The Man Upstairs and Other Stories

'The motor!' cried Mr Barstowe. 'Ah, Rossiter, that is the very poetry of motion. I never ride in a motor-car without those words of Shakespeare's ringing in my mind: "I'll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes."'

'I shouldn't give way to that sort of thing if I were you,' said Martin. 'The police are pretty down on road-hogging in these parts.' 

'Mr Barstowe was speaking figuratively,' said Elsa, with disdain.

'Was he?' grunted Martin, whose sorrows were tending to make him every day more like a sulky schoolboy. 'I'm afraid I haven't got a poetic soul.'

'I'm afraid you haven't,' said Elsa.

There was a brief silence. A bird made itself heard in a neighbouring tree.

'"The moan of doves in immemorial elms,"' quoted Mr Barstowe, softly.

'Only it happens to be a crow in a beech,' said Martin, as the bird flew out.

Elsa's chin tilted itself in scorn. Martin turned on his heel and walked away.

'It's the wrong way, sir; it's the wrong way,' said a voice. 'I was hobserving you from a window, sir. It's Lady Angelica over again. Hopposition is useless, believe me, sir.'

Martin faced round, flushed and wrathful. The butler went on unmoved: 

'Miss Elsa is going for a ride in the car today, sir.' 

'I know that.'

'Uncommonly tricky things, these motor-cars. I was saying so to Roberts, the chauffeur, just as soon as I 'eard Miss Elsa was going out with Mr Barstowe. I said, "Roberts, these cars is tricky; break down when you're twenty miles from hanywhere as soon as look at you. Roberts," I said, slipping him a sovereign, "'ow awful it would be if the car should break down twenty miles from hanywhere today!"'

Martin stared.

'You bribed Roberts to—'

'Sir! I gave Roberts the sovereign because I am sorry for him. He is a poor man, and has a wife and family to support.'

'Very well,' said Martin, sternly; 'I shall go and warn Miss Keith.'

'Warn her, sir!'

'I shall tell her that you have bribed Roberts to make the car break down so that—'

Keggs shook his head.

'I fear she would hardly credit the statement, sir. She might even think that you was trying to keep her from going for your own pussonal ends.'

'I believe you are the devil,' said Martin.

'I 'ope you will come to look on me, sir,' said Keggs, unctuously, 'as your good hangel.'

Martin shot abominably that day, and, coming home in the evening gloomy and savage, went straight to his room, and did not reappear till dinner-time. Elsa had been taken in by one of the moustache-tuggers. Martin found himself seated on her other side. It was so pleasant to be near her, and to feel that the bard was away at the other end of the table, that for the moment his spirits revived.

'Well, how did you like the ride?' he asked, with a smile. 'Did you put that girdle round the world?'

She looked at him—once. The next moment he had an uninterrupted view of her shoulder, and heard the sound of her voice as she prattled gaily to the man on her other side.

His heart gave a sudden bound. He understood now. The demon butler had had his wicked way. Good heavens! She had thought he was taunting her! He must explain at once. He—

'Hock or sherry, sir?'

He looked up into Kegg's expressionless eyes. The butler was wearing his on-duty mask. There was no sign of triumph in his face.

'Oh, sherry. I mean hock. No, sherry. Neither.'

This was awful. He must put this right.

'Elsa,' he said.

She was engrossed in her conversation with her neighbour.

From down the table in a sudden lull in the talk came the voice of Mr Barstowe. He seemed to be in the middle of a narrative. 

'Fortunately,' he was saying, 'I had with me a volume of Shelley, and one of my own little efforts. I had read Miss Keith the whole of the latter and much of the former before the chauffeur announced that it was once more possible—'

'Elsa,' said the wretched man, 'I had no idea—you don't think—'

She turned to him.

'I beg your pardon?' she said, very sweetly.

'I swear I didn't know—I mean, I'd forgotten—I mean—'

She wrinkled her forehead.

'I'm really afraid I don't understand.'

'I mean, about the car breaking down.'

'The car? Oh, yes. Yes, it broke down. We were delayed quite a little while. Mr Barstowe read me some of his poems. It was perfectly lovely. I was quite sorry when Roberts told us we could go on again. But do you really mean to tell me, Mr Lambert, that you—'

And once more the world became all shoulder.

When the men trailed into the presence of the ladies for that brief seance on which etiquette insisted before permitting the stampede to the billiard-room, Elsa was not to be seen.

'Elsa?' said Mrs Keith in answer to Martin's question. 'She has gone to bed. The poor child has a headache. I am afraid she had a tiring day.'

There was an early start for the guns next morning, and as Elsa did not appear at breakfast Martin had to leave without seeing her. His shooting was even worse than it had been on the previous day.

It was not until late in the evening that the party returned to the house. Martin, on the way to his room, met Mrs Keith on the stairs. She appeared somewhat agitated.

'Oh, Martin,' she said. 'I'm so glad you're back. Have you seen anything of Elsa?'

'Elsa?'

'Wasn't she with the guns?'

'With the guns' said Martin, puzzled. 'No.'

'I have seen nothing of her all day. I'm getting worried. I can't think what can have happened to her. Are you sure she wasn't with the guns?'

'Absolutely certain. Didn't she come in to lunch?'

'No. Tom,' she said, as Mr Keith came up, 'I'm so worried about Elsa. I haven't seen her all day. I thought she must be out with the guns.'

Mr Keith was a man who had built up a large fortune mainly by consistently refusing to allow anything to agitate him. He carried this policy into private life.

'Wasn't she in at lunch?' he asked, placidly.

'I tell you I haven't seen her all day. She breakfasted in her room—'

'Late?'

'Yes. She was tired, poor girl.'

'If she breakfasted late,' said Mr Keith, 'she wouldn't need any lunch. She's gone for a stroll somewhere.' 

'Would you put back dinner, do you think?' inquired Mrs Keith, anxiously.

'I am not good at riddles,' said Mr Keith, comfortably, 'but I can answer that one. I would not put back dinner. I would not put back dinner for the King.'

Elsa did not come back for dinner. Nor was hers the only vacant place. Mr Barstowe had also vanished. Even Mr Keith's calm was momentarily ruffled by this discovery. The poet was not a favourite of his—it was only reluctantly that he had consented to his being invited at all; and the presumption being that when two members of a house-party disappear simultaneously they are likely to be spending the time in each other's society, he was annoyed. Elsa was not the girl to make a fool of herself, of course, but—He was unwontedly silent at dinner.

Mrs Keith's anxiety displayed itself differently. She was frankly worried, and mentioned it. By the time the fish had been reached conversation at the table had fixed itself definitely on the one topic.

'It isn't the car this time, at any rate,' said Mr Keith. 'It hasn't been out today.'

'I can't understand it,' said Mrs Keith for the twentieth time. And that was the farthest point reached in the investigation of the mystery.

By the time dinner was over a spirit of unrest was abroad. The company sat about in uneasy groups. Snooker-pool was, if not forgotten, at any rate shelved. Somebody suggested search-parties, and one or two of the moustache-tuggers wandered rather aimlessly out into the darkness.

Martin was standing in the porch with Mr Keith when Keggs approached. As his eyes lit on him, Martin was conscious of a sudden solidifying of the vague suspicion which had been forming in his mind. And yet that suspicion seemed so wild. How could Keggs, with the worst intentions, have had anything to do with this? He could not forcibly have abducted the missing pair and kept them under lock and key. He could not have stunned them and left them in a ditch. Nevertheless, looking at him standing there in his attitude of deferential dignity, with the light from the open door shining on his bald head, Martin felt perfectly certain that he had in some mysterious fashion engineered the whole thing.