Spottsworth. What had first impressed her in Clifton Bessemer had been the way he had swatted a charging fly with a rolled-up evening paper at the studio party where they had met, and in the case of A. B. Spottsworth the spark had been lit when she heard him one afternoon in conversation with a Paris taxi-driver who had expressed dissatisfaction with the amount of his fare.
As she passed through the great gates of Rowcester Abbey and made her way up the long drive, it was beginning to seem to her that she might do considerably worse than cultivate Captain Biggar. A woman needs a protector, and what better protector can she find than a man who thinks nothing of going into tall grass after a wounded lion? True, wounded lions do not enter largely into the ordinary married life, but it is nice for a wife to know that, if one does happen to come along, she can leave it with every confidence to her husband to handle.
It would not, she felt, be a difficult matter to arrange the necessary preliminaries. A few kind words and a melting look or two ought to be quite sufficient to bring that strong, passionate nature to the boil. These men of the wilds respond readily to melting looks.
She was just trying one out in the mirror of her car when, as she rounded a bend in the drive, Rowcester Abbey suddenly burst upon her view, and for the moment Captain Biggar was forgotten. She could think of nothing but that she had found the house of her dreams.
Its mellow walls aglow in the rays of the setting sun, its windows glittering like jewels, it seemed to her like some palace of Fairyland. The little place in Pasadena, the little place in Carmel, and the little places in New York, Florida, Maine and Oregon were well enough in their way, but this outdid them all. Houses like Rowcester Abbey always look their best from outside and at a certain distance.
She stopped the car and sat there, gazing raptly.
Rory and Monica, tired of waiting in the yew alley, had returned to the house and met Bill coming out. All three had gone back into the living-room, where they were now discussing the prospects of a quick sale to this female Santa Claus from across the Atlantic. Bill, though feeling a little better after his whisky and soda, was still in a feverish state. His goggling eyes and twitching limbs would have interested a Harley Street physician, had one been present to observe them.
"Is there a hope?" he quavered, speaking rather like an invalid on a sick bed addressing his doctor.
"I think so," said Monica.
"I don't," said Rory.
Monica quelled him with a glance.
"The impression I got at that women's lunch in New York," she said, "was that she was nibbling. I gave her quite a blast of propaganda and definitely softened her up. All that remains now is to administer the final shove. When she arrives, I'll leave you alone together, so that you can exercise that well-known charm of yours. Give her the old personality."
"I will," said Bill fervently. "I'll be like a turtle dove cooing to a female turtle-dove. I'll play on her as on a stringed instrument."
"Well, mind you do, because if the sale comes off, I'm expecting a commission."
"You shall have it, Moke, old thing. You shall be repaid a thousandfold. In due season there will present themselves at your front door elephants laden with gold and camels bearing precious stones and rare spices."
"How about apes, ivory and peacocks?"
"They'll be there."
Rory, the practical, hard-headed business man, frowned on this visionary stuff.
"Well, will they?" he said. "The point seems to me extremely moot. Even on the assumption that this woman is weak in the head I can't see her paying a fortune for a place like Rowcester Abbey.
To start with, all the farms are gone."
"That's true," said Bill, damped. "And the park belongs to the local golf club. There's only the house and garden."
"The garden, yes. And we know all about the garden, don't we? I was saying to Moke only a short while ago that whereas in the summer months the river is at the bottom of the garden—"
"Oh, be quiet," said Monica. "I don't see why you shouldn't get fifteen thousand pounds, Bill. Maybe even as much as twenty."
Bill revived like a watered flower.
"Do you really think so?"
"Of course she doesn't," said Rory. "She's just trying to cheer you up, and very sisterly of her, too. I honour her for it. Under that forbidding exterior there lurks a tender heart.
But twenty thousand quid for a house from which even Reclaimed Juvenile Delinquents recoil in horror? Absurd. The thing's a relic of the past. A hundred and forty-seven rooms!"
"That's a lot of house," argued Monica.
"It's a lot of junk," said Rory firmly. "It would cost a bally fortune to do it up."
Monica was obliged to concede this.
"I suppose so," she said. "Still, Mrs.
Spottsworth's the sort of woman who would be quite prepared to spend a million or so on that.
You've been making a few improvements, I notice," she said to Bill.
"A drop in the bucket."
"You've even done something about the smell on the first-floor landing."
"Wish I had the money it cost."
"You're hard up?"
"Stony."
"Then where the dickens," said Rory, pouncing like a prosecuting counsel, "do all these butlers and housemaids come from? That girl Jill Stick-in-the-mud—"
"Her name is not Stick-in-the-mud."
Rory raised a restraining hand.
"Her name may or may not be Stick-in-the-mud," he said, letting the point go, for after all it was a minor one, "but the fact remains that she was holding us spellbound just now with a description of your domestic amenities which suggested the mad luxury that led to the fall of Babylon. Platoons of butlers, beauty choruses of housemaids, cooks in reckless profusion and stories flying about of boys to clean the knives and boots. ... I said to Moke after she'd left that I wondered if you had set up as a gentleman bur ... That reminds me, old girl. Did you tell Bill about the police?"
Bill leaped a foot, and came down shaking in every limb.
"The police? What about the police?"
"Some blighter rang up from the local gendarmerie. The rozzers want to question you."
"What do you mean, question me?"
"Grill you," explained Rory. "Give you the third degree. And there was another call before that. A mystery man who didn't give his name. He and Moke kidded back and forth for a while."
"Yes, I talked to him," said Monica.
"He had a voice that sounded as if he ate spinach with sand in it. He was inquiring about the licence number of your car."
"What!"
"You haven't run into somebody's cow, have you?
I understand that's a very serious offence nowadays."
Bill was still quivering briskly.
"You mean someone was wanting to know the licence number of my car?"
"That's what I said. Why, what's the matter, Bill? You're looking as worried as a prune."
"White and shaken," agreed Rory. "Like a side-car." He laid a kindly hand on his brother-in-law's shoulder. "Bill, tell me.
Be frank. Why are you wanted by the police?"
"I'm not wanted by the police."
"Well, it seems to be their dearest wish to get their hands on you. One theory that crossed my mind," said Rory, "was—I mentioned it to you, Moke, if you remember—that you had found some opulent bird with a guilty secret and were going in for a spot of blackmail. This may or may not be the case, but if it is, now is the time to tell us, Bill, old man. You're among friends.
Moke's broadminded, and I'm broadminded.
I know the police look a bit squiggle-eyed at blackmail, but I can't see any objection to it myself. Quick profits and practically no overheads. If I had a son, I'm not at all sure I wouldn't have him trained for that profession. So if the flatties are after you and you would like a helping hand to get you out of the country before they start watching the ports, say the word, and we'll ..."