“And
rightly,” said Conky. “These girls who bust your ankles and prevent you going
to Lord’s tomorrow need a sharp lesson.”
“What
do you mean, prevent me going to Lord’s to-morrow? Do you think a mere sprained
ankle will stop me going to a cricket match? I shall be there, with you at my
side. And now,” said Lord Plumpton, wearying of these exchanges, “go to hell!”
Conky
did not go to hell, but he went downstairs and out on to the front steps to get
a breath of air. He was feeling low and depressed. He had been so certain that
he would be able to get to-morrow off. He had turned to go in again when he
heard a noise of brakes as a car drew up behind him.
“Excuse
me,” said a voice. “Could I see Lord Plumpton?”
Simple
words, but their effect on Conky as he recognised that silvery voice was to
make him quiver from stay-combed hair to shoe sole. He uttered a whinnying cry
which, as he swivelled round and for the first time was privileged to see her
face, became a gasp. The voice had been the voice of an angel. The face
measured up to the voice.
Seeing
him, she too gasped. This was apt to be the reaction of the other sex on first
beholding Conky Biddle, for though his I.Q. was low his outer crust was rather
sensational. He was, indeed, a dazzlingly good-looking young man, who
out-Caryed Grant and began where Gregory Peck left off.
“I say,”
he said, going to the car and placing a foot on the running-board, “Don’t look
now, but did I by chance hear you expressing a wish to meet my uncle, Lord
Plumpton?”
“That’s
right. I recently flattened him out with my car, and I was planning to give him
some flowers.”
“I
wouldn’t,” said Conky. “I really wouldn’t. I say this as a friend. Time, the
great healer, will have to pull up its socks and spit on its hands quite a bit
before it becomes safe for you to enter the presence.”
“I see.
Then I’ll take the blooms around the corner and have them delivered by a
messenger boy. How’s that, umpire?”
Conky
winced. It was as though he had heard this divine creature sully her lips with
something out of a modern historical novel.
“Good
God!” he said. “Where did you pick up that obscene expression?”
“From
your uncle. He was chanting it at the top of his voice when I rammed him. A
mental case, I imagine. What does it mean?”
“It’s
what you say at cricket.”
“Cricket!”
The girl shuddered strongly. “Shall I tell you what I think of cricket?”
“I have
already heard your views. Your car got stuck abaft my taxi in a traffic block
this evening. I was here, if you follow what I mean, and you were there, a few
feet to the nor’-nor’-east, so I was able to drink in what you were saying
about cricket. Would you mind if I thanked you with tears in my eyes?”
“Not at
all. But don’t you like cricket? I thought all Englishmen loved it.”
“Not
this Englishman. It gives me the pip.”
“Me,
too. I ought never to have gone near that Lord’s place. But in a moment of
weakness I let myself be talked into it by my
fiancé.”
Conky reeled.
“Oh, my
sainted aunt! Have you got a
fiancé?”
“Not
now.”
Conky
stopped reeling.
“Was he
the bloke you were talking to in the car?”
“That’s
right. Eustace Davenport-Simms. I think he plays for Essex or Sussex or
somewhere. My views were too subversive for him, so after kidding back and
forth for a while we decided to cancel the order for the wedding cake.”
“I
thought he seemed a bit sniffy.”
“He got
sniffler.”
“Very
sensible of you not to marry a cricketer.”
“So I
felt.”
“The
upshot, then, when all the smoke has blown away, is that you are once more in
circulation?”
“Yes.”
“Well,
that’s fine,” said Conky. A sudden thought struck him. “I say, would you object
if I pressed your little hand?”
“Some
other time, I think.”
“Any
time that suits you.”
“You see,
I have to hie me back to my hotel and dress. I’m late already, and my father
screams like a famished hyæna if he’s kept waiting for his rations.”
And
with a rapid thrust of her shapely foot she set the machinery in motion and
vanished round the corner on two wheels, leaving Conky staring after her with a
growing feeling of desolation. He had just realized that he was unaware of her
name, address and telephone number and had had what was probably his last
glimpse of her. If the expression “Ships that pass in the night” had been
familiar to him, he would certainly have uttered it, using clenched teeth for
the purpose.
It was
a Conky with heart bowed down and a general feeling of having been passed
through the wringer who accompanied his uncle to Lord’s next morning. The
thought that a Grade A soulmate had come into his life and buzzed out again,
leaving no clue to her identity or whereabouts, was a singularly bitter one.
Lord Plumpton on the journey to the Mecca of cricket spoke well and easily of
the visit of the Australian team of 1921, but Conky proved a distrait listener;
so distrait that Lord Plumpton prodded him irascibly in the ribs and called him
an infernal goggle-eyed fathead, which of course he was.
He was
still in a sort of trance when they took their seats in the pavilion, but here
it was less noticeable, for everybody else was in a sort of trance. The
somnambulists out in the field tottered to and fro, and the spectators lay back
and let their eyes go glassy. For perhaps an hour nothing happened except that
Hedger of Middlesex, waking like Abou ben Adhem from a deep dream of peace,
flicked his bat at a rising ball and edged it into the hands of a sleeper
dozing in what is technically known as the gully. Then Lord Plumpton, who had
been silent except for an occasional “Nice! Nice!” sat up with a sudden jerk
and an explosive “Well, I’m dashed!” and glared sideways at the three shilling
seats which adjoined the pavilion. And Conky, following his gaze, felt his
heart execute four separate buck and wing steps and come to rest quivering like
a jelly in a high wind.
“Well,
I’m dashed!” said Lord Plumpton, continuing to direct at the three shilling
seats the kind of look usually associated with human fiends in mystery stories.
“There’s that blasted girl!”
It was
not a description which Conky himself would have applied to the divinest of her
sex, nor one which he enjoyed hearing applied to liner, and for a moment he was
in two minds as to whether to haul off and sock his relative on the beezer.
Wiser counsels prevailed, and he said:
“Yes,
there she spouts.”
Lord
Plumpton seemed surprised.
“You
know her?”
“Just
slightly. She ran into me last night.”
“Into
you, too? Good gad, the female’s a public menace. If she’s allowed to remain at
large, the population of London will be decimated. I’ve a good mind to go over
and tell her what I think of her.”
“But
your uncle, ankle.”
“What
the devil are you gibbering about?”
“I mean
your ankle, uncle. You mustn’t walk about on it. How would it be if I popped
over and acquainted her with your displeasure?”
Lord
Plumpton considered.
“Yes,
that’s not a bad idea. A surprisingly good idea, in fact, considering what a
nitwit you are. But pitch it strong.”
“Oh, I
will,” said Conky.
He rose
and hurried off, and Lord Plumpton fell into conversation with the barely
animate spectator on his left. They were soon deep in an argument as to whether
it was at square leg or at extra cover that D. C. L. Wodger of Gloucestershire
had fielded in 1904.
If the
girl had looked like the better class of angel in the uncertain light of last
night, she looked more than ever so in the reasonably bright sunshine of
to-day. She was one of those lissom girls of medium height. Her eyes and hair
were a browny hazel. The general effect was of a seraph who ate lots of yeast.
“Oh,
hullo,” said Conky, lowering himself into a seat beside her. ‘We meet again,
what?”
She
seemed surprised and startled. In her manner, as she gazed at his clean-cut face
and then into his frank blue eyes, there was something that might almost be
described as fluttering.
“You!”
she cried. “What are you doing here?”
“Just
watching cricket.”
“But
you told me last night that cricket gave you the pip, which I imagine is
something roughly equivalent to the megrims or the heeby-jeebies.”
“Quite.
But, you see, it’s like this. My uncle is crazy about the ghastly game and I’m
dependent on him, so when he says ‘Come along and watch cricket’, I have to
come along and watch it like a lynx.”
The
girl frowned. It was as if she had been hurt and disappointed.
“Why
are you dependent on your uncle? Why don’t you get a job?”
Conky
hastened to defend himself.
“I do
get a job. I get dozens of jobs. But I lose them all. The trouble is, you see,
that I’m not very bright.”
“No?”
“Not
very. That’s why they call me Conky.”
“Do
they call you Conky?”
“Invariably.
What started it was an observation one of the masters at school happened to
drop one day. He said, addressing me— To attempt to drive information into your
head, Biddle, is no easy task, for Providence, mysterious in its workings has,
given you instead of the more customary human brain a skull full of concrete.’
So after that everyone called me Conky.”
“I see.
What sort of jobs have you tried?”
“Practically
everything except Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.”
“And
you get fired every time?”
“Every
time.”
“I’m
sorry.”
“It’s
dashed white of you to be sorry, but as a matter of fact it’s all right.”
“How do
you mean it’s all right?”
Conky
hesitated. Then he reflected that if you couldn’t confide in an angel in human
shape, who could you confide in? He glanced about him. Except for themselves,
the three shilling tier of seats was almost empty.
“Well,
you’ll keep it under your hat, won’t you, because it’s supposed to be very
hush-hush at the moment. I am on the eve of making a stupendous fortune. You
know sea water?”
“The
stuff that props the ship up when you come over from New York?”
“That’s
right. Well, you probably aren’t aware of it, but it’s full of gold, and I’m in
with a fellow who’s got a secret process for scooping it out. I saw his
advertisement in the paper saying that if you dashed along and brassed up quick
you could get in on an invention of vast possibilities, so I dashed along and
brassed up. He was a nice chap and let me into the thing without a murmur.
Bloke of the name of MacSporran. I happened to have scraped up ten quid, so I
put that in and he tells me that at a conservative estimate I shall get back
about two hundred and fifty thousand. I call that a nice profit.”
“Very
nice.”
“Yes,
it’s all very convenient. And when I say that, I’m not thinking so much of the
jolliness of having all that splosh in the old sock, I am alluding more to the
difference this has made in what you might call my matrimonial plans. If I want
to get married, I mean. What I’m driving at,” said Conky, giving her a melting
look, “is that I am now in a position, when I meet the girl I love, to put the
binge on a practical basis.”
“I see.”
“In
fact,” said Conky, edging a little closer, “I might almost start making my
plans at once.”
“That’s
the spirit. Father’s slogan is ‘Do it now’, and he’s a tycoon.”
“I
thought a tycoon was a sort of storm.”
“No, a
millionaire.”
“Is
your father a millionaire?”
“Yes,
and more pouring in all the time.”
“Oh?”
A
sudden chill had come over Conky’s dashing mood. The one thing he had always
vowed he would never do was marry for money. For years his six uncles and seven
aunts had been urging him to cash in on his looks and grab something opulent.
They had paraded heiresses before him in droves, but he had been firm. He had
his principles.
Of
course, in the present case it was different. He loved this girl with every
fibre of his being. But all the same … No, he told himself, better wait till
his bank balance was actually bulging.
With a
strong effort he changed the conversation.
“Well,
as I was saying,” he said, “I hope to clean up shortly on an impressive scale,
and when I do I’ll never watch another cricket match as long as I live. Arising
from which, what on earth are you doing here, holding the views on cricket
which you do?”