The Blind Barber

Morgan looked him over as he sat stiffly upright at the breakfast-table, holding a fork with its prongs against the cloth and e-nun-ci-a-ting his words through stiff jaws. There was nothing effeminate or lackadaisical about Mr. Leslie Perrigord, that element which most irritated Morgan in the species intellectual. Mr. Perrigord looked as though he could pull his weight in a crew or handle a skittish horse. A tall lath with thin blond hair, a hooked nose, and a mummified eye, he simply talked. He looked at nothing in particular. He seemed far away. If you had not seen the feathery blond moustache floating as in an icy breeze, you would have sworn it was an effect of ventriloquism. But (once started) he showed no disposition to leave off talking.

A measured stream of hooey flowing from Mr. Perrigord's lips in concise cadences was checked by Peggy only when it became necessary for Perrigord to wind himself up with ice-water. She said:

'Oh, I say, excuse me! I'm so sorry to interrupt you, but I must present two very good friends of mine. Mr. Warren, Mr. Morgan… '

'De-do?' said Mrs. Perrigord, sepulchrally.

'Oh?' said Mr. Perrigord. He seemed vaguely annoyed. He had just kicked Shakespeare in the eye and mashed the hat of Ben Jonson; and Morgan felt he was ruffled at being interrupted. 'Oh? Delighted, I'm sure. I was — ah — mentioning some of the more elementary points, en passant, in the talk I have been asked to deliver at the ship's concert to-night.' He smiled thinly. 'But — ah — I fear I shall bore you. It is merely a talk serving as an introductory speech to the performance of M. Fortinbras's marionettes. I fear—'

'But of course they'll be interested, Mr. Perrigord!' crowed Peggy, with enthusiasm. 'Curt, I was just telling Mr. and Mrs. Perrigord about the time in Dubuque when the Knight Oliver got his pants split in the battle with the Moors, and they had to lower the curtain because all the sawdust came out of him, and he had to be sewed up again before uncle would go on with the play. Mr. Perrigord said it was charming, a charming detail. Didn't you, Mr. Perrigord?'

'Quite, Miss Glenn,' said the oracle, benevolently (for him), but he looked as if he wished the others would go and let him get back to literature. He showed that heavy sort of politeness which grows acutely uncomfortable in the air. 'Quite charming. These little details. But surely I am boring these gentlemen, who can have no conceivable interest… ?'

'But just fancy,' continued Peggy, appealing to Morgan. 'Hank, you villain, I've lost my bet to you, after all. And now I'll have to stand the cocktails, and it's a terrible shame. Don't you think so, dear Mr. Perrigord?'

Warren did not like this at all.

'Bet?' he said. 'What bet? Who made a bet?'

Somebody kicked him in the shins. 'Because,' the girl went on, 'after all my tam-o'-shanter didn't blow in the porthole of Mr. Perrigord's cabin last night. It's beastly luck, because now I've probably lost it; but it didn't, and there's that. Just before Mr. Perrigord began talking so wonderfully' — here she raised earnest, awed, soft eyes for a moment and kept them fixed on Perrigord's countenance.

He cleared his throat. A sort of paralytic leer passed over his face. Warren saw it. So did Mrs. Perrigord —'just before Mr. Perrigord began talking so wonderfully, he told me he'd found nothing in the cabin at all, and I'm afraid now I must have lost that nice tam of mine.'

'No deu-oubt,' said Mrs. Perrigord, giving Peggy a nasty look through her monocle. 'It was quayte dark on deck, wasn't it, my de-ah?'

'Quayte. And, I say, these men do take such advantage of us, don't they, Mrs. Perrigord? I mean, I think it's simply awful; but after all what can one do? I mean, it's much better to submit than cause a terrible lot of fuss and bother, isn't it?'

'Well, re-aolly!' said Mrs. Perrigord, stiffening. 'I confess I scarcely kneow. To — to one at a time, perhaps. But — ah — reaolly, my deah, since I am olmost certain I heard at least six intoxicated men carousing out the-ah, I confess I should not have been at oil surprised to find on our floor considerably moah than a tam-o'-shanter. As I observed to the steward at the time—'

'To the steward?' asked Peggy wonderingly. 'But, Mrs. Perrigord, wherever was your husband?'

Mrs. Perrigord's husband, who now seemed to despair of getting back to the serious business of sitting on literary hats, interposed:

'Most refreshing, Miss Glenn. Most refreshing. Ha-ha! I like the outspoken views, the free and untrammelled straightforwardness of our youth to-day, which is not by ancient prejudice cabined, cribbed, and confined… ' At this point, Mrs. Perrigord looked as though, if she were not by ancient prejudice cabined, cribbed, and confined, she would up and dot him one with a plate of kippers. 'I— in short, I like it. But you must not mind my wife. Ha- ha!'

'Oh?' said Mrs. Perrigord.

'Come, come, Cynthia. Jeunesse, jeunesse. A trifle of exuberant 'seizing the moment,' so to speak. Remember what D. H. Lawrence said to James Joyce. Ha-ha-ha!'

'My deah Leslie,' said Mrs. Perrigord coldly, 'Babylonian orgies and revels of Ishtar a la Pierre Louys are oil very well in books. But if it is to youah aesthetic taste to have these rites peahfoahmed oil ovah the deck of a respectable linah undah youah window at 2 a.m., I must say I caon't agree. And I must insist on explaining to this young lady that muh relations with the cabin steward were — ah— puahly those of business —'

'Coo!' said Peggy.

'— and were confined,' went on Mrs. Perrigord, in a louder voice, 'to ringing the bell, unbolting the doah, and asking him whethah (as my husband will inform you) something could be done to stop the noise. I can assuah you that I slept no moah oil night.'

Mr. Perrigord said mildly that you had got to remember what James Joyce said to D. H. Lawrence. Morgan felt that he had better do something to culminate this exchange of dirty digs before it reached the hair-pulling stage. All the same, he was aghast. The emerald had to be somewhere. He held no brief for either Lord Sturton or Captain Whistler, but the fact remained that they had pinched a fifty-thousand-pound jewel and thrown it through the porthole of one of those two cabins. If the emerald had somehow incredibly vanished, it meant the vanishing of Sturton's money and probably Whistler's official head. Something was wrong. Kyle said it wasn't in his cabin, and there was testimony to prove the Barber could not have lifted it from there. On the other hand, the Perrigords were awake; noticed the row; would certainly have noticed anything thrown in, and certainly could not have missed it this morning. His bewilderment grew, and he desperately sought for a new lead…

So Morgan assumed his most winning smile (although he felt it stretch like a hideous mask) and spoke flattering, soothing, cajoling words to Mrs. Perrigord. She was not at all bad-looking, by the way; and he went to work with gusto. While Warren stared at him, he sympathised with her and apologised angrily for the behaviour of whatever disgusting revellers had disturbed her sleep. He intimated that, no matter what might have been the conversation between those two notorious old rips James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence, it had been in very bad taste.

'… But to tell you the truth, Mrs. Perrigord,' said

Morgan, leaning confidingly over her chair, 'I heard that disturbance, too; and, though I can't say, since of course I wasn't there, you understand…'

'Oh, quayte!' said Mrs. Perrigord, relaxing a good deal and much less stiffly indicating that he had her royal ear. 'Yes?'

'… still, I should have said it sounded less like — well, shall we say Dionysian revelry? — than simply a free- for-all scrap. Er, fisticuffs, you know,' explained Morgan, seeking the highbrow mot juste. 'Especially as (if you'll forgive my saying so, Mrs. Perrigord) that a lady of your charm and knowledge of refinements in sensual indulgence would probably take a light view of men's and women's frailties if only they were staged with any degree of delicacy. Furthermore—'

'Well, no, reaolly!' said Mrs. Perrigord, looking arch. 'Come now, Mr. Morgan, you can scarcely expect muh to agree altogether with that, can you? Heh-heh-heh!'

'Sure! Absolutely, Mrs. Perrigord!' said Warren. He perceived that Hank: was trying to win the old girl over, and stoutly tried to help the good work along. 'We know you're a good sport. Absolutely. Remember what the travelling salesman said to the farmer's daughter.'

'Shut up,' said Morgan out of the corner of his mouth. 'And naturally I suppose this idea of a fight occurred to you, too. Gad! I wonder you didn't get up and bolt the door, Mrs. Perrigord, in case those drunken ba — ah — in