The Girl on the Boat
verge of one of their distressing fallings-out; but Jane Hubbard
intervened once more. This practical-minded girl disliked the
introducing of side-issues into the conversation. She was there to talk
about burglars, and she intended to do so.
“For goodness sake stop it!” she said, almost petulantly for one
usually so superior to emotion. “There’ll be lots of time for
quarrelling to-morrow. Just now we’ve got to catch these....”
“I’m not quarrelling,” said Mr. Bennett.
“Yes, you are,” said Mr. Mortimer.
“I’m not!”
“You are!”
“Don’t argue!”
“I’m not arguing!”
“You are!”
“I’m not!”
Jane Hubbard had practically every noble quality which a woman can
possess with the exception of patience. A patient woman would have
stood by, shrinking from interrupting the dialogue. Jane Hubbard’s
robuster course was to raise the elephant-gun, point it at the front
door, and pull the trigger.
“I thought that would stop you,” she said complacently, as the echoes
died away and Mr. Bennett had finished leaping into the air. She
inserted a fresh cartridge, and sloped arms. “Now, the question is....”
“You made me bite my tongue!” said Mr. Bennett, deeply aggrieved.
“Serve you right!” said Jane placidly. “Now, the question is, have the
fellows got away or are they hiding somewhere in the house? I think
they’re still in the house.”
“The police!” exclaimed Mr. Bennett, forgetting his lacerated tongue
and his other grievances. “We must summon the police!”
“Obviously!” said Mrs. Hignett, withdrawing her fascinated gaze from
the ragged hole in the front door, the cost of repairing which she had
been mentally assessing. “We must send for the police at once.”
“We don’t really need them, you know,” said Jane. “If you’ll all go to
bed and just leave me to potter round with my gun....”
“And blow the whole house to pieces!” said Mrs. Hignett tartly. She had
begun to revise her original estimate of this girl. To her, Windles was
sacred, and anyone who went about shooting holes in it forfeited her
esteem.
“Shall I go for the police?” said Billie. “I could bring them back in
ten minutes in the car.”
“Certainly not!” said Mr. Bennett. “My daughter gadding about all over
the countryside in an automobile at this time of night!”
“If you think I ought not to go alone, I could take Bream.”
“Where _is_ Bream?” said Mr. Mortimer.
The odd fact that Bream was not among those present suddenly presented
itself to the company.
“Where can he be?” said Billie.
Jane Hubbard laughed the wholesome, indulgent laugh of one who is
broad-minded enough to see the humour of the situation even when the
joke is at her expense.
“What a silly girl I am!” she said. “I do believe that was Bream I shot
at upstairs. How foolish of me making a mistake like that!”
“You shot my only son!” cried Mr. Mortimer.
“I shot _at_ him,” said Jane. “My belief is that I missed him. Though
how I came to do it beats me. I don’t suppose I’ve missed a sitter like
that since I was a child in the nursery. Of course,” she proceeded,
looking on the reasonable side, “the visibility wasn’t good, but it’s
no use saying I oughtn’t at least to have winged him, because I ought.”
She shook her head with a touch of self-reproach. “I shall get chaffed
about this if it comes out,” she said regretfully.
“The poor boy must be in his room,” said Mr. Mortimer.
“Under the bed, if you ask me,” said Jane, blowing on the barrel of her
gun and polishing it with the side of her hand. “_He’s_ all right!
Leave him alone, and the housemaid will sweep him up in the morning.”
“Oh, he can’t be!” cried Billie, revolted.
A girl of high spirit, it seemed to her repellent that the man she was
engaged to marry should be displaying such a craven spirit. At that
moment she despised and hated Bream Mortimer. I think she was wrong,
mind you. It is not my place to criticise the little group of people
whose simple annals I am relating—my position is merely that of a
reporter—; but personally I think highly of Bream’s sturdy
common-sense. If somebody loosed off an elephant-gun at me in a dark
corridor, I would climb on to the roof and pull it up after me. Still,
rightly or wrongly, that was how Billie felt; and it flashed across her
mind that Samuel Marlowe, scoundrel though he was, would not have
behaved like this. And for a moment a certain wistfulness added itself
to the varied emotions then engaging her mind.
“I’ll go and look, if you like,” said Jane agreeably. “You amuse
yourselves somehow till I come back.”
She ran easily up the stairs, three at a time. Mr. Mortimer turned to
Mr. Bennett.
“It’s all very well your saying Wilhelmina mustn’t go, but, if she
doesn’t, how can we get the police? The house isn’t on the ’phone, and
nobody else can drive the car.”
“That’s true,” said Mr. Bennett, wavering.
“Of course, we could drop them a post-card first thing to-morrow
morning,” said Mr. Mortimer in his nasty sarcastic way.
“I’m going,” said Billie resolutely. It occurred to her, as it has
occurred to so many women before her, how helpless men are in a crisis.
The temporary withdrawal of Jane Hubbard had had the effect which the
removal of the rudder has on a boat. “It’s the only thing to do. I
shall be back in no time.”
She stepped firmly to the coat-rack, and began to put on her
motoring-cloak. And just then Jane Hubbard came downstairs, shepherding
before her a pale and glassy-eyed Bream.
“Right under the bed,” she announced cheerfully, “making a noise like a
piece of fluff in order to deceive burglars.”
Billie cast a scornful look at her fiancé. Absolutely unjustified, in
my opinion, but nevertheless she cast it. But it had no effect at all.
Terror had stunned Bream Mortimer’s perceptions. His was what the
doctors call a penumbral mental condition.
“Bream,” said Billie, “I want you to come in the car with me to fetch
the police.”
“All right,” said Bream.
“Get your coat.”
“All right,” said Bream.
“And cap.”
“All right,” said Bream.
He followed Billie in a docile manner out through the front door, and
they made their way to the garage at the back of the house, both
silent. The only difference between their respective silences was that
Billie’s was thoughtful, while Bream’s was just the silence of a man
who has unhitched his brain and is getting along as well as he can
without it.
In the hall they had left, Jane Hubbard once more took command of
affairs.
“Well, that’s something done,” she said, scratching Smith’s broad back
with the muzzle of her weapon. “Something accomplished, something done,
has earned a night’s repose. Not that we’re going to get it yet. I
think those fellows are hiding somewhere, and we ought to search the
house and rout them out. It’s a pity Smith isn’t a bloodhound. He’s a
good cake-hound, but as a watch-dog he doesn’t finish in the first
ten.”
The cake-hound, charmed at the compliment, frisked about her feet like
a young elephant.
“The first thing to do,” continued Jane, “is to go through the
ground-floor rooms....” She paused to strike a match against the suit
of armour nearest to her, a proceeding which elicited a sharp cry of
protest from Mrs. Hignett, and lit a cigarette. “I’ll go first, as I’ve
got a gun....” She blew a cloud of smoke. “I shall want somebody with
me to carry a light, and....”
“Tchoo!”
“What?” said Jane.
“I didn’t speak,” said Mr. Mortimer. “Who am I to speak?” he went on
bitterly. “Who am I that it should be supposed that I have anything
sensible to suggest?”
“Somebody spoke,” said Jane. “I....”
“Achoo!”
“Do you feel a draught, Mr. Bennett?” cried Jane sharply, wheeling
round on him.
“There _is_ a draught,” began Mr. Bennett.
“Well, finish sneezing and I’ll go on.”
“I didn’t sneeze!”
“Somebody sneezed.”
“It seemed to come from just behind you,” said Mrs. Hignett nervously.
“It couldn’t have come from just behind me,” said Jane, “because there
isn’t anything behind me from which it could have....” She stopped
suddenly, in her eyes the light of understanding, on her face the set
expression which was wont to come to it on the eve of action. “Oh!” she
said in a different voice, a voice which was cold and tense and
sinister. “Oh, I see!” She raised her gun, and placed a muscular
forefinger on the trigger. “Come out of that!” she said. “Come out of
that suit of armour and let’s have a look at you!”
“I can explain everything,” said a muffled voice through the vizor of
the helmet. “I can—_achoo!_” The smoke of the cigarette tickled Sam’s
nostrils again, and he suspended his remarks.
“I shall count three,” said Jane Hubbard, “One—two—”
“I’m coming! I’m coming!” said Sam petulantly.
“You’d better!” said Jane.
“I can’t get this dashed helmet off!”
“If you don’t come quick, I’ll blow it off.”
Sam stepped out into the hall, a picturesque figure which combined the
costumes of two widely separated centuries. Modern as far as the neck,
he slipped back at that point to the Middle Ages.
“Hands up!” commanded Jane Hubbard.
“My hands _are_ up!” retorted Sam querulously, as he wrenched at his
unbecoming head-wear.
“Never mind trying to raise your hat,” said Jane. “If you’ve lost the
combination, we’ll dispense with the formalities. What we’re anxious to
hear is what you’re doing in the house at this time of night, and who
your pals are. Come along, my lad, make a clean breast of it and
perhaps you’ll get off easier. Are you a gang?”
“Do I look like a gang?”
“If you ask me what you look like....”
“My name is Marlowe ... Samuel Marlowe....”
“Alias what?”
“Alias nothing! I say my name is Samuel Marlowe....”
An explosive roar burst from Mr. Bennett.
“The scoundrel! I know him! I forbade him the house, and....”
“And by what right did you forbid people my house, Mr. Bennett?” said
Mrs. Hignett with acerbity.
“I’ve rented the house, Mortimer and I rented it from your son....”
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Jane Hubbard. “Never mind about that. So you know
this fellow, do you?”
“I don’t know him!”
“You said you did.”
“I refuse to know him!” went on Mr. Bennett. “I won’t know him! I
decline to have anything to do with him!”
“But you identify him?”
“If he says he’s Samuel Marlowe,” assented Mr. Bennett grudgingly, “I
suppose he is. I can’t imagine anybody saying he was Samuel Marlowe if
he didn’t know it could be proved against him.”
“_Are_ you my nephew Samuel?” said Mrs. Hignett.
“Yes,” said Sam.
“Well, what are you doing in my house?”
“It’s _my_ house,” said Mr. Bennett, “for the summer, Henry Mortimer’s
and mine. Isn’t that right, Henry?”
“Dead right,” said Mr. Mortimer.
“There!” said Mr. Bennett. “You hear? And when Henry Mortimer says a
thing, it’s so. There’s nobody’s word I’d take before Henry
Mortimer’s.”
“When Rufus Bennett makes an assertion,” said Mr. Mortimer, highly
flattered by these kind words, “you can bank on it. Rufus Bennett’s
word is his bond. Rufus Bennett is a white man!”
The two old friends, reconciled once more, clasped hands with a good
deal of feeling.
“I am not disputing Mr. Bennett’s claim to belong to the Caucasian
race,” said Mrs. Hignett testily. “I merely maintain that this house is
m....”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes!” interrupted Jane. “You can thresh all that out
some other time. The point is, if this fellow is your nephew, I don’t
see what we can do. We’ll have to let him go.”
“I came to this house,” said Sam, raising his vizor to facilitate
speech, “to make a social call....”
“At this hour of the night!” snapped Mrs. Hignett. “You always were an
inconsiderate boy, Samuel.”
“I came to inquire after poor Eustace’s mumps. I’ve only just heard
that the poor chap was ill.”
“He’s getting along quite well,” said Jane, melting. “If I had known