“Pleased to meet cha, ma’m,” Buggy said cordially.
Larry put a hand on his shoulder and smiled innocently.
“Mr. Rafferty does all the heavy work for me,” he said. “There won’t be anything for him to do since you have taken care of my outfit; so,” he patted Buggy on the back, “maybe there’s some work around here he can do.”
“Well, I don’t know,” the girl said. She turned to the elderly Negro. “Rastus, will you take Mr. Rafferty to the kitchen?” Maybe you can find something to keep him occupied.”
Rastus rubbed his big, horny hands. He did not approve of Buggy Rafferty and it was obvious that his mistress’ assignment gave him deep pleasure.
“Yassum,” he said, smiling. “I’ll keep him busy. Ain’t nobody touched dat woodpile for days now. He can start on dat.” He turned to Buggy. “Come on, you.”
Buggy looked darkly at Larry.
“Much obliged, chum,” he muttered under his breath. He shuffled off after the Negro, the cigar in his mouth wagging angrily.
Gloria took Larry by the arm.
“You must come in and meet Father now.”
“Fine,” Larry said.
His vague misgivings in regard to the colonel were not eased when he entered into the huge, high-ceilinged library with Gloria at his side, and saw a tall, broad-shouldered old man, with fierce white mustaches standing in front of the fireplace with a great, blue-barrelled rifle in his hands.
The old man had steel blue eyes and a jaw that looked like Gibraltar.
“Shot and shell are for sissies,” he was thundering to some invisible auditor as Gloria and Larry entered the room. He waved the huge gun about impatiently. “For a real, honest-to-God battle give me cold steel. A man—”
He broke off in mid-sentence and peered at his daughter.
“Ah, there you are,” he said in a milder voice. “Dereck and I were talking about you.”
Gloria smiled. “How did I manage to squeeze into a conversation on the relative merits of cold steel and shot-and-shell?”
Dereck stood up and bowed gallantly. He had been seated in a high-backed chair facing the colonel.
“There’s room for you, my dear, in any conversation,” he said, fairly exuding charm from every pore. He was dressed in formal riding clothes and he seemed to realize that he cut quite a dashing figure.
Gloria led Larry forward.
“Father, this is the young man I was telling you about.”
Larry shook hands with the colonel and he found himself staring into a pair of frosty blue eyes that were like chilled lake water.
“Yes, yes,” the old man muttered, “I remember you telling me about him. How are you, young fellow?”
“Fine, thank you, sir,” Larry said, breathing a little more easily, as the colonel stood the huge elephant gun against the fireplace.
“What do you do for a living?” the colonel asked bluntly, when he turned back to Larry. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back and his bushy eyebrows were drawn together over his piercing eyes.
Gloria said quickly, “I told you all about him, Father. He’s an entertainer. He’s going to perform at the party tomorrow night.”
“What kind of an entertainer?” the colonel asked.
“I’m a puppeteer,” Larry explained apologetically. He didn’t know quite why but his occupation suddenly seemed rather shameful.
“A what?”
“A puppeteer, sir. I manipulate puppets by string control and make them do all sorts of things.”
The colonel frowned.
“What sort of things?”
Larry loosened his collar.
“Well, I make them hit each other over the head and walk as if they’re drunk and—” His voice trailed off weakly and he cleared his throat desperately. “Things like that,” he added feebly. He was all too conscious of how silly his work must seem to a fire-belching colonel.
“I see,” the colonel said. He glanced at Dereck and smiled. “Interesting, what?”
“Very,” Dereck said smoothly. “Someone has to keep the women and children entertained while the men are away fighting the war, I suppose.” Larry restrained an impulse to kick Dereck squarely in the stomach. He said nothing of the knee that had caused his rejection from the Army, Navy and Marines. That was a little something he kept pretty close to himself.
“Of course,” Dereck continued smoothly, “when I was fighting in India we were too busy to worry about the morale of the people back home. We had enough trouble staying alive without worrying about anything else.”
“You’ve mentioned that before. Dereck,” Gloria said quietly. She turned to Larry. “Maybe you’d be willing to show us how your act works. Sort of a preview of tomorrow night. Everything’s all set up in the sun-room, just off the library.”
“I’d be glad to,” Larry said.
She led him across the library and through an arched doorway into a solarium. His puppet booth was in the center of this room and his three puppets, Pat, Mike and Tim were sprawled on the tiny stage.
Dereck and the colonel followed them, and Larry heard the colonel’s clarion voice growling vaguely about a sabre charge in the Crimea in which he participated; and in between these blasts he could hear Dereck’s smooth voice relating some bit of personal daring that he had accomplished in the air above Tobruk.
He sighed and there was envy in the sigh. Naturally the old man and Dereck would be as thick as thieves, since they had a sort of military bond between them.
“Oh, they’re cute,” Gloria cried, as Larry gathered the controlling strings of the puppets in his hands and lifted them to a standing position. With dexterously sensitive fingers he set them jigging.
The colonel shoved his craggy face close to the dancing puppets.
“I’ve never seen anything so ridiculous in all my life,” he growled.
“They’re the most stupid looking things a person could imagine. They look silly. Whoever made them must have been dumb and blind.”
His fiercely scowling face was within an inch of the puppet at the left end of the line. This was the puppet Larry had dubbed Mike, because of the merrily belligerent expression carved on his little wooden face.
An odd thing happened then.
The foot of this puppet flew out with sudden malicious speed.
And its hard wooden shoe landed squarely on the tip of the colonel’s red-veined, beaked nose!
The colonel straightened with a roar that set the floor trembling. He glared in raging accusation at the puppet that had kicked him.
“It — it assaulted me!” he roared.
“Don’t be silly, Father,” Gloria said soothingly. “How could a puppet do anything like that? They’re just little wooden figures. Their actions are completely controlled by Larry.”
“So that’s it!” the colonel bellowed.
He wheeled on Larry who was still holding the puppets’ strings in his hands.
“I presume, young man, that that is your idea of a joke,” he shouted wrathfully.
He drew himself up to his full impressive height and his eyes pierced Larry like twin needles.
“It might interest you to know,” he said scathingly, “that I happen to regard practical joking as the external expression of a low, perverted intellect.”
He turned on his heel and marched stiffly from the room. After a discreet interval Dereck followed suit. His attitude indicated plainly that he shared the colonel’s opinion.
Gloria was looking at Larry with wonder in her blue eyes. “Why did you have to do that, Larry?”
“Do what?”
“Make that puppet kick Father.” Larry’s expression was slightly dazed. “I–I didn’t. Anyway I don’t think I did.”
The girl’s expression was an interesting blend of exasperation and amusement. “Don’t be silly! It could hardly have kicked him of its own accord.”