You mustn’t suppose that I stood listening silently to this speech. Every time she seemed to be going to stop for breath I tried to horn in and tell her all these things which had been happening were not mere flukes, as she seemed to think, but parts of a deuced carefully planned scheme of my own. Every time I’d try to interrupt, Ann would wave me down, and carry on without so much as a semi-colon.
But at this point I did manage a word in. “I know, I know, I know! I did it all. It was I who suggested to Harold that he should lengthen the meditations, and insisted on his inviting Percy to stay.”
I had hardly got the words out, when I saw that they were not making the hit I had anticipated. She looked at me with an expression of absolute scorn, don’t you know.
“Well, really, Reggie,” she said at last, “I never have had a very high opinion of your intelligence, as you know, but this is a revelation to me. What motive you can have had, unless you did it in a spirit of pure mischief–-” She stopped, and there was a glare of undiluted repulsion in her eyes. “Reggie! I can’t believe it! Of all the things I loathe most, a practical joker is the worst. Do you mean to tell me you did all this as a practical joke?”
“Great Scott, no! It was like this–-“
I paused for a bare second to collect my thoughts, so as to put the thing clearly to her. I might have known what would happen. She dashed right in and collared the conversation.
“Well, never mind. As it happens, there is no harm done. Quite the reverse, in fact. Hilda left a note for Harold telling him what she had done and where she had gone and why she had gone, and Harold found it. The result was that, after Hilda had been with me for some time, in he came in a panic and absolutely grovelled before the dear child. It seems incredible but he had apparently had no notion that his absurd behavior had met with anything but approval from Hilda. He went on as if he were mad. He was beside himself. He clutched his hair and stamped about the room, and then he jumped at the telephone and called this house and got Ponsonby and told him to go straight to the little room on the top floor and take Amelia’s portrait down. I thought that a little unnecessary myself, but he was in such a whirl of remorse that it was useless to try and get him to be rational. So Hilda was consoled, and he calmed down, and we all came down here in the automobile. So you see–-“
At this moment the door opened, and in came Harold.
“I say—hello, Reggie, old man—I say, it’s a funny thing, but we can’t find Ponsonby anywhere.”
There are moments in a chappie’s life, don’t you know, when Reason, so to speak, totters, as it were, on its bally throne. This was one of them. The situation seemed somehow to have got out of my grip. I suppose, strictly speaking, I ought, at this juncture, to have cleared my throat and said in an audible tone, “Harold, old top, I know where Ponsonby is.” But somehow I couldn’t. Something seemed to keep the words back. I just stood there and said nothing.
“Nobody seems to have seen anything of him,” said Harold. “I wonder where he can have got to.”
Hilda came in, looking so happy I hardly recognized her. I remember feeling how strange it was that anybody could be happy just then.
“I know,” she said. “Of course! Doesn’t he always go off to the inn and play bowls at this time?”
“Why, of course,” said Harold. “So he does.”
And he asked Ann to play something on the piano. And pretty soon we had settled down to a regular jolly musical evening. Ann must have played a matter of two or three thousand tunes, when Harold got up.
“By the way,” he said. “I suppose he did what I told him about the picture before he went out. Let’s go and see.”
“Oh, Harold, what does it matter?” asked Hilda.
“Don’t be silly, Harold,” said Ann.
I would have said the same thing, only I couldn’t say anything.
Harold wasn’t to be stopped. He led the way out of the room and upstairs, and we all trailed after him. We had just reached the top floor, when Hilda stopped, and said “Hark!”
It was a voice.
“Hi!” it said. “Hi!”
Harold legged it to the door of the studio. “Ponsonby?”
From within came the voice again, and I have never heard anything to touch the combined pathos, dignity and indignation it managed to condense into two words.
“Yes, sir?”
“What on earth are you doing in there?”
“I came here, sir, in accordance with your instructions on the telephone, and–-“
Harold rattled the door. “The darned thing’s stuck.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How on earth did that happen?”
“I could not say, sir.”
“How can the door have stuck like this?” said Ann.
Somebody—I suppose it was me, though the voice didn’t sound familiar— spoke. “Perhaps there’s a wedge under it,” said this chappie.
“A wedge? What do you mean?”
“One of those little wedges you use to keep windows from rattling, don’t you know.”
“But why–-? You’re absolutely right, Reggie, old man, there is!”
He yanked it out, and flung the door open, and out came Ponsonby, looking like Lady Macbeth.
“I wish to give notice, sir,” he said, “and I should esteem it a favor if I might go to the pantry and procure some food, as I am extremely hungry.”
And he passed from our midst, with Hilda after him, saying: “But, Ponsonby! Be reasonable, Ponsonby!”
Ann Selby turned on me with a swish. “Reggie,” she said, “did you shut Ponsonby in there?”
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I did.”
“But why?” asked Harold.
“Well, to be absolutely frank, old top, I thought it was you.”
“You thought it was me? But why—what did you want to lock me in for?”
I hesitated. It was a delicate business telling him the idea. And while I was hesitating, Ann jumped in.
“I can tell you why, Harold. It was because Reggie belongs to that sub-species of humanity known as practical jokers. This sort of thing is his idea of humor.”
“Humor! Losing us a priceless butler,” said Harold. “If that’s your idea of–-“
Hilda came back, pale and anxious. “Harold, dear, do come and help me reason with Ponsonby. He is in the pantry gnawing a cold chicken, and he only stops to say ‘I give notice.’”
“Yes,” said Ann. “Go, both of you. I wish to speak to Reggie alone.”
That’s how I came to lose Ann. At intervals during her remarks I tried to put my side of the case, but it was no good. She wouldn’t listen. And presently something seemed to tell me that now was the time to go to my room and pack. Half an hour later I slid silently into the night.
Wasn’t it Shakespeare or somebody who said that the road to Hell—or words to that effect—was paved with good intentions? If it was Shakespeare, it just goes to prove what they are always saying about him—that he knew a bit. Take it from one who knows, the old boy was absolutely right.
** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, DEATH AT THE EXCELSIOR ***
This file should be named 8dexc10.txt or 8dexc10.zip Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8dexc11.txt VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8dexc10a.txt
Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, even years after the official publication date.