"Yes," said Mr. Pyecroft. "You have, and I _will_ say"--he patted my car"s bonnet--"you earned "em."
"I want to know why--," I went on.
"Quite justifiable. You haven"t noticed anything in the papers, have you?"
"I"ve only just landed. I haven"t seen a paper for weeks."
"Then you can lend me a virgin ear. There"s been a scandal in the Junior Service--the Army, I believe they call "em."
A bag of coffee-beans pitched on the counter. "Roast that," said the uncle from within.
Pyecroft rigged a small coffee-roaster, while I took down the shutters, and sold a young lady in curl-papers two bunches of mixed greens and one soft orange.
"Sickly stuff to handle on an empty stomach, ain"t it?" said Pyecroft.
"What about my new tyres?" I insisted.
"Oh, any amount. But the question is"--he looked at me steadily--"is this what you might call a court-martial or a post-mortem inquiry?"
"Strictly a post-mortem," said I.
"That being so," said Pyecroft, "we can rapidly arrive at facts. Last Thursday--the shutters go behind those baskets--last Thursday at five bells in the forenoon watch, otherwise ten-thirty A.M., your Mr. Leggatt was discovered on Westminster Bridge laying his course for the Old Kent Road."
"But that doesn"t lead to Southampton," I interrupted.
"Then perhaps he was swinging the car for compa.s.ses. Be that as it may, we found him in that lat.i.tude, simultaneous as Jules and me was _ong route_ for Waterloo to rejoin our respective ships--or Navies I should say. Jules was a _permissionaire_, which meant being on leaf, same as me, from a French ca.s.sowary-cruiser at Portsmouth. A party of her trusty and well-beloved petty officers "ad been seeing London, chaperoned by the R.C. Chaplain. Jules "ad detached himself from the squadron and was cruisin" on his own when I joined him, in company of copious lady-friends. _But_, mark you, your Mr. Leggatt drew the line at the girls. Loud and long he drew it."
"I"m glad of that," I said.
"You may be. He adopted the puristical formation from the first. "Yes,"
he said, when we was annealing him at--but you wouldn"t know the pub--"I _am_ going to Southampton," he says, "and I"ll stretch a point to go _via_ Portsmouth; _but_," says he, "seeing what sort of one h.e.l.l of a time invariably trarnspires when we cruise together, Mr. Pyecroft, I do _not_ feel myself justified towards my generous and long-suffering employer in takin" on that kind of ballast as well." I a.s.sure you he considered your interests."
"And the girls?" I asked.
"Oh, I left that to Jules. I"m a monogomite by nature. So we embarked strictly _ong garcong_. But I should tell you, in case he didn"t, that your Mr. Leggatt"s care for your interests "ad extended to sheathing the car in matting and gunny-bags to preserve her paint-work. She was all swathed up like an I-talian baby."
"He _is_ careful about his paint-work," I said.
"For a man with no Service experience I should say he was fair homicidal on the subject. If we"d been Marines he couldn"t have been more pointed in his allusions to our hob-nailed socks. However, we reduced him to a malleable condition, and embarked for Portsmouth. I"d seldom rejoined my _vaisseau ong automobile, avec_ a fur coat and goggles. Nor "ad Jules."
"Did Jules say much?" I asked, helplessly turning the handle of the coffee-roaster.
"That"s where I pitied the pore beggar. He "adn"t the language, so to speak. He was confined to heavings and shruggin"s and copious _Mong Jews_! The French are very badly fitted with relief-valves. And then our Mr. Leggatt drove. He drove."
"Was he in a very malleable condition?"
"Not him! We recognised the value of his cargo from the outset. He hadn"t a chance to get more than moist at the edges. After which we went to sleep; and now we"ll go to breakfast."
We entered the back room where everything was in order, and a screeching canary made us welcome. The uncle had added sausages and piles of b.u.t.tered toast to the kippers. The coffee, cleared with a piece of fish-skin, was a revelation.
Leggatt, who seemed to know the premises, had run the car into the tiny backyard where her mirror-like back almost blocked up the windows. He minded shop while we ate. Pyecroft pa.s.sed him his rations through a flap in the door. The uncle ordered him in, after breakfast, to wash up, and he jumped in his gaiters at the old man"s commands as he has never jumped to mine.
"To resoom the post-mortem," said Pyecroft, lighting his pipe. "My slumbers were broken by the propeller ceasing to revolve, and by vile language from your Mr. Leggatt."
"I--I--" Leggatt began, a blue-checked duster in one hand and a cup in the other.
"When you"re wanted aft you"ll be sent for, Mr. Leggatt," said Pyecroft amiably. "It"s clean mess decks for you now. Resooming once more, we was on a lonely and desolate ocean near Portsdown, surrounded by gorse bushes, and a Boy Scout was stirring my stomach with his little copper-stick."
""You count ten," he says.
""Very good, Boy Jones," I says, "count "em," and I hauled him in over the gunnel, and ten I gave him with my large flat hand. The remarks he pa.s.sed, lying face down tryin" to bite my leg, would have reflected credit on any Service. Having finished I dropped him overboard again, which was my gross political error. I ought to "ave killed him; because he began signalling--rapid and accurate--in a sou"westerly direction.
Few equatorial calms are to be apprehended when B.P."s little pets take to signallin". Make a note o" that! Three minutes later we were stopped and boarded by Scouts--up our backs, down our necks, and in our boots!
The last I heard from your Mr. Leggatt as he went under, brushin" "em off his cap, was thanking Heaven he"d covered up the new paint-work with mats. An "eroic soul!"
"Not a scratch on her body," said Leggatt, pouring out the coffee-grounds.
"And Jules?" said I.
"Oh, Jules thought the much advertised Social Revolution had begun, but his mackintosh hampered him.
"You told me to bring the mackintosh," Leggatt whispered to me.
"And when I "ad "em half convinced he was a French vicomte coming down to visit the Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth, he tried to take it off.
Seeing his uniform underneath, some sucking Sherlock Holmes of the Pink Eye Patrol (they called him Eddy) deduced that I wasn"t speaking the truth. Eddy said I was tryin" to sneak into Portsmouth un.o.bserved--un.o.bserved mark you!--and join hands with the enemy. It trarnspired that the Scouts was conducting a field-day against opposin"
forces, ably a.s.sisted by all branches of the Service, and they was so afraid the car wouldn"t count ten points to them in the fray, that they"d have scalped us, but for the intervention of an umpire--also in short under-drawers. A fleshy sight!"
Here Mr. Pyecroft shut his eyes and nodded. "That umpire," he said suddenly, "was our Mr. Morshed--a gentleman whose acquaintance you have already made _and_ profited by, if I mistake not[7]."
[Footnote 7: "Their Lawful Occasions," _Traffics and Discoveries_.]
"Oh, was the Navy in it too?" I said; for I had read of wild doings occasionally among the Boy Scouts on the Portsmouth Road, in which Navy, Army, and the world at large seemed to have taken part.
"The Navy _was_ in it. I was the only one out of it--for several seconds. Our Mr. Morshed failed to recognise me in my fur boa, and my appealin" winks at "im behind your goggles didn"t arrive. But when Eddy darling had told his story, I saluted, which is difficult in furs, and I stated I was bringin" him dispatches from the North. My Mr. Morshed cohered on the instant. I"ve never known his ethergram installations out of order yet. "Go and guard your blessed road," he says to the Fratton Orphan Asylum standing at attention all round him, and, when they was removed--"Pyecroft," he says, still _sotte voce_, "what in Hong-Kong are you doing with this dun-coloured _sampan_?"
"It was your Mr. Leggatt"s paint-protective matting which caught his eye. She _did_ resemble a _sampan_, especially about the stern-works. At these remarks I naturally threw myself on "is bosom, so far as Service conditions permitted, and revealed him all, mentioning that the car was yours. You know his way of working his lips like a rabbit? Yes, he was quite pleased. "_His_ car!" he kept murmuring, working his lips like a rabbit. "I owe "im more than a trifle for things he wrote about me. I"ll keep the car."
"Your Mr. Leggatt now injected some semi-mutinous remarks to the effect that he was your chauffeur in charge of your car, and, as such, capable of so acting. Mr. Morshed threw him a glarnce. It sufficed. Didn"t it suffice, Mr. Leggatt?"
"I knew if something didn"t happen, something worse would," said Leggatt. "It never fails when you"re aboard."
"And Jules?" I demanded.
"Jules was, so to speak, panicking in a water-tight flat through his unfortunate lack of language. I had to introduce him as part of the _entente cordiale_, and he was put under arrest, too. Then we sat on the gra.s.s and smoked, while Eddy and Co. violently annoyed the traffic on the Portsmouth Road, till the umpires, all in short panties, conferred on the valuable lessons of the field-day and added up points, same as at target-practice. I didn"t hear their conclusions, but our Mr. Morshed delivered a farewell address to Eddy and Co., tellin" "em they ought to have deduced from a hundred signs about me, that I was a friendly bringin" in dispatches from the North. We left "em tryin" to find those signs in the Scout book, and we reached Mr. Morshed"s hotel at Portsmouth at 6.27 P.M. _ong automobile_. Here endeth the first chapter."
"Begin the second," I said.
The uncle and Leggatt had finished washing up and were seated, smoking, while the damp duster dried at the fire.
"About what time was it," said Pyecroft to Leggatt, "when our Mr.