Johnny Ludlow Fourth Series Part 74

"Can you give me the address of Mr. Roger Bevere?" I asked of this younger one.

The girl flushed scarlet, and looked at her companion, who looked back again. It was a curious sort of look, as much--I thought--as to say, what are we to do? Then they both looked at me. But neither spoke.

"I am told that Mr. Bevere often comes here, and that you can give me his address."

"Well, sir--I don't think we can," said the younger one, and her speech was quite proper and modest. "We don't know it, do we, Miss Panken?"

"Perhaps you'll first of all tell me who it was that said we could give it you," cried Miss Panken, in tones as strong-minded as herself, and as though she were by a very long way my superior in the world.

"It was one of his fellow-students at the hospital."

"Oh--well--I suppose we can give it you," she concluded. "Here, I'll write it down. Lend me your pencil, Mabel: mine has disappeared. There,"

handing me the paper, "if he is not there, we can't tell you where he is."

"Roger Bevary, 22, New Crescent," was what she wrote. I thanked her and went out, encountering two or three young men who rushed in from another train and called individually for refreshment.

New Crescent was soon found, but not Bevere. The elderly woman-servant who answered me said Mr. Bevere formerly lived with them, but left about eighteen months back. He had not left the neighbourhood, she thought, as she sometimes met him in it. She saw him only the past Sat.u.r.day night when she was out on an errand.

"What, this past Sat.u.r.day!" I exclaimed. "Are you certain?"

"To be sure I am, sir. He was smoking a pipe and looking in at the shop windows. He saw me and said, Good-night, Ann: he was always very pleasant. I thought he looked ill."

Back I went to the refreshment-room. Those girls knew his address well enough, but for some reason would not give it--perhaps by Bevere's orders. Two young men were there now, sipping their beer, or whatever it was, and exchanging compliments with Miss Panken. I spoke to her civilly.

"Mr. Bevere does not live at New Crescent: he left it eighteen months ago. Did you not know that? I think you can give me his address if you will."

_She did not answer me at all._ It may be bar-room politeness. Regarding me for a full minute superciliously from my head to my boots, she slowly turned her shoulders the other way, and resumed her talk with the customers.

I spoke then to the other, who was wiping gla.s.ses. "It is in Mr.

Bevere's own interest that I wish to find him; I wish it very particularly indeed. He lives in this neighbourhood; I have heard that: if you can tell me where, I shall be very much obliged to you."

The girl's face looked confused, timid, full of indecision, as if she knew the address but did not know whether to answer or not. By this time I had attracted attention, and silence fell on the room. Strong-minded Miss Panken came to the relief of her companion.

"Did you call for a gla.s.s of ale?" she asked me, in a tone of incipient mockery.

"Nor for soda?--nor bitters?--not even cherry-brandy?" she ran on. "No?

Then as you don't seem to want anything we supply here, perhaps you'll take yourself off, young man, and leave s.p.a.ce for them that do. Fancy this room being open to promiscuous inquirers, and us young ladies being obliged to answer 'em!" added Miss Panken affably to her two friends.

"I'd like to see it!"

Having thus put me down and turned her back upon me, I had nothing to wait for, and walked out of the lady's presence. The younger one's eyes followed me with a wistful look. I'm sure she would have given the address had she dared.

After that day, I took to haunt the precincts of the Bell-and-Clapper, believing it to be my only chance of finding Bevere. Scott had a brief note from him, no address to it, stating that he was not yet well enough to resume his duties; and this note Scott forwarded to me. A letter also came to me; from Lady Bevere asking what the matter was that I did not write, and whether Roger was worse. How _could_ I write, unless I found him?

So, all the leisure time that I could improvise I spent round about the Bell-and-Clapper. Not inside the room, amid its manifold attractions: Circe was a wily woman, remember, and pretty bottles are insidious. That particular Circe, also, Miss Panken, might have objected to my company and ordered me out of it.

Up one road, down another, before this row of houses and that, I hovered for ever like a walking ghost. But I saw nothing of Bevere.

Luck favoured me at last. One afternoon towards the end of the week, I was standing opposite the church, watching the half-dozen worshippers straggling into it, for one of its many services, listening to the irritating ding-dong of its bell, and wondering the noise was put up with, when suddenly Richard Scott came running up from the city train.

Looking neither to the right nor the left, or he must inevitably have seen me, he made straight for a cross-road, then another, and presently entered one of a row of small houses whose lower rooms were on a level with the ground and the yard or two of square garden that fronted them.

"Paradise Place." I followed Scott at a cautious distance.

"Bevere lives there!" quoth I, mentally.

Should I go in at once boldly, and beard him? While deliberating--for somehow it goes against my nature to beard anybody--Scott came striding out and turned off the other way: which led to the shops. I crossed over and went in quietly at the open door.

The parlour, small and shabby as was Mrs. Mapping's in Gibraltar Terrace, was on the left, its door likewise open. Seated at a table, taking his tea, was Roger Bevere; opposite to him, presiding over the ceremonies, sat a lady who must unquestionably have been first-cousin to those damsels at the Bell-and-Clapper, if one might judge by the hair.

"Roger!" I exclaimed. "What a dance you have led us!"

He started up with a scarlet face, his manner strangely confused, his tongue for the moment lost. And then I saw that he was without his coat, and his arm was bandaged.

"I was going to write to you," he said--an excuse invented on the spur of the moment, "I thought to be about before now, but my arm got bad again."

"How was that?"

"Well, I hurt it, and did not pay attention to it. It is properly inflamed now."

I took a seat on the red stuff sofa without being invited, and Bevere dropped into his chair. The lady at the tea-tray had been regarding me with a free, friendly, unabashed gaze. She was a well-grown, attractive young woman, with a saucy face and bright complexion, fine dark eyes, and full red lips. Her abundant hair was of the peculiar and rare colour that some people call red and others gold. As to her manners, they were as a.s.sured as Miss Panken's, but a great deal pleasanter. I wondered who she was and what she did there.

"So this is Johnny Ludlow that I've heard tell of!" she exclaimed, catching up my name from Bevere, and sending me a gracious nod. "Shall I give you a cup of tea?"

"No, thank you," was my answer, though all the while as thirsty as a fish, for the afternoon was hot.

"Oh, you had better: don't stand on ceremony," she said, laughing.

"There's nothing like a good cup of tea when the throat's dry and the weather's baking. Come! make yourself at home."

"Be quiet, Lizzie," struck in Bevere, his tone ringing with annoyance and pain. "Let Mr. Ludlow do as he pleases." And it struck me that he did not want me to take the tea.

Scott came in then, and looked surprised to see me: he had been out to get something for Bevere's arm. I felt by intuition that he had known where Bevere was all along, that his a.s.sumption of ignorance was a pretence. He and the young lady seemed to be upon excellent terms, as though they had been acquainted for ages.

The arm looked very bad: worse than it had at Gibraltar Terrace. I stood by when Scott took off the bandages. He touched it here and there.

"I tell you what, Bevere," he said: "you had better let Pitt see to this again. He got it right before; and--I don't much like the look of it."

"Nonsense!" returned Bevere. "I don't want Pitt here."

"I say nonsense to that," rejoined Scott. "Who's Pitt?--he won't hurt you. No good to think you can shut yourself up in a nutsh.e.l.l--with such an arm as this, and--and--" he glanced at me, as if he would say, "and now Ludlow has found you out."

"You can do as much for the arm as Pitt can," said Bevere, fractiously.

"Perhaps I could: but I don't mean to try. I tell you, Bevere, I do not like the look of it," repeated Scott. "What's more, I, not being a qualified pract.i.tioner yet, would not take the responsibility."

"Well, I will go to Pitt to-morrow if I'm no better and can get my coat on," conceded Bevere. "Lizzie, where's the other bandage?"

"Oh, I left it in my room," said Lizzie; and she ran up the stairs in search of it.

So she lived there! Was it her home, I wondered; or Bevere's; or their home conjointly? The two might have vowed eternal friendship and set up housekeeping together on a platonic footing. Curious problems do come into fashion in the great cities of this go-ahead age; perhaps that one had.