Another lot of Wessex-Gardners. Bingham and Constance. Man known as Binks. In business with his brother, but definitely a lesser light. Very good bridge-player. Constance -Maud Lushington’s sister. Vague recollections of having met her-vague recollections of her being even more like a horse than Maud. It didn’t seem possible, but the equine impression very strong.
Francis Colesborough and the lovely Sylvia. A peach of peaches. Quite, quite negligible in the affair Algy Somers. She wouldn’t even know what sabotage was, bless her.
He turned reluctantly to a less radiant image. Francis Colesborough. Very well set up, very well preserved. One of your forceful, industry-building fellows. Second generation of self-made family-timber, steel. Lots of irons in the fire. Lots of money. Easy, pleasant, reasonably good at all the things people are good at. Highly efficient, and full of government contracts. Just a trifle aloof.
Monty and Maud. Irreverence toyed with a fantasy of Maud abstracting Monty’s papers. Algy had no deep affection for his cousin Maud by marriage-too much nose; too much upper lip; too many teeth; far, far too many bony ridges in front. Ungrateful of Algy, because Maud had quite an affection for him and always spoke of him as “my husband’s young cousin.” He sometimes wondered what would happen when he passed the thirty mark, and the thirty-five, and the forty. Would he become “my husband’s middle-aged cousin”-and at what moment? Digressions apart, Monty and Maud were off the map. What remained not promising at all. Buffo, Poppy, Binks, Constance, Francis Colesborough, and the lovely Sylvia. It was really extremely difficult to imagine any of them pinching a government memorandum out of Monty’s despatch-case with Monty next door having a bath. Worse than difficult-farcical. Well, when there are no probables you must take a possible, and if there aren’t any possibles, you must work through the improbables, and may even end up with an impossible.
He stood frowning into the glass as he dealt with his tie. He was good at ties, and it came out well. Faint memories of some historic character who took particular pains over a toilet for the scaffold flitted through the hinterland of his mind. They were presently supplemented by the refrain of a ballad about the gentleman called Gilderoy:
“Sae rantingly, sae wantonly.
Sae dauntingly gae’d he.
He played a spring and danced it round
Beneath the gallows tree.”
– the sort of thing that would come into your head at this sort of moment.
He buttoned his waistcoat and slipped his arms into his coat. With his hands at the lapels he surveyed the result. Not too bad. “Sae rantingly, sae wantonly-” There was the dashed thing again, and he couldn’t even remember how he came to know it. He turned, and was aware of the light glancing oddly across the tail of his coat. The excellent Barker had furnished the room with a nice fumed oak suite. The wardrobe sported a long strip of mirror glass upon its door. Algy was always afraid that the weight of it would bring the whole thing over, but for the moment it stood firm. The glass showed a bulge in the left-hand tail where no bulge should be-something in the pocket. But there oughtn’t to be anything in the pocket. He would never dream of putting anything there. People did of course-the cigarette-case. He knew a man who harboured a handkerchief-a most slovenly habit. But this wasn’t a cigarette-case, and it certainly wasn’t a handkerchief. It was stiff, and it crackled-paper-thickish paper. He drew it out, and beheld a manila envelope doubled up, folded neatly. He unfolded it, laid it flat. It was an official envelope, and it bore an official address:
The Rt. Hon’ble. Montagu Lushington.
The words dazzled, the words swam before Algy’s horrified eyes. Because he had handled this envelope before. He had taken it from Carstairs at the study door and gone up to Monty’s room and put it down on Monty’s dressing-table. He hadn’t looked at the address. He hadn’t consciously looked at the envelope. But now that he had it in his hand again, he knew that he had noticed the blot in the left-hand corner-a round blob of a blot which had dried very thick, and black, and shiny. This was undoubtedly Monty’s envelope-the stolen envelope. And someone had planted it on him. Someone must have planted it on him at the Ducks and Drakes last night.
He stared at it. Why? Rather crass attempt to deepen suspicion? Or rather subtle attempt to put the wind up him? Other possibilities… Too many possibilities…
He turned the envelope over, and the flap hung loose. He lifted it and looked inside.
The envelope was empty.
IX
Giles and Linda Westgate lived in a flat which consisted of one large room and several darkish cupboards euphemistically labelled bedroom No. I, bedroom No. 2, kitchen, and bathroom. Linda had done her best by painting each one a different colour and in the brightest possible shade. Her cupboard was a brilliant jade, Giles’ canary-yellow, the bathroom emerald, and the kitchen a cheerful orange. The large room she had left alone. It had cream walls, a parquet floor, and no furniture except piles of cushions, a collapsible table, and a dozen chromium-plated chairs. Their brittle, angular brightness reminded Algy of some insect’s legs-grasshopper, dragonfly, mantis.
Linda furnished her room with people. There were eight of them for dinner, and a crowd afterwards. She wore scarlet velvet, which went very well with her cream skin and her cream walls. She had black hair which never stayed where it was put, and dancing eyes with a dark, malicious sparkle in them-a vivid creature, decorative and talkative as a parrot and quite as indiscreet. Giles, a budding barrister, talked nearly as much as she did, and could be witty. They had a great many friends, and spared none of them.
Algy, coming into the room, was aware of a sudden silence which seemed so abnormal in any room of Linda’s as to make him positive that they had been talking about him. If he flinched he contrived not to show it, and in a moment Linda was hanging on his arm and chattering at him.
“Algy darling, we were talking about you. Didn’t you hear us all stop dead?” (Clever to take the bull by the horns like that.) “Would you like to know what we were saying?”
Algy said, “Very much.” But he thought he knew already, and he thought that he wouldn’t be very likely to hear the truth, or to like it if he did.
There were four people there besides the Westgates. Two of them laughed, and two made rather a lamentable failure of an attempt to appear quite easy and comfortable. Algy looked round, said how do you do to the friend of Linda’s who had been asked to balance a friend of Giles’-pretty girl with red hair; dark young man with a superiority complex-and to James and Mary Craster, whom he liked. It was James and Mary who had been embarrassed, and the other two who had laughed.
“And what were you saying about me?” he said, and saw Mary blush and Linda twinkle maliciously.
“Darling Algy, you are the scandal of the moment. Did you know? Half everybody is saying you’ve sold all Monty’s secrets to the Bolshevists, and that you’re going to be shot at dawn in the Tower-and, darling, if you are, you will see about my having a front seat, won’t you? Because what’s the good of being a relation if it doesn’t give you a pull?”
Algy laughed.
“I’ll make a point of it. What are the other half saying?”