"Is your name Shorty?"
"Shorty is short for Shortlands," Mike explained.
"Shorty short for Shortlands," murmured Augustus Robb. Then, as the full humour of the thing began to penetrate, he repeated the words with an appreciative chuckle rather more loudly; so loudly, indeed, that the fifth earl rose a full six inches in the direction of the ceiling and, having descended, clutched at Mike's arm.
"Can't you stop him making such a noise?"
"I'll try."
"Adela is not a heavy sleeper."
Mike saw that he had overlooked something else in framing his plans. Lady Adela Toppping should have been given a Micky Finn in her bedtime glass of warm milk. It is just these small details that escape an organizer's notice.
"I think he's subsiding," he said. And indeed Augustus Robb, who had been striding about the room with an odd, lurching movement, as if he were having leg trouble, had navigated to a chair and was sitting there, looking benevolent and murmuring "Shorty short for Shortlands" in a meditative undertone, like a parrot under a green baize cloth. "Rush along and see if those tools are in your room."
Lord Shortlands rushed along, and a strange silence fell upon the library. Augustus Robb had stopped his soliloquy, and was sitting with bowed head. As he raised it for a moment in order to refresh himself from the bottle, Terry touched Mike's arm.
"Mike."
"Yes, love?"
"Look," whispered Terry, and there was womanly commiseration in her voice. "He's crying!"
Mike looked. It was even as she had said. A tear was stealing down behind the horn-rimmed spectacles.
"Something the matter, Augustus?" he asked.
Augustus Robb wiped away the pearly drop.
"Just thinking of 'Er, cocky," he said huskily.
'"Er?"
"The woman I lost, chum."
Mike felt profoundly relieved.
"It's all right," he whispered to Terry. "The quiet, sentimental stage."
"Oh, is that it?"
"That's it. Let us hope it persists, because the next one in rotation is the violent. I didn't know you'd lost a woman, Augustus. Where did you see her last?"
"I didn't. She wasn't there."
"Where?"
"At the blinking registry office. I suppose it's never occurred to you, cocky, to ask yourself why I'm a solitary chip drifting down the river of life, as the saying is. Well, I'll tell you. I was once going to marry a good woman, but she didn't turn up."
"That was tough."
"You may well say it was tough."
"What a shame, Mr. Robb."
"And you may well say 'What a shame, Mr. Robb,' ducky. No, she didn't turn up. I'd confessed my past to her the night before, and she had seemed to forgive, but she must have slep' on it and changed her mind, because the fact remains that I waited a couple of hours at the Beak Street registry office and not a sign of her."
"An unpleasant experience. What did you do?"
"I went and had a sarsaparilla and a ham sandwich and tried to forget. Not that I ever 'ave forgot. The memory of her sweet face still gnaws my bosom like a flock of perishing rats."
Mike nodded sympathetically.
"Women are like that."
The slur on the sex offended Augustus Robb's chivalry.
"No, they aren't. Unless they are, of course," he added, for he was a man who could look at things from every angle. "And yet sometimes," he said, finishing the creme de menthe thoughtfully, "I wonder if maybe she wasn't a mere tool of Fate, as the expression is. You see, there's a Beak Street registry office and a Meek Street registry ofice and a Greek Street registry office, and who knows but what she may have gone and got confused? What I mean, how am I to know that all the time I was waiting at Beak Street she mayn't have been waiting at Meek Street?"
"Or Greek Street."
"R. It's the sort of thing might easily happen."
"Didn't you think of asking her?"
"Yus. But too late. The possibility of there having been some such what you might call misunderstanding didn't occur to me till a week or two later, and when I nipped round to her lodging she'd gorn, leaving no address. And a couple of days after that I had to go to America with an American gentleman who I'd took service with, so there we were, sundered by the seas. Sundered by the ruddy seas," he added, to make his meaning clearer. "And I've never seen her since."
A silence fell. Mike and Terry, disinclined for chatter after the stark human story to which they had been listening, sat gazing at Augustus Robb in mute sympathy, and Augustus Robb, except for an occasional soft hiccough, might have been a statue of himself, erected by a few friends and admirers.
Presently he came to life, like a male Galatea.
"Broke my blinking 'eart, that did," he said. "If I was to tell you how that woman could cook steak and kidney pudding, you wouldn't believe me. Melted in the mouth."
"It's a tragedy," said Terry.
"You're right, ducky. It's a tragedy."
"You ought to have told it to Shakespeare," said Mike. "He could have made a play out of it."
"R.," said Augustus Robb moodily. He removed his horn-rimmed spectacles in order to wipe away another tear, and, replacing them, looked at his young companions mournfully. "Yus, it's a tragedy right enough. Lots of aching 'earts you see around you these days. Something chronic. Which reminds me. 'Ow's your business coming along, Mr. Cardinal? You and this little party. Thought quite a bit about that, I 'ave. Ever tried kissing her? I've known that to answer."
Terry started, and there came into her face a flush which Mike found himself comparing, to the latter's disadvantage, to the first faint glow of pink in some lovely summer sky. He asked himself what Lord Percy would have done at such a moment. The answer came readily. He would have spared the loved one's blushes, turning that rose back again to a lily.
"Let's talk about something else," he suggested.
Augustus Robb's brow darkened. He twitched his chin petulantly.
"I won't talk about something else. I don't want any pie-faced young Gawd-'elp-uses tellin' me what to talk about."
"Read any good books lately, Augustus?"
"Whippersnappers," said Augustus Robb, after a pause, as if, like Flaubert, he had been hunting for the mot juste, and was about to dilate on the theme when Lord Shortlands re-entered, announcing that he had been unable to find the tools.
Augustus Robb turned a cold eye upon him.
"What tools?"
"Your tools."
Augustus Robb stiffened. It was plain that that last unfortunate dip into the creme de menthe bottle had eased him imperceptibly from the sentimental to the peevish stage of intoxication, accentuating his natural touchiness to a dangerous degree.
He directed at Lord Shortlands a misty, but penetrating, stare.
"You let me catch you messing about with my tools, and I'll twist your head off and make you swallow it."
"But you told me to go and look for them," pleaded Lord Shortlands.
"I never!"
"Well, he did," said Lord Shortlands.
Augustus Robb transferred his morose gaze to Mike.
"What's it got to do with him, may I ask?"
"I thought it wisest to start hunting around, Augustus. We want those tools."
"Well, we've got 'em, ain't we? They're under the sofa, where I put 'em, ain't they? Fust thing I done on enterin' this room was to place my tools neatly under the sofa."
"I see. Just a little misunderstanding."
"I don't like little misunderstandings."
"Here you are. All present and correct."
Augustus Robb took the bag of tools absently. He was glaring at Lord Shortlands again. For some reason he seemed to have taken a sudden dislike to that inoffensive peer.
"Earls!" he said disparagingly, and it was plain that by some process not easily understandable the creme de menthe had turned this once staunch supporter of England's aristocracy into a republican with strong leanings towards the extreme left. "Earls aren't everything. They make me sick."