The man who found himself (Smith's Magazine 1920)/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII.
“Higgs!” cried the Honorable Richard Pugeot.
“Sir?” answered a voice from behind the silk curtains cutting off the dressing and bathroom from the bedroom.
“What o'clock is it?”
“Just gone eight, sir.”
“Get me some soda water.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Honorable Richard lay still.
Higgs, a clean-shaven and smart-looking young man, appeared with a bottle of Schweppes and a tumbler on a salver. The cork popped and the sufferer drank.
“What o'clock did I come home?”
“After twelve, sir—pretty nigh one.”
“Was there any one with me?”
“No, sir.”
“No old gentleman?”
“No, sir.”
“Was Randall there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And the car?”
“Yes, sir.”
“There was no old gentleman in the car?”
“No, sir.”
“Good heavens!” said Pugeot. “What can I have done with him?”
Higgs, not knowing, said nothing, moving about now, puttings things in order and getting his master's bath ready.
“I've lost an old gentleman, Higgs,” said Pugeot, for Higgs was a confidential servant as well as a valet.
“Indeed, sir,” said Higgs, as if losing old gentlemen were as common as losing umbrellas.
“And the whole business is so funny I can scarcely believe it's true. I haven't a touch of the jimjams, have I, Higgs?”
“Lord, sir, no! You're all right.”
“Am I? See here, Higgs: yesterday morning I met old Mr. Simon Pettigrew, the lawyer. Mind, you are to say nothing about this to any one—but stay a moment, go into the sitting room and fetch me 'Who's Who'. ”
Higgs fetched the book.
“Pettigrew, Simon,” read out Pugeot, with the book resting on his knees. “Justice of the Peace for Herts—President of the United Law Society—Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries—h'm, h'm—Club Athenaeum—well, I met the old gentleman in Piccadilly; we went for a spin together, and the last thing I remember was seeing him chasing a stableman round some inn yard, where we had stopped for petrol or whisky or something, chasing him round with a bucket, trying to put the bucket over the stableman's head.”
“Fresh,” said Higgs.
“As you say, fresh—but I want to know, was that an optical illusion? There were other things, too. If it wasn't an optical illusion, I want to know what has become of the old gentleman. I'm nervous, for he did me a good turn once, and I hope to Heaven I haven't let him in for any bother.”
“Well, sir,” said Higgs, “I wouldn't worry. It was only his little lark and most likely he's home safe by this.”
“I have also a recollection of two ladies that got mixed up in the affair,” went on the other, “but who they were I can't say. Little lark! The bother of it is, Higgs, one can't play little larks like that, safely, if one is a highly respectable person and a J.P. and a member of the what's-it's-name society.”
He got up and tubbed and dressed, greatly troubled in his mind. People sucked into the Simon whirl were generally troubled in their minds, so great is the power of high respectability when linked to the follies of youth.
At breakfast Mr. Robert Ravenshaw's card was presented by Higgs.
“Show him in,” said Pugeot.
“Hullo, Ravenshaw,” said Pugeot. “Glad to see you. Have you had breakfast?”
“Yes, thanks. I only called for a moment to see you about my uncle.”
“Which uncle?”
“Pettigrew.”
“Good heavens! Don't say he's”
Bobby explained. It was like a mill-stone removed from Pugeot's neck. Then he, in his turn, explained. Then Bobby went into details. Then they consulted.
“You can't get him out of London without telling him where you are taking him to,“\” said Pugeot. “He'll kick the car over on the road if he's anything like what he was last night. Leave it to me and I'll do the trick. But the question is, where shall we take him. There's no use going to a place like Brighton—too many attractions for him. A moated grange is what he wants, and even then he'll be tumbling into the moat.”
“I know of a place,” said Bobby, “down at Upton-on-Hill. A girl told me of it; it's the Rose Hotel.”
“I know it,” said Pugeot. “Couldn't be better! I have a cousin there living at a place called The Nook. There's a bowling green at the hotel and a golf course near. Can't hurt himself. Leave it all to me.”
He told Higgs to telephone for the car and then they sat and smoked while Pugeot showed Bobby just the way to deal with people of uncle Simon's description.
“It's all nonsense—that doctor man's talk!” said Pugeot. “The poor old chap has shed a nut or two. I ought to know something about it, for I've had the same bother in my family. Got his youth back—pish! Cracked—that's the real name for it. I've seen it. I've seen my own uncle, when he was seventy, get his youth back, and the last time I saw him he was pulling a toy elephant along with a string. He'd got a taste, also, for playing with matches. Is that the car, Higgs? Come along, and let's try a little gentle persuasion.”
Vhen they arrived, Simon was finishing breakfast, assisted by madame and Cerise. Poor Monsieur Pattigrew did not seem in the least in the need of pity, either, though the women hung about him as women hang about an invalid. He was talking and laughing, and he greeted the newcomers as good companions who had just turned up. His geniality was not to be denied, and it struck Bobby, in a weird sort of manner, that uncle Simon like this was a much pleasanter person than the old, original article—that is to say, for a moment out of danger from the vicious grinding wheels of a city that destroys butterflies and a society that requests respectable old solicitors to remain respectable old solicitors, Simon was a jovial companion.
Then, the women having discreetly retired for a while, Pugeot began his gentle persuasion.
Uncle Simon, without visions of yesterday's rural pleasures in his mind, required no persuasion. He would come for a run into the country with pleasure. But Pugeot was not taking that sort of thing on any more; he was gay, but a very little of that sort of gayety sufficed him for a long time.
“I don't mean that,” said he. “I mean, let's go down and stay for a while quietly at some place—I mean you and Ravenshaw here—for business will oblige me to come back to town.”
“No, thanks,” said Simon. “I'm quite happy in London.”
“But think how nice it will be in the country this weather,” said Bobby. “London's so hot.”
“I like it hot,” said Simon, “Weather can't be too hot for me.”
Then the gentle persuaders alternately began offering inducements—bowling, golf, a jolly bar at a hotel they knew, even girls. They might just as well have been offering buns to the lions of Trafalgar Square.
Then Bobby had an idea and, leaving the room, he had a conference on the stairs with Madame Rossignol and Cerise.
Then, leaving Simon to the women for a while, they went for a walk and returned to find the marble wax.
Simon did not mind a few days in the country if the ladies would come as his guests. He was enthusiastic on the subject now. They would all go and have a jolly time in the country. The old poetical instinct that had not shown itself, up to this, restrained, no doubt, by the mesmerism of London, seemed to be awakening and promising new developments.
Bobby did not care. Poetry or a Pickford's van were all the same to him as long as they got Simon out of London.
He had promised Julia Delyse, if you remember, to see her that day, but he had quite forgotten her for the moment.