Mrs Weston rapidly took a great quantity of mouthfuls of partridge. As soon as possible she went on.
“So perhaps you can tell me where it is now, if it was for Mr Georgie,” she said. “I was there only two days ago, and it wasn’t in his hall, or in his dining room, or in his drawing room, for though there are changes there, that settle isn’t one of them. It’s his treasure case that’s so altered. The snuff-box is gone, and the cigarette case and the piece of Bow china, and instead there’s a rat-tail spoon which he used to have on his dinner-table, and made a great fuss with, and a bit of Worcester china that used to stand on the mantelpiece, and a different cigarette case, and a bead-bag. I don’t know where that came from, but if he inherited it, he didn’t inherit much that time, I priced it at five shillings. But there’s no settle in the treasure-case or out of it, and if you want to know where that settle is, it’s in Old Place, because I saw it there myself, when the door was open, as I passed. He bought it—Mr Georgie—on behalf of Miss Bracely, unless you suppose that Mr Georgie is going to live in Old Place one day and his own house the next. No; it’s Miss Bracely who is going to live at ‘Old Place’ and that explains the landlord saying ‘Miss’ and then stopping. For some reason, and I daresay that won’t puzzle me long, now I can give my mind to it, she’s making a secret about it, and only Mr Georgie and the landlord of the Arms know. Of course he had to, for ‘Old Place’ is his, and I wish I had bought it myself now, for he got it for an old song.”
“Well, by Jove, you have pieced it together finely,” said Colonel Boucher.
“Wait a bit,” said Mrs Weston, rising to her climax. “This very day, when Mary, that’s my cook as you know, was coming back from Brinton with that bit of brill we’ve been eating, for they hadn’t got an ounce of turbot, which I wanted, a luggage-train was standing at Riseholme station, and they had just taken out of it a case that could have held nothing but a grand piano. And if that’s not enough for you, Colonel, there were two big dress-baskets as well, which I think must have contained linen, for they were corded, and it took two men to move each of them, so Mary said, and there’s nothing so heavy as linen properly packed, unless it’s plate, and there printed on them in black—no, it would be white, because the dress-baskets are black, were two initials, O.B. And if you can point to another O.B. in Riseholme I shall think I’ve lost my memory.”
At this moment of supreme climax, the telephone-bell rang in the hall, shrill through the noise of cracking walnuts, and in came Elizabeth with the news that Mr Georgie wanted to know if he might come in for half-an-hour and chat. If it had been Olga Bracely herself, she could hardly have been more welcome; virtue (the virtue of observation and inference) was receiving its immediate reward.
“Delighted; say I’m delighted, Elizabeth,” said Mrs Weston, “and now, Colonel, why should you sit all alone here, and I all alone in the drawing room? Bring your decanter and your glass with you, and you shall spare me half a glass for myself, and if you can’t guess what one of the questions that I shall ask Mr Georgie is: well—”
Georgie made haste to avail himself of this hospitality for he was bursting with the most important news that had been his since the night of the burglaries. Today he had received permission to let it be known that Olga was coming to Old Place, for Mr Shuttleworth had been informed of the purchase and furnishing of the house, and had, as expected, presented his wife with it, a really magnificent gift. So now Riseholme might know, too, and Georgie, as eager as Hermes, if not quite so swift, tripped across to Mrs Weston’s, on his delightful errand. It was, too, of the nature of just such a punitive expedition as Georgie thoroughly enjoyed, for Lucia all this week had been rather haughty and cold with him for his firm refusal to tell her who the purchaser of Old Place was. He had admitted that he knew, but had said that he was under promise not to reveal that, until permitted and Lucia had been haughty in consequence. She had, in fact, been so haughty that when Georgie rang her up just now, before ringing Mrs Weston up, to ask if he might spend an hour after dinner there, fully intending to tell her the great news, she had replied through her parlour-maid that she was very busy at the piano. Very well, if she preferred the second and third movements of the Moonlight Sonata, which she had seriously taken in hand, to Georgie’s company, why, he would offer himself and his great news elsewhere. But he determined not to bring it out at once; that sort of thing must be kept till he said it was time to go away. Then he would bring it out, and depart in the blaze of Success.
He had brought a pretty piece of embroidery with him to occupy himself with, for his work had fallen into sad arrears during August, and he settled himself comfortably down close to the light, so that at the cost of very little eye-strain, he need not put on his spectacles.
“Any news?” he asked, according to the invariable formula. Mrs Weston caught the Colonel’s eye. She was not proposing to bring out her tremendous interrogation just yet.
“Poor Mrs Antrobus. Toothache!” she said. “I was in the chemist’s this morning and who should come in but Miss Piggy, and she wanted a drop of laudanum and had to say what it was for, and even then she had to sign a paper. Very unpleasant, I call it, to be obliged to let a chemist know that your mother has a toothache. But there it was, tell him she had to, or go away without any laudanum. I don’t know whether Mr Doubleday wasn’t asking more than he should, just out of inquisitiveness, for I don’t see what business it is of his. I know what I should have said: ‘Oh, Mr Doubleday, I want it to make laudanum tartlets, we are all so fond of laudanum tartlets.’ Something sharp and sarcastic like that, to show him his place. But I expect it did Mrs Antrobus good, for there she was on the green in the afternoon, and her face wasn’t swollen for I had a good look at her. Oh, and there was something I wanted to ask you, Mr Georgie, and I had it on the tip of my tongue a moment ago. We talked about it at dinner, the Colonel and I, while we were eating our bit of partridge, and I thought ‘Mr Georgie will be sure to be able to tell us,’ and if you didn’t ring up on the telephone immediately afterwards! That seemed just Providential, but what’s the use of that, if I can’t remember what it was that I wanted to ask you.”
This seemed a good opening for his startling news, but Georgie rejected it, as it was too early yet. “I wonder what it could have been,” he said.
“Well, it will come back to me presently, and here’s our coffee, and I see Elizabeth hasn’t forgotten to bring a drop of something good for you two gentlemen. And I don’t say that I won’t join you, if Elizabeth will bring another glass. What with a glass of Burgundy at my dinner, and a drop of brandy now, I shall be quite tipsy unless I take care. The Guru now, Mr Georgie, no, that’s not what I wanted to ask you about—but has there been any news of the Guru?”
For a moment in this juxtaposition of the topics of brandy and Guru, Georgie was afraid that something might have leaked out about the contents of the cupboard in Othello. But it was evidently a chance combination, for Mrs Weston went straight on without waiting for an answer.
“What a day that was,” she said, “when he and Miss Olga Bracely were both at Mrs Lucas’ garden-party. Ah, now I’ve got it; now I know what I wanted to ask. When will Miss Olga Bracely come to live at Old Place? Quite soon now, I suppose.”
If Georgie had not put down his embroidery with great expedition, he would undoubtedly have pricked his finger.
“But how on earth did you know she was coming at all?” he said. “I was just going to tell you that she was coming, as a great bit of news. How tarsome! It’s spoiled all my pleasure.”
“Haw, hum, not a very gallant speech, when you’re talking to Mrs Weston,” said the Colonel, who hated Georgie’s embroidery.
Luckily the pleasure in the punitive part of the expedition remained and Georgie recovered himself. He had some news too; he could answer Mrs Weston’s question.
“But it was to have been such a secret until the whole thing was ready,” he said. “I knew all along; I have known since the day of the garden-party. No one but me, not even her husband.”
He