The American Amateur Championship was held that year in Detroit. I had accompanied my employer there; for, though engaged on this nerve-wearing contest, he refused to allow his business to be interfered with. As he had indicated in his schedule, he was busy at the time cornering wheat; and it was my task to combine the duties of caddy and secretary. Each day I accompanied him round the links with my note-book and his bag of clubs, and the progress of his various matches was somewhat complicated by the arrival of a stream of telegraph-boys bearing important messages. He would read these between the strokes and dictate replies to me, never, however, taking more than the five minutes allowed by the rules for an interval between strokes. I am inclined to think that it was this that put the finishing touch on his opponents' discomfiture. It is not soothing for a nervous man to have the game hung up on the green while his adversary dictates to his caddy a letter beginning "Yours of the 11th inst. received and contents noted. In reply would state——" This sort of thing puts a man off his game.
I was resting in the lobby of our hotel after a strenuous day's work, when I found that I was being paged. I answered the summons, and was informed that a lady wished to see me. Her card bore the name "Miss Amelia Merridew." Amelia! The name seemed familiar. Then I remembered. Amelia was the name of the girl Vincent Jopp intended to marry, the fourth of the long line of Mrs. Jopps. I hurried to present myself, and found a tall, slim girl, who was plainly labouring under a considerable agitation.
"Miss Merridew?" I said.
"Yes," she murmured. "My name will be strange to you."
"Am I right," I queried, "in supposing that you are the lady to whom Mr. Jopp——"
"I am! I am!" she replied. "And, oh, what shall I do?"
"Kindly give me particulars," I said, taking out my pad from force of habit.
She hesitated a moment, as if afraid to speak.
"You are caddying for Mr. Jopp in the Final tomorrow?" she said at last.
"I am."
"Then could you—would you mind—would it be giving you too much trouble if I asked you to shout 'Boo!' at him when he is making his stroke, if he looks like winning?"
I was perplexed.
"I don't understand."
"I see that I must tell you all. I am sure you will treat what I say as absolutely confidential."
"Certainly."
"I am provisionally engaged to Mr. Jopp."
"Provisionally?"
She gulped.
"Let me tell you my story. Mr. Jopp asked me to marry him, and I would rather do anything on earth than marry him. But how could I say 'No!' with those awful eyes of his boring me through? I knew that if I said 'No', he would argue me out of it in two minutes. I had an idea. I gathered that he had never played golf, so I told him that I would marry him if he won the Amateur Championship this year. And now I find that he has been a golfer all along, and, what is more, a plus man! It isn't fair!"
"He was not a golfer when you made that condition," I said. "He took up the game on the following day."
"Impossible! How could he have become as good as he is in this short time?"
"Because he is Vincent Jopp! In his lexicon there is no such word as impossible."
She shuddered.
"What a man! But I can't marry him," she cried. "I want to marry somebody else. Oh, won't you help me? Do shout 'Boo!' at him when he is starting his down-swing!"
I shook my head.
"It would take more than a single 'boo' to put Vincent Jopp off his stroke."
"But won't you try it?"
"I cannot. My duty is to my employer."
"Oh, do!"
"No, no. Duty is duty, and paramount with me. Besides, I have a bet on him to win."
The stricken girl uttered a faint moan, and tottered away.
I was in our suite shortly after dinner that night, going over some of the notes I had made that day, when the telephone rang. Jopp was out at the time, taking a short stroll with his after-dinner cigar. I unhooked the receiver, and a female voice spoke.
"Is that Mr. Jopp?"
"Mr. Jopp's secretary speaking. Mr. Jopp is out."
"Oh, it's nothing important. Will you say that Mrs. Luella Mainprice Jopp called up to wish him luck? I shall be on the course tomorrow to see him win the final."
I returned to my notes. Soon afterwards the telephone rang again.
"Vincent, dear?"
"Mr. Jopp's secretary speaking."
"Oh, will you say that Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp called up to wish him luck? I shall be there tomorrow to see him play."
I resumed my work. I had hardly started when the telephone rang for the third time.
"Mr. Jopp?"
"Mr. Jopp's secretary speaking."
"This is Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp. I just called up to wish him luck. I shall be looking on tomorrow."
I shifted my work nearer to the telephone-table so as to be ready for the next call. I had heard that Vincent Jopp had only been married three times, but you never knew.
Presently Jopp came in.
"Anybody called up?" he asked.
"Nobody on business. An assortment of your wives were on the wire wishing you luck. They asked me to say that they will be on the course tomorrow."
For a moment it seemed to me that the man's iron repose was shaken.
"Luella?" he asked.
"She was the first."
"Jane?"
"And Jane."
"And Agnes?"
"Agnes," I said, "is right."
"H'm!" said Vincent Jopp. And for the first time since I had known him I thought that he was ill at ease.
The day of the final dawned bright and clear. At least, I was not awake at the time to see, but I suppose it did; for at nine o'clock, when I came down to breakfast, the sun was shining brightly. The first eighteen holes were to be played before lunch, starting at eleven. Until twenty minutes before the hour Vincent Jopp kept me busy taking dictation, partly on matters connected with his wheat deal and partly on a signed article dealing with the Final, entitled "How I Won." At eleven sharp we were out on the first tee.
Jopp's opponent was a nice-looking young man, but obviously nervous. He giggled in a distraught sort of way as he shook hands with my employer.
"Well, may the best man win," he said.
"I have arranged to do so," replied Jopp, curtly, and started to address his ball.
There was a large crowd at the tee, and, as Jopp started his down-swing, from somewhere on the outskirts of this crowd there came suddenly a musical "Boo!" It rang out in the clear morning air like a bugle.
I had been right in my estimate of Vincent Jopp. His forceful stroke never wavered. The head of his club struck the ball, despatching it a good two hundred yards down the middle of the fairway. As we left the tee I saw Amelia Merridew being led away with bowed head by two members of the Greens Committee. Poor girl! My heart bled for her. And yet, after all, Fate had been kind in removing her from the scene, even in custody, for she could hardly have borne to watch the proceedings. Vincent Jopp made rings round his antagonist. Hole after hole he won in his remorseless, machine-like way, until when lunch-time came at the end of the eighteenth he was ten up. All the other holes had been halved.
It was after lunch, as we made our way to the first tee, that the advance-guard of the Mrs. Jopps appeared in the person of Luella Mainprice Jopp, a kittenish little woman with blond hair and a Pekingese dog. I remembered reading in the papers that she had divorced my employer for persistent and aggravated mental cruelty, calling witnesses to bear out her statement that he had said he did not like her in pink, and that on two separate occasions had insisted on her dog eating the leg of a chicken instead of the breast; but Time, the great healer, seemed to have removed all bitterness, and she greeted him affectionately.