We reached the house. In the hall we parted, she to upper regions, I to my cla.s.sroom. She did not look at me. Her face was cold and offended.

One is curiously inconsistent. Having created what in the circ.u.mstances was a most desirable coldness between Audrey and myself, I ought to have been satisfied. Reason told me that this was the best thing that could have happened. Yet joy was one of the few emotions which I did not feel during the days which followed. My brief moment of clear-headedness had pa.s.sed, and with it the exhilaration that had produced the letter to Cynthia and the resentment which had helped me to reason calmly with myself on the intrinsic nature of fascination in woman. Once more Audrey became the centre of my world. But our friendship, that elusive thing which had contrived to exist side by side with my love, had vanished. There was a breach between us which widened daily. Soon we hardly spoke.

Nothing, in short, could have been more eminently satisfactory, and the fact that I regretted it is only a proof of the essential weakness of my character.

Chapter 12

I

In those grey days there was one thought, of the many that occupied my mind, which brought with it a certain measure of consolation. It was the reflection that this state of affairs could not last for ever. The school term was drawing to a close.

Soon I should be free from the propinquity which paralysed my efforts to fight. I was resolved that the last day of term should end for ever my connection with Sanstead House and all that was in it. Mrs Ford must find some other minion. If her happiness depended on the recovery of the Little Nugget, she must learn to do without happiness, like the rest of the inhabitants of this horrible world.

Meanwhile, however, I held myself to be still on duty. By what tortuous processes of thought I had arrived at the conclusion I do not know, but I considered myself responsible to Audrey for the safeguarding of the Little Nugget, and no altered relations between us could affect my position. Perhaps mixed up with this att.i.tude of mind, was the less altruistic wish to foil Smooth Sam.

His continued presence at the school was a challenge to me.

Sam's behaviour puzzled me. I do not know exactly what I expected him to do, but I certainly did not expect him to do nothing. Yet day followed day, and still he made no move. He was the very model of a butler. But our dealings with one another in London had left me vigilant, and his inaction did not disarm me. It sprang from patience, not from any weakening of purpose or despair of success.

Sooner or later I knew he would act, swiftly and suddenly, with a plan perfected in every detail.

But when he made his attack it was the very simplicity of his methods that tricked me, and only pure chance defeated him.

I have said that it was the custom of the staff of masters at Sanstead House School--in other words, of every male adult in the house except Mr Fisher himself--to a.s.semble in Mr Abney's study after dinner of an evening to drink coffee. It was a ceremony, like most of the ceremonies at an establishment such as a school, where things are run on a schedule, which knew of no variation.

Sometimes Mr Abney would leave us immediately after the ceremony, but he never omitted to take his part in it first.

On this particular evening, for the first time since the beginning of the term, I was seized with a prejudice against coffee. I had been sleeping badly for several nights, and I decided that abstention from coffee might remedy this.

I waited, for form's sake, till Glossop and Mr Abney had filled their cups, then went to my room, where I lay down in the dark to wrestle with a more than usually p.r.o.nounced fit of depression which had descended upon me. Solitude and darkness struck me as the suitable setting for my thoughts.

At this moment Smooth Sam Fisher had no place in my meditations.

My mind was not occupied with him at all. When, therefore, the door, which had been ajar, began to open slowly, I did not become instantly on the alert. Perhaps it was some sound, barely audible, that aroused me from my torpor and set my blood tingling with antic.i.p.ation. Perhaps it was the way the door was opening. An honest draught does not move a door furtively, in jerks.

I sat up noiseless, tense, and alert. And then, very quietly, somebody entered the room.

There was only one person in Sanstead House who would enter a room like that. I was amused. The impudence of the thing tickled me. It seemed so foreign to Mr Fisher's usual cautious methods. This strolling in and helping oneself was certainly kidnapping _de luxe_. In the small hours I could have understood it; but at nine o'clock at night, with Glossop, Mr Abney and myself awake and liable to be met at any moment on the stairs, it was absurd. I marvelled at Smooth Sam's effrontery.

I lay still. I imagined that, being in, he would switch on the electric light. He did, and I greeted him pleasantly.

'And what can I do for _you_, Mr Fisher?'

For a man who had learned to control himself in difficult situations he took the shock badly. He uttered a startled exclamation and spun round, open-mouthed.

I could not help admiring the quickness with which he recovered himself. Almost immediately he was the suave, chatty Sam Fisher who had unbosomed his theories and dreams to me in the train to London.

'I quit,' he said pleasantly. 'The episode is closed. I am a man of peace, and I take it that you would not keep on lying quietly on that bed while I went into the other room and abstracted our young friend? Unless you have changed your mind again, would a fifty-fifty offer tempt you?'

'Not an inch.'

'Just so. I merely asked.'

'And how about Mr Abney, in any case? Suppose we met him on the stairs?'

'We should not meet him on the stairs,' said Sam confidently. 'You did not take coffee tonight, I gather?'

'I didn't--no. Why?'

He jerked his head resignedly.

'Can you beat it! I ask you, young man, could I have foreseen that, after drinking coffee every night regularly for two months, you would pa.s.s it up tonight of all nights? You certainly are my jinx, sonny. You have hung the Indian sign on me all right.'

His words had brought light to me.

'Did you drug the coffee?'

'Did I! I fixed it so that one sip would have an insomnia patient in dreamland before he had time to say "Good night". That stuff Rip Van Winkle drank had nothing on my coffee. And all wasted!

Well, well!'

He turned towards the door.

'Shall I leave the light on, or would you prefer it off?'

'On please. I might fall asleep in the dark.'

'Not you! And, if you did, you would dream that I was there, and wake up. There are moments, young man, when you bring me pretty near to quitting and taking to honest work.'

He paused.

'But not altogether. I have still a shot or two in my locker. We shall see what we shall see. I am not dead yet. Wait!'

'I will, and some day, when I am walking along Piccadilly, a pa.s.sing automobile will splash me with mud. A heavily furred plutocrat will stare haughtily at me from the tonneau, and with a start of surprise I shall recognize--'

'Stranger things have happened. Be flip while you can, sonny. You win so far, but this hoodoo of mine can't last for ever.'

He pa.s.sed from the room with a certain sad dignity. A moment later he reappeared.

'A thought strikes me,' he said. 'The fifty-fifty proposition does not impress you. Would it make things easier if I were to offer my cooperation for a mere quarter of the profit?'

'Not in the least.'

'It's a handsome offer.'

'Wonderfully. I'm afraid I'm not dealing on any terms.'

He left the room, only to return once more. His head appeared, staring at me round the door, in a disembodied way, like the Cheshire Cat.

'You won't say later on I didn't give you your chance?' he said anxiously.