The Girl on the Boat
had some snuff to take or something to tap against his front teeth.
“Miss Bennett, I believe?”
The effect of the question upon Billie was disastrous. She had come to
this office with beating heart, prepared to end all misunderstandings,
to sob on her soul-mate’s shoulder and generally make everything up;
but at this inane exhibition the fighting spirit of the Bennetts—which
was fully as militant as that of the Marlowes—became roused. She told
herself that she had been mistaken in supposing that she still loved
this man. She was a proud girl and refused to admit herself capable of
loving any man who looked at her as if she was something that the cat
had brought in. She drew herself up stiffly.
“Yes,” she replied. “How clever of you to remember me.”
“I have a good memory.”
“How nice! So have I!”
There was a pause, during which Billie allowed her gaze to travel
casually about the room. Sam occupied the intermission by staring
furtively at her profile. He was by now in a thoroughly overwrought
condition, and the thumping of his heart sounded to him as if workmen
were mending the street outside. How beautiful she looked, with that
red hair peeping out beneath her hat and.... However!
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked in the sort of voice
Widgery might have used. Sam always pictured Widgery as a small man
with bushy eyebrows, a thin face, and a voice like a rusty file.
“Well, I really wanted to see Sir Mallaby.”
“My father has been called away on important business to Walton Heath.
Cannot I act as his substitute?”
“Do you know anything about the law?”
“Do I know anything about the law!” echoed Sam, amazed. “Do I know——!
Why, I was reading my Widgery on Nisi Prius Evidence when you came in.”
“Oh, were you?” said Billie, interested. “Do you always read on the
floor?”
“I told you I dropped my pen,” said Sam coldly.
“And of course you couldn’t read without that! Well, as a matter of
fact, this has nothing to do with Nisi—what you said.”
“I have not specialised exclusively on Nisi Prius Evidence. I know the
law in all its branches.”
“Then what would you do if a man insisted on playing the orchestrion
when you wanted to get to sleep?”
“The orchestrion?”
“Yes.”
“The orchestrion, eh? Ah! H’m!” said Sam.
“You still haven’t made it quite clear,” said Billie.
“I was thinking.”
“Oh, if you want to _think!_”
“Tell me the facts,” said Sam.
“Well, Mr. Mortimer and my father have taken a house together in the
country....”
“I knew that.”
“_What_ a memory you have!” said Billie kindly. “Well, for some reason
or other they have quarrelled, and now Mr. Mortimer is doing everything
he can to make father uncomfortable. Yesterday afternoon father wanted
to sleep, and Mr. Mortimer started this orchestrion just to annoy him.”
“I think—I’m not quite sure—I think that’s a tort,” said Sam.
“A what?”
“Either a tort or a malfeasance.”
“Why, you do know something about it after all!” cried Billie, startled
into a sort of friendliness in spite of herself. And at the words and
the sight of her quick smile Sam’s professional composure reeled on its
foundations. He had half risen, with the purpose of springing up and
babbling of the passion that consumed him, when the chill reflection
came to him that this girl had once said that she considered him
ridiculous. If he let himself go, would she not continue to think him
ridiculous? He sagged back into his seat; and at that moment there came
another tap on the door which, opening, revealed the sinister face of
the holiday-making Peters.
“Good morning, Mr. Samuel,” said Jno. Peters. “Good morning, Miss
Milliken. Oh!”
He vanished as abruptly as he had appeared. He perceived that what he
had taken at first glance for the stenographer was a client, and that
the junior partner was engaged on a business conference. He left behind
him a momentary silence.
“What a horrible-looking man!” said Billie, breaking it with a little
gasp. Jno. Peters often affected the opposite sex like that at first
sight.
“I beg your pardon?” said Sam absently.
“What a dreadful-looking man! He quite frightened me!”
For some moments Sam sat without speaking. If this had not been one of
his Napoleonic mornings, no doubt the sudden arrival of his old friend,
Mr. Peters, whom he had imagined at his home in Putney packing for his
trip to America, would have suggested nothing to him. As it was, it
suggested a great deal. He had had a brain-wave, and for fully a minute
he sat tingling under its impact. He was not a young man who often had
brain-waves, and, when they came, they made him rather dizzy.
“Who is he?” asked Billie. “He seemed to know you? And who,” she
demanded after a slight pause, “is Miss Milliken?”
Sam drew a deep breath.
“It’s rather a sad story,” he said. “His name is John Peters. He used
to be clerk here.”
“But he isn’t any longer?”
“No.” Sam shook his head. “We had to get rid of him.”
“I don’t wonder. A man looking like that....”
“It wasn’t that so much,” said Sam. “The thing that annoyed father was
that he tried to shoot Miss Milliken.”
Billie uttered a cry of horror.
“He tried to shoot Miss Milliken!”
“He _did_ shoot her—the third time,” said Sam, warming to his work.
“Only in the arm, fortunately,” he added. “But my father is rather a
stern disciplinarian and he had to go. I mean, we couldn’t keep him
after that.”
“Good gracious!”
“She used to be my father’s stenographer, and she was thrown a good
deal with Peters. It was quite natural that he should fall in love with
her. She was a beautiful girl, with rather your own shade of hair.
Peters is a man of volcanic passions, and, when, after she had given
him to understand that his love was returned, she informed him one day
that she was engaged to a fellow at Ealing West, he went right off his
onion—I mean, he became completely distraught. I must say that he
concealed it very effectively at first. We had no inkling of his
condition till he came in with the pistol. And, after that ... well, as
I say, we had to dismiss him. A great pity, for he was a good clerk.
Still, it wouldn’t do. It wasn’t only that he tried to shoot Miss
Milliken. The thing became an obsession with him, and we found that he
had a fixed idea that every red-haired woman who came into the office
was the girl who had deceived him. You can see how awkward that made
it. Red hair is so fashionable now-a-days.”
“My hair is red!” whispered Billie pallidly.
“Yes, I noticed it myself. I told you it was much the same shade as
Miss Milliken’s. It’s rather fortunate that I happened to be here with
you when he came.”
“But he may be lurking out there still!”
“I expect he is,” said Sam carelessly. “Yes, I suppose he is. Would you
like me to go and send him away? All right.”
“But—but is it safe?”
Sam uttered a light laugh.
“I don’t mind taking a risk or two for your sake,” he said, and
sauntered from the room, closing the door behind him. Billie followed
him with worshipping eyes.
Jno. Peters rose politely from the chair in which he had seated himself
for the more comfortable perusal of the copy of _Home Whispers_ which
he had brought with him to refresh his mind in the event of the firm
being too busy to see him immediately. He was particularly interested
in the series of chats with Young Mothers.
“Hullo, Peters,” said Sam. “Want anything?”
“Very sorry to have disturbed you, Mr. Samuel. I just looked in to say
good-bye. I sail on Saturday, and my time will be pretty fully taken up
all the week. I have to go down to the country to get some final
instructions from the client whose important papers I am taking over.
I’m sorry to have missed your father, Mr. Samuel.”
“Yes, this is his golf day. I’ll tell him you looked in.”
“Is there anything I can do before I go?”
“Do?”
“Well—”—Jno. Peters coughed tactfully—“I see that you are engaged with
a client, Mr. Samuel, and I was wondering if any little point of law
had arisen with which you did not feel yourself quite capable of
coping, in which case I might perhaps be of assistance.”
“Oh, that lady,” said Sam. “That was Miss Milliken’s sister.”
“Indeed? I didn’t know Miss Milliken had a sister.”
“No?” said Sam.
“She is not very like her in appearance.”
“No. This one is the beauty of the family, I believe. A very bright,
intelligent girl. I was telling her about your revolver just before you
came in, and she was most interested. It’s a pity you haven’t got it
with you now, to show to her.”
“Oh, but I have it! I have, Mr. Samuel!” said Peters, opening a small
handbag and taking out a hymn-book, half a pound of mixed chocolates, a
tongue sandwich, and the pistol, in the order named. “I was on my way
to the Rupert Street range for a little practice. I should be glad to
show it to her.”
“Well, wait here a minute or two,” said Sam. “I’ll have finished
talking business in a moment.”
He returned to the inner office.
“Well?” cried Billie.
“Eh? Oh, he’s gone,” said Sam. “I persuaded him to go away. He was a
little excited, poor fellow. And now let us return to what we were
talking about. You say....” He broke off with an exclamation, and
glanced at his watch. “Good Heavens! I had no idea of the time. I
promised to run up and see a man in one of the offices in the next
court. He wants to consult me on some difficulty which has arisen with
one of his clients. Rightly or wrongly he values my advice. Can you
spare me for a short while? I shan’t be more than ten minutes.”
“Certainly.”
“Here is something you may care to look at while I’m gone. I don’t know
if you have read it? Widgery on Nisi Prius Evidence. Most interesting.”
He went out. Jno. Peters looked up from his _Home Whispers_.
“You can go in now,” said Sam.
“Certainly, Mr. Samuel, certainly.”
Sam took up the copy of _Home Whispers_ and sat down with his feet on
the desk. He turned to the serial story and began to read the synopsis.
In the inner room Billie, who had rejected the mental refreshment
offered by Widgery and was engaged on making a tour of the office,
looking at the portraits of whiskered men whom she took correctly to be
the Thorpes, Prescotts, Winslows, and Applebys mentioned on the
contents-bill outside, was surprised to hear the door open at her back.
She had not expected Sam to return so instantaneously.
Nor had he done so. It was not Sam who entered. It was a man of
repellent aspect whom she recognised instantly, for Jno. Peters was one
of those men who, once seen, are not easily forgotten. He was smiling a
cruel, cunning smile—at least, she thought he was; Mr. Peters himself
was under the impression that his face was wreathed in a benevolent
simper; and in his hand he bore the largest pistol ever seen outside a
motion-picture studio.
“How do you do, Miss Milliken?” he said.
CHAPTER XIII.
SHOCKS ALL ROUND
Billie had been standing near the wall, inspecting a portrait of the
late Mr. Josiah Appleby, of which the kindest thing one can say is that
one hopes it did not do him justice. She now shrank back against this
wall, as if she were trying to get through it. The edge of the
portrait’s frame tilted her hat out of the straight, but in this
supreme moment she did not even notice it.
“Er—how do you do?” she said.
If she had not been an exceedingly pretty girl, one would have said
that she spoke squeakily. The fighting spirit of the Bennetts, though
it was considerable fighting spirit, had not risen to this emergency.
It had ebbed out of her, leaving in its place a cold panic. She had
seen this sort of thing in the movies—there was one series of pictures,
“The Dangers of Diana,” where something of the kind had happened to the
heroine in every reel—but she had not anticipated that it would ever