He leaped from his chair and returned to the boudoir, carrying the paper.
“Well, what do you know about this?” said Bradbury Fisher, in a hearty voice.
“We know a great deal about a good many things,” said Mrs. Maplebury.
“What is it, Bradbury?” said Mrs. Fisher.
“I’m afraid I shall have to leave you for a couple of days. Great nuisance, but there it is. But, of course, I must be there.”
“Where?”
“Ah, where?” said Mrs. Maplebury.
“At Sing-Sing. I see in the paper that tomorrow and the day after they are inaugurating the new Osborne Stadium. All the men of my class will be attending, and I must go, too.”
“Must you really?”
“I certainly must. Not to do so would be to show a lack of college spirit. The boys are playing Yale, and there is to be a big dinner afterwards. I shouldn’t wonder if I had to make a speech. But don’t worry, honey,” he said, kissing his wife affectionately. “I shall be back before you know I’ve gone.” He turned sharply to Mrs. Maplebury. “I beg your pardon?” he said, stiffly.
“I did not speak.”
“I thought you did.”
“I merely inhaled. I simply drew in air through my nostrils. If I am not at liberty to draw in air through my nostrils in your house, pray inform me.”
“I would prefer that you didn’t,” said Bradbury, between set teeth.
“Then I would suffocate.”
“Yes,” said Bradbury Fisher.
Of all the tainted millionaires who, after years of plundering the widow and the orphan, have devoted the evening of their life to the game of golf, few can ever have been so boisterously exhilarated as was Bradbury Fisher when, two nights later, he returned to his home. His dreams had all come true. He had won his way to the foot of the rainbow. In other words, he was the possessor of a small pewter cup, value three dollars, which he had won by beating a spavined old gentleman with one eye in the final match of the competition for the sixth sixteen at the Squashy Hollow Golf Club Invitation Tournament.
He entered the house, radiant.
“Tra-la!” sang Bradbury Fisher. “Tra-la!”
“I beg your pardon, sir?” said Vosper, who had encountered him in the hall.
“Eh? Oh, nothing. Just tra-la.”
“Very good, sir.”
Bradbury Fisher looked at Vosper. For the first time it seemed to sweep over him like a wave that Vosper was an uncommonly good fellow. The past was forgotten, and he beamed upon Vosper like the rising sun.
“Vosper,” he said, “what wages are you getting?”
“I regret to say, sir,” replied the butler, “that, at the moment, the precise amount of the salary of which I am in receipt has slipped my mind. I could refresh my memory by consulting my books, if you so desire it, sir.”
“Never mind. Whatever it is, it’s doubled.”
“I am obliged, sir. You will, no doubt, send me a written memo to that effect?”
“Twenty, if you like.”
“One will be ample, sir.”
Bradbury curveted past him through the baronial hall and into the Crystal Boudoir. His wife was there alone.
“Mother has gone to bed,” she said. “She has a bad headache.”
“You don’t say!” said Bradbury. It was as if everything was conspiring to make this a day of days. “Well, it’s great to be back in the old home.”
“Did you have a good time?”
“Capital.”
“You saw all your old friends?”
“Every one of them.”
“Did you make a speech at the dinner?”
“Did I! They rolled out of their seats and the waiters swept them up with dusters.”
“A very big dinner, I suppose?”
“Enormous.”
“How was the football game?”
“Best I’ve ever seen. We won. Number 432,986 made a hundred-and-ten-yard run for a touch down in the last five minutes.”
“Really?”
“And that takes a bit of doing, with a ball and chain round your ankle, believe me!”
“Bradbury,” said Mrs. Fisher, “where have you been these last two days?”
Bradbury’s heart missed a beat. His wife was looking exactly like her mother. It was the first time he had ever been able to believe that she could be Mrs. Maplebury’s daughter.
“Been? Why, I’m telling you.”
“Bradbury,” said Mrs. Fisher, “just one word. Have you seen the paper this morning?”
“Why, no. What with all the excitement of meeting the boys and this and that—”
“Then you have not seen that the inauguration of the new Stadium at Sing-Sing was postponed on account of an outbreak of mumps in the prison?”
Bradbury gulped.
“There was no dinner, no football game, no gathering of Old Grads—nothing! So—where have you been, Bradbury?”
Bradbury gulped again.
“You’re sure you haven’t got this wrong?” he said at length.
“Quite.”
“I mean, sure it wasn’t some other place?”
“Quite.”
“Sing-Sing? You got the name correctly?”
“Quite. Where, Bradbury, have you been these last two days?”
“Well—er—”
Mrs. Fisher coughed dryly.
“I merely ask out of curiosity. The facts will, of course, come out in court.”
“In court!”
“Naturally I propose to place this affair in the hands of my lawyer immediately.”
Bradbury started convulsively.
“You mustn’t!”
“I certainly shall.”
A shudder shook Bradbury from head to foot. He felt worse than he had done when his opponent in the final had laid him a stymie on the last green, thereby squaring the match and taking it to the nineteenth hole.
“I will tell you all,” he muttered.
“Well?”
“Well—it was like this.”
“Yes?”
“Er—like this. In fact, this way.”
“Proceed.”
Bradbury clenched his hands; and, as far as that could be managed, avoided her eye.
“I’ve been playing golf,” he said in a low, toneless voice.
“Playing golf?”
“Yes.” Bradbury hesitated. “I don’t mean it in an offensive spirit, and no doubt most men would have enjoyed themselves thoroughly, but I—well, I am curiously constituted, angel, and the fact is I simply couldn’t stand playing with you any longer. The fault, I am sure, was mine, but—well, there it is. If I had played another round with you, my darling, I think that I should have begun running about in circles, biting my best friends. So I thought it all over, and, not wanting to hurt your feelings by telling you the truth, I stooped to what I might call a ruse. I said I was going to the office; and, instead of going to the office, I
