A WIRE ENTANGLEMENT
I
Mr. James Rapkin emerged from the depths of a wave of his fellow-creatures emitted by the Golders Green Terminal of the Hampstead Tube, and felt his ribs from long habit. Finding these all present and intact, he drew a full breath—the first for half an hour—and set off briskly through the gloaming of a fine spring evening in the direction of Hampstead Garden Suburb. Indeed, his briskness would have struck those who knew him as surprising. His step was almost elastic. Through teeth totally unused to such exercises he whistled something resembling a tune—a tune, moreover, acquired at second-hand from Albert, the office boy, and entitled “Whose Baby Are You, Dear?” Mr. Rapkin, of course, did not know this, but even if he had it is to be doubted whether, in his present somewhat abnormal frame of mind, he would have refrained.
For Mr. Rapkin was not of the jaunty type. Practically all of his little life had been spent in a whole sale hosiery house in the City, in which he now filled the post of Assistant Cashier, and the sun rose and set for him upon a world of indents and invoices. He was not of heroic mould. His height was five feet four; his head was somewhat large for his body; and the straggling sandy moustache which covered his rather tremulous mouth only accentuated a receding chin. Finally, he had been married to Mrs. Rapkin for twenty-one years. Indeed, that is really the only thing that need be said about him.
But this evening, as already stated, Mr. Rapkin's demeanour was almost jaunty. For one thing, it was springtime; and springtime means something to us even at forty-nine. For another thing, his wife was away from home, had been away from home for a fortnight, and was not expected home for another week. Lastly, Mr. Rapkin had had a sentimental adventure—the first since, some twenty-odd years ago, stimulated by mild Christmas cheer and a certain compelling glint in the eye of the young lady herself, he had felt constrained to kiss one Gladys Badworthy under the mistletoe, with matrimonial consequences which had permanently closed to him what is known as the primrose path.
In a quiet side road Mr. Rapkin paused at a neat green gate, and entered. With a disapproving expression he stooped to pick up two odd scraps of paper which were fluttering about upon the gravel path. He was a tidy little creature. He paused again, this time to cast a displeased eye over the windows—there were five of them—at the front of the house. Then, having let himself in with his latchkey, he groped his way to the back parlour, turned on the light, and rang the bell with great firmness. A maid appeared.
“Jane,” said Mr. Rapkin, “I am sorry to note that the window-blinds, both of the drawing-room and dining-room and also of the rooms upstairs, are not only not drawn, but are all on different levels. Attend to it at once, please.”
“Right-o,” replied Jane pleasantly. “I suppose that does n’t mean that the Missis is coming home to-night, does it?” she added, a trifle sympathetically.
“It does not,” said Mr. Rapkin shortly, and Jane retired, with a contented little sigh.
But Mr. Rapkin was wrong. Half an hour later, while he was upstairs in his dressing-room, still whistling, and engaged upon some rather stealthy operations with the electric iron and his Sunday trousers, a cab creaked up to the door and reunited Mr. Rapkin in an unexpected and somewhat untimely fashion with the wife of his bosom.
“This is, indeed, a pleasant surprise, dear,” he said, as the cabman, having been paid by Mrs. Rapkin, drove sarcastically away. “I was n’t expecting you until next Friday.”
“I did n’t intend to arrive till next Friday,” replied Mrs. Rapkin; “only Mother sent me a postcard to say that she was coming up from Leicester and would like to spend Saturday to Monday with us. It was short notice. I simply had to pack up and leave Sophy Sackett's right away. She was very disappointed, of course, but it could n’t be helped. Mother will be here to-morrow morning, so you had better be ready to take her somewhere in the afternoon—a walk round the Heath, or the pictures if it's wet. … What are you looking so queer for? I suppose I can invite my own mother to stay in my own house for a day or two? Of course if you grudge the food she eats, or the bed she sleeps in—”
Mr. Rapkin interposed, with strained heartiness.
“I shall be most happy at any time,” he said, “to entertain your dear mother beneath our roof.”
“Then don't look as if you'd swallowed the cruet!” retorted Mrs. Rapkin.
Her husband smiled feebly.
“It’s a touch of indigestion, I fancy,” he said. “What with your being away, and a good deal to occupy me in the City—” He faltered, and flushed. Mrs. Rapkin regarded him curiously.
“No,” she said, “you don’t seem yourself. You are n’t even attending to what I am saying. Your mind's wandering. You’ve been smoking and sitting up late all the time I have been away, I suppose. I’ll give you something before you go to bed to-night that will put you right at once. Why, where are you going?”
They were still standing in the little front hall. Mr. Rapkin, having edged his way to the hat-stand, was now struggling into his coat.
“I promised,” he explained, “to look in for a chat, and a smoke, and—er—so forth, with Bloxham to-night. Now that you have come home, dear, I must run round and put him off.”
“H'm! Bloxham?” Mrs. Rapkin sniffed. “If that's where you have been running round to of an evening while I have been away, no wonder you look like half nothing. You’re a nervous wreck. But why not telephone? What’s the use of our having it put in if we don’t use it? Goodness knows I did n’t want it, but you were so set on being grand—Why, what's the matter now? Have you seen a ghost?”
Even under the roseate light of an electric bulb artistically draped in crinkly pink paper, it could be seen that Mr. Rapkin's features had assumed a sort of greenish luminosity.
“No, dear, no!” he stammered. “Just a sudden twinge. You must n’t worry about me. The stroll will do me good. I will be back directly.” He closed the front door behind him and fairly ran down the gravel path.
“O lor!” he muttered to himself. “The telephone! The telephone on top of everything else! I'd forgotten that! What am I going to do? What can I do? If Bloxham can’t advise me—”
Meanwhile Mrs. Rapkin, looking exceedingly thoughtful, walked slowly upstairs. There she discovered a portion of her husband's Sabbath attire and the electric iron in a proximity provocative of interesting speculation.
II
“Well, you are a chump!” said Mr. Bloxham. “Have another spot of this; it won't hurt you.”
With trembling hands Mr. Rapkin accepted a second glass of very pale sherry.
“There are two things I can’t understand,” said Mr. Bloxham, whose bluff and candid disposition enabled him at all times to criticize his friends without insincerity or false delicacy—“first of all, why your boss should invite a little whippersnapper like you to lunch, especially at the Ritz, and, secondly, why he should invite a girl to meet you. When I go out to lunch with a girl, I'm darned if I ever take anybody else with me.” (Mr. Bloxham was the gay bachelor of a district almost exclusively connubial.)
“He was expecting a second lady,” explained Rapkin, “and he invited me to make a fourth, so he said.”
“Ah! Well, that's more reasonable. It relieves your boss of the suspicion of being a lunatic, anyhow. I wonder which one it was that did n’t turn up—the one he wanted or the one he did n't want.”
“Perhaps he wanted them both,” suggested Mr. Rapkin mildly.
“No fear! If he'd wanted them both, he’d have asked them separately. No, my lad, what you were invited for was to take the other one off his hands and act as gooseberry all round. Did he talk to this girl much?”
“No.” Mr. Rapkin blushed, and his watery blue eyes gleamed for a moment. “Most of the conversation was carried on between the young lady and myself.”
“Then she was the dud! His own little bit had jinked him. Bad luck on the boss! What was she like?”
“Er—extremely attractive.”
“Young?”
“About twenty-one, I should say.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Well, she—er—”
“What was her name, by the way?”
Again Mr. Rapkin's eyes gleamed sentimentally.
“Miss Vivi Valentine,” he announced.
The sophisticated Bloxham grunted.
“Chorus?”
“Miss Valentine is on the stage,” replied Mr. Rapkin with dignity, “but disengaged for the moment. Indeed, she is thinking of taking up commercial pursuits. That is why she was anxious to have a chat with me—”
“Good-night!”
“—About bookkeeping, ledger work, and accounts generally.”
“It must have been a riotous party,” commented Mr. Bloxham. “What else did you talk about? The water rate?”
“It was a most interesting experience,” retorted Mr. Rapkin in mild defiance. “But naturally we touched also upon lighter topics. Indeed, after Mr. Mossop left us—”
“Oh, he left you?”
“Yes. He—”
“I don’t blame him!”
“He had to get back to the office. After he left we sat on for a while, and indulged in a little—er—er—banter and chaff.”
“What do you mean, banter and chaff?” demanded Mr. Bloxham, who was a plain creature and disliked vague phrases. “Did you try to flirt with her?”
“Certainly not!”
“Did she try to flirt with you?”
Mr. Rapkin hesitated. Then:
“Well—she told me I had wicked eyes,” he said modestly.
Mr. Bloxham rose suddenly from his seat and raised clenched hands to the ceiling. Then he sat down again.
“After that,” continued Mr. Rapkin hurriedly, “we discussed music, letters, and er—er—the drama. Ultimately”—he gave a nervous cough—“I invited her to take lunch with me to-morrow, Saturday, and come to a matinée.”
Mr. Bloxham uttered a deep groan.
“Lunch!” he exclaimed. “Where?”
“The Regent Palace.”
“What made you pitch on the Regent Palace? Have you ever been there in your life?”
“No. But I happened to be discussing the whole question of restaurants with Nash only yesterday.”
“Who’s Nash?”
“Our Chief Cashier. He is rather a society sort of person. He was telling me of the various places where he takes his friends out to supper, and so on. He gave me to understand that at the Regent Palace gratuities were not as a rule offered or accepted. That was what put it into my head.”
“But what made you do it at all, I mean? You!”
“Possibly some Bohemian strain in my nature,” replied Mr. Rapkin, with perfect sincerity. “You never know.”
Mr. Bloxham recommended him to cut it out, and inquired:
“What did you have to drink at lunch?”
“A little white wine of some kind.”
“What did you have after your boss left?”
“A liqueur. I am not accustomed to them, and possibly—”
“What did you order?”
“Bénédictine.
“Why?”
“It was the easiest to pronounce.”
“And she had a couple, too, I suppose?”
“No. She took nothing all lunch.”
“Did she accept your invitation for to-morrow?”
For a moment Mr. Rapkin's anguish had been allayed. Now it returned in an acute form.
“Yes. But—we did not arrange details. She was to inquire of her theatrical friends as to the most suitable entertainment to visit, and—and—oh, lor!—she is going to ring me up at my house this evening, and tell me!”
Mr. Bloxham, who was a man of coarse fibre, banged the table with his fist and laughed loud and long.
“And your wife has come home to-night?”
“Yes.”
“And that girl has got your telephone number?”
“Yes. She will ring up at nine o'clock, as we are sitting in the back parlour after dinner! That’s where the telephone is—within two yards of my wife's chair! I’m at my wits' end! That's why I came to consult you, Bloxham! You’re a man of the world—”
Mr. Bloxham, made the recipient of the highest compliment that one nonentity can pay another, leaned back, inflated himself comfortably, and considered.
“Why not ring the girl up from here now,” he suggested, “and tell her you can't come to-morrow?”
“I don’t know her number,” wailed Rapkin. “I don’t even know her address. I’m at her mercy! I’m at—!”
“Well, don’t get the wind up,” counselled Mr. Bloxham soothingly. “I’ll think again. … It's quite simple,” he said presently. “When the telephone-bell rings to-night, look up from your evening paper and say something impatient, like, ‘I expect that’s old Bloxham again.’”
“Yes?” said Mr. Rapkin respectfully.
“Then go to the telephone, take off the receiver, and have an imaginary conversation with me. There!”
“But how will that enable me to inform Miss Valentine—?”
“You must be pretending to talk to me, but you must frame your words in such a way as to indicate to her all the time that what you say is meant for her. Finally, when you have made it clear that to-morrow's party is off, say good-night and hang up the receiver.”
“But what am I to say?” demanded Rapkin desperately.
“Say? Oh, say: ‘Yes, this is Rapkin. Hallo, is that you, Bloxham? You're very kind, but I have a long-standing engagement to-morrow afternoon: otherwise I should have been delighted.’ Something simple, like that. Then you hang up the receiver and say to your wife: “That was Bloxham. He wanted me to go for a country walk with him to-morrow afternoon; but of course I have refused, with your mother coming.” There you are! Just bluff it out!”
Mr. Rapkin shook his head dismally.
“I don't like it,” he said. “Supposing Miss Valentine does n’t understand? Supposing she says she’s not Bloxham? Supposing she goes on saying it? Supposing she won’t let me ring off? Supposing she keeps on ringing me up?”
“Shout her down!” said Mr. Bloxham. “Keep on talking in a rather boisterous, masterful sort of way, like this: ‘That’s all right, old friend! It's no use pressing me, because I can’t do it! But ring me up at the office on Monday, and we'll make another appointment.’ And so on. All you want is a bit of nerve.” He looked round the room. “I’ll tell you what; go to that telephone there, and let me hear you answer a call. Do the thing properly: take off the receiver, and everything. Hold down the receiver rest, though; or you’ll have a song from the exchange. Now let me hear you do it. I’ll be Miss What's-her-name.”
Enjoying himself hugely, Mr. Bloxham herded his flinching friend towards the telephone, sat down beside him, and began in a shrill falsetto:
“Is that you, dear old Wicked Eyes?”
Ten minutes later, after a remorseless rehearsal, the unhappy Rapkin, pronounced word-perfect and ready for a public appearance, turned his faltering steps homeward.
“Don’t lose your head, but keep on bluffing,” reiterated his host, opening the front door for him. “Don’t stand and shiver, but say something! Anything you like—but something! And if ever you find yourself utterly cornered, just ask yourself: ‘What would Bloxham do?’ That ought to help you. So long!”
III
“You’re very restless to-night, James,” remarked Mrs. Rapkin from her chair by the fire. “Why are you prowling about like a strange cat?”
“I’m shivering a little; dear,” replied Mr. Rapkin, with perfect truth. “I fancy I must have caught a touch of cold.”
“Where?”
“In my feet.”
“I suppose that is why you wanted to drag me out to the pictures to-night in the rain!” commented Mrs. Rapkin sarcastically. “I have no patience with you sometimes. Well, as I was saying, Sophy Sackett has been having trouble with her husband again. Of course she did n’t admit it to me, but when he slipped out after dinner three evenings running and did n’t come home before half-past eleven—well, naturally I have eyes in my head, besides a certain amount of common sense—”
The telephone bell rang sharply.
“I wonder who that can be?” said Mrs. Rapkin. “Thank goodness somebody uses the thing!”
Mr. Rapkin glanced at the clock. It was ten minutes to nine. Swallowing a mysterious obstacle which had suddenly appeared in his throat, and licking his dry lips, he rose to his feet and crossed to the writing-table.
“Perhaps it's old Bloxham again,” said a voice which he knew, though he did not recognize it, for his own.
He sat down on the swivel-chair, interposed his shrinking person between the telephone and the fire place, and with palsied hand took up the receiver. The time had come for him to give his carefully rehearsed performance.
“Hallo!” he remarked huskily.
A tense pause followed. Then a gruff voice inquired:
“Number, please?”
“You—you—rang me up,” said Mr. Rapkin feebly.
“Sorry you’ve been troubled,” replied the voice; and there was silence again.
Reprieved for the moment, Mr. Rapkin hastily replaced the receiver and rose to his feet.
“Wrong number, I fancy,” he said.
He dropped into his armchair by the fire. Simultaneously the bell rang again. An idea occurred to him.
“Oh, dear!” he exclaimed, “this is very tiresome! Perhaps they will go on doing it all the evening. We’d better take no notice: it will be no use answering every time.”
“Answer this time, all the same,” replied Mrs. Rapkin. “If you will have the telephone in your house, you must take the consequences.”
Too agitated to consider whether this dark saying bore any deeper significance, Mr. Rapkin returned to the writing-table, and, assuming the same humped attitude over the instrument, once more removed the receiver.
“Are you Golders Green 7654?” inquired a voice.
“Er–er–yes, I think so,” faltered Mr. Rapkin.
“Streatham wants you,” said the voice. “Don’t go away.” Mr. Rapkin, devoutly wishing that he could, sat awaiting the stroke of fate.
“She lives at Streatham,” he said to himself.
“Who wants you?” inquired a voice from the fireplace.
“Somebody at Streatham. I can't think who: I don’t know anybody there. I—I expect it's another wrong number. I'll just give them another minute and then hang up—”
“James!” said Mrs. Rapkin suddenly.
The unhappy man started violently.
“Yes, dear?” he said.
“You have got your foot in the waste-paper basket. You are very preoccupied to-night.”
“I have had a lot to bother me at the office while you have been away, dear,” said Rapkin desperately, as he extracted his foot. “Sometimes I hardly know what I am doing. Hallo! Yes?”
The operator was speaking again.
“That call from Streatham seems to have got lost. I’ll ring you if it comes through.”
“Oh, that's all right! Don't trouble,” said Mr. Rapkin earnestly. “It’s getting rather late, anyhow.”
Once more he hung up the receiver.
“And what is the trouble at the office?” inquired Mrs. Rapkin, as her quivering lord sank once more into his armchair and began to fiddle with his pipe.
“Well, dear,” replied Mr. Rapkin, realizing too late his own folly in gratuitously complicating an already involved explanation, “the fact is, it's rather a delicate matter. Delicate, and—er—er—technical. And—h’m—confidential. I don’t know that I should be quite justified—”
“Then don’t tell me anything. Naturally a man should never tell business secrets to his wife—even though she's been a faithful wife to him for twenty years—should he?”
Mr. Rapkin squirmed helplessly. This gambit was only too familiar to him.
“Of course I know I have always shown myself to be a thoroughly untrustworthy woman,” continued Mrs. Rapkin, Smiling a little, but with heightened colour; “so naturally—”
It was almost a relief to Mr. Rapkin when the telephone bell rang a third time. Once more he rose to his feet and sat down at the instrument. It seemed too much to hope that this might be another wrong number. Still—
“Hallo!” he remarked.
“Hallo, dear old thing!” replied a silvery voice, with appalling distinctness. Mr. Rapkin, in a blind instinct of self-preservation, hastily jammed down the receiver-rest with his right forefinger. Then, perspiring gently, he embarked upon the dolorous performance in which he had been schooled by the resourceful Bloxham.
“Yes, it's Rapkin speaking,” he said in a low, trembling voice. “Is that you, Bloxham, old man? How are you? … Good! … Capital! … Splendid! What's that? I can’t quite hear.”
He paused diplomatically, and listened. So did Mrs. Rapkin. Presently, after a strained and unconvincing silence, Mr. Rapkin resumed.
“Well, that's uncommonly good of you—uncommonly good—er—uncommonly good. I am afraid I must decline, though. We have friends with us rather unexpectedly for the week-end, and my—er—my time will be fully occupied all to-morrow, I fear—I hope—that is, I expect. Otherwise I should have been delighted.”
He was interrupted in these hollow exercises by the sudden and prolonged ringing of the telephone bell. Realizing, even in his present unbalanced condition, that the bell would continue to ring until he released the receiver-rest, he hastily relaxed the pressure of his finger and prepared to resume his apostrophe to the fictitious Bloxham. But before he could find his faltering tongue the limpid voice of Miss Vivi Valentine again assailed his ear.
“Hallo! Is that you, Wicked Eyes? The silly idiots cut us off. Now I want to tell you something—”
“Good-night!” Mr. Rapkin almost shrieked. “Ring me up at the office to-morrow morning, and we’ll try to fix a date next week!”
He hung up the receiver with a clatter, nipping Miss Valentine's shrill protests in the bud, and returned to his seat by the fire.
“The telephone service is a disgrace,” he observed, resolutely avoiding his wife's eye. “The wires are all jumbled up again. I was cut off right in the middle of a conversation just now.”
“Was that when the bell began to ring again?” inquired Mrs. Rapkin with ominous calm.
“Yes. It was most exasp—”
“I did n’t know it could ring when the receiver was off,” observed Mrs. Rapkin placidly.
“Crossed wires, I expect,” said Mr. Rapkin hurriedly.
“Ah! Who was it?”
“Who was it?”
“Yes; who was it? Who rang you up?”
Mr. Rapkin took a full breath.
“Bloxham,” he said, and swallowed violently.
“Bloxham?”
“Yes. He wanted me to go to a mati—to a billiard match with him to-morrow afternoon. At least, I think so; but there was such a buzzing on the wire I could hardly hear.”
“That's funny,” said Mrs. Rapkin. “The other person's voice seemed quite distinct.”
“Whose? Bloxham's?”
“No, the lady's.”
“The lady's? You—you mean the girl at the exchange?”
“They have male operators at the exchange after eight o'clock,” said Mrs. Rapkin, with an indulgent smile. “Besides, this one called you ‘Dear old thing.’ Who would she be, now?”
Mrs. Rapkin suddenly laid down her knitting and directed a basilisk glare upon her writhing victim. The velvet glove was off; the moment of reckoning had come. Mr. Rapkin, petrified, merely gazed at her like a fascinated rabbit.
“I am asking you a question,” repeated Mrs. Rapkin. “The young lady called you ‘Dear old thing.” Of course it's none of my business: I'm only your wife. But—”
“You’re mistaken, dear,” replied Mr. Rapkin with the courage of despair. “You could n’t possibly have heard distinctly what any one said from where you were sitting. She said” (“What would Bloxham do?” he asked himself frantically; and the answer came like a ray of light from heaven)—“she said, “Hallo, did you ring?” as far as I remember; not ‘Dear old—” not what you said.”
Mrs. Rapkin surveyed her overwrought mate curiously. Taking her all round, she was a sensible woman. That Mr. Rapkin, at his age and with his appearance and disposition, should be conducting a flirtation with an unknown young female seemed barely within the bounds of human possibility. Still, he had undoubtedly been rung up on the telephone by a woman, and had pretended that she was a man.
“Very well, then,” she replied. “The lady said, ‘Did you ring’—not, “Dear old thing.” But who was she? And why did you tell her to ring you up at the office to-morrow morning?”
“That was Bloxham,” said Rapkin miserably.
“No, James, it was n’t. I know Mr. Bloxham's voice quite well. He does n’t speak falsetto. Or perhaps you mean some one speaking for Mr. Bloxham. Has he got married while I have been away? Or started a lady secretary?”
“It’s a funny thing,” said Mr. Rapkin, grasping at this most exiguous straw, “but I believe that's what he must have done.”
“Got married? Well, you ought to know. You were in his house two hours ago.”
“No, I don’t mean that. But I think he must have some one with him—guests, perhaps. Now you mention it, I did hear a woman's voice mixed up with his.”
“Did you hear his at all?”
“Oh, yes, certainly. At least, I thought it was his; but what with the buzzing on the wire and the—the—lady's voice, too, I could n’t be certain. Of course it may have been a practical joke on somebody's part, just to make a fool of me. You know what people are. Wh-what are you going to do, Gladys?” His wife had risen majestically to her feet. She was a large woman, and was at the moment drawn up to her full height.
“I am going to ring up Mr. Bloxham,” replied Mrs. Rapkin simply. “I am not going to have you worried just now, especially when you are not well and things are so upsetting at the office.”
“But what are you going to ask him, dear?”
“I shall ask him first of all whether he has any one with him. Then I shall ask him if he rang you up to-night.”
“But if he did n’t,” objected Mr. Rapkin, “he would think it so strange.”
“You told me just now he did.”
“Well, of course one can't be quite certain, dear. And the buzzing—”
“If he did n’t,” said Mrs. Rapkin calmly, “there will be no harm done; and I can set to work and find out who did. It may take some time, but I shall find out. What's his number?
Once more the telephone bell rang clear and shrill.
“I will answer,” said Mrs. Rapkin. “Stay where you are.” She sat down at the table and took off the receiver.
“Well?”she inquired.
“Hallo!” replied a clear and all-too familiar voice. “Is that Golders Green 7654?”
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Rapkin grimly, “it is.”
Now that the guillotine had actually fallen, Mr. Rapkin was conscious of a certain sense of relief. He was numb, but at least the tension was over. With feeble bravado he filled his pipe and lit it. Never to the end of his married life would he hear the end of this episode. Still, he had been told that he had wicked eyes. Nothing could ever take away that glorious moment from him. He had lived his hour.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Rapkin was getting to work.
“Who is speaking, please?”
The reply which she received evidently surprised her. She looked across at her husband with a puzzled expression.
“It is some one speaking for Mr. Mossop,” she said, “from Streatham. Does he live there?”
“Now I come to think of it,” said Mr. Rapkin, “he does. What does she—he—want?”
“You. But don’t disturb yourself.” Mrs. Rapkin turned to the telephone again. “Can I take a message for Mr. Rapkin?” she asked.
The receiver uttered a single and unmistakable monosyllable. Mrs. Rapkin, looking considerably annoyed, rose to her feet and signalled to her husband to approach.
Mr. Rapkin mechanically took the receiver and sank down into the swivel-chair.
“Hallo!” he muttered.
“Is that Mr. Rapkin?” inquired Miss Valentine's voice.
“Er—yes. Who is that, please?”
“Vivi. Vivi Valentine.”
“Oh! How do you do?” replied Mr. Rapkin, bowing nervously to the telephone. “I had the pleasure of meeting you with Mr. Mossop, I think?”
“What a memory!” said Miss Valentine. “But never mind that. I have got a confession to make to you, and an apology. Shall I make them now?”
“She’s going to cry off lunch,” said Mr. Rapkin to himself. “That's something, anyhow.” Still, he knew that his wife would make no distinction between the will and the deed. This conversation must stop.
“Had n’t I better speak to Mr. Mossop first?” he said. “I understand he wants me.”
“Always the little man of business!” commented Miss Valentine. “Right-o! Here he is. Hold on!”
To the justifiable exasperation of Mrs. Rapkin the clear tones of Miss Valentine's young voice now gave place to an ordinary and indistinguishable masculine growl. With a patient sigh she resumed her seat by the fire and endeavoured by the exercise of the faculties of intuition and deduction—with both of which she was exceptionally highly endowed—to glean what clues she could from her husband's contributions to the dialogue. Her patience was taxed to the full: it was only by summoning up her entire stock of Christian forbearance that she restrained herself from crossing the room and shaking him till his teeth rattled. At last she could bear it no longer.
“James,” she said sharply, “what is it? What is it?”
But Mr. Rapkin took not the slightest notice. With his ear glued to the receiver and his wide-open mouth breathing heavily into the transmitter, he remained absolutely silent and motionless, while Mr. Mossop's bass voice boomed unceasingly along the wire. For the first time in his married life he failed to realize that his wife was speaking to him.
“Yes, sir,” he said at last, “I understand now. … Yes, it is indeed a relief to my mind. … I will be there at nine-fifteen. Good-night, sir.”
He took the receiver from his ear, but not before a second voice—a silvery feminine voice—had officiously supplemented Mr. Mossop's good-night. Mr. Rapkin hung up the receiver in a dazed fashion, rose to his feet, and faced his wife. His hair was rumpled, his tie awry, and his appearance that of a man who has gone through deep waters. But one thing was obvious; he had recovered his morale—for what it was worth.
“Well?” inquired Mrs. Rapkin.
Mr. Rapkin sank down into his armchair.
“I can tell you everything now, Gladys,” he said.
“And about time, too!” rejoined that overcharged lady. “Go on!”
Mr. Rapkin hesitated. Disaster had been miraculously turned to triumph; but for all that the explanation would not be an easy one.
“Go on!” repeated Mrs. Rapkin. “I suppose it was about the trouble at the office that you have been hinting at all the evening?”
“Yes,” replied Mr. Rapkin, smiling gratefully for this lead, “it was. That was just it.”
“What is the trouble about?”
“Nash.”
“Nash? He's your Chief Cashier, is n’t he?”
“He was our Chief Cashier.”
“Was?”
“Yes.” Mr. Rapkin rose to his feet and took his stand before the fire, in order to impart due pomp to this, the one dramatic situation of his hitherto uneventful career. “He was—until about an hour ago. The fact is, it appears that there has been something wrong with the office accounts for some time. There was a serious leakage somewhere, and naturally suspicion fell upon two people.”
“Oh! Who?”
“Nash and—er—myself.”
“You?” exclaimed Mrs. Rapkin wrathfully. “Let them dare!”
“Well, after all, dear, it was probably one of us; as all the money had to pass through our hands in the first instance. So the firm decided to employ a detective, and have both of us—er—shadowed.”
Mr. Rapkin swelled importantly. Never in all his life had he felt like this.
“A detective?” Mrs. Rapkin trembled.
“Yes—a woman detective! Apparently that’s quite the latest thing. That—ah—was the person talking to me on the telephone just now.”
Mrs. Rapkin's protective impulse instantly evaporated. “James,” she said sternly, “are you speaking the truth?”
“If you don’t believe me,” replied Mr. Rapkin with a happy smile, “ring up Mr. Mossop and ask him.”
Mrs. Rapkin, realizing instinctively that this confidence could not be assumed, promptly shifted her ground.
“Then why did you say she was Bloxham?” she demanded.
Mr. Rapkin coughed gently.
“There, dear, I am afraid I deceived you,” he said. “But you put me in a very difficult position. The negotiations were at a most delicate stage, and I was sworn to secrecy; so I simply had to—”
“What negotiations? If you were being watched by detectives, I don’t see what you had to do with negotiations. You don’t want me to believe that they consulted you before they set detectives on you, do you?”
“You are going ahead too fast for me,” said Mr. Rapkin, quite truthfully. “Let me explain. In order that the lady detective might be made familiar with the personal appearance of Nash and myself, Mr. Mossop invited each of us to lunch with him to meet her—as a lady friend of his interested in finance, and so on. Did n’t I mention to you that I had had a pleasant little luncheon party with Mr. Mossop a few days ago?”
“No, you did n't.”
“Ah! I thought I had. Well, never mind! It appears that the lady detective—”
“Why not call her Valentine, and have done with it?”
For a moment Mr. Rapkin's heart stood still.
“How do you know?”
“You can hear that telephone all over the room. Go on!”
Mr. Rapkin's heart resumed its functions. “Well,” he continued, “I suppose Miss—er—Vi–Valentine sized me up at lunch, and decided that I was—er—not that sort of man—”
“She must have been an expert!” commented Mrs. Rapkin sarcastically.
“—And concentrated on Nash. It appears that she had already prevailed upon him to take her out to dinner a few nights ago. After dinner they went on to one of those dance places—”
“Is she young?” interposed Mrs. Rapkin.
Mr. Rapkin considered.
“Not more than forty, I should say. But of course she may be older than she looks.”
“Go on! They went to a dance place—?”
“Yes. And they did n’t part company until nearly one o'clock in the morning. I fancy she must have wormed something out of Nash during that time, because—”
“Never mind Nash! What about you?”
Mr. Rapkin, politely puzzled, elevated his eyebrows.
“When and where did you take her out? That's what I want to know. Don't say you went dancing at your time of life, and with your cartilage!”
Mr. Rapkin laughed heartily.
“My dear Ada, is it likely? Would I, a man in my responsible position, with a wife of my own, be so indiscreet, so—er—well—Of course, when one was a young man about town, one might have—”
“Never mind your position, and don’t talk that silly way to me. Did you or did you not take her out?”
“I most certainly did not. And I must say, Ada, I am just a little hurt.”—the curious part about it was that Mr. Rapkin at the moment really did feel a little hurt—“that you should so doubt my discretion and—er—fidelity.”
“She must have got hold of something pretty definite from Nash, since she dropped you,” said Mrs. Rapkin thoughtfully. “And when did they catch Nash?”
“This evening. It appears that this afternoon Miss Valentine received some further clues which she had been waiting for, and followed them up at once. Nash is now under lock and key, and Mr. Mossop rang me up from Streatham to-night to tell me that I had been unjustly suspected, and to apologize for the unconscious indignity to which I had been submitted. He added that I am appointed Chief Cashier in Nash's place. I am to be at the office half-an-hour earlier to-morrow to take over the books. Mr. Mossop also explained to me who the lady was whom I met at lunch to-d—recently. In fact, she was with him at his house when he rang me up this evening.”
“I suppose she had come to apologize to you too.”
“Er—precisely.”
“Still,” remarked Mrs. Rapkin, “I don’t see why you should have got so nervous and jumpy just because a lot of things were going on behind your back that you knew nothing about.”
“One has instincts—and intuitions,” said Mr. Rapkin grandly, “where one's honour is concerned.”
His wife rose to her feet, and began to turn out the lights.
“You have had a narrow escape, James,” she said; and with this ambiguous comment departed upstairs to bed.
But human nature is a strange thing. Half an hour later, in his dressing-room, Mr. Rapkin sadly folded up and put away the garments which had been destined for the morrow's festivities. For a man who had been saved by the hand of Providence from unspeakable disaster he looked singularly ungrateful. He surveyed himself in the mirror, and sighed.
“I suppose I have n’t got wicked eyes after all!” he said sorrowfully.