A Damsel in Distress Part 11

"John!"

"But deplorable, of course," added Lord Marshmoreton hastily. "Very deplorable." He endeavoured to regain his sister's esteem by a show of righteous indignation. "What do you mean by it, d.a.m.n it? You're my only son. I have watched you grow from child to boy, from boy to man, with tender solicitude. I have wanted to be proud of you. And all the time, dash it, you are prowling about London like a lion, seeking whom you may devour, terrorising the metropolis, putting harmless policemen in fear of their lives..."

"Will you listen to me for a moment?" shouted Percy. He began to speak rapidly, as one conscious of the necessity of saying his say while the saying was good. "The facts are these. I was walking along Piccadilly on my way to lunch at the club, when, near Burlington Arcade, I was amazed to see Maud."

Lady Caroline uttered an exclamation.

"Maud? But Maud was here."

"I can't understand it," went on Lord Marshmoreton, pursuing his remarks. Righteous indignation had, he felt, gone well. It might be judicious to continue in that vein, though privately he held the opinion that nothing in Percy's life so became him as this a.s.sault on the Force. Lord Marshmoreton, who in his time had committed all the follies of youth, had come to look on his blameless son as scarcely human. "It's not as if you were wild. You've never got into any sc.r.a.pes at Oxford. You've spent your time collecting old china and prayer rugs. You wear flannel next your skin ..."

"Will you please be quiet," said Lady Caroline impatiently. "Go on, Percy."

"Oh, very well," said Lord Marshmoreton. "I only spoke. I merely made a remark."

"You say you saw Maud in Piccadilly, Percy?"

"Precisely. I was on the point of putting it down to an extraordinary resemblance, when suddenly she got into a cab. Then I knew."

Lord Marshmoreton could not permit this to pa.s.s in silence. He was a fair-minded man.

"Why shouldn't the girl have got into a cab? Why must a girl walking along Piccadilly be my daughter Maud just because she got into a cab. London," he proceeded, warming to the argument and thrilled by the clearness and coherence of his reasoning, "is full of girls who take cabs."

"She didn't take a cab."

"You just said she did," said Lord Marshmoreton cleverly.

"I said she got into a cab. There was somebody else already in the cab. A man. Aunt Caroline, it was the man."

"Good gracious," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Lady Caroline, falling into a chair as if she had been hamstrung.

"I am absolutely convinced of it," proceeded Lord Belpher solemnly.

"His behaviour was enough to confirm my suspicions. The cab had stopped in a block of the traffic, and I went up and requested him in a perfectly civil manner to allow me to look at the lady who had just got in. He denied that there was a lady in the cab. And I had seen her jump in with my own eyes. Throughout the conversation he was leaning out of the window with the obvious intention of screening whoever was inside from my view. I followed him along Piccadilly in another cab, and tracked him to the Carlton. When I arrived there he was standing on the pavement outside. There were no signs of Maud. I demanded that he tell me her whereabouts..."

"That reminds me," said Lord Marshmoreton cheerfully, "of a story I read in one of the papers. I daresay it's old. Stop me if you've heard it. A woman says to the maid: 'Do you know anything of my husband's whereabouts?' And the maid replies--"

"Do be quiet," snapped Lady Caroline. "I should have thought that you would be interested in a matter affecting the vital welfare of your only daughter."

"I am. I am," said Lord Marshmoreton hastily. "The maid replied: 'They're at the wash.' Of course I am. Go on, Percy. Good G.o.d, boy, don't take all day telling us your story."

"At that moment the fool of a policeman came up and wanted to know what the matter was. I lost my head. I admit it freely. The policeman grasped my shoulder, and I struck him."

"Where?" asked Lord Marshmoreton, a stickler for detail.

"What does that matter?" demanded Lady Caroline. "You did quite right, Percy. These insolent jacks in office ought not to be allowed to manhandle people. Tell me, what this man was like?"

"Extremely ordinary-looking. In fact, all I can remember about him was that he was clean-shaven. I cannot understand how Maud could have come to lose her head over such a man. He seemed to me to have no attraction whatever," said Lord Belpher, a little unreasonably, for Apollo himself would hardly appear attractive when knocking one's best hat off.

"It must have been the same man."

"Precisely. If we wanted further proof, he was an American. You recollect that we heard that the man in Wales was American."

There was a portentous silence. Percy stared at the floor. Lady Caroline breathed deeply. Lord Marshmoreton, feeling that something was expected of him, said "Good Gad!" and gazed seriously at a stuffed owl on a bracket. Maud and Reggie Byng came in.

"What ho, what ho, what ho!" said Reggie breezily. He always believed in starting a conversation well, and putting people at their ease. "What ho! What ho!"

Maud braced herself for the encounter.

"Hullo, Percy, dear," she said, meeting her brother's accusing eye with the perfect composure that comes only from a thoroughly guilty conscience. "What's all this I hear about your being the Scourge of London? Reggie says that policemen dive down manholes when they see you coming."

The chill in the air would have daunted a less courageous girl.

Lady Caroline had risen, and was staring sternly. Percy was pulling the puffs of an overwrought soul. Lord Marshmoreton, whose thoughts had wandered off to the rose garden, pulled himself together and tried to look menacing. Maud went on without waiting for a reply.

She was all bubbling gaiety and insouciance, a charming picture of young English girlhood that nearly made her brother foam at the mouth.

"Father dear," she said, attaching herself affectionately to his b.u.t.tonhole, "I went round the links in eighty-three this morning.

I did the long hole in four. One under par, a thing I've never done before in my life." ("Bless my soul," said Lord Marshmoreton weakly, as, with an apprehensive eye on his sister, he patted his daughter's shoulder.) "First, I sent a screecher of a drive right down the middle of the fairway. Then I took my bra.s.sey and put the ball just on the edge of the green. A hundred and eighty yards if it was an inch. My approach putt--"

Lady Caroline, who was no devotee of the royal and ancient game, interrupted the recital.

"Never mind what you did this morning. What did you do yesterday afternoon?"

"Yes," said Lord Belpher. "Where were you yesterday afternoon?"

Maud's gaze was the gaze of a young child who has never even attempted to put anything over in all its little life.

"Whatever do you mean?"

"What were you doing in Piccadilly yesterday afternoon?" said Lady Caroline.

"Piccadilly? The place where Percy fights policemen? I don't understand."

Lady Caroline was no sportsman. She put one of those direct questions, capable of being answered only by "Yes" or "No", which ought not to be allowed in controversy. They are the verbal equivalent of shooting a sitting bird.

"Did you or did you not go to London yesterday, Maud?"

The monstrous unfairness of this method of attack pained Maud. From childhood up she had held the customary feminine views upon the Lie Direct. As long as it was a question of suppression of the true or suggestion of the false she had no scruples. But she had a distaste for deliberate falsehood. Faced now with a choice between two evils, she chose the one which would at least leave her self-respect.

"Yes, I did."

Lady Caroline looked at Lord Belpher. Lord Belpher looked at Lady Caroline.

"You went to meet that American of yours?"

Reggie Byng slid softly from the room. He felt that he would be happier elsewhere. He had been an acutely embarra.s.sed spectator of this distressing scene, and had been pa.s.sing the time by shuffling his feet, playing with his coat b.u.t.tons and perspiring.

"Don't go, Reggie," said Lord Belpher.

"Well, what I mean to say is--family row and what not--if you see what I mean--I've one or two things I ought to do--"