“Are you going to let that woman loose on a duck-farm, Mullett?”
“Yes, sir. We are taking a little place in the neighbourhood of Speonk.”
“She’ll have the tail-feathers off every bird on the premises before the end of the first week.”
Mullett bowed his appreciation of the compliment.
“And they wouldn’t know they’d lost them, sir,” he agreed. “There’s never been anyone in the profession fit to be reckoned in the same class with my little girl. But all that sort of thing is over now, sir. She is definitely retiring from business—except for an occasional visit to the department stores during bargain-sales. A girl must have her bit of finery. Good night, sir.”
“Good night,” said George.
He took out the necklace, examined it carefully, replaced it in his pocket, buttoned his coat once more, and went into the apartment to telephone to Molly.
XVII
I
Mrs. Waddington had once read a story in which a series of emotions including fear, horror, amazement, consternation and a sickly dismay were described as “chasing one another” across the face of a dastardly person at the moment of realisation that his villainy had been discovered past concealment: and it was with the expectation of watching a similar parade on the moon-like countenance of Ferris, the butler, that she pressed the bell outside the door of the apartment of Mr. Lancelot Biffen on the ninth floor.
She was disappointed. Ferris, as he appeared in the doorway in answer to her ring, lacked a little of his customary portentous dignity, but that was only because we authors, after a gruelling bout at the desk, are always apt to look a shade frazzled. The butler’s hair was disordered where he had plucked at it in the agony of composition, and there was more ink on the tip of his nose than would have been there on a more formal occasion: but otherwise he was in pretty good shape, and he did not even start on perceiving the identity of his visitor.
“Mr. Biffen is not at home, madam,” said Ferris equably.
“I do not wish to see Mr. Biffen.” Mrs. Waddington swelled with justifiable wrath. “Ferris,” she said, “I know all!”
“Indeed, madam?”
“You have no sick relative,” proceeded Mrs. Waddington, though her tone suggested the opinion that anyone related to him had good reason to be sick. “You are here because you are writing a scurrilous report of what happened this afternoon at my house for a gutter rag called Town Gossip.”
“With which is incorporated ‘Broadway Whispers’ and ‘Times Square Tattle,’ ” murmured the butler, absently.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
Ferris raised his eyebrows.
“I venture to take issue with you, madam. The profession of journalism is an honourable one. Many very estimable men have written for the Press. Horace Greeley,” said Ferris, specifying. “Delane. …”
“Bah!”
“Madam?”
“But we will go into that later.”
“Very good, madam.”
“Meanwhile, I wish you to accompany me to the roof. …”
“I fear I must respectfully decline, madam. I have not climbed since I was a small lad.”
“You can walk up a flight of stairs, can’t you?”
“Oh, stairs? Decidedly, madam. I will be at your disposal in a few moments.”
“I wish you to accompany me now.”
The butler shook his head.
“If I might excuse myself, madam. I am engaged on the concluding passages of the article to which you alluded just now, and I am anxious to complete it before Mr. Biffen’s return.”
Mrs. Waddington caused the eye before which Sigsbee H. had so often curled up and crackled like a burnt feather to blaze imperiously upon the butler. He met it with the easy aplomb of one who in his time has looked at dukes and made them feel that their trousers were bagging at the knees.
“Would you care to step inside and wait, madam?”
Mrs. Waddington was reluctantly obliged to realise that she was quelled. She had shot her bolt. A cyclone might shake this man, but not the human eye.
“I will not step inside.”
“Very good, madam. For what reason do you desire me to accompany you to the roof?”
“I want you to—to look at something.”
“If it is the view, madam, I should mention that I have already visited the top of the Woolworth Building.”
“It is not the view. I wish you to look at a man who is living in open sin.”
“Very good, madam.” There was no surprise in Ferris’s manner, only a courteous suggestion that he was always glad to look at men living in open sin. “I will be at your disposal in a few minutes.”
He closed the door gently, and Mrs. Waddington, full of the coward rage which dares to burn but does not dare to blaze, abandoned her intention of kicking in a panel and stood on the landing, heaving gently. And presently there was borne up to her from the lower levels a cheerful sound of whistling.
Lord Hunstanton came into view.
“Hullo-ullo-ullo!” said Lord Hunstanton exuberantly. “Here I am, here I am, here I am!”—meaning, of course, that there he was.
A striking change had taken place in the man’s appearance since Mrs. Waddington had last seen him. He now wore the carefree and debonair expression of one who has dined and dined well. The sparkle in his eye spoke of clear soup, the smile on his lips was eloquent of roast duck and green peas. To Mrs. Waddington, who had not broken bread since lunchtime, he seemed the most repellant object on which she had ever gazed.
“I trust you have had a good dinner,” she said icily.
His lordship’s sunny smile broadened, and a dreamy look came into his eyes.
“Absolutely!” he replied. “I started with a spruce spoonful of Julienne and passed on by way of a breezy half-lobster on the shell to about as upstanding a young Long Island duckling as I have ever bitten.”
“Be quiet!” said Mrs. Waddington, shaken to the core. The man’s conversation seemed to her utterly revolting.
“Finishing up
