The Vanity Girl Part 20

"Certainly it would; so when he's let out you'd better get behind George here so as to hide your ugly mug."

This caused a general laugh, and the upholder of the orang-utan seemed inclined to back his favorite with an appeal to force, until the porter interposed to prevent a squabble.

"Now, what's the good in arguing if it's a griller or a yourang-gatang?"

he demanded, in a nasal whine. "All I know is it got my poor trouser leg into a rare old yourang-atangle when I was 'oppin it out of the front hall."

"Is there much damage done?" Hausberg asked.

"Damage?" repeated the porter. "Damage ain't the word. It looks as if there'd been a young volcano turned loose in the flat."

"But what I don't understand," Dorothy began, primly, "is why I have been brought into this."

Various ladies in light attire from the upper flats were beginning to peer over into the well of the staircase, and Dorothy was wondering if she were not being compromised by this midnight adventure.

"Let's get the monkey out first," said Hausberg, "and then I'll tell you why."

After listening for another three-quarters of an hour to disputes between the various supporters of the gorilla and the orang-utan, which extended to a heated argument about the comparative merits of Mr.

Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain, the car came back, and the intruder, which was announced to be a chimpanzee, was ejected by the keeper, and, after an attempt to hand it over to the police, shut up till morning in a boot-hole.

The flat presented a desolate spectacle when Dorothy and Hausberg entered it; the chimpanzee had smashed the ornaments, ripped up the curtains, tore the paper from the walls, and wrenched off all the lamp-brackets; he had then apparently been seized with a revulsion against the bananas and nuts strewn about the pa.s.sage for his supper and had gnawed the porter's hat.

"Now," said Hausberg, sternly, to the owner of the hat, who was tenderly nursing it, "just tell this lady exactly what has happened here."

"Well, sir, about twelve o'clock this morning a gentleman drove up to the mansions with a crate and said he was a friend of Mr. Hausberg's and had brought him a marble Venus for a present, and I was to put it in the hall of the flat. I particularly remember he said a Venus, because I thought he said a green'ouse, which surprised me for the moment, and I asked him if he didn't, mean a portable aquarium, which is what my wife's brother has in the window of his best parlor."

"Go on, you fool!" Hausberg commanded. "We don't want to hear about your wife's brother."

"Well, I accepted delivery of this Venus and between us we got this Venus--"

"Don't go on rhyming like that," said Hausberg. "Tell the story properly in plain prose."

"Between us--I mean to say me and the lift-boy together--we deposited in the hall this crate which had a tin lining for the chim-pansy to breathe with according to instructions duly received. When I turned up my nose at this Venus, which smelled very heavy, the gentleman, who didn't give his name, explained that you was intending to use it for a hat-stand, and told us not to wait, as he'd unpack the crate hisself. I looked at him a bit hard, but he give me something for me and the boy between us before we come down-stairs again, and I thought no more about it. The gentleman drove off about ten minutes afterward with a friendly nod, and I was just sitting down to my dinner in the domestic office on the ground floor when the people underneath--of course you'll understand I'm referring to the flat now--the people underneath came down and complained that something must have happened over their heads, as the noise was something shocking and bits of the ceiling was coming down, or they said it would be coming down in two two's if the noise wasn't stopped. Well, of course up I went to investigate, and when I opened the door and seed all the wall-paper hanging in strips I thought something funny must have occurred, and I felt a bit nervous and began swallering.

Then all of a sudding, before I knew where I was, something had me by the trouser leg, and if I'd of been a religious man I'd of said right out it was the devil himself; but when I seed it was a great hairy animal I run for the front door and slammed it to behind me, it being on the jar for a piece of luck, because if it hadn't of been on the jar my calf was a goner."

"Why didn't you send for me at once?"

"Well, sir, how was I to know you hadn't put the chim-pansy there for the purpose?"

"Do you think I take flats for chimpanzees?" demanded Hausberg.

"No, sir, I don't, but if you'll pardon me, there's a lot of queer things goes on in these mansions, and I've learned not to interfere before I'm asked to, and sometimes not then. Only last week Number Fourteen got the D. T.'s on him and threw a sewing-machine at me when his young lady called me up to see what could be done about quieting him down. And now this here monkey has cost me a pair of trousers and a new hat with the name of the mansions worked on the front which I shall have to replace, and I only hope I sha'n't be the loser by it."

"Get out," snarled Hausberg.

He was in such a rage that he looked more like a large monkey than ever while he was striding in and out of every dismantled room; and Dorothy realized the extreme malice of the joke that had been played upon him.

"You know who did this?" he said to her, wrathfully.

She shook her head.

"Do you mean to tell me you don't know that it was your friend Lord Clarehaven?"

"Rubbish!" said Dorothy. "Why should he shut a chimpanzee in _your_ flat?"

"Your friend Clarehaven," Hausberg went on, "and that little swine Lonsdale are responsible for this; but when I tell you that they drove down this afternoon to Brighton with Lily and that cursed friend of hers--"

"How do you know?" she interrupted, with some emotion.

"You don't suppose I set a girl up in a flat without having her watched first, do you? When I buy," said Hausberg, "I buy in the best market.

Here's the detective's report."

He handed her a half-sheet of note-paper written in a copperplate hand with a record of Lily's day, ending up with the information that she and her friend Sylvia Scarlett, accompanied by the Earl of Clarehaven and the Honorable Arthur Lonsdale, had driven down to Brighton immediately after lunch and reached the Britannia Hotel at five o'clock, "as confirmed per telephone."

"Well," said Hausberg, grimly, "Lily has been paid out by losing my protection, but, by G.o.d! I'll get even with the rest of them soon or late."

"You don't really think that I had anything to do with this?" asked Dorothy. "Why, I haven't seen either Clarehaven or Lonsdale for a month!

I didn't even know that they had met Sylvia and Lily. They didn't meet them in Halfmoon Street. Why do you drag me here at this hour of the night?"

Hausberg seemed convinced by her denials, and his manner changed abruptly.

"I'm sorry I suspected you as well. I might have known better. I see now that we've both been made to look foolish. What can I do to show you I'm sorry for behaving like this? We're old pals, Dorothy. I was off my head when I came round here and they told me the trick that had been played on me. d.a.m.n them! d.a.m.n them! I'll--But what can I do to show you I'm sorry?"

"You'd better invest some money for me," said Dorothy, severely.

"How much do you want?"

"No, no," she said. "I've got two hundred and fifty pounds that I want to invest; only, of course, I must have a really good investment."

"That's all right," he promised. "I'll do a bit of gambling for you."

They had left the flat behind them and were walking slowly down-stairs when suddenly from one of the doors on the landing immediately below a man slipped out, paused for a moment when he heard their footsteps descending, thought better of his timidity, hurried on down, and was out of sight before they reached the landing.

"Good Heavens!" Dorothy e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, seizing her companion's arm.

"I'm afraid I've made you jumpy," he said. "Poor old Dorothy, I shall have to find a jolly good investment to make up for it."

Hausberg was quite his old suave self again; it was Dorothy who was pale and agitated now.

"It was nothing," she murmured; but it was really a great deal, because the man she had seen was Mr. Gilbert Caffyn, the secretary of the Church of England Purity Society.

Dorothy did not enjoy her motor drive that Sunday. It was pale-blue November weather with the sun like a topaz hanging low in the haze above the Surrey hills, but the knowledge that Clarehaven all this month, perhaps even for longer, had been carrying on with Lily and Sylvia when she had taken such care to keep them apart tormented her beyond any capacity to enjoy the landscape or the weather. Heartless treachery, then, was the result of being kind to old friends--and oh, what an odious world it was! There would have to be a grand breaking of friendships presently--yes, and a grand dissolution of family ties as well, for, at any rate, in the midst of this miserable and humiliating affair she had at least been granted the consolation of catching out her father, which might be useful one day. Olive wondered, when the great man left them after supper, why Dorothy had been so gloomy on the drive.

She had told the story of the chimpanzee so well, and the great man had laughed more heartily over it than over anything she could remember. Why was Dorothy so sad? Was there something she had left out? Surely on Hausberg's mere word she was not thinking anything horrid about Sylvia's going for a drive with Clarehaven? They had probably just driven down to Brighton for dinner to laugh over the chimpanzee.

"I shall see Sylvia once more," said Dorothy, "and that will be for the last time."

"But I'm sure you'll find Hausberg has made everything appear in the worst light," Olive protested. "I'm sure Sylvia would never s.n.a.t.c.h a man away from any girl."

"I don't understand how you can go on being friends with me and yet defend her," said Dorothy.