“I’ll be damned if I let Bill take that tenner off me. Are you coming?”
“I’ll go up and get my coat,” said Mandrake unwillingly.
“Take one out of the cloak-room here. I’m going to. The Tyrolese cape.”
“Jonathan’s?
“Or Hart’s!” Nicholas grinned. “Hart’s mantle may as well fall across my shoulders, what? I’ll go down now and change in that bloody pavilion. You follow. Bill’s running down from the west door when he’s given me time to undress.”
Nicholas went into the cloak-room and reappeared wearing one Tyrolese cape and carrying another. “Here you are,” he said, throwing it at Mandrake. “Don’t be long.”
He pulled the hood of his cape over his head and went out through the front doors. For a moment Mandrake saw him, a fantastic figure caught in a flurry of snow. Then Nicholas lowered his head to the wind and ran out of sight.
Mandrake’s club-foot prevented him from running. It was some distance from the front of the house to the pool and he remembered that the west door opened directly on a path that led to the terrace above the pool. He decided that, like William, he would go down that way. He would go at once, before William started. He loathed people to check their steps to his painful limp. Imitating Nicholas, he pulled the hood of the second cape over his head and made his way along a side passage to the west door and, as he opened it, heard somebody call after him from the house. He ignored the call and, filled with disgust at the whole situation, slammed the door behind him and limped out into the storm.
The north wind drove against him, flattening the cloak against his right side and billowing it out on his left. He felt snow on his eyelids and lips and pulled the hood further over his brows so that he could see only the ground before him. As he limped forward, snow squeaked under his steps. It closed over his sound foot above the rim of his shoe. The path was still defined and he followed it to the edge of the terrace. Below him lay the pool and the pavilion. The water was a black hole in a white field but the pavilion resembled a light-hearted decoration, so well did the snow become it. Mandrake was tempted to watch from the terrace but the wind was so violent there that he changed his mind and crept awkwardly down the long flight of steps, thinking to himself that it would be just like this party if he slipped and broke his good leg. At last he reached the rounded embankment that curved sharply above the pool, hiding the surface of the water from anybody who did not climb its steps. Mandrake reached the top of this bank with difficulty and descended the far side to the paved kerb, now covered in snow. He glanced at the pavilion and saw Nicholas wave from one of the windows. Mandrake walked to the deep end of the pool where there was a diving platform and stood huddled in his cloak, watching fleets of snow die on the black surface of the water. He looked back towards the terrace steps but the embankment hid the bottom flight. There was nobody on the top flight. Perhaps, after all, none of the others would come. “Damn!” said Mandrake. “Damn Nicholas, damn William, and damn Jonathan for his filthy party. I’ve never been so bored or cold or angry in my life before.” He staggered a little against a sudden gust of wind and snow.
The next moment something drove hard against his shoulders. He took a gigantic stride forward into nothingness and was torn from head to foot with the appalling shock of icy water.
The fabric of the cape was in his eyes and mouth and clamped about his arms and legs. The cold cut him with terrible knives of pain. As he sank he thought: “This is disgusting. This is really bad. A terrible thing has happened to me.” Water rushed in at his nose and ears. His heavy boot pulled at his leg. His arms fought the cape and after a timeless interval it rose above his head, free of his face, and he saw a green prison about him. Then, with frozen limbs, he struggled and fought; and at last, feeling the bottom of the pool, struck at it with his feet and rose into the folds of the cape. His lungs were bursting, his body dying of cold. His hands wrenched at the fastening about his throat and broke it, his arms fought off the nightmare cape, and after an age of suffocating despair, he reached the surface. He drew a retching gasp and swallowed air. For a moment he felt and saw snow and heard, quite close by, a voice. As he sank again, something slapped the water above his head. “But I can swim a little,” he thought, as wheels clashed and whirred behind his brain, and he made frog-like gestures with his arms and legs. Immediately the fingers of his right hand touched something smooth that slipped away from them. He made a more determined effort and, after three violent strokes, again reached the surface. As he gasped and opened his eyes, he was confronted by a scarlet face, beaked, on the end of a long scarlet neck. He flung his arms round this neck, fell backwards and was half-suffocated with another in-drawn jet of water. Then he found himself lying on the pond, choking into the face of a monstrous bird. Again he heard voices, but they now sounded unreal and very far away.
“Are you all right? Kick. Kick out. You’re coming this way.”
“But this is my cloak.”
“Kick, Aubrey, kick.”
He kicked and, after an aeon of time, floated into the view of five faces, upside down with their mouths open. His head struck against hardness.
“The rail. There’s a rail here. Get hold of it.”
“You’re all right, now. Here!”
He was drawn up. His arms scraped against stone. He was lying on the edge of the pool clasping an inflated India-rubber bird to his bosom. He was turned so that his face hung over the edge of the pond. His jaws had developed an independent life of their own and his teeth chattered like castanets. His skin, too, leapt and jerked over the surface of his frozen muscles. When he tried to speak he made strange ugly noises. Acrid water trickled from his nostrils over his lips and chin.
“How the devil did it happen?” somebody — William — was asking.
“The edge is horribly slippery,” said Chloris Wynne. “I nearly fell in myself.”
“I didn’t fall,” Mandrake mouthed out with great difficulty. “I was pushed.” Nicholas Compline burst into a shout of laughter and Mandrake wondered dimly if he could make a quick grab at his ankle and overturn him into the pool. It was borne in on Mandrake that Nicholas was wearing bathing drawers under his cape.
“Did he fall or was he pushed?” shouted Nicholas.
“Shut up, Nicholas.” That was Chloris Wynne.
“My dear fellow,” Jonathan made a series of little dabs at Mandrake, “you must come up at once. My coat. Take my coat. Ah, yours too, William, that’s better. Help him up, now. A hot toddy and a blazing fire, eh Hart? There never was anything more unfortunate. Come now.”
Mandrake was suddenly torn by a violent retching. “Disgusting,” he thought, “disgusting!”
“That will be better,” said a voice. Dr. Hart’s! “We should get him up quickly. Can you walk, Mr. Mandrake?”
“Yes.”
“Your arm across my shoulders. So. Come, now.”
“I’ll just get into my clothes,” said Nicholas.
“Perhaps, Mr. Compline, as you are in bathing dress, you will be good enough to retrieve my cape.”
“Sorry, I can’t swim.”
“We’ll fish it out somehow,” said Chloris. “Take Mr. Mandrake in.”
Jonathan, William and Dr. Hart took him back. Over the embankment, up the terrace steps, through a mess of footprints left by the others. The heavy boot on his club-foot dragged and hit against snow and sodden turf. Halfway up he was sick again. Jonathan ran ahead and, when at last they reached the house, could be heard shouting out orders to the servants. “Hot-water bottles. All you can find. His bath— quickly. Brandy, Caper. The fire in his room. What are you doing, all of you! God bless my soul, Mrs. Pouting, here’s Mr. Mandrake, half-drowned.”