Indiscretions of Archie by P. G. Wodehouse (page 3)

eighty-three degrees Fahrenheit hotter than it looked. In the intermission caused by this disaster his agile mind skipped a few chapters of the story, and, when he was able to speak again, he said, “So then there was a lot of trouble. Everything broke loose!”

“Why?” Archie was puzzled. “Did the management object to her bringing the dog to rehearsal?”

“A lot of good that would have done! She does what she likes in the theatre.”

“Then why was there trouble?”

“You weren’t listening,” said Mr. Benham, reproachfully. “I told you. This dog came snuffling up to where I was sitting–it was quite dark in the body of the theatre, you know–and I got up to say something about something that was happening on the stage, and somehow I must have given it a push with my foot.”

“I see,” said Archie, beginning to get the run of the plot. “You kicked her dog.”

“Pushed it. Accidentally. With my foot.”

“I understand. And when you brought off this kick–“

“Push,” said Mr. Benham, austerely.

“This kick or push. When you administered this kick or push–“

“It was more a sort of light shove.”

“Well, when you did whatever you did, the trouble started?”

Mr. Benham gave a slight shiver.

“She talked for a while, and then walked out, taking the dog with her. You see, this wasn’t the first time it had happened.”

“Good Lord! Do you spend your whole time doing that sort of thing?”

“It wasn’t me the first time. It was the stage-manager. He didn’t know whose dog it was, and it came waddling on to the stage, and he gave it a sort of pat, a kind of flick–“

“A slosh?”

“NOT a slosh,” corrected Mr. Benham, firmly. “You might call it a tap–with the promptscript. Well, we had a lot of difficulty smoothing her over that time. Still, we managed to do it, but she said that if anything of the sort occurred again she would chuck up her part.”

“She must be fond of the dog,” said Archie, for the first time feeling a touch of goodwill and sympathy towards the lady.

“She’s crazy about, it. That’s what made it so awkward when I happened–quite inadvertently–to give it this sort of accidental shove. Well, we spent the rest of the day trying to get her on the ‘phone at her apartment, and finally we heard that she had come here. So I took the next train, and tried to persuade her to come back. She wouldn’t listen. And that’s how matters stand.”

“Pretty rotten!” said Archie, sympathetically.

“You can bet it’s pretty rotten–for me. There’s nobody else who can play the part. Like a chump, I wrote the thing specially for her. It means the play won’t be produced at all, if she doesn’t do it. So you’re my last hope!”

Archie, who was lighting a cigarette, nearly swallowed it.

“_I_ am?”

“I thought you might persuade her. Point out to her what a lot hangs on her coming back. Jolly her along, YOU know the sort of thing!”

“But, my dear old friend, I tell you I don’t know her!”

Mr. Benham’s eyes opened behind their zareba of glass.

“Well, she knows YOU. When you came through the lobby just now she said that you were the only real human being she had ever met.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I did take a fly out of her eye. But–“

“You did? Well, then, the whole thing’s simple. All you have to do is to ask her how her eye is, and tell her she has the most beautiful eyes you ever saw, and coo a bit.”

“But, my dear old son!” The frightful programme which his friend had mapped out stunned Archie. “I simply can’t! Anything to oblige and all that sort of thing, but when it comes to cooing, distinctly Napoo!”

“Nonsense! It isn’t hard to coo.”

“You don’t understand, laddie. You’re not a married man. I mean to say, whatever you say for or against marriage–personally I’m all for it and consider it a ripe egg–the fact remains that it practically makes a chappie a spent force as a cooer. I don’t want to dish you in any way, old bean, but I must firmly and resolutely decline to coo.”

Mr. Benham rose and looked at his watch.

“I’ll have to be moving,” he said. “I’ve got to get back to New York and report. I’ll tell them that I haven’t been able to do anything myself, but that I’ve left the matter in good hands. I know you will do your best.”

“But, laddie!”

“Think,” said Mr. Benham, solemnly, “of all that depends on it! The other actors! The small-part people thrown out of a job! Myself–but no! Perhaps you had better touch very lightly or not at all on my connection with the thing. Well, you know how to handle it. I feel I can leave it to you. Pitch it strong! Good-bye, my dear old man, and a thousand thanks. I’ll do the same for you another time.” He moved towards the door, leaving Archie transfixed. Half-way there he turned and came back. “Oh, by the way,” he said, “my lunch. Have it put on your bill, will you? I haven’t time to stay and settle. Good- bye! Good-bye!”

CHAPTER XIII

RALLYING ROUND PERCY

It amazed Archie through the whole of a long afternoon to reflect how swiftly and unexpectedly the blue and brilliant sky of life can cloud over and with what abruptness a man who fancies that his feet are on solid ground can find himself immersed in Fate’s gumbo. He recalled, with the bitterness with which one does recall such things, that that morning he had risen from his bed without a care in the world, his happiness unruffled even by the thought that Lucille would be leaving him for a short space. He had sung in his bath. Yes, he had chirruped like a bally linnet. And now–

Some men would have dismissed the unfortunate affairs of Mr. George Benham from their mind as having nothing to do with themselves, but Archie had never been made of this stern stuff. The fact that Mr. Benham, apart from being an agreeable companion with whom he had lunched occasionally in New York, had no claims upon him affected him little. He hated to see his fellowman in trouble. On the other hand, what could he do? To seek Miss Silverton out and plead with her–even if he did it without cooing–would undoubtedly establish an intimacy between them which, instinct told him, might tinge her manner after Lucille’s return with just that suggestion of Auld Lang Syne which makes things so awkward.

His whole being shrank from extending to Miss Silverton that inch which the female artistic temperament is so apt to turn into an ell; and when, just as he was about to go in to dinner, he met her in the lobby and she smiled brightly at him and informed him that her eye was now completely recovered, he shied away like a startled mustang of the prairie, and, abandoning his intention of worrying the table d’hote in the same room with the amiable creature, tottered off to the smoking-room, where he did the best he could with sandwiches and coffee.

Having got through the time as best he could till eleven o’clock, he went up to bed.

The room to which he and Lucille had been assigned by the management was on the second floor, pleasantly sunny by day and at night filled with cool and heartening fragrance of the pines. Hitherto Archie had always enjoyed taking a final smoke on the balcony overlooking the woods, but, to-night such was his mental stress that he prepared to go to bed directly he had closed the door. He turned to the cupboard to get his pyjamas.

His first thought, when even after a second scrutiny no pyjamas were visible, was that this was merely another of those things which happen on days when life goes wrong. He raked the cupboard for a third time with an annoyed eye. From every hook hung various garments of Lucille’s, but no pyjamas. He was breathing a soft malediction preparatory to embarking on a point-to-point hunt for his missing property, when something in the cupboard caught his eye and held him for a moment puzzled.

He could have sworn that Lucille did not possess a mauve neglige. Why, she had told him a dozen times that mauve was a colour which she did not like. He frowned perplexedly; and as he did so, from near the window came a soft cough.

Archie spun round and subjected the room to as close a scrutiny as that which he had bestowed upon the cupboard. Nothing was visible. The window opening on to the balcony gaped wide. The balcony was manifestly empty.

“URRF!”

This time there was no possibility of error. The cough had come from the immediate neighbourhood of the window.

Archie was conscious of a pringly sensation about the roots of his closely-cropped back-hair, as he moved cautiously across the room. The affair was becoming uncanny; and, as he tip-toed towards the window, old ghost stories, read in lighter moments before cheerful fires with plenty of light in the room, flitted through his mind. He had the feeling–precisely as every chappie in those stories had had–that he was not alone.

Nor was he. In a basket behind an arm-chair, curled up, with his massive chin resting on the edge of the wicker-work, lay a fine bulldog.

“Urrf!” said the bulldog.

“Good God!” said Archie.

There was a lengthy pause in which the bulldog looked earnestly at Archie and Archie looked earnestly at the bulldog.

Normally, Archie was a dog-lover. His hurry was never so great as to prevent him stopping, when in the street, and introducing himself to any dog he met. In a strange house, his first act was to assemble the canine population, roll it on its back or backs, and punch it in the ribs. As a boy, his earliest ambition had been to become a veterinary surgeon; and, though the years had cheated him of his career, he knew all about dogs, their points, their manners, their customs, and their treatment in sickness and in health. In short, he loved dogs, and, had they met under happier conditions, he would undoubtedly have been on excellent terms with this one within the space of a minute. But, as things were, he abstained from fraternising and continued to goggle dumbly.

And then his eye, wandering aside, collided with the following objects: a fluffy pink dressing-gown, hung over the back of a chair, an entirely strange suit-case, and, on the bureau, a photograph in a silver frame of a stout gentleman in evening-dress whom he had never seen before in his life.

Much has been written of the emotions of the wanderer who, returning to his childhood home, finds it altered out of all recognition; but poets have neglected the theme–far more poignant–of the man who goes up to his room in an hotel and finds it full of somebody else’s dressing-gowns and bulldogs.

Bulldogs! Archie’s heart jumped sideways and upwards with a wiggling movement, turning two somersaults, and stopped beating. The hideous truth, working its way slowly through the concrete, had at last penetrated to his brain. He was not only in somebody else’s room, and a woman’s at that. He was in the room belonging to Miss Vera Silverton.

He could not understand it. He would have been prepared to stake the last cent he could borrow from his father-in-law on the fact that he had made no error in the number over the door. Yet, nevertheless, such was the case, and, below par though his faculties were at the moment, he was sufficiently alert to perceive that it behoved him to withdraw.

He leaped to the door, and, as he did so, the handle began to turn.

The cloud which had settled on Archie’s mind lifted abruptly. For an instant he was enabled to think about a hundred times more quickly than was his leisurely wont. Good fortune had brought him to within easy reach of the electric-light switch. He snapped it back, and was in darkness. Then, diving silently and swiftly to the floor, he wriggled under the bed. The thud of his head against what appeared to be some sort of joist or support, unless it had been placed there by the maker as a practical joke, on the chance of this kind of thing happening some day, coincided with the creak of the opening door. Then the light was switched on again, and the bulldog in the corner gave a welcoming woofle.

“And how is mamma’s precious angel?”

Rightly concluding that the remark had not been addressed to himself and that no social obligation demanded that he reply, Archie pressed his cheek against the boards and said nothing. The question was not repeated, but from the other side of the room came the sound of a patted dog.

“Did he think his muzzer had fallen down dead and was never coming up?”

The beautiful picture which these words conjured up filled Archie with that yearning for the might-have-been which is always so painful. He was finding his position physically as well as mentally distressing. It was cramped under the bed, and the boards were harder than anything he had ever encountered. Also, it appeared to be the practice of the housemaids at the Hotel Hermitage to use the space below the beds as a depository for all the dust which they swept off the carpet, and much of this was insinuating itself into his nose and mouth. The two things which Archie would have liked most to do at that moment were first to kill Miss Silverton–if possible, painfully–and then to spend the remainder of his life sneezing.

After a prolonged period he heard a drawer open, and noted the fact as promising. As the old married man, he presumed that it signified the putting away of hair-pins. About now the dashed woman would be looking at herself in the glass with her hair down. Then she would brush it. Then she would twiddle it up into thingummies. Say, ten minutes for this. And after that she would go to bed and turn out the light, and he would be able, after giving her a bit of time to go to sleep, to creep out and leg it. Allowing at a conservative estimate three-quarters of–

“Come out!”

Archie stiffened. For an instant a feeble hope came to him that this remark, like the others, might be addressed to the dog.

“Come out from under that bed!” said a stern voice. “And mind how you come! I’ve got a pistol!”

“Well, I mean to say, you know,” said Archie, in a propitiatory voice, emerging from his lair like a tortoise and smiling as winningly as a man can who has just bumped his head against the leg of a bed, “I suppose all this seems fairly rummy, but–“

“For the love of Mike!” said Miss Silverton.

The point seemed to Archie well taken and the comment on the situation neatly expressed.

“What are you doing in my room?”

“Well, if it comes to that, you know–shouldn’t have mentioned it if you hadn’t brought the subject up in the course of general chit- chat–what are you doing in mine?”

“Yours?”

“Well, apparently there’s been a bloomer of some species somewhere, but this was the room I had last night,” said Archie.

“But the desk-clerk said that he had asked you if it would be quite satisfactory to you giving it up to me, and you said yes. I come here every summer, when I’m not working, and I always have this room.”

“By Jove! I remember now. The chappie did say something to me about the room, but I was thinking of something else and it rather went over the top. So that’s what he was talking about, was it?”

Miss Silverton was frowning. A moving-picture director, scanning her face, would have perceived that she was registering disappointment.

“Nothing breaks right for me in this darned world,” she said, regretfully. “When I caught sight of your leg sticking out from under the bed, I did think that everything was all lined up for a real find ad. at last. I could close my eyes and see the thing in the papers. On the front page, with photographs: ‘Plucky Actress Captures Burglar.’ Darn it!”

“Fearfully sorry, you know!”

“I just needed something like that. I’ve got a Press-agent, and I will say for him that he eats well and sleeps well and has just enough intelligence to cash his monthly cheque without forgetting what he went into the bank for, but outside of that you can take it from me he’s not one of the world’s workers! He’s about as much solid use to a girl with aspirations as a pain in the lower ribs. It’s three weeks since he got me into print at all, and then the brightest thing he could thing up was that my favourite breakfast- fruit was an apple. Well, I ask you!”

“Rotten!” said Archie.

“I did think that for once my guardian angel had gone back to work and was doing something for me. ‘Stage Star and Midnight Marauder,’ ” murmured Miss Silverton, wistfully. “‘Footlight Favourite Foils Felon.'”

“Bit thick!” agreed Archie, sympathetically. “Well, you’ll probably be wanting to get to bed and all that sort of rot, so I may as well be popping, what! Cheerio!”

A sudden gleam came into Miss Silverton’s compelling eyes.

“Wait!”

“Eh?”

“Wait! I’ve got an idea!” The wistful sadness had gone from her manner. She was bright and alert. “Sit down!”

“Sit down?”

“Sure. Sit down and take the chill off the arm-chair. I’ve thought of something.”

Archie sat down as directed. At his elbow the bulldog eyed him gravely from the basket.

“Do they know you in this hotel?”

“Know me? Well, I’ve been here about a week.”

“I mean, do they know who you are? Do they know you’re a good citizen?”

“Well, if it comes to that, I suppose they don’t. But–“

“Fine!” said Miss Silverton, appreciatively. “Then it’s all right. We can carry on!”

“Carry on!”

“Why, sure! All I want is to get the thing into the papers. It doesn’t matter to me if it turns out later that there was a mistake and that you weren’t a burglar trying for my jewels after all. It makes just as good a story either way. I can’t think why that never struck me before. Here have I been kicking because you weren’t a real burglar, when it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans whether you are or not. All I’ve got to do is to rush out and yell and rouse the hotel, and they come in and pinch you, and I give the story to the papers, and everything’s fine!”

Archie leaped from his chair.

“I say! What!”

“What’s on your mind?” enquired Miss Silverton, considerately. “Don’t you think it’s a nifty scheme?”

“Nifty! My dear old soul! It’s frightful!”

“Can’t see what’s wrong with it,” grumbled Miss Silverton. “After I’ve had someone get New York on the long-distance ‘phone and give the story to the papers you can explain, and they’ll let you out. Surely to goodness you don’t object, as a personal favour to me, to spending an hour or two in a cell? Why, probably they haven’t got a prison at all out in these parts, and you’ll simply be locked in a room. A child of ten could do it on his head,” said Miss Silverton. “A child of six,” she emended.

“But, dash it–I mean–what I mean to say–I’m married!”

“Yes?” said Miss Silverton, with the politeness of faint interest. “I’ve been married myself. I wouldn’t say it’s altogether a bad thing, mind you, for those that like it, but a little of it goes a long way. My first husband,” she proceeded, reminiscently, “was a travelling man. I gave him a two-weeks’ try-out, and then I told him to go on travelling. My second husband–now, HE wasn’t a gentleman in any sense of the word. I remember once–“

“You don’t grasp the point. The jolly old point! You fail to grasp it. If this bally thing comes out, my wife will be most frightfully sick!”

Miss Silverton regarded him with pained surprise.

“Do you mean to say you would let a little thing like that stand in the way of my getting on the front page of all the papers–WITH photographs? Where’s your chivalry?”

“Never mind my dashed chivalry!”

“Besides, what does it matter if she does get a little sore? She’ll soon get over it. You can put that right. Buy her a box of candy. Not that I’m strong for candy myself. What I always say is, it may taste good, but look what it does to your hips! I give you my honest word that, when I gave up eating candy, I lost eleven ounces the first week. My second husband–no, I’m a liar, it was my third–my third husband said–Say, what’s the big idea? Where are you going?”

“Out!” said Archie, firmly. “Bally out!”

A dangerous light flickered in Miss Silverton’s eyes.

“That’ll be all of that!” she said, raising the pistol. “You stay right where you are, or I’ll fire!”

“Right-o!”

“I mean it!”

“My dear old soul,” said Archie, “in the recent unpleasantness in France I had chappies popping off things like that at me all day and every day for close on five years, and here I am, what! I mean to say, if I’ve got to choose between staying here and being pinched in your room by the local constabulary and having the dashed thing get into the papers and all sorts of trouble happening, and my wife getting the wind up and–I say, if I’ve got to choose–“

“Suck a lozenge and start again!” said Miss Silverton.

“Well, what I mean to say is, I’d much rather take a chance of getting a bullet in the old bean than that. So loose it off and the best o’ luck!”

Miss Silverton lowered the pistol, sank into a chair, and burst into tears.

“I think you’re the meanest man I ever met!” she sobbed. “You know perfectly well the bang would send me into a fit!”

“In that case,” said Archie, relieved, “cheerio, good luck, pip-pip, toodle-oo, and good-bye-ee! I’ll be shifting!”

“Yes, you will!” cried Miss Silverton, energetically, recovering with amazing swiftness from her collapse. “Yes, you will, I by no means suppose! You think, just because I’m no champion with a pistol, I’m helpless. You wait! Percy!”

“My name is not Percy.”

“I never said it was. Percy! Percy, come to muzzer!”

There was a creaking rustle from behind the arm-chair. A heavy body flopped on the carpet. Out into the room, heaving himself along as though sleep had stiffened his joints, and breathing stertorously through his tilted nose, moved the fine bulldog. Seen in the open, he looked even more formidable than he had done in his basket.

“Guard him, Percy! Good dog, guard him! Oh, heavens! What’s the matter with him?”

And with these words the emotional woman, uttering a wail of anguish, flung herself on the floor beside the animal.

Percy was, indeed, in manifestly bad shape. He seemed quite unable to drag his limbs across the room. There was a curious arch in his back, and, as his mistress touched him, he cried out plaintively,

“Percy! Oh, what IS the matter with him? His nose is burning!”

Now was the time, with both sections of the enemy’s forces occupied, for Archie to have departed softly from the room. But never, since the day when at the age of eleven he had carried a large, damp, and muddy terrier with a sore foot three miles and deposited him on the best sofa in his mother’s drawing-room, had he been able to ignore the spectacle of a dog in trouble.

“He does look bad, what!”

“He’s dying! Oh, he’s dying! Is it distemper? He’s never had distemper.”

Archie regarded the sufferer with the grave eye of the expert. He shook his head.

“It’s not that,” he said. “Dogs with distemper make a sort of snifting noise.”

“But he IS making a snifting noise!”

“No, he’s making a snuffling noise. Great difference between snuffling and snifting. Not the same thing at all. I mean to say, when they snift they snift, and when they snuffle they–as it were– snuffle. That’s how you can tell. If you ask ME”–he passed his hand over the dog’s back. Percy uttered another cry. “I know what’s the matter with him.”

“A brute of a man kicked him at rehearsal. Do you think he’s injured internally?”

“It’s rheumatism,” said Archie. “Jolly old rheumatism. That’s all that’s the trouble.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely!”

“But what can I do?”

“Give him a good hot bath, and mind and dry him well. He’ll have a good sleep then, and won’t have any pain. Then, first thing to- morrow, you want to give him salicylate of soda.”

“I’ll never remember that.”-“I’ll write it down for you. You ought to give him from ten to twenty grains three times a day in an ounce of water. And rub him with any good embrocation.”

“And he won’t die?”

“Die! He’ll live to be as old as you are!-I mean to say–“

“I could kiss you!” said Miss Silverton, emotionally.

Archie backed hastily.

“No, no, absolutely not! Nothing like that required, really!”

“You’re a darling!”

“Yes. I mean no. No, no, really!”

“I don’t know what to say. What can I say?”

“Good night,” said Archie.

“I wish there was something I could do! If you hadn’t been here, I should have gone off my head!”

A great idea flashed across Archie’s brain.

“Do you really want to do something?”

“Anything!”

“Then I do wish, like a dear sweet soul, you would pop straight back to New York to-morrow and go on with those rehearsals.”

Miss Silverton shook her head.

“I can’t do that!”

“Oh, right-o! But it isn’t much to ask, what!”

“Not much to ask! I’ll never forgive that man for kicking Percy!”

“Now listen, dear old soul. You’ve got the story all wrong. As a matter of fact, jolly old Benham told me himself that he has the greatest esteem and respect for Percy, and wouldn’t have kicked him for the world. And, you know it was more a sort of push than a kick. You might almost call it a light shove. The fact is, it was beastly dark in the theatre, and he was legging it sideways for some reason or other, no doubt with the best motives, and unfortunately he happened to stub his toe on the poor old bean.”

“Then why didn’t he say so?”

“As far as I could make out, you didn’t give him a chance.”

Miss Silverton wavered.

“I always hate going back after I’ve walked out on a show,” she said. “It seems so weak!”

“Not a bit of it! They’ll give three hearty cheers and think you a topper. Besides, you’ve got to go to New York in any case. To take Percy to a vet., you know, what!”

“Of course. How right you always are!” Miss Silverton hesitated again. “Would you really be glad if I went back to the show?”

“I’d go singing about the hotel! Great pal of mine, Benham. A thoroughly cheery old bean, and very cut up about the whole affair. Besides, think of all the coves thrown out of work–the thingummabobs and the poor what-d’you-call-’ems!”

“Very well.”

“You’ll do it?”

“Yes.”

“I say, you really are one of the best! Absolutely like mother made! That’s fine! Well, I think I’ll be saying good night.”

“Good night. And thank you so much!”

“Oh, no, rather not!”

Archie moved to the door.

“Oh, by the way.”

“Yes?”

“If I were you, I think I should catch the very first train you can get to New York. You see–er–you ought to take Percy to the vet. as soon as ever you can.”

“You really do think of everything,” said Miss Silverton.

“Yes,” said Archie, meditatively.

CHAPTER XIV

THE SAD CASE OF LOONEY BIDDLE

Archie was a simple soul, and, as is the case with most simple souls, gratitude came easily to him. He appreciated kind treatment. And when, on the following day, Lucille returned to the Hermitage, all smiles and affection, and made no further reference to Beauty’s Eyes and the flies that got into them, he was conscious of a keen desire to show some solid recognition of this magnanimity. Few wives, he was aware, could have had the nobility and what not to refrain from occasionally turning the conversation in the direction of the above-mentioned topics. It had not needed this behaviour on her part to convince him that Lucille was a topper and a corker and one of the very best, for he had been cognisant of these facts since the first moment he had met her: but what he did feel was that she deserved to be rewarded in no uncertain manner. And it seemed a happy coincidence to him that her birthday should be coming along in the next week or so. Surely, felt Archie, he could whack up some sort of a not unjuicy gift for that occasion–something pretty ripe that would make a substantial hit with the dear girl. Surely something would come along to relieve his chronic impecuniosity for just sufficient length of time to enable him to spread himself on this great occasion.

And, as if in direct answer to prayer, an almost forgotten aunt in England suddenly, out of an absolutely blue sky, shot no less a sum than five hundred dollars across the ocean. The present was so lavish and unexpected that Archie had the awed feeling of one who participates in a miracle. He felt, like Herbert Parker, that the righteous was not forsaken. It was the sort of thing that restored a fellow’s faith in human nature. For nearly a week he went about in a happy trance: and when, by thrift and enterprise–that is to say, by betting Reggie van Tuyl that the New York Giants would win the opening game of the series against the Pittsburg baseball team–he contrived to double his capital, what it amounted to was simply that life had nothing more to offer. He was actually in a position to go to a thousand dollars for Lucille’s birthday present. He gathered in Mr. van Tuyl, of whose taste in these matters he had a high opinion, and dragged him off to a jeweller’s on Broadway.

The jeweller, a stout, comfortable man, leaned on the counter and fingered lovingly the bracelet which he had lifted out of its nest of blue plush. Archie, leaning on the other side of the counter, inspected the bracelet searchingly, wishing that he knew more about these things; for he had rather a sort of idea that the merchant was scheming to do him in the eyeball. In a chair by his side, Reggie van Tuyl, half asleep as usual, yawned despondently. He had permitted Archie to lug him into this shop; and he wanted to buy something and go. Any form of sustained concentration fatigued Reggie.

“Now this,” said the jeweller, “I could do at eight hundred and fifty dollars.”

“Grab it!” murmured Mr. van Tuyl.

The jeweller eyed him approvingly, a man after his own heart; but Archie looked doubtful. It was all very well for Reggie to tell him to grab it in that careless way. Reggie was a dashed millionaire, and no doubt bought bracelets by the pound or the gross or what not; but he himself was in an entirely different position.

“Eight hundred and fifty dollars!” he said, hesitating.

“Worth it,” mumbled Reggie van Tuyl.

“More than worth it,” amended the jeweller. “I can assure you that it is better value than you could get anywhere on Fifth Avenue.”

“Yes?” said Archie. He took the bracelet and twiddled it thoughtfully. “Well, my dear old jeweller, one can’t say fairer than that, can one–or two, as the case may be!” He frowned. “Oh, well, all right! But it’s rummy that women are so fearfully keen on these little thingummies, isn’t it? I mean to say, can’t see what they see in them. Stones, and all that. Still, there, it is, of course!”

“There,” said the jeweller, “as you say, it is, sir.”

“Yes, there it is!”

“Yes, there it is,” said the jeweller, “fortunately for people in my line of business. Will you take it with you, sir?”

Archie reflected.

“No. No, not take it with me. The fact is, you know, my wife’s coming back from the country to-night, and it’s her birthday to- morrow, and the thing’s for her, and, if it was popping about the place to-night, she might see it, and it would sort of spoil the surprise. I mean to say, she doesn’t know I’m giving it her, and all that!”

“Besides,” said Reggie, achieving a certain animation now that the tedious business interview was concluded, “going to the ball-game this afternoon–might get pocket picked–yes, better have it sent.”

“Where shall I send it, sir?”

“Eh? Oh, shoot it along to Mrs. Archibald Moffam, at the Cosmopolis. Not to-day, you know. Buzz it in first thing to-morrow.”

Having completed the satisfactory deal, the jeweller threw off the business manner and became chatty.

“So you are going to the ball-game? It should be an interesting contest.”

Reggie van Tuyl, now–by his own standards–completely awake, took exception to this remark.

“Not a bit of it!” he said, decidedly. “No contest! Can’t call it a contest! Walkover for the Pirates!”

Archie was stung to the quick. There is that about baseball which arouses enthusiasm and the partisan spirit in the unlikeliest bosoms. It is almost impossible for a man to live in America and not become gripped by the game; and Archie had long been one of its warmest adherents. He was a whole-hearted supporter of the Giants, and his only grievance against Reggie, in other respects an estimable young man, was that the latter, whose money had been inherited from steel-mills in that city, had an absurd regard for the Pirates of Pittsburg.

“What absolute bally rot!” he exclaimed. “Look what the Giants did to them yesterday!”

“Yesterday isn’t to-day,” said Reggie.

“No, it’ll be a jolly sight worse,” said Archie. “Looney Biddle’ll be pitching for the Giants to-day.”

“That’s just what I mean. The Pirates have got him rattled. Look what happened last time.”

Archie understood, and his generous nature chafed at the innuendo. Looney Biddle–so-called by an affectionately admiring public as the result of certain marked eccentricities–was beyond dispute the greatest left-handed pitcher New York had possessed in the last decade. But there was one blot on Mr. Biddle’s otherwise stainless scutcheon. Five weeks before, on the occasion of the Giants’ invasion of Pittsburg, he had gone mysteriously to pieces. Few native-born partisans, brought up to baseball from the cradle, had been plunged into a profounder gloom on that occasion than Archie; but his soul revolted at the thought that that sort of thing could ever happen again.

“I’m not saying,” continued Reggie, “that Biddle isn’t a very fair pitcher, but it’s cruel to send him against the Pirates, and somebody ought to stop it. His best friends should interfere. Once a team gets a pitcher rattled, he’s never any good against them again. He loses his nerve.”

The jeweller nodded approval of this sentiment.

“They never come back,” he said, sententiously.

The fighting blood of the Moffams was now thoroughly stirred. Archie eyed his friend sternly. Reggie was a good chap–in many respects an extremely sound egg–but he must not be allowed to talk rot of this description about the greatest left-handed pitcher of the age.

“It seems to me, old companion,” he said, “that a small bet is indicated at this juncture. How about it?”

“Don’t want to take your money.”

“You won’t have to! In the cool twilight of the merry old summer evening I, friend of my youth and companion of my riper years, shall be trousering yours.”

Reggie yawned. The day was very hot, and this argument was making him feel sleepy again.

“Well, just as you like, of course. Double or quits on yesterday’s bet, if that suits you.”

For a moment Archie hesitated. Firm as his faith was in Mr. Biddle’s stout left arm, he had not intended to do the thing on quite this scale. That thousand dollars of his was earmarked for Lucille’s birthday present, and he doubted whether he ought to risk it. Then the thought that the honour of New York was in his hands decided him. Besides, the risk was negligible. Betting on Looney Biddle was like betting on the probable rise of the sun in the east. The thing began to seem to Archie a rather unusually sound and conservative investment. He remembered that the jeweller, until he drew him firmly but kindly to earth and urged him to curb his exuberance and talk business on a reasonable plane, had started brandishing bracelets that cost about two thousand. There would be time to pop in at the shop this evening after the game and change the one he had selected for one of those. Nothing was too good for Lucille on her birthday.

“Right-o!” he said. “Make it so, old friend!”

Archie walked back to the Cosmopolis. No misgivings came to mar his perfect contentment. He felt no qualms about separating Reggie from another thousand dollars. Except for a little small change in the possession of the Messrs. Rockefeller and Vincent Astor, Reggie had all the money in the world and could afford to lose. He hummed a gay air as he entered the lobby and crossed to the cigar-stand to buy a few cigarettes to see him through the afternoon.

The girl behind the cigar counter welcomed him with a bright smile. Archie was popular with all the employes of the Cosmopolis.

“‘S a great day, Mr. Moffam!”

“One of the brightest and best,” Agreed Archie. “Could you dig me out two, or possibly three, cigarettes of the usual description? I shall want something to smoke at the ball-game.”

“You going to the ball-game?”

“Rather! Wouldn’t miss it for a fortune.”

“No?”

“Absolutely no! Not with jolly old Biddle pitching.”

The cigar-stand girl laughed amusedly.

“Is he pitching this afternoon? Say, that feller’s a nut? D’you know him?”

“Know him? Well, I’ve seen him pitch and so forth.”

“I’ve got a girl friend who’s engaged to him!”

Archie looked at her with positive respect. It would have been more dramatic, of course, if she had been engaged to the great man herself, but still the mere fact that she had a girl friend in that astounding position gave her a sort of halo.

“No, really!” he said. “I say, by Jove, really! Fancy that!”

“Yes, she’s engaged to him all right. Been engaged close on a coupla months now.”

“I say! That’s frightfully interesting! Fearfully interesting, really!”

“It’s funny about that guy,” said the cigar-stand girl. “He’s a nut! The fellow who said there’s plenty of room at the top must have been thinking of Gus Biddle’s head! He’s crazy about m’ girl friend, y’ know, and, whenever they have a fuss, it seems like he sort of flies right off the handle.”

“Goes in off the deep end, eh?”

“Yes, SIR! Loses what little sense he’s got. Why, the last time him and m’ girl friend got to scrapping was when he was going on to Pittsburg to play, about a month ago. He’d been out with her the day he left for there, and he had a grouch or something, and he started making low, sneaky cracks about her Uncle Sigsbee. Well, m’ girl friend’s got a nice disposition, but she c’n get mad, and she just left him flat and told him all was over. And he went off to Pittsburg, and, when he started in to pitch the opening game, he just couldn’t keep his mind on his job, and look what them assassins done to him! Five runs in the first innings! Yessir, he’s a nut all right!”

Archie was deeply concerned. So this was the explanation of that mysterious disaster, that weird tragedy which had puzzled the sporting press from coast to coast.

“Good God! Is he often taken like that?”

“Oh, he’s all right when he hasn’t had a fuss with m’ girl friend,” said the cigar-stand girl, indifferently. Her interest in baseball was tepid. Women are too often like this–mere butterflies, with no concern for the deeper side of life.

“Yes, but I say! What I mean to say, you know! Are they pretty pally now? The good old Dove of Peace flapping its little wings fairly briskly and all that?”

“Oh, I guess everything’s nice and smooth just now. I seen m’ girl friend yesterday, and Gus was taking her to the movies last night, so I guess everything’s nice and smooth.”

Archie breathed a sigh of relief.

“Took her to the movies, did he? Stout fellow!”

“I was at the funniest picture last week,” said the cigar-stand girl. “Honest, it was a scream! It was like this–“

Archie listened politely; then went in to get a bite of lunch. His equanimity, shaken by the discovery of the rift in the peerless one’s armour, was restored. Good old Biddle had taken the girl to the movies last night. Probably he had squeezed her hand a goodish bit in the dark. With what result? Why, the fellow would be feeling like one of those chappies who used to joust for the smiles of females in the Middle Ages. What he meant to say, presumably the girl would be at the game this afternoon, whooping him on, and good old Biddle would be so full of beans and buck that there would be no holding him.

Encouraged by these thoughts, Archie lunched with an untroubled mind. Luncheon concluded, he proceeded to the lobby to buy back his hat and stick from the boy brigand with whom he had left them. It was while he was conducting this financial operation that he observed that at the cigar-stand, which adjoined the coat-and-hat alcove, his friend behind the counter had become engaged in conversation with another girl.

This was a determined looking young woman in a blue dress and a large hat of a bold and flowery species, Archie happening to attract her attention, she gave him a glance out of a pair of fine brown eyes, then, as if she did not think much of him, turned to her companion and resumed their conversation–which, being of an essentially private and intimate nature, she conducted, after the manner of her kind, in a ringing soprano which penetrated into every corner of the lobby. Archie, waiting while the brigand reluctantly made change for a dollar bill, was privileged to hear every word.

“Right from the start I seen he was in a ugly mood. YOU know how he gets, dearie! Chewing his upper lip and looking at you as if you were so much dirt beneath his feet! How was _I_ to know he’d lost fifteen dollars fifty-five playing poker, and anyway, I don’t see where he gets a licence to work off his grouches on me. And I told him so. I said to him, ‘Gus,’ I said, ‘if you can’t be bright and smiling and cheerful when you take me out, why do you come round at all? Was I wrong or right, dearie?”

The girl behind the counter heartily endorsed her conduct. “Once you let a man think he could use you as a door-mat, where were you?”

“What happened then, honey?”

“Well, after that we went to the movies.”

Archie started convulsively. The change from his dollar-bill leaped in his hand. Some of it sprang overboard and tinkled across the floor, with the brigand in pursuit. A monstrous suspicion had begun, to take root in his mind.

“Well, we got good seats, but–well, you know how it is, once things start going wrong. You know that hat of mine, the one with the daisies and cherries and the feather–I’d taken it off and given it him to hold when we went in, and what do you think that fell’r’d done? Put it on the floor and crammed it under the seat, just to save himself the trouble of holding it on his lap! And, when I showed him I was upset, all he said was that he was a pitcher and not a hatstand!”

Archie was paralysed. He paid no attention to the hat-check boy, who was trying to induce him to accept treasure-trove to the amount of forty-five cents. His whole being was concentrated on this frightful tragedy which had burst upon him like a tidal wave. No possible room for doubt remained. “Gus” was the only Gus in New York that mattered, and this resolute and injured female before him was the Girl Friend, in whose slim hands rested the happiness of New York’s baseball followers, the destiny of the unconscious Giants, and the fate of his thousand dollars. A strangled croak proceeded from his parched lips.

“Well, I didn’t say anything at the moment. It just shows how them movies can work on a girl’s feelings. It was a Bryant Washburn film, and somehow, whenever I see him on the screen, nothing else seems to matter. I just get that goo-ey feeling, and couldn’t start a fight if you asked me to. So we go off to have a soda, and I said to him, ‘That sure was a lovely film, Gus!’ and would you believe me, he says straight out that he didn’t think it was such a much, and he thought Bryant Washburn was a pill! A pill!” The Girl Friend’s penetrating voice shook with emotion.

“He never!” exclaimed the shocked cigar-stand girl.

“He did, if I die the next moment! I wasn’t more than half-way through my vanilla and maple, but I got up without a word and left him. And I ain’t seen a sight of him since. So there you are, dearie! Was I right or wrong?”

The cigar-stand girl gave unqualified approval. What men like Gus Biddle needed for the salvation of their souls was an occasional good jolt right where it would do most good.

“I’m glad you think I acted right, dearie,” said the Girl Friend. “I guess I’ve been too weak with Gus, and he’s took advantage of it. I s’pose I’ll have to forgive him one of these old days, but, believe me, it won’t be for a week.”

The cigar-stand girl was in favour of a fortnight.

“No,” said the Girl Friend, regretfully. “I don’t believe I could hold out that long. But, if I speak to him inside a week, well–! Well, I gotta be going. Goodbye, honey.”

The cigar-stand girl turned to attend to an impatient customer, and the Girl Friend, walking with the firm and decisive steps which indicate character, made for the swing-door leading to the street. And as she went, the paralysis which had pipped Archie relased its hold. Still ignoring the forty-five cents which the boy continued to proffer, he leaped in her wake like a panther and came upon her just as she was stepping into a car. The car was full, but not too full for Archie. He dropped his five cents into the box and reached for a vacant strap. He looked down upon the flowered hat. There she was. And there he was. Archie rested his left ear against the forearm of a long, strongly-built young man in a grey suit who had followed him into the car and was sharing his strap, and pondered.

CHAPTER XV

SUMMER STORMS

Of course, in a way, the thing was simple. The wheeze was, in a sense, straightforward and uncomplicated. What he wanted to do was to point out to the injured girl all that hung on her. He wished to touch her heart, to plead with her, to desire her to restate her war-aims, and to persuade her–before three o’clock when that stricken gentleman would be stepping into the pitcher’s box to loose off the first ball against the Pittsburg Pirates–to let bygones be bygones and forgive Augustus Biddle. But the blighted problem was, how the deuce to find the opportunity to start. He couldn’t yell at the girl in a crowded street-car; and, if he let go of his strap and bent over her, somebody would step on his neck.

The Girl Friend, who for the first five minutes had remained entirely concealed beneath her hat, now sought diversion by looking up and examining the faces of the upper strata of passengers. Her eye caught Archie’s in a glance of recognition, and he smiled feebly, endeavouring to register bonhomie and good-will. He was surprised to see a startled expression come into her brown eyes. Her face turned pink. At least, it was pink already, but it turned pinker. The next moment, the car having stopped to pick up more passengers, she jumped off and started to hurry across the street.

Archie was momentarily taken aback. When embarking on this business he had never intended it to become a blend of otter-hunting and a moving-picture chase. He followed her off the car with a sense that his grip on the affair was slipping. Preoccupied with these thoughts, he did not perceive that the long young man who had shared his strap had alighted too. His eyes were fixed on the vanishing figure of the Girl Friend, who, having buzzed at a smart pace into Sixth Avenue, was now legging it in the direction of the staircase leading to one of the stations of the Elevated Railroad. Dashing up the stairs after her, he shortly afterwards found himself suspended as before from a strap, gazing upon the now familiar flowers on top of her hat. From another strap farther down the carriage swayed the long young man in the grey suit.

The train rattled on. Once or twice, when it stopped, the girl seemed undecided whether to leave or remain. She half rose, then sank back again. Finally she walked resolutely out of the car, and Archie, following, found himself in a part of New York strange to him. The inhabitants of this district appeared to eke out a precarious existence, not by taking in one another’s washing, but by selling one another second-hand clothes.

Archie glanced at his watch. He had lunched early, but so crowded with emotions had been the period following lunch that he was surprised to find that the hour was only just two. The discovery was a pleasant one. With a full hour before the scheduled start of the game, much might be achieved. He hurried after the girl, and came us with her just as she turned the comer into one of those forlorn New York side-streets which are populated chiefly by children, cats, desultory loafers, and empty meat-tins.

The girl stopped and turned. Archie smiled a winning smile.

“I say, my dear sweet creature!” he said. “I say, my dear old thing, one moment!”

“Is that so?” said the Girl Friend.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Is that so?”

Archie began to feel certain tremors. Her eyes were gleaming, and her determined mouth had become a perfectly straight line of scarlet. It was going to be difficult to be chatty to this girl. She was going to be a hard audience. Would mere words be able to touch her heart? The thought suggested itself that, properly speaking, one would need to use a pick-axe.

“If you could spare me a couples of minutes of your valuable time–“

“Say!” The lady drew herself up menacingly. “You tie a can to yourself and disappear! Fade away, or I’ll call a cop!”

Archie was horrified at this misinterpretation of his motives. One or two children, playing close at hand, and a loafer who was trying to keep the wall from falling down, seemed pleased. Theirs was a colourless existence and to the rare purple moments which had enlivened it in the past the calling of a cop had been the unfailing preliminary. The loafer nudged a fellow-loafer, sunning himself against the same wall. The children, abandoning the meat-tin round which their game had centred, drew closer.

“My dear old soul!” said Archie. “You don’t understand!”

“Don’t I! I know your sort, you trailing arbutus!”

“No, no! My dear old thing, believe me! I wouldn’t dream!”

“Are you going or aren’t you?”

Eleven more children joined the ring of spectators. The loafers stared silently, like awakened crocodiles.

“But, I say, listen! I only wanted–“

At this point another voice spoke.

“Say!”

The word “Say!” more almost than any word in the American language, is capable of a variety of shades of expression. It can be genial, it can be jovial, it can be appealing. It can also be truculent The “Say!” which at this juncture smote upon Archie’s ear-drum with a suddenness which made him leap in the air was truculent; and the two loafers and twenty-seven children who now formed the audience were well satisfied with the dramatic development of the performance. To their experienced ears the word had the right ring.

Archie spun round. At his elbow stood a long, strongly-built young man in a grey suit.

“Well!” said the young man, nastily. And he extended a large, freckled face toward Archie’s. It seemed to the latter, as he backed against the wall, that the young man’s neck must be composed of india-rubber. It appeared to be growing longer every moment. His face, besides being freckled, was a dull brick-red in colour; his lips curled back in an unpleasant snarl, showing a gold tooth; and beside him, swaying in an ominous sort of way, hung two clenched red hands about the size of two young legs of mutton. Archie eyed him with a growing apprehension. There are moments in life when, passing idly on our way, we see a strange face, look into strange eyes, and with a sudden glow of human warmth say to ourselves, “We have found a friend!” This was not one of those moments. The only person Archie had ever seen in his life who looked less friendly was the sergeant- major who had trained him in the early days of the war, before he had got his commission.

“I’ve had my eye on you!” said the young man.

He still had his eye on him. It was a hot, gimlet-like eye, and it pierced the recesses of Archie’s soul. He backed a little farther against the wall.

Archie was frankly disturbed. He was no poltroon, and had proved the fact on many occasions during the days when the entire German army seemed to be picking on him personally, but he hated and shrank from anything in the nature of a bally public scene.

“What,” enquired the young man, still bearing the burden of the conversation, and shifting his left hand a little farther behind his back, “do you mean by following this young lady?”

Archie was glad he had asked him. This was precisely what he wanted to explain.

“My dear old lad–” he began.

In spite of the fact that he had asked a question and presumably desired a reply, the sound of Archie’s voice seemed to be more than the young man could endure. It deprived him of the last vestige of restraint. With a rasping snarl he brought his left fist round in a sweeping semicircle in the direction of Archie’s head.

Archie was no novice in the art of self-defence. Since his early days at school he had learned much from leather-faced professors of the science. He had been watching this unpleasant young man’s eyes with close attention, and the latter could not have indicated his scheme of action more clearly if he had sent him a formal note. Archie saw the swing all the way. He stepped nimbly aside, and the fist crashed against the wall. The young man fell back with a yelp of anguish.

“Gus!” screamed the Girl Friend, bounding forward.

She flung her arms round the injured man, who was ruefully examining a hand which, always of an out-size, was now swelling to still further dimensions.

“Gus, darling!”

A sudden chill gripped Archie. So engrossed had he been with, his mission that it had never occurred to him that the love-lorn pitcher might have taken it into his head to follow the girl as well in the hope of putting in a word for himself. Yet such apparently had been the case. Well, this had definitely torn it. Two loving hearts were united again in complete reconciliation, but a fat lot of good that was. It would be days before the misguided Looney Biddle would be able to pitch with a hand like that. It looked like a ham already, and was still swelling. Probably the wrist was sprained. For at least a week the greatest left-handed pitcher of his time would be about as much use to the Giants in any professional capacity as a cold in the head. And on that crippled hand depended the fate of all the money Archie had in the world. He wished now that he had not thwarted the fellow’s simple enthusiasm. To have had his head knocked forcibly through a brick wall would not have been pleasant, but the ultimate outcome would not have been as unpleasant as this. With a heavy heart Archie prepared to withdraw, to be alone with his sorrow.

At this moment, however, the Girl Friend, releasing her wounded lover, made a sudden dash for him, with the plainest intention of blotting him from the earth.

“No, I say! Really!” said Archie, bounding backwards. “I mean to say!”

In a series of events, all of which had been a bit thick, this, in his opinion, achieved the maximum of thickness. It was the extreme ragged, outside edge of the limit. To brawl with a fellow-man in a public street had been bad, but to be brawled with by a girl–the shot was not on the board. Absolutely not on the board. There was only one thing to be done. It was dashed undignified, no doubt, for a fellow to pick up the old waukeesis and leg it in the face of the enemy, but there was no other course. Archie started to run; and, as he did so, one of the loafers made the mistake of gripping him by the collar of his coat.

“I got him!” observed the loafer.-There is a time for all things. This was essentially not the time for anyone of the male sex to grip the collar of Archie’s coat. If a syndicate of Dempsey, Carpentier, and one of the Zoo gorillas had endeavoured to stay his progress at that moment, they would have had reason to consider it a rash move. Archie wanted to be elsewhere, and the blood of generations of Moffams, many of whom had swung a wicked axe in the free-for-all mix-ups of the Middle Ages, boiled within him at any attempt to revise his plans. There was a good deal of the loafer, but it was all soft. Releasing his hold when Archie’s heel took him shrewdly on the shin, he received a nasty punch in what would have been the middle of his waistcoat if he had worn one, uttered a gurgling bleat like a wounded sheep, and collapsed against the wall. Archie, with a torn coat, rounded the corner, and sprinted down Ninth Avenue.

The suddenness of the move gave him an initial advantage. He was halfway down the first block before the vanguard of the pursuit poured out of the side street. Continuing to travel well, he skimmed past a large dray which had pulled up across the road, and moved on. The noise of those who pursued was loud and clamorous in the rear, but the dray hid him momentarily from their sight, and it was this fact which led Archie, the old campaigner, to take his next step.

It was perfectly obvious–he was aware of this even in the novel excitement of the chase–that a chappie couldn’t hoof it at twenty- five miles an hour indefinitely along a main thoroughfare of a great city without exciting remark. He must take cover. Cover! That was the wheeze. He looked about him for cover.

“You want a nice suit?”

It takes a great deal to startle your commercial New Yorker. The small tailor, standing in his doorway, seemed in no way surprised at the spectacle of Archie, whom he had seen pass at a conventional walk some five minutes before, returning like this at top speed. He assumed that Archie had suddenly remembered that he wanted to buy something.

This was exactly what Archie had done. More than anything else in the world, what he wanted to do now was to get into that shop and have a long talk about gents’ clothing. Pulling himself up abruptly, he shot past the small tailor into the dim interior. A confused aroma of cheap clothing greeted him. Except for a small oasis behind a grubby counter, practically all the available space was occupied by suits. Stiff suits, looking like the body when discovered by the police, hung from hooks. Limp suits, with the appearance of having swooned from exhaustion, lay about on chairs and boxes. The place was a cloth morgue, a Sargasso Sea of serge.

Archie would not have had it otherwise. In these quiet groves of clothing a regiment could have lain hid.

“Something nifty in tweeds?” enquired the business-like proprietor of this haven, following him amiably into the shop, “Or, maybe, yes, a nice serge? Say, mister, I got a sweet thing in blue serge that’ll fit you like the paper on the wall!”

Archie wanted to talk about clothes, but not yet.

“I say, laddie,” he said, hurriedly. “Lend me, your ear for half a jiffy!” Outside the baying of the pack had become imminent. “Stow me away for a moment in the undergrowth, and I’ll buy anything you want.”

He withdrew into the jungle. The noise outside grew in volume. The pursuit had been delayed for a priceless few instants by the arrival of another dray, moving northwards, which had drawn level with the first dray and dexterously bottled up the fairway. This obstacle had now been overcome, and the original searchers, their ranks swelled by a few dozen more of the leisured classes, were hot on the trail again.

“You done a murder?” enquired the voice of the proprietor, mildly interested, filtering through a wall of cloth. “Well, boys will be boys!” he said, philosophically. “See anything there that you like? There some sweet things there!”

“I’m inspecting them narrowly,” replied Archie. “If you don’t let those chappies find me, I shouldn’t be surprised if I bought one.”

“One?” said the proprietor, with a touch of austerity.

“Two,” said Archie, quickly. “Or possibly three or six.”

The proprietor’s cordiality returned.

“You can’t have too many nice suits,” he said, approvingly, “not a young feller like you that wants to look nice. All the nice girls like a young feller that dresses nice. When you go out of here in a suit I got hanging up there at the back, the girls ‘ll be all over you like flies round a honey-pot.”

“Would you mind,” said Archie, “would you mind, as a personal favour to me, old companion, not mentioning that word ‘girls’?”

He broke off. A heavy foot had crossed the threshold of the shop.

“Say, uncle,” said a deep voice, one of those beastly voices that only the most poisonous blighters have, “you seen a young feller run past here?”

“Young feller?” The proprietor appeared to reflect. “Do you mean a young feller in blue, with a Homburg hat?”

“That’s the duck! We lost him. Where did he go?”

“Him! Why, he come running past, quick as he could go. I wondered what he was running for, a hot day like this. He went round the corner at the bottom of the block.”

There was a silence.

“Well, I guess he’s got away,” said the voice, regretfully.

“The way he was travelling,” agreed the proprietor, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was in Europe by this. You want a nice suit?”

The other, curtly expressing a wish that the proprietor would go to eternal perdition and take his entire stock with him, stumped out.

“This,” said the proprietor, tranquilly, burrowing his way to where Archie stood and exhibiting a saffron-coloured outrage, which appeared to be a poor relation of the flannel family, “would put you back fifty dollars. And cheap!”

“Fifty dollars!”

“Sixty, I said. I don’t speak always distinct.”

Archie regarded the distressing garment with a shuddering horror. A young man with an educated taste in clothes, it got right in among his nerve centres.

“But, honestly, old soul, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but that isn’t a suit, it’s just a regrettable incident!”

The proprietor turned to the door in a listening attitude.

“I believe I hear that feller coming back,” he said.

Archie gulped.

“How about trying it on?” he said. “I’m not sure, after all, it isn’t fairly ripe.”

“That’s the way to talk,” said the proprietor, cordially. “You try it on. You can’t judge a suit, not a real nice suit like this, by looking at it. You want to put it on. There!” He led the way to a dusty mirror at the back of the shop. “Isn’t that a bargain at seventy dollars? … Why, say, your mother would be proud if she could see her boy now!”

A quarter of an hour later, the proprietor, lovingly kneading a little sheaf of currency bills, eyed with a fond look the heap of clothes which lay on the counter.

“As nice a little lot as I’ve ever had in my shop!” Archie did not deny this. It was, he thought, probably only too true.

“I only wish I could see you walking up Fifth Avenue in them!” rhapsodised the proprietor. “You’ll give ’em a treat! What you going to do with ’em? Carry ’em under your arm?” Archie shuddered strongly. “Well, then, I can send ’em for you anywhere you like. It’s all the same to me. Where’ll I send ’em?”

Archie meditated. The future was black enough as it was. He shrank from the prospect of being confronted next day, at the height of his misery, with these appalling reach-me-downs.

An idea struck him.

“Yes, send ’em,” he said.

“What’s the name and address?”

“Daniel Brewster,” said Archie, “Hotel Cosmopolis.”

It was a long time since he had given his father-in-law a present.

Archie went out into the street, and began to walk pensively down a now peaceful Ninth Avenue. Out of the depths that covered him, black as the pit from pole to pole, no single ray of hope came to cheer him. He could not, like the poet, thank whatever gods there be for his unconquerable soul, for his soul was licked to a splinter. He felt alone and friendless in a rotten world. With the best intentions, he had succeeded only in landing himself squarely amongst the ribstons. Why had he not been content with his wealth, instead of risking it on that blighted bet with Reggie? Why had he trailed the Girl Friend, dash her! He might have known that he would only make an ass of himself, And, because he had done so, Looney Biddle’s left hand, that priceless left hand before which opposing batters quailed and wilted, was out of action, resting in a sling, careened like a damaged battleship; and any chance the Giants might have had of beating the Pirates was gone–gone–as surely as that thousand dollars which should have bought a birthday present for Lucille.

A birthday present for Lucille! He groaned in bitterness of spirit. She would be coming back to-night, dear girl, all smiles and happiness, wondering what he was going to give her tomorrow. And when to-morrow dawned, all he would be able to give her would be a kind smile. A nice state of things! A jolly situation! A thoroughly good egg, he did NOT think!

It seemed to Archie that Nature, contrary to her usual custom of indifference to human suffering, was mourning with him. The sky was overcast, and the sun had ceased to shine. There was a sort of sombreness in the afternoon, which fitted in with his mood. And then something splashed on his face.

It says much for Archie’s pre-occupation that his first thought, as, after a few scattered drops, as though the clouds were submitting samples for approval, the whole sky suddenly began to stream like a shower-bath, was that this was simply an additional infliction which he was called upon to bear, On top of all his other troubles he would get soaked to the skin or have to hang about in some doorway. He cursed richly, and sped for shelter.

The rain was setting about its work in earnest. The world was full of that rending, swishing sound which accompanies the more violent summer storms. Thunder crashed, and lightning flicked out of the grey heavens. Out in the street the raindrops bounded up off the stones like fairy fountains. Archie surveyed them morosely from his refuge in the entrance of a shop.

And then, suddenly, like one of those flashes which were lighting up the gloomy sky, a thought lit up his mind.

“By Jove! If this keeps up, there won’t be a ball-game to-day!”

With trembling fingers he pulled out his watch. The hands pointed to five minutes to three. A blessed vision came to him of a moist and disappointed crowd receiving rain-checks up at the Polo Grounds.

“Switch it on, you blighters!” he cried, addressing the leaden clouds. “Switch it on more and more!”

It was shortly before five o’clock that a young man bounded into a jeweller’s shop near the Hotel Cosmopolis–a young man who, in spite of the fact that his coat was torn near the collar and that he oozed water from every inch of his drenched clothes, appeared in the highest spirits.. It was only when he spoke that the jeweller recognised in the human sponge the immaculate youth who had looked in that morning to order a bracelet.

“I say, old lad,” said this young man, “you remember that jolly little what-not you showed me before lunch?”

“The bracelet, sir?”

“As you observe with a manly candour which does you credit, my dear old jeweller, the bracelet. Well, produce, exhibit, and bring it forth, would you mind? Trot it out! Slip it across on a lordly dish!”

“You wished me, surely, to put it aside and send it to the Cosmopolis to-morrow?”

The young man tapped the jeweller earnestly on his substantial chest.

“What I wished and what I wish now are two bally separate and dashed distinct things, friend of my college days! Never put off till to- morrow what you can do to-day, and all that! I’m not taking any more chances. Not for me! For others, yes, but not for Archibald! Here are the doubloons, produce the jolly bracelet Thanks!”

The jeweller counted the notes with the same unction which Archie had observed earlier in the day in the proprietor of the second-hand clothes-shop. The process made him genial.

“A nasty, wet day, sir, it’s been,” he observed, chattily.

Archie shook his head.

“Old friend,” he said, “you’re all wrong. Far otherwise, and not a bit like it, my dear old trafficker in gems! You’ve put your finger on the one aspect of this blighted p.m. that really deserves credit and respect. Rarely in the experience of a lifetime have I encountered a day so absolutely bally in nearly every shape and form, but there was one thing that saved it, and that was its merry old wetness! Toodle-oo, laddie!”

“Good evening, sir,” said the jeweller.

CHAPTER XVI

ARCHIE ACCEPTS A SITUATION

Lucille moved her wrist slowly round, the better to examine the new bracelet.

“You really are an angel, angel!” she murmured.

“Like it?” said Archie complacently.

“LIKE it! Why, it’s gorgeous! It must have cost a fortune.”

“Oh, nothing to speak of. Just a few hard-earned pieces of eight. Just a few doubloons from the old oak chest.”

“But I didn’t know there were any doubloons in the old oak chest.”

“Well, as a matter of fact,” admitted Archie, “at one point in the proceedings there weren’t. But an aunt of mine in England–peace be on her head!–happened to send me a chunk of the necessary at what you might call the psychological moment.”

“And you spent it all on a birthday present for me! Archie!” Lucille gazed at her husband adoringly. “Archie, do you know what I think?”

“What?”

“You’re the perfect man!”

“No, really! What ho!”

“Yes,” said Lucille firmly. “I’ve long suspected it, and now I know. I don’t think there’s anybody like you in the world.”

Archie patted her hand.

“It’s a rummy thing,” he observed, “but your father said almost exactly that to me only yesterday. Only I don’t fancy he meant the same as you. To be absolutely frank, his exact expression was that he thanked God there was only one of me.”

A troubled look came into Lucille’s grey eyes.

“It’s a shame about father. I do wish he appreciated you. But you mustn’t be too hard on him.”

“Me?” said Archie. “Hard on your father? Well, dash it all, I don’t think I treat him with what you might call actual brutality, what! I mean to say, my whole idea is rather to keep out of the old lad’s way and curl up in a ball if I can’t dodge him. I’d just as soon be hard on a stampeding elephant! I wouldn’t for the world say anything derogatory, as it were, to your jolly old pater, but there is no getting away from the fact that he’s by way of being one of our leading man-eating fishes. It would be idle to deny that he considers that you let down the proud old name of Brewster a bit when you brought me in and laid me on the mat.”

“Anyone would be lucky to get you for a son-in-law, precious.”

“I fear me, light of my life, the dad doesn’t see eye to eye with you on that point. No, every time I get hold of a daisy, I give him another chance, but it always works out at ‘He loves me not!'”

“You must make allowances for him, darling.”

“Right-o! But I hope devoutly that he doesn’t catch me at it. I’ve a sort of idea that if the old dad discovered that I was making allowances for him, he would have from ten to fifteen fits.”

“He’s worried just now, you know.”

“I didn’t know. He doesn’t confide in me much.”

“He’s worried about that waiter.”

“What waiter, queen of my soul?”

“A man called Salvatore. Father dismissed him some time ago.”

“Salvatore!”

“Probably you don’t remember him. He used to wait on this table.”

“Why–“

“And father dismissed him, apparently, and now there’s all sorts of trouble. You see, father wants to build this new hotel of his, and he thought he’d got the site and everything and could start building right away: and now he finds that this man Salvatore’s mother owns a little newspaper and tobacco shop right in the middle of the site, and there’s no way of getting him out without buying the shop, and he won’t sell. At least, he’s made his mother promise that she won’t sell.”

“A boy’s best friend is his mother,” said Archie approvingly. “I had a sort of idea all along–“

“So father’s in despair.”

Archie drew at his cigarette meditatively.

“I remember a chappie–a policeman he was, as a matter of fact, and incidentally a fairly pronounced blighter–remarking to me some time ago that you could trample on the poor man’s face but you mustn’t be surprised if he bit you in the leg while you were doing it. Apparently this is what has happened to the old dad. I had a sort of idea all along that old friend Salvatore would come out strong in the end if you only gave him time. Brainy sort of feller! Great pal of mine.”-Lucille’s small face lightened. She gazed at Archie with proud affection. She felt that she ought to have known that he was the one to solve this difficulty.

“You’re wonderful, darling! Is he really a friend of yours?”

“Absolutely. Many’s the time he and I have chatted in this very grill-room.”

“Then it’s all right. If you went to him and argued with him, he would agree to sell the shop, and father would be happy. Think how grateful father would be to you! It would make all the difference.”

Archie turned this over in his mind.

“Something in that,” he agreed.

“It would make him see what a pet lambkin you really are!”

“Well,” said Archie, “I’m bound to say that any scheme which what you might call culminates in your father regarding me as a pet lambkin ought to receive one’s best attention. How much did he offer Salvatore for his shop?”

“I don’t know. There is father.–Call him over and ask him.”

Archie glanced over to where Mr. Brewster had sunk moodily into a chair at a neighbouring table. It was plain even at that distance that Daniel Brewster had his troubles and was bearing them with an ill grace. He was scowling absently at the table-cloth.

“YOU call him,” said Archie, having inspected his formidable relative. “You know him better.”

“Let’s go over to him.”

They crossed the room. Lucille sat down opposite her father.-Archie draped himself over a chair in the background.

“Father, dear,” said Lucille. “Archie has got an idea.”

“Archie?” said Mr. Brewster incredulously.

“This is me,” said Archie, indicating himself with a spoon. “The tall, distinguished-looking bird.”

“What new fool-thing is he up to now?”

“It’s a splendid idea, father. He wants to help you over your new hotel.”

“Wants to run it for me, I suppose?”

“By Jove!” said Archie, reflectively. “That’s not a bad scheme! I never thought of running an hotel. I shouldn’t mind taking a stab at it.”

“He has thought of a way of getting rid of Salvatore and his shop.”

For the first time Mr. Brewster’s interest in the conversation seemed to stir. He looked sharply at his son-in-law.

“He has, has he?” he said.

Archie balanced a roll on a fork and inserted a plate underneath. The roll bounded away into a corner.

“Sorry!” said Archie. “My fault, absolutely! I owe you a roll. I’ll sign a bill for it. Oh, about this sportsman Salvatore, Well, it’s like this, you know. He and I are great pals. I’ve known him for years and years. At least, it seems like years and years. Lu was suggesting that I seek him out in his lair and ensnare him with my diplomatic manner and superior brain power and what not.”

“It was your idea, precious,” said Lucille.

Mr. Brewster was silent.–Much as it went against the grain to have to admit it, there seemed to be something in this.

“What do you propose to do?”

“Become a jolly old ambassador. How much did you offer the chappie?”

“Three thousand dollars. Twice as much as the place is worth. He’s holding out on me for revenge.”

“Ah, but how did you offer it to him, what? I mean to say, I bet you got your lawyer to write him a letter full of whereases, peradventures, and parties of the first part, and so forth. No good, old companion!”

“Don’t call me old companion!”

“All wrong, laddie! Nothing like it, dear heart! No good at all, friend of my youth! Take it from your Uncle Archibald! I’m a student of human nature, and I know a thing or two.”

“That’s not much,” growled Mr. Brewster, who was finding his son-in- law’s superior manner a little trying.

“Now, don’t interrupt, father,” said Lucille, severely. “Can’t you see that Archie is going to be tremendously clever in a minute?”

“He’s got to show me!”

“What you ought to do,” said Archie, “is to let me go and see him, taking the stuff in crackling bills. I’ll roll them about on the table in front of him. That’ll fetch him!” He prodded Mr. Brewster encouragingly with a roll. “I’ll tell you what to do. Give me three thousand of the best and crispest, and I’ll undertake to buy that shop. It can’t fail, laddie!”

“Don’t call me laddie!” Mr. Brewster pondered. “Very well,” he said at last. “I didn’t know you had so much sense,” he added grudgingly.

“Oh, positively!” said Archie. “Beneath a rugged exterior I hide a brain like a buzz-saw. Sense? I exude it, laddie; I drip with it.”

There were moments during the ensuing days when Mr. Brewster permitted himself to hope; but more frequent were the moments when he told himself that a pronounced chump like his son-in-law could not fail somehow to make a mess of the negotiations. His relief, therefore, when Archie curveted into his private room and announced that he had succeeded was great.

“You really managed to make that wop sell out?”

Archie brushed some papers off the desk with a careless gesture, and seated himself on the vacant spot.

“Absolutely! I spoke to him as one old friend to another, sprayed the bills all over the place; and he sang a few bars from ‘Rigoletto,’ and signed on the dotted line.”

“You’re not such a fool as you look,” owned Mr. Brewster.

Archie scratched a match on the desk and lit a cigarette.

“It’s a jolly little shop,” he said. “I took quite a fancy to it. Full of newspapers, don’t you know, and cheap novels, and some weird-looking sort of chocolates, and cigars with the most fearfully attractive labels. I think I’ll make a success of it. It’s bang in the middle of a dashed good neighbourhood. One of these days somebody will be building a big hotel round about there, and that’ll help trade a lot. I look forward to ending my days on the other side of the counter with a full set of white whiskers and a skull-cap, beloved by everybody. Everybody’ll say, ‘Oh, you MUST patronise that quaint, delightful old blighter! He’s quite a character.'”

Mr. Brewster’s air of grim satisfaction had given way to a look of discomfort, almost of alarm. He presumed his son-in-law was merely indulging in badinage; but even so, his words were not soothing.

“Well, I’m much obliged,” he said. “That infernal shop was holding up everything. Now I can start building right away.”

Archie raised his eyebrows.

“But, my dear old top, I’m sorry to spoil your daydreams and stop you chasing rainbows, and all that, but aren’t you forgetting that the shop belongs to me? I don’t at all know that I want to sell, either!”

“I gave you the money to buy that shop!”

“And dashed generous of you it was, too!” admitted Archie, unreservedly. “It was the first money you ever gave me, and I shall always, tell interviewers that it was you who founded my fortunes. Some day, when I’m the Newspaper-and-Tobacco-Shop King, I’ll tell the world all about it in my autobiography.”

Mr. Brewster rose dangerously from his seat.

“Do you think you can hold me up, you–you worm?”

“Well,” said Archie, “the way I look at it is this. Ever since we met, you’ve been after me to become one of the world’s workers, and earn a living for myself, and what not; and now I see a way to repay you for your confidence and encouragement. You’ll look me up sometimes at the good old shop, won’t you?” He slid off the table and moved towards the door. “There won’t be any formalities where you are concerned. You can sign bills for any reasonable amount any time you want a cigar or a stick of chocolate. Well, toodle-oo!”

“Stop!”

“Now what?”

“How much do you want for that damned shop?”

“I don’t want money.-I want a job.-If you are going to take my life- work away from me, you ought to give me something else to do.”

“What job?”

“You suggested it yourself the other day. I want to manage your new hotel.”

“Don’t be a fool! What do you know about managing an hotel?”

“Nothing. It will be your pleasing task to teach me the business while the shanty is being run up.”

There was a pause, while Mr. Brewster chewed three inches off a pen- holder.

“Very well,” he said at last.

“Topping!” said Archie. “I knew you’d, see it. I’ll study your methods, what! Adding some of my own, of course. You know, I’ve thought of one improvement on the Cosmopolis already.”

“Improvement on the Cosmopolis!” cried Mr. Brewster, gashed in his finest feelings.

“Yes. There’s one point where the old Cosmop slips up badly, and I’m going to see that it’s corrected at my little shack. Customers will be entreated to leave their boots outside their doors at night, and they’ll find them cleaned in the morning. Well, pip, pip! I must be popping. Time is money, you know, with us business men.”

CHAPTER XVII

BROTHER BILL’S ROMANCE

“Her eyes,” said Bill Brewster, “are like–like–what’s the word I want?”

He looked across at Lucille and Archie. Lucille was leaning forward with an eager and interested face; Archie was leaning back with his finger-tips together and his eyes closed. This was not the first time since their meeting in Beale’s Auction Rooms that his brother- in-law had touched on the subject of the girl he had become engaged to marry during his trip to England. Indeed, Brother Bill had touched on very little else: and Archie, though of a sympathetic nature and fond of his young relative, was beginning to feel that he had heard all he wished to hear about Mabel Winchester. Lucille, on the other hand, was absorbed. Her brother’s recital had thrilled her.

“Like–” said Bill. “Like–“

“Stars?” suggested Lucille.

“Stars,” said Bill gratefully. “Exactly the word. Twin stars shining in a clear sky on a summer night. Her teeth are like–what shall I say?”

“Pearls?”

“Pearls. And her hair is a lovely brown, like leaves in autumn. In fact,” concluded Bill, slipping down from the heights with something of a jerk, “she’s a corker. Isn’t she, Archie?”

Archie opened his eyes.

“Quite right, old top!” he said. “It was the only thing to do.”

“What the devil are you talking about?” demanded Bill coldly. He had been suspicious all along of Archie’s statement that he could listen better with his eyes shut.

“Eh? Oh, sorry! Thinking of something else.”

“You were asleep.”

“No, no, positively and distinctly not. Frightfully interested and rapt and all that, only I didn’t quite get what you said.”

“I said that Mabel was a corker.”

“Oh, absolutely in every respect.”

“There!” Bill turned to Lucille triumphantly. “You hear that? And Archie has only seen her photograph. Wait till he sees her in the flesh.”

“My dear old chap!” said Archie, shocked. “Ladies present! I mean to say, what!”

“I’m afraid that father will be the one you’ll find it hard to convince.”

“Yes,” admitted her brother gloomily.

“Your Mabel sounds perfectly charming, but–well, you know what father is. It IS a pity she sings in the chorus.”

“She-hasn’t much of a voice,”-argued Bill-in extenuation.

“All the same–“

Archie, the conversation having reached a topic on which he considered himself one of the greatest living authorities–to wit, the unlovable disposition of his father-in-law–addressed the meeting as one who has a right to be heard.

“Lucille’s absolutely right, old thing.–Absolutely correct-o! Your esteemed progenitor is a pretty tough nut, and it’s no good trying to get away from it.-And I’m sorry to have to say it, old bird, but, if you come bounding in with part of the personnel of the ensemble on your arm and try to dig a father’s blessing out of him, he’s extremely apt to stab you in the gizzard.”

“I wish,” said Bill, annoyed, “you wouldn’t talk as though Mabel