“What exactly did you have against me? I never could make out what it was, to tell you the truth.”
“I thought you belonged to Victor Dean’s beastly doping and drinking crowd, and thought you were trying to get Pamela-Miss Dean-in among them again. She tells me that’s not the case. But I saw you there with her, and now she tells me it’s my fault that you-that you-oh, hell!”
“What is the matter?”
“I’ll tell you what’s the matter,” said Willis, violently. “You went and forced yourself on Miss Dean-God knows what you told her, and she won’t tell me. You made out you were a friend of her brother’s, or something-was that true, to start with?”
“Not quite, as you put it. I made Miss Dean’s acquaintance over a matter connected with her brother, but I had never met him, and she knows that.”
“What had it got to do with him, then?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”
“It sounds damned queer to me,” said Willis, his face darkening with suspicion. Then he seemed to recollect that he was supposed to be making an apology, and went on:
“Well, anyway, you took her to that disgusting place down there by the river.”
“That’s not altogether true, either. I asked her to take me, because I couldn’t very well have got in without an introduction.”
“That’s a lie; I got in all right.”
“Miss Dean told them to let you in.”
“Oh!” Willis was disconcerted for a moment. “Well, in any case, you had no business to ask a decent girl to do anything of the kind. That was exactly what Dean and I had trouble about. A house like that is no fit place for her, and you know it.”
“I do; and I regretted the necessity which compelled me to ask her to go there. You may have noticed that I took care nothing should happen to her.”
“I don’t know that,” grumbled Willis.
“You aren’t a very good detective,” said Bredon with a smile. “You must take my word for it that she was quite safe.”
“I won’t take your word, but I’d take hers. She says so, and I suppose I’ve got to believe it. But if you’re not an out-and-out rotter yourself, why did you want to be taken there?”
“That’s another thing I can’t tell you. But I can offer you one or two reasonable explanations that might fit the case. I might be a journalist, commissioned to write an inside story about the newest kind of night-club. Or I might be a detective, engaged in tracking down dope-smugglers. Or I might be a zealot with a new brand of religion, trying to save the souls of post-war society sinners. Or I might be in love with somebody-say, if you like it, the notorious Dian de Momerie-and threatening to commit suicide unless I got an introduction to her. I present you with those four solutions on the spur of the moment, and I dare say I could think of others, if I was put to it.”
“You might be a dope-merchant yourself,” said Willis.
“I hadn’t thought of that. But if I were, I doubt if I should need Miss Dean’s introduction to that particular crowd.”
Willis muttered something unintelligible.
“But I gather,” said Bredon, “that Miss Dean has more or less absolved me of being anything hopelessly corrupt. So what’s the trouble?”
“The trouble is,” groaned Willis, “that you’ve-my God! you swine-you’ve thrown her over and she says it’s my fault.”
“You oughtn’t to say a thing like that, old son,” said Bredon, really distressed. “It’s not done.”
“No-I dare say I’m not quite a gentleman. I’ve never been-”
“If you tell me you’ve never been to a public school,” said Bredon, “I shall scream. What with Copley and Smayle, and all the other pathetic idiots who go about fostering inferiority complexes, and weighing up the rival merits of this place and that place, when it doesn’t matter a damn anyway, I’m fed up. Pull yourself together. Anybody, wherever he’s been educated, ought to know better than to say a thing like that about any girl. Particularly when there isn’t the slightest foundation for it.”
“Ah, but there is,” said Willis. “You don’t realize it, but I do. I know a man’s a man for a’ that and all the rest of it, but people like you have a sort of glamour about them and women fall for it, every time. I know I’m as good a man as you are, but I don’t look it, and that’s where it is.”
“I can only assure you, Willis-”
“I know, I know. You’ve never made love to Miss Dean-that’s what you’re going to say-never by word, look or deed and so forth and so on, given her the slightest ground-bah! I know it. She admits it. It makes it all the worse.”
“I am afraid,” said Mr. Bredon, “that you are a very foolish pair of people. And I really think you must be quite mistaken in Miss Dean’s feelings.”
“That’s damned likely.”
“I think so. In any case, you oughtn’t to have said anything to me about it. And in any case, there’s nothing I can do.”
“She asked me,” said Willis, miserably, “to apologize to you and bring you-and ask you-and put the matter right.”
“There’s nothing to put right. Miss Dean knows quite well that my interviews with her were merely a matter of business. And all I can say is, Willis, if you accepted any such commission, she must think you as soft as a pancake. Why on earth didn’t you tell her you’d see me at the devil first? That’s probably what she expected you to do.”
“Do you think so?”
“Sure of it,” said Bredon, who was not sure at all, but thought it best to appear so. “You mustn’t go about creating intolerable situations, you know. It’s very awkward for me, and I’m sure Miss Dean would be horribly upset if she knew what you’d been saying about her. All she meant was, I expect, that you’d taken quite a wrong view of a perfectly ordinary business acquaintanceship and been unnecessarily antagonistic and so on, and that she wanted you to put the thing straight, so that, if I needed her help again, there wouldn’t be any awkwardness about it. Isn’t that, in other words, what she said to you?”
“Yes,” said Willis. It was a lie, and he knew that Bredon knew that it was a lie, but he lied manfully. “Of course that was what she actually said. But I’m afraid I put another interpretation on it.”
“All right,” said Bredon, “that’s settled. Tell Miss Dean that my business is progressing very well, and that when I need her kind help again I shall have no hesitation in calling her to my assistance. Now, is that all?”
“Yes, that’s all.”
“You’re sure-while you are about it-that there’s nothing else you want to get off your chest?”
“N-no.”
“You don’t sound very sure about it. You’ve been trying to say all this to me for some time, I dare say.”
“No, not very long. A few days.”
“Since the day of the monthly tea-party, shall we say?”
Willis started violently. Bredon, with a wary eye on him, followed up his advantage.
“Was that what you came round to Great Ormond Street that night to tell me?”
“How do you know about that?”
“I didn’t know, I guessed. As I have said before, you would not make a good detective. You lost a pencil on that occasion, I believe?”
He drew the pencil from his pocket and held it out.
“A pencil? Not that I know of. Where did you find that?”
“In Great Ormond Street.”
“I don’t think it’s mine. I don’t know. I think I’ve still got mine.”
“Well, never mind. You came round that night intending to apologize?”
“No-I didn’t. I came round to have an explanation with you. I wanted to bash your face in, if you must know. I went round there just before ten-”
“Did you ring the bell of my flat?”
“No, I didn’t. I’ll tell you why. I looked in your letterbox, and I saw a letter there from Miss Dean, and I-I didn’t dare go upstairs. I was afraid I might let myself go. I felt like murdering you. So I went off and wandered about till I was too done-up to think.”