Beasts and Super Beasts

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Gorworth, to whom he unburdened himself in private, gave him the same
counsel as heretofore.

"Invent something."

"Yes, but what?"

The ready affirmative coupled with the question betrayed a significant
shifting of the ethical standpoint.

It was a few days later that Blenkinthrope revealed a chapter of family
history to the customary gathering in the railway carriage.

"Curious thing happened to my aunt, the one who lives in Paris," he
began. He had several aunts, but they were all geographically
distributed over Greater London.

"She was sitting on a seat in the Bois the other afternoon, after
lunching at the Roumanian Legation."

Whatever the story gained in picturesqueness from the dragging-in of
diplomatic "atmosphere," it ceased from that moment to command any
acceptance as a record of current events. Gorworth had warned his
neophyte that this would be the case, but the traditional enthusiasm of
the neophyte had triumphed over discretion.

"She was feeling rather drowsy, the effect probably of the champagne,
which she's not in the habit of taking in the middle of the day."

A subdued murmur of admiration went round the company. Blenkinthrope's
aunts were not used to taking champagne in the middle of the year,
regarding it exclusively as a Christmas and New Year accessory.

"Presently a rather portly gentleman passed by her seat and paused an
instant to light a cigar. At that moment a youngish man came up behind
him, drew the blade from a swordstick, and stabbed him half a dozen times
through and through. 'Scoundrel,' he cried to his victim, 'you do not
know me. My name is Henri Leturc.' The elder man wiped away some of the
blood that was spattering his clothes, turned to his assailant, and said:
'And since when has an attempted assassination been considered an
introduction?' Then he finished lighting his cigar and walked away. My
aunt had intended screaming for the police, but seeing the indifference
with which the principal in the affair treated the matter she felt that
it would be an impertinence on her part to interfere. Of course I need
hardly say she put the whole thing down to the effects of a warm, drowsy
afternoon and the Legation champagne. Now comes the astonishing part of
my story. A fortnight later a bank manager was stabbed to death with a
swordstick in that very part of the Bois. His assassin was the son of a
charwoman formerly working at the bank, who had been dismissed from her
job by the manager on account of chronic intemperance. His name was
Henri Leturc."

From that moment Blenkinthrope was tacitly accepted as the Munchausen of
the party. No effort was spared to draw him out from day to day in the
exercise of testing their powers of credulity, and Blenkinthrope, in the
false security of an assured and receptive audience, waxed industrious
and ingenious in supplying the demand for marvels. Duckby's satirical
story of a tame otter that had a tank in the garden to swim in, and
whined restlessly whenever the water-rate was overdue, was scarcely an
unfair parody of some of Blenkinthrope's wilder efforts. And then one
day came Nemesis.

Returning to his villa one evening Blenkinthrope found his wife sitting
in front of a pack of cards, which she was scrutinising with unusual
concentration.

"The same old patience-game?" he asked carelessly.

"No, dear; this is the Death's Head patience, the most difficult of them
all. I've never got it to work out, and somehow I should be rather
frightened if I did. Mother only got it out once in her life; she was
afraid of it, too. Her great-aunt had done it once and fallen dead from
excitement the next moment, and mother always had a feeling that she
would die if she ever got it out. She died the same night that she did
it. She was in bad health at the time, certainly, but it was a strange
coincidence."

"Don't do it if it frightens you," was Blenkinthrope's practical comment
as he left the room. A few minutes later his wife called to him.

"John, it gave me such a turn, I nearly got it out. Only the five of
diamonds held me up at the end. I really thought I'd done it."

"Why, you can do it," said Blenkinthrope, who had come back to the room;
"if you shift the eight of clubs on to that open nine the five can be
moved on to the six."

His wife made the suggested move with hasty, trembling fingers, and piled
the outstanding cards on to their respective packs. Then she followed
the example of her mother and great-grand-aunt.

Blenkinthrope had been genuinely fond of his wife, but in the midst of
his bereavement one dominant thought obtruded itself. Something
sensational and real had at last come into his life; no longer was it a
grey, colourless record. The headlines which might appropriately
describe his domestic tragedy kept shaping themselves in his brain.
"Inherited presentiment comes true." "The Death's Head patience: Card-
game that justified its sinister name in three generations." He wrote
out a full story of the fatal occurrence for the _Essex Vedette_, the
editor of which was a friend of his, and to another friend he gave a
condensed account, to be taken up to the office of one of the halfpenny
dailies. But in both cases his reputation as a romancer stood fatally in
the way of the fulfilment of his ambitions. "Not the right thing to be
Munchausening in a time of sorrow" agreed his friends among themselves,
and a brief note of regret at the "sudden death of the wife of our
respected neighbour, Mr. John Blenkinthrope, from heart failure,"
appearing in the news column of the local paper was the forlorn outcome
of his visions of widespread publicity.

Blenkinthrope shrank from the society of his erstwhile travelling
companions and took to travelling townwards by an earlier train. He
sometimes tries to enlist the sympathy and attention of a chance
acquaintance in details of the whistling prowess of his best canary or
the dimensions of his largest beetroot; he scarcely recognises himself as
the man who was once spoken about and pointed out as the owner of the
Seventh Pullet.




THE BLIND SPOT


"You've just come back from Adelaide's funeral, haven't you?" said Sir
Lulworth to his nephew; "I suppose it was very like most other funerals?"

"I'll tell you all about it at lunch," said Egbert.

"You'll do nothing of the sort. It wouldn't be respectful either to your
great-aunt's memory or to the lunch. We begin with Spanish olives, then
a borshch, then more olives and a bird of some kind, and a rather
enticing Rhenish wine, not at all expensive as wines go in this country,
but still quite laudable in its way. Now there's absolutely nothing in
that menu that harmonises in the least with the subject of your great-
aunt Adelaide or her funeral. She was a charming woman, and quite as
intelligent as she had any need to be, but somehow she always reminded me
of an English cook's idea of a Madras curry."

"She used to say you were frivolous," said Egbert. Something in his tone
suggested that he rather endorsed the verdict.

"I believe I once considerably scandalised her by declaring that clear
soup was a more important factor in life than a clear conscience. She
had very little sense of proportion. By the way, she made you her
principal heir, didn't she?"

"Yes," said Egbert, "and executor as well. It's in that connection that
I particularly want to speak to you."

"Business is not my strong point at any time," said Sir Lulworth, "and
certainly not when we're on the immediate threshold of lunch."

"It isn't exactly business," explained Egbert, as he followed his uncle
into the dining-room.

"It's something rather serious. Very serious."

"Then we can't possibly speak about it now," said Sir Lulworth; "no one
could talk seriously during a borshch. A beautifully constructed
borshch, such as you are going to experience presently, ought not only to
banish conversation but almost to annihilate thought. Later on, when we
arrive at the second stage of olives, I shall be quite ready to discuss
that new book on Borrow, or, if you prefer it, the present situation in
the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg. But I absolutely decline to talk anything
approaching business till we have finished with the bird."

For the greater part of the meal Egbert sat in an abstracted silence, the
silence of a man whose mind is focussed on one topic. When the coffee
stage had been reached he launched himself suddenly athwart his uncle's
reminiscences of the Court of Luxemburg.

"I think I told you that great-aunt Adelaide had made me her executor.
There wasn't very much to be done in the way of legal matters, but I had
to go through her papers."

"That would be a fairly heavy task in itself. I should imagine there
were reams of family letters."

"Stacks of them, and most of them highly uninteresting. There was one
packet, however, which I thought might repay a careful perusal. It was a
bundle of correspondence from her brother Peter."

"The Canon of tragic memory," said Lulworth.

"Exactly, of tragic memory, as you say; a tragedy that has never been
fathomed."

"Probably the simplest explanation was the correct one," said Sir
Lulworth; "he slipped on the stone staircase and fractured his skull in
falling."

Egbert shook his head. "The medical evidence all went to prove that the
blow on the head was struck by some one coming up behind him. A wound
caused by violent contact with the steps could not possibly have been
inflicted at that angle of the skull. They experimented with a dummy
figure falling in every conceivable position."

"But the motive?" exclaimed Sir Lulworth; "no one had any interest in
doing away with him, and the number of people who destroy Canons of the
Established Church for the mere fun of killing must be extremely limited.
Of course there are individuals of weak mental balance who do that sort
of thing, but they seldom conceal their handiwork; they are more
generally inclined to parade it."

"His cook was under suspicion," said Egbert shortly.

"I know he was," said Sir Lulworth, "simply because he was about the only
person on the premises at the time of the tragedy. But could anything be
sillier than trying to fasten a charge of murder on to Sebastien? He had
nothing to gain, in fact, a good deal to lose, from the death of his
employer. The Canon was paying him quite as good wages as I was able to
offer him when I took him over into my service. I have since raised them
to something a little more in accordance with his real worth, but at the
time he was glad to find a new place without troubling about an increase
of wages. People were fighting rather shy of him, and he had no friends
in this country. No; if anyone in the world was interested in the
prolonged life and unimpaired digestion of the Canon it would certainly
be Sebastien."

"People don't always weigh the consequences of their rash acts," said
Egbert, "otherwise there would be very few murders committed. Sebastien
is a man of hot temper."

"He is a southerner," admitted Sir Lulworth; "to be geographically exact
I believe he hails from the French slopes of the Pyrenees. I took that
into consideration when he nearly killed the gardener's boy the other day
for bringing him a spurious substitute for sorrel. One must always make
allowances for origin and locality and early environment; 'Tell me your
longitude and I'll know what latitude to allow you,' is my motto."

"There, you see," said Egbert, "he nearly killed the gardener's boy."

"My dear Egbert, between nearly killing a gardener's boy and altogether
killing a Canon there is a wide difference. No doubt you have often felt
a temporary desire to kill a gardener's boy; you have never given way to
it, and I respect you for your self-control. But I don't suppose you
have ever wanted to kill an octogenarian Canon. Besides, as far as we
know, there had never been any quarrel or disagreement between the two
men. The evidence at the inquest brought that out very clearly."

"Ah!" said Egbert, with the air of a man coming at last into a deferred
inheritance of conversational importance, "that is precisely what I want
to speak to you about."

He pushed away his coffee cup and drew a pocket-book from his inner
breast-pocket. From the depths of the pocket-book he produced an
envelope, and from the envelope he extracted a letter, closely written in
a small, neat handwriting.

"One of the Canon's numerous letters to Aunt Adelaide," he explained,
"written a few days before his death. Her memory was already failing
when she received it, and I daresay she forgot the contents as soon as
she had read it; otherwise, in the light of what subsequently happened,
we should have heard something of this letter before now. If it had been
produced at the inquest I fancy it would have made some difference in the
course of affairs. The evidence, as you remarked just now, choked off
suspicion against Sebastien by disclosing an utter absence of anything
that could be considered a motive or provocation for the crime, if crime
there was."

"Oh, read the letter," said Sir Lulworth impatiently.

"It's a long rambling affair, like most of his letters in his later
years," said Egbert. "I'll read the part that bears immediately on the
mystery.

"'I very much fear I shall have to get rid of Sebastien. He cooks
divinely, but he has the temper of a fiend or an anthropoid ape, and I am
really in bodily fear of him. We had a dispute the other day as to the
correct sort of lunch to be served on Ash Wednesday, and I got so
irritated and annoyed at his conceit and obstinacy that at last I threw a
cupful of coffee in his face and called him at the same time an impudent
jackanapes. Very little of the coffee went actually in his face, but I
have never seen a human being show such deplorable lack of self-control.
I laughed at the threat of killing me that he spluttered out in his rage,
and thought the whole thing would blow over, but I have several times
since caught him scowling and muttering in a highly unpleasant fashion,
and lately I have fancied that he was dogging my footsteps about the
grounds, particularly when I walk of an evening in the Italian Garden.'

"It was on the steps in the Italian Garden that the body was found,"
commented Egbert, and resumed reading.

"'I daresay the danger is imaginary; but I shall feel more at ease when
he has quitted my service.'"

Egbert paused for a moment at the conclusion of the extract; then, as his
uncle made no remark, he added: "If lack of motive was the only factor
that saved Sebastien from prosecution I fancy this letter will put a
different complexion on matters."

"Have you shown it to anyone else?" asked Sir Lulworth, reaching out his
hand for the incriminating piece of paper.

"No," said Egbert, handing it across the table, "I thought I would tell
you about it first. Heavens, what are you doing?"

Egbert's voice rose almost to a scream. Sir Lulworth had flung the paper
well and truly into the glowing centre of the grate. The small, neat
handwriting shrivelled into black flaky nothingness.

"What on earth did you do that for?" gasped Egbert. "That letter was our
one piece of evidence to connect Sebastien with the crime."

"That is why I destroyed it," said Sir Lulworth.

"But why should you want to shield him?" cried Egbert; "the man is a
common murderer."

"A common murderer, possibly, but a very uncommon cook."




DUSK


Norman Gortsby sat on a bench in the Park, with his back to a strip of
bush-planted sward, fenced by the park railings, and the Row fronting him
across a wide stretch of carriage drive. Hyde Park Corner, with its
rattle and hoot of traffic, lay immediately to his right. It was some
thirty minutes past six on an early March evening, and dusk had fallen
heavily over the scene, dusk mitigated by some faint moonlight and many
street lamps. There was a wide emptiness over road and sidewalk, and yet
there were many unconsidered figures moving silently through the half-
light, or dotted unobtrusively on bench and chair, scarcely to be
distinguished from the shadowed gloom in which they sat.

The scene pleased Gortsby and harmonised with his present mood. Dusk, to
his mind, was the hour of the defeated. Men and women, who had fought
and lost, who hid their fallen fortunes and dead hopes as far as possible
from the scrutiny of the curious, came forth in this hour of gloaming,
when their shabby clothes and bowed shoulders and unhappy eyes might pass
unnoticed, or, at any rate, unrecognised.

A king that is conquered must see strange looks,
So bitter a thing is the heart of man.

The wanderers in the dusk did not choose to have strange looks fasten on
them, therefore they came out in this bat-fashion, taking their pleasure
sadly in a pleasure-ground that had emptied of its rightful occupants.
Beyond the sheltering screen of bushes and palings came a realm of
brilliant lights and noisy, rushing traffic. A blazing, many-tiered
stretch of windows shone through the dusk and almost dispersed it,
marking the haunts of those other people, who held their own in life's
struggle, or at any rate had not had to admit failure. So Gortsby's
imagination pictured things as he sat on his bench in the almost deserted
walk. He was in the mood to count himself among the defeated. Money
troubles did not press on him; had he so wished he could have strolled
into the thoroughfares of light and noise, and taken his place among the
jostling ranks of those who enjoyed prosperity or struggled for it. He
had failed in a more subtle ambition, and for the moment he was heartsore
and disillusionised, and not disinclined to take a certain cynical
pleasure in observing and labelling his fellow wanderers as they went
their ways in the dark stretches between the lamp-lights.

On the bench by his side sat an elderly gentleman with a drooping air of
defiance that was probably the remaining vestige of self-respect in an
individual who had ceased to defy successfully anybody or anything. His
clothes could scarcely be called shabby, at least they passed muster in
the half-light, but one's imagination could not have pictured the wearer
embarking on the purchase of a half-crown box of chocolates or laying out
ninepence on a carnation buttonhole. He belonged unmistakably to that
forlorn orchestra to whose piping no one dances; he was one of the
world's lamenters who induce no responsive weeping. As he rose to go
Gortsby imagined him returning to a home circle where he was snubbed and
of no account, or to some bleak lodging where his ability to pay a weekly
bill was the beginning and end of the interest he inspired. His
retreating figure vanished slowly into the shadows, and his place on the
bench was taken almost immediately by a young man, fairly well dressed
but scarcely more cheerful of mien than his predecessor. As if to
emphasise the fact that the world went badly with him the new-corner
unburdened himself of an angry and very audible expletive as he flung
himself into the seat.

"You don't seem in a very good temper," said Gortsby, judging that he was
expected to take due notice of the demonstration.

The young man turned to him with a look of disarming frankness which put
him instantly on his guard.

"You wouldn't be in a good temper if you were in the fix I'm in," he
said; "I've done the silliest thing I've ever done in my life."

"Yes?" said Gortsby dispassionately.

"Came up this afternoon, meaning to stay at the Patagonian Hotel in
Berkshire Square," continued the young man; "when I got there I found it
had been pulled down some weeks ago and a cinema theatre run up on the
site. The taxi driver recommended me to another hotel some way off and I
went there. I just sent a letter to my people, giving them the address,
and then I went out to buy some soap--I'd forgotten to pack any and I
hate using hotel soap. Then I strolled about a bit, had a drink at a bar
and looked at the shops, and when I came to turn my steps back to the
hotel I suddenly realised that I didn't remember its name or even what
street it was in. There's a nice predicament for a fellow who hasn't any
friends or connections in London! Of course I can wire to my people for
the address, but they won't have got my letter till to-morrow; meantime
I'm without any money, came out with about a shilling on me, which went
in buying the soap and getting the drink, and here I am, wandering about
with twopence in my pocket and nowhere to go for the night."

There was an eloquent pause after the story had been told. "I suppose
you think I've spun you rather an impossible yarn," said the young man
presently, with a suggestion of resentment in his voice.

"Not at all impossible," said Gortsby judicially; "I remember doing
exactly the same thing once in a foreign capital, and on that occasion
there were two of us, which made it more remarkable. Luckily we
remembered that the hotel was on a sort of canal, and when we struck the
canal we were able to find our way back to the hotel."

The youth brightened at the reminiscence. "In a foreign city I wouldn't
mind so much," he said; "one could go to one's Consul and get the
requisite help from him. Here in one's own land one is far more derelict
if one gets into a fix. Unless I can find some decent chap to swallow my
story and lend me some money I seem likely to spend the night on the
Embankment. I'm glad, anyhow, that you don't think the story
outrageously improbable."

He threw a good deal of warmth into the last remark, as though perhaps to
indicate his hope that Gortsby did not fall far short of the requisite
decency.

"Of course," said Gortsby slowly, "the weak point of your story is that
you can't produce the soap."

The young man sat forward hurriedly, felt rapidly in the pockets of his
overcoat, and then jumped to his feet.

"I must have lost it," he muttered angrily.

"To lose an hotel and a cake of soap on one afternoon suggests wilful
carelessness," said Gortsby, but the young man scarcely waited to hear
the end of the remark. He flitted away down the path, his head held
high, with an air of somewhat jaded jauntiness.

"It was a pity," mused Gortsby; "the going out to get one's own soap was
the one convincing touch in the whole story, and yet it was just that
little detail that brought him to grief. If he had had the brilliant
forethought to provide himself with a cake of soap, wrapped and sealed
with all the solicitude of the chemist's counter, he would have been a
genius in his particular line. In his particular line genius certainly
consists of an infinite capacity for taking precautions."

With that reflection Gortsby rose to go; as he did so an exclamation of
concern escaped him. Lying on the ground by the side of the bench was a
small oval packet, wrapped and sealed with the solicitude of a chemist's
counter. It could be nothing else but a cake of soap, and it had
evidently fallen out of the youth's overcoat pocket when he flung himself
down on the seat. In another moment Gortsby was scudding along the dusk-
shrouded path in anxious quest for a youthful figure in a light overcoat.
He had nearly given up the search when he caught sight of the object of
his pursuit standing irresolutely on the border of the carriage drive,
evidently uncertain whether to strike across the Park or make for the
bustling pavements of Knightsbridge. He turned round sharply with an air
of defensive hostility when he found Gortsby hailing him.

"The important witness to the genuineness of your story has turned up,"
said Gortsby, holding out the cake of soap; "it must have slid out of
your overcoat pocket when you sat down on the seat. I saw it on the
ground after you left. You must excuse my disbelief, but appearances
were really rather against you, and now, as I appealed to the testimony
of the soap I think I ought to abide by its verdict. If the loan of a
sovereign is any good to you--"

The young man hastily removed all doubt on the subject by pocketing the
coin.

"Here is my card with my address," continued Gortsby; "any day this week
will do for returning the money, and here is the soap--don't lose it
again it's been a good friend to you."

"Lucky thing your finding it," said the youth, and then, with a catch in
his voice, he blurted out a word or two of thanks and fled headlong in
the direction of Knightsbridge.

"Poor boy, he as nearly as possible broke down," said Gortsby to himself.
"I don't wonder either; the relief from his quandary must have been
acute. It's a lesson to me not to be too clever in judging by
circumstances."

As Gortsby retraced his steps past the seat where the little drama had
taken place he saw an elderly gentleman poking and peering beneath it and
on all sides of it, and recognised his earlier fellow occupant.

"Have you lost anything, sir?" he asked.

"Yes, sir, a cake of soap."




A TOUCH OF REALISM


"I hope you've come full of suggestions for Christmas," said Lady Blonze
to her latest arrived guest; "the old-fashioned Christmas and the up-to-
date Christmas are both so played out. I want to have something really
original this year."