Ignoring the interruption, Mrs. Stiffson returned to the attack.

"I demand an explanation!" Her voice shook with suppressed fury.

"Listen!" cried Cissie Boye, "if your boy will come and sleep in my flat----"

"Sleep in your flat!" cried Mrs. Stiffson in something between a roar and a scream. "Sleep in your flat!" She turned upon her husband.

"Jabez, did you hear that? Oh! you villain, you liar, you monster!"

"But--but, my dear," protested Mr. Stiffson, becoming articulate, "Oscar was here all the time."

Cissie Boye giggled.

"So that is why you have put on your best clothes, you deceiver, you viper, you sc.u.m!"

"Steady on, mum!" broke out Bindle. "'E ain't big enough to be all them things; besides, if you starts a-megaphonin' like that, you'll 'ave all the other bunnies a-runnin' in to see wot's 'appened, an' if you was to 'ear Number Seven's language, an' see wot Queenie calls 'er face, Mr. S. might be a widower before 'e knew it."

"Where did you meet this person?" demanded Mrs. Stiffson of her husband, who, now that the coffee was cooling, began to feel chilly, and was busily engaged in trying to extract the moisture from his garments.

"Where did you meet her?" repeated his wife.

"In--in the bath-room," responded Mr. Stiffson weakly.

Mrs. Stiffson gasped and stood speechless with amazement.

"I heard a splashing," broke in Cissie Boye, "and I peeped in,--I only just peeped in, really and really."

"An' then we 'ad a little friendly chat in the 'all," explained Bindle, "an' after breakfast we was goin' to talk things over, an' see 'ow we could manage so that you didn't know."

"Your bath-room!" roared Mrs. Stiffson at length, the true horror of the situation at last seeming to dawn upon her. "My husband in your bath-room! Jabez!" she turned on Mr. Stiffson once more like a raging fury. "You heard! were you in this creature's bath-room?"

Mr. Stiffson paused in the process of endeavouring to extract coffee from his exterior.

"Er--er----" he began.

"Answer me!" shouted Mrs. Stiffson. "Were you or were you not in this person's bath-room?"

"Yes--er--but----" began Mr. Stiffson.

Mrs. Stiffson cast a frenzied glance round the room. Action had become necessary, violence imperative. Her roving eye lighted on the bowl full of half-cold porridge that Mrs. Sedge had just brought in.

She seized it and, with a swift inverting movement, crashed it down upon her husband's head.

With the scream of a wounded animal, Mr. Stiffson half rose, then sank back again in his chair, his hands clutching convulsively at the basin fixed firmly upon his head by the suction of its contents. From beneath the rim the porridge gathered in large pendulous drops, and slowly lowered themselves upon various portions of Mr. Stiffson's person, leaving a thin filmy thread behind, as if reluctant to cut off all communication with the basin.

Bindle and Cissie Boye went to the victim's a.s.sistance, and Bindle removed the basin. It parted from Mr. Stiffson's head with a juicy sob of reluctance. Whilst his rescuers were occupied in their samaritan efforts, Mrs. Stiffson was engaged in describing her husband's character.

Beginning with a request for someone to end his poisonous existence, she proceeded to explain his place, or rather lack of place, in the universe. She traced the coa.r.s.eness of his a.s.sociates to the vileness of his ancestors. She enquired why he had not been to the front (Mr.

Stiffson was over fifty years of age), why he was not in the volunteers. Then slightly elevating her head she demanded of Heaven why he was permitted to live. She traced all degradation, including that of the lower animals, to the example of such men as her husband.

He was the breaker-up of homes, in some way or other connected with the increased death-rate and infant mortality, the indirect cause of the Income Tax and directly responsible for the war; she even hinted that he was to some extent answerable for the defection of Russia from the Allied cause.

Whilst she was haranguing, Bindle and Cissie Boye, with the aid of desert spoons, were endeavouring to remove the porridge from Mr.

Stiffson's head. It had collected behind his spectacles, forming a succulent pad before each eye.

Bindle listened to Mrs. Stiffson's tirade with frank admiration; language always appealed to him.

"Ain't she a corker!" he whispered to Cissie Boye.

"Cork's out now, any old how," was the whispered reply.

Then Mrs. Stiffson did a very feminine thing. She gave vent to three short, sharp snaps of staccatoed laughter, and suddenly collapsed upon the sofa in screaming hysterics.

Cissie Boye made a movement towards her. Bindle laid an arresting hand upon her arm.

"You jest leave 'er be, miss," he said. "I know all about them little games. She'll come to all right."

"Where the h.e.l.l is that d.a.m.n porter?" the voice of Number Seven burst in upon them from the outer corridor.

"'Ere I am, sir," sang out Bindle.

"Then why the corruption aren't you in your room?" bawled Number Seven.

Bindle slipped quickly out into the corridor to find Number Seven bristling with rage.

"Because Ole d.a.m.n an' 'Op it, I can't be in two places at once," he said.

Whilst Bindle was engaged with Number Seven, Mrs. Stiffson had once more galvanised herself to action. Still screaming and laughing by turn, she wheeled out of the flat with incredible rapidity and made towards the lift.

"Hi! stop 'er, stop 'er!" shouted Bindle, bolting after Mrs. Stiffson, followed by Number Seven.

"Police, police, murder, murder!" screamed Mrs. Stiffson. She reached the lift and, with an agility that would have been creditable in a young goat, slipped in and shut the gates with a clang. Just as Bindle arrived the lift began slowly to descend. In a fury of impatience, Mrs. Stiffson began banging at the b.u.t.tons, with the result that the lift stopped halfway between the two floors.

Bindle and Number Seven shouted down instructions; but without avail.

The lift had stuck fast. Mrs. Stiffson shrieked for help, shrieked for the police, and shrieked for vengeance.

"d.a.m.ned old tiger-cat!" cried Number Seven. "Leave her where she is."

Bindle turned upon him a face radiating smiles.

"Them's the best words I've 'eard from you yet, sir"; and he walked upstairs to rea.s.sure the occupants of Number Six that fate and the lift had joined the Entente against Mrs. Stiffson.

It was four hours before Mrs. Stiffson was free; but Mr. Stiffson, his luggage, his thermos flask and Oscar had fled. Cissie Boye was at rehearsal and Bindle had donned his uniform. It was a chastened Mrs.

Stiffson who wheeled out of the lift and enquired for her husband, and it was a stern and official Bindle who told her that Mr. Stiffson had gone, and warned her that any further attempt at disturbing the cloistral peace of Fulham Square Mansions would end in a prosecution for disorderly conduct.

And Mrs. Stiffson departed in search of her husband.

CHAPTER XI