'Flashlight apparatus?'
'Have you not brought a flashlight apparatus?'
Dudley shook his head. He prided himself on being something of an authority on what the young visitor should take with him on country-house visits, but this was a new one.
'No,' he said, 'no flashlight apparatus.'
'Then how,' demanded Lady Wickham, with some heat, 'do you imagine that you can take photographs at this time of night?'
'Ah!' said Dudley, vaguely. 'See what you mean, of course. Take a bit of doing, what?'
Lady Wickham seemed to become moderately resigned.
'Oh, well, I suppose they can send someone down to-morrow.'
'That's right,' said Dudley, brightening.
'In the meantime – this is where I work.'
'No, really?'
'Yes. All my books have been written at this desk.'
'Fancy that!' said Dudley. He remembered having heard Bobbie mention that Lady Wickham wrote novels.
'I get my inspirations, however, in the garden for the most part. Generally the rose-garden. I like to sit there in the mornings and think.'
'And what,' agreed Dudley, cordially, 'could be sweeter?'
His hostess regarded him curiously. A sense of something wrong seemed to come upon her.
'You
are
from
Milady's Boudoir
?' she asked, suddenly.
'From what was that, once again?' asked Dudley.
'Are you that man the editor of
Milady's Boudoir
was sending down to interview me?'
Dudley could answer this one.
'No,' he said.
'No?' echoed Lady Wickham.
'Most absolutely not-o,' said Dudley, firmly.
'Then who,' demanded Lady Wickham, 'are you?'
'My name's Dudley Finch.'
'And to what,' asked his hostess in a manner so extraordinarily like that of his late grandmother that Dudley's toes curled in their shoes, 'am I to attribute the honour of this visit?'
Dudley blinked.
'Why, I thought you knew all about it.'
'I know nothing whatever about it.'
'Didn't Bobbie send you a wire?'
'He did not. Nor do I know who Bobbie may be.'
'Miss Wickham, I mean. Your daughter Roberta. She told me to buzz down here for the night, and said she would send you a wire paving the way, so to speak. Oh, I say, this is a bit thick. Fancy her forgetting!'
For the second time that day a disagreeable feeling that his idol was after all not entirely perfect stole upon Dudley. A girl, he meant, oughtn't to lure a bloke down to her mater's house and then forget to send a wire tipping the old girl off. No, he meant to say! Pretty dashed casual, he meant.
'Oh,' said Lady Wickham, 'you are a friend of my daughter?'
'Absolutely.'
'I see. And where is Roberta?'
'She's tooling down in the car.'
Lady Wickham clicked her tongue.
'Roberta is becoming too erratic for endurance,' she said.
'I say, you know,' said Dudley, awkwardly, 'if I'm in the way, you know, just speak the word and I'll race off to the local pub. I mean to say, don't want to butt in, I mean.'
'Not at all, Mr—'
'Finch.'
'Not at all, Mr Finch. I am only too delighted,' said Lady Wickham, looking at him as if he were a particularly loathsome slug which had interrupted some beautiful reverie of hers in the rose-garden, 'that you were able to come.' She touched the bell. 'Oh, Simmons,' she said, as the butler appeared, 'in which room did you put Mr Finch's luggage?'
'In the Blue Room, m'lady.'
'Then perhaps you will show him the way there. He will wish to dress. Dinner,' she added to Dudley, 'will be at eight o'clock.'
'Righto!' said Dudley. He was feeling a little happier now. Formidable old bird as this old bird undoubtedly was, he was pretty confident that she would melt a bit when once he had got the good old dress-clothes draped about his person. He was prepared to stand or fall by his dress-clothes. There are a number of tailors in London who can hack up a bit of broadcloth and sew it together in some sort of shape, but there is only one who can construct a dress-suit so that it blends with the figure and seems as beautiful as a summer's dawn. It was this tailor who enjoyed the benefit of Dudley's patronage. Yes, Dudley felt as he entered the Blue Room, in about twenty minutes old Madame Lafarge was due to get her eye knocked out.
In the brief instant before he turned on the light he could dimly see that perfect suit laid out on the bed, and it was with something of the feeling of a wanderer returning home that he pressed the switch.
Light flooded the room, and Dudley stood there blinking.
But, no matter how much he blinked, the awful sight which had met his eyes refused to change itself in the slightest detail. What was laid out on the bed was not his dress-clothes, but the most ghastly collection of raiment he had ever beheld. He blinked once again as a forlorn hope, and then tottered forward.
He stood looking down at the foul things, his heart ice within him. Reading from left to right, the objects on the bed were as follows: A pair of short white woollen socks; a crimson made-up bow-tie of enormous size; a sort of middy-blouse arrangement; a pair of blue velvet knickerbockers; and finally – and it was this that seemed to Dudley to make it all so sad and hopeless – a very small sailor-hat with a broad blue ribbon, across which in large white letters ran the legend
H.M.S. See-Sik
.
On the floor were a pair of brown shoes with strap-and-buckle attachment. They seemed to be roomy number twelves.
Dudley sprang to the bell. A footman presented himself.
'Sir?' said the footman.
'What,' demanded Dudley, wildly, 'what is all this?'
'I found them in your suit-case, sir.'
'But where are my dress-clothes?'
'No dress-clothes in the suit-case, sir.'
A bright light shone upon Dudley. That argument with those two birds at the Drones had, he now recalled, been on the subject of fancy-dress. Both birds were dashing off to a fancy-dress ball that night, and one bird had appealed to Dudley to support him against the other bird in his contention that at these affairs the prudent man played for safety and went as a Pierrot. The second bird had said that he would sooner be dead in a ditch than don any such unimaginative costume. He was going as a small boy, he said, and with a pang Dudley remembered having laughed mockingly and prophesied that he would look the most priceless ass. And then he had sprinted off and collared the man's bag in mistake for his own.
'Look here,' he said, 'I can't possibly come down to dinner in those!'
'No, sir?' said the footman, respectfully, but with a really inhuman lack of interest and sympathy.
'You'd better leg it to the old girl's room— I mean,' said Dudley, recollecting himself, 'you had better go to Lady Wickham and inform her that Mr Finch presents his compliments and I'm awfully sorry but he has mislaid his dress-clothes, so he will have to come down to dinner in what I've got on at present.'
'Very good, sir.'
'I say!' A horrid thought struck Dudley. 'I say, we shall be alone, what? I mean to say, nobody else is coming to dinner?'
'Yes, sir,' said the footman, brightly. 'A number of guests are expected, sir.'
It was a sagging and demoralized Dudley who crawled into the dining-room a quarter of an hour later. In spite of what moralists say, a good conscience is not enough in itself to enable a man to bear himself jauntily in every crisis of life. Dudley had had a good upbringing, and the fact that he was dining at a strange house in a bright check suit gave him a consciousness of sin which he strove vainly to overcome.
The irony of it was that in a normal frame of mind he would have sneered loftily at the inferior garments which clothed the other male members of the party. On the left sleeve of the man opposite him was a disgraceful wrinkle. The fellow next to the girl in pink might have a good heart, but the waistcoat which covered it did not fit by a mile. And as for the tie of that other bloke down by Lady Wickham, it was not a tie at all in the deeper meaning of the word; it was just a deplorable occurrence. Yet, situated as he was, his heart ached with envy of all these tramps.
He ate but little. As a rule his appetite was of the heartiest, and many a novel had he condemned as untrue to life on the ground that its hero was stated to have pushed his food away untasted. Until to-night he had never supposed that such a feat was possible. But as course succeeded course he found himself taking almost no practical interest in the meal. All he asked was to get it over, so that he could edge away and be alone with his grief. There would doubtless be some sort of binge in the drawing-room after dinner, but it would not have the support of Dudley Finch. For Dudley Finch the quiet seclusion of the Blue Room.
It was as he was sitting there some two hours later that there drifted into his mind something Roberta had said about Roland Attwater leaving on the milk-train. At the time he had paid little attention to the remark, but now it began to be borne in upon him more and more strongly that this milk-train was going to be of great strategic importance in his life. This ghastly house was just the sort of house that fellows did naturally go away from on milk-trains, and it behoved him to be prepared.
He rang the bell once more.
'Sir?' said the footman.
'I say,' said Dudley, 'what time does the milk-train leave?'
'Milk-train, sir?'
'Yes. Train that takes the milk, you know.'
'Do you wish for milk, sir?'
'No!' Dudley fought down a desire to stun this man with one of the number twelve shoes. 'I just want to know what time the milk-train goes in the morning – in case – in – er – case I am called away unexpectedly I mean to say.'
'I will inquire, sir.'
The footman made his way to the servants' hall, the bearer of great news.
'Guess what,' said the footman.
'Well, Thomas?' asked Simmons the butler, indulgently.
'That bloke – the Great What-is-it,' said Thomas – for it was by this affectionate sobriquet that Dudley was now known below stairs – 'is planning to go off on the milk-train!'
'What?' Simmons heaved his stout form out of his chair. His face did not reflect the gay mirth of his subordinate. 'I must inform her ladyship. I must inform her ladyship at once.'
The last guest had taken his departure, and Lady Wickham was preparing to go to a well-earned bed when there entered to her Simmons, grave and concerned.
'Might I speak to your ladyship?'
'Well, Simmons?'
'Might I first take the liberty of inquiring, m'lady, if the – er – the young gentleman in the tweed suit is a personal friend of your ladyship's?'
Lady Wickham was surprised. It was not like Simmons to stroll in and start chatting about her guests, and for a moment she was inclined to say as much; then something told her that by doing so she would miss information of interest.