He was passing through Madison Square at the moment, having just flushed Fourteenth Street for another Mulcahy: and so deeply did this new idea affect him that he tottered to one of the benches and, sitting down, groaned heavily. It was the breaking-point. Mr. Waddington decided to give it up and go home. His head was aching, his feet were aching, and the small of his back was aching. The first fine careless rapture with which he had started his quest had ebbed away to nothing. In short, if there was one man in New York utterly incapable of going about the place looking for Murphys, that man was Sigsbee H. Waddington. He limped to the Pennsylvania Station and took the next train home, and here he was, approaching journey’s end.
The house, as he drew near, seemed very silent. And, of course, it had every right to be. Long since, the wedding must have taken place and the happy pair departed on their honeymoon. Long since, the last guest must have left. And now, beneath that quiet roof, there remained only Mrs. Waddington, no doubt trying out blistering phrases in the seclusion of her boudoir—here, discarding an incandescent adjective in favour of a still zippier one that had just suggested itself; there, realising that the noun “worm” was too mild and searching in Roget’s Thesaurus for something more expressive. Mr. Waddington paused on the doorstep, half inclined to make for the solitude of the tool-shed.
Manlier counsels prevailed. In the tool-shed there would be nothing to drink, and, cost what it might, a drink was what his suffering soul demanded. He crossed the threshold, and leaped nimbly as a dark figure suddenly emerged from the telephone-booth.
“Oosh!” said Mr. Waddington.
“Sir?” said the figure.
Mr. Waddington felt relieved. It was not his wife. It was Ferris. And Ferris was the one person he particularly wanted at that moment to meet. For it was Ferris who could most expeditiously bring him something to drink.
“Sh!” whispered Sigsbee H. “Anyone about?”
“Sir?”
“Where is Mrs. Waddington?”
“In her boudoir, sir.”
Sigsbee H. had expected as much.
“Anyone in the library?”
“No, sir.”
“Then bring me a drink in there, Ferris. And don’t tell anybody you’ve seen me.”
“Very good, sir.”
Mr. Waddington shambled to the library and flung himself down on the chesterfield. Delicious, restful moments passed, and then a musical tinkling made itself heard without. Ferris entered with a tray.
“You omitted to give me definite instructions, sir,” said the butler, “so, acting on my own initiative, I have brought the whisky-decanter and some charged water.”
He spoke coldly, for he disapproved of Mr. Waddington. But the latter was in no frame of mind to analyse the verbal nuances of butlers. He clutched at the decanter, his eyes moist with gratitude.
“Splendid fellow, Ferris!”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’re the sort of fellow who ought to be out West, where men are men.”
The butler twitched a frosty eyebrow.
“Will that be all, sir?”
“Yes. But don’t go, Ferris. Tell me about everything.”
“On what particular point did you desire information, sir?”
“Tell me about the wedding. I wasn’t able to be present. I had most important business in New York, Ferris. So I wasn’t able to be present. Because I had most important business in New York.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“Most important business. Impossible to neglect it. Did the wedding go off all right?”
“Not altogether, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“There has been no wedding, sir.”
Mr. Waddington sat up. The butler appeared to be babbling. And the one moment when a man does not want to mix with babbling butlers is immediately after he has returned home from a search through New York for a policeman named Mulcahy or Garrity.
“No wedding?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“At the last moment a hitch occurred, sir.”
“Don’t tell me the new clergyman sprained his ankle, too?”
“No, sir. The presiding minister continues to enjoy good health in every respect. The hitch to which I allude was caused by a young woman who, claiming to be an old friend of the bridegroom, entered the room where the guests were assembled and created some little disturbance, sir.”
Mr. Waddington’s eyes bulged.
“Tell me about this,” he said.
The butler fixed a fathomless gaze on the wall beyond him.
“I was not actually present at the scene myself, sir. But one of the lower servants, who chanced to be glancing in at the door, has apprised me of the details of the occurrence. It appears that, just as the wedding-party was about to start off for the church, a young woman suddenly made her way through the French windows opening to the lawn, and, pausing in the entrance, observed ‘George! George! Why did you desert me? You don’t belong to that girl there. You belong to me—the woman you have wronged!’ Addressing Mr. Finch, I gather.”
Mr. Waddington’s eyes were now protruding to such a dangerous extent that a sharp jerk would have caused them to drop off.
“Sweet suffering soupspoons! What happened then?”
“There was considerable uproar and confusion, so my informant tells me. The bridegroom was noticeably taken aback, and protested with some urgency that it was all a mistake. To which Mrs. Waddington replied that it was just what she had foreseen all along. Miss Waddington, I gather, was visibly affected. And the guests experienced no little embarrassment.”
“I don’t blame them.”
“No, sir.”
“And then?”
“The young woman was pressed for details, but appeared to be in an overwrought and highly emotional condition. She screamed, so my informant tells me, and wrung her hands. She staggered about the room and, collapsing on the table where the wedding-presents had been placed, seemed to swoon. Almost immediately afterwards, however, she appeared to
