“That?” said Harold. “That’s Percy.” He gave a slight shudder. “Amelia’s brother, you know. An awful fellow. I haven’t seen him for years.”
Then I placed Percy. I had met him once or twice in the old days, and I had a brainwave. Percy was everything that poor old Harold disliked most. He was hearty at breakfast, a confirmed back-slapper, and a man who prodded you in the chest when he spoke to you.
“You haven’t seen him for years!” I said in a shocked voice.
“Thank heaven!” said Harold devoutly.
I put down the photograph album, and looked at him in a deuced serious way. “Then it’s high time you asked him to come here.”
Harold blanched. “Reggie, old man, you don’t know what you are saying. You can’t remember Percy. I wish you wouldn’t say these things, even in fun.”
“I’m not saying it in fun. Of course, it’s none of my business, but you have paid me the compliment of confiding in me about Amelia, and I feel justified in speaking. All I can say is that, if you cherish her memory as you say you do, you show it in a very strange way. How you can square your neglect of Percy with your alleged devotion to Amelia’s memory, beats me. It seems to me that you have no choice. You must either drop the whole thing and admit that your love for her is dead, or else you must stop this infernal treatment of her favorite brother. You can’t have it both ways.”
He looked at me like a hunted stag. “But, Reggie, old man! Percy! He asks riddles at breakfast.”
“I don’t care.”
“Hilda can’t stand him.”
“It doesn’t matter. You must invite him. It’s not a case of what you like or don’t like. It’s your duty.”
He struggled with his feelings for a bit. “Very well,” he said in a crushed sort of voice.
At dinner that night he said to Hilda: “I’m going to ask Amelia’s brother down to spend a few days. It is so long since we have seen him.”
Hilda didn’t answer at once. She looked at him in rather a curious sort of way, I thought. “Very well, dear,” she said.
I was deuced sorry for the poor girl, but I felt like a surgeon. She would be glad later on, for I was convinced that in a very short while poor old Harold must crack under the strain, especially after I had put across the coup which I was meditating for the very next evening.
It was quite simple. Simple, that is to say, in its working, but a devilish brainy thing for a chappie to have thought out. If Ann had really meant what she had said at lunch that day, and was prepared to stick to her bargain and marry me as soon as I showed a burst of intelligence, she was mine.
What it came to was that, if dear old Harold enjoyed meditating in front of Amelia’s portrait, he was jolly well going to have all the meditating he wanted, and a bit over, for my simple scheme was to lurk outside till he had gone into the little room on the top floor, and then, with the aid of one of those jolly little wedges which you use to keep windows from rattling, see to it that the old boy remained there till they sent out search parties.
There wasn’t a flaw in my reasoning. When Harold didn’t roll in at the sound of the dinner gong, Hilda would take it for granted that he was doing an extra bit of meditating that night, and her pride would stop her sending out a hurry call for him. As for Harold, when he found that all was not well with the door, he would probably yell with considerable vim. But it was odds against anyone hearing him. As for me, you might think that I was going to suffer owing to the probable postponement of dinner. Not so, but far otherwise, for on the night I had selected for the coup I was dining out at the neighboring inn with my old college chum Freddie Meadowes. It is true that Freddie wasn’t going to be within fifty miles of the place on that particular night, but they weren’t to know that.
Did I describe the peculiar isolation of that room on the top floor, where the portrait was? I don’t think I did. It was, as a matter of fact, the only room in those parts, for, in the days when he did his amateur painting, old Harold was strong on the artistic seclusion business and hated noise, and his studio was the only room in use on that floor.
In short, to sum up, the thing was a cinch.
Punctually at ten minutes to seven, I was in readiness on the scene. There was a recess with a curtain in front of it a few yards from the door, and there I waited, fondling my little wedge, for Harold to walk up and allow the proceedings to start. It was almost pitch-dark, and that made the time of waiting seem longer. Presently—I seemed to have been there longer than ten minutes—I heard steps approaching. They came past where I stood, and went on into the room. The door closed, and I hopped out and sprinted up to it, and the next moment I had the good old wedge under the wood—as neat a job as you could imagine. And then I strolled downstairs, and toddled off to the inn.
I didn’t hurry over my dinner, partly because the browsing and sluicing at the inn was really astonishingly good for a roadhouse and partly because I wanted to give Harold plenty of time for meditation. I suppose it must have been a couple of hours or more when I finally turned in at the front door. Somebody was playing the piano in the drawing room. It could only be Hilda who was playing, and I had doubts as to whether she wanted company just then—mine, at any rate.
Eventually I decided to risk it, for I wanted to hear the latest about dear old Harold, so in I went, and it wasn’t Hilda at all; it was Ann Selby.
“Hello,” I said. “I didn’t know you were coming down here.” It seemed so odd, don’t you know, as it hadn’t been more than ten days or so since her last visit.
“Good evening, Reggie,” she said.
“What’s been happening?” I asked.
“How do you know anything has been happening?”
“I guessed it.”
“Well, you’re quite right, as it happens, Reggie. A good deal has been happening.” She went to the door, and looked out, listening. Then she shut it, and came back. “Hilda has revolted!”
