The Girl on the Boat
“Has he?” said Sam, not particularly interested. “I used to stay with
him,” he went on, “during the holidays sometimes, but I’ve practically
forgotten what the place is like inside. I remember the hall vaguely.
Fireplace at one side, one or two suits of armour standing about, a
sort of window-ledge near the front door....”
“Precisely, sir. It is close beside that window-ledge that the animal’s
basket is situated. If I administer a slight soporific....”
“Yes, but you haven’t explained yet how I am to get into the house in
the first place.”
“Quite easily, sir. I can admit you through the drawing-room windows
while dinner is in progress.”
“Fine!”
“You can then secrete yourself in the cupboard in the drawing-room.
Perhaps you recollect the cupboard to which I refer, sir?”
“No, I don’t remember any cupboard. As a matter of fact, when I used to
stay at the house the drawing-room was barred. Mrs. Hignett wouldn’t
let us inside it for fear we should smash her china. Is there a
cupboard?”
“Immediately behind the piano, sir. A nice, roomy cupboard. I was
glancing into it myself in a spirit of idle curiosity only the other
day. It contains nothing except a few knick-knacks on an upper shelf.
You could lock yourself in from the interior, and be quite comfortably
seated on the floor till the household retired to bed.”
“When would that be?”
“They retire quite early, sir, as a rule. By half-past ten the coast is
generally clear. At that time I would suggest that I came down and
knocked on the cupboard door to notify you that all was well.”
Sam was glowing with frank approval.
“You know, you’re a master-mind!” he said, enthusiastically.
“You’re very kind, sir!”
“One of the lads, by Jove!” said Sam. “And not the worst of them! I
don’t want to flatter you, but there’s a future for you in crime, if
you cared to go in for it.”
“I am glad that you appreciate my poor efforts, sir. Then we will
regard the scheme as passed and approved?”
“I should say we would! It’s a bird!”
“Very good, sir.”
“I’ll be round at about a quarter to eight. Will that be right?”
“Admirable, sir.”
“And, I say, about that soporific.... Don’t overdo it. Don’t go killing
the little beast.”
“Oh, no, sir.”
“Well,” said Sam, “you can’t say it’s not a temptation. And you know
what you Napoleons of the Underworld are!”
CHAPTER XVII.
A CROWDED NIGHT
§ 1
If there is one thing more than another which weighs upon the mind of a
story-teller as he chronicles the events which he has set out to
describe, it is the thought that the reader may be growing impatient
with him for straying from the main channel of his tale and devoting
himself to what are, after all, minor developments. This story, for
instance, opened with Mrs. Horace Hignett, the world-famous writer on
Theosophy, going over to America to begin a lecturing-tour; and no one
realises more keenly than I do that I have left Mrs. Hignett flat. I
have thrust that great thinker into the background and concentrated my
attention on the affairs of one who is both her mental and her moral
inferior, Samuel Marlowe. I seem at this point to see the reader—a
great brute of a fellow with beetling eyebrows and a jaw like the ram
of a battleship, the sort of fellow who is full of determination and
will stand no nonsense—rising to remark that he doesn’t care what
happened to Samuel Marlowe and that what he wants to know is, how Mrs.
Hignett made out on her lecturing-tour. Did she go big in Buffalo? Did
she have ’em tearing up the seats in Schenectady? Was she a riot in
Chicago and a cyclone in St. Louis? Those are the points on which he
desires information, or give him his money back.
I cannot supply the information. And, before you condemn me, let me
hastily add that the fault is not mine but that of Mrs. Hignett
herself. The fact is, she never went to Buffalo. Schenectady saw
nothing of her. She did not get within a thousand miles of Chicago, nor
did she penetrate to St. Louis. For the very morning after her son
Eustace sailed for England in the liner “Atlantic,” she happened to
read in the paper one of those abridged passenger-lists which the
journals of New York are in the habit of printing, and got a nasty
shock when she saw that, among those whose society Eustace would enjoy
during the voyage, was “Miss Wilhelmina Bennett, daughter of J. Rufus
Bennett of Bennett, Mandelbaum and Co.”. And within five minutes of
digesting this information, she was at her desk writing out telegrams
cancelling all her engagements. Iron-souled as this woman was, her
fingers trembled as she wrote. She had a vision of Eustace and the
daughter of J. Rufus Bennett strolling together on moonlit decks,
leaning over rails damp with sea-spray and, in short, generally
starting the whole trouble all over again.
In the height of the tourist season it is not always possible for one
who wishes to leave America to spring on to the next boat. A long
morning’s telephoning to the offices of the Cunard and the White Star
brought Mrs. Hignett the depressing information that it would be a full
week before she could sail for England. That meant that the inflammable
Eustace would have over two weeks to conduct an uninterrupted wooing,
and Mrs. Hignett’s heart sank, till suddenly she remembered that so
poor a sailor as her son was not likely to have had leisure for any
strolling on the deck during the voyage on the “Atlantic.”
Having realised this, she became calmer and went about her preparations
for departure with an easier mind. The danger was still great, but
there was a good chance that she might be in time to intervene. She
wound up her affairs in New York, and on the following Wednesday,
boarded the “Nuronia” bound for Southampton.
The “Nuronia” is one of the slowest of the Cunard boats. It was built
at a time when delirious crowds used to swoon on the dock if an ocean
liner broke the record by getting across in nine days. It rolled over
to Cherbourg, dallied at that picturesque port for some hours, then
sauntered across the Channel and strolled into Southampton Water in the
evening of the day on which Samuel Marlowe had sat in the lane plotting
with Webster, the valet. At almost the exact moment when Sam, sidling
through the windows of the drawing-room, slid into the cupboard behind
the piano, Mrs. Hignett was standing at the Customs barrier telling the
officials that she had nothing to declare.
Mrs. Hignett was a general who believed in forced marches. A lesser
woman might have taken the boat-train to London and proceeded to
Windles at her ease on the following afternoon. Mrs. Hignett was made
of sterner stuff. Having fortified herself with a late dinner, she
hired a car and set out on the cross-country journey. It was only when
the car, a genuine antique, had broken down three times in the first
ten miles, that she directed the driver to take her instead to the
“Blue Boar” in Windlehurst, where she arrived, tired but thankful to
have reached it at all, at about eleven o’clock.
At this point many, indeed most, women would have gone to bed; but the
familiar Hampshire air and the knowledge that half an hour’s walking
would take her to her beloved home acted on Mrs. Hignett like a
restorative. One glimpse of Windles she felt that she must have before
she retired for the night, if only to assure herself that it was still
there. She had a cup of coffee and a sandwich brought to her by the
night-porter whom she had roused from sleep, for bedtime is early in
Windlehurst, and then informed him that she was going for a short walk
and would ring when she returned.
Her heart leaped joyfully as she turned in at the drive gates of her
home and felt the well-remembered gravel crunching under her feet. The
silhouette of the ruined castle against the summer sky gave her the
feeling which all returning wanderers know. And, when she stepped on to
the lawn and looked at the black bulk of the house, indistinct and
shadowy with its backing of trees, tears came into her eyes. She
experienced a rush of emotion which made her feel quite faint, and
which lasted until, on tiptoeing nearer to the house in order to gloat
more adequately upon it, she perceived that the French windows of the
drawing-room were standing ajar. Sam had left them like this in order
to facilitate departure, if a hurried departure should by any mischance
be rendered necessary, and drawn curtains had kept the household from
noticing the fact.
All the proprietor in Mrs. Hignett was roused. This, she felt
indignantly, was the sort of thing she had been afraid would happen the
moment her back was turned. Evidently laxity—one might almost say
anarchy—had set in directly she had removed the eye of authority. She
marched to the window and pushed it open. She had now completely
abandoned her kindly scheme of refraining from rousing the sleeping
house and spending the night at the inn. She stepped into the
drawing-room with the single-minded purpose of routing Eustace out of
his sleep and giving him a good talking-to for having failed to
maintain her own standard of efficiency among the domestic staff. If
there was one thing on which Mrs. Horace Hignett had always insisted it
was that every window in the house must be closed at lights-out.
She pushed the curtains apart with a rattle and, at the same moment,
from the direction of the door there came a low but distinct gasp which
made her resolute heart jump and flutter. It was too dark to see
anything distinctly, but, in the instant before it turned and fled, she
caught sight of a shadowy male figure, and knew that her worst fears
had been realised. The figure was too tall to be Eustace, and Eustace,
she knew, was the only man in the house. Male figures, therefore, that
went flitting about Windles, must be the figures of burglars.
Mrs. Hignett, bold woman though she was, stood for an instant
spell-bound, and for one moment of not unpardonable panic tried to tell
herself that she had been mistaken. Almost immediately, however, there
came from the direction of the hall a dull chunky sound as though
something soft had been kicked, followed by a low gurgle and the noise
of staggering feet. Unless he were dancing a _pas seul_ out of sheer
lightness of heart, the nocturnal visitor must have tripped over
something.
The latter theory was the correct one. Montagu Webster was a man who,
at many a subscription ball, had shaken a gifted dancing-pump, and
nothing in the proper circumstances pleased him better than to exercise
the skill which had become his as the result of twelve private lessons
at half-a-crown a visit; but he recognised the truth of the scriptural
adage that there is a time for dancing, and that this was not it. His
only desire when, stealing into the drawing-room he had been confronted
through the curtains by a female figure, was to get back to his bedroom
undetected. He supposed that one of the feminine members of the
house-party must have been taking a stroll in the grounds, and he did
not wish to stay and be compelled to make laborious explanations of his
presence there in the dark. He decided to postpone the knocking on the
cupboard door, which had been the signal arranged between himself and
Sam, until a more suitable occasion. In the meantime he bounded
silently out into the hall, and instantaneously tripped over the portly
form of Smith, the bulldog, who, roused from a light sleep to the
knowledge that something was going on, and being a dog who always liked
to be in the centre of the maelstrom of events, had waddled out to
investigate.
By the time Mrs. Hignett had pulled herself together sufficiently to
feel brave enough to venture into the hall, Webster’s presence of mind
and Smith’s gregariousness had combined to restore that part of the