“… Waddington,” concluded Sigsbee H.
The policeman eyed him coldly. The fever of dislike which he had felt towards this man had passed, but he could never look on him as a friend. Moreover, Mr. Waddington, descending from the tub, had stamped heavily on his right foot, almost the only portion of his anatomy which had up till then come unscathed through the adventures of the night.
“What’s all this?” inquired Officer Garroway.
His eye fell upon George: and he uttered that low, sinister growl which is heard only from the throats of leopards seeking their prey, tigers about to give battle, and New York policemen who come unexpectedly upon men who have thrown tablecloths over them and hit them in the eye.
“So there you are!” said Officer Garroway.
He poised his nightstick in his hand, and moved softly forward. Molly flung herself in his path with a cry.
“Stop!”
“Miss,” said the policeman, courteously as was his wont in the presence of the sex. “Oblige me by getting to hell out of here.”
“Garroway!”
The policeman wheeled sharply. Only one man in the world would have been able to check his dreadful designs at that moment, and that man had now joined the group. Clad in a sweater and a pair of running-shorts, Hamilton Beamish made a strangely dignified and picturesque figure as he stood there with the moonlight glinting on his horn-rimmed spectacles. He wore soft shoes with rubber soles, and he was carrying a pair of dumbbells. Hamilton Beamish was a man who lived by schedule: and not all that he had passed through that day could blur his mind to the fact that this was the hour at which he did his before-retiring dumbbell exercises.
“What is the trouble, Garroway?”
“Well, Mr. Beamish. …”
Confused voices interrupted him.
“He was trying to murder George.”
“He’s got my wife locked up in this room.”
“The brute!”
“Darned fresh guy.”
“George didn’t do a thing to him.”
“My wife only threw a little pepper in his face.”
Hamilton Beamish raised a compelling dumbbell.
“Please, please! Garroway, state your case.”
He listened attentively.
“Unlock that door,” he said, when all was told.
The policeman unlocked the door. Mrs. Waddington, followed by Lord Hunstanton, emerged. Lord Hunstanton eyed Mr. Waddington warily, and sidled with an air of carelessness towards the stairway. Accelerating his progress as he neared the door, he vanished abruptly. Lord Hunstanton was a well-bred man who hated a fuss: and every instinct told him that this was one. He was better elsewhere, he decided.
“Stop that man!” ejaculated Officer Garroway. He turned back, baffled, with a darkening brow. “Now he’s gone!” he said soberly. “And he was wanted up in Syracuse.”
Sigsbee H. Waddington shook his head. He was not fond of that town, but he had a fair mind.
“Even in Syracuse,” he said, “they wouldn’t want a man like that.”
“It was Willie the Dude, and I was going to take him to the station-house.”
“You are mistaken, Garroway,” said Hamilton Beamish. “That was Lord Hunstanton, a personal acquaintance of mine.”
“You know him, Mr. Beamish?”
“Quite.”
“Do you know her?” asked the policeman, pointing to Mrs. Waddington.
“Intimately.”
“And him?” said Officer Garroway, indicating George.
“He is one of my best friends.”
The policeman heaved a dreary sigh. He relapsed into silence, baffled.
“The whole affair,” said Hamilton Beamish, “appears to have been due to a foolish misunderstanding. This lady, Garroway, is the stepmother of this young lady here, to whom Mr. Finch should have been married today. There was some little trouble, I understand from Mr. Waddington, and she was left with the impression that Mr. Finch’s morals were not all they should have been. Later, facts which came to light convinced her of her error, and she hastened to New York to seek Mr. Finch out and tell him that all was well and that the marriage would proceed with her full approval. That is correct, Mrs. Waddington?”
Mrs. Waddington gulped. For a moment her eye seemed about to resume its well-known expression of a belligerent fish. But her spirit was broken. She was not the woman she had been. She had lost the old form.
“Yes. … Yes. … That is to say … I mean, yes,” she replied huskily.
“You called at Mr. Finch’s apartment with no other motive than to tell him this?”
“None. … Or, rather. … No, none.”
“In fact, to put the thing in a nutshell, you wished to find your future son-in-law and fold him in a mother-in-law’s embrace. Am I right?”
This time the pause before Mrs. Waddington found herself able to reply was so marked and the look she directed at George so full of meaning that the latter, always sensitive, could not but wonder whether in refraining from punching her on the nose he was not neglecting his duty as a man and a citizen. She gazed at him long and lingeringly. Then she spoke.
“Quite right,” she said huskily.
“Excellent,” said Hamilton Beamish. “So you see, Garroway, that Mrs. Waddington’s reason for being in the apartment where you found her was wholly admirable. That clears up that point.”
“It doesn’t clear up why she threw pepper in my face.”
Hamilton Beamish nodded.
“There, Garroway,” he said, “you have put your finger on the one aspect of Mrs. Waddington’s behaviour which was not completely unexceptionable. As regards the pepper, you have, it seems to me, legitimate cause for pique and, indeed, solid grounds for an action for assault and battery. But Mrs. Waddington is a reasonable woman, and will, no doubt, be willing to settle this little matter in a way acceptable to all parties.”
“I will pay him whatever he wants,” cried the reasonable woman. “Anything, anything!”
“Hey!”
It was the voice of Sigsbee H. He stood there, forceful and dominant. His cigar had gone out, and he was chewing the dry remains aggressively.
“Say, listen!” said Sigsbee H. Waddington. “If
