Mr. Zero (7 page)

He ceased to lie supine in the gratifyingly hot water. You didn't expose villainy by lying in a hot bath—you girded yourself for the fray, and you went out and looked for the fellow who had really done the deed.

Algy proceeded to gird himself. He didn't know where he was going to look, but it occurred to him that Linda's dinner table wasn't at all a bad place to begin, because what he wanted to do was to listen to the voice of scandal. About the Wessex-Gardners, and the Wessex-Gardners' house-party.

He ran through the guests in his own mind. Monty had been a bit stiff over telling him about them, but had stood and delivered like a man in the end.

Beaufort and Poppy Wessex-Gardner. The host and hostess. He was the little man with the bald head at the Ducks and Drakes. Insignificant physically and no use socially, but a bulging forehead and probably a great brain. Anyhow he had made masses of money, and was now going to build aeroplanes for the government. They called him Buffo. Sabotage might interest him. Poppy? Amazing clothes, bizarre make-up, moderate personal attractions, age very difficult to tell—somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five. Nothing to suggest whether she was or could be interested in anything or anyone except herself.

Another lot of Wessex-Gardners. Bingham and Constance. Man known as Binks. In business with his brother, but definitely a lesser light. Very good bridge-player. Constance—Maud Lushington's sister. Vague recollections of having met her—vague recollections of her being even more like a horse than Maud. It didn't seem possible, but the equine impression very strong.

Francis Colesborough and the lovely Sylvia. A peach of peaches. Quite, quite negligible in the affair Algy Somers. She wouldn't even know what sabotage was, bless her.

He turned reluctantly to a less radiant image. Francis Colesborough. Very well set up, very well preserved. One of your forceful, industry-building fellows. Second generation of self-made family—timber, steel. Lots of irons in the fire. Lots of money. Easy, pleasant, reasonably good at all the things people are good at. Highly efficient, and full of government contracts. Just a trifle aloof.

Monty and Maud. Irreverence toyed with a fantasy of Maud abstracting Monty's papers. Algy had no deep affection for his cousin Maud by marriage—too much nose; too much upper lip; too many teeth; far, far too many bony ridges in front. Ungrateful of Algy, because Maud had quite an affection for him and always spoke of him as “my husband's young cousin.” He sometimes wondered what would happen when he passed the thirty mark, and the thirty-five, and the forty. Would he become “my husband's middle-aged cousin”—and at what moment? Digressions apart, Monty and Maud were off the map. What remained not promising at all. Buffo, Poppy, Binks, Constance, Francis Colesborough, and the lovely Sylvia. It was really extremely difficult to imagine any of them pinching a government memorandum out of Monty's despatch-case with Monty next door having a bath. Worse than difficult—farcical. Well, when there are no probables you must take a possible, and if there aren't any possibles, you must work through the improbables, and may even end up with an impossible.

He stood frowning into the glass as he dealt with his tie. He was good at ties, and it came out well. Faint memories of some historic character who took particular pains over a toilet for the scaffold flitted through the hinterland of his mind. They were presently supplemented by the refrain of a ballad about the gentleman called Gilderoy:

“Sae rantingly, sae wantonly.

Sae dauntingly gae'd he.

He played a spring and danced it round

Beneath the gallows tree.”

—the sort of thing that
would
come into your head at this sort of moment.

He buttoned his waistcoat and slipped his arms into his coat. With his hands at the lapels he surveyed the result. Not too bad. “Sae rantingly, sae wantonly—” There was the dashed thing again, and he couldn't even remember how he came to know it. He turned, and was aware of the light glancing oddly across the tail of his coat. The excellent Barker had furnished the room with a nice fumed oak suite. The wardrobe sported a long strip of mirror glass upon its door. Algy was always afraid that the weight of it would bring the whole thing over, but for the moment it stood firm. The glass showed a bulge in the left-hand tail where no bulge should be—something in the pocket. But there oughtn't to be anything in the pocket. He would never dream of putting anything there. People did of course—the cigarette-case. He knew a man who harboured a handkerchief—a most slovenly habit. But this wasn't a cigarette-case, and it certainly wasn't a handkerchief. It was stiff, and it crackled—paper—thickish paper. He drew it out, and beheld a manila envelope doubled up, folded neatly. He unfolded it, laid it flat. It was an official envelope, and it bore an official address:

The Rt. Hon'ble. Montagu Lushington.

The words dazzled, the words swam before Algy's horrified eyes. Because he had handled this envelope before. He had taken it from Carstairs at the study door and gone up to Monty's room and put it down on Monty's dressing-table. He hadn't looked at the address. He hadn't consciously looked at the envelope. But now that he had it in his hand again, he knew that he had noticed the blot in the left-hand corner—a round blob of a blot which had dried very thick, and black, and shiny. This was undoubtedly Monty's envelope—the stolen envelope. And someone had planted it on him. Someone must have planted it on him at the Ducks and Drakes last night.

He stared at it. Why? Rather crass attempt to deepen suspicion? Or rather subtle attempt to put the wind up him? Other possibilities … Too many possibilities.…

He turned the envelope over, and the flap hung loose. He lifted it and looked inside.

The envelope was empty.

IX

Giles and Linda Westgate lived in a flat which consisted of one large room and several darkish cupboards euphemistically labelled bedroom No. I, bedroom No. 2, kitchen, and bathroom. Linda had done her best by painting each one a different colour and in the brightest possible shade. Her cupboard was a brilliant jade, Giles' canary-yellow, the bathroom emerald, and the kitchen a cheerful orange. The large room she had left alone. It had cream walls, a parquet floor, and no furniture except piles of cushions, a collapsible table, and a dozen chromium-plated chairs. Their brittle, angular brightness reminded Algy of some insect's legs—grasshopper, dragonfly, mantis.

Linda furnished her room with people. There were eight of them for dinner, and a crowd afterwards. She wore scarlet velvet, which went very well with her cream skin and her cream walls. She had black hair which never stayed where it was put, and dancing eyes with a dark, malicious sparkle in them—a vivid creature, decorative and talkative as a parrot and quite as indiscreet. Giles, a budding barrister, talked nearly as much as she did, and could be witty. They had a great many friends, and spared none of them.

Algy, coming into the room, was aware of a sudden silence which seemed so abnormal in any room of Linda's as to make him positive that they had been talking about him. If he flinched he contrived not to show it, and in a moment Linda was hanging on his arm and chattering at him.

“Algy darling, we were talking about you. Didn't you hear us all stop dead?” (Clever to take the bull by the horns like that.) “Would you like to know what we were saying?”

Algy said, “Very much.” But he thought he knew already, and he thought that he wouldn't be very likely to hear the truth, or to like it if he did.

There were four people there besides the Westgates. Two of them laughed, and two made rather a lamentable failure of an attempt to appear quite easy and comfortable. Algy looked round, said how do you do to the friend of Linda's who had been asked to balance a friend of Giles'—pretty girl with red hair; dark young man with a superiority complex—and to James and Mary Craster, whom he liked. It was James and Mary who had been embarrassed, and the other two who had laughed.

“And what were you saying about me?” he said, and saw Mary blush and Linda twinkle maliciously.

“Darling Algy, you are
the
scandal of the moment. Did you know? Half everybody is saying you've sold all Monty's secrets to the Bolshevists, and that you're going to be shot at dawn in the Tower—and, darling, if you are, you
will
see about my having a front seat, won't you? Because what's the good of being a relation if it doesn't give you a pull?”

Algy laughed.

“I'll make a point of it. What are the other half saying?”

“That you're as
pure
as the driven snow,” said Linda. “Algy,
darling
, do, do please tell us all about it. And if you did sell them, do tell me how, and where, and what you got for them, because I might try and collect something myself—I'm most awfully hard up. If I got Monty in the melting mood, I
might
get something out of him.”

“Not you,” said Giles—“he hates you like sin.”

“Does he hate sin?” said the dark young man.

Algy said, “Apparently.” He owed Linda something, and was always ready to pay.

“Yes, isn't it a shame?” she said. “And all because someone told him I said that it gave me the jitters to think of ever having another horse's neck—after meeting Maud, you know. And I adored them before, and someone told Monty, and he's been dead cuts with me ever since. Not
my
fault that Maud is the dead spit and image of a mare in the knacker's yard—now is it? But, Algy my angel, you haven't confided in us. Did you sell Monty, or didn't you? And what did you get for it? And are they going to shoot you at dawn?”

“The sentence has been commuted to an evening with you, my dear. Death by tongue-pricks—a nasty lingering affair. Be kind and get it over. Perhaps Giles will tell me what I am supposed to have done.”

Fatal for Giles to hesitate, but he did—almost but not quite imperceptibly. Then he came in with a gay,

“You would be the last to hear about it. It's the most marvellous tale—all the Cabinet secrets gone down the drain, and your's the hand that loosed the plug.”

There was no hesitation about Algy's laughter. If you didn't laugh at a thing like this, if you couldn't laugh at it, then you would go down under it and be dead, and damned, and done for. But Algy had no intention of being done for. He threw back his head and laughed, and it took him all he knew, but quite suddenly in the middle of it there came a strange rushing conviction that he was going to come out on top. He linked his arm with Mary Craster's and said,

“Marvellous! Poor Monty—has anyone broken it to him?”

Linda hung affectionately on his other arm.

“Darling, will he have to come and see you shot? In the front row. With Maud. He'll simply hate it—won't he? So humanitarian. But I suppose he'll have to. Home Secretaries do, don't they?”

“Too much imagination, my dear,” said Algy. “Go and write a dime novel.”

Linda shook her head.

“No, I'm going to do an anonymous autobiography. You know,
Malice in Mayfair
, or
Velvet and Venom
, or—”

“Lispings of a Liar
,” said Giles rudely.

“Jealous!” said Linda. “He won't be jealous about
me
, but he'd hate me to write a book—wouldn't you, darling?”

“Well, I'd have to settle up for the libel actions. And if you don't stop making love to Algy I shall probably break his head. Woman, your guests arrive. Behave!”

“It'll be Sylvia Colesborough,” said Linda.

The front door of the flat opened and shut again. The maid announced, “Lady Colesborough and Mr. Rooster.”

Sylvia came in without hurry. She wore a pale gold frock. She had a radiance. The lights shone on her. Cyril Brewster, thin, dark, and earnest, followed her into the room. Linda surveyed him with surprise.

“Oh, Linda darling!” Sylvia kissed her. “I do hope you don't mind, but Francis couldn't come. He got a telephone call—from Birmingham, I think—they're generally from Birmingham—and he had to rush off. I do think being in business is a bore. But, darling, I'm afraid I've made rather a muddle, because I'd written you down for tomorrow, so I was going to dine with Mr. Brewster, but when Francis said he couldn't come I remembered—you know how one does all of a sudden—so I thought if I brought him along it wouldn't put your table out.”

Mr. Brewster looked decidedly unhappy. The soul of correctness, he was being placed in a position which was irregular if not actually incorrect. The lady's husband had been asked. He was not the lady's husband. Far from it. He had only met her three times, and she had really given him no choice, she had simply brought him. Instead of her husband. And now it appeared that her husband hadn't been asked either. Lady Colesborough had always known he was going to be away.

“You said so all along, Sylvia—you know you did,” said Linda, with an edge on her voice. Because really Sylvia was the limit, and the table could just be got to hold eight, but definitely wouldn't take nine. Well, it had got to—that was all. And anyhow it would make a frightfully good story, Sylvia trailing in about twenty minutes late with that awful stick Cyril and apologizing for Francis who hadn't been asked. She pushed aside Cyril's painstaking politeness with a laugh.

“The more the merrier, and if there isn't enough to go round, it shall be Giles. Or he and Algy can take it by turns. There's going to be too much of both of them if they don't watch it.”

Amid indignant protests the door opened. Food began to come in, and they sorted themselves. The table stretched, as tables do, and there was plenty to eat, as there always was in Linda's house. She adored food, and could have lived on cream and potatoes without ever putting on a quarter of an ounce. Gay, racketing talk went to and fro. The red-haired girl, whose name was Muriel, told them she had been staying in a nudist colony and had felt an urge towards crinolines and large Victorian shawls ever since. She was wearing a shawl now, bright green and Spanish, and her very full black taffeta skirts swept the floor. Giles' friend with the superiority complex looked moody and said nothing. His name was Cedric, and his infatuation for lively red-haired Muriel had reached a point of which it was a fiery torment to himself and a source of extreme boredom to everyone else. Muriel's reactions those of the eternal feminine—a desire to prod, to poke, to stir the fire, and drop fresh fuel on the flame. Giles was hating her, and Linda despising him. The talk leapt flashing to and fro from pointed tongues.