"No."
"She"s engaged to him."
It is an ironical fact that Lady Wetherby was by nature one of the firmest believers in existence in the policy of breaking things gently to people. She had a big, soft heart, and she hated hurting her fellows. As a rule, when she had bad news to impart to any one she administered the blow so gradually and with such mystery as to the actual facts that the victim, having pa.s.sed through the various stages of imagined horrors, was genuinely relieved, when she actually came to the point, to find that all that had happened was that he had lost all his money. But now in perfect innocence, thinking only to pa.s.s along an interesting bit of information, she had crushed Bill as effectively as if she had used a club for that purpose.
"I"m tickled to death about it," she went on, as it were over her hearer"s prostrate body. It was I who brought them together, you know. I wrote telling Claire to come out here on the Atlantic, knowing that Dudley was sailing on that boat. I had an idea they would hit it off together. Dudley fell for her right away, and she must have fallen for him, for they had only known each other for a few weeks when they came and told me they were engaged. It happened last Sunday."
"Last Sunday!"
It had seemed to Bill a moment before that he would never again be capable of speech, but this statement dragged the words out of him. Last Sunday! Why, it was last Sunday that Claire had broken off her engagement with him!
"Last Sunday at nine o"clock in the evening, with a full moon shining and soft music going on off-stage. Real third-act stuff."
Bill felt positively dizzy. He groped back in his memory for facts. He had gone out for his walk after dinner. They had dined at eight. He had been walking some time. Why, in Heaven"s name, this was the quickest thing in the amatory annals of civilization! His brain was too numbed to work out a perfectly accurate schedule, but it looked as if she must have got engaged to this Pickering person before she met him, Bill, in the road that night.
"It"s a wonderful match for dear old Claire," resumed Lady Wetherby, twisting the knife in the wound with a happy unconsciousness. "Dudley"s not only a corking good fellow, but he has thirty million dollars stuffed away in the stocking and a business that brings him in a perfectly awful mess of money every year. He"s the Pickering of the Pickering automobiles, you know."
Bill got up. He stood for a moment holding to the back of his chair before speaking. It was almost exactly thus that he had felt in the days when he had gone in for boxing and had stopped forceful swings with the more sensitive portions of his person.
"That-that"s splendid!" he said. "I-I think I"ll be going."
"I heard the car outside just now," said Lady Wetherby. "I think it"s probably Claire and Dudley come back. Won"t you wait and see her?"
Bill shook his head.
"Well, good-bye for the present, then. You must come round again. Any friend of Claire"s-and it was bully of you to bother about looking in to tell of Eustace."
Bill had reached the door. He was about to turn the handle when someone turned it on the other side.
"Why, here is Dudley," said Lady Wetherby. "Dudley, this is a friend of Claire"s."
Dudley Pickering was one of those men who take the ceremony of introduction with a measured solemnity. It was his practice to grasp the party of the second part firmly by the hand, hold it, look into his eyes in a reverent manner, and get off some little speech of appreciation, short but full of feeling. The opening part of this ceremony he performed now. He grasped Bill"s hand firmly, held it, and looked into his eyes. And then, having performed his business, he fell down on his lines. Not a word proceeded from him. He dropped the hand and stared at Bill amazedly and-more than that-with fear.
Bill, too, uttered no word. It was not one of those chatty meetings.
But if they were short on words, both Bill and Mr Pickering were long on looks. Bill stared at Mr Pickering. Mr Pickering stared at Bill.
Bill was drinking in Mr Pickering. The stoutness of Mr Pickering-the orderliness of Mr Pickering-the dullness of Mr Pickering-all these things he perceived. And illumination broke upon him.
Mr Pickering was drinking in Bill. The largeness of Bill-the embarra.s.sment of Bill-the obvious villainy of Bill-none of these things escaped his notice. And illumination broke upon him also.
For Dudley Pickering, in the first moment of their meeting, had recognized Bill as the man who had been lurking in the grounds and peering in at the window, the man at whom on the night when he had become engaged to Claire he had shouted "Hi!"
"Where"s Claire, Dudley?" asked Lady Wetherby.
Mr Pickering withdrew his gaze reluctantly from Bill.
"Gone upstairs."
I"ll go and tell her that you"re here, Mr-You never told me your name."
Bill came to life with an almost acrobatic abruptness. There were many things of which at that moment he felt absolutely incapable, and meeting Claire was one of them.
"No; I must be going," he said, hurriedly. "Good-bye."
He came very near running out of the room. Lady Wetherby regarded the practically slammed door with wide eyes.
"Quick exit of Nut Comedian!" she said. "Whatever was the matter with the man? He"s scorched a trail in the carpet."
Mr Pickering was trembling violently.
"Do you know who that was? He was the man!" said Mr Pickering.
"What man?"
"The man I caught looking in at the window that night!"
"What nonsense! You must be mistaken. He said he knew Claire quite well."
"But when you suggested that he should meet her he ran."
This aspect of the matter had not occurred to Lady Wetherby.
"So he did!"
"What did he tell you that showed he knew Claire?"
"Well, now that I come to think of it, he didn"t tell me anything.
I did the talking. He just sat there."
Mr Pickering quivered with combined fear and excitement and inductive reasoning.
"It was a trick!" he cried. "Remember what Sherriff said that night when I told you about finding the man looking in at the window? He said that the fellow was spying round as a preliminary move. To-day he trumps up an obviously false excuse for getting into the house. Was he left alone in the rooms at all?"
"Yes. Wrench loosed him in here and then came up to tell me."
"For several minutes, then, he was alone in the house. Why, he had time to do all he wanted to do!"
"Calm down!"
"I am perfectly calm. But-"
"You"ve been seeing too many crook plays, Dudley. A man isn"t necessarily a burglar because he wears a decent suit of clothes."
"Why was he lurking in the grounds that night?"
"You"re just imagining that it was the same man."
"I am absolutely positive it was the same man."