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“Why, what happened to Percy?”
“Do you mean to say you haven’t heard? Of course not. It wouldn’t have been in the morning papers. Why, Percy punched a policeman.”
“Percy did what?”
“Slugged a slop. Most dramatic thing. Sloshed him in the midriff. Absolutely. The cross marks the spot where the tragedy occurred.”
Maud caught her breath. Somehow, though she could not trace the co
“You don’t mean to say Percy did that?”
“Absolutely. The human tiger, and what not. Menace to Society and all that sort of thing. No holding him. For some unexplained reason the generous blood of the Belphers boiled over, and then—zing. They jerked him off to Vine Street. Like the poem, don’t you know. ‘And poor old Percy walked between with gyves upon his wrists.’ And this morning, bright and early, the beak parted him from ten quid. You know, Maud, old thing, our duty stares us plainly in the eyeball. We’ve got to train old Boots down to a reasonable weight and spring him on the National Sporting Club. We’ve been letting a champion middleweight blush unseen under our very roof tree.”
Maud hesitated a moment.
“I suppose you don’t know,” she asked carelessly, “why he did it? I mean, did he tell you anything?”
“Couldn’t get a word out of him. Oysters garrulous and tombs chatty in comparison. Absolutely. All I know is that he popped one into the officer’s waistband. What led up to it is more than I can tell you. How would it be to stagger to the library and join the post-mortem?”
“The post-mortem?”
“Well, I met the mater and his lordship on their way to the library, and it looked to me very much as if the mater must have got hold of an evening paper on her journey from town? When did she arrive?”
“Only a short while ago.”
“Then that’s what’s happened. She would have bought an evening paper to read in the train. By Jove, I wonder if she got hold of the one that had the poem about it. One chappie was so carried away by the beauty of the episode that he treated it in verse. I think we ought to look in and see what’s happening.”
Maud hesitated again. But she was a girl of spirit. And she had an intuition that her best defence would be attack. Bluff was what was needed. Wide-eyed, i
“All right.”
“By the way, dear old girl,” inquired Reggie, “did your little business come out satisfactorily? I forgot to ask.”
“Not very. But it was awfully sweet of you to take me into town.”
“How would it be,” said Reggie nervously, “not to dwell too much on that part of it? What I mean to say is, for heaven’s sake don’t let the mater know I rallied round.”
“Don’t worry,” said Maud with a laugh. “I’m not going to talk about the thing at all.”
Lord Belpher, meanwhile, in the library, had begun with the aid of a whisky and soda to feel a little better. There was something about the library with its sombre half tones that soothed his bruised spirit. The room held something of the peace of a deserted city. The world, with its violent adventures and tall policemen, did not enter here. There was balm in those rows and rows of books which nobody ever read, those vast writing tables at which nobody ever wrote. From the broad mantel-piece the bust of some u
He rose defensively.
“Let me explain.”
Lady Caroline quivered with repressed emotion. This masterly woman had not lost control of herself, but her aristocratic calm had seldom been so severely tested. As Reggie had surmised, she had read the report of the proceedings in the evening paper in the train, and her world had been reeling ever since. Caesar, stabbed by Brutus, could scarcely have experienced a greater shock. The other members of her family had disappointed her often. She had become inured to the spectacle of her brother working in the garden in corduroy trousers and in other ways behaving in a ma
“Explain?” she cried. “How can you explain? You—my nephew, the heir to the title, behaving like a common rowdy in the streets of London … your name in the papers …
“If you knew the circumstances.”
“The circumstances? They are in the evening paper. They are in print.”
“In verse,” added Lord Marshmoreton. He chuckled amiably at the recollection. He was an easily amused man. “You ought to read it, my boy. Some of it was capital …”
“John!”
“But deplorable, of course,” added Lord Marshmoreton hastily. “Very deplorable.” He endeavoured to regain his sister’s esteem by a show of righteous indignation. “What do you mean by it, damn it? You’re my only son. I have watched you grow from child to boy, from boy to man, with tender solicitude. I have wanted to be proud of you. And all the time, dash it, you are prowling about London like a lion, seeking whom you may devour, terrorising the metropolis, putting harmless policemen in fear of their lives…”
“Will you listen to me for a moment?” shouted Percy. He began to speak rapidly, as one conscious of the necessity of saying his say while the saying was good. “The facts are these. I was walking along Piccadilly on my way to lunch at the club, when, near Burlington Arcade, I was amazed to see Maud.”
Lady Caroline uttered an exclamation.
“Maud? But Maud was here.”
“I can’t understand it,” went on Lord Marshmoreton, pursuing his remarks. Righteous indignation had, he felt, gone well. It might be judicious to continue in that vein, though privately he held the opinion that nothing in Percy’s life so became him as this assault on the Force. Lord Marshmoreton, who in his time had committed all the follies of youth, had come to look on his blameless son as scarcely human. “It’s not as if you were wild. You’ve never got into any scrapes at Oxford. You’ve spent your time collecting old china and prayer rugs. You wear fla