Short Fiction - P. G. Wodehouse (top ten ebook reader txt) 📗

until late in the evening that the party returned to the house. Martin, on the way to his room, met Mrs. Keith on the stairs. She appeared somewhat agitated.

“Oh, Martin,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re back. Have you seen anything of Elsa?”

“Elsa?”

“Wasn’t she with the guns?”

“With the guns!” said Martin, puzzled. “No.”

“I have seen nothing of her all day. I’m getting worried. I can’t think what can have happened to her. Are you sure she wasn’t with the guns?”

“Absolutely certain. Didn’t she come in to lunch?”

“No. Tom,” she said, as Mr. Keith came up, “I’m so worried about Elsa. I haven’t seen her all day. I thought she must be out with the guns.”

Mr. Keith was a man who had built up a large fortune mainly by consistently refusing to allow anything to agitate him. He carried this policy into private life.

“Wasn’t she in at lunch?” he asked, placidly.

“I tell you I haven’t seen her all day. She breakfasted in her room⁠—”

“Late?”

“Yes. She was tired, poor girl.”

“If she breakfasted late,” said Mr. Keith, “she wouldn’t need any lunch. She’s gone for a stroll somewhere.”

“Would you put back dinner, do you think?” inquired Mrs. Keith, anxiously.

“I am not good at riddles,” said Mr. Keith, comfortably, “but I can answer that one. I would not put back dinner. I would not put back dinner for the King.”

Elsa did not come back for dinner. Nor was hers the only vacant place. Mr. Barstowe had also vanished. Even Mr. Keith’s calm was momentarily ruffled by this discovery. The poet was not a favourite of his⁠—it was only reluctantly that he had consented to his being invited at all; and the presumption being that when two members of a house-party disappear simultaneously they are likely to be spending the time in each other’s society, he was annoyed. Elsa was not the girl to make a fool of herself, of course, but⁠—He was unwontedly silent at dinner.

Mrs. Keith’s anxiety displayed itself differently. She was frankly worried, and mentioned it. By the time the fish had been reached conversation at the table had fixed itself definitely on the one topic.

“It isn’t the car this time, at any rate,” said Mr. Keith. “It hasn’t been out today.”

“I can’t understand it,” said Mrs. Keith for the twentieth time. And that was the farthest point reached in the investigation of the mystery.

By the time dinner was over a spirit of unrest was abroad. The company sat about in uneasy groups. Snooker-pool was, if not forgotten, at any rate shelved. Somebody suggested search-parties, and one or two of the moustache-tuggers wandered rather aimlessly out into the darkness.

Martin was standing in the porch with Mr. Keith when Keggs approached. As his eyes lit on him, Martin was conscious of a sudden solidifying of the vague suspicion which had been forming in his mind. And yet that suspicion seemed so wild. How could Keggs, with the worst intentions, have had anything to do with this? He could not forcibly have abducted the missing pair and kept them under lock and key. He could not have stunned them and left them in a ditch. Nevertheless, looking at him standing there in his attitude of deferential dignity, with the light from the open door shining on his bald head, Martin felt perfectly certain that he had in some mysterious fashion engineered the whole thing.

“Might I have a word, sir, if you are at leisure?”

“Well, Keggs?”

“Miss Elsa, sir.”

“Yes?”

Kegg’s voice took on a sympathetic softness.

“It was not my place, sir, to make any remark while in the dining room, but I could not ’elp but hoverhear the conversation. I gathered from remarks that was passed that you was somewhat hat a loss to account for Miss Elsa’s nonappearance, sir.”

Mr. Keith laughed shortly.

“You gathered that, eh?”

Keggs bowed.

“I think, sir, that possibly I may be hable to throw light on the matter.”

“What!” cried Mr. Keith. “Great Scott, man! then why didn’t you say so at the time? Where is she?”

“It was not my place, sir, to henter into the conversation of the dinner-table,” said the butler, with a touch of reproof. “If I might speak now, sir?”

Mr. Keith clutched at his forehead.

“Heavens above! Do you want a signed permit to tell me where my daughter is? Get on, man, get on!”

“I think it ’ighly possible, sir, that Miss Elsa and Mr. Barstowe may be on the hisland in the lake, sir.” About half a mile from the house was a picturesque strip of water, some fifteen hundred yards in width and a little less in length, in the centre of which stood a small and densely wooded island. It was a favourite haunt of visitors at the house when there was nothing else to engage their attention, but during the past week, with shooting to fill up the days, it had been neglected.

“On the island?” said Mr. Keith. “What put that idea into your head?”

“I ’appened to be rowing on the lake this morning, sir. I frequently row of a morning, sir, when there are no duties to detain me in the ’ouse. I find the hexercise hadmirable for the ’ealth. I walk briskly to the boat-’ouse, and⁠—”

“Yes, yes. I don’t want a schedule of your daily exercises. Cut out the athletic reminiscences and come to the point.”

“As I was rowing on the lake this morning, sir, I ’appened to see a boat ’itched up to a tree on the hisland. I think that possibly Miss Elsa and Mr. Barstowe might ’ave taken a row out there. Mr. Barstowe would wish to see the hisland, sir, bein’ romantic.”

“But you say you saw the boat there this morning?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, it doesn’t take all day to explore a small island. What’s kept them all this while?”

“It is possible, sir, that the rope might not have ’eld. Mr. Barstowe, if I might say so, sir, is one of those himpetuous literary pussons, and possibly he homitted to see that the knot was hadequately tied. Or”⁠—his eye, grave and inscrutable, rested for a moment on Martin’s⁠—“some party might ’ave come along and huntied it a-puppus.”

“Untied it on purpose?” said Mr. Keith. “What on