"I am very glad to meet you, Mr. Pitt, very glad," he said. "We have been expecting you for some time."

Jimmy explained that he had lost his way.

"Exactly. It was ridiculous that you should be compelled to walk, perfectly ridiculous. It was grossly careless of my nephew not to let us know that you were coming. My wife told him so in the car."

"I bet she did," said Jimmy to himself. "Really," he said aloud, by way of lending a helping hand to a friend in trouble, "I preferred to walk. I have not been on a country road since I landed in England." He turned to the big man, and held out his hand. "I don't suppose you remember me, Mr. McEachern? We met in New York."

"You remember the night Mr. Pitt scared away our burglar, father,"

said Molly.

Mr. McEachern was momentarily silent. On his native asphalt, there are few situations capable of throwing the New York policeman off his balance. In that favored clime, savoir faire is represented by a shrewd blow of the fist, and a masterful stroke with the truncheon amounts to a satisfactory repartee. Thus shall you never take the policeman of Manhattan without his answer. In other surroundings, Mr. McEachern would have known how to deal with the young man whom with such good reason he believed to be an expert criminal. But another plan of action was needed here. First and foremost, of all the hints on etiquette that he had imbibed since he entered this more reposeful life, came the maxim: "Never make a scene." Scenes, he had gathered, were of all things what polite society most resolutely abhorred. The natural man in him must be bound in chains.

The st.u.r.dy blow must give way to the honeyed word. A cold, "Really!"

was the most vigorous retort that the best circles would countenance. It had cost Mr. McEachern some pains to learn this lesson, but he had done it. He shook hands, and gruffly acknowledged the acquaintanceship.

"Really, really!" chirped Sir Thomas, amiably. "So, you find yourself among old friends, Mr. Pitt."

"Old friends," echoed Jimmy, painfully conscious of the ex-policeman's eyes, which were boring holes in him.

"Excellent, excellent! Let me take you to your room. It is just opposite my own. This way."

In his younger days, Sir Thomas had been a floor-walker of no mean caliber. A touch of the professional still lingered in his brisk movements. He preceded Jimmy upstairs with the restrained suavity that can be learned in no other school.

They parted from Mr. McEachern on the first landing, but Jimmy could still feel those eyes. The policeman's stare had been of the sort that turns corners, goes upstairs, and pierces walls.

CHAPTER XIII

SPIKE'S VIEWS

Nevertheless, it was in an exalted frame of mind that Jimmy dressed for dinner. It seemed to him that he had awakened from a sort of stupor. Life, so gray yesterday, now appeared full of color and possibilities. Most men who either from choice or necessity have knocked about the world for any length of time are more or less fatalists. Jimmy was an optimistic fatalist. He had always looked on Fate, not as a blind dispenser at random of gifts good and bad, but rather as a benevolent being with a pleasing bias in his own favor.

He had almost a Napoleonic faith in his star. At various periods of his life (notably at the time when, as he had told Lord Dreever, he had breakfasted on bird-seed), he had been in uncommonly tight corners, but his luck had always extricated him. It struck him that it would be an unthinkable piece of bad sportsmanship on Fate's part to see him through so much, and then to abandon him just as he had arrived in sight of what was by far the biggest thing of his life.

Of course, his view of what const.i.tuted the biggest thing in life had changed with the years. Every ridge of the Hill of Supreme Moments in turn had been mistaken by him for the summit; but this last, he felt instinctively, was genuine. For good or bad, Molly was woven into the texture of his life. In the stormy period of the early twenties, he had thought the same of other girls, who were now mere memories as dim as those of figures in a half-forgotten play.

In their case, his convalescence had been temporarily painful, but brief. Force of will and an active life had worked the cure. He had merely braced himself, and firmly ejected them from his mind. A week or two of aching emptiness, and his heart had been once more in readiness, all nicely swept and garnished, for the next lodger.

But, in the case of Molly, it was different. He had pa.s.sed the age of instantaneous susceptibility. Like a landlord who has been cheated by previous tenants, he had become wary. He mistrusted his powers of recuperation in case of disaster. The will in these matters, just like the mundane "bouncer," gets past its work. For some years now, Jimmy had had a feeling that the next arrival would come to stay; and he had adopted in consequence a gently defensive att.i.tude toward the other s.e.x. Molly had broken through this, and he saw that his estimate of his will-power had been just. Methods that had proved excellent in the past were useless now. There was no trace here of the dimly consoling feeling of earlier years, that there were other girls in the world. He did not try to deceive himself. He knew that he had pa.s.sed the age when a man can fall in love with any one of a number of types.

This was the finish, one way or the other. There would be no second throw. She had him. However it might end, he belonged to her.

There are few moments in a man's day when his brain is more contemplative than during that brief s.p.a.ce when he is lathering his face, preparatory to shaving. Plying the brush, Jimmy reviewed the situation. He was, perhaps, a little too optimistic. Not unnaturally, he was inclined to look upon his luck as a sort of special train which would convey him without effort to Paradise.

Fate had behaved so exceedingly handsomely up till now! By a series of the most workmanlike miracles, it had brought him to the point of being Molly's fellow-guest at a country-house. This, as reason coldly pointed out a few moments later, was merely the beginning, but to Jimmy, thoughtfully lathering, it seemed the end. It was only when he had finished shaving, and was tying his cravat, that he began to perceive obstacles in his way, and sufficiently big obstacles, at that.

In the first place, Molly did not love him. And, he was bound to admit, there was no earthly reason why she ever should. A man in love is seldom vain about his personal attractions. Also, her father firmly believed him to be a master-burglar.

"Otherwise," said Jimmy, scowling at his reflection in the gla.s.s, "everything's splendid." He brushed his hair sadly.

There was a furtive rap at the door.

"Hullo?" said Jimmy. "Yes?"

The door opened slowly. A grin, surmounted by a mop of red hair, appeared round the edge of it.

"Hullo, Spike. Come in. What's the matter?"

The rest of Mr. Mullins entered the room.

"Gee, boss! I wasn't sure was dis your room. Say, who do you t'ink I nearly b.u.mped me coco ag'inst out in de corridor downstairs? Why, old man McEachern, de cop. Dat's right!"

"Yes?"

"Sure. Say, what's he doin' on dis beat? I pretty near went down an'

out when I seen him. Dat's right. Me breath ain't got back home yet."

"Did he recognize you?"

"Did he! He starts like an actor on top de stoige when he sees he's up ag'inst de plot to ruin him, an' he gives me de fierce eye."

"Well?"

"I was wonderin' was I on Thoid Avenoo, or was I standin' on me coco, or what was I doin' anyhow. Den I slips off, an' chases meself up here. Say, boss, what's de game? What's old man McEachern doin'

stunts dis side fer?"

"It's all right, Spike. Keep calm. I can explain. He has retired--like me! He's one of the handsome guests here."

"On your way, boss! What's dat?"

"He left the force just after that merry meeting of ours when you frolicked with the bull-dog. He came over here, and b.u.t.ted into society. So, here we are again, all gathered together under the same roof, like a jolly little family party."

Spike's open mouth bore witness to his amazement.

"Den--" he stammered.

"Yes?"

"Den, what's he goin' to do?"

"I couldn't say. I'm expecting to hear shortly. But we needn't worry ourselves. The next move's with him. If he wants to comment on the situation, he won't be backward. He'll come and do it."

"Sure. It's up to him," agreed Spike.

"I'm quite comfortable. Speaking for myself, I'm having a good time.

How are you getting along downstairs?"

"De limit, boss. Honest, it's to de velvet. Dey's an old gazebo, de butler, Saunders his name is, dat's de best ever at handin' out long woids. I sits an' listens. Dey calls me Mr. Mullins down dere," said Spike, with pride.

"Good. I'm glad you're all right. There's no season why we shouldn't have an excellent time here. I don't think that Mr. McEachern will try to have us turned out, after he's heard one or two little things I have to say to him--just a few reminiscences of the past which may interest him. I have the greatest affection for Mr. McEachern--I wish it were mutual--but nothing he can say is going to make me stir from here."