"I am," said I. "You quite took me by surprise. I should have made myself more presentable if I had known—"
"Well, let's move on upstairs," said Rocksworth. Addressing the porters he said: "You fellows get this lot of stuff together and I'll take an option on it. I'll be over to-morrow to close the deal, Mr.—Mr.—Now, where is the old Florentine mirror the Count was telling us about?"
"The Count?" said I, frowning.
"Yes, the real owner. You can't stuff me with your talk about being the proprietor here, my friend. You see, we happen to know the Count."
They all condescended to laugh at me. I don't know what I should have said or done if Britton had not returned with a box of matches at that instant—sulphur matches which added subtly to the growing illusion.
Almost simultaneously there appeared in the lower hall a lanky youth of eighteen. He was a loud-voiced, imperious sort of chap with at least three rolls to his trousers and a plum-coloured cap.
"Say, these clubs are the real stuff, all right, all right. They're as brittle as glass. See what I did to 'em. We can hae 'em spliced and rewound and I'll hang 'em on my wall. All I want is the heads anyhow."
He held up to view a headless mid-iron and brassie, and triumphantly waved a splendid cleek. My favourite clubs! I could play better from a hanging lie with that beautiful brassie than with any club I ever owned and as for the iron, I was deadly with it.
He lit a cigarette and threw the match into a pile of shavings. Old Conrad returned to life at that instant and stamped out the incipient blaze.
"I shouldn't consider them very good clubs, Harold, if they break off like that," said his mother.
"What do you know about clubs?" he snapped, and I at once knew what class he was in at the preparatory school.
If I was ever like one of these, said I to myself, God rest the sage soul of my Uncle Rilas!
The situation was no longer humorous. I could put up with anything but the mishandling of my devoted golf clubs.
Striding up to him, I snatched the remnants from his hands.
"You infernal cub!" I roared. "Haven't you any more sense than to smash a golf club like that? For two cents I'd break this putter over your head."
"Father!" he yelled indignantly. "Who is this mucker?"
Mr. Rocksworth bounced toward me, his cane raised. I whirled upon him.
"How dare you!" he shouted. The ladies squealed.
If he expected me to cringe, he was mightily mistaken. My blood was up. I advanced.
"Paste him, Dad!" roared Harold.
But Mr. Rocksworth suddenly altered his course and put the historic treaty table between him and me. He didn't like the appearance of my rather brawny fist.
"You big stiff!" shouted Harold. Afterwards it occurred to me that this inelegant appellation may have been meant for his father, but at the time I took it to be aimed at me.
Before Harold quite knew what was happening to him, he was prancing down the long hall with my bony fingers grasping his collar. Coming to the door opening into the outer vestibule, I drew back my foot for a final aid to locomotion. Acutely recalling the fact that slippers are not designed for kicking purposes, I raised my foot, removed the slipper and laid it upon a taut section of his trousers with all of the melancholy force that I usually exert in slicing my drive off the tee. I shall never forget the exquisite spasm of pleasure his plaintive "Ouch!" gave me.
Then Harold passed swiftly out of my life.
Mr. Rocksworth, reinforced by four reluctant mercenaries in the shape of porters, was advancing upon me. Somehow I had a vague, but unerring instinct that some one had fainted, but I didn't stop to inquire. Without much ado, I wrested the cane from him and sent it scuttling after Harold.
"Now, get out!" I roared.
"You shall pay for this!" he sputtered, quite black in the face. "Grab him, you infernal cowards!"
But the four porters slunk away, and Mr. Rocksworth faced me alone. Rudolph and Max, thoroughly fed and most prodigious, were bearing down upon us, accounting for the flight of the mercenaries.
"Get out!" I repeated. "I am the owner of this place, Mr. Rocksworth, and I am mad through and through. Skip!"
"I'll have the law—"
"Law be hanged!"
"If it costs me a million, I'll get—"
"It will cost you a million if you don't get!" I advised him, seeing that he paused for want of breath.
I left him standing there, but had the presence of mind to wave my huge henchmen away. Mr. Riley-Werkheimer approached, but very pacifically. He was paler than he will ever be again in his life, I fear.
"This is most distressing, most distressing, Mr.— Mr.— ahem! I've never been so outraged in my life. I—but, wait!" He had caught the snap in my atavistic eye. "I am not seeking trouble. We will go, sir. I—I—I think my wife has quite recovered. Are—are you all right, my dear?"
I stood aside and let them file past me. Mrs. Riley-Werkheimer moved very nimbly for one who had just been revived by smelling-salts. As her husband went by, he half halted in front of me. A curious glitter leaped into his fishy eyes.
"I'd give a thousand dollars to be free to do what you did to that insufferable puppy, Mr.—Mr.—ahem. A cool thousand, damn him!"
I had my coffee upstairs, far removed from the onions. A racking headache set in. Never again will I go without my coffee so long. It always gives me a headache.
CHAPTER III—I CONVERSE WITH A MYSTERY
Late in the afternoon, I opened my door, hoping that the banging of hammers and the buzz of industry would have ceased, but alas! the noise was even more deafening than before. I was still in a state of nerves over the events of the morning. There had been a most distressing lack of poise on my part, and I couldn't help feeling after it was all over that my sense of humour had received a shock from which it was not likely to recover in a long time. There was but little consolation in the reflection that my irritating visitors deserved something in the shape of a rebuff; I could not separate myself from the conviction that my integrity as a gentleman had suffered in a mistaken conflict with humour. My headache, I think, was due in a large measure to the sickening fear that I had made a fool of myself, notwithstanding my efforts to make fools of them. My day was spoilt. My plans were upset and awry.
Espying Britton in the gloomy corridor, I shouted to him, and he came at once.
"Britton," said I, as he closed the door, "do you think they will carry out their threat to have the law on me? Mr. Rocksworth was very angry—and put out. He is a power, as you know."
"I think you are quite safe, sir," said he. "I've been waiting outside since two o'clock to tell you something, sir, but hated to disturb you. I—"
"Thank you, Britton, my head was aching dreadfully."
"Yes, sir. Quite so. Shortly before two, sir, one of the porters from the hotel came over to recover a gold purse Mrs. Riley-Werkheimer had dropped in the excitement, and he informed Mr. Poopendyke that the whole party was leaving at four for Dresden. I asked particular about the young man, sir, and he said they had the doctor in to treat his stomach, sir, immediately after they got back to the hotel."
"His stomach? But I distinctly struck him on the verso."