Summer Moonshine (18 page)

'Yes?'

'Yes. He's going to jump out of a bush at him.'

'Jump out of a bush?'

'Yes. When the fellow makes a noise like a linnet.'

'But why?'

'Ah!' said Miss Attwater. 'Now you're wanting to know something I can't tell you. He says it'll be a big laugh, but I think it all goes deeper than that. I think there's more behind it than we can guess. That's what I mean about him – he's a man of mystery.'

A positive inrush of customers now took place, and as it was plain to Adrian that nothing more in the nature of intimate conversation was to be hoped for, he finished his tankard and left.

As he walked back to the houseboat, he found himself a prey to a certain uneasiness. It is never pleasant for a highly-strung young man to discover that he is accepting the hospitality of what appears to be a border-line case. On his own showing, Mr Bulpitt was a man who thought nothing of bopping people with bottles. He now stood revealed as a jumper-out of bushes.
One could not help asking oneself where this sort of thing would stop. Nobody, of course, minds a genial eccentric, but the question that was exercising Adrian Peake was: How long would this jumping bopper remain genial?

Profoundly thankful that today would see the end of his visit, he reached the
Mignonette
and climbed the gangplank. As his foot touched the deck, the door of the saloon opened and a nude figure came out, holding a towel.

It was Tubby Vanringham.

Tubby was the first to recover from the shock of this unexpected encounter. He was surprised to see Adrian, having supposed that he was many miles away, but he had too much on his mind to worry about the activities of a fellow like Adrian Peake. If he was here, he was here – that was how Tubby felt. He dashed a bead of perspiration from his forehead and said, 'Oh, hello.' Adrian echoed the remark, and there was silence for a moment.

'Going to have a swim,' said Tubby.

A less observant man than Adrian would have seen at a glance that he needed one. In spite of the warmth of the afternoon, he had evidently been moving swiftly from point to point, and his condition was highly soluble. In Mr Bulpitt's powerful, if slightly nauseating, phrase, he was sweating like a nigger at election.

'I'm warm,' he said.

'You look warm.'

'I feel warm.'

'Been walking fast?'

'Running fast,' corrected Tubby. All the way from the second milestone on the Walsingford Road.'

'What? Why?'

'So as to get here and tear up—' An idea seemed to strike Tubby. 'Say, listen,' he said. 'You used to have this boat. Is there any place on it except the saloon where a fellow could keep papers? I've gone over the saloon with a fine-tooth comb, and they're not there.'

'Papers?' Adrian remembered that that girl at the inn had given him a paper of some kind. He felt in his pocket. 'Could this be what you are looking for?' he asked obligingly, stepping forward with outstretched hand.

The effect of the words and their accompanying action upon Tubby was remarkable. He had been standing with the towel draped about his waist in the normal manner of an American gentleman chatting with a friend. He now sprang backwards with a convulsive leap, as if he had observed snakes in his path, and threw himself hastily into an attitude of self-defence. His fists were clenched and his gaze menacing.

'You come a step closer,' he said, 'and I'll beat your block off!'

Adrian's bewilderment was extreme. It seemed to be his fate today to mix with eccentrics, and in the case of this one, he had no hesitation whatever in discarding the adjective 'genial'. In describing Tubby Vanringham, it was the last word a precisian like the late Gustave Flaubert would have selected.

He gaped blankly.

'What do you mean?'

'You know what I mean.'

'But I don't.'

'Oh, no? I suppose Bulpitt didn't give you that to slip to me?'

'He left it at the inn. The barmaid gave it to me.'

Tubby's austerity relaxed a little, but he remained wary.

'Well, all right. Maybe you're on the level. But I'm not taking any chances. Tear it up and drop it in the river.'

'But it belongs to Bulpitt.'

'I'll say it belongs to Bulpitt! Go on. Tear it up.'

'But really-I mean—'

'Do you want a poke in the beezer?' asked Tubby, approaching the matter from another angle.

Except the sudden appearance of Sir Buckstone Abbott with his hunting crop, there was nothing Adrian could think of that he desired less. His misgivings concerning the destruction of property belonging to his host remained acute, but if the alternative was a poke in the beezer, then the property must be destroyed. He was not sure what a beezer was, but the operative word in his companion's remark had been the verb 'poke'. He followed his instructions meticulously, and a moment later the fragments of the blue document were floating sluggishly downstream like an armada of paper boats.

The sedative effect of this upon Tubby was very gratifying to a peace-loving man. All trace of animosity now left the nudist. He drew a deep breath of relief and asked Adrian if he had got a cigarette. Having secured this, he asked him if he had got a light. Having been given a light, he said, 'Thanks'. The thing had virtually become a love feast.

'Sorry I got tough,' he said. 'You see, I wasn't sure that darned thing couldn't be served by proxy.'

'But what was it?'

'A summons.'

'A summons?'

'For breach of promise.'

'But what was Bulpitt doing with it?'

'Trying to serve it on me. And will you believe,' said Tubby, flushing darkly as he thought of the loathsome stratagem, 'the old devil actually got a girl to phone me and date me up for
the second milestone on the Walsingford road. And when I got there and started making a noise like a linnet, out he came bounding from the bushes. It jarred a couple of years' growth out of me.'

He noted with pleasure that his companion's eyes were bulging and that his jaw had fallen slightly – with horror, no doubt, as any honest man's would have done, at this revelation of the depths of duplicity to which humanity can sink. For the first time in their acquaintance, he found himself thinking well of Adrian Peake. A twerp, yes, but a twerp with proper feelings.

And pretty soon,' he went on, a sombre satisfaction now creeping into his voice, 'I jarred a couple of years' growth out of him. Because what do you think happened? Just as I was saying to myself that this was the end, he suddenly pulled up short and started feeling in his pockets. And when I said, "Well, come on. Get it over with," he gave a sort of silly laugh and told me he'd have to call the thing off for today, because he must have left the papers on the boat. And I felt that this was where I got a bit of my own back for all that alarm and despondency he had been causing me.'

An odd gurgling sound proceeded from Adrian Peake. It was not loud enough or compelling enough to divert Tubby from his narrative.

'I socked him on the snoot. Yes, ma'am, I hauled off and let him have it squarely on the schnozzle. And then I took him by the collar and shook him like a rat. His false teeth came out with a pop and vanished into the undergrowth, and I wouldn't have been surprised if his eyes had come out too. Because I shook him good. And then I left him lying there, and came running to the boat to find the papers and tear them up. And now they are torn
up, and it'll take him days, maybe, to get another set. By which time—'

Adrian at last found speech.

'But is this man Bulpitt a process server?'

'Sure.'

'But isn't he rich?'

'Of course he's not.'

'He told me he was a millionaire!'

'He was kidding you.'

The sickening probability – nay, the certainty – that this was so made Adrian Peake feel absolutely filleted. Into his reeling mind there flashed what that girl at the inn had said about Mr Bulpitt's inordinate fondness for practical joking, and he perceived the hideous tangle which his too-trusting nature had led him to make of his personal affairs.

Lured on by the man's apparent genuineness, he had poured out his heart to Jane in a well-expressed letter and sent it up to the Hall by courtesy of Cyril Attwater. And unless some beneficent earthquake had engulfed Cyril or kindly bears had come out of the bushes and devoured him, that letter must even now be lying on some table, waiting her return.

Adrian Peake took one shuddering mental glance at the position of affairs and looked away again. Brief as it was, that glimpse of his predicament had made him feel absolutely sick. He had never been really happy at the thought that he was engaged to two women at once, but until now he had always had the consolation that no written evidence existed of his obligations to Jane, and that a verbal agreement can always be denied by a man who keeps his head.

'Well, I guess I'll have my swim,' said Tubby.

'I think I'll come in too,' said Adrian.

He was feeling as if he had contracted some form of prickly heat, and cold water seemed to offer at least a temporary relief.

M
EANWHILE,
unknown to Adrian Peake, though it is improbable that he would have cared if he had known, for his was rather a self-centred nature, other people in the immediate neighbourhood were having their troubles. On the short stretch of road that lay between Walsingford and Walsingford Parva, quite near to one another and getting nearer with every stride which Joe Vanringham took and every revolution of the wheels of Jane Abbott's two-seater, there were, on this sunny afternoon, no fewer than three hearts bowed down with weight of woe. One was Joe's, the second was Jane's, the third Mr Bulpitt's. This constituted a local record, for that sleepy thoroughfare was, as a rule, almost empty of pedestrians and traffic.

Joe was suffering from remorse. It gnawed him to the bone. Swinging along the highway at his best speed, he was experiencing all the pangs of one who has sold the pass or been asleep at the switch. His familiarity with his brother's notorious fatheadedness, he told himself, ought to have warned him that it would be insanity to relax his vigilance for even the brief space of time required for proposing to Jane in stable yards. When you were guarding a fellow like Tubby, it was not enough to dump him in a chair and give him a mystery novel and expect him to stay put. You had to stand over him with a shotgun. He felt that he had
lightly betrayed a sacred trust which had been reposed in him; and musing, in the intervals of wishing that the weather had been a little cooler and more suited to track work, he mourned in spirit.

Jane was not so much mourning in spirit as boiling with fury Her eyes, dark and stormy, were alive with quite a good deal of the old crocodile glitter.

The afternoon post had arrived just as she was starting out on her drive to Walsingford, bringing with it the first of Adrian Peake's well-expressed letters.

She had not been able to read this communication until some ten minutes ago, on the departure of her father's train, and its contents were, in consequence, fresh in her mind. She could, indeed, have recited them verbatim, and she pressed her foot on the accelerator, anxious to reach the Hall and discuss the situation with Joe. From time to time her tight lips parted and moved, and it seemed as if flame might come from between them. This was when she was murmuring to herself some of the things she intended to say to him when they met.

The distress of Mr Bulpitt, crawling about the road by the second milestone, differed from that of Joe and Jane, being in its essence physical rather than mental.

The punch administered by Tubby to his snoot, though it had been a vigorous one and had caused that organ to bleed rather freely, had not disturbed Mr Bulpitt to any great extent. He was a man who had taken many such a punch in his day, on just that spot. Indeed, in the really active years of his professional career he had come to look upon the sort of thing which had just been happening to him as pure routine. What did occasion him concern was the fact that his teeth had strayed from their moorings. Lacking them, he felt like Samson after his
hair had been shorn. A man may rise on stepping stones of punched snoots to higher things, but he is lost without his bridgework.

The shaking which Tubby had given him had blurred his mind a little, dulling his usually keen grasp of affairs, but he had a sort of recollection of having seen the missing molars, when they set out on their travels, lay a nor'-nor'-easterly course, and it was in this direction that he was proceeding when Jane came along in her car. There was a squealing of brakes and a flurry of dust as she drew up beside him. She opened the door and jumped out, agitated in the extreme. Mr Bulpitt, on all fours and smeared with blood, presented a distinctly horrifying spectacle, and hers had been a sheltered life. Except for the time when the cook had cut her thumb opening a tin of sardines, she had never been brought face to face with tragedy.

In the sunken features on which her eyes rested, it is not surprising that she did not recognize the round, rosy countenance of her Uncle Sam. She had seen him only once, and then under very different conditions. It was in the light of an anonymous hit-and-run victim that she regarded him, and it was thus that she introduced him to Joe, when the latter came panting up a short while later.

She was glad to see Joe. Adrian Peake in his letter had specifically named him as the source from which he had learned that Sir Buckstone Abbott was thinking in terms of hunting crops, and she knew what motives had led him to give the information, but in spite of that she found his presence welcome. However black his soul might be, his body was comfortingly muscular; and somebody muscular to help her get the sufferer into the car and off to the doctor was what she had been wanting ever since her arrival on the scene.

Her own efforts to that end had been foiled by the coy refusal of Mr Bulpitt to assume a perpendicular position. With a quiet firmness, in spite of all her persuasion, he had remained on all fours, questing about like a dog that has scented game. It had not yet occurred to Mr Bulpitt that anyone might suppose that he was hurt. All he wanted was to be left alone to conduct his research work. He had endeavoured to explain this to Jane, and it was the horrible, wordless, yammering sound which he had produced that, even more than his appearance, had struck a chill to her heart.

But though she was relieved to see Joe, she did not intend that even in this supreme moment there should be any mistake about her displeasure. The fact that he had appeared so opportunely did not in the slightest degree modify her opinion that his behaviour had been abominable and that if ever a young man had justified a girl in drawing herself up to her full height, such as it was, and speaking like a Princess to an offending varlet, he was that young man. It was with a cold hauteur that she addressed him.

'Mr Vanringham, this man has been knocked down by a car.'

Joe took in the situation in a flash. He was a little out of breath, but even with bellows to mend, he was gallant, self-sacrificing and the perfect gentleman. He had read a sufficient number of the novels published at their authors' expense by Mr Busby to know what your man of honour does on an occasion like this. He takes the rap, like Cecil Trevelyan in
Hearts Astir
and Lord Fotheringham in
'Twos Once in May.
A swift, intelligent glance at Mr Bulpitt, who was now rooting in the undergrowth by the milestone, and he had drawn Jane aside and was speaking in a low, tense voice.

'I was driving. Remember. That's our story, and we must stick to it. I was driving—'

'You silly ass,' said Jane, who found his heroism trying. 'You don't think I did it, do you?'

'Didn't you?'

'Of course I didn't. He was like that when I came up.'

Joe scrutinized Mr Bulpitt. The grass by the milestone having yielded no treasure, he was now crawling along the edge of the road with the air of a Nebuchadnezzar in search of better pasture.

'Like that?'

'Yes.'

'On his hands and knees?'

'Yes.'

'Circling and sniffing?'

'Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. A car must have knocked him down and gone on.'

'I suppose so.'

'Do you think he's dying?'

'He doesn't seem any too bobbish.'

'He said something, but he didn't speak properly.'

'Much stirred, no doubt. On these occasions a man's coarser side will come to the surface.'

'I mean I couldn't understand him. He just sort of gargled. He must have got concussion.'

'Where's the nearest doctor?'

'There's Dr Burke in the village, but he might be out now. He goes his rounds in the afternoon.'

'How about Walsingford?'

'There must be lots of doctors there, but I don't know where they live.'

'We had better drive there and ask. . . . Hello, he's getting up.'

Mr Bulpitt had risen and was coming toward them. It had suddenly occurred to him that the quest was not being conducted in the most scientific manner. Three heads are better than one. With his niece Jane and the young fellow whom he had now recognized as T. P. Vanringham's brother to fall in and work under his directions, he had all the material for an organized search party. He mentioned this.

'Say, I can't seem to find my teeth,' he said. 'I wish you two would come and lend a hand. They're around here somewheres.'

He was aware, as he spoke, that his diction lacked something of its customary bell-like clearness, but it surprised him, nevertheless, to see Joe give a shocked start and look at Jane, who looked back and said, 'There!' And his astonishment was increased when, a moment later, a sinewy arm passed itself about his waist and he found himself lifted gently and placed in the car. And before he could find breath for comment, Jane was at the wheel, Joe had swung himself into the dickey, and the car was backing and turning, and then speeding smoothly along the road to Walsingford.

A passionate sense of bereavement came upon Mr Bulpitt as he was snatched away. He was convinced that a little more intensive searching would have produced solid results, and he endeavoured to voice a protest.

A kindly hand came from behind him and patted his shoulder.

'It's quite all right,' said Joe. 'Sit back and wait for the medical treatment. Just relax . . . . Say, I know this bird,' he added, scanning the twisted face. 'He's living on the houseboat. His name's Bulpitt.'

'What! Why, so it is!'

'You know him?'

'He's my uncle.'

This was news to Joe. Nothing in the attitude of Sir Buckstone Abbott toward their passenger had suggested that the latter was his brother-in-law. Lacking to rather a marked extent that easy cordiality which one likes to see in Baronets toward their wives' kinfolk, it had resembled more that of a man confronted with a snake which is no relation.

'Was your mother's name Bulpitt?'

'Yes.'

'I think she did well to change it to a sweet name like Abbott. He's really your uncle, is he?'

'I said he was.'

'Well, step on the gas, or he'll be your late uncle.'

The car sped on. It seemed to Joe a suitable moment for pointing out a psychological aspect of the matter which might have escaped her notice.

'You know,' he said, steadying Mr Bulpitt with a hand on his back and leaning forward, 'deplorable though this accident is, we must remember that it has its brighter side. It has brought you and me very close together. There is nothing like the sharing of a great emotional experience for doing that. It forms a bond. It knits. After this, you will find yourself thinking differently of me.'

It is not easy for a girl to give a man a long level look, if she is driving a car and his head is just behind her left shoulder, but Jane did her best. The fact that it nearly dislocated her neck did not improve her frame of mind.

'You would be lucky if I did.'

'What do you mean?'

'I will tell you after we have seen the doctor.'

'Tell me now It may be my imagination, but there seems to me something strange about your manner. It has an odd curtness. Almost abrupt. Is something the matter?'

'Yes.'

'But what? What has happened? Why, the last time we met, you were allowing – I might say encouraging – me to put my arm round your waist. In the stable yard, you remember.'

'When I was in the stable yard, I had not read the letter which I found waiting for me on the hall table.'

'A letter?'

'It came by the second post.'

A certain uneasiness began to steal upon Joe. In itself, of course, there was nothing unusual in the fact of her having received mail by the second post. He had, indeed, while conversing with her in the stable yard, seen the postman flash by on his bicycle. But he seemed to sense something sinister in her tone. Moreover, though that look of hers had been brief and wobbly rather than long and level, it had been long enough to enable him to discern the glitter in her eye.

'Oh, yes?' he said.

'It was from Adrian Peake.'

Joe removed his hand from Mr Bulpitt's back and began slowly to scratch his chin. A far less astute man than he would have been warned by this statement that trouble was in the air. He was well aware that the twerp Peake, having taken pen in hand, might quite conceivably have touched on topics with great potentialities of embarrassment in them.

However, as usual, he did his best.

'From Adrian Peake, eh? Now, let me see, who is Adrian Peake? Of course; yes, I remember. I have a sort of slight
acquaintance with him. . . . I wouldn't drive so fast, if I were you.'

Jane drove faster.

'Mr Vanringham, did you know that Adrian was the man to whom I was engaged?'

'Now, how in the world could I have known that?'

'I imagine Tubby told you. Did he?'

'Well, as a matter of fact, yes. Yes, now that I recall it, he did.'

'I thought so. And did you tell Adrian that he had better go away, because my father was furious with him and was looking for him with a horsewhip?'

Joe sighed. All this was making everything very difficult.

'Why, yes,' he said. 'I had been meaning to tell you about that. Yes, that's right.'

'Thank you. That is all I wanted to know.'

With tight lips and tilted chin, she increased her pressure on the accelerator. A wordless cry proceeded from Mr Bulpitt, whom a rough spot in the road had caused to bound in his seat like ice in a cocktail shaker.

'I think what he is trying to say,' suggested Joe, 'is that we should all be more comfortable if you would slow down a little. Try to hold the thought that you are driving an ambulance rather than a Juggernaut.' He leaned farther forward as the advice was taken. And now to go back to what we were talking about,' he said. 'I'm glad you have brought this matter up, because I have been wanting to explain. You concede that all is fair in love and war?'

'I don't.'

'That makes my explanation rather difficult, then. I acted on the assumption that it was. It seemed to me that only by eliminating Peake at a fairly early point in the proceedings
could I secure the leisure and freedom from interruption which I required. You know how it is when you are trying to show yourself to a girl at your best and there's another fellow hanging around. I had an idea that my little ruse would send him shooting off like a rabbit, and it did. Indeed, few rabbits would have acted so promptly.'