Berry And Co. (5 page)

And I stood there frozen and paralysed and dumb.

Posing his victim with a horrible precision, the monster raised his whip, but it struck a pendant lantern, and with an oath he turned to the gallery, where he should find room and to spare for his brutality. At this delay my lady fell upon her knees, in a wild hope, I think, to turn her respite into a reprieve, but the beast cried out upon her, struck down her outstretched hands, and, twisting his fingers in her soft dark hair, dragged her incontinently out of the closet. The little whimper she gave was awful…

And I stood there paralysed.

Five minutes, perhaps, had passed, slow-treading, pregnant minutes, when my lord reappeared. He stood for a moment listening at the top of the stairs, his chin on his shoulder. Then he stepped lightly down. His vile face was pale and his eyes shifted uneasily. The devil looked out of them yet, but Fright looked with him. Two paces brought the fellow before the tallboy. He put up his hands as if to pull open a drawer, when something about the whip he was holding caught his attention. For a second he stared at it, muttering. Then, with a glance at the doorway, he thrust the thing beneath the skirt of his coat and wiped it as it had been a rapier…

Again he made to open a drawer, but the spell under which I lay seemed to be lifted, and I shot out a hand and clapped him on the shoulder.

For all the notice he took, I might not have been there. The more incensed, I shook the man violently…

“Repose,” said Jonah, “is one thing, gluttonish sloth another. And even if you have once again overestimated the capacity of your stomach, why advertise your intemperance in a public place?” He lifted his hand from my shoulder to look at his watch. “It’s now ten minutes to three. Do you think you can stagger, or must you be carried, to the car?”

I sat up and looked about me. Except for Jill, who was standing a-tiptoe before a mirror, we were alone in the lounge.

“I’ve been dreaming,” said I. “About – about—”

“That’s all right, old chap. Tell Nanny all about it tonight, after you’ve had your bath. That’s one of the things she’s paid for.”

“Don’t be a fool,” said I, putting a hand to my head. “It’s important, I tell you. For Heaven’s sake, let me think. Oh, what was it?” My cousins stared at me. “I’m not rotting. It was real – something that mattered.”

“’Orse race?” said Jonah eagerly. “Green hoops leading by twelve lengths or something?”

I waved him away.

“No, no, no. Let me think. Let me think.”

I buried my face in my hands and thought and thought… But to no purpose. The vision was gone.

Hastily I made ready for our journey to Town, all the time racking my brain feverishly for some odd atom of incident that should remember my dream.

It was not until I was actually seated in the Rolls, with my foot upon the self-starter, that I thought about Berry.

Casually I asked what had become of him.

“That’s what we want to know,” said Jill. “He motored down here with Miss Childe, and now they’ve pushed off somewhere, but they wouldn’t say—”

“Childe!” I shouted. “Miss Childe! I’ve got it!”

“What on earth’s the matter?” said Jonah, as I started the car.

“My dream,” I cried. “I remember it all. It was about that tallboy.”

“What – the one we saw?” cried Jill.

I nodded.

“I’m going to double my bid,” I said. “We simply must have it, whatever the price.”

Disregarding Jonah’s protests that we were going the wrong way, I swung the car in the direction from which we had come, and streaked down the road to Cranmer Place.

A minute later I dashed into the hall, with Jill at my heels.

The first person I saw was Mr Holly.

“Has it come up yet?”

I flung the words at him, casting strategy to the winds.

“It ’as, Major, an’ I’m sorry to say we’ve lorst it. I never see such a thing. There was a gent there as meant to ’ave it. ’Cept for ’im, there wasn’t a bid after twenty-five pounds. I never thort we’d ’ave to go over fifty, neither. Might ’a bin the owner ’isself, the way ’e was runnin’ us up. An’ when we was in the eighties, I sez to meself, I sez, ‘The one as calls a nundred first ’as it. So ’ere goes.’ ‘Eighty-nine,’ sez ’e. ‘A nundred pound,’ sez I, bold-like. ‘Make it guineas,’ sez he, as cool as if ’e was buyin’ a naporth o’ figs. I tell you, Major, it fair knocked me, it did. I come all of a tremble, an’ me knees—”

“Where’s the fellow who bought it?” said I.

“I’m afraid it’s no good, Major. I tell you ’e meant to ’ave them drawers.”

With an effort I mastered my impatience.

“Will you tell me where he is? Or, if he’s gone, find out—”

“I don’t think ’e’s gorn,” said Mr Holly, looking round. “I ’alf think – There ’e is,” he cried, suddenly, nodding over my shoulder. “That’s ’im on the stairs, with the lady in blue.”

Excitedly I swung round, to see my brother-in-law languidly descending the staircase, with Miss Childe by his side.

“Hullo,” he said. “Do you mind not asking me why I’m here?”

“It’s not my practice,” said I, “to ask a question, the answer to which I already know.” I turned to Mr Holly and took out a one pound note. “I’m much obliged for your trouble. ‘Not a bid after twenty-five pounds,’ I think you said.” I handed him the note, which he accepted with protests of gratitude. “You did better than you know,” I added.

“May I ask,” said Berry unsteadily, “if this gentleman and you are in collusion?”

“We were,” said I. “At least, I instructed him to purchase some furniture for me. Unfortunately we were outbid. But it’s of no consequence.”

Berry raised his eyes to heaven and groaned.

“Subtraction,” he said, “is not my strongest point, but I make it eighty pounds. Is that right?”

I nodded, and he turned to Miss Childe.

“That viper,” he said, “has stung the fool who feeds him to the tune of eighty pounds. Shall I faint here or by the hat-stand? Let’s be clear about it. The moment I enter the swoon—”

“Still, as long as it’s in the family–” began Jill.

“Exactly,” said I. “The main thing is, we’ve got it. And when you’ve heard my tale—”

“Eighty paper pounds,” said Berry. “Can you beat it?”

“That’d only be about thirty-five before the War,” said Miss Childe in a shaking voice.

“Yes,” said I. “Look at it that way. And what’s thirty-five? A bagatelle, brother, a bagatelle. Now, if we were in Russia—”

“Yes,” said Berry grimly, “and if we were in Patagonia, I suppose I should be up on the deal. You can cut that bit.”

Miss Childe and Jill dissolved into peals of merriment.

“That’s right,” said Berry. “Deride the destitute. Mock at bereavement. As for you,” he added, turning to Jill, “your visit to the Zoo is indefinitely postponed. Other children shall feel sick in the monkey-house and be taken to smell the bears. But you, never.” He turned to Miss Childe and laid a hand on her arm. “Shut your eyes, my dear, and repeat one of Alfred Austin’s odes. This place is full of the ungodly.”

My determination to carry the tallboy chest to London in the Rolls met with stern opposition, but in the end I prevailed, and at six o’clock that evening it was safely housed in Mayfair.

To do him justice, Berry’s annoyance was considerably tempered by the strange story which I unfolded during a belated tea.

The house and park which I had seen we were unable to identify, and the Post Office Guide was silent as to the whereabouts of Colt. But the excitement which Daphne’s production of a tape-measure aroused was only exceeded by the depression which was created by our failure to discover anything unusual about the chest.

We measured the cornice and we measured the plinth. We measured the frame and we measured the drawers. But if the linear measurements afforded us little satisfaction, the square measurements revealed considerably less, while, since no one of us was a mathematician, the calculation of the cubic capacity proved, not only unprofitable, but provocative of such bitter arguments and insulting remarks that Daphne demanded that we should desist.

“All right,” said Berry, “if you don’t believe me, call in a consulting engineer. I’ve worked the blinking thing out three times. I admit the answers were entirely different, but that’s not my fault. I never did like astrology. I tell you the beastly chest holds twenty-seven thousand point nine double eight recurring cubic inches of air. Some other fool can reduce that to rods, and there you are. I’m fed up with it. Thanks to the machinations of that congenital idiot with the imitation mustachios, I’ve paid more than four times its value, and I’m not going to burst my brains trying to work out which drawer would have had a false bottom if it had been built by a dipsomaniac who kept fowls. And that’s that.”

Tearfully Miss Childe announced that it was time for her to be going, and I elected to escort her as far as the garage. As we stepped on to the pavement—

“I know a lot more about you than you think,” said I. “I never told you all half what I dreamed.”

“What do you know?”

“Oh, nothing momentous. Just the more intimate details of your everyday life. Your partiality to mushrooms, your recognition of Love, your recklessness, pretty peculiarities of your toilet—”

“Good Heavens!” cried Miss Childe.

“But you wouldn’t tell me your name.”

“False modesty. Seriously you don’t mean to say—”

“But I do. Nothing was hid from me. Your little bare feet—”

A stifled scream interrupted me.

“This,” said Miss Childe, “is awful.” We turned into the mews. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Dictating. You see, there’s a dream I want recorded.”

“I shall expect you at half-past one. We can start after lunch. I’ve a beautiful hand.”

“I know you have. Two of them. They were bare, too,” I added reflectively.

With a choking sound, Miss Childe got into the car.

“Half-past one,” she said, as she slid into the driver’s seat.

“Without fail.” I raised my hat. “By the way, who shall I ask for?”

Miss Childe flung me a dazzling smile.

“I’ve no sisters,” she said.

Moodily I returned to the house.

I entered the library to find that the others had retired, presumably to dress for dinner. Mechanically I crossed to the tallboy, which we had so fruitlessly surveyed, and began to finger it idly, wondering all the time whether my dream was wanton, or whether there was indeed some secret which we might discover. It did not seem possible, and yet… That distant voice rang in my ears. “Measurements tell, measurements tell. But they never do that.”
What?

A sudden idea came to me, and I drew out the second long drawer. Then in some excitement I withdrew the first, and placed it exactly upon the top of the second, so that I might see if they were of the same size.
The second was the deeper by an inch and a half
.

I thrust my arms into the empty frame, feeling feverishly for a bolt or catch, which should be holding a panel in place at the back of where the first drawer had lain. At first I could find nothing, then my right hand encountered a round hole in the wood, just large enough to admit a man’s finger. Almost immediately I came upon a similar hole on the left-hand side. Their office was plain…

A moment later, and I had drawn the panel out of its standing and clear of the chest.

My hands were trembling as I thrust them into the dusty hiding-place.

“Hullo! Aren’t you going to dress?” said Jonah some two minutes later.

But I was still staring at a heavy riding-whip whose handle was wrought about with gold.

How a Man May Follow His Own Hat,

and Berry Took a Lamp in His Hand

“What are you doing this morning?” said Daphne.

Berry turned to the mantelpiece and selected a pipe before replying.

“I have,” he said, “several duties to discharge. All, curiously enough, to myself. First, if not foremost, I must hire some sock-suspenders. Secondly, I must select some socks for the sock-suspenders to suspend. Is that clear? Neither last nor least—”

“As a matter of fact,” said his wife, “you’re going to help me choose a present for Maisie Dukedom. Besides, I’ve got to go to Fortnum and Mason’s, and I want you—”

“To carry the string-bag. I know. And we can get the chops at the same time. We’d better take some newspaper with us. And a perambulator.”

“Tell you what,” said Jonah, “let’s all join together and give her a Persian rug.”

“That’s rather an idea,” said my sister. “And they wear forever.”

“You’re sure of that, aren’t you?” said Berry. “I mean, I shouldn’t like her to have to get a new one in about six hundred years. I like a present to last.”

Before Daphne could reply—

“How d’you spell ‘business’?” said Jill, looking up from a letter.

“Personally,” said I, “I don’t. It’s one of the words I avoid. If you must, I should write it down both ways and see what it looks like.”

The telephone bell began to ring.

“Wrong number, for a fiver,” said Jonah. “They always do it about this time.”

Berry crossed the room and picked up the receiver. We listened expectantly.

“Have I got a taxi! My dear fellow, I’ve got a whole school of them. Would you like a Renault or a baby grand? What? Oh, I’m afraid I couldn’t send it at once. You see, I’ve only got one boy, and he’s having his hair cut. I can post it to you, and I should think you’ll get it tomorrow morning. No, I’m not mad. No, I’m not the cab-rank, either. Well, you should have asked me. Never mind. Let’s talk of something else. I wonder if you’re interested in rockworms… I beg your pardon…” Gravely he restored the receiver to its perch. “Not interested,” he added for our information. “He didn’t actually say so, but from the directions he gave concerning them – happily, I may say, quite impracticable—”

“Talking of telephoning,” said Jonah uncertainly, “don’t forget we’ve got to ring up and say whether we want those tickets.”

“So we have,” said my sister. “Wednesday week, isn’t it ? Let’s see.” She fell to examining a tiny engagement-book, murmuring to herself as she deciphered or interpreted the entries.

I continued to survey the street.

It was a dark morning in December, and we were all in the library, where there was a good fire, warming ourselves preparatory to venturing abroad and facing the north-east wind which was making London so unpleasant.

The tickets to which Jonah referred would make us free of the Albert Hall for a ball which promised to surpass all its predecessors in splendour and discomfort. No one was to be admitted who was not clad in cloth either of gold or silver, and, while there were to be no intervals between the dances, a great deal of the accommodation usually reserved for such revellers as desired rest or refreshment was being converted into seats to be sold to any who cared to witness a pageant of unwonted brilliancy. The fact that no one of us had attended a function of this sort for more than five years, and the excellence of the cause on behalf of which it was being promoted, were responsible for our inclination to take the tickets, for, with the exception of Jill, we were not eager to subscribe to an entertainment which it was not at all certain we should enjoy.

At length—

“I suppose we’d better take the tickets,” I said reflectively. “If we don’t want to go, we needn’t use them.”

“Oh, we must use them,” said Daphne; “and we’ve got nothing on on Wednesday, as far as I can see.”

Berry cleared his throat.

“It is patent,” he said, “that my personal convenience is of no consideration. But let that pass. I have no objection to setting, as it were, the seal of success upon the ball in question, provided that my costume buttons in front, and has not less than two pockets which are at once accessible and of a reasonable capacity. I dare say they weren’t fashionable in the fourteenth century. No doubt our forefathers thought it a scream to keep their handkerchiefs in their boots or the seat of their trousers. But I’m funny like that. Last time I had to give the fellow in the cloak-room half a crown every time I wanted to blow my nose.”

“You four go,” said Jonah. “I always feel such a fool in fancy dress.”

“If you feel anything like the fool you look,” said Berry, “I’m sorry for you.”

Jonah lowered
The Sportsman
and surveyed the speaker.

“What you want,” he said, “is a little honest toil. I should take up scavenging, or sewerage. Something that appeals to you.”

“I agree,” said Daphne. “But you can’t start this morning, because you’re coming with Jill and me to choose the rug.” She turned to me. “Boy dear, ring up and take those tickets, will you?”

I nodded.

The spirit of reckless generosity which is so prominent a characteristic of “Exchange” was very noticeable this morning. The number I asked for, which was faithfully repeated by the operator, was Mayfair 976. I was connected successively to Hammersmith 24, Museum 113, and Mayfair 5800. After a decent interval I began again.

“Kennington Road Police Station,” said a voice.

“Kennington or Kennington Road?” said I.

“Kennington Road. There ain’t no Kennington.”

“Ain’t – I mean, aren’t there? I always thought… Never mind. How are the police?”

“I say this is Kennington Road Police Station,” replied the voice with some heat.

“I know you did. I heard you. Just now. If you remember, I asked you if it was Kennington or Kennington Road, and you said—”

“’Oo
are
you?”

To avoid any unpleasantness I replaced my receiver.

Two minutes later, after an agreeable conversation with “Supervisor,” I arranged to purchase five tickets for the Gold and Silver Ball.

“This,” said the salesman, spreading a rug upon the top of a fast-growing pile, “is a Shiraz.”

“I suppose,” said Berry, “you haven’t got a Badgerabahd?”

“I never came across one, sir.”

“They are rare,” was the airy reply. “The best ones used to be made in Germany and sent to Egypt. By the time the camels had finished with them, they’d fetch anything from a millionaire to a foxhound.”

This was too much for Jill’s gravity, and it was only with an effort that Daphne controlled her voice.

“I think that’s very nice,” she said shakily. “Don’t you?” she added, turning to me.

“Beautiful piece of work,” I agreed. “Some of it appears to have been done after dinner, but otherwise…”

“The pattern is invariably a little irregular, sir.”

“Yes,” said Berry. “That’s what makes them so valuable. Their lives are reflected in their rugs. Every mat is a human document.” With the ferrule of his umbrella he indicated a soft blue line that was straying casually from the course which its fellows had taken. “That, for instance, is where Ethel the Unready demanded a latchkey at the mature age of sixty-two. And here we see Uncle Sennacherib fined two measures of oil for being speechless before mid-day. I don’t think we’d better give her this one,” he added. “Shebat the Satyr seems to have got going about the middle, and from what I remember—”

“Haven’t you got to go and get some socks?” said Daphne desperately.

“I have. Will you meet me for lunch, or shall I meet you? I believe they do you very well at the Zoo.”

The salesman retired precipitately into an office, and my sister besought me tearfully to take her husband away.

“I might have known,” she said in a choking voice. “I was a fool to bring him.”

“Let’s play at bears,” said her husband. “It’s a priceless game. Everyone gets under a different rug and growls.”

Resignedly Daphne retired to the sofa. Jill sank down upon the pile of rugs and shook silently. Observing that we were unattended, another salesman was hurrying in our direction. Before he could launch the inevitable question—

“I want a dog licence and some magic lanterns,” said Berry. “You know. The ones that get all hot and smell.”

There was a shriek of laughter from Jill, and the unfortunate assistant looked round wildly, as if for support.

Clearly something had to be done.

I stepped forward and slid my arm through that of the delinquent.

“Enough,” said I. “Come and devil the hosier. If you’re not quick all the socks will be gone.”

My brother-in-law eyed me suspiciously.

“And leave my baggage?” he demanded, pointing to Daphne. “Never. This is a ruse. Where is the manager of the emporium? I dreamed about him last night. He had brown boots on.”

I consulted my watch before replying.

“By the time we get to the Club, Martinis will be in season.”

“Do you mean that?” said Berry.

“I do.”

“And a small but pungent cigar?”

I nodded.

He turned to the bewildered salesman.

“Please attend to these ladies. They want to choose an expensive-looking rug. Preferably a Shiraz. No doubt they will be safe in your hands. Good morning.”

On the way out he stopped at a counter and purchased one of the prettiest bead bags I have ever seen. He ordered it to be sent to Daphne.

The omnibus was sailing down Oxford Street at a good round pace, but it was the sudden draught from a side street that twitched my hat from my head. I turned to see the former describe a somewhat elegant curve and make a beautiful landing upon the canopy of a large limousine which was standing by the kerb some seventy yards away. By the time I had alighted, that distance was substantially increased. In some dudgeon I proceeded to walk, with such remnants of dignity as I could collect and retain, in the direction of my lost property. Wisdom suggested that I should run; but I felt that the spectacle of a young man, hatless but otherwise decently dressed and adequately protected from the severity of the weather, needed but the suggestion of impatience to make it wholly ridiculous. My vanity was rightly served. I was still about thirty paces from my objective, when the limousine drew out from the pavement and into the stream of traffic which was hurrying east.

As my lips framed a particularly unpleasant expletive a bell rang sharply, and I turned to see a taxi, which had that moment been dismissed.

“Oxford Circus,” I cried, flinging open the door.

A moment later we were near enough for me to indicate the large limousine and to instruct my driver to follow her.

As we swept into Regent’s Park, I began to wonder whether I should not have been wiser to drive to Bond Street and buy a new hat. By the time we had been twice round the Ring I had no longer any doubt on this point; but my blood was up, and I was determined to run my quarry to earth, even if it involved a journey to Hither Green.

More than once we were almost out-distanced, three times we were caught in a block of traffic, so that my taxi’s bonnet was nosing the limousine’s tank. Once I got out, but, as I stepped into the road, the waiting stream was released, and the car slid away and round the hull of a ’bus from under my very hand. My escape from a disfiguring death beneath the wheels of a lorry was so narrow that I refrained from a second attempt to curtail my pursuit, and resigned myself to playing a waiting game.

When we emerged from the Park, my spirits rose and I fell to studying what I could see of the lines of the limousine, and to speculating whether I was being led to Claridge’s or the Ritz. I had just pronounced in favour of the latter, when there fell upon my ears the long regular spasm of ringing which is a fire-engine’s peremptory demand for instant way. Mechanically the order was everywhere obeyed. The street was none too wide, and a second and louder burst of resonance declared that the fire-engine was hard upon our heels.

The twenty yards separating us from the limousine were my undoing. With a helpless glance at me over his shoulder, my driver pulled in to the kerb, and we had the felicity of watching the great blue car turn down a convenient side street and flash out of sight.

The engine swept by at a high smooth speed, the traffic emerged from its state of suspended animation, and in some annoyance I put my head out of the window and directed my driver to drive to Bond Street.

I had chosen a new hat and was on the point of leaving the shop, when a chauffeur entered with a soft grey hat in his hand. The hat resembled the one I had lost, and for a moment I hesitated. Then it occurred to me that there were many such hats in London, and I passed on and out of the door. Of course it was only a coincidence. Still…

Opposite me, drawn up by the kerb, was the large blue limousine.

The next moment I was back in the shop.

“I rather think that’s my hat,” I said.

The chauffeur looked round.

“Is it, sir? ’Er ladyship see it on top o’ the canopy just as I put ’er down at the Berkeley. ‘Wilkins,’ she says, ‘there’s a ’at on the car.’ ‘A ’at, me lady?’ says I. ‘A ’at,’ says she. ‘Fetch it down.’ I fetches it down and shows it ’er. ‘An’ a nice noo ’at, too,’ she says, ‘wot must have blowed orf of a gent’s ’ead, an’ ’e on top of a ’bus, as like as not.’ Then she looks inside and see the initials and the name o’ the shop. ‘Take it back where it come from,’ she says. ‘They’ll know ’oose it is.’ ‘Very good, me lady,’ said I, an’ come straight down, sir.”

I took off the hat I was wearing and bade him read the initials which had just been placed there. He did so reluctantly. Then—

“Very glad to ’ave found you so quick, sir. Shall I tell them to send it along? You won’t want to carry it.”

“I’ll see to that,” said I, taking it out of his hand. “Why didn’t it blow off your canopy?”

“The spare cover was ’oldin’ it, sir. Must ’ave shifted on to the brim as soon as it come there. I don’t know ’ow long—”

“Best part of an hour,” I said shortly, giving him a two-shilling piece. “Good day, and thanks very much.”