neighbourhood, calling on perfect strangers and asking for butter. I mean, you know yourself how you feel when a fellow you've never met drops in at your house with his face all black and tries to touch you for a bit of butter. You just aren't in sympathy.
No, everything pointed to Chuffy as the logical saviour of the situation. He was a man who had butter at his command, and it might be that, now that he had worked off some of the hard feelings on Brinkley, he would be in a frame of mind to oblige an old school friend with a quarter of a pound or so. So I crawled softly out of the undergrowth and came up in his immediate rear.
'Chuffy!' I said.
I can see now it would have been better to have given him a bit more warning of my presence. Nobody likes to have unexpected voices speaking suddenly down the back of their neck, and in calmer mood I should have recognized this. I don't say it was exactly a repetition of the scullery-maid episode, but for a moment it looked like coming very near it. The poor old lad distinctly leaped. The cigarette flew out of his hand, his teeth came together with a snap, and he shook visibly. The whole effect being much as if I had spiked him in the trousering with a gimlet or bodkin. I have seen salmon behave in a rather similar way during the spawning season.
I did my best to lull the storm with soothing words.
'It's only me, Chuffy.'
'Who?'
'Bertie.'
'Bertie?'
'That's right.'
'Oh!'
I didn't much like the sound of that 'Oh!' It hadn't a welcoming ring. One learns to sense when one is popular and when one is not. It was pretty plain to me at this point that I was not, and I thought it might be wise if, before proceeding to the main topic, I were to start off with a stately compliment.
'You put it across that fellow properly, Chuffy,' I said. 'I liked your work. It was particularly agreeable to me to see him so adequately handled, because I had been wishing I had the nerve to kick him myself
'Who was he?'
'My man, Brinkley'
'What was he doing here?'
'I fancy he was looking for me.'
'Why wasn't he at the cottage, then?'
I had been hoping for a good opportunity of breaking the news.
'I'm afraid you're a cottage short, Chuffy,' I said. 'I regret to report that Brinkley has just burned it down.'
'What!'
'Insured, I trust?'
'He burned the cottage? How? Why?'
'Just a whim. I suppose it seemed a good idea to him at the moment.'
Chuffy took it rather hard. I could see that he was brooding, and I would have liked to allow him to brood all he wanted. But if I was going to catch that 10.21 it was necessary to push along. Time was of the essence.
'Well,' I said, 'I hate to bother you, old man ...'
'Why on earth should he burn a cottage?'
'One cannot attempt to fathom the psychology of blokes like Brinkley. They move in a mysterious way their wonders to perform. Suffice it that he did.'
'Are you sure it wasn't you?'
'My dear chap!'
'It sounds the sort of silly, fat-headed thing you would do,' said Chuffy, and I was distressed to note in his voice much evidence of the old rancour. 'What do you want here, anyway? Who asked you to come? If you think, after what has happened, that you can stroll in and out ...'
'I know, I know. I understand. Painful misunderstanding. Coolness. A disposition to disapprove of Bertram. But ...'
'And where did you spring from just now? I never saw you.'
'I was sitting in a bush.'
'Sitting in a bush?'
The tone in which he said the words told me that, always too prone to misjudge an old friend, he had once more formed a wrong conclusion. I heard a match scratch on its box, and the next moment he was examining me by its light. The light went out, and I heard him breathing deeply in the darkness.
I could follow the workings of his mind. He was evidently struggling with his feelings. The disinclination to have anything more to do with me after last night's painful rift was contending with the reflection that the fact that we had been pals for years carried with it a certain obligation. A chap, he was thinking, may have ceased to be on cordial terms with an old school mate, but he can hardly let him go wandering about the countryside in the condition he supposed I was in.
'You'd better come in and sleep it off,' he said in a weary sort of way. 'Can you walk?'
'It's all right,' I hastened to assure him. 'It's not what you think. Listen.'
And with convincing fluency I rattled off 'British Constitution', 'She sells sea-shells', and 'He stood at the entrance of Burgess's fish-sauce shop, welcoming him in.'
The demonstration had its effect.
'Then you're not tight?'
'Not a bit.'
'But you sit in bushes.'
'Yes. But ...'
'And your face is black.'
'I know. Hold the line, old man, and I will tell you all.'
I dare say you have had the experience of telling someone a longish story and getting on to the fact, half-way through, that you haven't got the sympathy of the audience. Most unpleasant sensation. I had it now. It was not that he said anything. But a sort of deleterious animal magnetism seemed to exude from him as I passed from point to point. More and more, as I proceeded, did the conviction steal over me that I was getting the silent raspberry.
However, I carried on stoutly and, having related the salient facts, wound up with a pretty eloquent plea for the stearic matter.
'Butter, Chuffy, old man,' I said. 'Slabs of butter. If you have butter, prepare to shed it now. I'll just saunter about out here, shall I, while you pop to the kitchen and secure the stuff? And you realize, don't you, that time is of the essence? I shall only just be able to catch that train, as it is.'
He did not speak for a moment or two. When he did, there was such a nasty tinkle in his voice that I confess the heart sank.
'Let me get all this straight,' he said. 'You want me to bring you butter?'
'That's the idea.'
'So that you can clean your face and go off on this train to London.'
'Yes.'
'Thus escaping from Mr Stoker.'
'That's right. Amazing the way you've followed it all,' I said in a congratulatory sort of voice, deeming it best to suck up a bit and apply the old salve. 'I don't suppose I know six fellows who would have grasped the plot with the same unerring accuracy. I've always thought highly of your intelligence, Chuffy, old man – very highly.'
But the heart was still sinking. And when I heard him snort emotionally in the darkness it touched a new low.
'I see,' he said. 'In other words, you wish me to help you back out of your honourable obligations, what?'
'What?'
'That's what I said – 'What?' Good God!' cried Chuffy, and I dare say he quivered from head to foot, but I
