The caddie removed his bushy eyebrows, and with a quick gesture swept off his moustache.
“On the twelfth inst.,” he began in a monotonous, singsong voice, “acting upon instructions received, I made my way to the Goldenville Golf Links in order to observe the movements of the man Fisher. I had adopted for the occasion the Number Three disguise and—”
“All right, all right,” said Gladstone Bott, impatiently. “You can skip all that. Come down to what happened at the sixteenth.”
The caddie looked wounded, but he bowed deferentially.
“At the sixteenth hole the man Fisher moved his ball into what—from his actions and furtive manner—I deduced to be a more favourable position.”
“Ah!” said Gladstone Bott.
“On the seventeenth the man Fisher picked up his ball and threw it with a movement of the wrist on to the green.”
“It’s a lie. A foul and contemptible lie,” shouted Bradbury Fisher.
“Realizing that the man Fisher might adopt this attitude, sir,” said the caddie, “I took the precaution of snapshotting him in the act with my miniature wristwatch camera, the detective’s best friend.”
Bradbury Fisher covered his face with his hands and uttered a hollow groan.
“My match,” said Gladstone Bott, with vindictive triumph. “I’ll trouble you to deliver that butler to me f.o.b. at my residence not later than noon tomorrow. Oh, yes, and I was forgetting. You owe me three railroads.”
Blizzard, dignified but kindly, met Bradbury in the Byzantine hall on his return home.
“I trust your golf-match terminated satisfactorily, sir?” said the butler.
A pang, almost too poignant to be borne, shot through Bradbury.
“No, Blizzard,” he said. “No. Thank you for your kind inquiry, but I was not in luck.”
“Too bad, sir,” said Blizzard, sympathetically. “I trust the prize at stake was not excessive?”
“Well—er—well, it was rather big. I should like to speak to you about that a little later, Blizzard.”
“At any time that is suitable to you, sir. If you will ring for one of the assistant-underfootmen when you desire to see me, sir, he will find me in my pantry. Meanwhile, sir, this cable arrived for you a short while back.”
Bradbury took the envelope listlessly. He had been expecting a communication from his London agents announcing that they had bought Kent and Sussex, for which he had instructed them to make a firm offer just before he left England. No doubt this was their cable.
He opened the envelope, and started as if it had contained a scorpion. It was from his wife.
“Returning immediately Aquitania,” (it ran). “Docking Friday night. Meet without fail.”
Bradbury stared at the words, frozen to the marrow. Although he had been in a sort of trance ever since that dreadful moment on the seventeenth green, his great brain had not altogether ceased to function; and, while driving home in the car, he had sketched out roughly a plan of action which, he felt, might meet the crisis. Assuming that Mrs. Fisher was to remain abroad for another month, he had practically decided to buy a daily paper, insert in it a front-page story announcing the death of Blizzard, forward the clipping to his wife, and then sell his house and move to another neighbourhood. In this way it might be that she would never learn of what had occurred.
But if she was due back next Friday, the scheme fell through and exposure was inevitable.
He wondered dully what had caused her change of plans, and came to the conclusion that some feminine sixth sense must have warned her of peril threatening Blizzard. With a good deal of peevishness he wished that Providence had never endowed women with this sixth sense. A woman with merely five took quite enough handling.
“Sweet suffering soupspoons!” groaned Bradbury.
“Sir?” said Blizzard.
“Nothing,” said Bradbury.
“Very good, sir,” said Blizzard.
For a man with anything on his mind, any little trouble calculated to affect the joie de vivre, there are few spots less cheering than the Customs sheds of New York. Draughts whistle dismally there—now to, now fro. Strange noises are heard. Customs officials chew gum and lurk grimly in the shadows like tigers awaiting the luncheon-gong. It is not surprising that Bradbury’s spirits, low when he reached the place, should have sunk to zero long before the gangplank was lowered and the passengers began to stream down it.
His wife was among the first to land. How beautiful she looked, thought Bradbury, as he watched her. And, alas, how intimidating. His tastes had always lain in the direction of spirited women. His first wife had been spirited. So had his second, third, and fourth. And the one at the moment holding office was perhaps the most spirited of the whole platoon. For one long instant, as he went to meet her, Bradbury Fisher was conscious of a regret that he had not married one of those meek, mild girls who suffer uncomplainingly at their husbands’ hands in the more hectic type of feminine novel. What he felt he could have done with at the moment was the sort of wife who thinks herself dashed lucky if the other half of the sketch does not drag her round the billiard-room by her hair, kicking her the while with spiked shoes.
Three conversational openings presented themselves to him as he approached her.
“Darling, there is something I want to tell you—”
“Dearest, I have a small confession to make—”
“Sweetheart, I don’t know if by any chance you remember Blizzard, our butler. Well, it’s like this—”
But, in the event, it was she who spoke first.
“Oh, Bradbury,” she cried, rushing into his arms, “I’ve done the most awful thing, and you must try to forgive me!”
Bradbury blinked. He had never seen her in this strange mood before. As she clung to him, she seemed timid, fluttering, and—although a woman who weighed a full hundred and fifty-seven pounds—almost fragile.
“What is it?” he inquired, tenderly. “Has somebody stolen your jewels?”
“No, no.”
“Have you been losing money at
