Kitabı oku: «Tommy and Co.», sayfa 2

Another happy thought occurred to Peter.

“Tommy – I mean Jane,” said Peter, “I know what I’ll do with you.”

“What’s the game now?”

“I’ll make a journalist of you.”

“Don’t talk rot.”

“It isn’t rot. Besides, I won’t have you answer me like that. As a Devil – that means, Tommy, the unseen person in the background that helps a journalist to do his work – you would be invaluable to me. It would pay me, Tommy – pay me very handsomely. I should make money out of you.”

This appeared to be an argument that Tommy understood. Peter, with secret delight, noticed that the chin retained its normal level.

“I did help a chap to sell papers, once,” remembered Tommy; “he said I was fly at it.”

“I told you so,” exclaimed Peter triumphantly. “The methods are different, but the instinct required is the same. We will get a woman in to relieve you of the housework.”

The chin shot up into the air.

“I could do it in my spare time.”

“You see, Tommy, I should want you to go about with me – to be always with me.”

“Better try me first. Maybe you’re making an error.”

Peter was learning the wisdom of the serpent.

“Quite right, Tommy. We will first see what you can do. Perhaps, after all, it may turn out that you are better as a cook.” In his heart Peter doubted this.

But the seed had fallen upon good ground. It was Tommy herself that manoeuvred her first essay in journalism. A great man had come to London – was staying in apartments especially prepared for him in St. James’s Palace. Said every journalist in London to himself: “If I could obtain an interview with this Big Man, what a big thing it would be for me!” For a week past, Peter had carried everywhere about with him a paper headed: “Interview of Our Special Correspondent with Prince Blank,” questions down left-hand column, very narrow; space for answers right-hand side, very wide. But the Big Man was experienced.

“I wonder,” said Peter, spreading the neatly folded paper on the desk before him, “I wonder if there can be any way of getting at him – any dodge or trick, any piece of low cunning, any plausible lie that I haven’t thought of.”

“Old Man Martin – called himself Martini – was just such another,” commented Tommy. “Come pay time, Saturday afternoon, you just couldn’t get at him – simply wasn’t any way. I was a bit too good for him once, though,” remembered Tommy, with a touch of pride in her voice; “got half a quid out of him that time. It did surprise him.”

“No,” communed Peter to himself aloud, “I don’t honestly think there can be any method, creditable or discreditable, that I haven’t tried.” Peter flung the one-sided interview into the wastepaper-basket, and slipping his notebook into his pocket, departed to drink tea with a lady novelist, whose great desire, as stated in a postscript to her invitation, was to avoid publicity, if possible.

Tommy, as soon as Peter’s back was turned, fished it out again.

An hour later in the fog around St. James’s Palace stood an Imp, clad in patched trousers and a pepper-and-salt jacket turned up about the neck, gazing with admiring eyes upon the sentry.

“Now, then, young seventeen-and-sixpence the soot,” said the sentry, “what do you want?”

“Makes you a bit anxious, don’t it,” suggested the Imp, “having a big pot like him to look after?”

“Does get a bit on yer mind, if yer thinks about it,” agreed the sentry.

“How do you find him to talk to, like?”

“Well,” said the sentry, bringing his right leg into action for the purpose of relieving his left, “ain’t ’ad much to do with ’im myself, not person’ly, as yet. Oh, ’e ain’t a bad sort when yer know ’im.”

“That’s his shake-down, ain’t it?” asked the Imp, “where the lights are.”

“That’s it,” admitted sentry. “You ain’t an Anarchist? Tell me if you are.”

“I’ll let you know if I feel it coming on,” the Imp assured him.

Had the sentry been a man of swift and penetrating observation – which he wasn’t – he might have asked the question in more serious a tone. For he would have remarked that the Imp’s black eyes were resting lovingly upon a rain-water-pipe, giving to a skilful climber easy access to the terrace underneath the Prince’s windows.

“I would like to see him,” said the Imp.

“Friend o’ yours?” asked the sentry.

“Well, not exactly,” admitted the Imp. “But there, you know, everybody’s talking about him down our street.”

“Well, yer’ll ’ave to be quick about it,” said the sentry. “’E’s off to-night.”

Tommy’s face fell. “I thought it wasn’t till Friday morning.”

“Ah!” said the sentry, “that’s what the papers say, is it?” The sentry’s voice took unconsciously the accent of those from whom no secret is hid. “I’ll tell yer what yer can do,” continued the sentry, enjoying an unaccustomed sense of importance. The sentry glanced left, then right. “’E’s a slipping off all by ’imself down to Osborne by the 6.40 from Waterloo. Nobody knows it – ’cept, o’ course, just a few of us. That’s ’is way all over. ’E just ’ates – ”

A footstep sounded down the corridor. The sentry became statuesque.

At Waterloo, Tommy inspected the 6.40 train. Only one compartment indicated possibilities, an extra large one at the end of the coach next the guard’s van. It was labelled “Reserved,” and in the place of the usual fittings was furnished with a table and four easy-chairs. Having noticed its position, Tommy took a walk up the platform and disappeared into the fog.

Twenty minutes later, Prince Blank stepped hurriedly across the platform, unnoticed save by half a dozen obsequious officials, and entered the compartment reserved for him. The obsequious officials bowed. Prince Blank, in military fashion, raised his hand. The 6.40 steamed out slowly.

Prince Blank, who was a stout gentleman, though he tried to disguise the fact, seldom found himself alone. When he did, he generally indulged himself in a little healthy relaxation. With two hours’ run to Southampton before him, free from all possibility of intrusion, Prince Blank let loose the buttons of his powerfully built waistcoat, rested his bald head on the top of his chair, stretched his great legs across another, and closed his terrible, small eyes.

For an instant it seemed to Prince Blank that a draught had entered into the carriage. As, however, the sensation immediately passed away, he did not trouble to wake up. Then the Prince dreamed that somebody was in the carriage with him – was sitting opposite to him. This being an annoying sort of dream, the Prince opened his eyes for the purpose of dispelling it. There was somebody sitting opposite to him – a very grimy little person, wiping blood off its face and hands with a dingy handkerchief. Had the Prince been a man capable of surprise, he would have been surprised.

“It’s all right,” assured him Tommy. “I ain’t here to do any harm. I ain’t an Anarchist.”

The Prince, by a muscular effort, retired some four or five inches and commenced to rebutton his waistcoat.

“How did you get here?” asked the Prince.

“’Twas a bigger job than I’d reckoned on,” admitted Tommy, seeking a dry inch in the smeared handkerchief, and finding none. “But that don’t matter,” added Tommy cheerfully, “now I’m here.”

“If you do not wish me to hand you over to the police at Southampton, you had better answer my questions,” remarked the Prince drily.

Tommy was not afraid of princes, but in the lexicon of her harassed youth “Police” had always been a word of dread.

“I wanted to get at you.”

“I gather that.”

“There didn’t seem any other way. It’s jolly difficult to get at you. You’re so jolly artful.”

“Tell me how you managed it.”

“There’s a little bridge for signals just outside Waterloo. I could see that the train would have to pass under it. So I climbed up and waited. It being a foggy night, you see, nobody twigged me. I say, you are Prince Blank, ain’t you?”

“I am Prince Blank.”

“Should have been mad if I’d landed the wrong man.”

“Go on.”

“I knew which was your carriage – leastways, I guessed it; and as it came along, I did a drop.” Tommy spread out her arms and legs to illustrate the action. “The lamps, you know,” explained Tommy, still dabbing at her face – “one of them caught me.”

“And from the roof?”

“Oh, well, it was easy after that. There’s an iron thing at the back, and steps. You’ve only got to walk downstairs and round the corner, and there you are. Bit of luck your other door not being locked. I hadn’t thought of that. Haven’t got such a thing as a handkerchief about you, have you?”

The Prince drew one from his sleeve and passed it to her. “You mean to tell me, boy – ”

“Ain’t a boy,” explained Tommy. “I’m a girl!”

She said it sadly. Deeming her new friends such as could be trusted, Tommy had accepted their statement that she really was a girl. But for many a long year to come the thought of her lost manhood tinged her voice with bitterness.

“A girl!”

Tommy nodded her head.

“Umph!” said the Prince; “I have heard a good deal about the English girl. I was beginning to think it exaggerated. Stand up.”

Tommy obeyed. It was not altogether her way; but with those eyes beneath their shaggy brows bent upon her, it seemed the simplest thing to do.

“So. And now that you are here, what do you want?”

“To interview you.”

Tommy drew forth her list of questions.

The shaggy brows contracted.

“Who put you up to this absurdity? Who was it? Tell me at once.”

“Nobody.”

“Don’t lie to me. His name?”

The terrible, small eyes flashed fire. But Tommy also had a pair of eyes. Before their blaze of indignation the great man positively quailed. This type of opponent was new to him.

“I’m not lying.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the Prince.

And at this point it occurred to the Prince, who being really a great man, had naturally a sense of humour, that a conference conducted on these lines between the leading statesman of an Empire and an impertinent hussy of, say, twelve years old at the outside, might end by becoming ridiculous. So the Prince took up his chair and put it down again beside Tommy’s, and employing skilfully his undoubted diplomatic gifts, drew from her bit by bit the whole story.

“I’m inclined, Miss Jane,” said the Great Man, the story ended, “to agree with our friend Mr. Hope. I should say your métier was journalism.”

“And you’ll let me interview you?” asked Tommy, showing her white teeth.

The Great Man, laying a hand heavier than he guessed on Tommy’s shoulder, rose. “I think you are entitled to it.”

“What’s your views?” demanded Tommy, reading, “of the future political and social relationships – ”

“Perhaps,” suggested the Great Man, “it will be simpler if I write it myself.”

“Well,” concurred Tommy; “my spelling is a bit rocky.”

The Great Man drew a chair to the table.

“You won’t miss out anything – will you?” insisted Tommy.

“I shall endeavour, Miss Jane, to give you no cause for complaint,” gravely he assured her, and sat down to write.

Not till the train began to slacken speed had the Prince finished. Then, blotting and refolding the paper, he stood up.

“I have added some instructions on the back of the last page,” explained the Prince, “to which you will draw Mr. Hope’s particular attention. I would wish you to promise me, Miss Jane, never again to have recourse to dangerous acrobatic tricks, not even in the sacred cause of journalism.”

“Of course, if you hadn’t been so jolly difficult to get at – ”

“My fault, I know,” agreed the Prince. “There is not the least doubt as to which sex you belong to. Nevertheless, I want you to promise me. Come,” urged the Prince, “I have done a good deal for you – more than you know.”

“All right,” consented Tommy a little sulkily. Tommy hated making promises, because she always kept them. “I promise.”

“There is your Interview.” The first Southampton platform lamp shone in upon the Prince and Tommy as they stood facing one another. The Prince, who had acquired the reputation, not altogether unjustly, of an ill-tempered and savage old gentleman, did a strange thing: taking the little, blood-smeared face between his paws, he kissed it. Tommy always remembered the smoky flavour of the bristly grey moustache.

“One thing more,” said the Prince sternly – “not a word of all this. Don’t open your mouth to speak of it till you are back in Gough Square.”

“Do you take me for a mug?” answered Tommy.

They behaved very oddly to Tommy after the Prince had disappeared. Everybody took a deal of trouble for her, but none of them seemed to know why they were doing it. They looked at her and went away, and came again and looked at her. And the more they thought about it, the more puzzled they became. Some of them asked her questions, but what Tommy really didn’t know, added to what she didn’t mean to tell, was so prodigious that Curiosity itself paled at contemplation of it.

They washed and brushed her up and gave her an excellent supper; and putting her into a first-class compartment labelled “Reserved,” sent her back to Waterloo, and thence in a cab to Gough Square, where she arrived about midnight, suffering from a sense of self-importance, traces of which to this day are still discernible.

Such and thus was the beginning of all things. Tommy, having talked for half an hour at the rate of two hundred words a minute, had suddenly dropped her head upon the table, had been aroused with difficulty and persuaded to go to bed. Peter, in the deep easy-chair before the fire, sat long into the night. Elizabeth, liking quiet company, purred softly. Out of the shadows crept to Peter Hope an old forgotten dream – the dream of a wonderful new Journal, price one penny weekly, of which the Editor should come to be one Thomas Hope, son of Peter Hope, its honoured Founder and Originator: a powerful Journal that should supply a long-felt want, popular, but at the same time elevating – a pleasure to the public, a profit to its owners. “Do you not remember me?” whispered the Dream. “We had long talks together. The morning and the noonday pass. The evening still is ours. The twilight also brings its promise.”

Elizabeth stopped purring and looked up surprised. Peter was laughing to himself.

STORY THE SECOND – William Clodd appoints himself Managing Director

Mrs. Postwhistle sat on a Windsor-chair in the centre of Rolls Court. Mrs. Postwhistle, who, in the days of her Hebehood, had been likened by admiring frequenters of the old Mitre in Chancery Lane to the ladies, somewhat emaciated, that an English artist, since become famous, was then commencing to popularise, had developed with the passing years, yet still retained a face of placid youthfulness. The two facts, taken in conjunction, had resulted in an asset to her income not to be despised. The wanderer through Rolls Court this summer’s afternoon, presuming him to be familiar with current journalism, would have retired haunted by the sense that the restful-looking lady on the Windsor-chair was someone that he ought to know. Glancing through almost any illustrated paper of the period, the problem would have been solved for him. A photograph of Mrs. Postwhistle, taken quite recently, he would have encountered with this legend: “Before use of Professor Hardtop’s certain cure for corpulency.” Beside it a photograph of Mrs. Postwhistle, then Arabella Higgins, taken twenty years ago, the legend slightly varied: “After use,” etc. The face was the same, the figure – there was no denying it – had undergone decided alteration.

Mrs. Postwhistle had reached with her chair the centre of Rolls Court in course of following the sun. The little shop, over the lintel of which ran: “Timothy Postwhistle, Grocer and Provision Merchant,” she had left behind her in the shadow. Old inhabitants of St. Dunstan-in-the-West retained recollection of a gentlemanly figure, always in a very gorgeous waistcoat, with Dundreary whiskers, to be seen occasionally there behind the counter. All customers it would refer, with the air of a Lord High Chamberlain introducing débutantes, to Mrs. Postwhistle, evidently regarding itself purely as ornamental. For the last ten years, however, no one had noticed it there, and Mrs. Postwhistle had a facility amounting almost to genius for ignoring or misunderstanding questions it was not to her taste to answer. Most things were suspected, nothing known. St. Dunstan-in-the-West had turned to other problems.

“If I wasn’t wanting to see ’im,” remarked to herself Mrs. Postwhistle, who was knitting with one eye upon the shop, “’e’d a been ’ere ’fore I’d ’ad time to clear the dinner things away; certain to ’ave been. It’s a strange world.”

Mrs. Postwhistle was desirous for the arrival of a gentleman not usually awaited with impatience by the ladies of Rolls Court – to wit, one William Clodd, rent-collector, whose day for St. Dunstan-in-the-West was Tuesday.

“At last,” said Mrs. Postwhistle, though without hope that Mr. Clodd, who had just appeared at the other end of the court, could possibly hear her. “Was beginning to be afraid as you’d tumbled over yerself in your ’urry and ’urt yerself.”

Mr. Clodd, perceiving Mrs. Postwhistle, decided to abandon method and take No. 7 first.

Mr. Clodd was a short, thick-set, bullet-headed young man, with ways that were bustling, and eyes that, though kind, suggested trickiness.

“Ah!” said Mr. Clodd admiringly, as he pocketed the six half-crowns that the lady handed up to him. “If only they were all like you, Mrs. Postwhistle!”

“Wouldn’t be no need of chaps like you to worry ’em,” pointed out Mrs. Postwhistle.

“It’s an irony of fate, my being a rent-collector, when you come to think of it,” remarked Mr. Clodd, writing out the receipt. “If I had my way, I’d put an end to landlordism, root and branch. Curse of the country.”

“Just the very thing I wanted to talk to you about,” returned the lady – “that lodger o’ mine.”

“Ah! don’t pay, don’t he? You just hand him over to me. I’ll soon have it out of him.”

“It’s not that,” explained Mrs. Postwhistle. “If a Saturday morning ’appened to come round as ’e didn’t pay up without me asking, I should know I’d made a mistake – that it must be Friday. If I don’t ’appen to be in at ’alf-past ten, ’e puts it in an envelope and leaves it on the table.”

“Wonder if his mother has got any more like him?” mused Mr. Clodd. “Could do with a few about this neighbourhood. What is it you want to say about him, then? Merely to brag about him?”

“I wanted to ask you,” continued Mrs. Postwhistle, “’ow I could get rid of ’im. It was rather a curious agreement.”

“Why do you want to get rid of him? Too noisy?”

“Noisy! Why, the cat makes more noise about the ’ouse than ’e does. ’E’d make ’is fortune as a burglar.”

“Come home late?”

“Never known ’im out after the shutters are up.”

“Gives you too much trouble then?”

“I can’t say that of ’im. Never know whether ’e’s in the ’ouse or isn’t, without going upstairs and knocking at the door.”

“Here, you tell it your own way,” suggested the bewildered Clodd. “If it was anyone else but you, I should say you didn’t know your own business.”

“’E gets on my nerves,” said Mrs. Postwhistle. “You ain’t in a ’urry for five minutes?”

Mr. Clodd was always in a hurry. “But I can forget it talking to you,” added the gallant Mr. Clodd.

Mrs. Postwhistle led the way into the little parlour.

“Just the name of it,” consented Mr. Clodd. “Cheerfulness combined with temperance; that’s the ideal.”

“I’ll tell you what ’appened only last night,” commenced Mrs. Postwhistle, seating herself the opposite side of the loo-table. “A letter came for ’im by the seven o’clock post. I’d seen ’im go out two hours before, and though I’d been sitting in the shop the whole blessed time, I never saw or ’eard ’im pass through. E’s like that. It’s like ’aving a ghost for a lodger. I opened ’is door without knocking and went in. If you’ll believe me, ’e was clinging with ’is arms and legs to the top of the bedstead – it’s one of those old-fashioned, four-post things – ’is ’ead touching the ceiling. ’E ’adn’t got too much clothes on, and was cracking nuts with ’is teeth and eating ’em. ’E threw a ’andful of shells at me, and making the most awful faces at me, started off gibbering softly to himself.”

“All play, I suppose? No real vice?” commented the interested Mr. Clodd.

“It will go on for a week, that will,” continued Mrs. Postwhistle – “’e fancying ’imself a monkey. Last week he was a tortoise, and was crawling about on his stomach with a tea-tray tied on to ’is back. ’E’s as sensible as most men, if that’s saying much, the moment ’e’s outside the front door; but in the ’ouse – well, I suppose the fact is that ’e’s a lunatic.”

“Don’t seem no hiding anything from you,” Mrs. Postwhistle remarked Mr. Clodd in tones of admiration. “Does he ever get violent?”

“Don’t know what ’e would be like if ’e ’appened to fancy ’imself something really dangerous,” answered Mrs. Postwhistle. “I am a bit nervous of this new monkey game, I don’t mind confessing to you – the things that they do according to the picture-books. Up to now, except for imagining ’imself a mole, and taking all his meals underneath the carpet, it’s been mostly birds and cats and ’armless sort o’ things I ’aven’t seemed to mind so much.”

“How did you get hold of him?” demanded Mr. Clodd. “Have much trouble in finding him, or did somebody come and tell you about him?”

“Old Gladman, of Chancery Lane, the law stationer, brought ’im ’ere one evening about two months ago – said ’e was a sort of distant relative of ’is, a bit soft in the ’ead, but perfectly ’armless – wanted to put ’im with someone who wouldn’t impose on ’im. Well, what between ’aving been empty for over five weeks, the poor old gaby ’imself looking as gentle as a lamb, and the figure being reasonable, I rather jumped at the idea; and old Gladman, explaining as ’ow ’e wanted the thing settled and done with, got me to sign a letter.”

“Kept a copy of it?” asked the business-like Clodd.

“No. But I can remember what it was. Gladman ’ad it all ready. So long as the money was paid punctual and ’e didn’t make no disturbance and didn’t fall sick, I was to go on boarding and lodging ’im for seventeen-and-sixpence a week. It didn’t strike me as anything to be objected to at the time; but ’e payin’ regular, as I’ve explained to you, and be’aving, so far as disturbance is concerned, more like a Christian martyr than a man, well, it looks to me as if I’d got to live and die with ’im.”

“Give him rope, and possibly he’ll have a week at being a howling hyæna, or a laughing jackass, or something of that sort that will lead to a disturbance,” thought Mr. Clodd, “in which case, of course, you would have your remedy.”

“Yes,” thought Mrs. Postwhistle, “and possibly also ’e may take it into what ’e calls is ’ead to be a tiger or a bull, and then perhaps before ’e’s through with it I’ll be beyond the reach of remedies.”

“Leave it to me,” said Mr. Clodd, rising and searching for his hat. “I know old Gladman; I’ll have a talk with him.”

“You might get a look at that letter if you can,” suggested Mrs. Postwhistle, “and tell me what you think about it. I don’t want to spend the rest of my days in a lunatic asylum of my own if I can ’elp it.”

“You leave it to me,” was Mr. Clodd’s parting assurance.

The July moon had thrown a silver veil over the grimness of Rolls Court when, five hours later, Mr. Clodd’s nailed boots echoed again upon its uneven pavement; but Mr. Clodd had no eye for moon or stars or such-like; always he had things more important to think of.

“Seen the old ’umbug?” asked Mrs. Postwhistle, who was partial to the air, leading the way into the parlour.

“First and foremost commenced,” Mr. Clodd, as he laid aside his hat, “it is quite understood that you really do want to get rid of him? What’s that?” demanded Mr. Clodd, a heavy thud upon the floor above having caused him to start out of his chair.

“’E came in an hour after you’d gone,” explained Mrs. Postwhistle, “bringing with him a curtain pole as ’e’d picked up for a shilling in Clare Market. ’E’s rested one end upon the mantelpiece and tied the other to the back of the easy-chair – ’is idea is to twine ’imself round it and go to sleep upon it. Yes, you’ve got it quite right without a single blunder. I do want to get rid of ’im.”

“Then,” said Mr. Clodd, reseating himself, “it can be done.”

“Thank God for that!” was Mrs. Postwhistle’s pious ejaculation.

“It is just as I thought,” continued Mr. Clodd. “The old innocent – he’s Gladman’s brother-in-law, by the way – has got a small annuity. I couldn’t get the actual figure, but I guess it’s about sufficient to pay for his keep and leave old Gladman, who is running him, a very decent profit. They don’t want to send him to an asylum. They can’t say he’s a pauper, and to put him into a private establishment would swallow up, most likely, the whole of his income. On the other hand, they don’t want the bother of looking after him themselves. I talked pretty straight to the old man – let him see I understood the business; and – well, to cut a long story short, I’m willing to take on the job, provided you really want to have done with it, and Gladman is willing in that case to let you off your contract.”

Mrs. Postwhistle went to the cupboard to get Mr. Clodd a drink. Another thud upon the floor above – one suggestive of exceptional velocity – arrived at the precise moment when Mrs. Postwhistle, the tumbler level with her eye, was in the act of measuring.

“I call this making a disturbance,” said Mrs. Postwhistle, regarding the broken fragments.

“It’s only for another night,” comforted her Mr. Clodd. “I’ll take him away some time to-morrow. Meanwhile, if I were you, I should spread a mattress underneath that perch of his before I went to bed. I should like him handed over to me in reasonable repair.”

“It will deaden the sound a bit, any’ow,” agreed Mrs. Postwhistle.

“Success to temperance,” drank Mr. Clodd, and rose to go.

“I take it you’ve fixed things up all right for yourself,” said Mrs. Postwhistle; “and nobody can blame you if you ’ave. ’Eaven bless you, is what I say.”

“We shall get on together,” prophesied Mr. Clodd. “I’m fond of animals.”

Early the next morning a four-wheeled cab drew up at the entrance to Rolls Court, and in it and upon it went away Clodd and Clodd’s Lunatic (as afterwards he came to be known), together with all the belongings of Clodd’s Lunatic, the curtain-pole included; and there appeared again behind the fanlight of the little grocer’s shop the intimation: “Lodgings for a Single Man,” which caught the eye a few days later of a weird-looking, lanky, rawboned laddie, whose language Mrs. Postwhistle found difficulty for a time in comprehending; and that is why one sometimes meets to-day worshippers of Kail Yard literature wandering disconsolately about St. Dunstan-in-the-West, seeking Rolls Court, discomforted because it is no more. But that is the history of the “Wee Laddie,” and this of the beginnings of William Clodd, now Sir William Clodd, Bart., M.P., proprietor of a quarter of a hundred newspapers, magazines, and journals: “Truthful Billy” we called him then.

No one can say of Clodd that he did not deserve whatever profit his unlicensed lunatic asylum may have brought him. A kindly man was William Clodd when indulgence in sentiment did not interfere with business.

“There’s no harm in him,” asserted Mr. Clodd, talking the matter over with one Mr. Peter Hope, journalist, of Gough Square. “He’s just a bit dotty, same as you or I might get with nothing to do and all day long to do it in. Kid’s play, that’s all it is. The best plan, I find, is to treat it as a game and take a hand in it. Last week he wanted to be a lion. I could see that was going to be awkward, he roaring for raw meat and thinking to prowl about the house at night. Well, I didn’t nag him – that’s no good. I just got a gun and shot him. He’s a duck now, and I’m trying to keep him one: sits for an hour beside his bath on three china eggs I’ve bought him. Wish some of the sane ones were as little trouble.”

The summer came again. Clodd and his Lunatic, a mild-looking little old gentleman of somewhat clerical cut, one often met with arm-in-arm, bustling about the streets and courts that were the scene of Clodd’s rent-collecting labours. Their evident attachment to one another was curiously displayed; Clodd, the young and red-haired, treating his white-haired, withered companion with fatherly indulgence; the other glancing up from time to time into Clodd’s face with a winning expression of infantile affection.

“We are getting much better,” explained Clodd, the pair meeting Peter Hope one day at the corner of Newcastle Street. “The more we are out in the open air, and the more we have to do and think about, the better for us – eh?”

The mild-looking little old gentleman hanging on Clodd’s arm smiled and nodded.

“Between ourselves,” added Mr. Clodd, sinking his voice, “we are not half as foolish as folks think we are.”

Peter Hope went his way down the Strand.

“Clodd’s a good sort – a good sort,” said Peter Hope, who, having in his time lived much alone, had fallen into the habit of speaking his thoughts aloud; “but he’s not the man to waste his time. I wonder.”

With the winter Clodd’s Lunatic fell ill.

Clodd bustled round to Chancery Lane.

“To tell you the truth,” confessed Mr. Gladman, “we never thought he would live so long as he has.”

“There’s the annuity you’ve got to think of,” said Clodd, whom his admirers of to-day (and they are many, for he must be a millionaire by this time) are fond of alluding to as “that frank, outspoken Englishman.” “Wouldn’t it be worth your while to try what taking him away from the fogs might do for him?”

Old Gladman seemed inclined to consider the question, but Mrs. Gladman, a brisk, cheerful little woman, had made up her mind.

“We’ve had what there is to have,” said Mrs. Gladman. “He’s seventy-three. What’s the sense of risking good money? Be content.”

No one could say – no one ever did say – that Clodd, under the circumstances, did not do his best. Perhaps, after all, nothing could have helped. The little old gentleman, at Clodd’s suggestion, played at being a dormouse and lay very still. If he grew restless, thereby bringing on his cough, Clodd, as a terrible black cat, was watching to pounce upon him. Only by keeping very quiet and artfully pretending to be asleep could he hope to escape the ruthless Clodd.