Whether Hamilton Beamish would have pursued George Finch’s spirited policy of enveloping the man in the tablecloth and thereafter plugging him in the eye, will never be known: for the necessity for such a procedure was removed by the sudden extinction of the lights: and it was at this point that the advantage of being in that particular spot became apparent.
From the table to the fire-escape was but a few steps: and Hamilton Beamish, seizing his fiancée by the hand, dragged her thither and, placing her foot on the lowest step, gave her an upward boost which left no room for misapprehension. A moment later, Madame Eulalie was hurrying roofwards, with Hamilton Beamish in close attendance.
They stood together at the end of their journey, looking down. The lights of the Purple Chicken were still out, and from the darkness there rose a confused noise indicative of certain persons unknown being rather rough with certain other persons unknown. It seemed to Madame Eulalie that she and her mate were well out of it, and she said so.
“I never realised before what a splendid man you were to have by one in an emergency, Jimmy dear,” she said. “Anything slicker than the way you scooped us out of that place I never saw. You must have had lots and lots of practice.”
Hamilton Beamish was passing a handkerchief over his dome-like forehead. The night was warm, and the going had been fast.
“I shall never forgive myself,” he said, “for exposing you to such an experience.”
“Oh, but I enjoyed it.”
“Well, all has ended well, thank goodness. …”
“But has it?” interrupted Madame Eulalie.
“What do you mean?”
She pointed downwards.
“There’s somebody coming up!”
“You’re right.”
“What shall we do? Go out by the stairs?”
Hamilton Beamish shook his head.
“In all probability they will be guarding the entrance.”
“Then what?”
It is at moments like these that the big brain really tells. An ordinary man might have been nonplussed. Certainly, he would have had to waste priceless moments in thought. Hamilton Beamish, with one flash of his giant mind, had the problem neatly solved in four and a quarter seconds.
He took his bride-to-be by the arm and turned her round.
“Look.”
“Where?”
“There!”
“Which?”
“That.”
“What?” Bewilderment was limned upon the girl’s fair face. “I don’t understand. What do you want me to specially look at?”
“At what do you want me especially to look,” corrected Hamilton Beamish mechanically. He drew her across the roof. “You see that summerhouse thing? It is George Finch’s open-air sleeping-porch. Go in, shut the door, switch on the light. …”
“But. …”
“… and remove a portion of your clothes.”
“What!”
“And if anybody comes tell him that George Finch rented you the apartment and that you are dressing to go out to dinner. I, meanwhile, will go down to my apartment and will come up in a few minutes to see if you are ready to be taken out to dine.” Pardonable pride so overcame Hamilton Beamish that he discarded the English Pure and relapsed into the argot of the proletariat. “Is that a crackerjack?” he demanded with gleaming eyes. “Is that a wam? Am I the bozo with the big bean or am I not?”
The girl eyed him worshippingly. One of the consolations which we men of intellect have is that, when things come to a crisis, what captures the female heart is brains. Women may permit themselves in times of peace to stray after Sheiks and look languishingly at lizards whose only claim to admiration is that they can do the first three steps of the Charleston: but let matters go wrong; let some sudden peril threaten; and who then is the king pippin, who the main squeeze? The man with the eight and a quarter hat.
“Jimmy,” she cried, “it’s the goods!”
“Exactly.”
“It’s a lifesaver.”
“Precisely. Be quick, then. There is no time to waste.”
And so it came about that George Finch, nestling beneath the bed, received a shock which, inured though he should have been to shocks by now, seemed to him to turn every hair on his head instantaneously grey.
III
The first thing that impressed itself on George Finch’s consciousness, after his eyes had grown accustomed to the light, was an ankle. It was clad in a stocking of diaphanous silk, and was joined almost immediately by another ankle, similarly clad. For an appreciable time these ankles, though slender, bulked so large in George’s world that they may be said to have filled his whole horizon. Then they disappeared.
A moment before this happened, George, shrinking modestly against the wall, would have said that nothing could have pleased him better than to have these ankles disappear. Nevertheless, when they did so, it was all he could do to keep himself from uttering a stricken cry. For the reason they disappeared was that at this moment a dress of some filmy material fell over them, hiding them from view.
It was a dress that had the appearance of having been cut by fairy scissors out of moonbeams and stardust: and in a shopwindow George would have admired it. But seeing it in a shopwindow and seeing it bunched like a prismatic foam on the floor of this bedroom were two separate and distinct things: and so warmly did George Finch blush that he felt as if his face must be singeing the carpet. He shut his eyes and clenched his teeth. Was this, he asked himself, the end or
