"Indeed?" he said politely.
"Won't you believe me?" exclaimed Billie wildly.
"Why, certainly, certainly," said Jno. Peters.
"Thank God!" said Billie. "I'm not even engaged! It's all been a terrible mistake!"
When two people in a small room are speaking on two distinct and different subjects and neither knows what on earth the other is driving at, there is bound to be a certain amount of mental confusion; but at this point Jno. Peters, though still not wholly equal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation, began to see a faint shimmer of light behind the clouds. In a nebulous kind of way he began to understand that the girl had come to consult the firm about a breach-of-promise action. Some unknown man at Ealing West had been trifling with her heart—hardened lawyer's clerk as he was, that poignant cry "I'm not even engaged!" had touched Mr. Peters—and she wished to start proceedings. Mr. Peters felt almost in his depth again. He put the revolver in his pocket, and drew out a note-book.
"I should be glad to hear the facts," he said with professional courtesy. "In the absence of the guv'nor...."
"I have told you the facts!"
"This man at Ealing West," said Mr. Peters, moistening the point of his pencil, "he wrote you letters proposing marriage?"
"No, no, no!"
"At any rate," said Mr. Peters, disappointed but hopeful, "he made love to you before witnesses?"
"Never! Never! There is no man at Ealing West! There never was a man at Ealing West!"
It was at this point that Jno. Peters began for the first time to entertain serious doubts of the girl's mental balance. The most elementary acquaintance with the latest census told him that there were any number of men at Ealing West. The place was full of them. Would a sane woman have made an assertion to the contrary? He thought not, and he was glad that he had the revolver with him. She had done nothing as yet actively violent, but it was nice to feel prepared. He took it out and laid it nonchalantly in his lap.
The sight of the weapon acted on Billie electrically. She flung out her hands, in a gesture of passionate appeal, and played her last card.
"I love you!" she cried. She wished she could have remembered his first name. It would have rounded off the sentence neatly. In such a moment she could hardly call him "Mr. Peters." "You are the only man I love."
"My gracious goodness!" ejaculated Mr. Peters, and nearly fell over backwards. To a naturally shy man this sudden and wholly unexpected declaration was disconcerting; and the clerk was, moreover, engaged. He blushed violently. And yet, even in that moment of consternation, he could not check a certain thrill. No man thinks he is as plain as he really is, but Jno. Peters had always come fairly near to a correct estimate of his charms, and it had always seemed to him, that, in inducing his fiancée to accept him, he had gone some. He now began to wonder if he were not really rather a devil of a chap after all. There must be precious few men going about capable of inspiring devotion like this on the strength of about six and a half minutes casual conversation.
Calmer thoughts succeeded this little flicker of complacency. The girl was mad. That was the fact of the matter. He got up and began to edge towards the door. Mr. Samuel would be returning shortly, and he ought to be warned.
"So that's all right, isn't it!" said Billie.
"Oh, quite, quite!" said Mr. Peters. "Er—Thank you very much!"
"I thought you would be pleased," said Billie, relieved but puzzled. For a man of volcanic passions, as Sam Marlowe had described him, he seemed to be taking the thing very calmly. She had anticipated a strenuous scene.
"Oh, it's a great compliment!" Mr. Peters assured her.
At this point Sam came in, interrupting the conversation at a moment when it had reached a somewhat difficult stage. He had finished the instalment of the serial story in Home Whispers, and, looking at his watch, he fancied that he had allowed sufficient time to elapse for events to have matured along the lines which his imagination had indicated.
The atmosphere of the room seemed to him, as he entered, a little strained. Billie looked pale and agitated. Mr. Peters looked rather agitated, too. Sam caught Billie's eye. It had an unspoken appeal in it. He gave an imperceptible nod, a reassuring nod, the nod of a man who understood all and was prepared to handle the situation.
"Come, Peters," he said in a deep, firm, quiet voice, laying a hand on the clerk's arm. "It's time that you went."
"Yes, indeed, Mr. Samuel! Yes, yes, indeed!"
"I'll see you out," said Sam soothingly, and led him through the outer office and on to the landing outside. "Well, good luck, Peters," he said, as they stood at the head of the stairs. "I hope you have a pleasant trip. Why, what's the matter? You seem upset."
"That girl, Mr. Samuel! I really think—really, she cannot be quite right in her head."
"Nonsense, nonsense!" said Sam firmly. "She's all right! Well, good-bye."
"Good-bye, Mr. Samuel."
"When did you say you were sailing?"
"Next Saturday, Mr. Samuel. But I fear I shall have no opportunity of seeing you again before then. I have packing to do and I have to see this gentleman down in the country...."
"All right. Then we'll say good-bye now. Good-bye, Peters. Mind you have a good time in America. I'll tell my father you called."
Sam watched him out of sight down the stairs, then turned and made his way back to the inner office. Billie was sitting limply on the chair which Jno. Peters had occupied. She sprang to her feet.
"Has he really gone?"
"Yes. He's gone this time."
"Was he—was he violent?"
"A little," said Sam. "A little. But I calmed him down." He looked at her gravely. "Thank God I was in time!"
"Oh, you are the bravest man in the world!" cried Billie, and, burying her face in her hands, burst into tears.
"There, there!" said Sam. "There, there! Come, come! It's all right now! There, there, there!"
He knelt down beside her. He slipped one arm round her waist. He patted her hands.
"There, there, there!" he said.
I have tried to draw Samuel Marlowe so that he will live on the printed page. I have endeavoured to delineate his character so that it will be as an open book. And, if I have succeeded in my task, the reader will by now have become aware that he was a young man with the gall of an Army mule. His conscience, if he had ever had one, had become atrophied through long disuse. He had given this sensitive girl the worst fright she had had since a mouse had got into her bedroom at school. He had caused Jno. Peters to totter off to the Rupert Street range making low, bleating noises. And did he care? No! All he cared about was the fact that he had erased for ever from Billie's mind that undignified picture of himself as he had appeared on the boat, and substituted another which showed him brave, resourceful, gallant. All he cared about was the fact that Billie, so cold ten minutes before, had just allowed him to kiss her for the forty-second time. If you had asked him, he would have said that he had acted for the best, and that out of evil cometh good, or some sickening thing like that. That was the sort of man Samuel Marlowe was.
His face was very close to Billie's, who had cheered up wonderfully by this time, and he was whispering his degraded words of endearment into her ear, when there was a sort of explosion in the doorway.
"Great Godfrey!" exclaimed Mr. Rufus Bennett, gazing on the scene from this point of vantage and mopping with a large handkerchief a scarlet face, which, as the result of climbing three flights of stairs, had become slightly soluble. "Great Heavens above! Number four!"