Mr. Campion's Lucky Day & Other Stories Page 2

  Chloe saw it, of course. Tadema warmed to her with real affection when he saw her grave eyes when he proposed. He was a little in love even. It was typical of him that he should have done the thing so thoroughly once the ulterior motive had been faced and shelved in the back of his mind.

  He was hurt when she used the twenty-four hours which she demanded before giving him an answer to allow a pet paragraphist to get into print with the rumour, but he was mollified by the Press reception.

  “Our great lover.” “The man who understands women.” “Real romance at last.”

  The epithets were most gratifying.

  “The old hound!” said Wishart, grunting through his ragged moustache when he saw the middle page headlines. “He’s done it again—right on the dot. It’s second nature with him.”

  At the moment Tadema was very pleased.

  He was so happy, even, that when a total stranger walked in upon him—an unheard-of thing at any time and almost sacrilegious before a matinee—his smile did not fade.

  The newcomer paused in the doorway and stared at him disconcertingly. No expression at all passed over his youthful and vaguely familiar face. After a moment or two of this stern scrutiny Tadema’s good humour wavered. He rose to his feet and was about to make the obvious inquiry when he suddenly recognised this thick-featured boy. Quite apart from any little professional feeling which an old public favourite may experience when faced with a new, Tadema conceived an instant dislike of Gyp Rains, the young flier with the cold blue eyes who stood in his dressing room doorway and regarded him so uncompromisingly.

  The aviator’s first remark did not help to dispel his animosity.

  “I’ve come to see you, sir, because I felt it was my duty,” he said.

  The stereotyped but unexpected words were not aided by the curiously expressionless tone in which they were uttered and Tadema’s irritation increased. He loathed young men who had the impudence to address him as “sir” anyway. He fell back upon the particular brand of sarcasm of which he was master.

  “How very nice of you,” he said. “Perhaps you would sit down and be as decent and as dutiful as you can in the few moments which I have at my disposal.”

  Had he said nothing at all he could hardly have made less impression upon Mr. Rains’s stolid and bony countenance. The young man advanced into the room, placed himself within a foot of its owner, and recited, still in the same monotone: “Chloe did not want me to tell you, sir, but I realised that even a man of your age has his feelings and I thought it was the only right thing to do, so I’ve come to warn you. I always do what I think right,” he added with unexpected naivete, and Tadema, who had the uncomfortable impression that he was back on the stage with the stock company of his early youth, caught a glimpse of something glazed in the blue eyes and realised that he was dealing with a man labouring under intense excitement.

  But he had no time for any feelings Gyp Rains might have been imperfectly concealing. He had heard the name “Chloe” and a great fear had descended upon him. He was about to subside stiffly into his chair, but subconsciously recognised it as the movement of an ageing man, and checked it hastily.

  “Perhaps you’d better explain a little more fully,” he said easily. “What’s all this about?”

  “It’s a secret. Chloe and I are to be married. We’ve fallen in love and we’re going to elope. I start on my big flight tomorrow night and she’s coming with me. They’ll find her in Athens, of course, and I don’t suppose they’ll let her go on but we’re getting married late tomorrow.”

  “Are you talking about Chloe Staratt?”

  “Of course.” Mr. Gyp Rains seemed to regard the question as surprisingly unnecessary.

  “I see,” said Tadema with awful solemnity. “I see. And what do you intend me to do about it?”

  For the first time during the interview Gyp Rains’s face changed. His eyebrows rose. His eyes became round and foolish.

  “What can you do?” he said. “I only came to tell you.”

  It has been said that the chance answer of a half-wit can confound a brilliant counsel by its very simplicity and it was so in this case. Tadema’s mouth opened but no sound came. Mr. Rains continued: “I’ve only told you,” he said gently, “because I did not think it was the decent thing not to. You can’t do anything. You see that, don’t you?”

  The final question was put gently.

  “Look here, my boy—” Tadema was clutching wildly at straws, “—I don’t want to appear offensive, but you don’t think that something Lady Chloe may have said may have given you a wrong impression? I mean—”

  “Oh no.” The shining countenance was blank as ever. I brought this along. She couldn’t keep it very well, could she? She saw that as soon as I put it to her.”

  And, advancing towards the dressing table, he set down amongst the grease paint the very large and expensive diamond-and-platinum ring which Sir Geoffrey had chosen only a few weeks before and had paid for but a few days previously.

  There was a long and difficult pause. Gyp Rains braced himself for the final effort.

  “Both Chloe and I rely upon your decency, sir. We know you won’t give us away. Chloe’s afraid of trouble with her father, you see, and so far you are the only person in the know. You won’t let us down, will you? I know that.”

  And, having dropped his bombshell, Mr. Rains, latest darling of an air-minded British public, smiled kindly at Sir Geoffrey Tadema and walked stolidly out of the dressing room, a ridiculous, humourless and unconquerable figure.

  Tadema acted the big scene silently by himself for perhaps two minutes. He paced the floor, he looked at the ring, he peered at himself in the mirror, he threw the ring away, picked it up again, put it in his pocket, shrugged his shoulders, wiped his eyes, and went through every pantomime which the most exacting producer could have desired.

  And then, having reacted in this perfectly normal way, he pulled himself up abruptly and began to think. There were many words which fitly described Chloe, but he was not the man to fall to cursing. Behind his fury there was a quiet part of his mind which could almost admire her. As a piece of publicity it was superb—the discovery in Athens, the secret marriage and that stolid, love-besotted boy to back her up. There was a story to delight the most blasé of journalists!

  It was while he was visualising this flux of newsprint that he suddenly saw his own name. A wave of hot blood rose up in his throat and passed over his head, so that his hairs tingled. He saw himself deflated, saw his carefully built up personality blown away in idle sheets down a dusty road. This would be the end of him. This would be disaster. The beautiful romantic figure drowned in tears of pity, if not derision.

  He bounded to his feet again. Something had got to be done. Yes, by God, something had got to be done and how much time had he? When had the lunatic said he was flying? How much time?

  The callboy knocked at his door.

  “Five minutes, Sir Geoffrey. Curtain’s up.”

  There are times when the mind panics, moments when the imagination takes the bit between its teeth and carries a man headlong through vast avenues of nightmare much more vivid than actual experience can ever hope to be.

  In the intervals of the worst performance of his life Tadema lived through the whole gamut of human humiliation. He heard himself pitied and derided, heard his age discussed and fixed at an erroneous sixty-five, saw his perennial youth withered and his beautiful facade torn down to reveal a travesty of himself, ten times more false than any illusion of the past.

  Even in his saner moments, when he regarded the situation coldly, the prospect of being publicly jilted by Chloe for a younger, wider-known man was not inviting, to say the least of it.

  To do him justice, he had very little thought of retaliation as such. His mind was completely taken up with self-protective projects.

  Even so, his immediate plan of campaign was most difficult to decide, and there was the vital question of time. When had the insufferable young l
out said they intended to elope? Tomorrow night? Tadema paused in the middle of the repudiation scene in the second act and stared glassily at Miss Miller, who played the girl. She gave him his cue and an apprehensive glance under her lashes. It was not like the old man to lunch unwisely. She hoped devoutly that he was not going to have a stroke.

  By the middle of the third act Tadema had it all worked out. If Chloe was going to elope the following day she would be discovered in Athens the next morning and would make the evening papers of the same day. That gave him only until tomorrow to set up a counter-blast, only until tomorrow to get into print himself with a sensation which would make her effort an anticlimax.

  His mind revolved feverishly. Today was Tuesday. Therefore it could be done. It was just possible if he acted promptly.

  There was only one vital question to be settled: what on earth could he do? It is one thing to have an instinct, or even a genius, for getting oneself into the news in the right context but quite another to evolve a safe, yet sensational, stunt and carry it out in less than twelve hours. Tadema was desperate.

  He dismissed his dresser and stood staring through the minute window of his dressing room at the roofs and spires of London, deep blue in the evening light.

  At length he turned slowly away and switched on the light. A flood of hard white radiance disclosed a stocky, yet by no means graceless, figure. The adjective now was, perhaps, purposeful rather than romantic, but an attractive personality all the same: a gallant, middle-aged gentleman preparing to defend himself.

  He had decided on the first step. Where it was going to lead him he had no idea, but, like all true artists, he trusted to his instincts and prepared for action.

  The inspiration for the second move would come, he did not doubt. Necessity, the proverbial mother, should provide.

  Having committed himself to the undertaking, he went about his preparations with artistry and dispatch. The nondescript grey suit taken down from the peg in the big store where no one recognised him, since no one expected him, fitted well enough to look comfortable.

  The soft shirt was equally unarresting, as were the brown shoes, socks, tie and underwear—Tadema was justly famous in theatrical circles for his passion for detail—which he collected on his journey round the shop.

  At a minute before the store closed he walked out with half a dozen or so packages stowed away in a new suitcase.

  Fifteen minutes later the cloakroom of Tottenham Court Road tube station received the case, and Tadema taxied home to his Mayfair flat to bathe and dine before returning to the theatre for the evening performance. He was not exactly happy, but he experienced that curious sense of elation which comes to those about to take a desperate plunge.

  The discovery that Sharper, his old-maidish and inappropriately named man, had let Lessington into the study to wait for him was an unexpected blow.

  Lessington was a plump, bald, fortyish person whose early effeminacy had grown up into effeteness. If his plays had not been so competent Tadema could not have tolerated him. As it was, he fraternised with him but grudgingly.

  Lessington was in form. Aperitif in hand, he posed before the fire, and just had to tell old Taddy the perfectly marvellous notion he had had for the new show. He launched into a tedious recital of a plot in which a middle-aged man falls in love with a young girl, undergoes the usual misgivings, and is at last convinced that his love is reciprocated and his duty is to marry.

  “Of course I shall put it over,” said Lessington. He spoke with assurance, and Tadema reflected bitterly that he would. Lessington had a knack of serving up the coldest of cold mutton on a salver worthy of better things.

  “It’s just a weeny bit topical,” Lessington continued archly. “You’re not very grateful, Taddy.”

  “Splendid, my dear fellow, splendid!” said Tadema with great heartiness, since a warning voice in the back of his mind bade him behave normally. If anyone should guess there was anything unusual afoot the whole strength of his project would be ruined.

  He got rid of Lessington only when he was departing for the theatre. Conversation had been a great strain but he had weathered it. Lessington, he knew, would now be prepared to swear that dear old Taddy had been completely himself, and to report that they had spent a very happy hour discussing a new play.

  Back at the theatre Tadema put on a very careful performance. The relieved Miss Miller found the Old Man in the best of humours. He accepted a supper invitation for midnight and agreed to give a magazine correspondent an interview after the show.

  As the time wore on he was conscious of a growing nervousness, but he had made up his mind, and in the interval before the third act he wandered into De Lara’s room and stood chatting for a minute or so.

  Paul Ritchie, his own understudy, who shared the dressing room, was lounging disconsolately in his corner, he saw, but the young actor said afterwards that the Old Man never once looked in his direction after the first affable nod.

  After leaving De Lara, Tadema, who was wearing the striking pin stripe suit in which he appeared in the third act, was seen by Lottie Queen on the staircase leading up to the roof. He smiled at her, graciously congratulated her on her performance, and passed on.

  It went through that lady’s mind that it was odd that he should be wandering about the theatre when time was getting on, but it was a habit of the company to go up to the flat roof when the weather was close, and she thought no more of the incident just then.

  An electrician observed him higher up on the staircase immediately below the roof, but the man said no word passed, and that was all the evidence the united company could supply when the inquiry was instituted.

  At the moment when Tadema stepped out upon the dark roof, the dizzy lights of the city below him, he was trembling with excitement, but he realised that he had very little time and moved swiftly, stepping daintily across the leads to the desolate collection of builders’ debris which he had observed there earlier in the week and the recollection of which had given him his idea.

  The Gresham Theatre was an old-fashioned building whose rococo parapet was barely four feet away from its nearest neighbour, the Ever Safe Insurance Company’s premises.

  At one particular point a younger man might have sprung from one roof to the other, but Tadema preferred the plank. Pulling it out from beneath the folded sacks, he pushed it into position and prepared to climb across.

  It was a risky proceeding for a man of his years and unathletic habits, and it is possible that had he seriously considered the physical side of the venture his nerve might have failed him. As it was, however, his thoughts were occupied only by the other aspect of the plan, the enormity of it, the courage, the complete ruthlessness.

  It took his breath away. To walk out of the theatre in costume in the midst of the play! To go on to the roof and thence to—disappear!

  Told of any man it would be a piquant story, like the beginning of a mystery yarn, but when the man was Tadema—oh, the headlines would be large and the wind would seep out of Chloe’s sails! Would she start, even? Sir Geoffrey doubted it.

  He stepped out on to the insurance company’s leads and thrust the plank back sharply. It clattered on to the theatre roof so noisily that for a moment he was afraid. Discovery at this juncture would be disastrous. But there was no untoward sound from below and he went on.

  The fire escape descended into a narrow alley behind the building. As Tadema went down the spidery stair a new cause for alarm confronted him. London is a crowded city and the ever-watchful police are suspicious of shadowy figures on the fire escapes of dark buildings. An arrest or even an inquiry would be too embarrassing even to contemplate.

  Sir Geoffrey reached the pavement white with apprehension. He went unchallenged, however, and sped through the darker streets towards Tottenham Court Road.

  For the next half hour his mind was taken up completely with technical details. It is a simple thing to plan to change all one’s clothes, and with them one’s personal
ity, in the toilet room of a large and crowded station, but it is a surprisingly complicated project to carry through. Sir Geoffrey had completely overlooked the hampering qualities of a sense of guilt.

  In spite of these unexpected difficulties, however, his metamorphosis was remarkably successful. One does not dress up and pretend to be somebody else practically every night of one’s professional life without becoming an adept at the art. At twenty minutes to eleven, when Paul Ritchie was ploughing through the last act at the Gresham, a mild looking provincial gentleman walked on to Liverpool Street station, a newish suitcase in his hand.

  This stranger bore a superficial resemblance to the debonair Sir Geoffrey, it is true, but, since it is a curious fact that the actual face and figure of the normal man contribute but three points out of ten to his appearance, clothes, context and colouring making up the other seven, none of the weary passengers glanced at the grey-suited figure with any sort of recognition.

  Tadema himself was gradually getting the feel of his part. As he became increasingly aware of his safety he experienced a new sensation. He felt free. He had ninety pounds in cash on him in an envelope, all he had dared to collect without leaving traces of flight. His watch, studs, wallet and a letter or two were still in the clothes he had worn on leaving the theatre, and which were now stowed away in the case in his hand. He felt light and irresponsible, almost as though he had really walked out of life as cleanly and as mysteriously as the world must soon believe.

  He glanced at the station clock. His train, the Yarborough mail, left in thirty-five minutes. Why he had chosen Yarborough he did not know, save that it was at a fair distance from London and was on the coast.

  He had no definite plan in his head as yet, but he relied upon the long, slow journey to bring counsel. The first and most important step had been taken, and Chloe had been passed at the post. That was the main thing, and the rest, he thought superbly, would come.