Ladies and Gentlemen. Cobb Irvin Shrewsbury
not one who held by these flimsy, new-fangled notions of latter-day times in the details of feminine lingerie. For this was an ample garment, stoutly fashioned, generously cut, intimate, bifurcated, white, fit for a Christian woman to wear. It surreptitiously had been laved that morning in the sink and wrung out and hung for drying upon a lately almost disused rope, and then, in the press of culinary duties, forgotten. Now the rain was more or less having its way with it, making its limp ornamentation of ruffles limper still, making the horn buttons upon its strong waistband slippery. So much for the exterior of this peaceful homestead.
Above in the main guest-room, Mr. Boyce-Upchurch fretted as he undressed for bed. He felt a distinct sense of irritation. He had set forth his desires regarding a portable tub and plenty of water to be made ready against his hour of retiring yet, unaccountably, these had not been provided. His skin called for refreshment; it was beastly annoying.
A thought, an inspirational thought, came to him. He crossed to his front window and drew back the twin sashes. The sashes opened quite down to the floor and immediately outside, and from the same level, just as he remembered having noted it following his arrival, the roof of the veranda sloped away with a gentle slant. The light behind him showed its flat tin covering glistening and smooth, with a myriad of soft warm drops splashing and stippling upon it. Beyond was cloaking impenetrable blackness, a deep and Stygian gloom; the most confirmed Styg could have desired none deeper.
So Mr. Boyce-Upchurch walked back and entered the bathroom. There, from a pitcher, he poured the basin full of water and then stripped to what among athletes is known as the buff, meaning by that the pink, and he dipped an embroidered guest towel in the basin and with it sopped himself from head to feet, then dampened a cake of soap and wielded it until his body and his head and his limbs and members richly had been sudded. This done he recrossed his chamber, pausing only to turn out the lights. He stepped out upon the porch roof, gasping slightly as the downpouring torrent struck him on his bare flesh.
From the head of the stairs Mr. Gridley, in a puzzled way, called down:
“Say, Emaline?”
“In a minute – I’m just making sure everything is locked up down here,” answered Mrs. Gridley in a voice oddly strained.
“Say, do you know what?” Mr. Gridley retreated a few steps downward. “He’s gone and put his shoes outside his door in the hall. What do you suppose the big idea is?”
“Put out to be cleaned,” explained Mr. Braid from the foot of the stairs. “Quaint old custom – William the Conqueror always put his out. But don’t call ’em shoes; that’s one of those crude Americanisms of yours. The proper word is ‘boot.’”
“Well, who in thunder does he expect is going to clean them? – that’s what I want to know!” demanded the pestered Mr. Gridley.
“Perhaps the slavey – ” began Mr. Braid.
“Ollie, for heaven’s sake hush!” snapped Mrs. Gridley. “I warn you my nerves can’t stand much more tonight. They’re still up out in the kitchen – and suppose Delia heard you. It’s a blessing she didn’t hear him this afternoon.”
“I wonder if he thinks I’m going to shine ’em?” inquired Mr. Gridley, his tone plaintive, querulous, protesting. He strengthened himself with a resolution: “Well, I’m not! Here’s one worm that’s beginning to turn.”
“There’s Ditto,” speculated Mrs. Gridley. “I wouldn’t dare suggest such a thing to either of those other two. But maybe possibly Ditto – ”
“Never, except over my dead body,” declared Mr. Braid. “I’d as soon ask His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury to press my pants for me. Fie, for shame, Dumplings!”
“But who – ”
“I, gallant Jack Harkaway the volunteer fireman,” proclaimed Mr. Braid. “I, Michael Strogoff the Courier of the Czar – I’ll shine his doggone shoes – I mean, his doggone boots. I’ll slip up and get ’em now. There’s a brush and some polish out back somewheres. Only, by rights, I should have some of the genuine Day & Martin to do it with. And I ought to whistle through my teeth. In Dickens they always whistled through their teeth, cleaning shoes.”
“Well, for one, I’m going to take a couple of aspirin tablets and go straight to bed,” said Mrs. Gridley. “Thank goodness for one thing, anyway – it’s just coming down in bucketsful outside!”
On the porch top in the darkness, Mr. Boyce-Upchurch gasped anew but happily. The last of the lather coursed in rivulets down his legs; his grateful pores opened widely and he outstretched his arms, the better to let the soothing cloudburst from on high strike upon his expanded chest.
On the sudsy underfooting his bare soles slipped – first one sole began to slip, then the other began to slip. He gasped once more, but with a different inflection. His spread hands grasped frantically and closed on the void. Involuntarily he sat down, painfully and with great violence. He began to slide: he began to slide faster: he kept on sliding. His curved fingers, still clutching, skittered over stark metal surfaces as he picked up speed. He slid thence, offbound and slantwise, toward the edge. He gave one low muffled cry. He slid faster yet. He slid across the spouting gutter, over the verge, on, out, down, into swallowing space.
Out in the service ell the last of the wastage from the Gridleys’ dinner party was being disposed of and the place tidied up against the next gustatory event in this house, which would be breakfast. Along the connecting passage from his butler’s pantry where he racked up tableware, Ditto was speaking rearward to the two occupants of the kitchen. He had been speaking practically without cessation for twenty minutes. With the h’s it would have taken longer – probably twenty-two to twenty-four minutes.
He was speaking of the habits, customs, and general excellencies of the British upper classes among whom the greater part of his active life congenially had been spent. He was approaching a specific illustration in support and confirmation of his thesis. He reached it:
“Now, you tyke Mr. Boyce-Upchurch, now. Wot pride of bearin’ ’e’s got! Wot control! Wot a flow of language when the spirit moves ’im! Always the marster of any situation – that’s ’im all oaver. Never losin’ ’is ’ead. Never jostled out of ’is stride. Never lackin’ for a word. Stock of the old bull-dog – that’s wot it is!”
Where he stood, so discouraging, he could not see Norah. Perhaps it was just as well he could not see her. For a spell was lifting from Norah. If there is such a word as ‘unenglamored’ then ‘unenglamored’ is the proper word for describing what Norah rapidly was becoming.
From Delia the tattle-tale, Norah had but just now heard whispered things. She was sitting at ease, resting after an arduous spell of labors, but about her were signs and portents – small repressed signs but withal significant. The lips tightly were compressed; one toe tapped the floor with an ominous little tattoo; through the clenched teeth she made a low steady wasp-like humming noise; in the eyes smoldered and kindled a hostile bale. It was plain that before long Norah would herself be moved to utterance. She did but bide her time.
However, as stated, Ditto could not see. He proceeded to carry on:
“No nonsense abaht ’im, I tell you. Knows wot ’e wants and speaks up and arsks for it, stryte out.”
Several of Mrs. Gridley’s specimen rose bushes served somewhat to break the force of Mr. Boyce-Upchurch’s crash, though their intertwining barbed fronds sorely scratched him here and there as he plunged through to earth. He struck broadside in something soft and gelatinous. Dazed and shaken, he somehow got upon his feet and first he disentangled himself from the crushed-down thorny covert and then he felt himself all over to make sure no important bones were broken.
Very naturally, the thought next uppermost with him, springing forward in his mind through a swirl of confused emotions, was to reenter the house and return, without detection, to his room. He darted up the front porch steps and tried the front door. It was barred fast. He tried the windows giving upon the porch; their blinds were drawn, latched from within.
Out again in the storm he half circled the main body of the house, fumbling