Derek slammed the door. Freddie was alone. He stood rubbing his legs for some minutes, a rueful expression on his usually cheerful face. Freddie hated rows. He liked everything to jog along smoothly. What a rotten place the world was these days! Just one thing after another. First, poor old Jill takes the knock and disappears. He would miss her badly. What a good sort! What a pal! And now—gone. Biffed off. Next, Derek. Together, more or less, ever since Winchester, and now—bing!...
Freddie heaved a sigh, and reached out for the Sporting Times, his never-failing comfort in times of depression. He lit another cigar and curled up in one of the arm-chairs. He was feeling tired. He had been playing squash all the afternoon, a game at which he was exceedingly expert and to which he was much addicted.
Time passed. The paper slipped to the floor. A cold cigar followed it. From the depths of the chair came a faint snore....
A hand on his shoulder brought Freddie with a jerk from troubled dreams. Derek was standing beside him. A bent, tousled Derek, apparently in pain.
"Freddie!"
"Hullo!"
A spasm twisted Derek's face.
"Have you got any pepsin?"
Derek uttered a groan. What a mocker of our petty human dignity is this dyspepsia, bringing low the haughtiest of us, less than love itself a respecter of persons. This was a different Derek from the man who had stalked stiffly from the room two hours before. His pride had been humbled upon the rack.
"Pepsin?"
"Yes. I've got the most damned attack of indigestion."
The mists of sleep rolled away from Freddie. He was awake again, and became immediately helpful. These were the occasions when the Last of the Rookes was a good man to have at your side. It was Freddie who suggested that Derek should recline in the arm-chair which he had vacated; Freddie who nipped round the corner to the all-night chemist's and returned with a magic bottle guaranteed to relieve an ostrich after a surfeit of tenpenny nails; Freddie who mixed and administered the dose.
His ministrations were rewarded. Presently the agony seemed to pass. Derek recovered.
One would say that Derek became himself again, but that the mood of gentle remorse which came upon him as he lay in the arm-chair was one so foreign to his nature. Freddie had never seen him so subdued. He was like a convalescent child. Between them, the all-night chemist and the Dry. Salters seemed to have wrought a sort of miracle. These temporary softenings of personality frequently follow City dinners. The time to catch your Dry-Salter in angelic mood is the day after the semi-annual banquet. Go to him then and he will give you his watch and chain.
"Freddie," said Derek.
They were sitting over the dying fire. The clock on the mantelpiece, beside which Jill's photograph had stood pointed to ten minutes past two. Derek spoke in a low, soft voice. Perhaps the doctors are right after all, and two o'clock is the hour at which our self-esteem deserts us, leaving in its place regret for past sins, good resolutions for future behaviour.
"What do Martyn and the others say about ... you know?"
Freddie hesitated. Pity to start all that again.
"Oh, I know," went on Derek. "They say I behaved like a cad."
"Oh, well...."
"They are quite right. I did."
"Oh, I shouldn't say that, you know. Faults on both sides and all that sort of rot."
"I did!" Derek stared into the fire. Scattered all over London at that moment, probably a hundred Worshipful Dry-Salters were equally sleepless and subdued, looking wide-eyed into black pasts. "Is it true she has gone to America, Freddie?"
"She told me she was going."
"What a fool I've been!"
The clock ticked on through the silence. The fire sputtered faintly, then gave a little wheeze, like a very old man. Derek rested his chin on his hands, gazing into the ashes.
"I wish to God I could go over there and find her."
"Why don't you?"
"How can I? There may be an election coming on at any moment. I can't stir."
Freddie leaped from his seat. The suddenness of the action sent a red-hot corkscrew of pain through Derek's head.
"What the devil's the matter?" he demanded irritably. Even the gentle mood which comes with convalescence after a City dinner is not guaranteed to endure against this sort of thing.
"I've got an idea, old bean!"
"Well, there's no need to dance, is there?"
"I've nothing to keep me here, you know. What's the matter with my popping over to America and finding Jill?" Freddie tramped the floor, aglow. Each beat of his foot jarred Derek, but he made no complaint.
"Could you?" he asked eagerly.
"Of course I could. I was saying only the other day that I had half a mind to buzz over. It's a wheeze! I'll get on the next boat and charge over in the capacity of a jolly old ambassador. Have her back in no time. Leave it to me, old thing! This is where I come out strong!"
CHAPTER IX
JILL IN SEARCH OF AN UNCLE
I
New York welcomed Jill, as she came out of the Pennsylvania Station in Seventh Avenue, with a whirl of powdered snow that touched her cheek like a kiss, the cold, bracing kiss one would expect from this vivid city. She stood at the station entrance, a tiny figure beside the huge pillars, looking round her with eager eyes. A wind was whipping down the avenue. The sky was a clear, brilliant tint of the brightest blue. Energy was in the air, and hopefulness. She wondered if Mr. Elmer Mariner ever came to New York. It was hard to see how even his gloom would contrive to remain unaffected by the exhilaration of the place.
She took Uncle Chris' letter from her bag. He had written from an address on East Fifty-seventh Street. There would be just time to catch him before he went out to lunch. She hailed a taxi-cab which was coming out of the station.
It was a slow ride, halted repeatedly by congestion of the traffic, but a short one for Jill. She was surprised at herself, a Londoner of long standing, for feeling so provincial and being so impressed. But London was far away. It belonged to a life that seemed years ago and a world from which she had parted for ever. Moreover, this was undeniably a stupendous city through which her taxi-cab was carrying her. At Times Square the stream of the traffic plunged into a whirlpool, swinging out of Broadway to meet the rapids which poured in from east, west, and north. On Fifth Avenue all the motor-cars in the world were gathered together. On the pavements, pedestrians, muffled against the nipping chill of the crisp air, hurried to and fro. And, above, that sapphire sky spread a rich velvet curtain which made the tops of the buildings stand out like the white minarets of some eastern city of romance.
The cab drew up in front of a stone apartment house; and Jill, getting out, passed under an awning through a sort of mediæval courtyard, gay with potted shrubs, to an inner door. She was impressed. Evidently the tales one heard of fortunes accumulated overnight in this magic city were true, and one of them must have fallen to the lot of Uncle Chris. For nobody to whom money was a concern could possibly afford to live in a place like this. If Croesus and the Count of Monte Cristo had applied for lodging there, the authorities would probably have looked on them a little doubtfully at first and hinted at the desirability of a month's rent in advance.
In a glass case behind the inner door, reading a newspaper and chewing gum, sat a dignified old man in the rich uniform of a general in the Guatemalan army. He was a brilliant spectacle. He wore no jewellery, but this, no doubt, was due to a private distaste for display. As there was no one else of humbler rank at hand from whom Jill could solicit an introduction and the privilege of an audience, she took the bold step of addressing him directly.