The Man Upstairs and Other Stories
I have secured you, sir. And I may tell you, sir,' he added, with
stately courtesy, 'that, in the opinion of the servants' hall, your
chances are 'ighly fancied,--very 'ighly. The pool has now reached
considerable proportions, and, 'aving had certain losses on the Turf
very recent, I am extremely anxious to win it. So I thought, if I might
take the liberty, sir, I would place my knowledge of the sex at your
disposal. You will find it sound in every respect. That is all. Thank
you, sir.'
Martin's feelings had undergone a complete revulsion. In the last few
minutes the butler had shed his wings and grown horns, cloven feet, and
a forked tail. His rage deprived him of words. He could only gurgle.
'Don't thank me, sir,' said the butler, indulgently. 'I ask no thanks.
We are working together for a common hobject, and any little 'elp I can
provide is given freely.'
'You old scoundrel!' shouted Martin, his wrath prevailing even against
that blue eye. 'You have the insolence to come to me and--'
He stopped. The thought of these hounds, these demons, coolly gossiping
and speculating below stairs about Elsa, making her the subject of
little sporting flutters to relieve the monotony of country life,
choked him.
'I shall tell Mr Keith,' he said.
The butler shook his bald head gravely.
'I shouldn't, sir. It is a 'ighly fantastic story, and I don't think he
would believe it.'
'Then I'll--Oh, get out!'
Keggs bowed deferentially.
'If you wish it, sir,' he said, 'I will withdraw. If I may make the
suggestion, sir, I think you should commence to dress. Dinner will be
served in a few minutes. Thank you, sir.'
He passed softly out of the room.
* * * * *
It was more as a demonstration of defiance against Keggs than because
he really hoped that anything would come of it that Martin approached
Elsa next morning after breakfast. Elsa was strolling on the terrace in
front of the house with the bard, but Martin broke in on the conference
with the dogged determination of a steam-drill.
'Coming out with the guns today, Elsa?' he said.
She raised her eyes. There was an absent look in them.
'The guns?' she said. 'Oh, no; I hate watching men shoot.'
'You used to like it.'
'I used to like dolls,' she said, impatiently.
Mr Barstowe gave tongue. He was a slim, tall, sickeningly beautiful
young man, with large, dark eyes, full of expression.
'We develop,' he said. 'The years go by, and we develop. Our souls
expand--timidly at first, like little, half-fledged birds stealing out
from the--'
'I don't know that I'm so set on shooting today, myself,' said Martin.
'Will you come round the links?'
'I am going out in the motor with Mr Barstowe,' said Elsa.
'The motor!' cried Mr Barstowe. 'Ah, Rossiter, that is the very poetry
of motion. I never ride in a motor-car without those words of
Shakespeare's ringing in my mind: "I'll put a girdle round about the
earth in forty minutes."'
'I shouldn't give way to that sort of thing if I were you,' said
Martin. 'The police are pretty down on road-hogging in these parts.'
'Mr Barstowe was speaking figuratively,' said Elsa, with disdain.
'Was he?' grunted Martin, whose sorrows were tending to make him every
day more like a sulky schoolboy. 'I'm afraid I haven't got a poetic
soul.'
'I'm afraid you haven't,' said Elsa.
There was a brief silence. A bird made itself heard in a neighbouring
tree.
'"The moan of doves in immemorial elms,"' quoted Mr Barstowe, softly.
'Only it happens to be a crow in a beech,' said Martin, as the bird
flew out.
Elsa's chin tilted itself in scorn. Martin turned on his heel and
walked away.
'It's the wrong way, sir; it's the wrong way,' said a voice. 'I was
hobserving you from a window, sir. It's Lady Angelica over again.
Hopposition is useless, believe me, sir.'
Martin faced round, flushed and wrathful. The butler went on unmoved:
'Miss Elsa is going for a ride in the car today, sir.'
'I know that.'
'Uncommonly tricky things, these motor-cars. I was saying so to
Roberts, the chauffeur, just as soon as I 'eard Miss Elsa was going out
with Mr Barstowe. I said, "Roberts, these cars is tricky; break down
when you're twenty miles from hanywhere as soon as look at you.
Roberts," I said, slipping him a sovereign, "'ow awful it would be if
the car should break down twenty miles from hanywhere today!"'
Martin stared.
'You bribed Roberts to--'
'Sir! I gave Roberts the sovereign because I am sorry for him. He is a
poor man, and has a wife and family to support.'
'Very well,' said Martin, sternly; 'I shall go and warn Miss Keith.'
'Warn her, sir!'
'I shall tell her that you have bribed Roberts to make the car break
down so that--'
Keggs shook his head.
'I fear she would hardly credit the statement, sir. She might even
think that you was trying to keep her from going for your own pussonal
ends.'
'I believe you are the devil,' said Martin.
'I 'ope you will come to look on me, sir,' said Keggs, unctuously, 'as
your good hangel.'
Martin shot abominably that day, and, coming home in the evening gloomy
and savage, went straight to his room, and did not reappear till
dinner-time. Elsa had been taken in by one of the moustache-tuggers.
Martin found himself seated on her other side. It was so pleasant to be
near her, and to feel that the bard was away at the other end of the
table, that for the moment his spirits revived.
'Well, how did you like the ride?' he asked, with a smile. 'Did you put
that girdle round the world?'
She looked at him--once. The next moment he had an uninterrupted view
of her shoulder, and heard the sound of her voice as she prattled gaily
to the man on her other side.
His heart gave a sudden bound. He understood now. The demon butler had
had his wicked way. Good heavens! She had thought he was taunting her!
He must explain at once. He--
'Hock or sherry, sir?'
He looked up into Kegg's expressionless eyes. The butler was wearing
his on-duty mask. There was no sign of triumph in his face.
'Oh, sherry. I mean hock. No, sherry. Neither.'
This was awful. He must put this right.
'Elsa,' he said.
She was engrossed in her conversation with her neighbour.
From down the table in a sudden lull in the talk came the voice of Mr
Barstowe. He seemed to be in the middle of a narrative.
'Fortunately,' he was saying, 'I had with me a volume of Shelley, and
one of my own little efforts. I had read Miss Keith the whole of the
latter and much of the former before the chauffeur announced that it
was once more possible--'
'Elsa,' said the wretched man, 'I had no idea--you don't think--'
She turned to him.
'I beg your pardon?' she said, very sweetly.
'I swear I didn't know--I mean, I'd forgotten--I mean--'
She wrinkled her forehead.
'I'm really afraid I don't understand.'
'I mean, about the car breaking down.'
'The car? Oh, yes. Yes, it broke down. We were delayed quite a little
while. Mr Barstowe read me some of his poems. It was perfectly lovely.
I was quite sorry when Roberts told us we could go on again. But do you
really mean to tell me, Mr Lambert, that you--'
And once more the world became all shoulder.
When the men trailed into the presence of the ladies for that brief
seance on which etiquette insisted before permitting the stampede to
the billiard-room, Elsa was not to be seen.
'Elsa?' said Mrs Keith in answer to Martin's question. 'She has gone to
bed. The poor child has a headache. I am afraid she had a tiring day.'
There was an early start for the guns next morning, and as Elsa did not
appear at breakfast Martin had to leave without seeing her. His
shooting was even worse than it had been on the previous day.
It was not until late in the evening that the party returned to the
house. Martin, on the way to his room, met Mrs Keith on the stairs. She
appeared somewhat agitated.
'Oh, Martin,' she said. 'I'm so glad you're back. Have you seen
anything of Elsa?'
'Elsa?'
'Wasn't she with the guns?'
'With the guns' said Martin, puzzled. 'No.'
'I have seen nothing of her all day. I'm getting worried. I can't think
what can have happened to her. Are you sure she wasn't with the guns?'
'Absolutely certain. Didn't she come in to lunch?'
'No. Tom,' she said, as Mr Keith came up, 'I'm so worried about Elsa. I
haven't seen her all day. I thought she must be out with the guns.'
Mr Keith was a man who had built up a large fortune mainly by
consistently refusing to allow anything to agitate him. He carried this
policy into private life.
'Wasn't she in at lunch?' he asked, placidly.
'I tell you I haven't seen her all day. She breakfasted in her room--'
'Late?'
'Yes. She was tired, poor girl.'
'If she breakfasted late,' said Mr Keith, 'she wouldn't need any lunch.
She's gone for a stroll somewhere.'
'Would you put back dinner, do you think?' inquired Mrs Keith,
anxiously.
'I am not good at riddles,' said Mr Keith, comfortably, 'but I can
answer that one. I would not put back dinner. I would not put back
dinner for the King.'
Elsa did not come back for dinner. Nor was hers the only vacant place.
Mr Barstowe had also vanished. Even Mr Keith's calm was momentarily
ruffled by this discovery. The poet was not a favourite of his--it was
only reluctantly that he had consented to his being invited at all; and
the presumption being that when two members of a house-party disappear
simultaneously they are likely to be spending the time in each other's
society, he was annoyed. Elsa was not the girl to make a fool of
herself, of course, but--He was unwontedly silent at dinner.
Mrs Keith's anxiety displayed itself differently. She was frankly
worried, and mentioned it. By the time the fish had been reached
conversation at the table had fixed itself definitely on the one
topic.
'It isn't the car this time, at any rate,' said Mr Keith. 'It hasn't
been out today.'
'I can't understand it,' said Mrs Keith for the twentieth time. And
that was the farthest point reached in the investigation of the
mystery.
By the time dinner was over a spirit of unrest was abroad. The company
sat about in uneasy groups. Snooker-pool was, if not forgotten, at any
rate shelved. Somebody suggested search-parties, and one or two of the
moustache-tuggers wandered rather aimlessly out into the darkness.
Martin was standing in the porch with Mr Keith when Keggs approached.
As his eyes lit on him, Martin was conscious of a sudden solidifying of
the vague suspicion which had been forming in his mind. And yet that
suspicion seemed so wild. How could Keggs, with the worst intentions,
have had anything to do with this? He could not forcibly have abducted
the missing pair and kept them under lock and key. He could not have
stunned them and left them in a ditch. Nevertheless, looking at him
standing there in his attitude of deferential dignity, with the light
from the open door shining on his bald head, Martin felt perfectly
certain that he had in some mysterious fashion engineered the whole
thing.
'Might I have a word, sir, if you are at leisure?'
'Well, Keggs?'
'Miss Elsa, sir.'
'Yes?'
Kegg's voice took on a sympathetic softness.
'It was not my place, sir, to make any remark while in the dining-room,
but I could not 'elp but hoverhear the conversation. I gathered from
remarks that was passed that you was somewhat hat a loss to account for
Miss Elsa's non-appearance, sir.'
Mr Keith laughed shortly.
'You gathered that, eh?'
Keggs bowed.
'I think, sir, that possibly I may be hable to throw light on the
matter.'
'What!' cried Mr Keith. 'Great Scott, man! then why didn't you say so
at the time? Where is she?'
'It was not my place, sir, to henter into the conversation of the