Part 20

There was a lot of rubbish in that garden. It had never been treated as a garden, it did not look like a garden, it looked even less like a garden than did _The Garden of My Grandmother_. High walls enclosed it. And over it that deplorable moon threw a sheet of dead daylight.

“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers, and they dug.

“Do you mind if we take our coats off?” asked Beau Maturin. Mr. Trevor says that he was being sarcastic.

“I don’t mind what you take off,” snapped the woman.

“Now don’t say naughty things!” said Mr. Maturin. “Nothing is more revolting than the naughtiness of plain women.”

“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers, and they dug.

They dug, says Mr. Trevor, for a long time, for a very long time. Not, however, that it was difficult digging once one had got into the swing of it, for that garden was mostly dug-up soil. Suddenly Beau Maturin said:

“Bet you a fiver I dig a grave for my fellow before you.”

“Right!” said Mr. Trevor.

“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers, and they dug.

“_And_,” said the woman, “I don’t allow any betting in this house. So call that bet off.”

“What?” said Mr. Maturin.

“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers.

Mr. Maturin threw down his spade.

“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers.

Mr. Trevor dug.

Mr. Maturin said: “Dig yourself!”

“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers.

Mr. Trevor brandished his spade from a distance. He noticed for the first time that they had been digging in the light of the dawn and not of the moon.

“And who the deuce,” said Mr. Maturin dangerously, “do you think you are, not to allow any betting? I have stood a lot from you, but I won’t stand that.”

“Dig,” said the woman with the revolvers, but Mr. Maturin advanced upon the revolvers like a punitive expedition. Mr. Trevor brandished his spade.

“Another step, and I fire!” cried the woman harshly.

“Go ahead,” said Mr. Maturin. “I’ll teach you to stop me betting! And I hate your face.”

“Oh, dear; oh, dear!” the woman suddenly cried with a face of fear and, lowering her revolvers, fled into the house.

Mr. Trevor was so surprised that he could scarcely speak. Mr. Maturin laughed so much that he could not speak.

“What’s there to laugh about?” Mr. Trevor asked at last.

“It’s funny. They’ve had us, let’s face it. Come on, let’s follow her in.”

“She may shoot,” Mr. Trevor cautioned.

“Shoot my eye!” sighed Beau Maturin.

Once in the house, Mr. Trevor stopped spellbound. There were voices, there was laughter--from the room of the two corpses!

“They’re laughing at us!” said Mr. Trevor.

“Who wouldn’t!” laughed Beau Maturin, and, opening the door, said: “Good morning.”

“You’ve said it,” said the policeman. “Haw-haw!”

“You’ll have some breakfast?” asked the woman with the revolvers.

“Please do!” said Miss Samsonoff.

“You _ought_ to be hungry,” said the taxi-driver with the Homburg hat of green plush.

“Look here!” gasped Mr. Trevor. “What the blazes----”

“Haw-haw!” laughed the policeman. “’Ave a bit of vealanam-pie?”

“Now, Ted, don’t be rude to the gentlemen!” said the woman with the revolvers.

“Quite right, mother,” said Miss Samsonoff. “We owe these gentlemen an explanation and an apology----”

“And if they don’t take it we _are_ in the soup!” miserably said the man in the Homburg hat of green plush.

“Now, you two, go and get cups and plates for the two gentlemen,” said the woman with the revolvers to the two corpses in dress-clothes.

“Listen, please,” Miss Samsonoff gravely addressed Mr. Maturin, “my name isn’t Samsonoff at all but Kettlewell, and that’s my mother and these are my four brothers----”

“How do you do?” said Mr. Maturin, absently drinking the policeman’s coffee, but Mr. Trevor is glad that no one heard what he said.

“You see,” said Miss Kettlewell, and she was shy and beautiful, “we are The Kettlewell Film Company, just us; but of course we haven’t got a lot of money----”

“A ‘lot’ is good!” said the policeman.

“My brother there,” and Miss Kettlewell pointed to the wretched man with the Homburg hat of green plush, “was the director of an American company in Los Angeles, but he got the sack lately and so we thought we would make some films on our own. You see, we are such a large family! And the recent murders gave us a really brilliant idea for a film called ‘The Ghoul of Golders Green,’ which, thanks to you two gentlemen, we have completed to-night. Oh, I do hope it will be a success, especially as you have been kind enough to help us in our predicament, for we hadn’t any money to engage actors--and we did so need two gentlemen, just like you, who really looked the part, didn’t we, mother?”

“But, my dear child,” cried Beau Maturin, “I’m afraid your film can’t have come out very well. Trevor and I will look perfectly ghastly, as we neither of us had any make-up on.”

“But it’s that kind of film!” smiled Miss Kettlewell. “You see, you and your friend are supposed to be corpses who by some powerful psychic agency are digging your own graves---- Heavens, what’s that!”

There, at the open door, stood an apparition with a dreadful face. He appeared, says Mr. Trevor, to have some difficulty in choosing among the words that his state of mind was suggesting to him.

“And me?” gasped the taxi-driver hoarsely. “Wot abaht me? ‘Angingabahtallnight! ‘Oo’s going to pay me, that’s wot I want to know? There’s four quid and more on that clock----”

Mr. Maturin swept his empty coffee-cup round to indicate the family Kettlewell.

“My friends will pay,” sighed Mr. Maturin.

XI: FAREWELL, THESE CHARMING PEOPLE

I

Now, at last, the entertainment moves towards its end, the curtain is atremble for its fall, the affair called _May Fair_ is on tiptoe to make a last bow and retire forever into those anxious shades where all that is not of the first excellence must come to the foul embrace of limbo. So let the curtain fall, that we may get back to the serious business of life. But, oh, it is easy enough to say that! The rub is, a curtain has to be contrived. Action is demanded; and all the world loves a climax. In fine, ladies and gentlemen, those inexorable twin sisters, Finale and Farewell, have still to be served. And how shall that be done?

It happened that I was in Paris when I was thinking upon this matter with some urgency. How shall the farewell be contrived, thought I, how indeed? For, by the waters of the Thames, there never was such a trouble put upon mankind as this confounded business of leave-taking! Haven’t we all, to be sure, been sometime harassed by the saying of farewell? by the fumbling of that pitiful, pitiless occasion? Indeed, find us the man or woman who can say good-bye with ease, and he or she shall instantly have a clear start to our friendship. How often we have been distressed by the agonies of someone’s incapable departure! And you may rifle all diplomacy for ways and means to help some people take their leave, and still their glassy, fevered eyes will search your face as though for the ultimate word, still their aggressive nervousness will not permit you to put them and yourself out of their agony. While as for those poor wretches whom it is our dread delight to “see off” at railway stations, what confusion of mind is theirs, and ours! He is at the window of his carriage, smiling: we on the platform, smiling: others are nearby, smiling: hands are shaken, good-byes are said ... and does the train go? It does not. Wouldn’t we then, if we but dared, implore the departing wretch to withdraw his tormented head from the window, sit back in his seat, hide himself behind a paper and send us all to the deuce? We would, but we don’t, and he can’t, so fumble, fumble, fumble, until at last the train takes him--or her, why not?--from us who had once thought we were sorry he was going. Oh, no, this business of saying farewell is not like saying “Jack Robinson”: it needs, without a doubt, a touch of inhumanity, which, if it does not make the whole world kin, can at least help to make a good part of it comfortable, as the humane gentleman now honoured as Lord Balfour found when he was Secretary of State for Ireland.

It was, then, with such thoughts as these that my mind was vexed during my stay in Paris, much to the disorder of my pleasures, when whom should I meet but my friend Dwight-Rankin! Gratified, I was yet surprised almost beyond endurance. I had been at school with the man, but later we had lost sight of one another, and still later I had heard of his death on Gallipoli. I had been sorry.

Dwight-Rankin was a blood, and I have an intellectual leaning towards bloods. They may have only the most moderate aspirations towards a state of grace, theirs may be only the most superficial grasp of the culture of the ages, but theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do nothing and die. They may not Achieve, they may have nothing to Give to the world, but nevertheless they serve several useful purposes and are decidedly a good market for British-made and Dominion-made goods; such as golf-links, foxes, spats, plover’s eggs, chorus girls, kippers, the Conservative party, night-clubs, bookmakers, whisky, the Army, etc. They are also decorative and are frequently used at balls and at our Embassies abroad.

Dwight-Rankin remarked with gratification upon my pleasure at the fact that he was still alive and invited me to take a glass of wine with him at the Ritz, which we were at that moment passing. Nothing could have been more agreeable to me, in my troubled state of mind. We then indulged in conversation. It had rained the day before, and we spoke of the rain. There was a rumour that it had been snowing in England, and we spoke of the snow. Dwight-Rankin had just returned from Monte Carlo, where he had lost money, and I had just returned from Rome, where I had lost my luggage. We confounded Monte Carlo and Rome. Then Dwight-Rankin said that the report of his death on Gallipoli was a gross exaggeration and that one should not believe all one hears. His younger brother, Dwight-Rankin said, had believed the report with an agility surprising in one who was a confirmed sceptic in all religious matters, had stepped into the property and had gone bankrupt before Dwight-Rankin could say “knife.” Dwight-Rankin said he was now a broken man. I extended him my sympathy, for which he thanked me.

“Talking of death,” he added, “that was a nasty end for Mrs. Amp, wasn’t it?”

“Mrs. Amp!” I said. “Mrs. Amp? Who was Mrs. Amp?”

Dwight-Rankin said: “Rheumatism and Roosevelt, you’ve never heard of Mrs. Amp! Nor of the death? Nor of the Lady Surplice?”

“Lady Surplice?” I said. “Oh, yes, I’ve heard of the Countess of Surplice! And how is she?”

“She can’t be at all well,” said Dwight-Rankin. “She’s dead. Tummy trouble, they _said_. By the way, one doesn’t say ‘the Countess of’ Surplice. One says ‘Lady Surplice.’ Do you mind?”

“Not in the least,” I said.

“Then don’t say it or write it, will you?” begged Dwight-Rankin. “All you writers are very vague about your titles. No, not vague--you are malinspired. It puts people against you, I assure you. I often had a mind to tell Miss Marie Corelli about that, but I never had a chance.”

I said: “You see, Dwight-Rankin, I never hear any of these things, as I am not in society.”

“That’s all right,” said Dwight-Rankin. “Hang on to me.”

“Waiter!” I said. “Two Martinis, please.”

“Dry,” said Dwight-Rankin. “Dry, waiter. And with a dash.”

It was luncheon time, and the foyer was crowded with people waiting for each other whilst they passed the time of day with someone else. There were many women with eager eyes and low heels. Dwight-Rankin said they were American. There were many women with good complexions and large feet. Dwight-Rankin said they were English. There was a young man who looked like a pretty girl, except that his hair was long. Dwight-Rankin said he was known as the Venus de Marlow and that his friends thought him too marvellous. Pacing up and down was a French gentleman with drooping ginger moustachios, a gardenia and a dog. Dwight-Rankin said that he wore stays and that the dog was called “Hélöise and Abélard,” and when I asked him how one dog came to be called “Hélöise and Abélard” Dwight-Rankin said severely that even a dog must be called something.

“The man who owns him, her, it or them,” said Dwight-Rankin, “is the Marquis des Beaux-Aces. He married a very rich American, but she turned out to be a girl of strong character and instead of letting him spend her money she spent all his and then divorced him for being incompetent. He has never been the same man since, but he manages to make an honest living by selling fancy needlework to Argentine polo-players. But you will hear more of him when I tell you of the strange affair of Mrs. Amp and Lady Surplice--of the late Mrs. Amp,” said Dwight-Rankin gloomily, “and the late Lady Surplice. A great pity. By the way, are you lunching with anyone?”

I said: “No, but----”

“That’s all right,” said Dwight-Rankin; “I will lunch with you. I am supposed to be lunching with some people, but I am so short-sighted that I can’t see them. If you should remark two beautiful women looking at me with more than usual interest, just don’t take any notice. This short-sightedness of mine is developing into a nuisance. The other day I was having a clean-up at the club and when I came to wipe my face I found it was quite dry for the simple reason that I had been washing the face of the man next to me.”

I said: “In the meanwhile, shall we----”

“This is on me,” said Dwight-Rankin. “Waiter, two Martinis, please.”

“Dry,” I said.

“That’s all right,” said Dwight-Rankin. “They always wipe them for me first.”

II

The death of Mrs. Amp, said Dwight-Rankin, was the sensation of Paris in the spring of the year 1924. Who Mr. Amp was, it appeared, no one knew for certain. But it was said that he had fallen in love with a photograph of an English gentlewoman in Arab costume, had plunged into the desert to commune with his passion and had been kidnapped by a sheikess in plus-fours who had a fancy for bald Americans with bulging eyes. However....

Mrs. Amp, said Dwight-Rankin, died suddenly and terribly; and her mangled remains were the subject of discussion in society for many a day. It was a Friday evening, and all Paris was dressing itself to be present at a dinner-party that Mrs. Amp was to give that evening at the Ritz Hotel. “Just here, where we are sitting now,” said Dwight-Rankin, turning a glassy eye about the restaurant and accepting an invitation hurled at him by the Duchess of Putney to dine next Thursday to meet the Shah of Pongistan on the occasion of his having lost his job.

On that Friday evening, said Dwight-Rankin, there was only one person of note in Paris who was not dressing to be present at Mrs. Amp’s dinner-party. That, said Dwight-Rankin, was Lady Surplice. Mrs. Amp and Lady Surplice did not speak. That is to say, said Dwight-Rankin, they spoke to everyone about each other; but when they met, had you dropped a pin between them it would have made a noise like a bomb, and had you lit a match there would have been a cascade of water from the melting ice.

Lady Surplice, said Dwight-Rankin, had been the greatest hostess in Europe for twenty years. London dined with her when she was in London, Paris dined with her when she was in Paris, Mussolini met her at the station when she went to Rome, New York hailed her as the Duchess of Mayfair, while Palm Beach was her rouge-pot and over Ascot she cast her lorgnette. Naturally all this was very encouraging for Lady Surplice, and she bitterly resented any interference with her habits. However....

Lord Surplice--only technically known, said Dwight-Rankin severely, as “the Earl of”--did not assist at his wife’s entertainments. He was understood to be taking the waters for diabetes at a hydropathic establishment near Woodhall Spa. Or maybe, said Dwight-Rankin, it was liver trouble and Tunbridge Wells, but one can’t know everything.

Then one day, when Lady Surplice was at the height of her success, Mrs. Amp fell on Europe. Nay, said Dwight-Rankin, Mrs. Amp obliterated Europe. Without Mr. Amp, but with Mr. Amp’s millions. Mrs. Amp, said Dwight-Rankin, was a large woman: a very large woman: and hearty. Her face was not that of Aphrodite: her figure not that of Mrs. Vernon Castle: but she had, said Dwight-Rankin, a certain Charm. Her descent on Europe was catastrophic. She enveloped Europe. And Europe loved it. She laid one hand on London and one on Paris, threw Venice over one shoulder and hung Deauville about her neck, and people just fell on to her lap. And what a lap, said Dwight-Rankin. However....

For days and days people went about saying: “I say, what’s all this about a Mrs. Amp? Who is Mrs. Amp? What?” Then for days and days people went about saying: “Have you met Mrs. Amp? The devil, what a woman! These Americans! What?” Then for days and days people went about saying: “Are you dining with Mrs. Amp to-night? Am I? Good Lord, no! Why should one dine with Mrs. Amp? What?” Then for ever and ever people went about saying: “I’m sorry, but I must be going now. I am dining with Mrs. Amp to-night. What? Oh, you are too! Good, we’ll meet over dinner.”

Lady Surplice, however, stood firm. She wouldn’t, said Dwight-Rankin, accept Mrs. Amp. “Mrs. Amp,” said Lady Surplice, “is a Low woman. One does not know Mrs. Amp.” But thousands did, said Dwight-Rankin. So Lady Surplice tore between London and Paris, giving luncheons, dinners, dances and receptions right and left in the hope that no one would have time to go to any of Mrs. Amp’s parties. But people always had time, said Dwight-Rankin, to go to Mrs. Amp’s parties. Mrs. Amp’s parties were like that. Unavoidable, inevitable, eternal. And, said Dwight-Rankin, uncommonly amusing. One met all one’s friends at them, and the champagne was always dry.

Mrs. Amp was American, and Lady Surplice was born in Notting Hill of Nonconformist parents. And so, said Dwight-Rankin, they carried the same weights in the blue-blood stakes. But Mrs. Amp was the larger woman, the larger personality. Lady Surplice was very tall, very thin, dark, brittle, brilliant. Mrs. Amp enveloped, and could touch the ceiling of a sleeping-car with her hips when she lay on her side. Lady Surplice was relentless in her generosity and indomitable in her indiscretion. Mrs. Amp was as mean with money as a temperance hotel with matches; but even so she could stay the stars in their courses, anyhow for at least five courses and then make them sing and dance to her guests on top of it. Lady Surplice was very tall. But Mrs. Amp stood six-feet-two in her tiara. Lady Surplice undoubtedly put up a gallant fight. But Mrs. Amp undoubtedly won. Lady Surplice said: “That low, beastly woman!” Mrs. Amp said: “Muriel Surplice is proud of having discovered Europe. I am amused at having discovered Muriel Surplice.”

It gradually dawned on people, said Dwight-Rankin, that this between Mrs. Amp and Lady Surplice was not an affair which could be settled by a duel at Mah Jongg, that this was a case of war to the death. Mrs. Amp died first.

On that Friday evening, Mrs. Amp was dressing for dinner in her house near the Champs Élysées. She sat at her toilet-table, and whilst her maid did this and that to her hair, which, said Dwight-Rankin, aspired doggedly rather than beautifully to the mode, Mrs. Amp passed the time by looking out of the windows upon the noble trees of the Champs Élysées; and presently drew her maid’s attention to the fact that a circus was at that moment taking its station beneath them. “I want to tell you,” said Mrs. Amp to her maid, “that I am just crazy about circuses. Don’t forget to remind me to engage one the next time I pull a party.”

Those, her maid later told Dwight-Rankin, were almost the last words Mrs. Amp spoke in this world. For even as she uttered them an uproar became audible from without: the air was filled with screams, yells and curses: while the roars of savage beasts struck terror into the most stable heart and convinced the maid, she told Dwight-Rankin, that the end of the world was at hand.

With a cry to Mrs. Amp, who sat staring out of the window as though transfixed, the maid fled; for the uproar from the circus was caused by nothing less than the escape of the lions from their cages; and these, their maddened nostrils attracted by Heaven knows what odour, were rushing furiously on Mrs. Amp’s house, vainly pursued by their keepers. For the keepers, said Dwight-Rankin, appeared to be quite helpless: their whips lashed the air with inconceivable energy, but there seemed to be a grave lack of _entente_ between their commands and the lions’ movements; which was later only half-explained by the fact that they were Italian keepers in charge of French lions.

The lions, with a bound, with a series of bounds, passed the _concierge’s_ lodge, wherein the _concierge_ was clinging to an excrescence from the ceiling; and when the mangled corpse of poor Mrs. Amp was later found, it was recognisable, said Dwight-Rankin, only by the perfume which the poor lady was used to affect and which gave proof of its quality by rising superior even to the lively odour of the lions. However....

In such manner, said Dwight-Rankin, did Mrs. Amp give up the spirit. Nor was the sensation caused by her nasty death at all soothed by the evidence of her trembling _concierge_, who, before the Conference of Ambassadors that sat to enquire on the great hostess’s death, gave testimony to the effect that as the lions rushed into her bedroom Mrs. Amp was distinctly heard to cry: “This is the doing of Muriel Surplice! I will be revenged, if I roast in hell-fire for it!”

The _concierge_, of course, said Dwight-Rankin, gave his evidence in French; and when the interpreters had translated it for the benefit of the Conference of Ambassadors, those distinguished gentlemen were not a little disturbed by the ominous, if extravagant, burden of Mrs. Amp’s dying words. And, said Dwight-Rankin, rightly.

III

It was when we came to the second and last part of the affair of Mrs. Amp and Lady Surplice, which took place in London nearly a year later, that he himself, said Dwight-Rankin, entered upon the scene. He was, in point of fact, quite definitely responsible for the awful end to my Lady Surplice’s last dinner-party, a circumstance which would prey on his mind to his dying day. For, said Dwight-Rankin, had he not at the last moment been compelled, by some force outside himself, to take a bird out for a spot of dinner, and therefore to cancel his engagement to dine with Lady Surplice, nothing untoward could possibly have happened to that poor lady.

He had, however, been able to piece together every detail of the terrible events of that dinner-party with the help of the relations of those of his friends who were present: the most reliable among these being Shelmerdene (that lovely lady), Guy de Travest, most upright of men, and Percy Wentworth, 1st Marquess of Marketharborough, the Lord Chancellor of England, who was, said Dwight-Rankin, a very hearty man and a devil for accuracy whether on the Woolsack or the roundabouts.

It was Christmas Eve, and a dirty night. A violent wind distracted the town, hurling the rain with idiot fury against the windows of swift limousines and, no doubt, said Dwight-Rankin, greatly inconveniencing those thoughtless persons who had gone abroad without their limousines. But since Lady Surplice’s dinner was in honour of royalty, in the person of Son Altesse le Prince de Finaleauseltz, of the Royal house of Bonbon de Jambon-Parme, her guests, with that polite servility which distinguishes the freedom-loving peoples of England and America, were within the house in St. James’s Square by a quarter-to-nine o’clock.