"You"re careless in money matters, my lad," said the captain, reprovingly.
"I couldn"t understand him making all that fuss over a couple o"
pounds," said Mr. Chalk, looking round. "He"s very free, as a rule; too free."
Mr. Tredgold, sitting grave and silent, made no reply to these charges, and the girl was the only one to notice a faint twitching at the corners of his mouth. She saw it distinctly, despite the fact that her clear, grey eyes were fixed dreamily on a spot some distance above his head.
She sat in her room upstairs after the visitors had gone, thinking it over. The light was fading fast, and as she sat at the open window the remembrance of Mr. Tredgold"s conduct helped to mar one of the most perfect evenings she had ever known.
Downstairs the captain was also thinking. Dialstone Lane was in shadow, and already one or two lamps were lit behind drawn blinds. A little chatter of voices at the end of the lane floated in at the open window, mellowed by distance. His pipe was out, and he rose to search in the gloom for a match, when another murmur of voices reached his ears from the kitchen. He stood still and listened intently. To put matters beyond all doubt, the shrill laugh of a girl was plainly audible. The captain"s face hardened, and, crossing to the fireplace, he rang the bell.
"Yessir," said Joseph, as he appeared and closed the door carefully behind him.
"What are you talking to yourself in that absurd manner for?" inquired the captain with great dignity.
"Me, sir?" said Mr. Tasker, feebly.
"Yes, you," repeated the captain, noticing with surprise that the door was slowly opening.
Mr. Tasker gazed at him in a troubled fashion, but made no reply.
"I won"t have it," said the captain, sternly, with a side glance at the door. "If you want to talk to yourself go outside and do it. I never heard such a laugh. What did you do it for? It was like an old woman with a bad cold."
He smiled grimly in the darkness, and then started slightly as a cough, a hostile, challenging cough, sounded from the kitchen. Before he could speak the cough ceased and a thin voice broke carelessly into song.
"WHAT!" roared the captain, in well-feigned astonishment. "Do you mean to tell me you"ve got somebody in my pantry? Go and get me those rules and regulations."
Mr. Tasker backed out, and the captain smiled again as he heard a whispered discussion. Then a voice clear and distinct took command.
"I"ll take"em in myself, I tell you," it said. "I"ll rules and regulations him."
The smile faded from the captain"s face, and he gazed in perplexity at the door as a strange young woman bounced into the room.
"Here"s your rules and regulations," said the intruder, in a somewhat shrewish voice. "You"d better light the lamp if you want to see"em; though the spelling ain"t so noticeable in the dark."
The impressiveness of the captain"s gaze was wasted in the darkness. For a moment he hesitated, and then, with the dignity of a man whose spelling has nothing to conceal, struck a match and lit the lamp. The lamp lighted, he lowered the blind, and then seating himself by the window turned with a majestic air to a thin slip of a girl with tow-coloured hair, who stood by the door.
"Who are you?" he demanded, gruffly.
"My name"s Vickers," said the young lady. "Selina Vickers. I heard all what you"ve been saying to my Joseph, but, thank goodness, I can take my own part. I don"t want n.o.body to fight my battles for me. If you"ve got anything to say about my voice you can say it to my face."
Captain Bowers sat back and regarded her with impressive dignity. Miss Vickers met his gaze calmly and, with a pair of unwinking green eyes, stared him down.
"What were you doing in my pantry?" demanded the captain, at last.
"I was in your kitchen," replied Miss Vickers, with scornful emphasis on the last word, "to see my young man."
"Well, I can"t have you there," said the captain, with a mildness that surprised himself. "One of my rules-"
Miss Vickers interposed. "I"ve read"em all over and over again," she said, impatiently.
"If it occurs again," said the other, "I shall have to speak to Joseph very seriously about it."
"Talk to me," said Miss Vickers, sharply; "that"s what I come in for. I can talk to you better than what Joseph can, I know. What harm do you think I was doing your old kitchen? Don"t you try and interfere between me and my Joseph, because I won"t have it. You"re not married yourself, and you don"t want other people to be. How do you suppose the world would get on if everybody was like you?"
Captain Bowers regarded her in open-eyed perplexity. The door leading to the garden had just closed behind the valiant Joseph, and he stared with growing uneasiness at the slight figure of Miss Vickers as it stood poised for further oratorical efforts. Before he could speak she gave her lips a rapid lick and started again.
"You"re one of those people that don"t like to see others happy, that"s what you are," she said, rapidly. "I wasn"t hurting your kitchen, and as to talking and laughing there-what do you think my tongue was given to me for? Show? P"r"aps if you"d been doing a day"s hard work you"d-"
"Look here, my girl-" began the captain, desperately.
"Don"t you my girl me, please," interrupted Miss Vickers. "I"m not your girl, thank goodness. If I was you"d be a bit different, I can tell you.
If you had any girls you"d know better than to try and come between them and their young men. Besides, they wouldn"t let you. When a girl"s got a young man-"
The captain rose and went through the form of ringing the bell. Miss Vickers watched him calmly.
"I thought I"d just have it out with you for once and for all," she continued. "I told Joseph that I"d no doubt your bark was worse than your bite. And what he can see to be afraid of in you I can"t think.
Nervous disposition, I s"pose. Good evening."
She gave her head a little toss and, returning to the pantry, closed the door after her. Captain Bowers, still somewhat dazed, returned to his chair and, gazing at the "Rules," which still lay on the table, grinned feebly in his beard.
CHAPTER IV
To keep such a romance to himself was beyond the powers of Mr. Chalk.
The captain had made no conditions as to secrecy, and he therefore considered himself free to indulge in hints to his two greatest friends, which caused those gentlemen to entertain some doubts as to his sanity.
Mr. Robert Stobell, whose work as a contractor had left a permanent and unmistakable mark upon Binchester, became imbued with a hazy idea that Mr. Chalk had invented a new process of making large diamonds. Mr.
Jasper Tredgold, on the other hand, arrived at the conclusion that a highly respectable burglar was offering for some reason to share his loot with him. A conversation between Messrs. Stobell and Tredgold in the High Street only made matters more complicated.
"Chalk always was fond of making mysteries of things," complained Mr.
Tredgold.
Mr. Stobell, whose habit was taciturn and ruminative, fixed his dull brown eyes on the ground and thought it over. "I believe it"s all my eye and Betty Martin," he said, at length, quoting a saying which had been used in his family as an expression of disbelief since the time of his great-grandmother.
"He comes in to see me when I"m hard at work and drops hints," pursued his friend. "When I stop to pick"em up, out he goes. Yesterday he came in and asked me what I thought of a man who wouldn"t break his word for half a million. Half a million, mind you! I just asked him who it was, and out he went again. He pops in and out of my office like a figure on a cuckoo-clock."
Mr. Stobell relapsed into thought again, but no gleam of expression disturbed the lines of his heavy face; Mr. Tredgold, whose sharp, alert features bred more confidence in his own clients than those of other people, waited impatiently.
"He knows something that we don"t," said Mr. Stobell, at last; "that"s what it is."
Mr. Tredgold, who was too used to his friend"s mental processes to quarrel with them, a.s.sented.
"He"s coming round to smoke a pipe with me to-morrow night," he said, briskly, as he turned to cross the road to his office. "You come too, and we"ll get it out of him. If Chalk can keep a secret he has altered, that"s all I can say."
His estimate of Mr. Chalk proved correct. With Mr. Tredgold acting as cross-examining counsel and Mr. Stobell enacting the part of a partial and overbearing judge, Mr. Chalk, after a display of fort.i.tude which surprised himself almost as much as it irritated his friends, parted with his news and sat smiling with gratification at their growing excitement.