Biffen's Millions

Part I of a new novel

The Sergeant of Police who sat at his desk in the dingy little Paris police station was calm, stolid and ponderous, giving the impression of being constructed of some form of suet. He was what Roget in his Thesaurus would have called "not easily stirred or moved mentally," in which respect he differed sharply from the large young man standing facing him, whose deportment resembled rather closely that of a pea on a hot shovel. Jumpy was the word a stylist would have used to describe Jerry Shoesmith at this moment, and a casual observer might have supposed that he was a suspect undergoing the French equivalent of the third degree.

This, however, was not the case. The reason for his agitation was a more prosaic one. He had come on this last night of his Paris holiday to notify the authorities that he had lost the wallet containing the keys to the apartment lent to him for the duration of his visit. And what was exercising him was the problem of where, should the thing remain unfound, he was going to sleep.

So far, though he had been in the sergeant's presence for more than a minute, he had made no progress in the direction of informing him of his dilemma. The sergeant, who on his entry had been stamping official documents in the rhythmical manner of a man operating the trap drums, was still stamping official documents, appearing to have no outside interests. It seemed a shame to interrupt him, but Jerry felt it had to be done.

"Excuse me," he said, or, rather, "Pardon, monsieur," for he was speaking the language of France as far as he could manage it.

The sergeant looked up. If he was surprised to hear a human voice when he had supposed himself to be alone with his stamping, he gave no sign of it. His was a face not equipped to register emotion.

"Sir?"

"It's about my wallet. I've lost my wallet."

"Next door. Office of the commissaire's secretary."

"But I've just been there, and he told me to come here."

"Quite in order. You notify him, and then you notify me."

"So if I notify him again, he will notify me to notify you?"

"Precisely."

"You mean I go to him ––"

"Just so."

"And he sends me to you?"

"Exactly."

"And then you send me to him?"

"It is the official procedure in the case of lost property."

Jerry gulped, and what the sergeant would have called a frisson, not that he ever had them himself, passed through him. His spirits sank to an even lower low. He perceived that he was up against French red tape, compared to which that of Great Britain and America is only pinkish.

"What happens after you've sent me to him? Does he send me to Brigitte Bardot?"

The sergeant explained – patiently, for he was a patient man – that Mademoiselle Bardot had no connection with police work. Jerry thanked him.

"Well, anyway," he said, "now that I have your ear for a moment, may I repeat that I have lost my wallet. It had my money and my keys in it. Fortunately I was carrying my passport and return ticket in the breast pocket of my coat, or I should have lost those, too. And I've got to be back in London tomorrow."

"You are English?"

"I am."

"You speak French not so badly."

"I picked it up here and there. I read a lot of French."

"I see. Your accent leaves much to be desired, but you make yourself understood. Proceed, if you please. Tell me of this wallet."

"Well, it's a sort of combination wallet and key case. It has compartments for money on one side and clips to attach keys to on the other. Very convenient. Unless, of course, you lose the damn thing."

"If you lose it, you lose everything."

"You do."

"Puts you in an awkward position."

"You never spoke truer words. That is exactly what it puts you in."

The sergeant stamped some more papers, but absently, as if his thoughts were elsewhere.

Finally, he spoke. "What was it made of, this wallet?"

"Leather."

"What kind of leather?"

"Crocodile."

"What color?"

"Maroon."

"How big?"

"About six inches long."

"Had it initials?"

"G. S. in gold letters."

"It contained your keys?"

Jerry reminded him that that was the whole point of these proceedings, and the sergeant nodded understandingly.

"How many keys?"

"Two."

"To what?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Of what doors were they the keys?"

"Oh, I see what you mean. The outer and inner doors of my apartment."

"You own an apartment in Paris?"

"I'm sorry. I used the word 'my' loosely. It was lent me by my uncle. He keeps this apartment and runs over for weekends."

The sergeant so far forgot himself as to whistle.

"Must be rich."

"He is. He's a solicitor, and these legal sharks always have plenty."

The sergeant stamped some more papers. He had a wristy follow-through which at any other moment Jerry would have admired.

"What size were these keys?"

"One was big, one was small."

"One big, one small." The sergeant pursed his lips. "That's a bit vague, isn't it? Could you describe them?"

"The little one was flat, and the big one was round."

"Round?"

"Well, sort of round. Like any other key."

"Like any other key ... That's not much help, is it? Was the key bit of the smaller key grooved?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I asked you, was the key bit of the smaller key grooved? That's clear enough, isn't it?"

"No."

"It is not grooved?"

"I don't know."

The sergeant raised his eyebrows.

"Really, sir! I asked you was it grooved, and you said no. Now you say you don't know. We shall not get much further at this rate."

"I didn't mean No, it's not grooved. I meant No, it wasn't clear enough."

"I could scarcely have made it clearer," said the sergeant stiffly. "A key bit is either grooved or it is not grooved."

"But I don't know what a key bit is."

The sergeant drew his breath in sharply. He seemed incredulous.

"You don't know what a key bit is?" He took a bunch of keys from his pocket. "Look, see? That's the key bit, the part of the key which you insert in the keyhole. Now can you tell me if yours is grooved?"

"No."

As far as his features would allow him to, the sergeant registered satisfaction.

"Aha!" he said. "Now we are getting somewhere. It is not grooved?"

"I don't know. You asked me if I could tell you if my key bit is grooved, and I'm telling you that I can't tell you. For all I know, it may have been grooved from birth. Look here," said Jerry desperately, "is all this necessary?"

The sergeant frowned. He was an equable man, but he could not help feeling that his visitor was being a little difficult.

"These things have to be done in an orderly manner. We must have system. But if you wish, we will leave the matter of the keys for the moment. Now about the money. How much was there in the wallet?"

"I remember there was a mille note and some odd change, call it two hundred francs."

"So we'll say twelve hundred francs and two keys, one large, the other smaller, the latter with its key bit possibly grooved, possibly not. Does that satisfy you as a description of the contents?

"Yes."

"And the wallet was made of leather?"

"Yes."

"Crocodile leather?"

"Yes."

"Maroon in color?"

"Yes."

"In length six inches?"

"Yes."

"With the initials G. S. in gold letters?"

"Yes."

"I have it here," said the sergeant, opening a drawer. "I was thinking all along that this might be it. The key bit is grooved," he went on cutting short Jerry's cry of rapture. He emptied the wallet of its contents, and counted the money. "Twelve hundred and twenty francs, not twelve hundred as stated." He measured the wallet with a ruler, and shook his head. "It's not six inches in length, it's five and a half. Still, I'm not the man to be finicky. I'll draw up a report for you to sign," he said, taking three sheets of paper, interleaving them between carbons and starting to write with great care, rather like an obese child working at its copybook. "Your name?"

"Gerald Shoesmith."

"Gerald ... that is your surname?"

"No, my Christian name."

"In that case you should say Zoo-smeet, Gerald."

"Can't I have my wallet and go? It's late. I want to get to bed."

"All in good time, sir. Your home address?"

"Why not?"

"Impossible. Suppose you made a complaint that the sum was missing when the property was returned to you?"

"I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing."

"I have no means of knowing that. We must be orderly."

"And leisurely."

"Sir?"

"Nothing. I was just thinking it's nice to feel we're not in any hurry."

"I shall be here all night."

"So shall I, apparently." A long, shuddering groan escaped Jerry.

"I know what," he said finally. "It's just occurred to me. Lend me twenty francs."

"Out of my pocket?" cried the sergeant, aghast.

"You'll get it back with interest – substantial interest, I may say. I'll write you a receipt for two hundred francs, and you can take that out of the wallet. As a matter of fact, I'd be quite willing to make it a mille ..."

His voice died away. The sergeant's look had become stony.

"So you're trying to bribe me, are you?"

"No, no, of course not. Just showing my gratitude to you for doing me a service."

"When I'm on duty," said the sergeant austerely, "I don't do services. I'm in the service of the law."

Silence fell once more, a wounded silence on both sides of the desk. Pique was rife, as was dudgeon, and the entente cordiale found itself at its lowest ebb. The sergeant began stamping papers again in a marked manner, and Jerry, raising his head, lit a sullen cigarette. Then suddenly he uttered a cry which caused the sergeant to hit his thumb instead of the document.

"I've got it! Why didn't we think of that before? Look! Follow me closely here, because I believe I've found a formula acceptable to all parties. You require twenty francs for the receipt stamps for the written statement of the loss. Correct? There are twelve hundred and twenty francs in the wallet. Agreed? Well, then, here's what you do. Change the statement, making the amount of money in that blasted wallet twelve hundred, extract twenty francs, deposit them in the national treasury, and everybody's happy. How's that for constructive thinking?"

The sergeant sucked his thumb, which seemed to be paining him. The umbrage he had taken had subsided, but he was plainly dubious.

"Change the statement? But it is already written, initialed and signed."

"Write a new one."

"I have used up all my carbon paper."

"Get some more."

"But would what you suggest be in order?"

"Take a chance. Remember what the fellow said – De l'audace, et encore, de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace."

For some moments the sergeant continued to waver. Then he rose.

"I'll have to cover myself, first. I couldn't do anything like that without (continued on page 82) Biffen's Millions (continued from page 72) official sanction. Excuse me," he said, and passed ponderously through the door that led to the office of the secretary of the commissaire.

• • •

The secretary was a fussy little man with glasses and a drooping mustache. He looked up irritably as the door opened, his petulance caused, no doubt, by resentment at being interrupted while talking to a girl as pretty as the one seated before his desk. She had come in a moment ago, a small, trim, alert girl whose tiptilted nose, bright hazel eyes and brisk manner had made an immediate appeal to him.

They made an immediate appeal to the sergeant also, and the thought passed through what may loosely be called his mind that some people have all the luck. Here was the secretary enjoying a cozy chat with a delightful member of the other sex, while all he, the sergeant, drew was jumpy young men who were unsound, if not definitely shaky, on key bits. But remembering that he was here on official business, he fought down his self-pity.

"I'm sorry to trouble you," he said, "but in the absence of the commissaire I would like your ruling on an important point that has come up. The gentleman you sent to me just now, the one who had lost his wallet."

"Ah yes, the English newspaper man Gerald Zoosmeet."

"Zoosmeet, Gerald," said the sergeant, scoring a point.

The girl, who had been attending to her face, lowered the lipstick, interested.

"Zoosmeet? Did I hear you say Zoosmeet?"

"Yes, mademoiselle."

"It can't be. There isn't such a name."

"Pardon me, mademoiselle, I have it written down here. The gentleman gave it to me in person. He spelled it for me."

The girl looked at the paper he held out to her, and squeaked excitedly.

"Oh, Shoesmith."

"Precisely, mademoiselle. As I said."

"And Gerald at that. Well, I'll be darned. I know a Jerry Shoesmith. Is this one large? Solid bone structure? Lots of firm flesh?"

"Yes, mademoiselle, he is substantial."

"Reddish hair? Greenish eyes?"

"Yes, mademoiselle."

"And rather a lamb?"

The sergeant weighed this, as if not sure that he was justified in bestowing the honorable title of lamb on one who knew practically nothing about key bits. However, he stretched a point.

"The gentleman is careless in his speech and apt to become excitable, but otherwise he appears to be of a sufficiently amiable disposition."

"And you say he's a newspaperman. It must be the same. I met him on the boat coming over from New York two years ago. It turned out that he was a great friend of my brother's, so of course we fraternized. He was feeling a bit sorry for himself at the time, because he had been a New York correspondent on one of the papers and they had fired him. Did he say what he was doing now?"

"He describes himself as an editor."

The secretary intervened, speaking rather frostily. He was feeling that this get-together was becoming too chatty, too much like an Old World salon, and that there was far too great a tendency on the part of the speakers to leave him out of the conversation.

"You were about to ask my advice, sergeant," he said, and the sergeant got the message. He did not blush, for his cheeks were already ruddier than the cherry, but he quivered a little like a suet pudding in a high wind.

"Yes, sir. A problem has arisen. Do you think that in the case of the loss of an object containing money the cost of the receipt stamps could be met from the contents of the object itself?"

"Mr. Zoosmeet has no money in his possession?"

"None, sir. The object – a wallet (one), crocodile leather, color maroon, five and a half inches in length – contains all his assets."

"In that case, certainly."

"May I change the sum in the written statement so as to avoid any possible future recriminations?"

"I see no objection."

"And can you lend me two sheets of carbon paper?"

"With pleasure."

"Thank you."

"Hey, sarge," said the girl, calling after him as he started for the door, "try to keep Zoosmeet there till I'm through with this gentleman. I want a word with him."

"I will endeavor to do so, mademoiselle."

The sergeant lumbered off, and the secretary turned to his visitor.

"Now, mademoiselle, might I have your name?"

"Kay Christopher."

"Christopher, K. The K stands for?"

"Well, I suppose, if you delved into it, you'd find it was short for Katherine, but I've always been called Kay. K-a-y. It's quite a usual name in America."

"You are American?"

"Yes."

"You have some form of employment in Paris?"

"I work on the New York Herald Tribune."

"A most respectable paper. I read it myself to improve my English. And what have you lost?"

"My brother."

The secretary blinked. He had been thinking more in terms of miniature poodles.

"He's been missing for two days. He and I share an apartment, and two days ago I noticed that he was not among those present, so after waiting awhile and not hearing a word from him I thought I'd better come to the police."

"Have you made inquiries at the hospitals?"

"Every one of them. They haven't seen him."

The secretary was just about to mention the morgue, but changed his mind.

"Two days, you say?"

"Nearly that. I leave for work early and he sleeps late, so he may have been in his room when I pulled out the day before yesterday, but he certainly wasn't there that night and he wasn't around next morning. That's when I felt I ought to take steps of some kind. I'm not really panic-stricken, mind you, because he's been away from the nest before and always returned, but ... well, you know how it is, one gets a little anxious when it comes to two days and not a yip out of him."

"Quite understandable. Anxiety is inevitable. Well, I can assure you that the police will do all that is within their power. What is your brother's name?"

"Edmund Biffen Christopher. Sorry. Christopher, Edmund Biffen."

"Bee-fawn. An odd name. I do not think I have heard it before."

"He was called that after a godfather."

"I see."

"Fortunately everyone calls him Biff."

"I see. And what is his age?"

"Twenty-nine. Thirty in a week or so. Old enough to start behaving himself, wouldn't you say?"

"And his profession?"

"He used to be a reporter in New York until one day he suddenly decided to come to Paris. He's writing a novel, only he hasn't got far with it. He doesn't seem able to satisfy his artistic self. He keeps clutching his brow and muttering 'This damned thing needs dirtying up.' You know how it is when you're writing a novel these days. If it isn't the sort of stuff small boys scribble on fences, nobody will look at it."

"Shall we say profession: novelist?"

"If you don't mind stretching the facts a little."

"Could you give me some idea of his personal appearance?"

Kay laughed. She had a very musical laugh, the secretary thought.

"Oh, sure," she said. "That's easy. He looks like a dachshund."

"Pardon?"

"Well, he does. Sharp, pointed features. Animated manner, brown eyes, (continued on page 151) Biffen's Millions (continued from page 82) brown hair, brown suit, brown shoes. Longish nose and not much chin. Just like a dachshund."

"I see. And his frame of mind. Has he been in good spirits?"

"Excellent."

"Any financial worries?"

"At the moment, rather fewer than usual, as a matter of fact. That godfather I spoke of died recently in New York, leaving millions, and Biff has an idea he may be in line for a small legacy. He says it's the least the man could do after getting him christened Edmund."

The secretary coughed.

"You feel, then," he said delicately, "that we can rule out suicide as a possibility?"

"Good heavens, yes. Biff wouldn't kill himself with a ten-foot pole. Not so long as there was a blonde left in the world."

"He is fond of blondes?"

"They're his lifework. The feat that haunts me is that he may have gone off and married one. I wouldn't put it past him. Still, one must hope for the best."

"Precisely, mademoiselle. It is the only way. Well, I do not think there are any further questions that I need to ask. Will you please go now and repeat to the sergeant what you have been telling me?"

"Must I? Couldn't we keep it just between us two?"

"It is the official procedure. No, not through that door. That is reserved for the commissaire, the sergeant and myself. You go out and enter through the door leading from the street."

• • •

The sergeant came back to Jerry. His air was that of a diplomat who has solved a problem which has been worrying the chancelleries for weeks.

"All is in order," he said. "I have covered myself."

"Thank heaven for that," said Jerry. "Do you know, I had a feeling you would. There goes a man, I said to myself when you went out, who is going to cover himself."

"The commissaire's secretary assured me that there is no objection to doing what you suggest. There you are," said the sergeant some long minutes later as he slowly finished writing, slowly read through what he had written and slowly passed it across the desk. "Sign, please. Hard, for the carbons. Thank you."

He stamped the paper, put it on top of the pile already stamped, opened the drawer in which he had placed the wallet, took out the wallet, took 20 francs from it, replaced it in the drawer, locked the drawer.

"Now everything is in order," he said. "Here is a copy of your statement. The top copy and one carbon are reserved for the files."

He seemed to consider the affair closed, and Jerry was obliged to point out that there still remained something to be done.

"But you haven't given me my wallet."

A faint smile passed over the sergeant's face. How little, he was feeling, the public knew about official procedure.

"You will call for that in three days' time at the Lost Property Office, 36 Rue des Morillons," he said with the genial air of one imparting good news.

"Three days! But I'm leaving for England tomorrow!"

"I remember, yes, you told me, did you not?"

"Then where am I going to sleep tonight?"

"Ah," said the sergeant, seeming to admit that he had a point there.

He began stamping papers again.

• • •

Kay had decided not to see the sergeant. The brief glimpse she had had of him in the secretary's office had left her with the feeling that he was a man from whose conversation little uplift and entertainment were to be derived. She was wrong, of course, for he could have told her some good things about key bits, but she did not know that. She took up her stand in the street outside his door, hoping that he would cut his interview with Jerry reasonably short.

She had pleasant memories of Jerry and the prospect of meeting him again delighted her. Shipboard friendships are not as a rule durable, but theirs had lingered in her mind with an odd tenacity these past two years. It was with bright anticipation that she awaited the coming reunion.

When at length he appeared, he was tottering a little. His eyes were wild, his limbs twitched and he was breathing heavily. A hart panting for cooling streams when heated in the chase, had one happened to come along at the moment, would have shaken his hand and slapped him on the back, recognizing him immediately as a kindred spirit and a member of its lodge.

Kay hailed him with enthusiasm.

"Hello there, Jerry," she cried. "A hearty greeting to you, Zoosmeet."

He raised a hand in a passionate gesture.

"Are you going in to see the sergeant?" he asked hoarsely. "Don't do it. That way madness lies." He broke off, peering at her in the blue light cast from above by the police lamp. "What was that you said?" He drew a step closer. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed, allowing his eyes to bulge in the manner popularized by snails.

Until she had spoken, he had seen in her merely a misty, indistinct female figure hovering on the brink of the fate that is worse than death – viz., being closeted with a police sergeant whose conversational methods reduced even strong men to shells of their former selves, and his only thought had been to save her before it was too late. He was able now to perceive that this was no stranger but an old crony with whom he had walked on boat decks in the moonlight and shuffleboarded on sunny afternoons; with whom, side by side on adjoining deck chairs, he had sat and sipped the 11-o'clock soup.

"Good Lord!" he said. "You!"

"A word I never like," said Kay. "People say it when they're stalling for time, trying to remember your name."

"You don't think I've forgotten your name!"

"I don't know why you shouldn't have, considering that it's two years since we met and then, after five days on that boat, we never saw each other again. When we parted at Cherbourg, I remember you said we must keep in touch. But you didn't keep in touch."

"How could I? You were in Paris, and I was tied up with my job in London."

"I'm glad you got a job all right. You were rather worried on the boat about being one of the unemployed. But you could have written."

"I didn't know your address."

"And I didn't know yours."

"What is your address?"

"Sixteen Rue Jacob. Look in sometime, why don't you?"

"I've got to be back in London tomorrow."

"Golly, we are ships that pass in the night, aren't we? When do you expect to be in Paris again?"

"Not for another year."

"That's too bad. I was hoping we'd see something of each other. Well, how are you after all these long years, Jerry? Fine and dandy?"

"Yes. At least, no."

"Make up your mind."

"I'm fine and dandy now, but before I saw you I was feeling extremely blue."

"And, oddly enough, you're looking extremely blue. I suppose it's that police lamp. Why don't we go somewhere and split a cup of coffee? No sense in standing in this drafty street."

Jerry sighed. Situated as he was, the cheapest cup was beyond his means.

"There's nothing I'd like better. But I couldn't pay for it."

"Why, didn't you get your wallet back?"

Jerry laughed bitterly. The old wound was throbbing.

"If you knew the sergeant, you wouldn't ask that. You don't get things back when he has got ahold of them. But how did you know I had lost my wallet?"

"I was chatting with the secretary next door, and the sarge blew in and told all."

"Ah, so you've met the sergeant. I'm glad of that, because if you hadn't, it might have been difficult to make you understand. He's not easy to explain to the lay mind. Yes, he's got the wallet and refuses to give it up. I don't get it till I call at the Lost Property Office three days from now."

"That's the French for you. What was in it?"

"All my money and the keys to the apartment where I was staying."

"Won't the concierge let you in?"

"There isn't a concierge. It's a maisonette. Very snug, too, if you can get past the front door. This, however, I am unfortunately unable to do. So coffee's out, I'm afraid."

"Nonsense. I'll pick up the tab."

"The pride of the Shoesmiths had always been high, and in normal circumstances Jerry would never have permitted a member of the other sex to pay for his refreshment, but this was a special case. After half an hour with the sergeant he needed fortifying.

"You will?" he said eagerly, the aroma of coffee seeming to play about his nostrils. "It wouldn't run to a drop of brandy as well, would it?"

"Sure. No stint."

"I'll reimburse you when I get back to civilization."

"Don't give it a thought. This is my treat."

"It's awfully good of you."

"Not at all. Be my guest."

• • •

The bistro they found in the next street was of the humble zinc-counter-and-imitation-marble-tables type and rather fuller than he could have wished of taxi drivers and men who looked as if they were taking a coffee break after a spell of work in the sewers, but to Jerry it seemed an abode of luxury, what Kubla Khan would have called a stately pleasure dome. As he seated himself in a chair even harder than the one provided for his clients by the sergeant, a thrill of gratitude to the founder of the feast set him tingling.

"Tell me," he said, when the coffee arrived accompanied by what at first taste seemed to be carbolic acid, but which actually was brandy or something reasonably like it, "You were saying you had been in conference with the secretary. What was the trouble? Had you lost something?"

"Odd stuff, this," said Kay, sipping. "Probably used for taking stains out of serge suits. Still, it certainly has authority. Lost something, did you say? You bet I have. I've lost Biff."

Jerry stared.

"Biff? You mean Biff? Your brother Biff?"

"There's only one Biff in my life, and if you're going to say that's plenty, I'm with you a hundred percent. He's disappeared. Vanished into thin air. Gone without a cry and been gone two days."

"Good heavens! You must be worried."

"Not particularly. He'll be back when the spirit moves him. He's probably just off on a toot somewhere," said Kay with sisterly candor, and Jerry, too, felt that this must be the solution of the prodigal's absence. In his New York correspondent days he had seen a great deal of Biff and had come to love him like a brother, but he was not blind to his failings. Irresponsible was the adjective that sprang to the lips when one contemplated Edmund Biffen Christopher.

"Biff was always by way of being the master of the revels."

"He still is."

"Living in Paris hasn't changed him?"

"Did you expect it to?"

"He ought to get married."

"If there exists a woman capable of coping with him. There can't be many of that bulldog breed around. I thought he'd found one a year ago, a girl called Linda Rome. She would have been just right for him – one of those calm, quiet, sensible girls with high standards of behavior and a will of iron. She would have kept him in order. But she broke off the engagement."

"Why was that?"

"Because she was so sensible, I suppose. Much as I love Biff, I wouldn't recommend him as a husband to any girl who hadn't had experience as a prison wardress and wasn't a trainer of performing fleas on the side. He would drive the ordinary young bride crackers. Linda would have taken him in hand and reformed him, and it's a terrible pity she didn't see her way to going through with it. But let's not talk about Biff, let's take a look at your position. I don't see how one can avoid the conclusion that you're in something of a spot. How are you going to get back to London, if you haven't any money?"

"That part's all right. I have my passport and my return ticket."

"But you can't get into your apartment and you can't go to a hotel, so where are you going to sleep tonight? Have you given any thought to that?"

"Quite a good deal. I suppose I shall have to camp out in the Bois or on a bench somewhere."

"Oh, we must try to do better than that. Don't talk for a minute, I want to think."

She became silent, and Jerry watched her over his cup, not with any real hope, for he knew the problem was insoluble, but because watching her seemed to satisfy some deep need in his spiritual make-up. He would have been content to sit watching her forever.

"I've got it," she said.

A wave of emotion poured over Jerry. One of those loud French quarrels had broken out between two of the nearby taxi drivers and the air was vibrant with charges and countercharges, but he hardly heard them. He was stunned by the discovery that in addition to being the love-liest thing that ever played deck tennis or drank 11-o'clock soup she had a brain that even the deepest thinker might envy. He was conscious of an odd sensation similar to the one experienced by the character in the poem who on honeydew had fed and drunk the milk of paradise, and he did not need the heart expert of any of the many London periodicals that went in for heart experts to tell him what this meant. He was in a position to state without fear of contradiction that here beside him sat the girl he had been searching for all his adult life. There was something about her personality – the way she looked, the way her bright hair curled up at the sides of her little hat, the way she drank coffee and the way the mere sound of her voice got inside one and stirred one up as with a swizzle stick – that made the thought of leaving her and pining away with the Channel separating them the most nauseating he had ever experienced. He leaned forward impulsively, spilling a good deal of coffee, and was about to put these sentiments into words, to give her what at Tilbury House, where he worked, they called the over-all picture, when she spoke.

"I know where you can sleep. At Henry's."

"Who's Henry?"

"Henry Blake-Somerset. He's in the British Embassy. He'll put you up. It isn't far from here. If you've finished spilling coffee, let's go."

• • •

If Henry Blake-Somerset, enjoying a weak whiskey and water in his apartment preparatory to going to bed, had been asked by some inquiring reporter what was the last thing he wanted at this late hour, he would almost certainly have specified the intrusion on his privacy by a perfect stranger anxious to be accommodated with lodging for the night. He was tired and ruffled. He had had one of those trying days that come to all minor members of corps diplomatiques from time to time, the sort of day when everything goes wrong and the senior members expend their venom on the junior members, who, having no members junior to themselves to whom to pass the buck, are compelled to suffer in silence. His manner, consequently, when he opened the door to Kay's ring, had nothing in it of the jolly innkeeper of old-fashioned comic opera. He looked more like Macbeth seeing a couple of Banquos.

"Hello, Hank," said Kay in her brisk way. "You weren't asleep, were you?"

"I Was about to go to bed," said Henry, and his tone was stiff.

"Just what Jerry here wants to do, and I've brought him along to seek shelter. He's in sore straits. Oh, by the way, Mr. Shoesmith, Mr. Blake-Somerset."

"How do you do?" said Jerry effusively.

"How do you do?" said Henry, less effusively.

"Mr. Shoesmith, I should mention," said Kay, "is passing for the moment under the alias of Zoosmeet, but think none the worse of him for that. It's his only way of getting the secret papers through to the Prime Minister. Where was I? Oh yes, sore straits. Tell him the story of your life, Jerry."

Jerry embarked on his narrative, but not with any marked ease of manner, for he seemed to detect in his host's eye a certain imperfect sympathy. Henry Blake-Somerset was a small and slender young man of singular but frosty good looks. He had what Jerry had once seen described in a book as enameled elegance. His hair was light and sleek, his nose aristocratically arched, his lips thin, his eyes a pale and chilly blue. Kay, Jerry recalled, had said that he was attached to the British Embassy, and he could well believe it. Here, obviously, was a rising young diplomat who knew all about protocol and initialing memorandums in triplicate and could put foreign spies in their places with a lifted eyebrow. The thought crossed his mind that if called upon to select a companion for a long walking tour, Henry Blake-Somerset would be his choice only after he had scraped the barrel to its fullest extent. Against this, however, must be set the fact that he had a bed to dispose of, and that made up for everything.

"So you see," said Kay, as he concluded the story of the lost wallet, "he's like the dove they sent out of the ark, which could find no resting place, and if you don't do your boy-scout act of kindness, he'll be in what you embassy guys call a rapidly deteriorating situation. You can put him in your spare room," she said, and Henry, with a notable lack of enthusiasm, said yes, he supposed he could.

"Of course you can," said Kay. "There it is, eating its head off. Well, I'll leave you to fix him up. Goodnight, Hank. Goodnight, Jerry. If I'm to give my employers of my best tomorrow, I must go and get some sleep."

Her departure was followed by a longish silence. Jerry was silent because he was thinking of Kay; Henry was silent because he was thinking of Jerry. A young man of regular habits who held strong views on the subject of Englishmen's homes and castles, he resented having perfect strangers thrust on him like stray dogs. Left to himself, he would have finished his whiskey and water, wound up his watch, brushed his teeth, gargled a little mouthwash and turned in between the sheets, all set for the refreshing slumber which would enable him to be bright and competent at the embassy tomorrow. And now this! He did not actually glare at Jerry, but his manner could not have been more distant if the latter had been a heavily veiled woman, diffusing a strange exotic scent, whom he had found helping herself to top-secret documents out of the embassy safe.

However, he was – though unwillingly – a host.

"Can I offer you a drink, Mr. Shoesmith?" he said gloomily.

"Thanks," said Jerry, and instantly regretted the word. This, he realized, would mean conversation, and he was not feeling in the vein for conversation. Love had come to him this night, and he wanted to be alone with his thoughts, not to have to exchange small talk with a man who was making so obvious his distaste for his interior organs. "I feel awful," he said apologetically, "intruding on you like this."

"Not at all," said Henry, though with the air of one who would have preferred to say "And so you damn well ought to." He took a sip of whiskey and water. "Very glad to be of help," he said, speaking not perhaps actually from between clenched teeth but certainly the next thing to it.

"I was all set to camp out in the Bois, when Miss Christopher had this sudden inspiration of getting you to put me up."

"Indeed?" said Henry, his tone indicating only too clearly what he thought of Kay's sudden inspirations. "Are you an old friend of hers?"

"Hardly that," said Jerry, wishing not for the first time that his host's eyes were a little less pale and icy or, alternatively, that if they had to be pale and icy, their proprietor would not direct them at him with such unpleasant intensity, for the young diplomat was making him feel like an unwanted ant at a picnic. "We were on the same boat coming over from New York two years ago and saw something of each other then. I met her again tonight at the police station."

"What was she doing there?"

"She had gone to ask the police to find her brother. He seems to have disappeared."

If it is possible to drink whiskey and water with a sneer, Henry did so.

"Probably off on a drinking bout."

"That was Miss Christopher's theory."

"The correct one, I imagine."

"I'm very fond of him myself."

"You know him?"

"Oh, very well."

"I understood that you and Miss Christopher were mere acquaintances."

The expression revolted Jerry, but he supposed that – so far – it more or less fitted the facts.

"We are."

"Yet you appear to be closely connected with the family."

"I saw a lot of Biff in New York. He was a reporter on a paper there, and I was the New York correspondent of a London paper. I went around with him all the time."

"With Miss Christopher also?"

"No, I never met her when I was in New York. I think she was out on the Coast. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no particular reason. I just thought that you and she seemed on excellent terms. I noticed that she called you by your first name."

"Don't most girls drop the Mister fairly soon nowadays?"

"Do they? I could not say."

"They do with me. I suppose they find 'Mister Shoesmith' a bit of a tongue twister. I doubt if you could say it ten times quickly."

Henry Blake-Somerset apparently had no intention of trying. He took an austere sip of whiskey and water and was silent for so long that Jerry wondered if he had gone to sleep.

"So you and Miss Christopher were just shipboard acquaintances," he said, coming abruptly out of his reverie, and once more Jerry found the description distasteful. "I thought it possible that you might have been seeing her since."

"Oh, no."

"You have not happened to meet her during your stay in Paris?"

"No."

"The boat trip took how long?"

"Five days."

"And she calls you by your first name!" Jerry became a little irritated.

"Well, she calls you by your first name."

"That," said Henry, rising, "is no doubt because we are engaged to be married. Will you excuse me now if I turn in. We keep early hours at the embassy."

• • •

His statement that the embassy staff was expected to clock in at an early hour proved next morning to have been strictly accurate. When Jerry woke, he found himself alone. And he was just sitting down to breakfast when the telephone rang.

Kay's voice came over the wire.

"Hank?"

"No, he's gone. This is Jerry."

"Couldn't be better, because you're the one I want to talk to. Have you had breakfast?"

"Just having it."

"Don't spare the marmalade. It's good. Hank has it imported from Scotland. Listen, what I'm calling about: I've had a telegram from Biff."

"You have? Where is he?"

"Over in London, staying at Barribault's Hotel. As if he could afford a place like that, the misguided young cuckoo. Could you find time to go and see him when you get back?"

"Of course."

"Ask him what he thinks he's playing at, going off without a word. Tell him I've been distracted with anxiety and am under sedatives with an ice pack on my head. Talk to him like a Dutch uncle and grind his face in the dust. Goodbye."

"Wait. Don't go."

"I must go. I'm working. Well, I can give you five seconds. What's on your mind?"

Jerry's voice was grim and accusing, the voice of a man who is about to demand an explanation and intends to stand no nonsense.

"You know what's on my mind. Why didn't you tell me you were engaged to this Blake-Somerset disaster?"

"Disaster, did you say?"

"That's what I said."

"You sound as if you hadn't taken to Hank."

"I didn't."

"What's wrong with the poor guy?"

"He's a mess. Totally unfit for human consumption."

"Well, I'm certainly surprised to hear you talk like that about a man who is your host, with whose food you're at this very moment bursting."

"I am not bursting. I am making a light Continental breakfast. But that's not the point."

"What is the point?"

"The point is that you're not going to marry him or anyone else. You're going to marry me."

There was a silence at the other end of the wire. It lasted perhaps a quarter of a minute, though Jerry would have put it at more like a quarter of an hour. Then Kay spoke.

"What did you say?"

"Will you marry me?"

"This is the marmalade speaking, Zoosmeet. It's heady stuff. I ought to have warned you. My good man, you hardly know me."

"Of course I know you."

"Five days on an ocean liner."

"As good as five years ashore. You can't have forgotten those days."

"I've never forgotten you singing at the ship's concert."

"Don't make a joke of it. I'm serious."

"You're crazy."

"About you. Well?"

"Well, what? I suppose you mean you want my views. All right, here they come. You have paid me the greatest compliment a man can pay a woman, or so they all tell me, but I still maintain you're noncompos. You simply can't go talking like this to one whose troth is plighted to another. What would Henry say if he heard you? He'd be terribly annoyed and might not ask you to breakfast again. Goodbye," said Kay, "I must rush."

• • •

Barribault's Hotel, situated in the heart of Mayfair, is probably the best and certainly the most expensive establishment of its kind in London. It caters principally to Indian maharajas and Texas oil millionaires, plutocrats not given to counting the cost, and as these are men of impatient habit who want what they want when they want it and tend to become peevish if they do not get theirs quickly, it sees to it that its room service is prompt and efficient. It was consequently only a few minutes after Edmund Biffen Christopher had placed his order for breakfast on the morning following Jerry's return to London that a waiter wheeled a laden table into his room on the third floor.

This brother of Kay's fully bore out the picture she had sketched for the benefit of the commissaire's secretary. He not only looked like a dachshund, he looked considerably more like a dachshund than most dachshunds do. Seeing him, one got the feeling that nature had toyed with the idea of making a dog of this breed and on second thought had decided to turn out something with the same sort of face but not so horizontal and with no tail. He greeted the waiter with a "Hi!" that was virtually a bark, and the waiter said, "Good morning, sir."

"Your breakfast," he added rather unnecessarily, for the scent of sausages and bacon was floating over the room like a benediction.

Biff, inspecting the table, saw that Barribault's had given of its abundance. The coffee was there, the bacon was there, the sausages were there, and the eye rested in addition on toast, butter, marmalade, sugar, salt, pepper, cream, mustard and orange juice. A full hand, one might have supposed. Nevertheless, he seemed to feel that there was something missing.

"Isn't there any mail?"

"Sir?"

"I was expecting a cable. It must have come by now."

"Should I inquire at the desk?"

"Do just that. Christopher's the name."

The waiter went to the telephone, established communication with the desk and, having replaced the receiver, came back with the good news he had gleaned from the men up top.

"There is a cable, sir. It is being sent up."

Biff was unable to click his tongue censoriously, for he had started on the sausages, but he looked annoyed.

"Why didn't they send it up before, blister their insides? I've been in agonies of suspense."

"Possibly you placed a do not disturb sign on your door, sir."

Biff was fair minded. He saw the justice of this. Barribault's Hotel had not been negligent and must be dismissed without a stain on its character.

"You're perfectly right, I did. It's a long time since I was in London and I roamed around last night to a rather advanced hour, picking up the threads. You live in London?"

"In the suburbs, sir. Down at Valley Fields."

"Nice place?"

"Very nice, sir."

"Got your little bit of garden and all that?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good for you. I've been in Paris for the last three years. You know Paris at all?"

"No, sir. An agreeable city, I have been told."

"Well, it's all right in many ways – springtime on the boulevards and so forth, but everyone talks French there. Sheer affectation, it's always seemed to me. Do you know what you'd be if you were in Paris?"

"No, sir."

"A garçon, that's what you'd be, and these things would be called saucissons, and where you live would be the banlieue. That just shows you what you'd be up against if you went and settled there. Too silly for words."

At this point a knock sounded on the door. "Entrez," he shouted. "Sorry, damn it, I mean Come in."

A boy entered with an envelope on a salver, was tipped and withdrew. Biff tore open the envelope with fingers that shook a little, scanned its contents and with a gasping cry sank back in his chair, gurgling. The waiter eyed him with concern. Their acquaintanceship had been brief, but like most people who met him, he had rapidly come to look on Biff as a familiar friend, and his demeanor distressed him. He feared for his well-being. His niece, who lived with him, had recently been presented by her employer with a pedigreed boxer, and only yesterday it had behaved in a similar manner when about to give up its all after a surfeit of ice cream, a delicacy of which it was far too fond.

"Are you ill, sir?" he inquired anxiously, and Biff looked up, surprised.

"Who, me? I should say not. Never felt better in my life."

"I was afraid you might have had bad news, sir."

Biff rose and tapped him impressively on his gleaming shirt front. His eyes were glowing with a strange light.

"Waiter," he said, "let me tell you something, as you seem interested. I doubt if anyone has ever had better news. I'm floating on a pink cloud over an ocean of bliss while harps and sack-buts do their stuff and a thousand voices give three rousing cheers. Waiter ... But why this formality? May I call you George?"

"It is not my name, sir."

"What is your name?"

"William, sir."

"Mind if I address you as Bill?"

"Not at all, sir, though I am usually called Willie."

A slight frown marred the brightness of Biff's face, like a cloud passing over the sun on a fine summer day.

"This 'sir' stuff, I wish you'd cut it out. It's undemocratic. I don't like it. First names between buddies, don't you think? Well, not exactly first names, because that would mean your calling me Edmund, and you probably feel as I do that there are few fouler labels. Make it Biff, Willie."

"Very good, sir."

"Very good what?"

"Very good, Biff," said the waiter with a visible effort.

Biff had risen from his chair and was pacing the room in an emotional manner, his sausages temporarily forgotten.

"That's better. Yes, Willie o' man, I was christened Edmund Biffen after a godfather. But don't in your haste start pitying me, because if I hadn't been christened Edmund Biffen, you wouldn't now be chewing the fat with a millionaire. Yes, you heard me. That's what I said, a millionaire. For that's what I am, Willie o' man. This cable tells the story. My godfather, a big wheel named Edmund Biffen Pyke, who recently turned in his dinner pail and went to reside with the morning stars, has left me his entire pile, amounting to more millions than you could shake a stick at in a month of Sundays."

There was a momentary silence, and then the words "Cor lumme!" rang through the room. It was unusual for the waiter to use this exclamation, for as a rule he took pains to avoid the vernacular, and the fact that he did so now showed how deeply the news had stirred him. He was a moth-eaten man in his middle 50s, who looked as if he gardened after hours in his suburban home and on Sundays took around the offertory bag in a suburban church, as was indeed the case. His name was William Albert Pil-beam, and he had a son named Percy, who ran a private inquiry agency, and a niece called Gwendoline, who was secre-tary to the president of the Mammoth Publishing Company, but this did not show in his appearance. He gaped at Biff, stunned.

"Cor lumme," he said. "It's like winning a pool!"

Biff could not have agreed with him more.

"Exactly like winning a pool," he said, "because the odds against my bringing home the bacon were so astronomical that I can hardly believe it even now. I can't help feeling there's a catch somewhere. The late Pyke was an austere man and he never approved of me, except once, when I saved him from drowning at his Long Island residence. He didn't like me being pinched by New York's finest for getting into fights in bars, as happened from time to time. He always bailed me out, I'll give him credit for that, but you could see he wasn't pleased. He looked askance, Willie o' man, and when I tried to tell him that boys will be boys and you're only young once, there was nothing in his manner to suggest that I was putting the idea across. Do you often get into fights in bars?"

Mr. Pilbeam said that he did not.

"Not even when flushed with wine?"

It appeared that Mr. Pilbeam never became flushed with wine. He was, he explained, a total abstainer.

"Good God!" said Biff, shocked. He had known in a vague sort of way that such characters existed, but he had never expected to meet one of them. "You mean you get by in this disturbed post-War world on lemonade and barley water? You're certainly doing it the hard way. Still, I suppose you avoid certain inconveniences. It gets boring after a while being thrown into the tank, always with that nervous feeling that this time the old man won't come through with the necessary bail. But you know how it is. I like my little drop of something of an evening, and unfortunately, when I indulge, I seem to lose my calm judgment. That's why I'm in London. I had to skip out of Paris somewhat hurriedly as the result of socking an agent de police."

Mr. Pilbeam said, "Good gracious!" adding that strong wine was a mocker, and Biff said he didn't mind it mocking him, but he wished it would stop short of leading him on to swat the constabulary.

"I'd get into an argument with a fellow in a bar and at the height of the proceedings, just as I was about to strike him on the mazard, this flic intervened, and his was the mazard I struck. It was a mistake. I can see that now. But his manner was brusque and, as I have indicated, I had been hoisting a few. I managed to escape on winged feet, but I deemed it best to hop on the next plane to London without stopping to pack and make my getaway before the authorities started watching the ports. On arriving in London, I cabled the New York lawyers, asking if by chance there was some small legacy coming my way, and back comes this gram informing me that I cop the lot. As you say, very like winning a pool. The most I was hoping for was a thousand dollars or so, and I wasn't really expecting that." He paused, fixing Mr. Pilbeam with a reproachful eye, for the other was sidling toward the door. "Are you leaving me?"

Mr. Pilbeam explained that he would greatly have preferred to stay and hear more, for he had been held spellbound by even this brief résumé, but duty called him elsewhere. A waiter's time is not his own.

The door closed and Biff resumed his breakfast. And never in the history of sausages and bacon had sausages been so toothsome, bacon so crisp and palatable. The marmalade, too, had a tang which even Henry Blake-Somerset's imported Dundee could not have rivaled. He was covering the final slice of toast with a liberal smearing of it, when the telephone rang.

"Biff?"

"Speaking."

"Oh, hullo, Biff. This is Jerry Shoe-smith."

Biff uttered a joyful yelp.

"Well, fry me an oyster! What are you doing in London? I thought you were Our Man in America. Aren't you New York—corresponding any longer?"

"No, I lost that job two years ago. I let the paper in for a libel suit, and they fired me!"

"I'm sorry. That's too bad."

"My fault. Not that that makes it any better."

"What are you doing now?"

"I'm editor of one of Tilbury's papers. Don't ask me which one."

"Of course not. Wouldn't dream of it. Which one?"

"Society Spice."

"My God! But that's a loathsome rag. Not your cup of tea at all, I'd have thought."

"It isn't. I hate the foul thing. But I didn't ring you up to talk about my troubles. I want to see you."

"And I want to see you, Jerry o'man. Jerry, the most extraordinary thing has happened. This'll make you whistle. My godfather ––"

"Tell me about it later. Can you come to my place at about five?"

"Sure. Where is it?"

"Three Halsey Chambers. In Halsey Court. Just round the corner from Barri-bault's."

"I'll be there. Why can't you talk now?"

"I've got to work."

"Oh, work?" said Biff with a shiver of distaste. It was a nervous habit he himself had always avoided as far as possible.

He hung up the receiver and returned to his toast and marmalade.

• • •

It had been Jerry's intention, when he opened the door of Number Three Halsey Chambers at five o'clock and found Biff on the mat, to start without delay talking to him, as Kay had directed, like one of those Dutch uncles who are so much more formidable than the ordinary run-of-the-mill uncle. In the intervals of assembling next week's Society Spice during the afternoon he had thought up several good things to say to him, all calculated to bring the blush of shame to even his hardened cheek, and he was about to give them utterance when Biff raised a restraining hand.

"I know, Jerry o'man, I know. What a long time it is since we saw each other and how well I'm looking and I'm longing to hear all your news and whatever became of old what's-his-name and so on and so forth. But we haven't leisure for all that jazz. Let's take the minutes as read and get down to the agenda. Cast your eye on this," said Biff, thrusting the cable at him.

Jerry took it, read it with widening eyes, drew a deep breath, stared, read it again and drew another deep breath.

"Good Lord!" he said at length.

"Exactly how I felt."

"Well, I'll be damned!"

"Just what I said."

"Who's Pyke, deceased?"

"My godfather."

"Did he leave much?"

"Millions."

"And you get it all?"

"Every cent."

"But that's wonderful."

"I'm not ill pleased, I must confess."

"What does it feel like being a millionaire?"

Biff mused a moment. He had not really analyzed his state of mind, but he was able to give a rough idea of it.

"It's an odd sensation. Much the same as going up in an express elevator and finding at the halfway point that you've left all your insides at the third floor. It's difficult to realize at first that you're one of the higher-bracket boys and that from now on money is no object."

"I can imagine."

"When you do realize it, you feel a sort of yeasty benevolence toward the whole human race rather like what you get on New Year's Eve after the second bottle. You yearn to be a do-gooder. You think of all the poor slobs who aren't millionaires and your heart bleeds for them. You want to start fixing them up with purses of gold – bringing the sunshine into their drab lives, if you get what I mean."

"I get it."

"Take you, for instance. Here you are, working on a rag of a paper no right-thinking man would care to be found dead in a ditch with, and nothing to look forward to except a miserable impecunious old age ending in death in a gutter."

"That's what you read in the tea leaves, is it?"

"That's what. Death in a gutter," said Biff firmly. "And why? Because you're short of capital. You can't get anywhere in the world today without captial. I've noticed the same thing about myself. I've always been full of schemes, but I never had the cash to promote them. Till now, of course. What you need is a purse of gold, Jerry o'man. I'm penciling you in for ten thousand pounds."

"What!"

"Slip of the tongue. I meant twenty."

"Are you offering me twenty thousand pounds?"

"As a starter. More where it came from, if you need it. Just say the word. After all, we're buddies, you can't get away from that."

Jerry shook his head.

"No thanks, Biff. It's awfully good of you, but you'll have to bring the sunshine into somebody else's drab life. I want to be unique."

"How do you mean, unique?"

"I want to be the only member of your circle who doesn't come trotting up to you and offering to sit in your lap and share the wealth. How many friends have you, would you say?"

"Quite a number."

"Well, take it from me, they'll all try to get their cut."

"Except you?"

"Except me."

"Very disappointing," said Biff, and there was silence for a moment while he seemed to brood on Jerry's eccentric attitude. He himself had never found money anything of a problem. If you had it, fine, you lent it to your pals. If you hadn't, you touched the pals. As simple as that. "You're sure I can't persuade you?"

"Quite sure."

"Nothing doing?"

"Nothing."

"Twenty thousand isn't much."

"It sounds a lot to me. I'll tell you what I will do, Biff, as you're an old friend. When I've died in my gutter, you can pay the funeral expenses."

"Right. That's a gentleman's agreement. But it's going to be hard to get rid of all that money if everyone's as uncooperative as you."

"They won't be," Jerry assured him. "They'll be lining up in a queue with outstretched hands like the staff of a Paris hotel when a guest's leaving. When do you collect?"

"Ah, there you have me. They don't say in the cable. They simply say ... but you've read it. And here's something I'd like to have your views on, Jerry. Did you notice something sinister in that cable? The bit at the end?"

"You mean about you inheriting the money in accordance with the provisions of the trust? Yes, I saw that. I wonder what it means."

"So do I. What trust? Which trust? I don't like the sound of it. They say 'Letter follows,' so I imagine the explanation will be in that, but it makes me uneasy. Suppose it's one of those freak wills with a clause in the small print saying I've got to dye my hair purple or roll a peanut along Piccadilly with my nose?"

"Was Pyke, deceased, the sort of man to make a freak will?"

"He never gave me that impression. As I was saying to a capital fellow I met at the hotel this morning, he was very much on the austere side. Limey by birth, but converted in the course of the years into the typical American tycoon, all cold gray eye and jutting jaw. Nothing frivolous about Edmund Biffen Pyke when I knew him. But that was three years ago, and I did hear somebody say he'd become a bit on the eccentric side since he retired from business. These big financiers often do, they tell me, when they stop going to the office. They've nothing to occupy their time, and the next thing you know they're going about in a cocked hat with a hand tucked into their waistcoat, saying they're Napoleon. Or cutting out paper dolls or claiming that Queen Elizabeth wrote Shakespeare's plays."

"Very strange."

"Very."

"Well, let's hope you'll be all right."

"Oh, I shall be all right, whatever happens, because if I have to push peanuts with my nose, I'll do it blithely. I don't intend to let a little thing like that stand between me and a bank roll."

"That's the spirit. I wouldn't worry about this trust business. It probably merely means that you don't get the capital cash down but simply collect the interest till you're forty or fifty or whatever it is."

"Which, at even four percent on the Pyke millions, should work out at around two hundred thousand a year. This will be perfectly agreeable to me. I can scrape along on two hundred thousand. The only trouble is that in these legal matters there's always a long stage wait before the balloon goes up. It may be months before I get a cent, and in the meantime funds are running short. It's not cheap living at Barri-bault's."

"What on earth made you go there?"

"Oh, I thought I would. I'm sorry I did, though, now, because, as I say, my sojourn has made the privy purse look as if it had been going in for one of those diet systems. But all is not lost. I've a picture over in Paris that I won in a raffle and was saving for a rainy day. Do you know anything about pictures?"

"Not a thing."

"Well, this one's a Boudin, and it's quite valuable. I'm going to phone Kay – my sister – did I ever mention her to you? – we share an apartment – to send it to me, and then I'll sell it and be on a sound financial basis again."

"And while you're waiting to sell it, why don't you move in here with me?"

"May I really?"

"If you can stand the squalor."

Halsey Court, though situated in May-fair, was no luxury spot. It was a dark little cul-de-sac in which cats roamed and banana skins and old newspapers collected on the sidewalks, and the flats in Halsey Chambers were in keeping with the general seediness of the locality. Tilbury House did not believe in paying its minor editors large salaries, and the dinginess of the room in which they were sitting testified to the slenderness of Jerry's means. But Biff had no fault to find with it.

"What squalor?" he said. "I call it snug. You should see my place in Paris after a Saturday-night party. Thanks, Jerry, I'll be with you before yonder sun has set. Very handsome of you."

"A pleasure."

"I'll check out of Barribault's this evening. By the way," said Biff, suddenly remembering a point which had been puzzling him since breakfast time, "there's a mystery you can clear up, if you will be so good. You phoned me at Barribault's this morning. Correct? Well, how on earth did you know I was there?"

"Kay told me."

Biff stared. He could make nothing of this.

"Pull yourself together, Jerry o' man, and if you're just trying to be funny, don't. She can't have told you. She's in Paris."

"So was I in Paris. I got back yesterday."

"Well, I'll be darned. But here's another point. How did you meet Kay? And how did you know it was Kay when you did meet her? You had never seen her in your life."

"Yes, I had. We traveled over on the same boat from New York two years ago. We met the night before last at a police station."

This interested Biff, himself an old patron of police stations.

"Got herself jugged, did she? Cops finally closed in on her, eh?"

His words revolted Jerry. Like many another young man in love, he found a brother's attitude toward the loved one jarring.

"Not at all. I was notifying the police that I had lost my wallet, and she was notifying them that she had lost you. She was very worried about you, terribly worried."

No Dutch uncle could have spoken with more reproach, but Biff stoutly declined to show remorse.

"She was, was she? Well, I'm terribly worried about her. I don't suppose she told you, but that child is sticking out her foolish little neck ... what's the matter?"

"Nothing," said Jerry. He had merely shuddered at hearing Kay's neck so described.

"She's gone and got engaged to a pill of the first water, who can't possibly make her happy. A ghastly limey ... Sorry, I forgot you were one."

"Don't apologize. Somebody has to be. A ghastly limey, you were saying."

"Fellow in the British Embassy called Blake-Somerset, you wouldn't know him."

"On the contrary. I not only know him, but have slept in his spare bed and eaten his marmalade. I couldn't get into my apartment, so Kay made him put me up for the night. He didn't seem too pleased."

"He wouldn't be. Did you gather the impression that he was a pill?"

"Almost immediately."

"It beats me what she sees in him."

"I wondered that, too."

"Well, there it is. Girls are odd. Linda used to perplex me greatly at times. Have you ever met Tilbury's niece, Linda Rome?"

"No. Kay mentioned her name, but we've never met."

"I was engaged to her once."

"So Kay told me."

"Oh, she told you? Well, what she probably didn't tell you was that Linda's the only girl I ever loved, which, considering that she's a brunette, is rather remarkable. I worshiped her, Jerry o' man, and when she gave me the bum's rush, my heart broke and life became a blank."

"I'd never noticed it."

"No, I wear the mask. But you can take it from me that that's what happened. You see before you, Jerry, a broken man with nothing to live for."

"Except the Pyke millions."

"Oh, those," said Biff, dismissing them with a contemptuous wave of the hand. He fell into a moody silence, but it was not long before he was speaking again, this time in more cheerful vein.

"Jerry, o' man."

"Yes?"

"Shall I tell you something? I've been thinking of Linda, and I've reached a rather interesting conclusion. I believe there's quite a chance that under the present altered conditions the sun may come smiling through again. Now that I've got these millions – added attraction, as you might say – she may turn things over in her mind and reconsider."

"It's possible."

"Have you studied the sex closely?"

"Not very."

"I have, and I know that it often happens that a girl who has handed a man his hat and helped him from her presence with a kick in the pants gets a completely different slant on him when she learns that he owns the majority stock in about fifty-seven blue-chip corporations. I think that when Linda finds out the score, she'll forgive and forget. Am I right or wrong?"

"Right, I should say, unless you did something particularly out of the way to offend her. What made her hand you your hat?"

"Blondes, Jerry o' man. I was rather festooned with blondes at that time, and she objected – I may say she objected strongly. You know what Linda's like."

"No, I don't. I've never seen her."

"Nor you have. I was forgetting. Well, she's one of those calm, quiet girls you'd think nothing would steam up, but she has this in common with a stick of trinitrotoluene, that, given the right conditions, she can explode with a deafening report, strewing ruin and desolation in all directions. She did this when she found me giving supper to a blonde whose name, if I remember correctly, was Mabel. But that was a year ago. A year's a long time, Jerry."

"It is."

"She may have changed her mind."

"Girls have been known to."

"Especially if I make it clear to her that I'm off blondes for life. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to seek her out and see how she feels about things. The trouble is I don't know her address. She used to have an apartment in Chelsea, but she's not there now and I can't find her name in the telephone book. Short of engaging detectives and bloodhounds, I don't know what to do."

"Perfectly simple. You say she's Tilbury's niece. Ask Tilbury."

Biff scratched his chin thoughtfully.

"Between ourselves, o' man, I'm not too eager to meet Tilbury just now."

"Then ask his secretary. She's bound to know."

"My God, Jerry, you're shrewd. I'll do just that little thing. I'll go and see the wench immediately. And meanwhile you might be calling Kay up and telling her the good news. And don't forget about that picture. Impress her that I need it without delay, or I shan't be able to meet current expenses. I'll write down the number for you. You don't think there's any danger that Tilbury will be lurking in his office as late as this?"

"He probably left hours ago. Why don't you want to meet him?"

"I'll tell you. Have you noticed a peculiar thing as you go through life, Jerry? I allude to the fact that whatever you do, you can't please everybody. Take the present case. Edmund Biffen Pyke's testamentary dispositions or whatever you call them have made me all smiles, but I greatly fear they will have administered a nasty jolt to Tilbury. He was the old boy's brother and must have expected to gather in a substantial portion of the kitty, if not the whole works, and I can see him taking the thing a bit hard. If he's had the news, the sight of me might well give him a stroke. Still, he's loaded with the stuff, so this little extra bit ought not really to matter to him. There's always a bright side," said Biff, and on this philosophical note took his departure.

• • •

Left alone, Jerry lost no time in calling the number Biff had given him. The prospect of hearing Kay's voice again was one that appealed to him strongly.

"Kay?" he said some minutes later.

The voice that replied was not Kay's. It was that of Henry Blake-Somerset.

"Who is this?"

"Oh, hullo, Mr. Blake-Somerset. This is Jerry Shoesmith. Can I speak to Miss Christopher?"

"Miss Christopher is not in," said Henry, as frigidly as if he were refusing some doubtful character a visa.

This was not strictly true, for she was in the next room dressing for dinner, but he was in no mood to be fussy about the truth. He was thinking the worst. He had been suspicious about his betrothed's relations with this Shoesmith fellow ever since she and he had appeared at his door on what were obviously excellent terms, and this telephone call – this sinister, secret, surreptitious telephone call – had cemented those suspicions. There was a cold gleam in his pale eyes as he banged the receiver back into its place.

Kay came out of the bedroom, all dressed up.

"Who was that on the phone?" she asked.

"Wrong number," said Henry.

• • &#x2022

The Tilbury of whom mention has been made from to time in this chronicle, the employer of Jerry Shoesmith and William Albert Pilbeam's niece Gwendoline Gibbs, should more properly have been alluded to as Lord Tilbury, for it was several years now since a gracious sovereign, as a reward for flooding Great Britain with some of the most repellent daily, weekly and monthly periodicals seen around since the invention of the printing press, had bestowed on him a barony. He was the founder and proprietor of the mammoth Publishing Company, and at the moment when when Jerry and Biff's reunion had taken place he was in his office at Tilbury House dictating letters to Gwendoline Gibbs. And it may be said at once that he was doing it with the love-light in his eyes and in a voice which a poet would have had no hesitation in comparing to that of a turtledove calling to its mate.

Lord Tilbury was short, stout and inclined to come out in spots if he ate lobster, but there is no law prohibiting short, stout press lords, even when spotty, from falling in love with willowy blondes, and there are few blondes more willowy than Gwendoline. He was, moreover, at what is sometimes called the dangerous age, the age of those Pittsburgh millionaires who are so prone to marry into musical-comedy chrouses.

He was a widower. In the days when he had been plain George Pyke, long before he had even founded Society Spice, the first of his numerous enterprises, he had married a colorless young woman by the name of Lucy Maynard, and when after a year or two of marriage she had drifted colorlessly out of life, it had never occurred to him to look about him for a replacement. His work absorbed him, and he felt no need for feminine companionship other than that of his niece Linda Rome, who kept house for him at his mansion on Wimbledon Common.

And then the agency had sent him Gwendoline Gibbs, and it was as if one of his many employees – who were always saying to one another that what the old son of a bachelor needed was to have a bomb touched off under him – had proceeded from words to action. He looked forward eagerly to the time when, with her at his side, he would take his annual holiday on the yacht which ought at any moment to be in readiness at Cannes. Meanwhile, he dictated letters to her.

The one he was dictating now was to the editor of Society Spice, whose work, he considered, lacked zip and ginger. Society Spice had once been edited by Mr. Pilbeam's son Percy, and under his guidance had reached a high pitch of excellence with a new scandal featured almost every week. But Percy was shrewd and he saw no reason why he should nose out people's discreditable secrets for a salary from Tilbury House when he would be doing far better for himself nosing them out on his own behalf. He had resigned, borrowed a little capital and started a private investigation agency, and Lord Tilbury had never ceased to regret his loss. None of his successors had had the Pilbeam touch, and this latest man – Shoesmith, his name was – was the least satisfactory of the lot.

He finished dictating the note, its acerbity causing Gwendoline to label it mentally as a stinker, and when the last harsh word had been spoken returned to his melting mood.

"I hope I am not tiring you, Miss Gibbs," he said tenderly.

"Oh, no, Lord Tilbury."

"I am sure you must be tried," his lordship insisted. "It is this muggy weather. You had better go home and lie down."

Gwendoline assured him that his kindness was greatly appreciated, but said that she had a dinner date for that night and would have to wait till her cavalier arrived to pick her up.

"My cousin," she said, and Lord Tilbury, who had writhed in a spasm of jealousy, stopped writhing. He had no objection to cousins.

"I see," he said, relieved. "Then would you mind putting in a New York telephone call for me."

"Yes, Lord Tilbury."

"What would be the time in New York?"

Gwendoline made a rapid calculation, and said that it would be about 12:30.

"Then I ought just to catch Mr. Haskell before he goes to lunch. The call is to Haskell and Green. They are a legal firm. Ask for a person-to-person call to Mr. Leonard Haskell."

"Yes, Lord Tilbury."

"The number is Murray Hill 2-4025. Oh, and, Miss Gibbs, you sent that marconigram to Mr. Llewellyn's boat?"

"Yes, Lord Tilbury."

The door closed, and Lord Tilbury fell into a reverie, thinking of this and that, but principally of Gwendoline Gibbs' profile, which he had been studying with loving care for the past half hour. He was in the process of trying to decide whether she was seen to greater advantge side face or full face, when the door opened and a girl came in. And he was about to ask her how she dared enter the presence without making an appointment and – worse – without knocking, when he saw that it was his niece, Linda Rome.

In comparsion with Gwendoline Gibbs, Linda Rome could not have been called beautiful, but she was an attractive girl with clear eyes and a wide and good-humored mouth. Kay had described her to Jerry as sensible, and it was this quality perhaps that stood out most in her appearance. She looked capable and, as Mr. Gish of the Gish Galleries in Bond Street, where she worked, would have testified, she was extremely capable. Soothing, too, was another adjective that could have applied to her, though her advent seemed to have irritated Lord Tilbury. There was suppressed annoyance in his manner as he eyed her.

"Yes?" he said. "Yes, Linda, what is it?"

"Am I interrupting you?"

"Yes," said Lord Tilbury, who did not believe in formal courtesy between uncle and niece. "I am making a telephone call to New York."

"I'm sorry. I only looked in to tell you that I've fixed us up with rooms at Barribault's. With so little time before you'll be off on your yacht trip, it didn't seem worth while engaging a new staff."

There had recently been a volcanic upheaval at The Oaks, Wimbledon Common, with Lord Tilbury in one of his most imperious moods falling foul of and denouncing his domestic helpers and the helpers resigning their portfolios in a body, and Linda in her sensible way had decided that the only thing to do was to move temporarily to a hotel.

"You're on the third floor, I'm on the fourth. We shall be quite comfortable."

"For how long? It may be for weeks."

"No, that's all right. After you left this morning a phone call came from the skipper of the yacht. Apparently whatever was wrong with the poor thing's insides had been put right, and he says you can start your cruise any time you want to."

"Good. I wish I could start tomorrow, but unfortunately Ivor Llewellyn is on his way over from New York and I shall have to be here to give him lunch. It's a great nuisance, but unavoidable."

"Who's Ivor Llewellyn?"

"Motion-picture man. Big advertiser. I can't afford to offend him. And now, if you don't mind, Linda, I am making this important telephone call to New York."

"To Mr. Llewellyn?"

"No, he's on the Queen Mary. This is to Edmund's lawyers."

"Oh, about the will>"

"Precisely."

"I must wait to hear that. I wounder if he's left his money to you."

"I can think of no one else to whom he could leave it. We were never on very close terms, but he was my elder brother."

"How about charities?"

"He did not approve of charities."

"Then you ought to collect. Though why you want any more money beats me. Haven't you enough already?"

"Don't be silly," said Lord Tilbury, who disliked foolish questions. "Ah!"

The telephone had rung. His hand darted at the receiver like a striking snake.

"Mr. Haskell? ... How do you do? ... This is Lord Tilbury of the Mammoth Publishing Company. I understand you are handling the estate of my brother Edmund Biffen Pyke ..."

For some moments his lordship's share in the conversation was confined to greetings and civilities. Then, getting down to it like a good businessman, he asked to be informed of the contents of Edmund Biffen Pyke's will, and for perhaps half a minute sat listening in silence. At the end of that period he broke it abruptly.

"What!!" he roared in a voice that caused his niece to jump at least two inches. When she returned to earth, the interjection still seemed to be echoing through the room, and she was conscious of a mild surprise that plaster had not fallen from the ceiling.

Surprise was followed by alarm. Lord Tilbury's face had taken on a purple tinge and his breathing was stertorous.

"Uncle George!" she cried. "What is it?"

But she was an intelligent girl and did not really need to ask the question. It was plain to her that the news that had been wafted across the Atlantic had not been good news and that it was no inheritor of millions who sat spluttering before her.

"Can I get you a glass of water?"

"Water!" gurgled Lord Tilbury, and you could tell by his manner that he thought poorly of the stuff. "Do you know ––?"

"What?"

"Do you know ––?"

"Yes?"

"Do you know who he's left his money to?" demanded Lord Tilbury, becoming coherent. "That young waster Christopher!"

He had expected the information to astound her, and it did.

"To Biff?"

"You heard me."

"But Biff always gave me the idea that he and Uncle Edmund were hardly on speaking terms. What on earth made him do that?"

Lord Tilbury did not answer. He was staring before him in a sandbagged manner that spoke of an overwrought soul, and it seemed to Linda the tactful thing to leave this stricken man to his grief.

She moved to the door, and went out.

• • •

A few minutes later Lord Tilbury, too, took his departure, en route to his club, where he could obtain the stiff drink he so sorely needed. His preoccupation was so great that he passed Gwendoline Gibbs in the outer office without a word or a look. This was very unusual, and it puzzled Gwendoline. She was not a girl who as a rule thought for any length of time about anything except motion pictures and hairdos, but she found herself meditating now on her employer with what for her was a good deal of intensity.

Lord Tilbury's emotional state of mind had not passed unnoticed by her. She had discussed it with her cousin Percy, and he had confirmed her impression that all those tender glances and all that solicitude for her welfare were significant. It would not be the first time, said Percy, that a middle-aged widower had become enamored of his secretary. His father, Mr. Pilbeam senior, had once told him that half the couples who came to Barribault's Hotel were elderly businessmen who had married their secretaries. It was propinquity that did it, he said, the working with them all day and every day in the same office.

Her own reading had convinced her of the truth of this. In her capacity of secretary to the head of Tilbury House she got all the firm's publications free, and in many of these such as Cupid, Romance Weekly and the rest of them it was common form for the rich man to marry the poor but beautiful girl. She could think offhand of a dozen such unions which she had come across in the course of her studies.

A dreamy look came into her eyes, and if she was wishing that her employer could have been a little younger and a good deal slimmer and altogether more like Captain Eric Frobisher of the Guards, the one who married the governess, she was also thinking that a girl could do far worse than link her lot with his. She had just written the words "Lady Tilbury" in her notebook, to see how they looked, when the door opened and Biff appeared.

Biff came in with a jaunty stride, as befitted a newly made millionaire, but at the sight of Gwendoline he halted abruptly, rocked back on his heels and stood staring at her, eyes apop.

"Hi!" he said, when able to speak.

"Good evening," said Gwendoline. "Are you looking for someone?"

"Not now that I've found you," said Biff, who prided himself on the swiftness of his work. The odd breathless feeling which had paralyzed his vocal cords had subsided, and he was his old debonair self again. The mission on which he had come, the quest for Linda Rome's address, had passed from his mind.

"If you are," said Gwendoline, ignoring the remark, which she considered in dubious taste and bordering on the fresh, "you've come too late. There isn't anybody here."

"Just as I would have arranged it, if I'd been consulted. Old pie-faced Tilbury not around?"

"If you are alluding to my employ-ah, he left half an hour ago."

Biff nodded understanding.

"That's always the way. Everybody works but Father. I've never known one of these tycoons who wasn't a clock watcher. So he sneaks off, does he, and leaves you at your post? Poor, faithful little soul. You, I take it, are his righthand woman?"

"I am his secretary."

"That's just your modest way of putting it. I'll bet you really run the show. Without you, the Mammoth Publishing Company would go pop and cease to exist, and what a break that would be for everybody. But it's a shame. You're wasted here. You ought to be in the movies."

Gwendoline's haughtiness fell from her like a garment. This was the way she liked people to talk. Her azure eyes glowed, and for the first time she allowed herself to smile.

"Do you really think so?"

"I do indeed."

"Quite a number of my friends have told me the same thing."

"I'm not surprised."

"There's a big movie man, Mr. Ivor Llewellyn, coming here in a day or two. I'm hoping he'll think so, too."

"I know Ivor Llewellyn. I interviewed him once."

"What's he like?"

"A hippopotamus. You think he may give you a job?"

"I wish he would. I'd love to be in pictures."

"Pix, I believe, is the more correct term. Well, I shall watch your career with considerable interest. In my opinion, you will go far. If I may say so, you have that thing, that certain thing, that makes the birds forget to sing. Arising from which, how do you react to the idea of letting me buy you a few cents' worth of dinner?"

Gwendoline had made a discovery.

"You're American, aren't you?"

"Not only American, but one of the Americans who have made the country great. Well, how about a bite?"

"I'm waiting for Percy."

"That sounds like the title of one of those avant-garde off-Broadway shows. Who's Percy?"

"My cousin. He's taking me to dinner, but he's late. I suppose he's out on a case."

"Out on a what?"

"He runs an investigation agency."

"You mean he's a private eye?" said Biff, intrigued. "Now there's a thing I'd have liked to be. The fifth of bourbon in the desk drawer, the automatic in the holster and the lightly clad secretary on the lap. Yes, I've often wished I were a shamus."

"What are you?"

"Me?" Biff flicked a speck of dust from his coat sleeve. "Oh, I'm a millionaire."

"And I'm the Queen of Sheba."

Biff shook his head.

"The Queen of Sheba was a brunette. You're more the Helen of Troy type. Not that Helen of Troy was in your class. You begin where she left off."

Gwendoline's initial feeling of hostility toward this intruder had now vanished completely.

"No kidding," she said. "Are you really a millionaire?"

"Sure. Ask the waiter on the third floor at Barribault's. Name of Pilbeam."

"Why, that's my uncle."

"This seems to bring us very close together."

"Is your name Christopher?"

"Edmund Biffen Christopher."

"I was lunching with Uncle Willie this morning, and he told me all about you. He said he was there when a cable came saying you had come into millions."

"That's right."

"Coo!"

"What he said, as I recall, was 'Cor lumme!' but I imagine the two expressions mean about the same thing. Yes, your Uncle Willie was giving me breakfast when the story broke, and if he gives me breakfast, it seems only fair that I should give you dinner. Reciprocity, it's called. And another aspect of the matter. Don't overlook the fact that these private eyes have to watch the pennies. This Percy of yours is probably planning to take you to Lyons Popular Café and push meat loaf and cocoa into you. With me, it'll be the Savoy Grill and what you'll get will be caviar to start with and, to follow, whatever you may select from the bill of fare, paying no attention whatsoever to the prices in the right-hand column. The whole washed down with some nourishing wine that foams at the mouth when the waiter takes the cork out. Grab your hat and come along."

Gwendoline, though her eyes glowed at the picture he had conjured up, remained firm.

"We can't go without Percy."

"To hell, if I may use the expression, with Percy. Stand him up."

"Certainly not. I can't hurt his feelings."

"Ok," said Biff amiably. It had occurred to him that it might be interesting to meet the head of a private-inquiry agency and learn all that went on in a concern like that. Probably this Percy would prove to have a fund of good stories about dope rings, spy rings, maharaja's rubies and what not. It was odd, though, that stuff about hurting his feelings. He had not known till then that private eyes had any feelings.

• • •

It was with relief that Jerry reached home that night and settled himself in the one comfortable chair Number Three, Halsey Chambers, possessed. He mixed himself a whiskey and soda, far stronger than Henry Blake-Somerset would have approved, and fell to thinking how pleasant it would be if someone were to leave him nine or ten million. He tried not to envy Biff, but he could not help wishing that there were more godfathers like the late E. B. Pyke around. His own had been content to fulfill his obligations with a small silver mug.

His meditations were interrupted by the clicking of a key in the front door, the falling with a crash of something that sounded like the hatstand in the hall and a sharp yelp of agony from, he supposed, Biff, on whose toes the object had apparently descended. The next moment Biff entered, followed by a pimpled young man who was a stranger to Jerry.

"Hi, Jerry," he said.

He spoke so thickly and was weaving so noticeably in his walk that Jerry was able to form an instant diagnosis.

"Biff, you're blotto!"

"And why not?" said Biff warmly. He made a movement to seat himself, missed the chair by some inches and continued his remarks from the floor. "You don't become a millionaire every day, do you? And it's a poor heart that never rejoices, ain't it? You can take it from me, Jerry o' man, that if a fellow raised from rags to riches at the breakfast table isn't tanked to the uvula by nightfall, it simply means he hasn't been trying. Meet my friend Percy Pilbeam."

His friend Percy Pilbeam was a singularly uninviting young man of about Biff's age. His eyes were too small and too close together and he marcelled his hair in a manner distressing to rightthinking people, besides having side whiskers and a small and revolting mustache. He looked to Jerry like something unpleasant out of an early Evelyn Waugh novel, and he took as instant a dislike to him as he had taken to Henry Blake-Somerset.

"He's a private eye," said Biff. "Runs the Argus Inquiry Agency. Makes his living measuring footprints and picking up small objects from the carpet and placing them carefully in envelopes. Get him to tell you sometime how he secured the necessary evidence in the case of Nicholson vs. Nicholson, Hibbs, Alsopp, Bunter, Frobisher, Davenport and others. Well, see you later, o' man," he said, rising with some difficulty and weaving into his bedroom. "Got to freshen up a bit."

Percy Pilbeam uttered a brief snigger and gave his mustache a twirl.

"What a night!" he said.

"I can imagine," said Jerry aloofly.

"Glad I managed to get him home all right."

"Can't have been easy."

"It wasn't. He's the sort that gets fractious after he's had a few. He wanted to fight the policeman on the corner. I hauled him away."

"Very good of you."

"Does he often carry on like that?"

"He was rather apt to when I knew him in New York."

"Odd how drink affects people so differently. I know a man – fellow named Murphy – Fleet Street chap – who gets more and more amiable the more he puts away. He can shift the stuff all night and never turn a hair."

"It's a gift."

"I suppose so. Well, I'll be pushing along. Glad to have met you. Goodnight," said Percy Pilbeam.

Jerry went to the door of Biff's room. Biff was at the basin, sponging his face. If ever there was an ideal moment for talking to him like a Dutch uncle, this was it, but Jerry let it pass.

"Ah," he said, relieved. "Going to bed, eh? Quite right. Best place in the world for you. Go to sleep and dream of tomorrow's hang-over."

Biff's dripping face rose from the basin wearing a look of amazement and incredulity.

"Going to bed? Of course I'm not going to bed. Just freshening up. I'm off in a moment to sock a cop."

"To what?"

"Sock a cop."

"Oh, come," said Jerry pacifically.

"You don't want to sock a cop."

Biff thought this over as he plied the towel.

"It's not so much a question of wanting to sock a cop. It's more that I feel my pride demands it. Do you know the cop on the corner with the ginger mustache?"

"I've seen him."

"He's the one I've got to teach a sharp lesson to. As I was entering Halsey Court, he cautioned me. Cautioned me, Jerry o' man. Said I was plastered and cautioned me. We Christophers don't take that sort of thing lying down."

"Were you lying down?"

"Certainly not. Standing as straight as an arrow with my chin up and both feet on the ground. The only possible thing the man could have caviled at was that I was singing. And why shouldn't I sing? This is a free country, isn't it?"

"Oh, go to bed, Biff."

"Can't be done, Jerry o' man. No turning back now. My regiment leaves at dawn."

"What do you think Kay will say if you get jugged?"

"She'll be proud of me."

"Have you reflected that this policeman may have a wife and children?"

"He has a ginger mustache."

"But isn't it possible that he may have a wife and children as well?"

"I guess so, but he should have remembered that earlier," said Biff sternly, and Jerry closed the door and turned away. A few moments later its handle rattled and a stentorian "Hey!" came through the woodwork.

"Now what?" said Jerry.

"I can't get out."

"No, I noticed that."

"You've locked me in!"

"Just the Shoesmith service," said Jerry and made for his own room, feeling that he had done a knightly deed on Kay's behalf. His great love had made him come to look on this deplorable brother of hers as a sacred trust.

• • •

The cubbyhole allotted to Jerry at Tilbury House was two floors down from the head of the firm's palatial office, and many people would have thought it unfit for human habitation. Jerry was one of them. Its ink-stained furniture and evilsmelling stuffiness always lowered his spirits. It was not easy in such surroundings to concentrate on uncongenial work, and when toward noon on the following morning the door handle turned, indicating that someone was about to enter and take his mind off Society Spice, he welcomed the interruption. A boy came in, bearing one of those forms which visitors have to fill out before they can approach even the humblest Tilbury House editor. It ran:

Visitor's Name .... E. B. Christopher To see ..... Editor of Society Spice Business. ...... Terrifically urgent, Jerry old man. Drop everything and confer with me without a moment's delay.

"Send him in," said Jerry, and a few moments later Biff appeared, and he braced himself for rebukes and recriminations. The haughty spirit of the Christophers would, he knew, have been bound to resent being immured in bedrooms. Before leaving Halsey Chambers he had unlocked Biff's door, but he felt that this would have done little to alleviate his guest's pique.

To his surprise, Biff seemed to be in no hostile mood. His manner was grave, but not unfriendly. He said, "Gosh, what a lousy office," dusted a chair and sat down.

"Jerry o' man," he said, "I would like you, if you will, to throw your mind back to last night. Tell me in a few simple words what happened."

Jerry found no difficulty in recapitulating the facts. They were graven on his memory.

"You were tight."

"Sure, sure. We can take that as read. And what occurred?"

"You staggered in, accompanied by a weird object of the name of Pickford or something like that."

"Pilbeam. Most interesting fellow. Runs a private-inquiry agency and obtains the necessary evidence. What happened then?"

"You expressed a wish to go out again and sock the policeman on the corner."

"And then?"

"I locked you in your room."

Biff nodded.

"I thought I had the story sequence correctly. Well, let me tell you, Jerry o' man, that you did me a signal service. I will go further. You saved my life. The United States Marines never put up a smoother job. Do you know what would have been the outcome if you hadn't shown a presence of mind which it is impossible to overpraise? Ruin, desolation and despair, that's what the outcome would have been. That cop would have pinched me."

Jerry agreed that this was what almost certainly would have occurred, but was unable to understand why a seasoned veteran of arrests like Biff should attach such importance to what by this time he might have been expected to have come to regard as mere routine.

"Well, weren't you always getting pinched in New York?" he said putting this point.

"I was," said Biff, "but the difference between me getting pinched in the old home town three years ago and being thrown into a dungeon below the castle moat in London as of even date is subtle but well marked, Jerry o' man. Three years ago, had I been escorted to the coop, it would have set me back some trivial sum like ten bucks. Today it would be more like ten million."

"I don't follow you."

"You will," said Biff. He took a paper from his pocket. "Do you know what this is?"

"It looks like a letter."

"And it is a letter. From the New York lawyers. I picked it up at Barribault's just now, and do you know what I did when I read it? I reeled."

"Just like last night."

Biff gave him a reproving look that said that this was no time for frivolity. His face was grave.

"Never mind about last night, it's today we've got to concentrate on. Where was I?"

"Reeling."

"Ah yes. And if ever anyone was entitled to reel, it was me. You remember the bit at the end of the cable about me getting old Pyke's money in accordance with the provisions of the trust and letter follows?"

"I remember. This is the letter?"

"Nothing but. They said it would follow and it followed, and you can take it from me that it's dynamite. Shall I tell you about the trust I've got to act in accordance with the provisions of? They call it a spendthrift trust, which is a pretty offensive way of putting it, to start with, and when you've heard what a spendthrift trust is, you'll be astounded that Edmund Biffen Pyke should have countenanced such a thing. As dirty a trick to play on a young fellow trying to get along as I ever heard of. Briefly, the way it works out is that the trustees stick to the money like Scotch tape, and I don't get a smell of it till I'm thirty."

"Well, that's not so long to wait. Aren't you nearly that?"

"Pretty nearly. In about another week."

"Then what are you worrying about?"

"I'll tell you what I'm worrying about. You haven't heard the snapper. The provisions of this spendthrift trust are that if I'm arrested for any misdemeanor before my thirtieth birthday, I don't get a nickel."

The look which he directed at Jerry as he spoke made it plain that he was expecting his words to have a stirring effect, and he was not disappointed. Jerry jumped as if the chair he sat in had suddenly become incandescent. He could not have shown more consternation if it had been his own fortune that had thus been placed in jeopardy.

"Good Lord!" he cried.

"I thought that would make you sit up," said Biff with a certain gloomy satisfaction.

"You're sure you've got your facts right?"

"Sure I'm sure. It's all in the letter. Couched, if that's the word, in legal phraseology, but perfectly clear. Didn't I tell you I was certain there was bound to be a catch somewhere?"

"When did your godfather make this will?"

"Three years ago, just about the time I was leaving for Paris."

"And he never said a word to you about it?"

"Not a word. That's what makes me so sore. Can you imagine a man playing a low-down trick like that, just letting me amble along doing what comes naturally and then springing it on me that if I'd been a better boy, I'd have cleaned up but, as it is, I get nothing. It shatters one's whole faith in mankind."

"Didn't he even drop a hint?"

"If you could call it a hint. I saw him before I left, and he told me to keep out of trouble when I was in Paris, and I said I would, and he said I'd better."

"That was all?"

"That's all there was, there wasn't any more."

"He must have been an odd sort of man."

"He was."

"This is pretty serious, Biff."

"You're telling me!"

"You really lose all the money if you're arrested?"

"No question about it."

"You'd better not get arrested."

"Yes, I thought of that."

A horrible possibility occurred to Jerry.

"Have you been arrested since you went to Paris?"

Biff was able to reassure him there.

"Oddly enough, no. The cops aren't nearly so fussy in Paris as they are in New York. There's much more of the live-and-let-live spirit. But my blood runs cold when I think how near I came to it only a few days ago. There was some unpleasantness in a bar, and I socked an agent de ville. That's why I moved to London. To get away from it all, if you follow me."

"But you weren't pinched?"

"No, he hadn't time to pinch me."

"Well, you will be if you start doing that sort of thing here. It's a pity you have this urge to punch policemen."

"It's just a mannerism."

"I'd correct it, if I were you."

"I will. I've learned my lesson. Well, you see now, Jerry o' man, why I'm so grateful to you for what you did last night. But for you, I would now be inside looking out, and a letter would be following to say I could kiss my heritage goodbye. Think back, and you will recall that I used the expression 'You saved my life.' I repeat it. How can I ever repay you?"

"I don't want to be repaid."

"Of course you do. Everybody wants repaying. Jerry o' man, you simply must let me give you that twenty thousand."

"No."

"Well, lend it to you, then."

"No."

Biff frowned at the linoleum.

"I must say I don't like the way you're refusing to enter into the spirit of the thing. Have you nothing to suggest? I know. I'll back your play."

"What play?"

"Haven't you written a play? I thought everyone had."

"Not me. I've been too busy editing this ghastly paper."

"Editing! That word puts me on the right track. How would you like to edit something worth-while?"

"I'd love it."

"Then here's what we're going to do. I'll start a paper and you shall run it."

"It costs a fortune starting a paper from scratch."

"Suppose I bought a going concern."

Jerry gave a little jump. This was opening a new line of thought.

"Do you really mean it, Biff?"

"Of course, I mean it. What do you think I meant? Do you know of any going concerns?"

"Did you ever hear of the Thursday Review?"

"Vaguely. A pal of mine in Paris takes it in. It's politics and literature and all that slop, isn't it?"

"That sort of thing. I've had one or two pieces in it."

"Why do you bring it up?"

"Because I heard the other day that the editor was retiring, and I'd give anything to take on his job. It's right in my line. But what's the good of talking about it? The syndicate that owns it would sell, I suppose, if the price was high enough, but it would cost the earth."

"Well, I've got the earth, or shall have in another week, always provided I stay out of the calaboose. And you can take it from me, Jerry o' man, that staying out of calabooses is what from now on I'm going to specialize in."

Jerry drummed on the desk with his fingers.

"I'll tell you something, Biff. Actually, I don't think you'd be risking much. The Thursday's always made money, and I don't believe I'd let you down. And yet ... I don't know."

Biff would have none of this cat-in-the adage spirit. He was all enthusiasm.

"I do. Consider it done. I have the utmost confidence in your ability to make the damn thing the talk of the intelligentsia, and don't worry about the syndicate not wanting to sell. I know these syndicates. Once they hear there's somebody ready to put up real cash, they're after him like Percy Pilbeam on the track of the necessary evidence. By the way, did you know that Percy used to edit Society Spice?"

"No, I never heard that."

"Fact. He told me last night."

"He looks as if he would have been the ideal editor."

"He was, so he tells me. He spoke very highly of himself. He doesn't think much of you as a successor. He thinks you fall short in dishing the dirt."

"I've an idea my Lord Tilbury feels the same."

"Well, to hell with old Tilbury and to hell with Percy Pilbeam. Harking back to this Thursday Review thing. I'll start the negotiations right away, and your trouser seat will be warming the editorial chair before you know where you are."

Jerry sat speechless, looking into the future. It seemed to open before him in a golden vista, and if the thought presented itself that the whole of that future depended on Biff keeping out of the clutches of the law, it was succeeded by the comforting reflection that he had to do so only for another week. Even Biff, he felt, possibly a little too optimistically, could probably do that.

"I don't know what to say," he said. "You've rather taken my breath away. I'd like to try to thank you ––"

"Don't give it a thought."

Jerry laughed.

"That expression seems to run in the family. It was what Kay said to me when I thanked her for standing me a cup of coffee. Kay!" he exclaimed. "I was forgetting her. I tried to phone her last night, but she was out and all I got was Henry Blake-Somerset. Do you realize that she doesn't know a thing about what's happened? Unless you told her?"

"Oh, I told her. I called her up last night from one of the bars into which Percy Pilbeam led me, though it is possible, of course, that I was leading him. I explained the whole setup."

"Was she thrilled?"

"I think she would have been, if she had grasped the gist. But she didn't. She kept telling me she couldn't understand a word I was saying and accused me – with some justice, I admit – of being under the influence of the sauce. She then hung up. I was annoyed at the time, but I can see now that my articulation may not have been as clear as I could have wished. I seem to remember slurring my words a little."

"So she doesn't know?"

"Hasn't a notion. Nor is she aware that I've got to have that picture. The need is pressing. All sorts of new expenses have cropped up, and I can't waste time waiting for her to mail me the thing. It'll have to be fetched. Not by me, because I can't go to Paris myself – that trouble with the constabulary I spoke of – so everything points to you. You'll have to pop over there. How are you fixed for cash?"

"I've enough. And I ought to go to Paris anyway to pick up those keys and get my things. My uncle was fussing a good deal about his keys last night. But how can I manage it when I'm tied down here?"

"Won't Tilbury let you off?"

"After I've just had my holiday? No."

"You could ask him."

"No, I couldn't."

"Then we seem to be faced with what you might call a dilemma."

"We are."

There was a knock at the door. A boy entered, bearing a letter. Jerry opened the envelope, and laughed.

"Correction," he said. "Tilbury says he will let me off."

"Eh?"

"And I'm not tied down here. This is from the big chief dispensing with my services."

"He's fired you?"

"As of today."

"Well, the old popeyed son of a what not," said Biff. "Still, it just shows what I've always said, that there's a solution for every problem."

• • •

The doorbell of 16 Rue Jacob, Paris 6, Arrondissement Luxembourg, rang in the asthmatic way it had, and Kay came out of her bedroom to answer it, conscious of a sudden chill. This, she presumed, was Henry Blake-Somerset come to pick her up and take her to lunch to meet his mother, who was passing through Paris on her way to the Riviera, and some sixth sense told her that she was not going to enjoy the experience. She had seen a photograph of Lady Blake-Somerset in Henry's apartment and had been struck by the closeness of her resemblance to Queen Elizabeth the First of England. It is pretty generally conceded that, whatever her numerous merits, there was that about Good Queen Bess which made it difficult for strangers to feel at their ease with her, and she wished Henry had forgotten all about this luncheon date. An idle wish, for Henry never forgot anything.

But it was not he who stood without. It was a large young man with reddish hair, at the sight of whom her heart gave a leap quite unsuitable in a heart which should have leaped only at the sight of her betrothed.

"Jerry!" she cried. "Well, for heaven's sake! The last person I expected. What are you doing over here?"

"Business trip," said Jerry briefly. He was resolved to bank down the fire within him and to conduct this interview on orderly, unemotional lines. Just seeing her had caused his own heart to skip like the high hills, but he quickly got it under control, though it was like having to discourage a large, exuberant, bounding dog. "I came to get those keys at the Lost Property Office and collect the things I'd left in my uncle's apartment. And Biff asked me to come and see you because he wants me to take back a picture of his. He said you would know the one he meant."

"He's got only one. He isn't a collector. Why does he want it?"

"He's running short of money and wants to sell it. May I come in?"

"I wasn't planning to keep you standing on the mat. Come right in and tell me all your news."

"I don't know how much you've heard of it," said Jerry, seating himself. "Biff tells me he talked to you on the phone."

Kay laughed and, as always when she did this, Jerry was aware of a sensation similar to, but more pleasurable than, that experienced by the occupant of the electric chair at Sing Sing when willing hands turn on the juice.

"In a way he did," she said, "but it was more like gargling. He had plainly been looking on the wine when it was red. I couldn't understand more than about one word in twenty, but I seemed to gather that Mr. Pyke had left him something, which was better than I had expected. Did he tell you how much?"

"He's left him everything."

Kay stared.

"What do you mean?"

"Just that."

"But it sounds as if you were saying that Mr.Pyke had left him all his money, which doesn't make sense."

"He did."

"You mean ... You can't mean that Biff's a millionaire?"

"That's right."

Kay raised a finger and stilled an upper lip which was trembling. Amazement, enlarging her eyes, became her so well that Jerry began to have doubts as to his ability to keep the interview orderly and unemotional.

"Say it again – slowly."

"Biff gets everything."

"Slower than that. I want to savor each syllable."

"He's a millionaire."

"You wouldn't fool me?"

"Certainly not."

"It's really true?"

"Quite true."

"Zowie!" said Kay, not having William Albert Pilbeam's familiarity with the expression "Cor lumme." There was a tender look in her eyes as she thought of this local boy who had made good. The escapades which in the past had so often caused her to talk to him like a Dutch aunt were forgotten."No wonder he was celebrating. After getting pennies from heaven like that, it wouldn't be humane to expect him not to be pie-eyed. Fancy Biff a millionaire! I can hardly believe it. This'll be good news for his circle of acquaintances."

Jerry nodded.

"That's what I'm afraid of. I warned him that everybody he knew would want their cut."

"His little sister among the first. What that boy is going to buy for me! There's nothing like having a prosperous millionaire for a brother, especially a generous one like Biff. I may have had occasion to state from time to time that Edmund Biffen Christopher is as crazy as a bedbug and ought to be in some sort of a home, but nobody can say he isn't generous."

"Not me, anyway. Do you know what was the first thing he said when we met? He wanted to give me twenty thousand pounds."

"You're kidding."

"No, it was a firm offer. Naturally I couldn't take it."

"Why naturally? I know three hundred and forty-seven men in Paris alone who would have jumped at it. Yours must be a wonderful character."

"I believe Baedeker gives it five stars."

"The trouble is I still can't quite believe it."

"That I spurned his gold?"

"No, that he had the gold for you to spurn. Are you sure it's true?"

"I saw the cable from the New York lawyers."

For some moments Kay sat silent. When she spoke, it was to point a moral.

"You know, Jerry, there's a lesson in this for every one of us, and that is that we should always be kind to the very humblest, not that Mr. Pyke was that by a long way, according to the stories I've heard tell. If Biff hadn't saved the old gentleman's life, I don't suppose this would have happened. Did you know he once saved Mr. Pyke's life?"

"No, he never told me that."

"Our modest heroes. It was down at his summer place at Westhampton Beach. Mr. Pyke had gone for a swim in the pool much too soon after a big lunch and got cramps and Biff dived in with all his clothes on and gaffed him. No doubt the memory lingered."

"You think that's the explanation?"

"It must be, because he thoroughly disapproved of Biff's bohemian revels.

He was always having to bail him out after his get-togethers with the police, and it made him as mad as a wet hen. You'd have thought that would have influenced him when he was making his will."

Jerry stirred uncomfortably. It is never pleasant to have to break bad news.

"It did, I'm afraid."

"What do you mean?"

As coherently as he could with her eyes boring into him, Jerry revealed the conditions of the spendthrift trust, and his heart was torn as he watched the dismay grow in those eyes.

"You mean that if he's arrested, he loses everything?"

"I'm afraid so."

"One simple tiddly little pinch for doing practically nothing, and he's out millions of dollars?"

"Apparently."

"But the poor lamb's always getting pinched! He can't help getting pinched! He'd get pinched somehow if he was alone on a desert island. You ought never to have left him loose in London."

"I had to. I wanted to see you and tell you to go there at once and help me keep an eye on him. With both of us watching him, he can't get into trouble. I'm flying back this evening. Can you make it, too?"

"But I've a job."

"Won't they give you a few days off?" Kay reflected.

"I believe they would if I made a point of it. I'm not an indispensable cog in the machine. But I couldn't go today. It would have to be tomorrow at the earliest."

"Well, that's all right. I think we're safe for the next day or two. It'll take him that long to recover from the shock of that narrow escape he had."

"What narrow escape?"

Jerry related in as few words as he could manage the salient features of what a writer of tales of suspense would no doubt have called The Case of the Ginger-Mustached Policeman.

There was an almost worshiping look in Kay's eyes. It was not lost on Jerry. It gave him the idea that if only he could persuade her to join him at lunch, something constructive might result. He had much to say to her in the intimate seclusion of the luncheon table.

"What a mercy you had the presence of mind to lock him in his room. At Barribault's was this?"

"No, he's moved in with me at my flat."

"Thank heaven for that. It makes me shudder to think of him at large in a place like Barribault's. You'll be able to keep an eye on him."

"Watch his every move."

"Well, I don't know how to thank you. I wish there was something I could do for you."

"There is. Come and have lunch."

"I can't. I'd love to, but it's impossible. I'm lunching with Henry. And there he is," said Kay, as an asthmatic tinkle came from the door. "That must be Henry. He was calling here to pick me up and take me to Armenonville or one of those places."

It was Henry. He came in, kissed Kay, said he hoped she was ready, as they would have to hurry, and then, seeing Jerry, started like one who perceives a snake in his path.

"Oh, hullo," he said.

"Hullo," said Jerry.

"You here?" said Henry.

"Just going," said Jerry, and an observer, eying him as he made for the door, would have felt that if he was not grinding his teeth, he, the observer, did not know a ground tooth when he saw one.

It was some hours later, when up in the clouds on his journey back to London, that he suddenly remembered that he had omitted to collect Biff's Boudin.

• • •

Biff was annoyed and in his opinion justifiably annoyed. He was not, he said, an unreasonable man, he did not demand perfection and could make allowances when necessary, but he did feel that when a fellow sent a fellow over to Paris to get a picture for him, the fellow was entitled to expect the fellow to come back with the damned thing. Instead of which, he went about the place leaving it behind. Was that, he asked, the way to win friends and influence people?

Jerry put up the best defense he could.

"I did mention it to Kay. I told her about it directly I arrived. But we got to talking of other things, and then Blake-Somerset came in, and he made me so mad that I just rushed out."

"Forgetting the picture?"

"It never entered my mind."

"Such as it is. Why did he make you mad?"

Jerry did not speak for a moment. He was trying to cope with the rising feeling of nausea which the recollection of that revolting scene in the living room of 16 Rue Jacob never failed to induce. When he did speak, his voice quivered.

"He kissed her!"

This puzzled Biff.

"Very natural, surely? It's the first thing you do when you're engaged to a girl, or even when you aren't, for that matter. Good Lord!" said Biff, as a curious gulping sound proceeded from Jerry's lips. "Are you telling me you've gone and fallen in love with Kay?"

Jerry would have preferred not to be obliged to confide in one whom he knew to be of a ribald turn of mind, but it seemed unavoidable. Curtly he replied that he had, and Biff was surprisingly sympathetic.

"I don't wonder. Even a brother's eye can see that she has what it takes. She's always been very popular. There was an art nouveau sculptor in Paris who said he would shoot himself if she didn't marry him. He didn't, which was a pity, because obviously the more art nouveau sculptors who shoot themselves, the sweeter a place the world becomes. Well, well, so that's how it is, is it?"

"Yes, it is. Any objections?"

"None whatever. No harm in it at all, as far as I can see. You may be the beneficent influence which will divert her fatheaded little mind from that frozen fish of hers. I think with perseverance you may swing it, for I can't believe she seriously intends to marry that human bombe surprise. Shall I tell you something, Jerry? It's just a theory, but I believe the reason Kay teamed up with Henry Blake-Somerset was that he was so different from all the other men she knew. When a girl has been mixing for two years with the sort of blots who made up the personnel of our Parisian circle and somebody comes along who hasn't a beard and dresses well and looks as if he took a bath every morning instead of only at Christmas and on his birthday, something she may easily mistake for love awakes in her heart. But it can't last. Given the will to win, you should be able to cut him out. Have you taken any steps?"

"I told her I loved her."

"What did she say to that?"

"She reminded me that she was engaged to Henry Blake-Somerset."

"And then?"

"That's all."

"You mean you left it at that?"

"What else could I do?"

Biff was concerned. There came into his manner a suggestion of a father rebuking a loved but erring son.

"You'll have to show more spirit than this, Jerry o' man. You seem to have conducted your wooing like a cross between a scared rabbit and a jellyfish. That's not the way to win a girl's heart. You ought to have grabbed her and kissed her and gone on kissing her till she threw in her hand and agreed to play ball."

"We were talking on the telephone."

"Oh? I see. Yes, that would be an obstacle. And I suppose you couldn't have done it when you saw her this last time because Blake-Somerset was present, which would naturally have cramped your style. But bear in mind for your future guidance what I have outlined in the procedure if you want to get anywhere. I've tested it a hundred times. Meanwhile, let me say that I am no longer incensed because you forgot to bring the picture. It was an outstanding boner, but if it was love that made you pull it, I can readily understand and forgive, because for your private files, Jerry, I, too, love. I told you about Linda Rome, didn't I?"

"You said you were once engaged."

"And we're now engaged again. I've bought the license, notified the registrar, who requires a day's notice, and the wedding will take place shortly."

"Well, that's splendid. Congratulations. How did you find her?"

"Oh, very fit, thanks. A bit aloof for a moment or two, but it soon wore off."

"I mean, when last heard from you were trying to get her address. Did you get it from Tilbury's secretary?"

"Er – no. No, she didn't give it to me. I happened to run into Linda in Bond Street, where the picture galleries are. I'd gone there with the idea of finding out the current prices of Boudins. It seems she now works for one Gish, who peddles paintings for a living, and she was emerging from his joint just as I was going in and we collided on the doorstep."

"Embarrassing?"

"Not after the first moment or two. Everything went like a breeze. I said 'Hello, Linda' and she said 'Well, I'll be damned if it isn't Biff' or words to that effect, and after we'd kidded back and forth for a while I took her off to the Bollinger bar, where we shared a half bot and fixed everything up. Time, the great healer, had done its stuff and we were sweethearts still. She told me the reason I hadn't been able to locate her was that she had given up her apartment and was living with Tilbury out Wimbledon. He has one of those big houses on the Common."

"So I've heard. Didn't the secretary tell you she was living there?"

"No. No, she didn't mention that."

"Odd. She must have known. But she isn't an intelligent girl."

"You know her?"

"Not to speak to. I've seen her around. A strikingly beautiful blonde. I was only going by her appearance when I said she wasn't intelligent. Most blondes aren't."

At an early point in the proceedings Biff had mixed himself a refreshing drink and had been sipping it slowly as they talked. He now drained what was left in his glass with a gulp, and a gravity came into his manner.

"There's something you can do for me, Jerry. There's a little favor I'm asking of you, which will cost you nothing but will be of great help in stabilizing my position with Linda."

"I thought you said it was stabilized."

"To a certain extent, yes, but only to a certain extent."

"So ——?"

"So I should be infinitely obliged if, when you meet Linda as of course you will ere long, you don't bring the conversation around to Gwendoline Gibbs."

"I ought to be able to manage that, seeing that I've never heard of her in my life. Who is Gwendoline Gibbs?"

"Tilbury's secretary."

"Oh, I see. The fellow who pointed her out to me didn't tell me her name. You don't want me to mention her?"

"If you would be so kind. I don't mind telling you that though Linda has consented to go registrar's-officing with me, I'm still, as you might say, on appro. She admits to loving me, but gives the impression that she does it against her better judgment. The least suspicion that I am still the trailing arbutus I used to be, and that registrar will lose a fee. As I think I told you, it was my gentlemanly preference for blondes that led her to sever relations a year ago, and between ourselves, Jerry, in the couple of days before I ran into her on Gish's threshold I was giving Gwendoline a rather impressive rush. So if, when conversing with Linda, you find yourself running short of small talk, speak to her of the weather, the crops and any good books she may have read lately, but don't fall back on Gwendoline Gibbs. On the subject of Gwendoline Gibbs let your lips be sealed."

"I'll see to it."

"That's my boy. It will ease the situation greatly. Extraordinary how complex life has become these days, is it not? What with Gwendoline Gibbses and spendthrift trusts ... By the way, Tilbury has heard about the will. The New York lawyers, the ones who wrote the letter that followed, told him. Linda happened to be in his office and found him putting in a transatlantic call to them, all agog to get the low-down. She describes him as turning a rich magenta and uttering animal cries when they broke the bad news, and I'm not surprised. One can well imagine that the information would have given him food for thought. The next time she saw him he told her he was going to contest the will on the ground that the late Pyke was cuckoo. You don't think he can swing that, do you?"

"I don't see how. From what you've told me, Mr. Pyke had his eccentricities, but nothing more than that, and after all he was your godfather."

"And he had neither chick nor child, which was a bit of luck for the chicks and children, as I remember him."

"He probably looked on you as a son. Kay tells me you saved his life once, and apparently he wasn't fond of Tilbury, so why shouldn't he leave you his money?"

Biff was silent for a moment.

"There is one thing that worries me a little, Jerry o' man, due, I suppose, to that mellowed feeling of wanting to be a do-gooder which I believe I mentioned to you. We can't deny that I owe my present prosperity entirely to old Tilbury."

"I don't get that."

"Obvious, surely. If he hadn't been such a stinker, Pyke would have left him the whole bundle. By being a stinker he became the founder of my fortunes, and I think he ought to have his cut. I believe I'll slip him a piece of change."

"Very generous."

"Well, I want smiling faces about me. I'll rout out a solicitor and have him draw up an agreement whereby in exchange for waiving all claim to the lettuce Tilbury receives five percent of the gross. Would your uncle do that for me? Then I'll go and see him directly I'm dressed. Lincoln's Inn Fields he hangs out in, I think you told me."

• • •

In supposing that his telephone conversation with Mr. Leonard Haskell of the legal firm of Haskell and Green would have given Lord Tilbury food for thought, Biff had not erred. The letter which he found on his desk two days later gave him more. In the course of their transatlantic exchanges Mr. Haskell had spoken of a letter already on its way to him by air mail. It contained, said Mr. Haskell, full particulars of the late Mr. Pyke's last will and testament and should reach him at any moment now. And here, as promised, it was.

Lord Tilbury's initial emotion on opening it and learning of the spendthrift trust was a heartening feeling that things were looking up. He had consulted his solicitor in the matter of contesting the will on the ground that Mr. Pyke had been incompetent to make one, and his solicitor had not been encouraging, reasoning that it was very unlikely that a man capable of salting away ten or so millions of dollars could have been of weak intellect. But this letter, with its careful exposition of the conditions of the spendthrift trust, put new heart into him and showed him that all was not lost.

He knew Biff and was familiar with his record. Surely, he felt, unless the young wastrel had undergone a complete change of character, it should be a mere matter of days before the arm of the law gripped him on some pretext or other. According to Mr. Haskell's letter, unless he had totally misread it, arrest for even so trivial an offense as being drunk and disorderly would be enough to rule Edmund Biffen Christopher out. And if Edmund Biffen, exhilarated by the thought of his glittering prospects, did not become drunk and disorderly at the earliest opportunity, Lord Tilbury felt that he would lose his faith in human nature.

Only when the chilling reflection came to him that Biff, with so much at stake, probably would have undergone a complete, if temporary, change of character did his optimism wane. Reason told him that at current prices for good behavior even the most irresponsible of young men would keep his feet glued to the straight and narrow path.

Unless – and here optimism returned – he were assisted off it by outside sources. That, he saw, was an avenue that he would do well to explore. Was there not some way by which this promising young disturber of the peace could be induced to get back to normal and start disturbing it again?

Motionless at his desk, ignoring the letters he should have been dictating to Gwendoline Gibbs and ceasing for the moment even to think of Gwendoline Gibbs, Lord Tilbury gave the full force of his powerful intellect to the problem, spurred on by that urge which makes all very rich men eager to add to their riches.

For perhaps 20 minutes nothing stirred, and then suddenly something shook him like an electric shock. The thought of Percy Pilbeam had flashed into his mind, and his reaction was somewhat similar to that of a war horse hearing the sound of a bugle.

Pilbeam! If there was one man in existence capable of employing the conditions of the spendthrift trust to the undoing of Biff, it was Percy Pilbeam. He had always had the deepest respect for his former underling's ingenuity and unscrupulousness, and he knew that if adequately paid no one would be more likely to see to it that the conditions of the spendthrift trust produced practical results. What steps Percy Pilbeam, having pouched his fee, would take he could not say, but there was no doubt in his mind that they would be steps of impressive, if fishy, brilliance.

He decided to seek him out that afternoon as soon as his duties at Tilbury House would permit. The idea of inviting him to dinner at his club he dismissed. He was a man rather acutely alive to class distinctions and he felt that Percy, liberally pimpled and favoring the sort of clothes that made him look like Neapolitan ice cream, would not do him credit at his club. Better to call and see him at his business address.

This was not far from Barribault's Hotel, for the Argus Inquiry Agency, which had started in a modest way in a single room in the Soho neighborhood, had long since moved to Mayfair and had enlarged itself to an anteroom and two inner rooms. One of these, the smaller, was occupied by a couple of stenographers; in the other, in a leather chair which in the early days would have been far beyond his means, Percy Pilbeam sat waiting to receive clients. The anteroom was in the charge of a gentlemanly office boy.

It was to the last named that Lord Tilbury handed his card, and the boy looked properly impressed as he took it in to his employer.

"Someone to see me?" asked Percy Pilbeam, glancing up from the papers which were engaging his attention.

"A lord to see you, sir," said the office boy. A polished lad, he loved the aristocracy.

Percy inspected the card, shocked the boy by saying, "Oh, old Tilbury? All right, send him in," and sat back in his leather chair, well pleased. He always enjoyed meeting this former employer of his, for the sight of him brought back the days, now long past, when, like Ben Bolt's Alice, he had wept with delight when he gave him a smile and trembled with fear at his frown. But now to him his erstwhile boss was just another client, and he wondered what he had come about.

It was not immediately that Lord Tilbury put him in possession of the facts, for he seemed oddly reluctant to state his business. He said the weather was fine, which it was. He said these were nice offices, which they were. He said that he had never ceased to regret the day when Percy had severed his connection with Tilbury House, which was true, adding that since Percy's departure he had not been able to find a satisfactory editor for Society Spice. It was left for Percy to get down to what are commonly called brass tacks.

"Something you wanted to see me about, Tilbury?"

"Well – er – yes, Pilbeam. The fact is, I find myself in a somewhat delicate position."

"Pilbeam," he proceeded, "I had a brother named Edmund. He died recently."

As far as was possible for a man with pimples, sideburns and a small black mustache to look sympathetic, Percy did so. A few graceful words to the effect that he felt for Lord Tilbury in his bereavement floated into his mind, but he left them unspoken, as he did a rather neat line about all flesh being as grass. He did not want to delay whatever it might be that was coming next.

"He settled in America as a young man," said Lord Tilbury, becoming quite fluent, "and did extraordinarily well. Toward the end of his career he was one of New York's leading financiers, and as the greater part of his fortune was made before the days of high income taxes, he was at the time of his death extremely rich. I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that his estate must amount to at least ten million dollars."

Anything to do with money, particularly money running into the millions, enchained Percy's interest.

"Coo!" he said, and whistled. "Who gets it?"

"That is precisely what I came here to talk to you about, Pilbeam. Naturally, as his only surviving relative except for a niece whom he had never met, I expected to inherit, but I do not."

"What happened? Did he leave it all to charities?"

"No."

"Is there a widow?"

"No."

"Then why don't you collect?"

"Don't ask me!" said Lord Tilbury. "I think he must have been insane. He made a will leaving everything he possessed to a godson of his. I get nothing."

His hard-luck story did not really fill Percy with pity and terror, for, like Linda Rome, he considered that his visitor was quite rich enough already, but he tried to infuse sympathy into his voice.

"That's tough. But where do I come in? Why did you want to see me?"

Lord Tilbury's initial embarrassment had vanished. He had come to the offices of the Argus Inquiry Agency to seek aid in a scheme which even he could see fell under the heading of dirty work at the crossroads, and for a while he had been reluctant to put it into words. But there was something about Percy Pilbeam, as he sat curling his mustache with a pen, that made it easy to confide the rawest and most dubious propositions to him. You felt that he would understand and sympathize.

"I am hoping that you will be able to help me. Have you ever heard of a spendthrift trust?"

Percy said he had not.

"It is the general term, the New York lawyers tell me, applied to trusts which the beneficiary cannot dispose of in advance. I have never heard of them myself, but apparently they are quite usual in the United States, and in some states, such as New York, all trusts have this characteristic. Yes, yes, I am coming to the point," said Lord Tilbury, for Percy had suggested that he should. "The point is this: Some spendthrift trusts further provide that if the beneficiary shall commit some act or behave in some manner of which the testator does not approve, he forfeits his rights and the money goes to another beneficiary. It was this that my brother specified in his will. If his godson, a young man named Christopher, is arrested for any misdemeanor before his thirtieth birthday, he forfeits everything and the money comes to me as the next of kin. I beg your pardon?"

Percy Pilbeam had not spoken, except to say "Ouch!" His companion's words had caused him to start so abruptly that the pen with which he was curling his mustache had slipped and inflicted a nasty flesh wound on his upper lip.

"Christopher, did you say?"

"Yes."

"Is his name Biff?"

"I believe his friends call him that.

He was christened Edmund Biffen after my brother."

"Well, what a coincidence!"

"You know him?"

"I was out with him only the other night. I happened to meet him with a girl I know."

He phrased the remark discreetly. It would have been foreign to his policy to reveal to his visitor that the girl who had won his heart was the cousin of anyone so low in the social scale as a private investigator. Lord Tilbury, he knew, admired his brain and lack of scruple, but that did not mean that he would welcome him as a member of his family. Time enough to tell him after the wedding.

"He kept saying he was a millionaire, but I thought he had come into a little money and just felt like a millionaire. He took me on a pub crawl. You should have seen him put the stuff away."

"He drank heavily?"

"I'll say he did."

"How very satisfactory," said Lord Tilbury, beaming. "Then you are the man to help me. I knew I was not making a mistake in coming to you, my dear Pilbeam."

"But why me?"

"Because I have such confidence in your brains and ingenuity, Pilbeam. I thought that you might somehow make this young Christopher's acquaintance and – er – well, you see what I had in mind. And now I find that you already know him. Things could not be more satisfactory."

He had no need to enlarge on his point. Percy Pilbeam might wear sideburns and a Neapolitan-ice-cream suit, but he was quick at the uptake.

"I see what you mean. You want me to have another night out with the fellow and get him tight."

"Exactly."

"So that he'll do something to make him get pinched by the police and lose the money according to the terms of the trust and you'll collar the whole ten million."

"You put these things so clearly, Pilbeam. That is just what I want you to do."

"And what," said Percy, "is there in it for me?"

Lord Tilbury, knowing his Pilbeam, had anticipated that this query would be coming, and he had steeled himself to meet it. He never enjoyed paying out money, but he knew that if you do not speculate, you cannot accumulate.

"A hundred pounds."

"Or, rather," said Percy, "a thousand."

Lord Tilbury was seated at the moment, so he did not sway and totter, but his jaw fell and his eyes protruded like Biff's at the sight of a blonde. He gasped.

"A thousand!"

"An insignificant percentage on what you will be getting."

"Two hundred, Pilbeam."

"A thousand."

"Five hundred."

"A thousand was what I said. No, on second thought, make it two thousand."

Lord Tilbury breathed heavily. His face had taken on the purple tinge of which Linda Rome had spoken. He looked like a toad which was not only beneath a harrow but suffering from high blood pressure. But gradually the purple flush faded. The healing thought had come to him that as this conversation was taking place without witnesses present, he could always later on repudiate any promises to which he might bind himself. It was surely unlikely that Pilbeam would do anything so crude as to insist on a written agreement.

"Very well," he said.

"You agree?"

"I do."

"Then we'll just have a little written agreement," said Percy. He took up the pen with which he had fondled his mustache and wrote rapidly on a pad. He rang a bell, and the gentlemanly office boy entered. "Oh, Spenser," he said, "tell Lana and Marlene to come here."

The two stenographers made their appearance, witnessed the document and withdrew. They were both attractive young women, but Lord Tilbury, as he watched them append their signatures, thought he had never seen two more repulsive members of their sex. But it is to be doubted if even Gwendoline Gibbs would have seemed attractive to him, had she been rendering legal a document which was going to reduce his bank balance by two thousand pounds.

"And now," said Percy, "I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to get hold of Joe Murphy."

"I beg your pardon?"

"And introduce Christopher to him. Murphy is a man I know in Fleet Street who has the most astonishing capacity for absorbing alcoholic liquor. He's famous for it. Nobody can have an evening with Joe and not feel the effects. And we know what happens to Christopher when he has a few drinks. He wanted to wind up our night out by punching a policeman."

"And you restrained him!"

"Well, how was I to know? But it'll be all right this time. After he's met Murphy he's bound to end up punching someone. I can't guarantee a policeman, of course."

"No, no."

"Still, even a civilian will do the trick."

"Quite."

"So there we are."

"So there we are," echoed Lord Tilbury.

The expression "It's in the bag" was not familiar to him, or he would certainly have used it.

"Are you going in to see the sergeant?" Jerry asked hoarsely. "Don't do it. That way madness lies."

This is the first of two parts of P.G. Wodehouse's new novel, "Biffen's Millions." The conclusion will appear next month.