in the ballet on his own.
Whereupon he discovered that the game of undignified dodging in which he had just prepared to surrender his part was caused by some dimly discernible ambition of the elderly gent's to hold converse with him. Standing in front of him and blinking short-sightedly upwards from his lower altitude to the Saint's six foot two, with his mouth hanging vacantly open like an inverted 'U' and three long yellow teeth hanging down like stalactites from the top, the elderly gent tapped him on the chest and said, very earnestly and distinctly: 'Hig fwmgn glugl phnihklu hgrm skhlglgl?'
'I beg your pardon?' said the Saint vaguely.
'Hig fwmgn,' repeated the elderly gent, 'glugl phnihklu hgrm skhlglgl?' Simon considered the point. 'If you ask me,' he replied at length, 'I should say sixteen.'
The elderly gent's knobbly face seemed to take on a brighter shade of pink. He clutched the lapels of the Saint's coat, shaking him slightly in a positive passion of anguish.
'Flogh ghoglu sk,' he pleaded, 'klngnt hu ughl-gstghnd?'
Simon shook his head.
'No,' he said judiciously, 'you're thinking of weevils.'
The little man bounced about like a rubber doll. His eyes squinted with a kind of frantic despair.
'Ogmighogho,' he almost screamed, 'klngt hu ughglstghnd ? Ik ghln ngmnpp sktlghko 1 Klugt hu hgr ? Ik wgnt hlg phnihkln hgrm skhlglgl!'
The Saint sighed. He was by nature a kindly man to those whom the Gods had afflicted, but time was passing and he was thinking of Jacqueline Laine.
'I'm afraid not, dear old bird,' he murmured regretfully. 'There used to be one, but it died. Sorry, I'm sure.'
He patted the elderly gent apologetically upon the shoulder, steered his way around him, and passed on out of earshot of the frenzied sputtering noises that continued to honk despairingly through the dusk behind him. Two minutes later he was with Jacqueline.
Jacqueline Laine was twenty-three; she was tall and slender; she had grey eyes that twinkled and a demoralizing mouth. Both of these temptations were in play as she came towards him; but he was still slightly shaken by his recent encounter.
'Have you got any more village idiots hidden around?' he asked warily, as he took her hands; and she was puzzled.
'We used to have several, but they've all got into Congress. Did you want one to take home?'
'My God, no,' said the Saint fervently. 'The one I met at the gate was bad enough. Is he your latest boy friend?'
Her brow cleared.
'Oh, you mean the old boy with the cleft palate? Isn't he marvellous? I think he's got a screw loose or something. He's been hanging around all day--he keeps ringing the bell and bleating at me. I'd just sent him away for the third time. Did he try to talk to you?'
'He did sort of wag his adenoids at me,' Simon admitted, 'but I don't think we actually got on to common ground. I felt quite jealous of him for a bit, until I realized that he couldn't possibly kiss you nearly as well as I can, with that set of teeth.'
He proceeded to demonstrate this.
'I'm still in a hopeless muddle,' she said presently. 'But I'll be ready in five minutes. You can be fixing a cocktail while I finish myself off.'
In the living room there was an open trunk in one corner and a half-filled packing case in the middle of the floor. There were scattered heaps of paper around it, and a few partially wrapped and unidentifiable objects on the table. The room had that curiously naked and inhospitable look which a room, has when it has been stripped of all those intimately personal odds and ends of junk which make it a home, and only the bare furniture is left.
The Saint raised his eyebrows.
'Hullo,' he said. 'Are you moving?'
'Sort of.' She shrugged. 'Moving out, anyway.'
'Where to?'
'I don't know.'
He realized then that there should have been someone else there, in that room.
'Isn't your grandmother here any more ?'
'She died four weeks ago.'
'I'm sorry.'
'She was a good soul. But she was terribly old. Do you know she was just ninety-seven ?' She held his hand for a moment. 'I'll tell you all about it when I come down. Do you remember where to find the bottles?'
'Templars and elephants never forget.'
He blended bourbon, applejack, vermouth and bitters, skilfully and with the zeal of an artist, while he waited for her, remembering the old lady whom he had seen so often in that room. Also, he remembered the affectionate service that Jacqueline had always lavished on her, cheerfully limiting her own enjoyment of life to meet the demands of an unconscious tyrant who would allow no one else to look after her, and wondered if there was any realistic reason to regret the ending of such a long life. She had, he knew, looked after Jacqueline herself in her time, and had brought her up as her own child since she was left an orphan at the age of three; but life must always belong to the young. . . . He thought that for Jacqueline it must be a supreme escape, but he knew that she would never say so.
She came down punctually in the five minutes which she had promised. She had changed her dress and put a comb through her hair, and with that seemed to have achieved more than any other woman could have shown for an hour's fiddling in front of a mirror.-
'You should have been in pictures,' said the Saint, and he meant it.
'Maybe I shall,' she said. 'I'll have to do something to earn a living now.'
'Is it as bad as that?'
She nodded.
'But I can't complain. I never had to work for anything before. Why shouldn't I start? Other people have to.'
'Is that why you're moving out?'
'The house isn't mine.'
'But didn't the old girl leave you anything?'
'She left me some letters.'
The Saint almost spilt his drink. He sat down heavily on the edge of the table.
'She left you some letters? After you'd practically been a slave to her ever since you came out of finishing school? What did she do with the rest of her property ---leave it to a home for stray cats?'
'No, she left it to Harry.'
'Who?'
'Her grandson.'
'I didn't know you had any brothers.'
'I haven't. Harry Westler is my cousin. He's--well, as a matter of fact he's a sort of black sheep. He's a gambler, and he was in prison once for forging a check. Nobody else in the family would have anything to do with him, and if you believe what they used to say about him they were probably quite right; but Granny always had a soft spot for him. She never believed he could do anything wrong--he was just a mischievous boy to her. Well, you know how old she was . . .'
'And she left everything to him?'
'Practically everything. I'll show you.'
She went to a drawer of the writing table and brought him a typewritten sheet. He saw that it was a copy of a will, and turned to the details of the bequests.
To my dear granddaughter Jacqueline Laine, who has taken care of me so thoughtfully and unselfishly for four years, One Hundred Dollars and my letters from Sidney Farlance, knowing that she will find them of more value than anything else I could leave her.
