The City in the Clouds. Thorne Guy
thought he was about to go for me, and I stood ready, when "What about me?" came in a dry crackling voice from Arthur.
"Oh, I should put you and me about level," I said, "with the courtesy title as a little extra weight. It is a pity you should be the second son."
"Damn you, Kirby!" he burst out, blazing with anger.
I lifted up my hand and looked at both of them.
"I came in here," I said, "to my own house and find my two best friends, that I thought, waiting for me. A few hours ago I should have thought such a scene as this utterly impossible. I will ask you both to remember that it has not been provoked by me in any way, and that directly I came in you turned on me in the most atrocious and ill-bred way. Of your idea of the value of friendship I say nothing at all – it is obvious I must say nothing about that. Now you have forced the pace I will say this. To marry that young lady – I don't like to speak her name even – is about as difficult as to dive in a cork jacket or keep a smelt in a net. But I mean to try. I mean to use every ounce of weight I've got. I shall almost certainly fail, but now you know."
"Since you have said that," Pat broke in, "handicaps be damned! I'm a starter for the same stakes, and it's hell for leather I'll ride, and it's meself that says it, Tom."
Arthur Winstanley spoke last.
"I'm a fellow of a good many ambitions," he said quietly, "though I've never bothered you chaps with them. Now they are all consolidated into one."
Then we all stood and looked at each other, the cards on the table, and in the faces of the other two at least there was uneasiness and shame.
Just at that moment a funny thing happened. Preston had brought in an ice pail full of bottles of soda water. The heat of the night, or something, caused one of the corks to break its confining wire and go off with a startling report, while a fountain of foam drenched the sandwiches.
"Me kingdom for a drink!" said Pat. "Oh, the sweet, blessed, gurgling sound!" and striding to the table he mixed a gargantuan peg.
Arthur and I met behind Pat's back and he held out his hand to me, biting his lower lip.
"We've behaved abominably, old soul," he said.
The big guardsman turned round and raised his glass on high.
"Here's to the sweetest and most lovely lady in the world, bedad!" he shouted, accentuating his Irish brogue. "May the best man win her, fair fight, and no favors, and may the Queen of Heaven and all the saints watch over the little darlint and guide her choice aright!"
So all our midnight madness passed like a fleeting cloud. An extraordinary accession of high spirits came to us as we pledged the dark-haired maiden from Brazil. And it was Pat, dear old Pat, who welded us together in a league of chivalry against which nothing was ever to prevail.
"Tom," he said, "Arthur – we are all like brothers, we always have been. Let there be no change in that, now or ever. I have something to propose."
"Go on, Pat," said Arthur.
"Sure then, since we all love the same lady, that ought to bind us more together than anything else has ever done. But since we cannot all marry her, let us agree, in the first place, that no outsider ever shall."
"Hurrah!" said Arthur – I could see that he was fearfully excited – throwing his glass into the fireplace with a crash.
"I am with you, Pat!" I cried. "It's to be one of us three, and we are in league against all the other men in London. And now the question is – "
"Hear my plan. This very night we'll draw lots as to which of us shall have the first chance. The man who wins shall have the entire support of the other two in every possible way. If she accepts him, then the fates have spoken. If she doesn't, then the next man in the draw shall have his chance, and the rejected suitor and the poor third man shall help him to the utmost of their ability. Is that clear?"
He stopped and looked down at us from his great height with a smiling and anxious face.
Dear old Pat, I shall always love to think that the proposal came from him, straight, clean and true, as he always was.
"So be it," Arthur echoed solemnly. "The league shall begin this very night. Do either of you chaps know any Spanish, by the way?"
We shook our heads.
"Well, I do," he continued, "and we'll form ourselves into a Santa Hermandad – 'The Holy Brotherhood' – it was the name of an old Spanish Society of chivalry ever so many years ago."
"Santa Hermandad!" Pat shouted, "and now to shake hands on it. I think we'll not be needing to take an oath."
Our three hands were clasped together in an instant and we knew that, come what might, each would be true to that bond.
"And now," I said, "to draw lots as to who shall be the first to try his chance. How shall we settle it?"
"There's no fairer way," said Arthur, "than the throw of a die. Have you any poker dice, Tom?"
"Yes, I have a couple of sets somewhere."
"Very well then, we'll take a single one and the first man that throws Queen is the winner."
I found the dice and the leather cup and dropped a single one into it. Poker dice, for the benefit of the uninitiate, have the Queen on one side in blue, like the Queen in a pack of cards, the King in red and the Knave in black. On two other faces, the nine and the ten.
"Who will throw first?" said Pat.
"You throw," I said.
There was a rattle, and nine fell upon the table. I nodded to Arthur, who picked up the little ivory square, waved the cup in the air, and threw – an ace.
My turn came. I threw an ace also, and Arthur and I looked at Pat with sinking hearts.
He threw a King. I don't want another five minutes like that again. We threw and threw and threw and never once did the Queen turn up. At last Arthur said:
"Look here, you fellows, I can't stand this much longer, it's playing the devil with my nerves. Let's have one more throw and if Her Majesty doesn't turn up, let's decide it by values. Ace, highest, King, Queen and so on. Tom, your turn."
I took up the box, rattled the cube within it for a long time and then dropped it flat upon the table.
I had thrown Queen.
CHAPTER TWO
About a fortnight after the memorable scene in my flat when the league came into being, I was sitting in my editorial room at the offices of the Evening Special.
I had met Juanita once at a large dinner party and exchanged half a dozen words with her – that was all. My head was full of plans, I was trying to map out a social campaign that would give me the opportunity I longed for, but as yet everything was tentative and incomplete. The exciting business of journalism, the keeping of one's thumb upon the public pulse, the directing of public thought into this or that channel, was most welcome at a time like this, and I threw myself into it with avidity.
I had just returned from lunch, and the first editions of the paper were successfully afloat, when Williams, my acting editor, and Miss Dewsbury, my private secretary, came into my room.
"Things are very quiet indeed," said Williams.
"But the circulation is all right?"
"Never better. Still, I am thinking of our reputation, Sir Thomas."
I knew what he meant. We had never allowed the Evening Special– highly successful as it was – to go on in a jog-trot fashion. We had a tremendous reputation for great "stunts," genuine, exclusive pieces of news, and now for weeks nothing particular had come our way.
"That's all very well, Williams, but we cannot make bricks without straw, and if everything is as stagnant as a duck pond, that's not our fault."
Miss Dewsbury broke in. She was a little woman of thirty with a large head, fair hair drawn tightly from a rather prominent brow, and wore tortoise-shell spectacles. She looked as if her clothes