Short Fiction

guests’ name written in a little square on the door. In the hush that reigned in this part of the house he could still hear the hateful click-click of the balls; if he waited for a few minutes longer he would hear the little outbreak of clapping and buzz of congratulation that would hail Strinnit’s victory. On the alert tension of his nerves there broke another sound, the aggressive, wrath-inducing breathing of one who sleeps in heavy after-dinner slumber. The sound came from a room just at his elbow; the card on the door bore the announcement “Mrs. Thundleford.” The door was just slightly ajar; Rex pushed it open an inch or two more and looked in. The august Teresa had fallen asleep over an illustrated guide to Florentine art-galleries; at her side, somewhat dangerously near the edge of the table, was a reading-lamp. If Fate had been decently kind to him, thought Rex, bitterly, that lamp would have been knocked over by the sleeper and would have given them something to think of besides billiard matches.

There are occasions when one must take one’s Fate in one’s hands. Rex took the lamp in his.

“Two hundred and thirty-seven, one hundred and fifteen.” Strinnit was at the table, and the balls lay in good position for him; he had a choice of two fairly easy shots, a choice which he was never to decide. A sudden hurricane of shrieks and a rush of stumbling feet sent everyone flocking to the door. The Dillot boy crashed into the room, carrying in his arms the vociferous and somewhat dishevelled Teresa Thundleford; her clothing was certainly not a mass of flames, as the more excitable members of the party afterwards declared, but the edge of her skirt and part of the table-cover in which she had been hastily wrapped were alight in a flickering, halfhearted manner. Rex flung his struggling burden on the billiard table, and for one breathless minute the work of beating out the sparks with rugs and cushions and playing on them with soda-water syphons engrossed the energies of the entire company.

“It was lucky I was passing when it happened,” panted Rex; “someone had better see to the room, I think the carpet is alight.”

As a matter of fact the promptitude and energy of the rescuer had prevented any great damage being done, either to the victim or her surroundings. The billiard table had suffered most, and had to be laid up for repairs; perhaps it was not the best place to have chosen for the scene of salvage operations; but then, as Clovis remarked, when one is rushing about with a blazing woman in one’s arms one can’t stop to think out exactly where one is going to put her.

The Romance of Business

“Ring for some more tea,” said Margaret Sangrail to her nephew; “Sophie Chabhouse has just been here, and I always give her inferior tea in my most valuable tea service. The fact that she can neither drink the tea nor carry away the teacup fills her with acute anguish, which I find much more amusing than filling her with Lapsang Souchong.”

“I’m afraid you’re not very fond of Cousin Sophie,” said Clovis.

“I make it a rule to like my relations,” said Margaret; “I remember only their good qualities and forget their birthdays. Still, when a woman is as indecently rich and as incredibly mean and as unpardonably boastful as Sophie is, a little malicious tail-twisting becomes not merely a pleasure but an absolute duty.”

“The boasting is certainly rather unendurable,” admitted Clovis; “I met her at lunch yesterday at the Cuverings, and she could talk of nothing else but a fur stole she’d just bought, Lake Baikal beaver, cost her seventy guineas after a fortnight’s haggling, probably worth a hundred, and so on, all through lunch time.”

“I heard about that stole from about seven different people,” said Margaret placidly, “and when Sophie invited herself to tea I knew that she was coming to flaunt it at me. I just telephoned to Multevey & Princk to send me on approval the best thing in Lake Baikal beaver that they had in stock. When Sophie arrived the first thing she saw was the newly unpacked stole hanging over the back of a chair. ‘Why!’ she exclaimed, ‘Lake Baikal beaver! Exactly like my new stole.’ ‘Exactly like,’ I agreed, ‘only a bit larger, and if you don’t mind my saying so, rather better quality. In fact it’s rather better than I can afford. They’re asking sixty-two guineas for it.’ ‘Sixty-two!’ screamed Sophie, ‘why I gave⁠—’ ‘Sir Hartley Timming, the greatest living authority on furs, was lunching with me today,’ I said, ‘and he put its value at about sixty, and I daresay they’d let me have it for that, but he strongly advised me not to buy Lake Baikal beaver if I wanted to be in the fashion. “Only second-rate chorus girls and Viennese parvenus wear it,” he said, “and all the really well-dressed women are going in for the fur of the soda-mink, that comes from the great soda plains of Northern Alaska.” “Still,” I said, “beaver is a pretty fur and I never bother much about fashion, and if I could get it for sixty I would think about it,” ’ and before I could say another word Sophie was weeping and raving and begging me to buy her stole off her. She said she had never really fancied it and had bought it against her better judgment, and had seen a soda mink stole that she really hankered after, and couldn’t afford to have both. Finally I took pity on her and bought her seventy guinea beaver at my own figure. Altogether I rather enjoyed her visit.”

“I thought I knew something about fur,” said Clovis, “but I can’t say that I ever heard of Alaska soda-mink before.”

“There isn’t such an animal,” said Margaret, “and there isn’t such a person as Sir Hartley Timming, and the real price that