Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (74 page)

He glanced again at the young
people, caught the boy unaware, and was immediately interested.

The illustrated magazine had dropped
from the young man’s hand and he was looking out of the window, his mouth drawn
down at the corners and a narrow frown between his thick eyebrows. It was not
an unattractive face, too young for strong character but decent and open enough
in the ordinary way. At that particular moment, however, it wore a revealing
expression. There was recklessness in the twist of the mouth and sullenness in
the eyes, while the hand which lay upon the inside arm rest was clenched.

Campion was curious. Young people do
not usually go away for Christmas in this top-step-at-the-dentist’s frame of
mind. The girl looked up from her book.

“How far is Underhill from the
station?” she inquired.

“Five miles. They’ll meet us.” The
shy young man turned to her so easily and with such obvious affection that any
romantic theory Campion might have formed was knocked on the head instantly.
The youngster’s troubles evidently had nothing to do with love.

Lance had raised his head with bright-eyed
interest at the gratuitous information and now a faintly sardonic expression
appeared upon his lips. Campion sighed for him. For a man who fell in and out
of love with the abandonment of a seal round a pool, Lance Feering was an
impossible optimist. Already he was regarding the girl with that shy despair
which so many ladies had found too piteous to be allowed to persist. Campion
washed his hands of him and turned away just in time to notice a stranger
glancing in at them from the corridor. It was a dark and arrogant young face
and he recognized it instantly, feeling at the same time a deep wave of
sympathy for old Cookham. Florence, he gathered, had done it again.

Young Victor Preen, son of old Preen
of the Preen Aero Company, was certainly notable, not to say notorious. He had
obtained much publicity in his short life for his sensational flights, but a
great deal more for adventures less creditable; and when angry old gentlemen in
the armchairs of exclusive clubs let themselves go about the blackguardliness
of the younger generation, it was very often of Victor Preen that they were
thinking.

He stood now a little to the left of
the compartment window, leaning idly against the wall, his chin up and his
heavy lids drooping. At first sight he did not appear to be taking any interest
in the occupants of the compartment, but when the shy young man looked up.
Campion happened to see the swift glance of recognition, and of something else,
which passed between them. Presently, still with the same elaborate casualness,
the man in the corridor wandered away, leaving the other staring in front of
him, the same sullen expression still in his eyes.

The incident passed so quickly that
it was impossible to define the exact nature of that second glance, but Campion
was never a man to go imagining things, which was why he was surprised when
they arrived at Minstree station to hear Henry Boule, Florence’s private
secretary, introducing the two and to notice that they met as strangers.

It was pouring with rain as they
came out of the station, and Boule, who, like all Florence’s secretaries,
appeared to be suffering from an advanced case of nerves, bundled them all into
two big Daimlers, a smaller car, and a shooting-brake. Campion looked round him
at Florence’s Christmas bag with some dismay. She had surpassed herself.
Besides Lance there were at least half a dozen celebrities: a brace of
political highlights, an angry looking lady novelist, Madja from the ballet, a
startled R. A., and Victor Preen, as well as some twelve or thirteen unfamiliar
faces who looked as if they might belong to Art, Money, or even mere Relations.

Campion became separated from Lance
and was looking for him anxiously when he saw him at last in one of the cars,
with the novelist on one side and the girl with brandy-ball eyes on the other,
Victor Preen making up the ill-assorted four.

Since Campion was an unassuming sort
of person he was relegated to the brake with Boule himself, the shy young man,
and the whole of the luggage. Boule introduced them awkwardly and collapsed
into a seat, wiping the beads from off his forehead with a relief which was a
little too blatant to be tactful.

Campion, who had learned that the
shy young man’s name was Peter Groome, made a tentative inquiry of him as they sat
jolting shoulder to shoulder in the back of the car. He nodded.

“Yes, it’s the same family,” he
said. “Cookham’s sister married a brother of my father’s. I’m some sort of
relation, I suppose.”

The prospect did not seem to fill
him with any great enthusiasm and once again Campion’s curiosity was piqued.
Young Mr. Groome was certainly not in seasonable mood.

In the ordinary way Campion would
have dismissed the matter from his mind, but there was something about the
youngster which attracted him. something indefinable and of a despairing
quality, and moreover, there had been that curious intercepted glance in the
train.

They talked in a desultory fashion
throughout the uncomfortable journey. Campion learned that young Groome was in
his father’s firm of solicitors, that he was engaged to be married to the girl
with the brandy-ball eyes, who was a Miss Patricia Bullard of an old north
country family, and that he thought Christmas was a waste of time.

“I hate it.” he said with a sudden
passionate intensity which startled even his mild inquisitor. “All this
sentimental good-will-to-all-men business is false and sickening. There’s no
such thing as good will. The world’s rotten.”

He blushed as soon as he had spoken
and turned away.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, “but all
this bogus Dickensian stuff makes me writhe.”

Campion made no direct comment.
Instead he asked with affable inconsequence, “Was that young Victor Preen I saw
in the other car?”

Peter Groome turned his head and
regarded him with the steady stare of the willfully obtuse.

“I was introduced to someone with a
name like that, I think,” he said carefully. “He was a little baldish man, wasn’t
he?”

“No, that’s Sir George.” The
secretary leaned over the luggage to give the information. “Preen is the tall
young man, rather handsome, with the very curling hair. He’s
the
Preen,
you know.” He sighed. “It seems very young to be a millionaire, doesn’t it?”

“Obscenely so,” said Mr. Peter
Groome abruptly, and returned to his despairing contemplation of the landscape.

Underhill was
en fête
to
receive them. As soon as Campion observed the preparations, his sympathy for
young Mr. Groome increased, for to a jaundiced eye Lady Florence’s display
might well have proved as dispiriting as Preen’s bank balance. Florence had “gone
all Dickens,” as she said herself at the top of her voice, linking her arm
through Campion’s, clutching the R. A. with her free hand, and capturing Lance
with a bright birdlike eye.

The great Jacobean house was
festooned with holly. An eighteen-foot tree stood in the great hall. Yule logs
blazed on iron dogs in the wide hearths and already the atmosphere was thick
with that curious Christmas smell which is part cigar smoke and part roasting
food.

Sir Philip Cookham stood receiving
his guests with pathetic bewilderment. Every now and again his features broke
into a smile of genuine welcome as he saw a face he knew. He was a
distinguished-looking old man with a fine head and eyes permanently worried by
his country’s troubles.

“My dear boy, delighted to see you.
Delighted,” he said, grasping Campion’s hand. “I’m afraid you’ve been put over
in the Dower House. Did Florence tell you? She said you wouldn’t mind, but I
insisted that Feering went over there with you and also young Peter.” He sighed
and brushed away the visitor’s hasty reassurances. “I don’t know why the dear
girl never feels she has a party unless the house is so overcrowded that our
best friends have to sleep in the annex,” he said sadly.

The “dear girl,” looking not more
than fifty-five of her sixty years, was clinging to the arm of the lady
novelist at that particular moment and the two women were emitting mirthless
parrot cries at each other. Cookham smiled.

“She’s happy, you know,” he said
indulgently. “She enjoys this sort of thing. Unfortunately I have a certain
amount of urgent work to do this weekend, but we’ll get in a chat, Campion,
some time over the holiday. I want to hear your news. You’re a lucky fellow.
You can tell your adventures.”

The lean man grimaced. “More secret
sessions, sir?” he inquired.

The cabinet minister threw up his
hands in a comic but expressive little gesture before he turned to greet the
next guest.

As he dressed for dinner in his
comfortable room in the small Georgian dower house across the park, Campion was
inclined to congratulate himself on his quarters. Underhill itself was a little
too much of the ancient monument for strict comfort.

He had reached the tie stage when
Lance appeared. He came in very elegant indeed and highly pleased with himself.
Campion diagnosed the symptoms immediately and remained irritatingly incurious.

Lance sat down before the open fire
and stretched his sleek legs.

“It’s not even as if I were a
goodlooking blighter, you know,” he observed invitingly when the silence had
become irksome to him. “In fact, Campion, when I consider myself I simply can’t
understand it. Did I so much as speak to the girl?”

“I don’t know,” said Campion,
concentrating on his dressing. “Did you?”

“No.” Lance was passionate in his
denial. “Not a word. The hard-faced female with the inky fingers and the walrus
mustache was telling me her life story all the way home in the car. This dear
little poppet with the eyes was nothing more than a warm bundle at my side. I
give you my dying oath on that. And yet—well, it’s extraordinary, isn’t it?”

Campion did not turn round. He could
see the artist quite well through the mirror in front of him. Lance had a sheet
of notepaper in his hand and was regarding it with that mixture of feigned
amusement and secret delight which was typical of his eternally youthful
spirit.

“Extraordinary.” he repeated,
glancing at Campion’s unresponsive back. “She had nice eyes. Like licked
brandy-balls.”

“Exactly,” agreed the lean man by the
dressing table. “I thought she seemed very taken up with her fiancé, young
Master Groome, though,” he added tactlessly.

“Well, I noticed that, you know,”
Lance admitted, forgetting his professions of disinterest. “She hardly
recognized my existence in the train. Still, there’s absolutely no accounting
for women. I’ve studied ‘em all my life and never understood ‘em yet. I mean to
say, take this case in point. That kid ignored me. avoided me, looked through
me. And yet look at this. I found it in my room when I came up to change just
now.”

Campion took the note with a certain
amount of distaste. Lovely women were invariably stooping to folly, it seemed,
but even so he could not accustom himself to the spectacle. The message was
very brief. He read it at a glance and for the first time that day he was
conscious of that old familiar flicker down the spine as his experienced nose
smelted trouble. He re-read the three lines.

“There is a sundial on a stone
pavement just off the drive. We saw it from the car. I’ll wait ten minutes
there for you half an hour after the party breaks up tonight.”

There was neither signature nor
initial, and the summons broke off as baldly as it had begun.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Lance had the
grace to look shamefaced.

“Astounding.” Campion’s tone was
flat. “Staggering, old boy. Er—fishy.”

“Fishy?”

“Yes, don’t you think so?” Campion
was turning over the single sheet thoughtfully and there was no amusement in
the pale eyes behind his hornrimmed spectacles. “How did it arrive?”

“In an unaddressed envelope. I don’t
suppose she caught my name. After all, there must be some people who don’t know
it yet.” Lance was grinning impudently. “She’s batty, of course. Not safe out
and all the rest of it. But I liked her eyes and she’s very young.”

Campion perched himself on the edge
of the table. He was still very serious.

“It’s disturbing, isn’t it?” he
said. “Not nice. Makes one wonder.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Lance retrieved
his property and tucked it into his pocket. “She’s young and foolish, and it’s
Christmas.”

Campion did not appear to have heard
him. “I wonder,” he said. “I should keep the appointment, I think. It may be
unwise to interfere, but yes, I rather think I should.”

“You’re telling me.” Lance was
laughing. “I may be wrong, of course,” he added defensively, “but I think that’s
a cry for help. The poor girl evidently saw that I looked a dependable sort of
chap and—er—having her back against the wall for some reason or other she
turned instinctively to the stranger with the kind face. Isn’t that how you
read it?”

“Since you press me, no. Not
exactly,” said Campion, and as they walked over to the house together he
remained thoughtful and irritatingly uncommunicative.