AS THE CLUB kitten sauntered into the smoking-room of the Drones Club and greeted those present with a friendly miauw, Freddie Widgeon, who had been sitting in a corner with his head between his hands, rose stiffly.
“I had supposed,” he said, in a cold, level voice, “that this was a quiet retreat for gentlemen. As I perceive that it is a blasted Zoo, I will withdraw.”
And he left the room in a marked manner.
There was a good deal of surprise, not unmixed with consternation.
“What’s the trouble?” asked an Egg, concerned. Such exhibitions of the naked emotions are rare at the Drones. “Have they had a row?”
A Crumpet, always well-informed, shook his head.
“Freddie has had no personal breach with this particular kitten,” he said. “It is simply that since that week-end at Matcham Scratchings he can’t stand the sight of a cat.”
“Matcham what?”
“Scratchings. The ancestral home of Dahlia Prenderby in Oxfordshire.”
“I met Dahlia Prenderby once,” said the Egg. “I thought she seemed a nice girl.”
“Freddie thought so, too. He loved her madly.”
“And lost her, of course?”
“Absolutely.”
“Do you know,” said a thoughtful Bean, “I’ll bet that if all the girls Freddie Widgeon has loved and lost were placed end to end—not that I suppose one could do it—they would reach half-way down Piccadilly.”
“Further than that,” said the Egg. “Some of them were pretty tall. What beats me is why he ever bothers to love them. They always turn him down in the end. He might just as well never begin. Better, in fact, because in the time saved he could be reading some good book.”
“I think the trouble with Freddie,” said the Crumpet, “is that he always gets off to a flying start. He’s a good-looking sort of chap who dances well and can wiggle his ears, and the girl is dazzled for the moment, and this encourages him. From what he tells me, he appears to have gone very big with this Prenderby girl at the outset. So much so, indeed, that when she invited him down to Matcham Scratchings he had already bought his copy of What Every Young Bridegroom Ought to Know.”
“Rummy, these old country-house names,” mused the Bean. “Why Scratchings, I wonder?”
“Freddie wondered, too, till he got to the place. Then he tells me he felt it was absolutely the mot juste. This girl Dahlia’s family, you see, was one of those animal-loving families, and the house, he tells me, was just a frothing maelstrom of dumb chums. As far as the eye could reach, there were dogs scratching themselves and cats scratching the furniture. I believe, though he never met it socially, there was even a tame chimpanzee somewhere on the premises, no doubt scratching away as assiduously as the rest of them. You get these conditions here and there in the depths of the country, and this Matcham place was well away from the centre of things being about six miles from the nearest station.”
It was at this station (said the Crumpet) that Dahlia Prenderby met Freddie in her two-seater, and on the way to the house there occurred a conversation which I consider significant—showing, as it does, the cordial relations existing between the young couple at that point in the proceedings. I mean, it was only later that the bitter awakening and all that sort of thing popped up.
“I do want you to be a success, Freddie,” said the girl, after talking a while of this and that. “Some of the men I’ve asked down here have been such awful flops. The great thing is to make a good impression on Father.”
“I will,” said Freddie.
“He can be a little difficult at times.”
“Lead me to him,” said Freddie. “That’s all I ask. Lead me to him.”
“The trouble is, he doesn’t much like young men.”
“He’ll like me.”
“He will, will he?”
“Rather!”
“What makes you think that?”
“I’m a dashed fascinating chap.”
“Oh, you are?”
“Yes, I am.”
“You are, are you?”
“Rather!”
Upon which, she gave him a sort of push and he gave her a sort of push, and she giggled and he laughed like a paper bag bursting, and she gave him a kind of shove and he gave her a kind of shove, and she said “You are a silly ass!” and he said “What ho!” All of which shows you, I mean to say, the stage they had got to by this time. Nothing definitely settled, of course, but Love obviously beginning to burgeon in the girl’s heart.
Well, naturally, Freddie gave a good deal of thought during the drive to this father of whom the girl had spoken so feelingly, and he resolved that he would not fail her. The way he would suck up to the old dad would be nobody’s business. He proposed to exert upon him the full force of his magnetic personality, and looked forward to registering a very substantial hit.
Which being so, I need scarcely tell you, knowing Freddie as you do, that his first act on entering Sir Mortimer Prenderby’s orbit was to make the scaliest kind of floater, hitting him on the back of the neck with a tortoiseshell cat not ten minutes after his arrival.
His train having been a bit late, there was no time on reaching the house for any stately receptions or any of that “Welcome to Meadowsweet Hall” stuff. The girl simply shot him up to his room and told him to dress like a streak, because dinner was in a quarter of an hour, and then buzzed off to don the soup and fish herself. And Freddie was just going well when, looking round for his shirt, which he had left on the bed, he saw a large tortoiseshell cat standing on it, kneading it with its paws.
Well, you know how a fellow feels about his shirt-front. For an instant, Freddie stood spellbound. Then with a hoarse cry he bounded forward, scooped up the animal, and, carrying it out on to the balcony, flung it into the void. And an elderly gentleman, coming round the corner at this moment, received a direct hit on the back of his neck.
“Hell!” cried the elderly gentleman.
A head popped out of a window.
“Whatever is the matter, Mortimer?”
“It’s raining cats.”
“Nonsense. It’s a lovely evening,” said the head, and disappeared.
Freddie thought an apology would be in order.
“I say,” he said.
The old gentleman looked in every direction of the compass, and finally located Freddie on his balcony.
“I say,” said Freddie, “I’m awfully sorry you got that nasty buffet. It was me.”
“It was not you. It was a cat.”
“I know. I threw the cat.”
“Why?”
“Well . . .”
“Dam’ fool.”
“I’m sorry,” said Freddie.
“Go to blazes,” said the old gentleman.
Freddie backed into the room, and the incident closed.
Freddie is a pretty slippy dresser, as a rule, but this episode had shaken him, and he not only lost a collar-stud but made a mess of the first two ties. The result was that the gong went while he was still in his shirt-sleeves: and on emerging from his boudoir he was informed by a footman that the gang were already nuzzling their bouillon in the dining-room. He pushed straight on there, accordingly, and sank into a chair beside his hostess just in time to dead-heat with the final spoonful.
Awkward, of course, but he was feeling in pretty good form owing to the pleasantness of the thought that he was shoving his knees under the same board as the girl Dahlia: so, having nodded to his host, who was glaring at him from the head of the table, as much as to say that all would be explained in God’s good time, he shot his cuffs and started to make sparkling conversation to Lady Prenderby.
“Charming place you have here, what?”
Lady Prenderby said that the local scenery was generally admired. She was one of those tall, rangy, Queen Elizabeth sort of women, with tight lips and cold, blanc-mange-y eyes. Freddie didn’t like her looks much, but he was feeling, as I say, fairly fizzy, so he carried on with a bright zip.
“Pretty good hunting country, I should think.”
“I believe there is a good deal of hunting near here, yes.”
“I thought as much,” said Freddie. “Ah, that’s the stuff, is it not? A cracking gallop across good country with a jolly fine kill at the end of it, what, what? Hark for’ard, yoicks, tally-ho, I mean to say, and all that sort of thing.”
Lady Prenderby shivered austerely.
“I fear I cannot share your enthusiasm,” she said. “I have the strongest possible objection to hunting. I have always set my face against it, as against all similar brutalizing bloodsports.”
This was a nasty jar for poor old Freddie, who had been relying on the topic to carry him nicely through at least a couple of courses. It silenced him for the nonce. And as he paused to collect his faculties, his host, who had now been glowering for six and a half minutes practically without cessation, put a hand in front of his mouth and addressed the girl Dahlia across the table. Freddie thinks he was under the impression that he was speaking in a guarded whisper, but, as a matter of fact, the words boomed through the air as if he had been a costermonger calling attention to his brussels sprouts.
“Dahlia!”
“Yes, Father?”
“Who’s that ugly feller?”
“Hush!”
“What do you mean, hush? Who is he?”
“Mr. Widgeon.”
“Mr. Who?”
“Widgeon.”
“I wish you would articulate clearly and not mumble,” said Sir Mortimer fretfully. “It sounds to me just like ‘Widgeon.’ Who asked him here?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“He’s a friend of mine.”
“Well, he looks a pretty frightful young slab of damnation to me. What I’d call a criminal face.”
“Hush!”
“Why do you keep saying ‘Hush’? Must be a lunatic, too. Throws cats at people.”
“Please, Father!”
“Don’t say ‘Please, Father!’ No sense in it. I tell you he does throw cats at people. He threw one at me. Halfwitted, I’d call him—if that. Besides being the most offensive-looking young toad I’ve ever seen on the premises. How long’s he staying?”
“Till Monday.”
“My God! And to-day’s only Friday!” bellowed Sir Mortimer Prenderby.
It was an unpleasant situation for Freddie, of course, and I’m bound to admit he didn’t carry it off particularly well. What he ought to have done, obviously, was to have plunged into an easy flow of small-talk: but all he could think of was to ask Lady Prenderby if she was fond of shooting. Lady Prenderby having replied that, owing to being deficient in the savage instincts and wanton blood-lust that went to make up a callous and cold-hearted murderess, she was not, he relapsed into silence with his lower jaw hanging down.
All in all, he wasn’t so dashed sorry when dinner came to an end.
As he and Sir Mortimer were the only men at the table, most of the seats having been filled by a covey of mildewed females whom he had classified under the general heading of Aunts, it seemed to Freddie that the moment had now arrived when they would be able to get together once more, under happier conditions than those of their last meeting, and start to learn to appreciate one another’s true worth. He looked forward to a cosy tête-à-tête over the port, in the course of which he would smooth over that cat incident and generally do all that lay within his power to revise the unfavourable opinion of him which the other must have formed.
But apparently Sir Mortimer had his own idea of the duties and obligations of a host. Instead of clustering round Freddie with decanters, he simply gave him a long, lingering look of distaste and shot out of the french window into the garden. A moment later, his head reappeared and he uttered the words: “You and your dam’ cats!” Then the night swallowed him again.
Freddie was a good deal perplexed. All this was new stuff to him. He had been in and out of a number of country-houses in his time, but this was the first occasion on which he had ever been left flat at the conclusion of the evening meal, and he wasn’t quite sure how to handle the situation. He was still wondering, when Sir Mortimer’s head came into view again and its owner, after giving him another of those long, lingering looks, said: “Cats, forsooth!” and disappeared once more.
Freddie was now definitely piqued. It was all very well, he felt, Dahlia Prenderby telling him to make himself solid with her father, but how can you make yourself solid with a fellow who doesn’t stay put for a couple of consecutive seconds? If it was Sir Mortimer’s intention to spend the remainder of the night flashing past like a merry-go-round, there seemed little hope of anything amounting to a genuine rapprochement. It was a relief to his feelings when there suddenly appeared from nowhere his old acquaintance the tortoiseshell cat. It seemed to offer to him a means of working off his spleen.
Taking from Lady Prenderby’s plate, accordingly, the remains of a banana, he plugged the animal neatly at a range of two yards. It yowled and withdrew. And a moment later, there was Sir Mortimer again.
“Did you kick that cat?” said Sir Mortimer.
Freddie had half a mind to ask this old disease if he thought he was a man or a jack-in-the-box, but the breeding of the Widgeons restrained him.
“No,” he said, “I did not kick that cat.”
“You must have done something to it to make it come charging out at forty miles an hour.”
“I merely offered the animal a piece of fruit.”
“Do it again and see what happens to you.”
“Lovely evening,” said Freddie, changing the subject.
“No, it’s not, you silly ass,” said Sir Mortimer. Freddie rose. His nerve, I fancy, was a little shaken.
“I shall join the ladies,” he said, with dignity.
“God help them!” replied Sir Mortimer Prenderby in a voice instinct with the deepest feeling, and vanished once more.
Freddie’s mood, as he made for the drawing-room, was thoughtful. I don’t say he has much sense, but he’s got enough to know when he is and when he isn’t going with a bang. To-night, he realized, he had been very far from going in such a manner. It was not, that is to say, as the Idol of Matcham Scratchings that he would enter the drawing-room, but rather as a young fellow who had made an unfortunate first impression and would have to do a lot of heavy ingratiating before he could regard himself as really popular in the home.
He must bustle about, he felt, and make up leeway. And, knowing that what counts with these old-style females who have lived in the country all their lives is the exhibition of those little politenesses and attentions which were all the go in Queen Victoria’s time, his first action, on entering, was to make a dive for one of the aunts who seemed to be trying to find a place to put her coffee-cup.
“Permit me,” said Freddie, suave to the eyebrows.
And bounding forward with the feeling that this was the stuff to give them, he barged right into a cat.
“Oh, sorry,” he said, backing and bringing down his heel on another cat.
“I say, most frightfully sorry,” he said.
And, tottering to a chair, he sank heavily on to a third cat.
Well, he was up and about again in a jiffy, of course, but it was too late. There was the usual not-at-all-ing and don’t-mention-it-ing, but he could read between the lines. Lady Prenderby’s eyes had rested on his for only a brief instant, but it had been enough. His standing with her, he perceived, was now approximately what King Herod’s would have been at an Israelite Mothers’ Social Saturday Afternoon.
The girl Dahlia during these exchanges had been sitting on a sofa at the end of the room, turning the pages of a weekly paper, and the sight of her drew Freddie like a magnet. Her womanly sympathy was just what he felt he could do with at this juncture. Treading with infinite caution, he crossed to where she sat: and, having scanned the terrain narrowly for cats, sank down on the sofa at her side. And conceive his agony of spirit when he discovered that womanly sympathy had been turned off at the main. The girl was like a chunk of ice-cream with spikes all over it.
“Please do not trouble to explain,” she said coldly, in answer to his opening words. “I quite understand that there are people who have this odd dislike of animals.”
“But dash it. . . .” cried Freddie, waving his arm in a frenzied sort of way. “Oh, I say, sorry,” he added, as his fist sloshed another of the menagerie in the short ribs.
Dahlia caught the animal as it flew through the air.
“I think perhaps you had better take Augustus, Mother,” she said. “He seems to be annoying Mr. Widgeon.”
“Quite,” said Lady Prenderby. “He will be safer with me.”
“But, dash it. . . .” bleated Freddie.
Dahlia Prenderby drew in her breath sharply.
“How true it is,” she said, “that one never really knows a man till after one has seen him in one’s own home.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Dahlia Prenderby.
She rose and moved to the piano, where she proceeded to sing old Breton folk-songs in a distant manner, leaving Freddie to make out as best he could with a family album containing faded photographs with “Aunt Emily bathing at Llandudno, 1893”, and “This is Cousin George at the fancy-dress ball” written under them.
And so the long, quiet, peaceful home evening wore on, till eventually Lady Prenderby mercifully blew the whistle and he was at liberty to sneak off to his bedroom.
You might have supposed that Freddie’s thoughts, as he toddled upstairs with his candle, would have dwelt exclusively on the girl Dahlia. This, however, was not so. He did give her obvious shirtiness a certain measure of attention, of course, but what really filled his mind was the soothing reflection that at long last his path and that of the animal kingdom of Matcham Scratchings had now divided. He, so to speak, was taking the high road while they, as it were, would take the low road. For whatever might be the conditions prevailing in the dining-room, the drawing-room, and the rest of the house, his bedroom, he felt, must surely be a haven totally free from cats of all descriptions.
Remembering, however, that unfortunate episode before dinner, he went down on all fours and subjected the various nooks and crannies to a close examination. His eye could detect no cats. Relieved, he rose to his feet with a gay song on his lips: and he hadn’t got much beyond the first couple of bars when a voice behind him suddenly started taking the bass: and, turning, he perceived on the bed a fine Alsatian dog.
Freddie looked at the dog. The dog looked at Freddie. The situation was one fraught with embarrassment. A glance at the animal was enough to convince him that it had got an entirely wrong angle on the position of affairs and was regarding him purely in the light of an intrusive stranger who had muscled in on its private sleeping quarters. Its manner was plainly resentful. It fixed Freddie with a cold, yellow eye and curled its upper lip slightly, the better to display a long, white tooth. It also twitched its nose and gave a sotto-voce imitation of distant thunder.
Freddie did not know quite what avenue to explore. It was impossible to climb between the sheets with a thing like that on the counterpane. To spend the night in a chair, on the other hand, would have been foreign to his policy. He did what I consider the most statesmanlike thing by sidling out on to the balcony and squinting along the wall of the house to see if there wasn’t a lighted window hard by, behind which might lurk somebody who would rally round with aid and comfort.
There was a lighted window only a short distance away, so he shoved his head out as far as it would stretch, and said:
“I say!”
There being no response, he repeated:
“I say!”
And, finally, to drive his point home, he added:
“I say! I say! I say!”
This time he got results. The head of Lady Prenderby suddenly protruded from the window.
“Who,” she enquired, “is making that abominable noise?”
It was not precisely the attitude Freddie had hoped for, but he could take the rough with the smooth.
“It’s me. Widgeon, Frederick.”
“Must you sing on your balcony, Mr. Widgeon?”
“I wasn’t singing. I was saying ‘I say’.”
“What were you saying?”
“‘I say’.”
“You say what?”
“I say I was saying ‘I say’. Kind of a heart-cry, if you know what I mean. The fact is, there’s a dog in my room.”
“What sort of dog?”
“A whacking great Alsatian.”
“Ah, that would be Wilhelm. Good night, Mr. Widgeon.”
The window closed. Freddie let out a heart-stricken yip.
“But I say!”
The window reopened.
“Really, Mr. Widgeon!”
“But what am I to do?”
“Do?”
“About this whacking great Alsatian!”
Lady Prenderby seemed to consider.
“No sweet biscuits,” she said. “And when the maid brings you your tea in the morning please do not give him sugar. Simply a little milk in the saucer. He is on a diet. Good night, Mr. Widgeon.”
Freddie was now pretty well nonplussed. No matter what his hostess might say about this beastly dog being on a diet, he was convinced from its manner that its medical adviser had not forbidden it Widgeons, and once more he bent his brain to the task of ascertaining what to do next.
There were several possible methods of procedure. His balcony being not so very far from the ground, he could, if he pleased, jump down and pass a health-giving night in the nasturtium bed. Or he might curl up on the floor. Or he might get out of the room and doss downstairs somewhere.
This last scheme seemed about the best. The only obstacle in the way of its fulfilment was the fact that, when he started for the door, his room-mate would probably think he was a burglar about to loot silver of lonely country-house and pin him. Still, it had to be risked, and a moment later he might have been observed tiptoeing across the carpet with all the caution of a slack-wire artist who isn’t any too sure he remembers the correct steps.
Well, it was a near thing. At the instant when he started, the dog seemed occupied with something that looked like a cushion on the bed. It was licking this object in a thoughtful way, and paid no attention to Freddie till he was half-way across No Man’s Land. Then it suddenly did a sort of sitting high-jump in his direction, and two seconds later Freddie, with a draughty feeling about the seat of his trouserings, was on top of the wardrobe, with the dog underneath looking up. He tells me that if he ever moved quicker in his life it was only on the occasion when, a lad of fourteen, he was discovered by his uncle, Lord Blicester, smoking one of the latter’s cigars in the library: and he rather thinks he must have clipped at least a fifth of a second off the record then set up.
It looked to him now as if his sleeping arrangements for the night had been settled for him. And the thought of having to roost on top of a wardrobe at the whim of a dog was pretty dashed offensive to his proud spirit, as you may well imagine. However, as you cannot reason with Alsatians, it seemed the only thing to be done: and he was trying to make himself as comfortable as a sharp piece of wood sticking into the fleshy part of his leg would permit, when there was a snuffling noise in the passage and through the door came an object which in the dim light he was at first not able to identify. It looked something like a pen-wiper and something like a piece of a hearth-rug. A second and keener inspection revealed it as a Pekinese puppy.
The uncertainty which Freddie had felt as to the newcomer’s status was shared, it appeared, by the Alsatian: for after raising its eyebrows in a puzzled manner it rose and advanced enquiringly. In a tentative way it put out a paw and rolled the intruder over. Then, advancing again, it lowered its nose and sniffed.
It was a course of action against which its best friend would have advised it. These Pekes are tough eggs, especially when, as in this case, female. They look the world in the eye, and are swift to resent familiarity. There was a sort of explosion, and the next moment the Alsatian was shooting out of the room with its tail between its legs, hotly pursued. Freddie could hear the noise of battle rolling away along the passage, and it was music to his ears. Something on these lines was precisely what that Alsatian had been asking for, and now it had got it.
Presently, the Peke returned, dashing the beads of perspiration from its forehead, and came and sat down under the wardrobe, wagging a stumpy tail. And Freddie, feeling that the All Clear had been blown and that he was now at liberty to descend, did so.
His first move was to shut the door, his second to fraternize with his preserver. Freddie is a chap who believes in giving credit where credit is due, and it seemed to him that this Peke had shown itself an ornament of its species. He spared no effort, accordingly, to entertain it. He lay down on the floor and let it lick his face two hundred and thirty-three times. He tickled it under the left ear, the right ear, and at the base of the tail, in the order named. He also scratched its stomach.
All these attentions the animal received with cordiality and marked gratification: and as it seemed still in pleasure-seeking mood and had plainly come to look upon him as the official Master of the Revels, Freddie, feeling that he could not disappoint it but must play the host no matter what the cost to himself, took off his tie and handed it over. He would not have done it for everybody, he says, but where this life-saving Peke was concerned the sky was the limit.
Well, the tie went like a breeze. It was a success from the start. The Peke chewed it and chased it and got entangled in it and dragged it about the room, and was just starting to shake it from side to side when an unfortunate thing happened. Misjudging its distance, it banged its head a nasty wallop against the leg of the bed.
There is nothing of the Red Indian at the stake about a puppy in circumstances like this. A moment later, Freddie’s blood was chilled by a series of fearful shrieks that seemed to ring through the night like the dying cries of the party of the second part to a first-class murder. It amazed him that a mere Peke, and a juvenile Peke at that, should have been capable of producing such an uproar. He says that a Baronet, stabbed in the back with a paper-knife in his library, could not have made half such a row.
Eventually, the agony seemed to abate. Quite suddenly, as if nothing had happened, the Peke stopped yelling and with an amused smile started to play with the tie again. And at the same moment there was a sound of whispering outside, and then a knock at the door.
“Hullo?” said Freddie.
“It is I, sir. Biggleswade.”
“Who’s Biggleswade?”
“The butler, sir.”
“What do you want?”
“Her ladyship wishes me to remove the dog which you are torturing.”
There was more whispering.
“Her ladyship also desires me to say that she will be reporting the affair in the morning to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.”
There was another spot of whispering.
“Her ladyship further instructs me to add that, should you prove recalcitrant, I am to strike you over the head with the poker.”
Well, you can’t say this was pleasant for poor old Freddie, and he didn’t think so himself. He opened the door, to perceive, without, a group consisting of Lady Prenderby, her daughter Dahlia, a few assorted aunts, and the butler, with poker. And he says he met Dahlia’s eyes and they went through him like a knife.
“Let me explain . . .” he began.
“Spare us the details,” said Lady Prenderby with a shiver. She scooped up the Peke and felt it for broken bones.
“But listen . . .”
“Good night, Mr. Widgeon.”
The aunts said good night, too, and so did the butler. The girl Dahlia preserved a revolted silence.
“But, honestly, it was nothing, really. It banged its head against the bed . . .”
“What did he say?” asked one of the aunts, who was a little hard of hearing.
“He says he banged the poor creature’s head against the bed,” said Lady Prenderby.
“Dreadful!” said the aunt.
“Hideous!” said a second aunt.
A third aunt opened up another line of thought. She said that with men like Freddie in the house, was anyone safe? She mooted the possibility of them all being murdered in their beds. And though Freddie offered to give her a written guarantee that he hadn’t the slightest intention of going anywhere near her bed, the idea seemed to make a deep impression.
“Biggleswade,” said Lady Prenderby.
“M’lady?”
“You will remain in this passage for the remainder of the night with your poker.”
“Very good, m’lady.”
“Should this man attempt to leave his room, you will strike him smartly over the head.”
“Just so, m’lady.”
“But, listen . . .” said Freddie.
“Good night, Mr. Widgeon.”
The mob scene broke up. Soon the passage was empty save for Biggleswade the butler, who had begun to pace up and down, halting every now and then to flick the air with his poker as if testing the lissomness of his wrist-muscles and satisfying himself that they were in a condition to ensure the right amount of follow-through.
The spectacle he presented was so unpleasant that Freddie withdrew into his room and shut the door. His bosom, as you may imagine, was surging with distressing emotions. That look which Dahlia Prenderby had given him had churned him up to no little extent. He realized that he had a lot of tense thinking to do, and to assist thought he sat down on the bed.
Or, rather, to be accurate, on the dead cat which was lying on the bed. It was this cat which the Alsatian had been licking just before the final breach in his relations with Freddie—the object, if you remember, which the latter had supposed to be a cushion.
He leaped up as if the corpse, instead of being cold, had been piping hot. He stared down, hoping against hope that the animal was merely in some sort of coma. But a glance told him that it had made the great change. He had never seen a deader cat. After life’s fitful fever it slept well.
You wouldn’t be far out in saying that poor old Freddie was now appalled. Already his reputation in this house was at zero, his name mud. On all sides he was looked upon as Widgeon the Amateur Vivisectionist. This final disaster could not but put the tin hat on it. Before, he had had a faint hope that in the morning, when calmer moods would prevail, he might be able to explain that matter of the Peke. But who was going to listen to him if he were discovered with a dead cat on his person?
And then the thought came to him that it might be possible not to be discovered with it on his person. He had only to nip downstairs and deposit the remains in the drawing-room or somewhere and suspicion might not fall upon him. After all, in a super-catted house like this, cats must always be dying like flies all over the place. A housemaid would find the animal in the morning and report to G.H.Q. that the cat strength of the establishment had been reduced by one, and there would be a bit of tut-tutting and perhaps a silent tear or two, and then the thing would be forgotten.
The thought gave him new life. All briskness and efficiency, he picked up the body by the tail and was just about to dash out of the room when, with a silent groan, he remembered Biggleswade.
He peeped out. It might be that the butler, once the eye of authority had been removed, had departed to get the remainder of his beauty-sleep. But no. Service and Fidelity were evidently the watchwords at Matcham Scratchings. There the fellow was, still practising half-arm shots with the poker. Freddie closed the door.
And, as he did so, he suddenly thought of the window. There lay the solution. Here he had been, fooling about with doors and thinking in terms of drawing-rooms, and all the while there was the balcony staring him in the face. All he had to do was to shoot the body out into the silent night, and let gardeners, not housemaids, discover it.
He hurried out. It was a moment for swift action. He raised his burden. He swung it to and fro, working up steam. Then he let it go, and from the dark garden there came suddenly the cry of a strong man in his anger.
“Who threw that cat?”
It was the voice of his host, Sir Mortimer Prenderby.
“Show me the man who threw that cat!” he thundered.
Windows flew up. Heads came out. Freddie sank to the floor of the balcony and rolled against the wall.
“Whatever is the matter, Mortimer?”
“Let me get at the man who hit me in the eye with a cat.”
“A cat?” Lady Prenderby’s voice sounded perplexed. “Are you sure?”
“Sure? What do you mean sure? Of course I’m sure. I was just dropping off to sleep in my hammock, when suddenly a great beastly cat came whizzing through the air and caught me properly in the eyeball. It’s a nice thing. A man can’t sleep in hammocks in his own garden without people pelting him with cats. I insist on the blood of the man who threw that cat.”
“Where did it come from?”
“Must have come from that balcony there.”
“Mr. Widgeon’s balcony,” said Lady Prenderby in an acid voice. “As I might have guessed.”
Sir Mortimer uttered a cry.
“So might I have guessed! Widgeon, of course! That ugly feller. He’s been throwing cats all the evening. I’ve got a nasty sore place on the back of my neck where he hit me with one before dinner. Somebody come and open the front door. I want my heavy cane, the one with the carved ivory handle. Or a horsewhip will do.”
“Wait, Mortimer,” said Lady Prenderby. “Do nothing rash. The man is evidently a very dangerous lunatic. I will send Biggleswade to overpower him. He has the kitchen poker.”
Little (said the Crumpet) remains to be told. At two-fifteen that morning a sombre figure in dress clothes without a tie limped into the little railway station of Lower Smattering on the Wissel, some six miles from Matcham Scratchings. At three-forty-seven it departed London-wards on the up milk-train. It was Frederick Widgeon. He had a broken heart and blisters on both heels. And in that broken heart was that loathing for all cats of which you recently saw so signal a manifestation. I am revealing no secrets when I tell you that Freddie Widgeon is permanently through with cats. From now on, they cross his path at their peril.
The town of Walsingford, though provided almost to excess with public-houses, possesses only one hotel of the higher class, the sort that can be considered a suitable pull-up for the nobility and gentry. . . . The fastidious find it a little smelly, for the rule against opening windows holds good here, as in all English country-town hotels, but it is really the only place where a motorist of quality can look in for a brush up and a cup of tea. Nowhere else will you find marble mantelpieces, armchairs, tables bearing bead ferns in brass pots and waiters in celluloid collars.