1
You might say the affair began when Percy Feltham put a bullet through his head in 1917; or when Jeremy Freyne and I turned up on that foggy night at the Abbey to find half the household had turned out on to the moors; or even to the scene of the second violent death on the premises a few days later. But I think for my purpose it will be best to begin with the day I cannoned against Jeremy in the bazaar at M——in India. I had just completed a fascinating but intricate piece of personal inquiry work on behalf of a rich and fanatical client of my legal firm, Hutchinson, Keith and Murray. It had involved a great deal of examination, patience, travelling, time, money and the most minute inquiries, all to establish the falsity of a slander that scarcely seemed worth so much effort. I said as much to my senior partner, but Hutchinson is versed in humanity and possesses, in addition, a peculiar ripe wisdom of his own.
“Tell Desmond that,” he said, “and he’ll make the obvious retort of the almost fabulously wealthy man who has had to earn his living. He’s kept his hands clean all these years, worked colossally hard, achieved most of his aims, and his good name is worth a great deal to him. He can’t buy a new one, as he can replace most things. To him this is vital, and he hasn’t the advantages of birth that would enable him to shrug the lie aside for the stupid insult that it is.”
I had no objection to Mr. Desmond’s regard for his good name, since it gave me the opportunity of visiting a country that has always possessed a charm for me even in prospect. Moreover, after chasing from pillar to post, I ran down my slanderer, proved his bribes to certain locals and poor whites beyond a doubt, and was coming back with a fistful of evidence when I collided with Jeremy Freyne.
I had known Jeremy ever since we were small boys together at our first prep school. He had been a thin, intelligent, good-looking little boy, who had only to nod his head to gain adherents to the maddest scheme; at fourteen, at Eton, he had been coltish, with an appearance of wearing someone else’s clothes, but his personal magnetism was greater than ever. At seventeen he came nearer to being expelled, without actually pulling it off, than anyone I have ever met. Three of us held our thumbs for him for an hour while his persuasive tongue tackled its first serious task at diplomacy; and after that he was the rowdiest undergraduate on record to escape being sent down.
Wherever Jeremy was there was bound to be something going on; some madcap had only got to say, “What a lark to do so-and-so,” and Jeremy would be up and calling, “Come on!” before anyone could protest. The trouble was that his challenges were always irresistible. And he seldom lost his bet. Whenever I see “The Mikado,” I am reminded of Jeremy when Ko-Ko says pleadingly, “When your Majesty orders a thing, it is as good as done; to all intents and purposes that thing is done.” I remember during his second year at Oxford he got involved in a scrape that made a certain popular hostess remark that she wasn’t going to have that dissolute young man at her house again, a distinct miss for Jeremy, who was accustomed to having a pretty good time there. Three days later, there came to call on Mrs. D——a plumpish, beshawled, button-booted lady, in black, giving a general appearance of feathers and brooches and carrying a large brocade bag. She had come, she explained earnestly, to apologise for the ill-behaviour of her son.
“He is wild,” she acknowledged, “but he has a heart of gold.”
Mrs. D——was so won over by the old lady’s skittish and witty conversation, once the question of Jeremy was shelved, that she readily agreed to rescind her decision, and the visitor retired to a neighbouring garage to deal with stays, petticoats, suspenders, hairpins and a lace fichu.
The affair leaked out, though it never travelled so far as Mrs. D——. When Jeremy’s mother heard of it, she sent for him. She was a round dimpled dormouse of a woman with a deceptive air of gentleness.
“Don’t you be taken in, Tony, old son,” Jeremy said, feelingly, to me. “I give you my word that school lickings were nothing to my mother when she’d got her monkey up.”
Of course, at twenty-two she couldn’t deal so simply with him, but her subtlety made even her victim her admirer.
“Dear me, Jeremy,” she said in her charming voice and assuming her most delightful manner, “what a positive godsend you are! Here am I harried to death trying to find a good reason for refusing to attend the local bazaar in August.”
“Can I suggest anything?” asked Jeremy, looking puzzled.
“No, dear boy, I shan’t have to refuse now. What a pity you didn’t reveal your gifts last year. There were several functions I know I should have enjoyed. Fortunately, this is also going to be a busy summer.”
Jeremy looked appalled. “But why don’t you go yourself?” he demanded. “They’re—they’re your pigeon.”
Mrs. Freyne shook her head. “Oh, no,” she replied placidly, “I don’t run darning-needles into my fingers for fun, or swallow ground glass, so why should I be expected to catch germs in a number of local halls? Have you a diary, dear? There are so many engagements I’m afraid you might forget some of them.”
“My God!” said Jeremy in awe-struck tones at the end of the summer vacation, “never pit yourself against a woman, Tony. You won’t have an earthly.” But to his mother he said, “Dearest, how can I ever thank you enough? You’ve given me the most amazing warning. After seeing the lengths to which female brutality will go, and realising the manner in which respectable married women employ their leisure, I have resolved never to place my head in the noose.”
“How comforting!” said Judia Freyne. “I was so much afraid you were going to marry that red-headed Australian cat you’ve been trailing about everywhere this year. What about continuing the experiment at Christmas? There’ll be lots more parties then.”
We both got into the tail of the war, and I ran upon Jeremy at the beginning of 1918. Mrs. Freyne had died the previous year and he took it very hard. Otherwise he didn’t seem a scrap changed by his war experiences. He came through without a scratch, while I took a bullet in the hip that has left me a little lame ever since.
When I came back I was taken in by old Hutchinson, who had always promised to give me a stool in his office when I came down from Oxford. He had lost his son in the war, and in 1926 he took me into partnership. I liked the work amazingly, and Hutchinson was a charming man to deal with. There was another young partner, Murray, who came in two years after I did.
I had a little money of my own, besides what I earned, and no dependants, and I felt I deserved a little comfort, so I engaged chambers in town and advertised for a valet. I saw a good many, ex-servicemen to an applicant, but half of them had never dressed anything but themselves, except one enterprising man who said he was an expert at dressing windows, and I was beginning to despair and wax impatient when a tall slender young fellow, with a brief moustache and gold-rimmed glasses, put in an appearance. I have a habit of going by a man’s hands when I’m dealing with him, in practically every capacity. It’s a trick lawyers learn very early; people can disguise their voices, control their expressions, remain as unmoved as if they were something out of Madame Tussaud’s, but again and again they’re betrayed by their hands. This fellow had noticeably good hands, with flexible wrists, and he knew what to do with them. The only thing I didn’t like about him was the moustache, and I wondered if he’d agree to shave it off. I asked him, tentatively, and he replied without a shadow of hesitation, “Certainly, my dear fellow. It was a damned nuisance, anyhow,” and peeling it off, he dropped it in his pocket.
I felt a little annoyed. No man likes being fooled.
“What on earth’s your little game now?” I demanded.
“The moustache?” he asked. “To tell you the truth, I’m temporarily interested in a lady who considers it effeminate not to sport a healthy growth on the upper lip.”
“And you can’t manage the real thing? Bad luck.”
“There are several reasons against making the attempt. One, by the time it’s achieved adolescence my interest in Clarice and hers in me will undoubtedly have waned. Two, various other of my lady friends consider a moustache a positive nuisance. Three, it stamps me immediately as an ex-officer, and I’m beginning to discover that we aren’t exactly a popular lot. Worthy, my dear fellow, deserving, well-meaning, but—for the most part without the haziest notion of business methods, and so liable to grab a bayonet when we want to enforce an argument. Three—no, four—it limits my capacities. After all, one can always add a moustache when desirable, but one can’t so easily detach it if it’s permanently embedded in the individual. No, I do very well with Charlie.”
“I suppose it wouldn’t be so easy to pass yourself off as the new Parish Visitor with that kind of excrescence clinging to you,” I agreed. “I get you.”
“I hope you’re going to keep me,” said Jeremy promptly. “You’ll find me industrious, willing and trustworthy. And my taste is impeccable. Also, I’m damned hard up, I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed—and I know you do yourself devilish well.”
But I didn’t—take him, I mean. Instead I took a fair young man with the manners of a shop-walker, and Jeremy disappeared into the blue. He didn’t, after all, embrace any profession. He said he had had one darned good try and luck was against him. He knocked about, gathering experience and having the time of his life, so that presently, when you heard of some white man with the reputation of a lunatic, doing anything particularly futile in some obscure British protectorate, you could bet your boots Jeremy wasn’t far off.
His last words to me, as he turned to leave my rooms, were, “I bet the chap you do take in my place will sneak your watch, and I hope he gets your links as well.”
2
His first words to me when we met in the bazaar were, “Hullo, Tony. Do I win my bet?”
It was a minute before I realised what he meant; then I recollected, and handed him five pounds. “Though, as a matter of fact,” I said, “he didn’t take the links.”
Whatever he had been doing for the past ten years it didn’t appear to have aged him at all. He was the same lean, cheerful, reckless chap, deeply tanned, with the same mad dark-blue eyes (they say that if a male Freyne got born with eyes of any other colour it would be promptly disowned), the same cool way of walking into danger, the same casual manner of trusting to the hour to provide its own requirements.
“One of the lilies of the field, I am,” he said, complacently. “I toil not, neither do I spin, but I give you my word, I wouldn’t change places with any raven living. Come and spot the sacred ape with me, will you? They say he has to be seen to be believed. Personally, I thought we’d encountered his whole tribe.”
He looked at the crowds of people surging all round us; representatives of practically every nation under Heaven jostled and muttered and bargained. We watched them surging to and fro; there was a good sprinkling of English and American tourists, easily distinguished by their expansive topees, white drill suits, that made them look like something on the suburban stage, cigars, wrist-watches, cameras and incredible boots. One couple, clearly sprung from the lower middle-class (probably been lucky in the war, Jeremy suggested, but not rancorously), paused near us. The woman said in a quarrelsome, disappointed tone, “It’s what I told you all along, Ern. It’s just like the Earl’s Court Exhibition, only they do have seats there.”
Jeremy collapsed into wordless laughter. “Don’t let’s look for the ape,” he suggested. “He’d be pure anti-climax after that. I’ve found a place where you can get a God-fearing British drink.”
“As British as Earl’s Court, I suppose?”
“Or the British bathroom. Has it ever occurred to you, Tony, that the one real contribution of the Anglo-Saxon races towards culture is the bathroom? It’s become the most important room in the house. Why do you suppose magnates like to be interviewed at unconventional hours? The number of bigwigs, beginning with Lord B——k, that I’ve interviewed on the bath-edge, would surprise you. A bathroom is now such a thing of beauty that it puts a mere drawing-room in the shade. Of course, a man can’t very well say, ‘Cigarette, my dear fellow? Now what about a drink? Oh, and before you go, I must just show you my bathroom,’ so he stages the whole interview there. The ghosts of the ancient Romans must be getting a bit apprehensive about the way we’re overhauling them. What are you doing here?”
I told him. “Nice job, yours,” he murmured, “though it wouldn’t suit me.”
“What would?” I retorted.
He said contentedly, “Oh, well, I rub along all right. I get what I want most.”
“And that is?”
“Adventure, novelty, danger, excitement. Those are at least as justifiable as the goals of other average men. The fact is, we live too much on a money basis. And fail to realise that most of the desirable things can’t be bought for cold cash. What about you? When do you ascend the next rung in the legal ladder?”
“Take silk, d’you mean? My dear fellow, I’m not a barrister.”
“No?” he asked in surprise. “Why? Couldn’t you manage it?”
“I don’t want to be. Don’t want silk, either, if it comes to that.”
“What a rum chap you are. I thought every legal pot looked forward to the time when he raked in the fees and saw his pictures in the Sunday press.”
“Ah, but I, like yourself, am that rare creature, the man who doesn’t live wholly on a money basis.”
“I didn’t mean merely money. I know you’ve wads of that. But there are other considerations… you have such a sordid mind.”
“Kudos, you mean? But that’s only another name, as a rule, for notoriety. Besides, the solicitor sees what the barrister doesn’t, the actual working-out of the drama; the barrister only sees the consequences. Between him and his client stands the solicitor, the insatiable middleman. The barrister gets the fees, but the small fry get the fun.”
“My own opinion,” agreed Jeremy, cheerfully. “How long are you staying?”
“I go back to-morrow. And you?”
“I’m considering a wildcat scheme for raising ivory. For some reason, I’ve always missed Africa. It can’t be that I’ve overlooked it. This might be my chance.”
It seemed to me it was certainly his chance to lose his capital of three hundred pounds. Wildcats were cautious spinsters compared with Jeremy. The more I heard of the scheme the less I liked it.
“It’s all right,” he said gaily, “I put my money into this push…”
After that nothing emerged very clearly, beyond the certainty that the three hundred pounds never would. I said as much.
“I dare say you’re right,” Jeremy speculated. “Anyway, I’d practically decided to change my mind, before you planted these doubts in it.”
“Why?”
“You make me feel homesick. I suddenly remember that there are such places as the Holborn Grill, the Nelson Monument and the Twopenny Tube. Do they still plaster them with advertisements? His vests he had discarded quite, since he became a Bovrilite. That’s you all over, Tony.” He hooked his arm into mine and we moved over to the shipping offices.
3
I didn’t see much of Jeremy on the homeward voyage. You might say he was in his element on board ship, if experience hadn’t proved that he is in his element wherever he is. He was in perpetual demand: he got up amateur theatricals, organised deck games, danced, flirted, romanced, found rugs and sheltered corners for elderly ladies, and was even roped in by the chaplain to help with the Sunday morning services.
“I offered him my services carte-blanche,” Jeremy assured me. “To preach the sermons, read the lessons and carry the bag. I gather I’m to do the second.”
So that, taking one thing with another, we didn’t have much opportunity for conversation till just before we reached port. There had been dancing on the upper deck as usual, and as usual I’d sat out. At last everything was done, the passengers had gone down to their cabins, and a large number of empty glasses had been retrieved by the stewards. I thought Jeremy looked a shade more serious than usual as he came up, observing lightly, “Too good a night to fug in a bunk. It’s almost the last of them, too.”
We leaned against the rail in an amicable silence, smoking and watching the blaze of moonlight on the heaving water. Presently Jeremy shied the butt of his cigarette overboard. It described a glowing red arc and expired with a short indignant hiss.
“You know, Tony,” his sighs, like that of the Victorian swain, increased the gale, as he lounged with his back to the sea, “it’s been pretty good fun.”
“The voyage?”
“The last ten years. I shall hate like hell letting it go.”
“Why must you?” I asked foolishly. I should have known Jeremy better than that.
“Because one of the basic rules of life is that you can’t live on the past, any more than you can live on the memory of paid bills. You have to let it drop, and go on to the next thing. And that, in my case, is going to be out of a very different book.”
A swift suspicion stung me. “Jeremy, you haven’t let any of these affairs get serious? You’re not going to settle down?”
“I believe settle up is a more graphic way of putting it.”
The notion of our irrepressible Jeremy led tamely on a domestic leash was anything but consoling.
“Can’t you put it off for a bit?” I urged.
He shook his head. “Too risky.”
“I thought you appreciated risks?”
“Not where really important things are concerned. This counts.”
“Is it anyone I know?”
“You ought to.” He produced a tattered snapshot from his pocket-book, and let me glance at it. It was a picture of a girl tying up raspberry canes. She wore a cotton frock and no hat. She was laughing. I knew her at once.
“Hilary!” I exclaimed.
“Well?”
I said impulsively, “But, Jeremy…”
“You’re not trying to tell me you’re in love with the chit, are you? If I thought you were…”
“But…”
“I don’t approve of cousins marrying, and I’m sure Eleanor Feltham doesn’t either.”
“She’s Eleanor Nunn now, but…”
“I wish to Heaven I’d taken you to Africa and left you there.”
“But, Jeremy…”
“Though, if it comes to that, there’s plenty of nice empty sea, and not a soul in sight.”
“I’m not in love with her, you ass,” I shouted.
“Well, why not say so at once. And there’s no need to sound so pleased with yourself. I don’t suppose she’d look at you anyway.”
I gave him his head. I was thinking of Hilary, whom I hadn’t seen for nearly three years. She had been seventeen then, a tall, fair-haired grey-eyed girl, as reckless as Jeremy himself. She had been an attractive minx, with a fiendish love of making men look fools. I thought they’d be pretty well matched, if they did make a pair of it. Anyway, neither would be able to complain of the tediousness of married life.
After a short pause, I remarked tentatively, “Bit of a hurry, aren’t you? The girl’s only twenty.”
“My mother was engaged at sixteen and married within the year.”
“You won’t be allowed to be the ship’s flirt once you’re married.”
“I shall have another and even more entrancing occupation.”
I grinned. “That of Hilary’s husband?”
“What else?”
“You don’t find the word husband a trifle—er—overwhelming?”
“Like Humpty Dumpty, I have educated words to bear my own particular meaning. Unquestionably, in the hands of many men the word husband has a peculiarly revolting significance; it is heavy, solid, like the puddings of the old-fashioned nursery with few sultanas to atone for its suety flavour. But with me the word assumes an air, a fascination, a charm, a delight—in short, the prospect of being Hilary’s husband satisfies me completely.”
I sighed. “I suppose you know your own mind. It’s a pity you couldn’t postpone the event, though, for a little while.”
“It wouldn’t be safe. Too many good things are lost in that way. I remember my mother telling me once about a hat she’d seen in a shop window, a purple felt hat with a black veil, it was priced at two-and-eleven, I think (I wished Hilary could have heard the bland assurance of his tone). Well, twenty-two-and-eleven, perhaps, or forty-two-and-eleven—they’re all obscene prices—whatever it was, she decided to brood over a cup of tea, and when she came back the hat had vanished.”
“And Hilary’s your two-and-elevenpenny hat?”
“Precisely.”
“I see.” A new thought occurred to me. “Does she know of this—er—arrangement of yours?”
“Not yet. I’m going to tell her as soon as I get back.”
“But suppose she doesn’t agree? Suppose the idea of being your wife doesn’t appeal to her as a position of charm, fascination and delight?”
He swung round, astonished, perplexed, stupefied. “By Jove,” he exclaimed. “I never thought of that.”
I watched him saunter down the deck, his hands in his coat pockets; he was softly whistling a lilting Spanish air. I found myself wondering if any woman could resist him; so far he’d kept himself free from serious entanglements.
I had already forgotten the moral of the purple hat.