"A thousand dollars to you, madam," said I.
They were at once suspicious. While they were busily engaged in looking the seat over as the porters shifted it about at all angles, I stepped over and ordered my workmen to resume their operations. I was beginning to get sour and angry again, having missed my coffee. From the culinary regions there ascended a most horrific odour of fried onions. If there is one thing I really resent it is a fried onion. I do not know why I should have felt the way I did about it on this occasion, but I am mean enough now to confess that I hailed the triumphal entry of that pernicious odour with a meanness of spirit that leaves nothing to be explained.
"Good gracious!" gasped the aristocratic Mrs. Riley-Werkheimer, holding her nose. "Do you smell _that_"?
"Onions! My Gawd!" sniffed Maude. "How I hate "em!"
Mr. Rocksworth forgot his dignity. "Hate "em?" he cried, his eyes rolling. "I just love "em!"
"Orson!" said his wife, transfixing him with a glare. "_What_ will people think of you?"
"I like "em too," admitted Mr. Riley-Werkheimer, perceiving at once whom she meant by "people." He puffed out his chest.
At that instant the carpenters, plumbers and stone masons resumed their infernal racket, while scrubwomen, polishers and painters began to move intimately among us.
"Here!" roared Mr. Rocksworth. "Stop this beastly noise! What the deuce do you mean, sir, permitting these scoundrels to raise the dead like this? Confound "em, I stopped them once. Here! You! Let up on that, will you?"
I moved forward apologetically. "I am afraid it is not onions you smell, ladies and gentlemen." I had taken my cue with surprising quickness. "They _are_ raising the dead. The place is fairly alive with dead rats and--"
"Good Lord!" gasped Riley-Werkheimer. "We"ll get the bubonic plague here."
"Oh, I know _onions_," said Rocksworth calmly. "Can"t fool me on onions.
They _are_ onions, ain"t they, Carrie?"
"They _are_!" said she. "What a pity to have this wonderful old castle actually devastated by workmen! It is an outrage--a crime. I should think the owner would turn over in his grave."
"Unhappily, I am the owner, madam," said I, slyly working my foot back into an elusive slipper.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she said, eyeing me coldly with a hitherto unexposed lorgnon.
"I am," said I. "You quite took me by surprise. I should have made myself more presentable if I had known--"
"Well, let"s move on upstairs," said Rocksworth. Addressing the porters he said: "You fellows get this lot of stuff together and I"ll take an option on it. I"ll be over to-morrow to close the deal, Mr.--Mr.--Now, where is the old Florentine mirror the Count was telling us about?"
"The Count?" said I, frowning.
"Yes, the _real_ owner. You can"t stuff me with your talk about being the proprietor here, my friend. You see, we happen to _know_ the Count."
They all condescended to laugh at me. I don"t know what I should have said or done if Britton had not returned with a box of matches at that instant--sulphur matches which added subtly to the growing illusion.
Almost simultaneously there appeared in the lower hall a lanky youth of eighteen. He was a loud-voiced, imperious sort of chap with at least three rolls to his trousers and a plum-coloured cap.
"Say, these clubs are the real stuff, all right, all right. They"re as brittle as gla.s.s. See what I did to "em. We can hae "em spliced and rewound and I"ll hang "em on my wall. All I want is the heads anyhow."
He held up to view a headless mid-iron and bra.s.sie, and triumphantly waved a splendid cleek. My favourite clubs! I could play better from a hanging lie with that beautiful bra.s.sie than with any club I ever owned and as for the iron, I was deadly with it.
He lit a cigarette and threw the match into a pile of shavings. Old Conrad returned to life at that instant and stamped out the incipient blaze.
"I shouldn"t consider them very good clubs, Harold, if they break off like that," said his mother.
"What do you know about clubs?" he snapped, and I at once knew what cla.s.s he was in at the preparatory school.
If I was ever like one of these, said I to myself, G.o.d rest the sage soul of my Uncle Rilas!
The situation was no longer humorous. I could put up with anything but the mishandling of my devoted golf clubs.
Striding up to him, I s.n.a.t.c.hed the remnants from his hands.
"You infernal cub!" I roared. "Haven"t you any more sense than to smash a golf club like that? For two cents I"d break this putter over your head."
"Father!" he yelled indignantly. "Who is this mucker?"
Mr. Rocksworth bounced toward me, his cane raised. I whirled upon him.
"How dare you!" he shouted. The ladies squealed.
If he expected me to cringe, he was mightily mistaken. My blood was up. I advanced.
"Paste him, Dad!" roared Harold.
But Mr. Rocksworth suddenly altered his course and put the historic treaty table between him and me. He didn"t like the appearance of my rather brawny fist.
"You big stiff!" shouted Harold. Afterwards it occurred to me that this inelegant appellation may have been meant for his father, but at the time I took it to be aimed at me.
Before Harold quite knew what was happening to him, he was prancing down the long hall with my bony fingers grasping his collar. Coming to the door opening into the outer vestibule, I drew back my foot for a final aid to locomotion. Acutely recalling the fact that slippers are not designed for kicking purposes, I raised my foot, removed the slipper and laid it upon a taut section of his trousers with all of the melancholy force that I usually exert in slicing my drive off the tee. I shall never forget the exquisite spasm of pleasure his plaintive "Ouch!" gave me.
Then Harold pa.s.sed swiftly out of my life.
Mr. Rocksworth, reinforced by four reluctant mercenaries in the shape of porters, was advancing upon me. Somehow I had a vague, but unerring instinct that some one had fainted, but I didn"t stop to inquire.
Without much ado, I wrested the cane from him and sent it scuttling after Harold.
"Now, get out!" I roared.
"You shall pay for this!" he sputtered, quite black in the face. "Grab him, you infernal cowards!"
But the four porters slunk away, and Mr. Rocksworth faced me alone.
Rudolph and Max, thoroughly fed and _most_ prodigious, were bearing down upon us, accounting for the flight of the mercenaries.
"Get out!" I repeated. "I am the owner of this place, Mr. Rocksworth, and I am mad through and through. Skip!"
"I"ll have the law--"
"Law be hanged!"
"If it costs me a million, I"ll get--"
"It _will_ cost you a million if you don"t get!" I advised him, seeing that he paused for want of breath.