The Simpkins Plot Part 21

"You'd have liked to have seen him yesterday," said Meldon.

"I would not."

"You would. The Major had him out for a day in the _Spindrift_, and--"

Meldon winked.

Doyle got down from his trap and stood at the horse's head.

"A sicker man," said Meldon, "you never saw."

"Sick!"

"As a dog. Beastly sick. I don't care to enter into details; but, considering the small amount he ate during the day, the way he kept at it would have surprised you."

"Sick! What's the good of being sick? Why didn't you drown him?"

"We had Miss King out too," said Meldon, "and we didn't want to drown her. Besides, it wasn't the kind of day in which you could very well drown any one."

"What brought me over here this morning," said Doyle, "was--"

"I know," said Meldon. "You want to gather in the Major's subscription to the illuminated address with the apple trees in the corners. You shall have it. He's signing the cheque this minute."

"I'll take it, of course," said Doyle, "if it's quite convenient to the Major; but it wasn't it I came for."

"What was it, then? If you have any idea of dragging the Major into that salmon ambuscade of O'Donoghue's, I tell you plainly I won't have it."

"It's nothing of the kind," said Doyle. "After what you said on Friday we gave that notion up. What brought me here to-day was to see if the Major would lend me a set of car cushions. The rats got in on the ones I have of my own, and they've holes ate in them so as you'd be ashamed to put them on a car."

"You shall have them with the greatest possible pleasure," said Meldon.

"Not the new ones," said the Major through the window.

"I thought," said Meldon; "that you didn't want to be disturbed, and that I was carrying on this negotiation with Mr. Doyle. You must do one thing or the other, Major. Either come out and manage your own affairs, or else leave them entirely in my hands.--You can't," he said, turning to Doyle, "have the new cushions unless for some very special purpose. Is Miss King thinking of going for a drive on your car? If she is, the Major will lend the new cushions."

"She is not," said Doyle; "not that I heard of any way, though she might take the notion later."

"Then what do you want the cushions for?"

"It's an English gentleman," said Doyle; "a high-up man by all accounts, that has the fishing took from Simpkins. He'll be stopping in the hotel, and he'll want the car to take him up the river in the morning. The kind of man he is, I wouldn't like to be putting him off with my old cushions. They're terrible bad, the way the rats has them ate on me."

"If he really is a man of eminence in any walk of life," said Meldon--"a bishop, for instance, or a member of the House of Lords, or a captain of industry, you can have the cushions. If he's simply a second-rate man of the ordinary tourist type, you can't."

"He's a judge," said Doyle, "and what's more, an English judge."

"I'm surprised to hear you saying a thing like that. As a Nationalist you ought to be the last to admit that an English judge is in any way superior to an Irish one. He may be better paid--I daresay he is better paid, for we never get our fair share of what's going--but in the things that really matter--in legal ac.u.men, for instance, which is the great thing we look for in judges--I don't expect the Irishman is a bit behind. However, English or Irish, the mere fact of his being a judge doesn't prove that he's a man of what I call real eminence. I don't think the Major will let you have his best car cushions for some sleepy old gentleman who sits on a bench and makes silly jokes. There are lots of judges knocking about that rat-eaten car cushions would be too good for. What's your man's name?"

"Hawkesby," said Doyle. "Sir Gilbert Hawkesby, no less."

Meldon started from his chair.

"Are you sure of that?" he asked, "absolutely dead certain? This is a business over which it won't do to make mistakes."

"It's what was in his letter, any way," said Doyle, "when he wrote engaging rooms in the hotel."

"When does he arrive?"

"To-morrow," said Doyle; "to-morrow afternoon, and I told Sabina to kill a chicken to-day, for it's likely he'll be wanting a bit of dinner after the drive over from Donard. I thought if he had a chicken and a bit of boiled bacon, with a custard pudding after that--"

"Go into the coach-house at once," said Meldon, "and take any cushions you want. I can't talk any more to you this morning. I'm going to be frightfully busy."

Doyle, grinning broadly, led his horse round to the yard. He did not believe that Meldon was ever busy. Like most people he failed to appreciate the real greatness of the clergyman.

Meldon hurried into the house and flung open the door of the study.

Major Kent looked up from his papers with a weary smile.

"Couldn't you and Doyle settle that business of the car cushions between you? I shall never get these accounts done if I'm interrupted every minute."

"We could have settled it," said Meldon. "In fact we have settled it, but a question of vastly greater importance has arisen. We are threatened with something like an actual catastrophe."

"If it's the kind of catastrophe which involves an hour or so of solid talk, J. J., don't you think you could manage to put it off for a little? I shall be quite ready to go into it at any length you like this evening after dinner."

"Major," said Meldon, "if an earthquake came--the kind of earthquake which knocks down houses--and if thunderbolts were falling red-hot out of the sky, and if a large tidal wave was rushing up across the lawn, and if a moving bog was desolating your kitchen garden and engulfing your polo ponies, would you or would you not sit calmly there and go on with your accounts?"

"If all those things were happening I'd move, of course."

"There's no 'of course' about it. Some men wouldn't."

"Nonsense, J. J. The tidal wave alone--"

"Some men," repeated Meldon, "would sit on and finish their accounts.

There was a soldier at Pompeii, for instance--they found his body centuries afterwards--who wouldn't stir from his post even when he saw the molten lava flowing down the street. I thought you might be that sort of man."

"I'm not."

"I'm glad to hear it. That sentry has been made a hero of. I've frequently heard him mentioned in sermons as a person to be imitated.

In reality he was the worst kind of a.s.s; and I wouldn't like to think of your getting embalmed as he did, and being dug out afterwards by an antiquary with a chisel. For the matter of that I shouldn't care to hear of people writing odes about you on account of your going under while your sword was in its sheath and your fingers held the pen."

"What was he doing with the pen?" said the Major. "If he was on sentry duty--"

"It wasn't that sentry whose fingers held the pen, but brave Kempenfelt, another man of the same sort; though there was more excuse for him, because he seems to have been taken by surprise when the land breeze shook the shrouds."

"I don't in the least know what you're talking about," said the Major.

"Is there a moving bog, or a high tide, or anything unusual?"

"There's something a great deal worse," said Meldon. "Did you hear what Doyle said to me a few minutes ago?"

"I heard him asking for the loan of my car cushions. I don't particularly want to lend them, but I shouldn't regard his getting them as a catastrophe at all to be compared to the earthquake and all the other things you were ga.s.sing about."

"The cushions in themselves are nothing, and less than nothing, but did you hear who he wants them for?"