Part 13

"It's a lovely day," she said. "I will take you for a bus ride this afternoon, if you're good. Meanwhile, I want to have a pow-wow with you." Marjorie had picked up this expression from Roy, and was rather proud of it.

"What about?"

"Well--have you any money?"

"I thought there'd be a catch about it," said Liss, reaching out to the little table beside her bed for the bag in which the young woman of to-day is reputed to keep everything but the kitchen stove. "Let me see!" she said. She laid out on the counterpane a cigarette-case bearing a regimental crest, a match-case bearing another, entirely different, a long cigarette-holder, a powder-puff box, a lip-stick, and a diminutive handkerchief. "Now we're getting down to business!" she announced encouragingly. "Here's a shilling--a threepenny bit--and four pennies. Wait a minute! Here's a crumpled up thing here that might be a Bradbury. No, it's a note from Reggie. I suppose I oughtn't to keep that now!"

Liss tore up the _billet-doux_ with a sentimental sigh. It may be noted in passing that her engagement to Master Leonard had terminated some months previously by mutual and violent consent. A subsequent contract of eternal fidelity to a young gentleman in the Royal Flying Corps--one Reginald Bensham--had recently been dissolved, by unanimous vote. At present Miss Lyle's affections were disengaged.

"One and sevenpence!" she announced. "You can search me for more!"

"That's rather a blow," said Marjorie.

"Are we running short?" asked Liss. "Of course we must be, both having been out of a job for three weeks. But I thought--"

"So did I," replied Marjorie. "I thought we had a nest-egg in the bank at my home in Scotland. I haven't touched it for a year, because I wanted it to accumulate for a rainy day. On Monday I came to the conclusion that our present days were rainy enough--there's the doctor's bill, for one thing--so I wrote to Mr. Gillespie, the manager, and asked what my balance was. I got his answer this morning."

"I hate to ask--but what is the balance?"

Marjorie smiled dismally.

"That's just it! There isn't any balance at all! Just a few odd shillings. My father seems to have cut off my allowance about a year ago. I wonder why? At least, if he was going to do it at all I wonder why he didn't do it in the very beginning. However, we won't worry about that. The situation is, that you have one and sevenpence, and I have about two pounds ten."

"Two pounds ten, and one and sevenpence--that's about two pounds fifteen," announced Liss, after a brief calculation. "We can live for weeks on that. Before it's gone we shall be back in a job again."

"I shan't let you take a job again for a long time, my dear," said Marjorie. "They won't have much use for me, either; I can't lift my arm above my shoulder at present. How could I hold up the Torch of Liberty in the last act?"

"We'll rub along," announced the small optimist in the bed. "If the worst came to the worst, I could always get engaged again. There's a perfectly sweet boy in the Tanks--"

But Marjorie's hand was over Liss's mouth. "Baby, remember you don't get engaged again without my permission!"

"All right!" mumbled Liss. "Have it your own way! But what about your Roy? Can't you raise a small subscription out of him? That would be quite O.K., wouldn't it? You're going to marry--" Suddenly Liss sat up in bed, for she had caught sight of Marjorie's face. "Why, what's the matter, dear?" she asked.

"I haven't heard a word from him for five weeks," said Marjorie in a low voice. "I'm most awfully unhappy, Liss."

Liss forgot all about herself at once, and put both arms round her protector.

"Think what a lot of letters must be lying waiting for you somewhere," she said. "You'll get a whole bunch one morning. Now I'm going to get up, and we'll go on that bus ride."

They lunched frugally at an A.B.C. shop, and having boarded a Number Nine bus sped westward along Piccadilly. A communicative man with a broken nose, wearing the silver badge of a discharged soldier, leaned over their shoulders from the seat behind them.

"Sir Dougliss 'as done it again, ladies!" he announced importantly, thrusting an evening paper before them. "Look! _Fifteen-mile front--twelve villages--five thousand prisoners_! That's the stuff to give 'em!"

The girls read the report eagerly. It described the opening British attack of the Third Battle of Ypres. (In the first two, the attack had come from the other side.) Woods and villages, long familiar in daily bulletins as German strongholds, were at last in British hands--Hollebeke, Sanctuary Wood, Saint Julien, Hooge--and the advance was still continuing. Marjorie's heart quickened--then faltered. Great victories mean big casualties--and she did not even know where Roy was. When last heard of she had gathered that he was in a rest-area somewhere behind Amiens. But that had been five weeks ago.

"Do you know that district?" Liss was asking.

"Know it? I should think I did, miss--like the back of me 'and! I copped a sweet one there in 'fifteen--near Cambray."

"But Cambrai is not in the Salient," observed Marjorie.

The communicative man conceded the point immediately.

"Neither it is, miss--not in that _Salient_. My error! They rushed us up and down that Western Front so fast, no wonder a feller gets mixed! I was hit in both places, though. Well, 'ere we are in good old 'Ammersmiff. This is where I 'ops off. Good-day, ladies! Keep the paper, and welcome."

"It's big news, isn't it?" said Liss, continuing to skim through the heavily leaded paragraph.

"I wonder why that man thought Cambrai was in the Salient," remarked Marjorie.

"Swank, I expect," said Liss. "Probably he hasn't been out at all--_or_ wounded!"

"But he was wearing a silver badge," objected Marjorie, to whom all military geese were swans.

"Perhaps he pinched it," suggested Miss Lyle, who harboured few illusions concerning the male sex.

Her theory received entire corroboration a moment later. On folding up the newspaper before descending they discovered that Marjorie's vanity-bag, which was lying on the seat between them, had been neatly slit open and its entire contents extracted.

The pair turned and regarded one another silently. Liss was the first to speak.

"That brings us down to one and sevenpence," she remarked. "No wonder he didn't know where Cambrai was!"

*IV*

"Luncheon is served," announced Liss.

"What is there?" asked Marjorie.

"The same as breakfast, with Willie and John thrown in. Also the rest of the day before yesterday's loaf. Pull up your chair, dear."

As breakfast had consisted of nothing at all, the prodigality of this menu can be readily gauged. Willie and John, by the way, were the last two sardines in the tin.

"You take Willie," said Liss. "Here's your half of the bread. Oh my, but I'm hungry! Good-bye, John dear! Marjorie, what are we going to do next?"

Marjorie bent her brows judicially.

"Let me see," she said. "I've tried the theatre, and they don't begin rehearsing the new piece for a fortnight. It was no use trying the canteen, because it isn't there any more--at least, nothing worth considering. And as it happens, I don't know anyone else in any other canteen."

"We haven't got an account at any shop," continued Liss, "because we've always been to the cheap cash places. I don't know a living soul in London, except my family; and if I go back to Finchley I know I'll jolly well have to stay there for the duration."

"And I," supplemented Marjorie, "know no one except Uncle Fred, in Dulwich. And I'd rather die than ask _him_ for help!"

"No one at all?" exclaimed Liss. "Do you and I mean to sit here and tell each other that we know no one in London, except the people at the theatre, and the people at your canteen, and one or two dud relations? Why not call on your old Lord Eskerley?"

Marjorie hesitated.

"I don't think I can," she said. "I have no particular claim--"

"No claim? Didn't you drive his silly old car in all weathers for nearly a year? Didn't he tell you to come back and see him whenever you had time? It's no use being modest when you're starving. If you don't go and see him, I shall."

"Then I may as well tell you, dear," announced Marjorie, "that I have been already."

"Why didn't you say so before?"

"I didn't want to disappoint you."

"Why? Were you chucked out?"

"No. He's away in Paris, on an indefinite mission. The butler was very nice about it, but he had no information as to when his lordship would be back. I hadn't been entirely forgotten, though. There was a message for me. It had been lying there for weeks."

"What did it say?"

"It was just a scribbled note in an envelope with my motor licence, which I had left behind in the garage." Marjorie crossed the room to her little bureau. "Here it is! It says:

_My dear late lamented Habakkuk,--I enclose your licence, which you have inadvertently left on my premises. No doubt you will need it again some day._

_With kind regards,_ _Yours sincerely--_

There's a postscript," she added:

_Apropos of motor licences, let me offer you a piece of advice. Always keep an adequate sum--say a pound or so--folded up and tucked away between the covers of the licence itself. This expedient, when you get held up in a police-trap, and the minion of the law examines your credentials, may obviate a public appearance before the local Beaks. Verb, sap.! Very useful. Don't say I told you._

Marjorie laid down this characteristic effusion, and laughed.

"I don't think we are likely to tie up any capital in that way at present!" she said, finishing the last crumb of her bread. "We are down to fourpence now. We had better keep that for to-morrow, and go without supper to-night. No, we'll spend threepence on biscuits, and have a biscuit apiece at bed-time!"

"By golly, we do go it, don't we!" Liss looked round the room hungrily. "Isn't there _anything_ left that we can pop?"

"Nothing, I'm afraid. My jewellery is all at Netherby. I have my engagement-ring, of course--"

"That stays!" announced Liss firmly. "It was lucky," she went on with more cheerfulness, "that my little Leonard did not want his back! Not that we got much for it; I always _said_ he bought it at a stationer's! Now, if it had only been the one Reggie gave me, that would have been a different story; his was a beauty. But the little beast practically grabbed it back from me. Marjie, I _really_ think I'd better get engaged again. I could wire Toby, at--"

"You will do no such thing!" said Marjorie. "Besides, you can't send a wire for fourpence."

"I suppose," continued Liss (whose motto in life was "Anything Once!") "it wouldn't do to go and sit about in a restaurant somewhere, and get taken out to dinner by an Australian, or somebody? All right, I was only joking! Well, we must just hang on till Saturday; then there will be lots of our nice boy friends in town for the week-end, and we can make up for lost time. Meanwhile, let's go round and see if we can't get a job directing envelopes, or something. Carry on, partner!"

*V*

Towards evening our two hungry sparrows forgathered again, footsore and faint, but still smiling. Liss, who ought by rights to have been in bed consuming chicken-broth, was as white as wax.

"What luck?" she enquired.

"Nothing doing!" sighed Marjorie. "They will take me on at an office in Holborn as soon as my arm is well enough to write, but they wouldn't give me an advance of pay. They just told me to report at nine o'clock on Monday."

"And to-day's Thursday! Thank them for nothing!"

"Did you get anything?" asked Marjorie.

"No--except that I went round to the theatre again, and they are putting on the new show a little sooner. There's a call for rehearsal on Saturday. That doesn't mean any salary for a long while, but I ought to be able to borrow a shilling or two from the girls. Not that it will be easy: they all need the money themselves these days, poor things! I'm cold. Let's have our biscuit and go to bed."

"I wonder what time it is?" said Marjorie, getting up from her chair.

"About eight, I should say." (Watches had been hypothecated long since.) "It's a bit early."

"_Qui dort, dine,_" quoted Marjorie.

"What does that mean?"

"It's what Lord Eskerley used to say when he'd been to the House of Lords. Let's go to bed; I'm comfortably tired. London's a big place to get about in--when one hasn't a bus fare!"

They shared Marjorie's bed that night, for misery loves company.

"I say," suggested Liss suddenly, "couldn't we go round and get a meal from the Red Cross, or somebody?"

Marjorie, who was just dropping off to sleep, replied with great firmness:

"The Red Cross can only assist people who have been wounded in action. If they go beyond that, the Geneva Convention allows them to be fired on; and then Roy might--No, we _can't_ ask the Red Cross--unless we get hit in another air-raid!" she added hopefully.

Having no more suggestions to offer, Liss dropped off to sleep in her favourite attitude--with her head under the pillow. Marjorie lay awake for a long time, pondering many things in her heart--speculating mainly as to whether she could last out until Baby's flock of plutocratic second lieutenants came to town on Saturday. She decided immediately that she could, adding a mental rider condemning persons who, like herself, worried about their own personal comforts when there was a war on. She also wondered, again and again, what had become of Roy. She wondered whether he were hungry too. Presumably not. He had assured her that the British Army on the Western Front were grossly overfed--in fact, the inevitability with which the Army Service Corps got the rations up and through bordered on the uncanny. No, she need not worry about Roy's diet. His safety was another matter. Five weeks! She dropped into a troubled sleep.

*CHAPTER XV*

*THE EXPLORER*

Meanwhile, in a crowded street just off the Strand, in the fading light of a July evening, an elderly gentleman with a goat's beard, spectacles on nose, was diligently examining the framed photographs exhibited outside a very popular theatre. His attention was particularly directed to a large chorus group--an ensemble of attractive young women in costumes attuned to the economical spirit of wartime.

Aware of a sudden interference with the not too abundant supply of light, the elderly investigator turned round, a little guiltily, to find that he was being assisted in his investigations by three hard-breathing members of His Majesty's Forces--an English Sapper, a Highlander, and a Canadian of enormous bulk.

"And very nice, too!" observed the Sapper. "But Grandpa, not at your time of life, you didn't ought to--reelly! 'Op it--there's a good boy!"

"Awa' hame!" added the Scot severely--"or I'll tell on ye tae Grandmaw!"

Bitterly ashamed at having his motives thus misconstrued, Uncle Fred hurried away. His course now took him westward along the Strand, which was packed from end to end with seekers after diversion--mostly soldiers and their adherents. He plodded steadily through the press, with the air of a man who has a definite goal before him. This was the second week of his search for Marjorie, but he had considerably modified the plan of action laid down for him by his elder brother. His attempts to call upon the theatrical managers of London, _seriatim_, for the purpose of compelling them to disgorge his niece, had resulted in a sequence of humiliating reverses at the hands of stunted but precocious children in the outer office. Uncle Fred had now evolved a plan of his own. He had observed that theatres were accustomed to stimulate the appetites of their patrons by displaying samples of their wares--in the form of large framed photographs--outside the entrance to the theatre. Good! He would resolve himself into an investigating committee of one, visit each theatre in turn, and examine photographs until he had located Marjorie. After that, the stronghold itself must be penetrated. A somewhat hazardous enterprise, he decided, but not without its romantic side. As already noted, there was the making of a man-about-town in Uncle Fred.

His self-imposed quest had been in progress for several evenings, and, as yet, had borne no fruit. Uncle Fred was not familiar with the life of the West End--his knowledge of social life in London, like that of too many Members of Parliament, was limited to the tea-room of the House of Commons--and he had wasted a good deal of time hunting for photographs outside establishments where chorus girls are not usually to be found--Maskelyne and Cook's, for instance, and the Polytechnic. Also, it required expert knowledge to distinguish the humble home of the Drama from the palace of the Movie Queen. But he was learning rapidly. Assisted by the advertisements in the daily press and a District Railway map of London, he had now charted out the whole of theatre-land, and had very nearly completed a most methodical survey thereof. He knew the name of every revue and musical comedy in London, and could have given points, in his familiarity with the features of professional beauty, to the average Flying Corps subaltern.

He crossed Trafalgar Square, and headed for the Shaftesbury Avenue district. A hurried reference to the map, in a quiet corner behind the National Gallery, confirmed him in his bearings. Presently he found himself before another theatre. It was nearly nine o'clock; but, thanks to the Summer Time Act, it was still daylight. The name of the current attraction of the house, as stated on the bill-boards outside, was _Too Many Girls_. Diagonally across each bill-board was pasted a printed slip which said, a little ambiguously, "_Last Week_."

"That's a pity," mused Uncle Fred. "But I can slip inside and find out what they are doing this week and next. There's some sort of entertainment going on: I can hear it."

Thrusting his beard well forward, Uncle Fred marched boldly into the vestibule of the theatre. The framed photographs had been taken in for the night, and were ranged round the wall on easels. Uncle Fred set his spectacles in position, and began his usual methodical tour of inspection, at his regulation range of six inches.

A stout lady, confined in a gilded cage in one of the walls, engaged in counting change, suspended operations to watch him. She caught the eye of the commissionnaire who stood at the swing-door leading to the stalls, and coughed delicately. Certainly Uncle Fred, in his semi-ecclesiastical frock-coat and Heath Robinson tall hat, crouching astride his umbrella in a strained endeavour to scrutinise the very lowest row in a large photographic group of chorus girls, fairly invited comment.

"Boys will be boys!" observed the commissionnaire, to no one in particular; and the siren in the cage giggled.

Suddenly Uncle Fred came to a dead point opposite the very last photograph in the last row. Feverishly reinforcing his spectacles with a pair of eye-glasses, he made a confirmatory examination, and then rose to an upright position--looking as Stanley may have looked when he found Livingstone. Then, for the first time, he became aware that he was not alone.

"Naughty, naughty!" said a wheezy feminine voice.

"Haw, haw, haw!" roared the commissionnaire.

"I'm ashamed of you, little brighteyes!" declared the accusing angel in the cage.

"Outside!" added the commissionnaire, recalled to a sense of duty by the appearance at the swing-door of an authoritative-looking person in a dinner jacket.

Uncle Fred, shamefully misunderstood and deeply wounded, hurried out. In the street he hesitated.

"Those people might have given me some useful information," he reflected. "But I won't go back now, to be insulted! I think, after all, it would be best to see the caretaker at the stage door. I suppose that will be somewhere at the back."

A voyage of circumnavigation brought him to the dingy portal which early training and settled conviction had always represented to him as giving direct access to the Infernal Regions. With a guilty thrill he crossed the threshold, and found himself confronted by an unshaven man slumbering in a glass box. Uncle Fred coughed nervously. The man opened his eyes, and pushed open a glass shutter.

"Well?" he enquired.

"I want to ask a favour," began Uncle Fred. But the man cut him short.

"What is it? Temperance, or Christian Science? You can't put up no notices on our call-board. Management don't allow it."

"I have reason to believe," pursued Uncle Fred, with feeble dignity, "that a young woman is employed here--"

"We employ thirty-six of 'em," said the stage-door man.

"I have just seen her likeness--in a group--round there"--explained Uncle Fred, waving his umbrella vaguely towards the front of the house.

"It very often starts that way," remarked the stage-door man. "But why not pay for a seat, like a little gentleman, and go in front and see the gel?"

"She's my niece," explained Uncle Fred.

"They always are," said the stage-door man. "Or else cousins! Good night, Tirpitz!"

He shut the little glass shutter in the investigator's face, and recomposed his features to slumber. But Uncle Fred, though not a dashing person, possessed some elements of the dogged persistence of the Clegg family. He rapped on the window-pane. The stage-door man opened it again.

"Now, you run away!" he said. "'Op it! Sling yer 'ook, or I'll set the cat on you!"

"Is my niece here to-night?" asked Uncle Fred, employing the handle of his umbrella as a lever of the third order. "I am very anxious to have a few words with her, on a domestic matter. I see a notice outside, saying that the present entertainment concluded last week. But it has occurred to me that it is still possible--"

The stage-door man slid from his stool, came out of his den, and laid a heavy hand, not unkindly, on the orator's shoulder.

"What you want to do, ole friend," he said, "is to 'ire the Albert 'All, and make a night of it! That'll get it out of your system nicely. Good-bye!" He gently impelled his guest in the direction of the street.

"I want my niece's address," gasped Uncle Fred, clinging like a limpet to the door-post.

"Go along, you silly old sinner!" said the stage-door man, disengaging him. "I'm ashamed of you."

"I will pay you!" said Uncle Fred desperately.

The stage-door man relaxed at once.

"Now you're _talking_!" he announced.

Five minutes later, after a sordid commercial wrangle, Uncle Fred emerged from the stage door with a slip of paper in his hand. He walked straight into the arms of three members of His Majesty's Forces. They recognised him, and drew back in affected horror.

"What, again?" cried the Canadian. "My God, he's a Mormon! Come along, boys!"

*CHAPTER XVI*

*THE GREAT PRETEND*

"And the sweet?" enquired Marjorie, pencil poised.

"_Meringues!_" said Liss firmly.

"Well, I would say chocolate _souffle_ every time--with whipped cream, of course!" replied Marjorie. "But have it your own way. Now for the savoury!"

"We don't want a savoury," said Liss.

"Remember," Marjorie reminded her, "that there will be gentlemen present."

"I was forgetting the gentlemen. Well--what?"

"_My_ gentleman friend," said Marjorie, "is very fond of angels-on-horseback."

"All right! You can put them down if you like; only don't ask me to eat them: I expect I shall be stodged by that time, anyhow. Oh Marjie, if only it were true!" Liss hugged her hungry little self, longingly.

"There, that's the complete _menu_," said Marjorie. She laid down her pencil, took up the writing pad, and began to read:

"_Oysters!_" She took up her pencil again. "By the way, we can't have oysters."

"Why not?"

"You can only have oysters when there's an R in the month."