The Paliser case Part 29

But Jones knew his trade. He knew that the reader always balks unless the hero gets the heroine firsthand and he had thought of making the villain an invalid. Yet at that too he knew the reader would balk. The reader is so nice-minded!

Now, the plot recurring, he said to Verelst: "Your knowledge of women has, I am sure, made you indulgent."

"Not in the least."

"But----"

"Look here," Verelst interrupted. "When I was young and consequently very experienced, I was indulgent. But monsters change you. Last night I dined with one."

"Enviable mortal!"

"You remember Abraham?" Verelst continued. "His name was Abraham--wasn't it?--that benevolent old man in the Bible who made the sacrifice of sacrificing an animal instead of his son? Well, last night it seemed to me that there are women Abrahams, only less benevolent. The altar was veiled, the knife was concealed, but the victim was there--a girl for whom, at your age, I would have died, or offered to die, which amounts to the same thing. What is more to the point, at your age, or no, for you are much older than your conversation would lead one to believe, but in my careless days I offered to die for her mother. I swore I could not live without her. That is always a mistake. It is too flattering, besides being untrue. Perhaps she so regarded it. In any event another man fared better or worse. Afterward, time and again, he said to me: 'Peter, for G.o.d's sake, run away with her.' Am I boring you?"

"Enormously."

"Well, he was very gentlemanly about it. Without making a fuss at home, he went away and died in a hospital. She was very grateful to him for that. But her grat.i.tude waned when she came in for his money. It was adequate but not opulent, the result being that she tried to train her daughter for the great matrimonial steeplechase. Just here the plot thickens. Recently the filly shied, took the bit in her teeth and--hurrah, boys!--she was off on her own, until her mother jockied her up to a hurdle that she could not take and the filly came a cropper. But her mother was still one too many for her. She had her up in a jiffy and now she is heading her straight for the sweepstakes."

"Excuse me," Jones with affected meekness put in. "I a.s.sume that the sacrificial victim and the filly are one and the same."

"Your perspicacity does you much credit."

Jones laughed. "I have my little talents. But you! The wizardry with which you mix metaphors is beautiful. You produce a dinner-table and transform it into an altar which instantly becomes a racecourse. That is what I call genius. But to an every-day sort of chap like me, would you mind being less cryptic?"

"Can you keep a secret?"

"Yes."

"So can I."

Again Jones laughed. "Not in my neighbourhood. You were talking of Lennox and drifted from him into the Bible. Your thoughts of the one recalled studies of the other and at once you had Abraham's daughter downed on the racecourse. Well, she won't be."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it is my business to see things before they occur. Miss Austen----"

"I never mentioned her," Verelst heatedly exclaimed. "You have no right to----"

"I admit it. But because of Lennox the whole matter has preoccupied me and quite as much, I daresay, as it has distressed you."

"I don't see at all what you have to do with it."

"Perhaps not. But preoccupation may lead to crystal-gazing. Now I will wager a red pippin that I can tell what you said at the steeplechase to the steeplestakes. You asked after his father."

Verelst stared. A man of the world and, as such, at his ease in any circ.u.mstances, none the less he was startled. "How in G.o.d's name did you get that?"

"It is very simple. Five minutes ago his father sailed by. You made a remark about him. The remark suggested a train of thought which landed you at the racecourse where you saw, or intimated that you saw, the steeplestakes. But what visible sweepstakes are there except M. P.'s son? You and M. P. are friends. It is only natural that you should ask about him."

Verelst turned uneasily. "I don't yet see how you got it. The only thing I said is that I heard he was dying."

"And five minutes ago you exclaimed at his resurrection. There is a discrepancy there that is very suggestive."

"It is none of my making then."

"It is none the less suggestive. The death-bed was invented."

"M. P. may have recovered."

"Yes, men of his age make a practice of jumping into their death-bed and then jumping out. It is good for them. It keeps them in training."

"Oh, rubbish!" Verelst resentfully exclaimed.

"No," Jones pursued. "The story was invented and the invention had a reason. If you like, you may ask what it is."

"You seem to be very good at invention yourself. I shall ask nothing of the kind."

"But you would like to know and I will tell you. It was invented to delay a possible announcement. It could have had no other object."

"I said nothing of any announcement," Verelst angrily protested. "What announcement are you talking about?"

"The heading of the filly for the sweepstakes. The expression--very graphic by the way--is your own."

"Graphic or not I wish you would drop it. Besides----"

"Besides what?"

"Why, confound it, admitting the engagement, which I ought not to admit for it is not out yet, why should he play for delay?"

"Ha!" exclaimed Jones, whom the spectacle of Paliser and Ca.s.sy sailing up the Riverside had supplied with an impression or two. "I thought I would interest you. He played for delay because he feared that if it were known, a pitcher of ice-water might come dashing over it."

"Why do you say that?" asked Verelst, eager and anxious enough for a spoke--if spoke there could be--to shove in a certain lady's wheels.

"Given the man and the deduction is easy."

The spoke was receding. Verelst, swallowing his disappointment, retorted: "Incoherence is easy too."

"Well, you are right there," Jones, lighting another cigarette, replied.

"But there is nothing incoherent in the fact that fear is magnetic. What we dread, we attract. If our winning young friend fears the pitcher, the pitcher will probably land on him. That is the reason why, to vary your various metaphors, I declared that there would be no downing on the racecourse. On the contrary and look here. I will wager you not one pippin or two pippins, I will go so far as to lay a whole basket that Miss Austen becomes Mrs. Lennox."

Verelst sniffed. "You don't know her mother."

"No. I have not that honour. But I enjoy a bowing acquaintance with logic."

"Do you, now? I wonder if it bows back. I'll book your bet."

"Very good. Make it fancy pippins."

Verelst stood up. "Fancy is the only term that could be applied them."

"And of such is the Kingdom of Heaven," Jones told himself as the old man moved away.