Three Men and a Maid by P. G. Wodehouse (free e reader txt) 📗

you to remember me."

"I have a good memory."

"How nice! So have I!"

There was a pause, during which Billie allowed her gaze to travel casually about the room. Sam occupied the intermission by staring furtively at her profile. He was by now in a thoroughly overwrought condition, and the thumping of his heart sounded to him as if workmen were mending the street outside. How beautiful she looked, with that red hair peeping out beneath her hat and … However!

"Is there anything I can do for you?" he asked in the sort of voice Widgery might have used. Sam always pictured Widgery as a small man with bushy eyebrows, a thin face, and a voice like a rusty file.

"Well, I really wanted to see Sir Mallaby."

"My father has been called away on important business to Walton Heath.
Cannot I act as his substitute?"

"Do you know anything about the law?"

"Do I know anything about the law!" echoed Sam, amazed. "Do I know—!
Why, I was reading my Widgery on Nisi Prius Evidence when you came in."

"Oh, were you?" said Billie interested. "Do you always read on the floor."

"I told you I dropped my pen," said Sam coldly.

"And of course you couldn't read without that! Well, as a matter of fact, this has nothing to do with Nisi—what you said."

"I have not specialised exclusively on Nisi Prius Evidence. I know the law in all its branches."

"Then what would you do if a man insisted on playing the orchestrion when you wanted to get to sleep?"

"The orchestrion?"

"Yes."

"The orchestrion, eh? Ah! H'm!" said Sam.

"You still haven't made it quite clear," said Billie.

"I was thinking."

"Oh, if you want to think!"

"Tell me the facts," said Sam.

"Well, Mr. Mortimer and my father have taken a house together in the country, and for some reason or other they have quarrelled, and now Mr. Mortimer is doing everything he can to make father uncomfortable. Yesterday afternoon father wanted to sleep, and Mr. Mortimer started his orchestrion just to annoy him."

"I think—I'm not quite sure—I think that's a tort," said Sam.

"A what?"

"Either a tort or a misdemeanour."

"Why, you do know something about it after all!" cried Billie, startled into a sort of friendliness in spite of herself. And at the words and the sight of her quick smile Sam's professional composure reeled on its foundations. He had half risen, with the purpose of springing up and babbling of the passion that consumed him, when the chill reflection came to him that this girl had once said that she considered him ridiculous. If he let himself go, would she not continue to think him ridiculous? He sagged back into his seat and at that moment there came another tap on the door which, opening, revealed the sinister face of the holiday-making Peters.

"Good morning, Mr. Samuel," said Jno. Peters. "Good morning, Miss
Milliken. Oh!"

He vanished as abruptly as he had appeared. He perceived that what he had taken at first glance for the stenographer was a client, and that the junior partner was engaged on a business conference. He left behind him a momentary silence.

"What a horrible-looking man!" said Billie, breaking it with a little gasp. Jno. Peters often affected the opposite sex like that at first sight.

"I beg your pardon?" said Sam absently.

"What a dreadful-looking man! He quite frightened me!"

For some moments Sam sat without speaking. If this had not been one of his Napoleonic mornings, no doubt the sudden arrival of his old friend, Mr. Peters, whom he had imagined at his home in Putney packing for his trip to America, would have suggested nothing to him. As it was it suggested a great deal. He had had a brain-wave, and for fully a minute he sat tingling under its impact. He was not a young man who often had brain-waves, and, when they came, they made him rather dizzy.

"Who is he?" asked Billie. "He seemed to know you? And who," she demanded after a slight pause, "is Miss Milliken?"

Sam drew a deep breath.

"It's rather a sad story," he said. "His name is John Peters. He used to be clerk here."

"But isn't he any longer?"

"No." Sam shook his head. "We had to get rid of him."

"I don't wonder. A man looking like that…."

"It wasn't that so much," said Sam. "The thing that annoyed father was that he tried to shoot Miss Milliken."

Billie uttered a cry of horror!

"He tried to shoot Miss Milliken!"

"He did shoot her—the third time," said Sam warming to his work. "Only in the arm, fortunately," he added. "But my father is rather a stern disciplinarian and he had to go. I mean, we couldn't keep him after that."

"Good gracious!"

"She used to be my father's stenographer, and she was thrown a good deal with Peters. It was quite natural that he should fall in love with her. She was a beautiful girl, with rather your own shade of hair. Peters is a man of volcanic passions, and, when, after she had given him to understand that his love was returned, she informed him one day that she was engaged to a fellow at Ealing West, he went right off his onion—I mean, he became completely distraught. I must say that he concealed it very effectively at first. We had no inkling of his condition till he came in with the pistol. And, after that … well, as I say, we had to dismiss him. A great pity, for he was a good clerk. Still, it wouldn't do. It wasn't only that he tried to shoot Miss Milliken. That wouldn't have mattered so much, as she left after he had made his third attempt, and got married. But the thing became an obsession with him, and we found that he had a fixed idea that every red-haired woman who came into the office was the girl who had deceived him. You can see how awkward that made it. Red hair is so fashionable nowadays."

"My hair is red!" whispered Billie pallidly.

"Yes, I noticed it myself. I told you it was much the same shade as Miss Milliken's. It's rather fortunate that I happened to be here with you when he came."

"But he may be lurking out there still!"

"I expect he is," said Sam carelessly. "Yes, I suppose he is. Would you like me to go and send him away? All right."

"But—but is it safe?"

Sam uttered a light laugh.

"I don't mind taking a risk or two for your sake," he said, and sauntered from the room, closing the door behind him. Billie followed him with worshipping eyes.

Jno. Peters rose politely from the chair in which he had seated himself for more comfortable perusal of the copy of Home Whispers which he had brought with him to refresh his mind in the event of the firm being too busy to see him immediately. He was particularly interested in the series of chats with Young Mothers.

"Hullo, Peters," said Sam. "Want anything?"

"Very sorry to have disturbed you, Mr. Samuel. I just looked in to say good-bye. I sail on Saturday, and my time will be pretty fully taken up all the week. I have to go down to the country to get some final instructions from the client whose important papers I am taking over. I'm sorry to have missed your father, Mr. Samuel."

"Yes, this is his golf day, I'll tell him you looked in."

"Is there anything I can do before I go?"

"Do?"

"Well—"—Jno. Peters coughed tactfully—"I see that you are engaged with a client, Mr. Samuel, and was wondering if any little point of law had arisen with which you did not feel yourself quite capable of coping, in which case I might perhaps be of assistance."

"Oh, that lady," said Sam. "That was Miss Milliken's sister."

"Indeed? I didn't know Miss Milliken had a sister."

"No?" said Sam.

"She is not very like her in appearance."

"No. This one is the beauty of the family, I believe. A very bright, intelligent girl. I was telling her about your revolver just before you came in, and she was most interested. It's a pity you haven't got it with you now, to show to her."

"Oh, but I have! I have, Mr. Samuel!" said Peters, opening a small handbag and taking out a hymn-book, half a pound of mixed chocolates, a tongue sandwich, and the pistol, in the order named. "I was on my way to the Rupert Street range for a little practice. I should be glad to show it to her."

"Well, wait here a minute or two," said Sam, "I'll have finished talking business in a moment."

He returned to the inner office.

"Well?" cried Billie.

"Eh? Oh, he's gone," said Sam. "I persuaded him to go away. He was a little excited, poor fellow. And now let us return to what we were talking about. You say…." He broke off with an exclamation, and glanced at his watch. "Good Heavens! I had no idea of the time. I promised to run up and see a man in one of the offices in the next court. He wants to consult me on some difficulty which has arisen with one of his clients. Rightly or wrongly he values my advice. Can you spare me for a short while? I shan't be more than ten minutes."

"Certainly."

"Here is something you may care to look at while I'm gone. I don't know if you have read it? Widgery on Nisi Prius Evidence. Most interesting."

He went out. Jno. Peters looked up from his Home Whispers.

"You can go in now," said Sam.

"Certainly, Mr. Samuel, certainly."

Sam took up the copy of Home Whispers, and sat down with his feet on the desk. He turned to the serial story and began to read the synopsis.

In the inner room, Billie, who had rejected the mental refreshment offered by Widgery, and was engaged in making a tour of the office, looking at the portraits of whiskered men whom she took correctly to be the Thorpes, Prescotts, Winslows and Applebys mentioned on the contents-bill outside, was surprised to hear the door open at her back. She had not expected Sam to return so instantaneously.

Nor had he done so. It was not Sam who entered. It was a man of repellent aspect whom she recognised instantly, for Jno. Peters was one of those men who, once seen, are not easily forgotten. He was smiling, a cruel, cunning smile—at least, she thought he was; Mr. Peters himself was under the impression that his face was wreathed in a benevolent simper; and in his hand he bore the largest pistol ever seen outside a motion picture studio.

"How do you do, Miss Milliken?" he said.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Billie had been standing near the wall, inspecting a portrait of the late Mr. Josiah Appleby, of which the kindest thing one can say is that one hopes it did not do him justice. She now shrank back against this wall, as if she were trying to get through it. The edge of the portrait's frame tilted her hat out of the straight, but in this supreme moment she did not even notice it.

"Er—how do you do?" she said.

If she had not been an exceedingly pretty girl, one would have said that she spoke squeakily. The fighting spirit of the Bennetts, though it was considerable fighting spirit, had not risen to this emergency. It had ebbed out of her, leaving in its place a cold panic. She had seen this sort of thing in the movies—there was one series of pictures, The Dangers of Diana, where something of the kind had happened to the heroine in every reel—but she had not anticipated that it would ever happen to her: and consequently she had not thought out any plan for coping with such a situation. A grave error. In this world one should be prepared for everything, or where is one? The best she could do was to stand and stare at the intruder. It would have done Sam Marlowe good—he had now finished the synopsis and was skimming through the current instalment—if he could have known how she yearned for his return.

"I've brought the revolver," said Mr. Peters.

"So—so I see!" said Billie.

Mr. Peters nursed the weapon affectionately in his hand. He was rather a shy man with women as a rule, but what Sam had told him about her being interested