The man who found himself (Smith's Magazine 1920)/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII.
Bobby Ravenshaw did not spend the day at the Charing Cross Hotel waiting for Simon. He amused himself otherwise, leaving Mudd to do the waiting.
At eleven o'clock he called at the hotel. “Mr. Mudd” was upstairs in Mr. Pettigrew's room and would be called down.
Bobby thought that he could trace a lot of things in the porter's tone and manner, a respect and commiseration for Mr. Mudd, and perhaps not quite such a high respect for himself and Simon. He fancied that the hotel was beginning to have its eye upon him and Simon as questionable parties of the bon viveur type, a fancy that may have been baseless, but was still there.
Then Mudd appeared.
“Well, Mudd,” said Bobby, “hasn't he turned up yet?”
“No, Mr. Robert.”
“Where on earth can he be?”
“I'm givin' him till half past eleven,” said Mudd, “and then I'm off to Vine Street.”
“What on earth for?”
“To have the hospitals circulated to ask about him.”
“Oh, nonsense.”
“It's on my mind he's had an accident,” said Mudd. “Robbed and stunned, or drugged with opium and left in the street. I know London—and him as he is! He'll be found with his pockets inside out—I know London. You should have got him down to the country to-day, Mr. Robert, somewhere quiet. Now, maybe, it's too late.”
“It's very easy to say that. I tried to and he wouldn't go, not even to Richmond. London seems to hold him like a charm. He's like a bee in a bottle—can't escape.”
At this moment a horrid little girl in a big hat and feathers, boots too large for her, and a shawl, made her appearance at the entrance door, saw the hall porter, and came toward him. She had a letter in her hand.
The hall porter took the letter, looked at it, and brought it to Mudd.
Mudd glanced at the envelope and tore it open.
Mr. Mudd: Come at once.
That was all, written in an angular, old-fashioned hand and in purple ink.
“Where's my hat?” cried Mudd, running about like a decapitated fowl. “Where's my hat—oh, ay, it's upstairs.” He vanished, and in a minute reappeared with his hat. Then, with Bobby, and followed by the dirty little girl, off they started.
They tried to question the little girl on the way, but she knew nothing definite.
The gentleman had been brought 'ome—didn't know what was wrong with him. The lady had given her the letter to take; that was all she knew.
“He's alive, anyhow,” said Bobby.
“The Lord knows!” said Mudd.
The little girl let them in, with a key and, Mudd leading the way, up the stairs they went.
Mudd knocked at the door of the sitting room.
Madame and Cerise were there, quite calm, and evidently waiting. Of Simon there was not a trace.
“Oh, Mr. Modd!” cried the old lady. “How fortunate you have received my letter. Poor Monsieur Pattigrew is”
“He ain't dead?” cried Mudd.
No, Simon was not dead. Poor Monsieur Pattigrew and a very big gentleman had arrived over an hour ago. Mr. Pattigrew could not stand. He had been taken ill, the big gentleman had declared.
Such a nice gentleman, who had sat down and cried while Mr. Pattigrew had been placed on the sofa. He had been taken ill in the street. The big gentleman had gone for a doctor but had not yet returned. Mr. Pattigrew had been put to bed. She and the big gentleman had seen to that.
Mr. Pattigrew had recovered consciousness for a moment during this operation, and had produced a number of bank notes. Such a number! She had placed them safely in her desk. It was one of the reasons she had sent so urgently for Mr. Modd.
She produced the notes—a huge sheaf. Mudd took them and examined them dazedly, hundreds and hundreds of pounds' worth of notes. And he had started with only two hundred pounds;
“Why, there's nearly a thousand pounds' worth here,” said Mudd.
Bobby's astonishment might have been greater had not his eyes rested, from the first moment of their coming in, on Cerise. Cerise, with parted lips, a heightened color, and the air of a little child at a play, did not quite understand.
She was lovely, French, innocent, lovely as a flower, a new thing in London. He had never seen anything quite like her before. The poverty of the room, uncle Simon, his worries and troubles—all were banished and eased. She was music, and if Saul could have seen her he would have had no need for David.
Had uncle Simon added burglary to knocker snatching; broken into a jeweler's and disposed of his takings to a “fence”: committed robbery? All these thoughts strayed over his mind, harmless because of Cerise.
The unfortunate young man, who had fooled so long with girls, had met the girl who had been waiting for him since the beginning of the world. There is always that. She may be blowsy; she may be plain or lovely like Cerise; she is Fate.
“And here is the big gentleman's card,” said madame, taking a visiting card from her desk, then another and another.
“He gave me three.”
Mudd handed the card to Bobby, who read:
- The Hon. Richard Pugeot,
- Pall Mall Place, St. James'.
Guards' Club.
“I know him,” said Bobby. “That's all right. Uncle Simon couldn't have fallen into better hands.”
“Is, then, Monsieur Pattigrew your oncle?” asked the old lady.
“He is, madame.”
“Then you are thrice welcome here, monsieur,” said she.
Illustration: Pugeot played and lost and then Simon plunged. They were there an hour, and in that hour Simon won seven hundred pounds.
Cerise looked the words, and Bobby's eyes as they met hers returned thanks.
“Come,” said madame. “You shall see him and that he is safe.”
She gently opened the door leading to the bedroom and there, in a little bed, dainty and white, Cerise's little bed, lay uncle Simon, flushed and smiling and snoring.
“Poor Monsieur Pattigrew,” murmured the old lady.
Then they withdrew.
It seemed that there was another bed to be got in the house of Cerise; and Mudd taking charge of the patient, the ladies withdrew. It was agreed that no doctor was wanted. It was also agreed between Bobby and Mudd that the hotel was impossible after this.
“We must get him away to the country to-morrow,” said Mudd, “if he'll go.”
“He'll go if I have to take him tied up and bound,” said Bobby. “My nerves won't stand another day of this. Take care of those notes, Mudd, and don't let him see them. They'll be useful getting him away. I'll be round as early as I can. I'll see Pugeot and get the rights of the matter from him. Good night.”
Off he went. In the street he paused for a moment, then he took a passing taxi for the Albany.
Tozer was in, playing patience and smoking. He did not interrupt his game for the other.
“Well, how's uncle Simon?” asked Tozer.
“He's asleep at last after a most rampageous day.”
“You look pretty sober.”
“Don't mention it,” said Bobby, going to a case and helping himself to some whisky. “My nerves are all unstrung.”
“Trailing after him?”
“Thank God, no!” said Bobby. “Waiting for him to turn up dead, bruised, battered, or simply intoxicated and stripped of his money. He gave me the slip in Piccadilly with two hun-hundred-pound notes in his pocket. The next place I find him was half an hour ago in a young lady's bed, dead to the world, smiling, and with nearly a thousand pounds in bank notes which he'd hived somehow during the day.”
“A thousand pounds!”
“Yes, and he'd started with only two hundred.”
“I say!” said Tozer, forgetting his cards. “What a chap he must have been when he was young!”
“When he was young, Lord! I don't want to see him any younger than he is. If this is youth, give me old age!”
“You'll get it fast enough,” said Tozer, “don't you worry, and this will be a reminder to you to keep old. There's an Arab proverb that says: 'There are two things colder than ice, an old young man and a young old man,'”
“Colder than ice!” said Bobby. “I wish you had five minutes with uncle Simon.”
“But who's this lady—this young and”
“Two of the nicest people on earth,” said Bobby. “An old lady and her daughter—French. He saved the girl in an omnibus accident or something, in one of his escapades, and took her home to her mother. Then, to-night, he must have remembered them and got a friend to take him there. Fancy the cheek! What made him, in his state, able to remember them?”
“What is the young lady like?”
“She's beautiful,” said Bobby. Then he took a sip of whisky and soda and failed to meet Tozer's eye as he put down the glass.
“That's what made him remember her,” said Tozer.
Bobby laughed.
“It's no laughing matter,” said the other, “at his age—when the heart is young.”
Bobby laughed again.
“Bobby,” said Tozer, “beware of that girl!”
“I'm not thinking of the girl,” said Bobby. “I'm thinking how on earth the old man”
“The youth you mean.”
“Got all that money.”
“You're a liar,” said Tozer. “You are thinking of the girl.”