Ambrotox and Limping Dick Part 3

But before he reached the stairhead, all other sounds were drowned by shouts of laughter from the billiard-room--good laughter and familiar; but the smile left his face and his pace slackened. He was, perhaps, too old to wake the echoes, and d.i.c.k's laugh, he thought, was infectious as the plague.

In the wide, comfortable hall used instead of the drawing-room which Bellamy hated, he found Amaryllis smiling with a sparkle in her eyes, as if she too had been laughing.

"Did you hear them?" she asked.

Randal nodded.

"Father hasn't laughed like that for years--billiards!" she said. "Your brother is just telling him shocking stories, Sir Randal."

"How d'you know?" he asked.

"I dressed as quickly as I could, and went to the billiard-room. Father couldn't speak, but just ran me out by the scruff of the neck."

At this moment her attention was distracted by the bull-dog, sliding and tumbling down the stairs in his eagerness to reach his mistress.

"Gorgon's behaving like a puppy," said Randal, smiling.

"Oh, he's been laughing, too," said Amaryllis, fondling the soft ears.

"And he wants to tell me all the jokes."

And then Caldegard and d.i.c.k Bellamy came down the stairs together.

"What have you been doing to Gorgon?" asked Amaryllis.

"Never mind the dog," said her father. "It's what this 'vaudeville artist' has been doing to me!"

"Oh, Gorgon, Gorgon! If those lips could only speak!" laughed the girl.

"Don't you think Gorgon's a good name for the ugly darling, Mr.

Bellamy?" she said, as they went in to dinner.

"Surely the Gorgon was a kind of prehistoric suffragette," objected d.i.c.k.

"There you are, Amy," said her father, and turned to him. "Your brother and I have quite failed to convince my illiterate daughter that the word _Gorgon_ is of the feminine gender."

"Anyhow," said Amaryllis defiantly, as she took her seat at the dinner-table, "I looked it up in the dictionary, and all it said was: A monster of fearful aspect.'"

"He deserves it," said d.i.c.k.

"He seems to have taken a great fancy to you, Mr. Bellamy," said the girl.

"Dogs always do," said Randal.

"Always at the first meeting?" asked Amaryllis.

"Nearly always. But that doesn't prove that I don't travel without a ticket when I get the chance," replied d.i.c.k.

"What _do_ you mean?" asked the girl.

"Oh, the dog-and-baby theory's not dead yet. But I a.s.sure you, Miss Caldegard, that the hardest case I ever met couldn't walk through a town without collecting every dog in the place. That's why he never succeeded in his first profession."

"What was he?" asked the girl.

"Burglar," said d.i.c.k.

"That's all very well," said his brother. "I know nothing about babies, but I've noticed that the man whom all dogs dislike is no good at all."

"That's quite true," said Caldegard. "Remember Melchard, Amy?"

d.i.c.k Bellamy caught the quiver of disgust which pa.s.sed over the girl's face before she answered.

"Horrible person!" she said. "Trixy bit him, the dachshund next door always ran away from him, and Gorgon had to be chained up."

"Who is this Melchard, Caldegard?" asked Randal.

"He came to me about eighteen months ago, and stayed about nine; a very capable practical chemist; had worked for some time in the factory of a Dutch rubber company. Sumatra, I think, or the Malay Peninsula. Tried unqualified dentistry after he came home, went broke and got an introduction to me. That's what he told me. An accurate and painstaking worker, and never asked questions."

d.i.c.k began to be interested.

"But I really can't see anything horrible in all that," said Randal.

"At first it was what he was, not what he did," said Caldegard. "Tall, slender, effeminate, over-dressed, native coa.r.s.eness which would not be hidden by spasmodic attempts at fine manners, and a foul habit of scenting his handkerchiefs and even his clothes with some weird stuff he made himself; left a trail behind him wherever he went. It smelt something like a mixture of orris-root and attar of roses."

Amaryllis wiped her lips, and d.i.c.k Bellamy thought her cheeks nearly as white as the little handkerchief.

"What did the fellow do?" asked Randal.

"For one thing, I discovered that he carried a hypodermic syringe; so I watched him--morphia--not a bad case, but getting worse. And then," said Caldegard, looking towards his daughter, "he had the presumption----"

"Oh, father, please!" cried Amaryllis.

"I'm sorry, my dear," said her father. "I was only----"

He was interrupted by a crash, a fumbling and a burst of flame. One of the four-branched candlesticks had been upset, and its rose-coloured shades were on fire. Very coolly the two Bellamys' pinched out the flames and replaced the candles.

"Hope that didn't startle you, Miss Caldegard," said Randal.

"Not a bit," said Amaryllis, smiling.

"What a clumsy devil you are, d.i.c.k," he continued.

"I was trying to get the sugar," said d.i.c.k.

Randal tasted his coffee. "Cook's got one fault, d.i.c.k," he said. "She can't make coffee; and we've been spoiled."

"Yes, indeed," said Caldegard. "I've never in my life drunk black coffee to beat what your yellow-haired Dutch girl used to make."

Randal turned to his brother. "Parlour-maid, d.i.c.k. Best servant I ever had. Didn't mind the country, and after she'd been here a fortnight disclosed a heaven-sent gift for making coffee. Took some diplomacy, I can tell you, to get cook to cede her rights."