the car.

"Billie--this is Jim Strickland. Miss Cartwright."

A pair of very blue eyes under the rim of a little pull-on hat. . . . A face, cool and faintly mocking. . . . A figure, slim and almost boyish. . . . Thoroughbred hands, faultlessly kept. . . . A pair of adorable silk-stockinged legs which a kindly fashion ordained should be seen. Especially when sitting in a motor-car.

"How d'you do?" said Jim, gravely.

"But, Monica," said Billie, "I love the wrinkles round his eyes."

"Billie, you're the limit," remarked Tubby placidly. "Look here, people, I must put the bus away: we're blocking the entire gangway."

And then--struck by a sudden thought----

"Jim--what are you doing this week-end?"

"Damn all," answered Jim. "Why?"

"Then come down and stop with old Louisa Arkwright at Henley."

"Do," cried Monica.

"You'll probably have to sleep in the bathroom," murmured Billie. "But it's a very nice bath."

"Doubtless," remarked Jim. "The only drawback to your otherwise excellent suggestion is that old Louisa Arkwright doesn't know me from Adam."

"That doesn't matter a hoot, old lad," cried Tubby. "Her false teeth will chatter like castanets at the thought of getting you. I mean it, really, Jim. Look here, Monica can go and telephone through to her. Tell her we've met you, and that we're bringing you down. I know she'll be delighted to have you. Then you can motor down, and, incidentally take Billie if you don't mind. She can show you where the house is."

"I think I could bear it," murmured Jim gravely. "Provided Miss Cartwright will trust herself to my driving."

"You'll come, then?" cried Tubby.

Very blue eyes they were under the rim of that pull-on hat.

"If she'll have me, I'd like to," said Jim. "Where shall I meet you, Miss Cartwright? According to the Powers that be, I have to take the car to Waterloo Place."

"I'll be there at five o'clock," she answered. "And we'll stop on the way down for a cocktail."

And because those eyes were astoundingly blue under that little pull-on hat, Jim Strickland, as he stepped into his Bentley, failed to see a foreign-looking man who dodged rapidly behind another car--a man whose teeth were bared in a snarl of satisfaction, a man who had heard every word of the conversation.

If he had seen him, strange things might have happened in St. James's Square on that sunny afternoon in June. As it was, life resumed the even tenor of its way. For man must buy shirts and ties to cover his nakedness, though God forbid that one should write of such a boring proceeding.

Of one thing, however, it is necessary to write, before coming to Waterloo Place at five o'clock. When a man has been hailed as a celebrity, something must be said to justify the word. Otherwise he might be a K.B.E. or an actor, or even an author--which would damn the whole show from the very beginning. Also it conjures up visions of unwashed men signing autographs for flappers. . . .

Now it is safe to say that not one single flapper had ever written to Jim Strickland for his autograph. But then, except for two nieces who adored him, not one single flapper had ever heard of his name. And even they had to admit that his signature ranked lower in the great scheme of things than that of the French mistress's brother, who had once shaken hands with Rudolph Valentino.

True--he was a V.C. But the war was a back number. And when asked how he got it his reply was unsatisfying to a degree.

"It was nothing, kids, nothing. I happened to be there, that's all."

A few men there were, in High Places, who had been heard to declare in strict confidence over the port that twice since the war Jim Strickland had altered our policy abroad--and altered it rightly. But policy abroad is a tedious business--and, anyway, the remark was made in strict confidence. And there were swarthy hillsmen from over the Indian border who placed him only a little after the Almighty: and Bedouins who had told him strange stories under the star-studded African night: and hard-bitten sailormen who had affirmed with oaths and curses that they would sooner have Jim Strickland beside them in a tight corner than any two other men.

But of all those things he never spoke, and even to his nearest friends Jim Strickland remained a bit of an enigma. That he disappeared for months on end from the ken of man they knew, but where he went to was a different matter. He would vanish abruptly without a word to a soul; only to reappear just as suddenly--unchanged, save perhaps for a little more brown on his face, a few more tiny wrinkles round his eyes. And then for a space England would hold him--Ascot, Cowes, Scotland; with mothers angling in vain and daughters running round in small circles. But up to date Jim Strickland had shown no signs of entering the holy paths of matrimony.

"What the deuce should I do with a wife, my dear fellow?" he was wont to observe. "I shouldn't see the dear thing for more than two months a year, and I'd have to pay for her for the other ten. Or someone else would. I was nearly caught once, but, thank God! I had to go to Tibet suddenly. And she'd married someone else by the time I got back. I shall live and die a bachelor."

And after a while women of his acquaintance ceased to prophesy that he was a liar, and began to believe that he really would. True, they still dangled desirable girls in his path, but it was more from habit than from any real hope of success. And Jim Strickland, who adored pretty girls, was only too delighted that they should. The spreading of the net in the sight of the wary old bird is always amusing--for the bird.

Wherefore, that being that, and descriptions being at the best of times intolerably tedious, we can come even as he did to Waterloo Place when the clock still wanted five minutes to the hour of five.

He saw her at once curled up in the front seat of his car, smoking a cigarette.

"Punctual person," he remarked, sitting down beside her. "Are you certain you wouldn't like some tea before we start?"

She shook her head.

"It's hot and stuffy here. Let's drive--fast."

"But certainly," he said, and glanced at her sideways. Just the tip of her nose and her firm little chin could he see: then he let in his clutch. And in silence they drove along Pall Mall.

The girl sat motionless, staring in front of her--her hands linked loosely in her lap. Evidently, she was in no mood for conversation, and suddenly the contrast struck him between her and other women who from time to time had driven in that same seat. No forced small talk--no banal platitudes. . . .

"How do you like travelling, Mr. Strickland?" And: "Isn't your life very dangerous, Mr. Strickland?"

Moreover, it seemed natural with this girl: she seemed so full of--he searched for the word--full of repose. No, that was wrong: repose conjured up elderly ladies of aristocratic appearance, knitting.

Self-possession. That was nearer the mark. The right type of self-possession.

Once again he glanced at her sideways, and as he did so she turned and met his eye.

"Do you want me to talk?" she said, quietly.

"I was just thinking how pleasant it was to sit beside someone and not feel it necessary to do anything of the sort," he answered. "It's rather a favourable sign, isn't it?"

"It may be a very dangerous one," she remarked.

"Pointing to boredom," he said, lightly.

She gave a short laugh, and, leaning forward, lit a cigarette under cover of the wind-screen.

"I'm in a peculiar mood, Jim Strickland," she announced calmly. "I'm out of conceit with life--rather more so than usual. Met an old cat at my club."

He negotiated a lorry with care.

"I shouldn't have thought you were the type of person to be upset by old cats," he said noncommittally.

They came to the new switch road, and she put her hand on his arm.

"Let her out--all out," she cried. "Seventy--eighty . . . Go on, Jim--she'll do eighty-five."

The wind roared past them: the needle quivered past eighty-five--stayed motionless at eighty-seven.

"Over ninety if she's tuned up," said Jim Strickland, slowing as they came to the main road.

"I felt like that," she said, lying back in her seat.

"The old cat was very cattish, was she?"

"She insisted on giving me good advice," she answered.

"Nuff said," remarked Jim. "Men have died for less than that."

Once again she fell silent, a little frown puckering her forehead. And it was not until they were approaching that celebrated hotel by the river at Maidenhead that she spoke again.

"Mine is a Martini with an olive," she said. "And the point is, shall I marry him or shall I not?"

For a moment Jim Strickland stared at her: then he burst out laughing.

"You really are an astounding person," he remarked.

"Why?" she answered calmly, strolling across the lawn at his side. "You are just as capable of answering the question as my old cat at the club. And she said yes. In fact she said it so often that it sounded like bullets coming out of a machine-gun."

"Who is the fortunate individual?" asked Jim politely.

"You'll see him. He's stopping at Henley. By the name of Trevor. George of that ilk. Stockbroker by trade. And full of money. Good-looking and dances divinely."

"One trifling detail," murmured Jim. "Do you love him?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Can one afford to indulge in luxuries on the princely allowance of a hundred a year?"

"Rotten," said Jim, curtly. "Cheap and rotten."

She stared at him, a hint of passionate anger in her eyes.

"It's easy for you to talk, Jim Strickland," she said, in a low voice. "It's a problem that has never confronted you."

"True," he agreed. "Nor has a desire to commit forgery. But there are some things about which one can make up one's mind without actually encountering reality."

"And anyway," she went on, "what is love? You seem to have escaped it yourself up to date?"

"Maybe," he answered, quietly. "Or shall we say that it has escaped me? Not quite the same thing. In any case, what has that to do with it? The fact that I am not married--which I presume is what you mean--seems to me to be no adequate reason why you should do otherwise. I have never fallen in love: therefore I am not married. You, on your own showing, have never fallen in love: therefore you propose to get married. 'Tisn't sense."

"It's sense all right." She was sitting very still staring across the river. "Not the sense, perhaps, of romantic fiction: but common or garden horse sense, Jim Strickland."

"Then there's no more to be said," he answered shortly. "Incidentally I don't want to hurry you, but I think as the newcomer I ought to arrive before dinner."

"I suppose you think me a pretty average sweep," she remarked, in a low voice.

For a moment he did not answer; then he spoke very deliberately.

"I think that, without exception, you are the most attractive girl I have ever met. And I loathe to hear you talking as you have done. It's horrible: it's unnatural: it's not worthy of you. Shall we go?"

And it was only when she made no movement to rise that he noticed that her eyes were swimming in tears.

"Sorry, Kid," he said gently. "No business of mine and all that. But--don't."

Impulsively he put his hand on her shoulder: felt her quiver under his touch. Then slowly his hand fell to his side, and, over her head, he stared with unseeing eyes at a passing steamer. For in that brief second of contact a new factor had entered into the situation. And because he was thirty-seven, and the thoughts and habits of a life-time are not easily broken, Jim Strickland shied away from that new factor like a frightened colt.

At last she rose, having furtively dabbed her eyes with a pocket handkerchief. The mocking smile had returned to her lips: the very blue eyes under the little pull-on hat seemed bluer than ever because of their mistiness.

"You're incorrigibly romantic, Jim," she announced calmly. "In fact, not at all the sort of person for an impressionable young girl to be alone with. But you're--rather a darling."

And then, abruptly, her eyes fell from his, and she began to fumble with her hand-bag.

"I think we'd better go," she said, a little unsteadily. "It would never do if you were late for dinner."

In silence he led the way to the car, wild, incoherent thoughts pounding through his brain. In silence she got in and sat down beside him. And that was the second time within the space of three hours that Jim Strickland, of whom it was said that he possessed not one but twenty pairs of eyes, failed to see a foreign-looking man, now reinforced by a companion, who watched the car as it drove off with barely concealed malevolence. If he had seen him, strange things might have happened in Maidenhead on that sunny afternoon in June.