A Fool and His Money Part 20

Off goes the child. Abducted--kidnapped! And the court had granted him the custody of the child. That's what makes it so terrible. If she is caught anywhere in Europe--well, I don't know what may happen to her. It is just such silly acts as this that make American girls the laughing stocks of the whole world. I give you my word I am almost ashamed to have people point me out and say: 'There goes an American. Pooh!'"

By this time I had myself pretty well in hand.

"I daresay the mother loved the child, which ought to condone one among her mult.i.tude of sins. I take it, of course, that she was entirely to blame for everything that happened."

They at once proceeded to tear the poor little mother to shreds, delicately and with finesse, to be sure, but none the less completely.

No doubt they meant to be charitable.

"This is what a silly American n.o.body gets for trying to be somebody over here just because her father has a trunkful of millions," said Elsie, concluding a rather peevish estimate of the conjugal effrontery laid at the door of Mr. Pless's late wife.

"Or just because one of these spendthrift foreigners has a t.i.tle for sale," said Billy Smith sarcastically.

"He was deeply in love with her when they were married," said his wife.

"I don't believe it was his fault that they didn't get along well together."

"The truth of the matter is," said Elsie with finality, "she couldn't live up to her estate. She was a drag, a stone about his neck. It was like putting one's waitress at the head of the table and expecting her to make good as a hostess."

"What was her social standing in New York?" I enquired.

"Oh, good enough," said Betty Billy. "She was in the smartest set, if that is a recommendation."

"Then you admit, both of you, that the best of our American girls fall short of being all that is required over here. In other words, they can't hold a candle to the Europeans."

"Not at all," they both said in a flash.

"That's the way it sounds to me."

Elsie seemed repentant. "I suppose we are a little hard on the poor thing. She was very young, you see."

"What you mean to say, then, is that she wasn't good enough for Mr.

Pless and his coterie."

"No, not just precisely that," admitted Betty Billy Smith. "She made a bid for him and got him, and my contention is that she should have lived up to the bargain."

"Wasn't he paid in full?" I asked, with a slight sneer.

"What do you mean?"

"Didn't he get his money?"

"I am sure I don't see what money has to do with the case," said Elsie, with dignity. "Mr. Pless is a poor man I've heard. There could not have been very much of a marriage settlement."

"A mere million to start with," remarked Billy Smith ironically. "It's all gone, my dear Elsie, and I gather that father-in-law locked the trunk you speak of and hid the key. You don't know women as well as I do, Mr. Smart. Both of these charming ladies professed to adore Mr.

Pless's wife up to the time the trial for divorce came up. Now they've got their hammers and hat-pins out for her and--"

"That isn't true, Billy Smith," cried Elsie in a fierce whisper. "We stood by her until she disobeyed the mandate--or whatever you call it--of the court. She did steal the child, and you can't deny it."

"Poor little kiddie," said he, and from his tone I gathered that all was not rosy in the life of the infant in this game of battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k.

To my disgust, the three of them refused to enlighten me further as to the history, ident.i.ty or character of either Mr. or Mrs. Pless, but of course I knew that I was entertaining under my roof, by the most extraordinary coincidence, the Count and Countess of Something-or-other, who were at war, and the child they were fighting for with motives of an entirely opposite nature.

Right or wrong, my sympathies were with the refugee in the lonely east wing. I was all the more determined now to s.h.i.+eld her as far as it lay in my power to do so, and to defend her if the worst were to happen.

Mr. Pless tossed his cigarette over the railing and sauntered over to join us.

"I suppose you've been discussing the view," he said as he came up.

There was a mean smile on his--yes, it was a rather handsome face--and the two ladies started guiltily. The attack on his part was particularly direct when one stops to consider that there wasn't any view to be had from where we were sitting, unless one could call a three-decked plasterer's scaffolding a view.

"We've been discussing the recent improvements about the castle, Mr.

Pless," said I with so much directness that I felt Mrs. Billy Smith's arm stiffen and suspected a general tension of nerves from head to foot.

"You shouldn't spoil the place, Mr. Smart," said he, with a careless glance about him.

"Don't ruin the ruins," added Billy Smith, of the diplomatic corps.

"What time do we dine?" asked Mr. Pless, with a suppressed yawn.

"At eight," said Elsie promptly.

We were in the habit of dining at seven-thirty, but I was growing accustomed to the over-riding process, so allowed my dinner hour to be changed without a word.

"I think I'll take a nap," said he. With a languid smile and a little flaunt of his hand as if dismissing us, he moved languidly off, but stopped after a few steps to say to me: "We'll explore the castle to-morrow, Mr. Smart, if it's just the same to you." He spoke with a very slight accent and in a peculiarly attractive manner. There was charm to the man, I was bound to admit. "I know Schloss Rothhoefen very well. It is an old stamping ground of mine."

"Indeed," said I, affecting surprise.

"I spent a very joyous season here not so many years ago. Hohendahl is a bosom friend."

When he was quite out of hearing, Billy Smith leaned over and said to me: "He spent his honeymoon here, old man. It was the girls' idea to bring him here to a.s.suage the present with memories of the past. Quite a pretty sentiment, eh?"

"It depends on how he spent it," I said significantly. Smith grinned approvingly. Being a diplomat he sensed my meaning at once.

"It was a lot of money," he said.

At dinner the Russian baron, who examined every particle of food he ate with great care and discrimination, evidently looking for poison, embarra.s.sed me in the usual fas.h.i.+on by asking how I write my books, where I get my plots, and all the rest of the questions that have become so hatefully unanswerable, ending up by blandly enquiring _what_ I had written. This was made especially humiliating by the prefatory remark that he had lived in Was.h.i.+ngton for five years and had read everything that was worth reading.

If Elsie had been a man I should have kicked her for further confounding me by mentioning the t.i.tles of all my books and saying that he surely must have read them, as everybody did, thereby supplying him with the chance to triumphantly say that he'd be hanged if he'd ever heard of any one of them. I shall always console myself with the joyful thought that I couldn't remember his infernal name and would now make it a point never to do so.

Mr. Pless openly made love to Elsie and the Baron openly made love to Betty Billy. Being a sort of noncommittal bachelor, I ranged myself with the two abandoned husbands and we had quite a reckless time of it, talking with uninterrupted devilishness about the growth of American dentistry in European capitals, the way one has his nails manicured in Germany, the upset price of hot-house strawberries, the relative merit of French and English bulls, the continued progress of the weather and sundry other topics of similar piquancy. Elsie invited all of us to a welsh rarebit party she was giving at eleven-thirty, and then they got to work at the bridge table, poor George Hazzard cutting in occasionally. This left Billy Smith and me free to make up a somewhat somnolent two-some.

I was eager to steal away to the east wing with the news, but how to dispose of Billy without appearing rude was more than I could work out. It was absolutely necessary for the Countess to know that her ex-husband was in the castle. I would have to manage in some way to see her before the evening was over. The least carelessness, the smallest slip might prove the undoing of both of us.

I wondered how she would take the dismal news. Would she become hysterical and go all to pieces? Would the prospect of a week of propinquity be too much for her, even though thick walls intervened to put them into separate worlds? Or, worst of all, would she reveal an uncomfortable spirit of bravado, rashly casting discretion to the winds in order to show him that she was not the timid, beaten coward he might suspect her of being? She had once said to me that she loathed a coward. I have always wondered how it felt to be in a "pretty kettle of fish," or a "pickle," or any of the synonymous predicaments. Now I knew. Nothing could have been more synchronous than the plural howdy-do that confronted me.

My nervousness must have been outrageously p.r.o.nounced. Pacing the floor, looking at one's watch, sighing profoundly, putting one's hands in the pockets and taking them out again almost immediately, letting questions go by unanswered, and all such, are actions or conditions that usually produce the impression that one is nervous. A discerning observer seldom fails to note the symptoms.

Mr. Smith said to me at nine-sixteen (I know it was exactly nine-sixteen to the second) with polite conviction in his smile: "You seem to have something on your mind, old chap."

Now no one but a true diplomat recognises the psychological moment for calling an almost total stranger "old chap."