Bream Mortimer hopped down from his chair.
"Well, you"ve taken a weight off my mind."
"A mind, I should imagine, scarcely constructed to bear great weights."
"I"ll be going. Haven"t had breakfast yet. Too worried to eat breakfast.
Relieved now. This is where three eggs and a rasher of ham get cut off in their prime. I feel I can rely on you."
"You can!"
"Then I"ll say good-bye."
"Good-bye."
"I mean really good-bye. I"m sailing for England on Sat.u.r.day on the "Atlantic.""
"Indeed? My son will be your fellow-traveller."
Bream Mortimer looked somewhat apprehensive.
"You won"t tell him that I was the one who spilled the beans?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"You won"t wise him up that I threw a spanner into the machinery?"
"I do not understand you."
"You won"t tell him that I crabbed his act ... gave the thing away ...
gummed the game?"
"I shall not mention your chivalrous intervention."
"Chivalrous?" said Bream Mortimer a little doubtfully. "I don"t know that I"d call it absolutely chivalrous. Of course, all"s fair in love and war. Well, I"m glad you"re going to keep my share in the business under your hat. It might have been awkward meeting him on board."
"You are not likely to meet Eustace on board. He is a very indifferent sailor and spends most of his time in his cabin."
"That"s good! Saves a lot of awkwardness. Well, good-bye."
"Good-bye. When you reach England, remember me to your father."
"He won"t have forgotten you," said Bream Mortimer, confidently. He did not see how it was humanly possible for anyone to forget this woman. She was like a celebrated chewing-gum. The taste lingered.
Mrs. Hignett was a woman of instant and decisive action. Even while her late visitor was speaking, schemes had begun to form in her mind like bubbles rising to the surface of a rushing river. By the time the door had closed behind Bream Mortimer she had at her disposal no fewer than seven, all good. It took her but a moment to select the best and simplest. She tiptoed softly to her son"s room. Rhythmic snores greeted her listening ears. She opened the door and went noiselessly in.
CHAPTER II
GALLANT RESCUE BY WELL-DRESSED YOUNG MAN
-- 1
The White Star liner "Atlantic" lay at her pier with steam up and gangway down, ready for her trip to Southampton. The hour of departure was near, and there was a good deal of mixed activity going on. Sailors fiddled about with ropes. Junior officers flitted to and fro.
White-jacketed stewards wrestled with trunks. Probably the captain, though not visible, was also employed on some useful work of a nautical nature and not wasting his time. Men, women, boxes, rugs, dogs, flowers, and baskets of fruits were flowing on board in a steady stream.
The usual drove of citizens had come to see the travellers off. There were men on the pa.s.senger-list who were being seen off by fathers, by mothers, by sisters, by cousins, and by aunts. In the steerage, there was an elderly Jewish lady who was being seen off by exactly thirty-seven of her late neighbours in Rivington Street. And two men in the second cabin were being seen off by detectives, surely the crowning compliment a great nation can bestow. The cavernous Customs sheds were congested with friends and relatives, and Sam Marlowe, heading for the gang-plank, was only able to make progress by employing all the muscle and energy which Nature had bestowed upon him, and which during the greater part of his life he had developed by athletic exercise. However, after some minutes of silent endeavour, now driving his shoulder into the midriff of some obstructing male, now courteously lifting some stout female off his feet, he had succeeded in struggling to within a few yards of his goal, when suddenly a sharp pain shot through his right arm, and he spun round with a cry.
It seemed to Sam that he had been bitten, and this puzzled him, for New York crowds, though they may shove and jostle, rarely bite.
He found himself face to face with an extraordinarily pretty girl.
She was a red-haired girl, with the beautiful ivory skin which goes with red hair. Her eyes, though they were under the shadow of her hat, and he could not be certain, he diagnosed as green, or may be blue, or possibly grey. Not that it mattered, for he had a catholic taste in feminine eyes. So long as they were large and bright, as were the specimens under his immediate notice, he was not the man to quibble about a point of colour. Her nose was small, and on the very tip of it there was a tiny freckle. Her mouth was nice and wide, her chin soft and round. She was just about the height which every girl ought to be. Her figure was trim, her feet tiny, and she wore one of those dresses of which a man can say no more than that they look pretty well all right.
Nature abhors a vacuum. Samuel Marlowe was a susceptible young man, and for many a long month his heart had been lying empty, all swept and garnished, with "Welcome" on the mat. This girl seemed to rush in and fill it. She was not the prettiest girl he had ever seen. She was the third prettiest. He had an orderly mind, one capable of cla.s.sifying and docketing girls. But there was a subtle something about her, a sort of how-shall-one-put-it, which he had never encountered before. He swallowed convulsively. His well-developed chest swelled beneath its covering of blue flannel and invisible stripe. At last, he told himself, he was in love, really in love, and at first sight, too, which made it all the more impressive. He doubted whether in the whole course of history anything like this had ever happened before to anybody. Oh, to clasp this girl to him and....
But she had bitten him in the arm. That was hardly the right spirit.
That, he felt, const.i.tuted an obstacle.
"Oh, I"m so sorry!" she cried.
Well, of course, if she regretted her rash act.... After all, an impulsive girl might bite a man in the arm in the excitement of the moment and still have a sweet, womanly nature....
"The crowd seems to make Pinky-Boodles so nervous."
Sam might have remained mystified, but at this juncture there proceeded from a bundle of rugs in the neighbourhood of the girl"s lower ribs, a sharp yapping sound, of such a calibre as to be plainly audible over the confused noise of Mamies who were telling Sadies to be sure and write, of Bills who were instructing d.i.c.ks to look up old Joe in Paris and give him their best, and of all the fruit-boys, candy-boys, magazine-boys, American-flag-boys, and telegraph boys who were honking their wares on every side.
"I hope he didn"t hurt you much. You"re the third person he"s bitten to-day." She kissed the animal in a loving and congratulatory way on the tip of his black nose. "Not counting waiters at the hotel, of course,"
she added. And then she was swept from him in the crowd, and he was left thinking of all the things he might have said--all those graceful, witty, ingratiating things which just make a bit of difference on these occasions.
He had said nothing. Not a sound, exclusive of the first sharp yowl of pain, had proceeded from him. He had just goggled. A rotten exhibition!
Perhaps he would never see this girl again. She looked the sort of girl who comes to see friends off and doesn"t sail herself. And what memory of him would she retain? She would mix him up with the time when she went to visit the deaf-and-dumb hospital.
-- 2
Sam reached the gang-plank, showed his ticket, and made his way through the crowd of pa.s.sengers, pa.s.sengers" friends, stewards, junior officers, and sailors who infested the deck. He proceeded down the main companion-way, through a rich smell of india-rubber and mixed pickles, as far as the dining saloon; then turned down the narrow pa.s.sage leading to his state-room.
State-rooms on ocean liners are curious things. When you see them on the chart in the pa.s.senger-office, with the gentlemanly clerk drawing rings round them in pencil, they seem so vast that you get the impression that, after stowing away all your trunks, you will have room left over to do a bit of entertaining--possibly an informal dance or something.
When you go on board, you find that the place has shrunk to the dimensions of an undersized cupboard in which it would be impossible to swing a cat. And then, about the second day out, it suddenly expands again. For one reason or another the necessity for swinging cats does not arise, and you find yourself quite comfortable.
Sam, balancing himself on the narrow, projecting ledge which the chart in the pa.s.senger-office had grandiloquently described as a lounge, began to feel the depression which marks the second phase. He almost wished now that he had not been so energetic in having his room changed in order to enjoy the company of his cousin Eustace. It was going to be a tight fit. Eustace"s bag was already in the cabin, and it seemed to take up the entire fairway. Still, after all, Eustace was a good sort, and would be a cheerful companion. And Sam realised that if the girl with the red hair was not a pa.s.senger on the boat, he was going to have need of diverting society.
A footstep sounded in the pa.s.sage outside. The door opened.
"Hullo, Eustace!" said Sam.