There was a shrill scream from the pink neglige.
"It"s all right, miss. This gentleman"s like yerself, sort o" got hisself mixed up. There"s a lady in "is room-ahem! in "is bed too. Kind o" family coach goin" on this mornin", seems to me."
The youth blushed rosily, and was just on the point of stammering apologies for his garb, when a tremendous uproar from the corridor interrupted him.
Bindle had purposely left the door ajar and through the slit he had, a moment previously, seen the clergyman disappear precipitately through one of the bedroom doors. It was from this room that the noise came.
"Mon Dieu!" shrieked a female voice. "Il se battent. a moi! a moi!" There were hoa.r.s.e mutterings and the sound of blows.
""Ere, you look arter each other," Bindle cried, "it"s murder this time." And he sped down the corridor.
He entered No. 21 to find locked together in a deadly embrace the clergyman and a little bald-headed man in pyjamas. In the bed was a figure, Bindle mentally commended its daintiness, rising up from a foam of frillies and shrieking at the top of her voice "silly things wot wasn"t even words," as Bindle afterwards told Mrs. Hearty.
"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Il sera tue!"
"Regular fightin" parson," muttered Bindle, as he strove to part the men. "If "e don"t stop a-b.u.mpin" "is "ead on the floor "e"ll break it. "Ere, stop it, sir. Yer mustn"t use "is "ead as if it was a c.o.kernut and yer wanted the milk. Come orf!"
Bindle had seized the clergyman from behind, and was pulling with all his strength as he might at the collar of a bellicose bull-terrier.
"Come orf, yer mustn"t do this sort o" thing in an "otel. I"m surprised at you, sir, a clergyman too."
Half choking, the clergyman rose to his feet, and strove to brush the flood of hair from his eyes. His opponent seized the opportunity and flew back to bed, where he sat trying to staunch the blood that flowed from his nose and hurling defiance at his enemy.
"Wot"s it all about?" enquired Bindle.
"I-I came back from my bath and found this man in my bed with a-a--"
"Ma femme," shrieked the little Frenchman. "Is it not that we have slept here every night for--"
""Ush, sir, "ush!" rebuked Bindle over his shoulder with a grin. "We don"t talk like that in England."
"Sort of lost yer way, sir, and got in the wrong room," Bindle suggested to the clergyman.
"He rushed at me and kicked me in the-er-stom-er-well, he kicked me, and I-I forget, and I-I--"
"Of course yer did, sir; anyone "ud "a done the same."
Then to the Frenchman Bindle remarked severely:
"Yer didn"t ought to "ave kicked "im, "im a clergyman too. Fancy kicking a clergyman in the-well, where you kicked "im. Wot"s the number of yer room, sir?" he enquired, turning to the clergyman.
"Twenty-one; see, it"s on the door."
Bindle looked; there was "21" clear enough.
"Wot"s yer number, sir?" he asked the Frenchman.
"Vingt-quatre."
"Now don"t you go a-using none of them words "fore a clergyman. Wot"s yer number? that"s wot I"m arstin"."
"Twenty-four-vingt-quatre."
"Well," said Bindle with decision, "you"re in the wrong room."
"Mais c"est impossible," cried the Frenchman. "We have been here all night. Is it not so, cherie?" He turned to his wife for corroboration.
Bindle had no time to enter further into the dispute. Suddenly a fresh disturbance broke out further along the corridor.
"What the devil do you mean by this outrage, sir?" an angry and imperious voice was demanding. "What the devil do you--"
With a hasty word to the clergyman, who now looked thoroughly ashamed of himself, and a gentle push in the direction of the Office of Works, Bindle trotted off to the scene of the new disturbance. He heard another suppressed scream from the pink neglige betokening the entry of the clergyman.
"What the devil do you mean by entering my room?"
A tall, irate man, with the Army stamped all over him, dressed in pyjamas, with a monocle firmly wedged in his left eye, was fiercely eyeing a smaller man in a bath-robe.
"Not content with having got into my room, but damme, sir, you must needs try and get into my trousers. What the devil do you mean by it?"
Bindle looked along the corridor appreciatively. "Looks like a shipwreck at night, it do," he remarked to the chambermaid.
"It"s my room," said the man in the bathrobe.
"Confound you," was the reply, "this is my room, and I"ll prosecute you for libel."
"My room is No. 18," responded the other, "and I left my wife there half an hour ago."
He pointed to the figures on the door in proof of his contention. The man in the monocle looked at the door, and a puzzled expression pa.s.sed over his face.
"Damme," he exploded, "my room is No. 15, but I certainly slept in that room all night." He darted inside and reappeared a moment after with his trousers in his hand.
"Here are my trousers to prove it. Are these your trousers?" The man in the bath-robe confessed that they were not.
"That seems to prove it all right, sir," remarked Bindle, who had come up. "A man don"t sleep in a different room from his trousers, leastways, unless "e"s a "Ighlander."
Similar disturbances were taking place along the corridor. The uproar began to attract visitors from other corridors, and soon the whole place was jammed with excited guests, in attire so varied and insufficient that one lady, who had insisted on her husband accompanying her to see what had happened, immediately sent him back to his room that his eyes might not be outraged by the lavish display of ankles and bare arms.
The more nervous among the women guests had immediately a.s.sumed fire to be the cause of the disturbance, and thinking of their lives rather than of modesty and decorum, had rushed precipitately from their rooms.
"It might be a Turkish bath for all the clothes they"re wearin"," Bindle whispered to the exquisite youth, who with his two fellow-guests had left the Office of Works. "Ain"t women funny shapes when they ain"t braced up!"
The youth looked at Bindle reproachfully. He had not yet pa.s.sed from that period when women are mysterious and wonderful.
At the doors of several of the rooms heated arguments were in progress as to who was the rightful occupant. Inside they were all practically the same, that was part of the scheme of the hotel. The man with the monocle was still engaged in a fierce altercation with the man in the bath-robe, who was trying to enter No. 18.
"My wife"s in there," cried the man in the bath-robe fiercely.
At this moment the deputy-manager appeared, a man whose face had apparently been modelled with the object of expressing only two emotions, benignant servility to the guests and overbearing contempt to his subordinates. As if by common consent, the groups broke up and the guests hastened towards him. His automatic smile seemed strangely out of keeping with the crisis he was called upon to face. Information and questions poured in upon him.