"Bill! Was Bill there?"
"Absolutely in person! We were bidding against each other like the dickens till we managed to get together and get acquainted. And then this bird--this gentleman--sailed in and started to slip it across us."
Professor Binstead chuckled--the care-free chuckle of a man who sees all those around him smitten in the pocket, while he himself remains untouched.
"A very ingenious rogue, this Parker of yours, Brewster. His method seems to have been simple but masterly. I have no doubt that either he or a confederate obtained the figure and placed it with the auctioneer, and then he ensured a good price for it by getting us all to bid against each other. Very ingenious!"
Mr. Brewster struggled with his feelings. Then he seemed to overcome them and to force himself to look on the bright side.
"Well, anyway," he said. "I've got the pair of figures, and that's what I wanted. Is that it in that parcel?"
"This is it. I wouldn't trust an express company to deliver it. Suppose we go up to your room and see how the two look side by side."
They crossed the lobby to the lift.-The cloud was still on Mr. Brewster's brow as they stepped out and made their way to his suite. Like most men who have risen from poverty to wealth by their own exertions, Mr. Brewster objected to parting with his money unnecessarily, and it was plain that that twenty-three hundred dollars still rankled.
Mr. Brewster unlocked the door and crossed the room. Then, suddenly, he halted, stared, and stared again. He sprang to the bell and pressed it, then stood gurgling wordlessly.
"Anything wrong, old bean?" queried Archie, solicitously.
"Wrong! Wrong! It's gone!"
"Gone?"
"The figure!"
The floor-waiter had manifested himself silently in answer to the bell, and was standing in the doorway.
"Simmons!" Mr. Brewster turned to him wildly. "Has anyone been in this suite since I went away?"
"No, sir."
"Nobody?"
"Nobody except your valet, sir--Parker. He said he had come to fetch some things away. I supposed he had come from you, sir, with instructions."
"Get out!"
Professor Binstead had unwrapped his parcel, and had placed the Pongo on the table. There was a weighty silence. Archie picked up the little china figure and balanced it on the palm of his hand. It was a small thing, he reflected philosophically, but it had made quite a stir in the world.
Mr. Brewster fermented for a while without speaking.
"So," he said, at last, in a voice trembling with self-pity, "I have been to all this trouble--"
"And expense," put in Professor Binstead, gently.
"Merely to buy back something which had been stolen from me! And, owing to your damned officiousness," he cried, turning on Archie, "I have had to pay twenty-three hundred dollars for it! I don't know why they make such a fuss about Job. Job never had anything like you around!"
"Of course," argued Archie, "he had one or two boils."
"Boils! What are boils?"
"Dashed sorry," murmured Archie. "Acted for the best. Meant well. And all that sort of rot!"
Professor Binstead's mind seemed occupied to the exclusion of all other aspects of the affair, with the ingenuity of the absent Parker.
"A cunning scheme!" he said. "A very cunning scheme! This man Parker must have a brain of no low order. I should like to feel his bumps!"
"I should like to give him some!" said the stricken Mr. Brewster. He breathed a deep breath. "Oh, well," he said, "situated as I am, with a crook valet and an imbecile son-in-law, I suppose I ought to be thankful that I've still got my own property, even if I have had to pay twenty-three hundred dollars for the privilege of keeping it." He rounded on Archie, who was in a reverie. The thought of the unfortunate Bill had just crossed Archie's mind. It would be many moons, many weary moons, before Mr. Brewster would be in a suitable mood to listen sympathetically to the story of love's young dream. "Give me that figure!"
Archie continued to toy absently with Pongo. He was wondering now how best to break this sad occurrence to Lucille. It would be a disappointment for the poor girl.
"GIVE ME THAT FIGURE!"
Archie started violently. There was an instant in which Pongo seemed to hang suspended, like Mohammed's coffin, between heaven and earth, then the force of gravity asserted itself. Pongo fell with a sharp crack and disintegrated. And as it did so there was a knock at the door, and in walked a dark, furtive person, who to the inflamed vision of Mr. Daniel Brewster looked like something connected with the executive staff of the Black Hand. With all time at his disposal, the unfortunate Salvatore had selected this moment for stating his case.
"Get out!" bellowed Mr. Brewster. "I didn't ring for a waiter."
Archie, his mind reeling beneath the catastrophe, recovered himself sufficiently to do the honours. It was at his instigation that Salvatore was there, and, greatly as he wished that he could have seen fit to choose a more auspicious moment for his business chat, he felt compelled to do his best to see him through.
"Oh, I say, half a second," he said. "You don't quite understand. As a matter of fact, this chappie is by way of being downtrodden and oppressed and what not, and I suggested that he should get hold of you and speak a few well-chosen words. Of course, if you'd rather-- some other time--"
But Mr. Brewster was not permitted to postpone the interview. Before he could get his breath, Salvatore had begun to talk. He was a strong, ambidextrous talker, whom it was hard to interrupt; and it was not for some moments that Mr. Brewster succeeded in getting a word in. When he did, he spoke to the point. Though not a linguist, he had been able to follow the discourse closely enough to realise that the waiter was dissatisfied with conditions in his hotel; and Mr. Brewster, as has been indicated, had a short way with people who criticised the Cosmopolis.
"You're fired!" said Mr. Brewster.
"Oh, I say!" protested Archie.
Salvatore muttered what sounded like a passage from Dante.
"Fired!" repeated Mr. Brewster resolutely. "And I wish to heaven," he added, eyeing his son-in-law malignantly, "I could fire you!"
"Well," said Professor Binstead cheerfully, breaking the grim silence which followed this outburst, "if you will give me your cheque, Brewster, I think I will be going. Two thousand three hundred dollars. Make it open, if you will, and then I can run round the corner and cash it before lunch. That will be capital!"
CHAPTER XII
BRIGHT EYES--AND A FLY
The Hermitage (unrivalled scenery, superb cuisine, Daniel Brewster, proprietor) was a picturesque summer hotel in the green heart of the mountains, built by Archie's father-in-law shortly after he assumed control of the Cosmopolis. Mr. Brewster himself seldom went there, preferring to concentrate his attention on his New York establishment; and Archie and Lucille, breakfasting in the airy dining-room some ten days after the incidents recorded in the last chapter, had consequently to be content with two out of the three advertised attractions of the place. Through the window at their side quite a slab of the unrivalled scenery was visible; some of the superb cuisine was already on the table; and the fact that the eye searched in vain for Daniel Brewster, proprietor, filled Archie, at any rate, with so sense of aching loss. He bore it with equanimity and even with positive enthusiasm. In Archie's opinion, practically all a place needed to make it an earthly Paradise was for Mr. Daniel Brewster to be about forty-seven miles away from it.
It was at Lucille's suggestion that they had come to the Hermitage. Never a human sunbeam, Mr. Brewster had shown such a bleak front to the world, and particularly to his son-in-law, in the days following the Pongo incident, that Lucille had thought that he and Archie would for a time at least be better apart--a view with which her husband cordially agreed. He had enjoyed his stay at the Hermitage, and now he regarded the eternal hills with the comfortable affection of a healthy man who is breakfasting well.