“Of course he ought to have got rid of him,” said Alec. “Still, sir, there’s nothing, er, disgraceful.”
“It seems hardly to have come to that,” the General admitted reluctantly.
“It all rather makes me like him,” Gertie affirmed courageously.
“I think that, on the whole, we may venture to know him in times of peace,” Mr. Naylor summed up.
“That’s your look out,” remarked the General. “I’ve warned you. You can do as you like.”
Delia Wall had sat silent through the story. Now she spoke up, and got back to the real point:
“There’s nothing in all that to show how he comes to be at Mr. Saffron’s.”
The General shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, Saffron be hanged! He’s not the British Army,” he said.
CHAPTER III. — MR. SAFFRON AT HOME
To put it plainly, Sergeant Hooper—he had been a Sergeant for a brief and precarious three weeks, but he used the title in civil life whenever he safely could, and he could at Inkston—Sergeant Hooper was a villainous-looking dog. Beaumaroy, fresh from the comely presences of Old Place, unconscious of how the General had ripped up his character and record, pleasantly nursing a little project concerning Dr. Mary Arkroyd, had never been more forcibly struck with his protege’s ill-favoredness than when he arrived home on this same evening, and the Sergeant met him at the door.
“By gad, Sergeant,” he observed pleasantly, “I don’t think anybody could be such a rascal as you look. It’s that faith that carries me through.”
The Sergeant helped him off with his coat. “It’s some people’s stock-in-trade,” he remarked, “not to look a rascal like they really are, sir.” The “sir” stuck out of pure habit; it carried no real implication of respect.
“Meaning me!” laughed Beaumaroy. “How’s the old man to-night?”
“Quiet enough. He’s in the Tower there—been there an hour or more.”
The cottage door opened on to a narrow passage, with a staircase on one side, and on the other a door leading to a small square parlor, cheerfully if cheaply furnished, and well lit by an oil lamp. A fire blazed on the hearth, and Beaumaroy sank into a “saddle-bag” armchair beside it, with a sigh of comfort. The Sergeant had jerked his head towards another door, on the right of the fireplace; it led to the Tower. Beaumaroy’s eyes settled on it.
“An hour or more, has he? Have you heard anything?”
“He was making a speech a little while back, that’s all.”
“No more complaints and palpitations, or anything of that sort?”
“Not as I’ve heard. But he never says much to me. Mrs. Wiles gets the benefit of his symptoms mostly.”
“You’re not sympathetic, perhaps.”
During the talk Hooper had been to a cupboard and mixed a glass of whisky and soda. He brought it to Beaumaroy and put it on a small table by him. Beaumaroy regarded his squat paunchy figure, red face, small eyes (a squint in one of them), and bulbous nose with a patient and benign toleration.
“Since you can’t expect, Sergeant, to prepossess the judge and jury in your favor, the instant you make your appearance in the box—”
“Here, what are you on to, sir?”
“It’s the more important for you to have it clearly in your mind that we are laboring in the cause of humanity, freedom, and justice. Exactly like the Allies in the late war, you know, Sergeant. Keep that in your mind, clinch it! He hasn’t wanted you to do anything particular to-night, or asked for me?”
“No, sir. He’s happy with—with what you call his playthings.”
“What are they but playthings?” asked Beaumaroy, tilting his glass to his lips with a smile perhaps a little wry.
“Only I wish as you wouldn’t talk about judges and juries,” the Sergeant complained.
“I really don’t know whether it’s a civil or a criminal matter, or both, or neither,” Beaumaroy admitted candidly. “But what we do know, Sergeant, is that it provides us with excellent billets and rations. Moreover, a thing that you certainly will not appreciate, it gratifies my taste for the mysterious.”
“I hope there’s a bit more coming from it than that,” said the Sergeant. “That is, if we stick together faithful, sir.”
“Oh, we shall! One thing puzzles me about you, Sergeant. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before. Sometimes you speak almost like an educated man; at others your speech is, well, illiterate.”
“Well, sir, it’s a sort of mixture of my mother; she was class, the blighter who come after my father, and the Board School—”
“Of course! What they call the educational ladder! That explains it. By the way, I’m thinking of changing our doctor.”
“Good job, too. I ‘ate that Irechester. Stares at you, that chap does.”
“Does he stare at your eyes?’ ” asked Beaumaroy thoughtfully.
“I don’t know that he does at my eyes particularly. Nothing wrong with ’em, is there?” The Sergeant sounded rather truculent.
“Never mind that; but I fancied he stared at Mr. Saffron’s. And I’ve read somewhere, in some book or other, that doctors can tell, or guess, by the eyes. Well, that’s only an idea. How does a lady doctor appeal to you, Sergeant?”
“I should be shy,” said the Sergeant, grinning.
“Vulgar! vulgar!” Beaumaroy murmured.
“That Dr. Mary Arkroyd?”
“I had thought of her.”
“She ought to be fair easy to kid. You ’ave notions sometimes, sir.”
Beaumaroy stretched out his legs, debonnair, well-rounded legs, to the seducing blaze of oak logs.
“I haven’t really a care in the world,” he said.
The Sergeant’s reply, or comment, had a disconcerting ring. “And you’re sure of ‘Eaven? That’s what the bloke always says to the ‘angman.”
“I’ve no intention of being a murderer, Sergeant.” Beaumaroy’s eyebrows were raised in gentle protest.
“Once you’re in with a job, you never know,” his retainer observed darkly.
Beaumaroy laughed. “Oh, go to the devil! and mix me another whisky.” Yet a vague uneasiness showed itself on his face; he looked across the room at the evil-shaped man handling the bottles in the cupboard. He made one queer, restless movement of his arms, as though to free himself. Then, in a moment, he sprang from his chair, a glad kindly smile illuminating his face; he bowed in a very courtly fashion, exclaiming, “Ah! here you are, sir? And all well, I hope?”
Mr. Saffron had entered from the door leading to the Tower, carefully closing it after him. Hooper’s hand went up to his forehead in the ghost of a military salute, but a sneering smile persisted on his lips. The only notice Mr. Saffron took of him was a jerk of the head towards the passage, an abrupt and ungracious dismissal, which, however, the Sergeant silently accepted and stumped out. The greeting