Mrs. Archie was devouring the Doughnuts with wide-open eyes. I caught a glimpse of them myself, and only just managed not to laugh, for it was the set of pictures where Pa Doughnut tries to fix the electric light, one of the very finest things dear old Archie had ever done.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “I draw these things. I have sold my soul.”

  “Archie!”

  He winced, but stuck to it bravely.

  “Yes, I knew how you would feel about it, and that was why I didn’t dare to tell you, and why we fixed up this story about old Brackett.

  I couldn’t bear to live on you any longer, and to see you roughing it here, when we might be having all the money we wanted.”

  Suddenly, like a boiler exploding, she began to laugh.

  “They’re the funniest things I ever saw in my life,” she gurgled.

  “Mr. Pepper, do look! He’s trying to cut the electric wire with the scissors, and everything blazes up. And you’ve been hiding this from me all that time!”

  Archie goggled dumbly. She dived at a table, and picked up a magazine, pointing to one of the advertisement pages.

  “Read!” she cried. “Read it aloud.”

  And in a shaking voice Archie read:

  You think you are perfectly well, don’t you? You wake up in the morning and spring out of bed and say to yourself that you have never been better in your life. You’re wrong! Unless you are avoiding coffee as you would avoid the man who always tells you the smart things his little boy said yesterday, and drinking Safety First Molassine for breakfast, you cannot be Perfectly Well.

  It is a physical impossibility. Coffee contains an appreciable quantity of the deadly drug caffeine, and therefore—

  “I wrote that,” she said. “And I wrote the advertisement of the Spiller Baby Food on page ninety-four, and the one about the Preeminent Breakfast Sausage on page eighty-six. Oh, Archie, dear, the torments I have been through, fearing that you would some day find me out and despise me. I couldn’t help it. I had no private means, and I didn’t make enough out of my poetry to keep me in hats. I learned to write advertisements four years ago at a correspondence school, and I’ve been doing them ever since. And now I don’t mind your knowing, now that you have told me this perfectly splendid news. Archie!”

  She rushed into his arms like someone charging in for a bowl of soup at a railway station buffet. And I drifted out. It seemed to me that this was a scene in which I was not on. I sidled to the door, and slid forth. They didn’t notice me. My experience is that nobody ever does – much.

  THE END

  Edited and compiled at www.ebook-house.com

  The Test Case

  Well-meaning chappies at the club sometimes amble up to me and tap me on the wishbone, and say “Reggie, old top,” – my name’s Reggie Pepper – ”you ought to get married, old man.” Well, what I mean to say is, it’s all very well, and I see their point and all that sort of thing; but it takes two to make a marriage, and to date I haven’t met a girl who didn’t seem to think the contract was too big to be taken on.

  Looking back, it seems to me that I came nearer to getting over the home-plate with Ann Selby than with most of the others. In fact, but for circumstances over which I had no dashed control, I am inclined to think that we should have brought it off. I’m bound to say that, now that what the poet chappie calls the first fine frenzy has been on the ice for awhile and I am able to consider the thing calmly, I am deuced glad we didn’t. She was one of those strong-minded girls, and I hate to think of what she would have done to me. At the time, though, I was frightfully in love, and, for quite a while after she definitely gave me the mitten, I lost my stroke at golf so completely that a child could have given me a stroke a hole and got away with it. I was all broken up, and I contend to this day that I was dashed badly treated.

  Let me give you what they call the data.

  One day I was lunching with Ann, and was just proposing to her as usual, when, instead of simply refusing me, as she generally did, she fixed me with a thoughtful eye and kind of opened her heart.

  “Do you know, Reggie, I am in doubt.”

  “Give me the benefit of it,” I said. Which I maintain was pretty good on the spur of the moment, but didn’t get a hand. She simply ignored it, and went on.

  “Sometimes,” she said, “you seem to me entirely vapid and brainless; at other times you say or do things which suggest that there are possibilities in you; that, properly stimulated and encouraged, you might overcome the handicap of large private means and do something worthwhile. I wonder if that is simply my imagination?” She watched me very closely as she spoke.

  “Rather not. You’ve absolutely summed me up. With you beside me, stimulating and all that sort of rot, don’t you know, I should show a flash of speed which would astonish you.”

  “I wish I could be certain.”

  “Take a chance on it.”

  She shook her head.

  “I must be certain. Marriage is such a gamble. I have just been staying with my sister Hilda and her husband—”

  “Dear old Harold Bodkin. I know him well. In fact, I’ve a standing invitation to go down there and stay as long as I like. Harold is one of my best pals. Harold is a corker. Good old Harold is—”

  “I would rather you didn’t eulogize him, Reggie. I am extremely angry with Harold. He is making Hilda perfectly miserable.”

  “What on earth do you mean? Harold wouldn’t dream of hurting a fly. He’s one of those dreamy, sentimental chumps who—”

  “It is precisely his sentimentality which is at the bottom of the whole trouble. You know, of course, that Hilda is not his first wife?”

  “That’s right. His first wife died about five years ago.”

  “He still cherishes her memory.”

  “Very sporting of him.”

  “Is it! If you were a girl, how would you like to be married to a man who was always making you bear in mind that you were only number two in his affections; a man whose idea of a pleasant conversation was a string of anecdotes illustrating what a dear woman his first wife was. A man who expected you to upset all your plans if they clashed with some anniversary connected with his other marriage?”

  “That does sound pretty rotten. Does Harold do all that?”

  “That’s only a small part of what he does. Why, if you will believe me, every evening at seven o’clock he goes and shuts himself up in a little room at the top of the house, and meditates.”

  “What on earth does he do that for?”

  “Apparently his first wife died at seven in the evening. There is a portrait of her in the room. I believe he lays flowers in front of it. And Hilda is expected to greet him on his return with a happy smile.”

  “Why doesn’t she kick?”

  “I have been trying to persuade her to, but she won’t. She just pretends she doesn’t mind. She has a nervous, sensitive temperament, and the thing is slowly crushing her. Don’t talk to me of Harold.”

  Considering that she had started him as a topic, I thought this pretty unjust. I didn’t want to talk of Harold. I wanted to talk about myself.

  “Well, what has all this got to do with your not wanting to marry me?” I said.

  “Nothing, except that it is an illustration of the risks a woman runs when she marries a man of a certain type.”

  “Great Scott! You surely don’t class me with Harold?”

  “Yes, in a way you are very much alike. You have both always had large private means, and have never had the wholesome discipline of work.”

  “But, dash it, Harold, on your showing, is an absolute nut. Why should you think that I would be anything like that?”

  “There’s always the risk.”

  A hot idea came to me.

  “Look here, Ann,” I said, “Suppose I pull off some stunt which only a deuced brainy chappie could get away with? Would you marry me then?”

  “Certainly. What do you propose to do?”

  “Do! What do I propose to do! Well, er, to be absolutely frank, at the moment I don’t quite know.”

  “You never will know, Reggie. You’re one of the idle rich, and your brain, if you ever had one, has atrophied.”

  Well, that seemed to me to put the lid on it. I didn’t mind a heart-to-heart talk, but this was mere abuse. I changed the subject.

  “What would you like after that fish?” I said coldly. You know how it is when you get an idea. For awhile it sort of simmers inside you, and then suddenly it sizzles up like a rocket, and there you are, right up against it. That’s what happened now. I went away from that luncheon, vaguely determined to pull off some stunt which would prove that I was right there with the gray matter, but without any clear notion of what I was going to do. Side by side with this in my mind was the case of dear old Harold. When I wasn’t brooding on the stunt, I was brooding on Harold. I was fond of the good old lad, and I hated the idea of his slowly wrecking the home purely by being a chump. And all of a sudden the two things clicked together like a couple of chemicals, and there I was with a corking plan for killing two birds with one stone – putting one across that would startle and impress Ann, and at the same time healing the breach between Harold and Hilda.

  My idea was that, in a case like this, it’s no good trying opposition. What you want is to work it so that the chappie quits of his own accord. You want to egg him on to overdoing the thing till he gets so that he says to himself, “Enough! Never again!” That was what was going to happen to Harold.

  When you’re going to do a thing, there’s nothing like making a quick start. I wrote to Harold straight away, proposing myself for a visit. And Harold wrote back telling me to come right along. Harold and Hilda lived alone in a large house. I believe they did a good deal of entertaining at times, but on this occasion I was the only guest. The only other person of note in the place was Ponsonby, the butler.

  Of course, if Harold had been an ordinary sort of chappie, what I had come to do would have been a pretty big order. I don’t mind many things, but I do hesitate to dig into my host’s intimate private affairs. But Harold was such a simple-minded Johnnie, so grateful for a little sympathy and advice, that my job wasn’t so very difficult. It wasn’t as if he minded talking about Amelia, which was his first wife’s name. The difficulty was to get him to talk of anything else. I began to understand what Ann meant by saying it was tough on Hilda.

  I’m bound to say the old boy was clay in my hands. People call me a chump, but Harold was a super-chump, and I did what I liked with him. The second morning of my visit, after breakfast, he grabbed me by the arm.

  “This way, Reggie. I’m just going to show old Reggie Amelia’s portrait, dear.”

  There was a little room all by itself on the top floor. He explained to me that it had been his studio. At one time Harold used to do a bit of painting in an amateur way.

  “There!” he said, pointing at the portrait. “I did that myself, Reggie. It was away being cleaned when you were here last. It’s like dear Amelia, isn’t it?”

  I suppose it was, in a way. At any rate, you could recognize the likeness when you were told who it was supposed to be. He sat down in front of it, and gave it the thoughtful once-over.

  “Do you know, Reggie, old top, sometimes when I sit here, I feel as if Amelia were back again.”

  “It would be a bit awkward for you if she was.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, old lad, you happen to be married to someone else.”

  A look of childlike enthusiasm came over his face.

  “Reggie, I want to tell you how splendid Hilda is. Lots of other women might object to my still cherishing Amelia’s memory, but Hilda has been so nice about it from the beginning. She understands so thoroughly.”

  I hadn’t much breath left after that, but I used what I had to say:

  “She doesn’t object?”

  “Not a bit,” said Harold. “It makes everything so pleasant.”

  When I had recovered a bit, I said, “What do you mean by everything?”

  “Well,” he said, “for instance, I come up here every evening at seven and – er – think for a few minutes.”

  “A few minutes?!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, a few minutes isn’t long.”

  “But I always have my cocktail at a quarter past.”

  “You could postpone it.”

  “And Ponsonby likes us to start dinner at seven-thirty.”

  “What on earth has Ponsonby to do with it?”

  “Well, he likes to get off by nine, you know. I think he goes off and plays bowls at the madhouse. You see, Reggie, old man, we have to study Ponsonby a little. He’s always on the verge of giving notice

  – in fact, it was only by coaxing him on one or two occasions that we got him to stay on – and he’s such a treasure that I don’t know what we should do if we lost him. But, if you think that I ought to stay longer—?”

  “Certainly I do. You ought to do a thing like this properly, or not at all.”

  He sighed.

  “It’s a frightful risk, but in future we’ll dine at eight.”

  It seemed to me that there was a suspicion of a cloud on Ponsonby’s shining morning face, when the news was broken to him that for the future he couldn’t unleash himself on the local bowling talent as early as usual, but he made no kick, and the new order of things began.

  My next offensive movement I attribute to a flash of absolute genius. I was glancing through a photograph album in the drawingroom before lunch, when I came upon a face which I vaguely remembered. It was one of those wide, flabby faces, with bulging eyes, and something about it struck me as familiar. I consulted Harold, who came in at that moment.

  “That?” said Harold. “That’s Percy.” He gave a slight shudder.

  “Amelia’s brother, you know. An awful fellow. I haven’t seen him for years.”

  Then I placed Percy. I had met him once or twice in the old days, and I had a brainwave. Percy was everything that poor old Harold disliked most. He was hearty at breakfast, a confirmed back-slapper, and a man who prodded you in the chest when he spoke to you.

  “You haven’t seen him for years!” I said in a shocked voice.

  “Thank heaven!” said Harold devoutly.

  I put down the photograph album, and looked at him in a deuced serious way. “Then it’s high time you asked him to come here.”

  Harold blanched. “Reggie, old man, you don’t know what you are saying. You can’t remember Percy. I wish you wouldn’t say these things, even in fun.”

  “I’m not saying it in fun. Of course, it’s none of my business, but you have paid me the compliment of confiding in me about Amelia, and I feel justified in speaking. All I can say is that, if you cherish her memory as you say you do, you show it in a very strange way. How you can square your neglect of Percy with your alleged devotion to Amelia’s memory, beats me. It seems to me that you have no choice. You must either drop the whole thing and admit that your love for her is dead, or else you must stop this infernal treatment of her favorite brother. You can’t have it both ways.”

  He looked at me like a hunted stag. “But, Reggie, old man! Percy! He asks riddles at breakfast.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Hilda can’t stand him.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You must invite him. It’s not a case of what you like or don’t like. It’s your duty.”

  He struggled with his feelings for a bit. “Very well,” he said in a crushed sort of voice.

  At dinner that night he said to Hilda: “I’m going to ask Amelia’s brother down to spend a few days. It is so long since we have seen him.”Hilda didn’t answer at once. She looked at him in rather a curious sort of way, I thought. “Very well, dear,” she said. I was deuced sorry for the poor girl, but I felt like a surgeon. She would be glad later on, for I was convinced that in a very short while poor old Harold must crack under the strain, especially after I had put across the coup which I was meditating for the very next evening.

  It was quite simple. Simple, that is to say, in its working, but a devilish brainy thing for a chappie to have thought out. If Ann had really meant what she had said at lunch that day, and was prepared to stick to her bargain and marry me as soon as I showed a burst of intelligence, she was mine.

  What it came to was that, if dear old Harold enjoyed meditating in front of Amelia’s portrait, he was jolly well going to have all the meditating he wanted, and a bit over, for my simple scheme was to lurk outside till he had gone into the little room on the top floor, and then, with the aid of one of those jolly little wedges which you use to keep windows from rattling, see to it that the old boy remained there till they sent out search parties.

  There wasn’t a flaw in my reasoning. When Harold didn’t roll in at the sound of the dinner gong, Hilda would take it for granted that he was doing an extra bit of meditating that night, and her pride would stop her sending out a hurry call for him. As for Harold, when he found that all was not well with the door, he would probably yell with considerable vim. But it was odds against anyone hearing him. As for me, you might think that I was going to suffer owing to the probable postponement of dinner. Not so, but far otherwise, for on the night I had selected for the coup I was dining out at the neighboring inn with my old college chum Freddie Meadowes. It is true that Freddie wasn’t going to be within fifty miles of the place on that particular night, but they weren’t to know that.

  Did I describe the peculiar isolation of that room on the top floor, where the portrait was? I don’t think I did. It was, as a matter of fact, the only room in those parts, for, in the days when he did his amateur painting, old Harold was strong on the artistic seclusion business and hated noise, and his studio was the only room in use on that floor.

  In short, to sum up, the thing was a cinch.

  Punctually at ten minutes to seven, I was in readiness on the scene. There was a recess with a curtain in front of it a few yards from the door, and there I waited, fondling my little wedge, for Harold to walk up and allow the proceedings to start. It was almost pitchdark, and that made the time of waiting seem longer. Presently – I seemed to have been there longer than ten minutes – I heard steps approaching. They came past where I stood, and went on into the room. The door closed, and I hopped out and sprinted up to it, and the next moment I had the good old wedge under the wood – as neat a job as you could imagine. And then I strolled downstairs, and toddled off to the inn.

 

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