A Damsel in Distress Part 10

"Ah. You'd rather wait till you can do it a little more privately.

Perhaps you're right."

The butler smiled indulgently. He did not understand what Reggie was talking about, but that did not worry him. He had long since come to the conclusion that Reggie was slightly mad, a theory supported by the latter's valet, who was of the same opinion. Keggs did not dislike Reggie, but intellectually he considered him negligible.

"Send something to drink into the library, Keggs," said Lord Belpher.

"Very good, your lords.h.i.+p."

"A topping idea," said Reggie. "I'll just take the old car round to the garage, and then I'll be with you."

He climbed to the steering wheel, and started the engine. Lord Belpher proceeded to the library, while Keggs melted away through the green baize door at the end of the hail which divided the servants' quarters from the rest of the house.

Reggie had hardly driven a dozen yards when he perceived his stepmother and Lord Marshmoreton coming towards him from the direction of the rose-garden. He drew up to greet them.

"Hullo, mater. What ho, uncle! Back again at the old homestead, what?"

Beneath Lady Caroline's aristocratic front agitation seemed to lurk.

"Reggie, where is Percy?"

"Old Boots? I think he's gone to the library. I just decanted him out of the car."

Lady Caroline turned to her brother.

"Let us go to the library, John."

"All right. All right. All right," said Lord Marshmoreton irritably. Something appeared to have ruffled his calm.

Reggie drove on. As he was strolling back after putting the car away he met Maud.

"Hullo, Maud, dear old thing."

"Why, hullo, Reggie. I was expecting you back last night."

"Couldn't get back last night. Had to stick in town and rally round old Boots. Couldn't desert the old boy in his hour of trial."

Reggie chuckled amusedly. "'Hour of trial,' is rather good, what?

What I mean to say is, that's just what it was, don't you know."

"Why, what happened to Percy?"

"Do you mean to say you haven't heard? Of course not. It wouldn't have been in the morning papers. Why, Percy punched a policeman."

"Percy did what?"

"Slugged a slop. Most dramatic thing. Sloshed him in the midriff.

Absolutely. The cross marks the spot where the tragedy occurred."

Maud caught her breath. Somehow, though she could not trace the connection, she felt that this extraordinary happening must be linked up with her escapade. Then her sense of humour got the better of apprehension. Her eyes twinkled delightedly.

"You don't mean to say Percy did that?"

"Absolutely. The human tiger, and what not. Menace to Society and all that sort of thing. No holding him. For some unexplained reason the generous blood of the Belphers boiled over, and then--zing.

They jerked him off to Vine Street. Like the poem, don't you know.

'And poor old Percy walked between with gyves upon his wrists.' And this morning, bright and early, the beak parted him from ten quid.

You know, Maud, old thing, our duty stares us plainly in the eyeball. We've got to train old Boots down to a reasonable weight and spring him on the National Sporting Club. We've been letting a champion middleweight blush unseen under our very roof tree."

Maud hesitated a moment.

"I suppose you don't know," she asked carelessly, "why he did it? I mean, did he tell you anything?"

"Couldn't get a word out of him. Oysters garrulous and tombs chatty in comparison. Absolutely. All I know is that he popped one into the officer's waistband. What led up to it is more than I can tell you. How would it be to stagger to the library and join the post-mortem?"

"The post-mortem?"

"Well, I met the mater and his lords.h.i.+p on their way to the library, and it looked to me very much as if the mater must have got hold of an evening paper on her journey from town. When did she arrive?"

"Only a short while ago."

"Then that's what's happened. She would have bought an evening paper to read in the train. By Jove, I wonder if she got hold of the one that had the poem about it. One chappie was so carried away by the beauty of the episode that he treated it in verse. I think we ought to look in and see what's happening."

Maud hesitated again. But she was a girl of spirit. And she had an intuition that her best defence would be attack. Bluff was what was needed. Wide-eyed, innocent wonder ... After all, Percy couldn't be certain he had seen her in Piccadilly.

"All right."

"By the way, dear old girl," inquired Reggie, "did your little business come out satisfactorily? I forgot to ask."

"Not very. But it was awfully sweet of you to take me into town."

"How would it be," said Reggie nervously, "not to dwell too much on that part of it? What I mean to say is, for heaven's sake don't let the mater know I rallied round."

"Don't worry," said Maud with a laugh. "I'm not going to talk about the thing at all."

Lord Belpher, meanwhile, in the library, had begun with the aid of a whisky and soda to feel a little better. There was something about the library with its sombre half tones that soothed his bruised spirit. The room held something of the peace of a deserted city. The world, with its violent adventures and tall policemen, did not enter here. There was balm in those rows and rows of books which n.o.body ever read, those vast writing tables at which n.o.body ever wrote. From the broad mantel-piece the bust of some unnamed ancient looked down almost sympathetically. Something remotely resembling peace had begun to steal into Percy's soul, when it was expelled by the abrupt opening of the door and the entry of Lady Caroline Byng and his father. One glance at the face of the former was enough to tell Lord Belpher that she knew all.

He rose defensively.

"Let me explain."

Lady Caroline quivered with repressed emotion. This masterly woman had not lost control of herself, but her aristocratic calm had seldom been so severely tested. As Reggie had surmised, she had read the report of the proceedings in the evening paper in the train, and her world had been reeling ever since. Caesar, stabbed by Brutus, could scarcely have experienced a greater shock. The other members of her family had disappointed her often. She had become inured to the spectacle of her brother working in the garden in corduroy trousers and in other ways behaving in a manner beneath the dignity of an Earl of Marshmoreton. She had resigned herself to the innate flaw in the character of Maud which had allowed her to fall in love with a n.o.body whom she had met without an introduction. Even Reggie had exhibited at times democratic traits of which she thoroughly disapproved. But of her nephew Percy she had always been sure. He was solid rock. He, at least, she had always felt, would never do anything to injure the family prestige. And now, so to speak, "Lo, Ben Adhem's name led all the rest." In other words, Percy was the worst of the lot. Whatever indiscretions the rest had committed, at least they had never got the family into the comic columns of the evening papers. Lord Marshmoreton might wear corduroy trousers and refuse to entertain the County at garden parties and go to bed with a book when it was his duty to act as host at a formal ball; Maud might give her heart to an impossible person whom n.o.body had ever heard of; and Reggie might be seen at fas.h.i.+onable restaurants with pugilists; but at any rate evening paper poets had never written facetious verses about their exploits. This crowning degradation had been reserved for the hitherto blameless Percy, who, of all the young men of Lady Caroline's acquaintance, had till now appeared to have the most scrupulous sense of his position, the most rigid regard for the dignity of his great name. Yet, here he was, if the carefully considered reports in the daily press were to be believed, spending his time in the very spring-tide of his life running about London like a frenzied Hottentot, brutally a.s.saulting the police.

Lady Caroline felt as a bishop might feel if he suddenly discovered that some favourite curate had gone over to the wors.h.i.+p of Mumbo Jumbo.

"Explain?" she cried. "How can you explain? You--my nephew, the heir to the t.i.tle, behaving like a common rowdy in the streets of London ... your name in the papers ... "

"If you knew the circ.u.mstances."

"The circ.u.mstances? They are in the evening paper. They are in print."

"In verse," added Lord Marshmoreton. He chuckled amiably at the recollection. He was an easily amused man. "You ought to read it, my boy. Some of it was capital ..."