The silence was growing oppressive. Somebody had to break it soon. And as Mr. Beach was still confining himself to the language of the eyebrow and apparently intended to fight it out on that line if it took all Summer, Ashe himself broke it.

It seemed to him as he reconstructed the scene in bed that night that Providence must have suggested the subject to Mr. Peters' indigestion; for the mere mention of his employer's sufferings acted like magic on the butler.

"I might have had better luck while I was looking for a place," said Ashe. "I dare say you know how bad-tempered Mr. Peters is. He is dyspeptic."

"So," responded Mr. Beach, "I have been informed." He brooded for a space. "I, too," he proceeded, "suffer from my stomach. I have a weak stomach. The lining of my stomach is not what I could wish the lining of my stomach to be."

"Tell me," said Ashe gratefully, leaning forward in an attitude of attention, "all about the lining of your stomach."

It was a quarter of an hour later when Mr. Beach was checked in his discourse by the chiming of the little clock on the mantelpiece. He turned round and gazed at it with surprise not unmixed with displeasure.

"So late?" he said. "I shall have to be going about my duties. And you, also, Mr. Marson, if I may make the suggestion. No doubt Mr. Peters will be wishing to have your assistance in preparing for dinner. If you go along the passage outside you will come to the door that separates our portion of the house from the other. I must beg you to excuse me. I have to go to the cellar."

Following his directions Ashe came after a walk of a few yards to a green-baize door, which, swinging at his push, gave him a view of what he correctly took to be the main hall of the castle—a wide, comfortable space, ringed with settees and warmed by a log fire burning in a mammoth fireplace. On the right a broad staircase led to the upper regions.

It was at this point that Ashe realized the incompleteness of Mr. Beach's directions. Doubtless, the broad staircase would take him to the floor on which were the bedrooms; but how was he to ascertain, without the tedious process of knocking and inquiring at each door, which was the one assigned to Mr. Peters? It was too late to go back and ask the butler for further guidance; already he was on his way to the cellar in quest of the evening's wine.

As he stood irresolute a door across the hall opened and a man of his own age came out. Through the doorway, which the young man held open for an instant while he answered a question from somebody within, Ashe had a glimpse of glass-topped cases.

Could this be the museum—his goal? The next moment the door, opening a few inches more, revealed the outlying portions of an Egyptian mummy and brought certainty. It flashed across Ashe's mind that the sooner he explored the museum and located Mr. Peters' scarab, the better. He decided to ask Beach to take him there as soon as he had leisure.

Meantime the young man had closed the museum door and was crossing the hall. He was a wiry-haired, severe-looking young man, with a sharp nose and eyes that gleamed through rimless spectacles—none other, in fact than Lord Emsworth's private secretary, the Efficient Baxter. Ashe hailed him:

"I say, old man, would you mind telling me how I get to Mr. Peters' room? I've lost my bearings."

He did not reflect that this was hardly the way in which valets in the best society addressed their superiors. That is the worst of adopting what might be called a character part. One can manage the business well enough; it is the dialogue that provides the pitfalls.

Mr. Baxter would have accorded a hearty agreement to the statement that this was not the way in which a valet should have spoken to him; but at the moment he was not aware that Ashe was a valet. From his easy mode of address he assumed that he was one of the numerous guests who had been arriving at the castle all day. As he had asked for Mr. Peters, he fancied that Ashe must be the Honorable Freddie's American friend, George Emerson, whom he had not yet met. Consequently he replied with much cordiality that Mr. Peters' room was the second at the left on the second floor.

He said Ashe could not miss it. Ashe said he was much obliged.

"Awfully good of you," said Ashe.

"Not at all," said Mr. Baxter.

"You lose your way in a place like this," said Ashe.

"You certainly do," said Mr. Baxter.

Ashe went on his upward path and in a few moments was knocking at the door indicated. And sure enough it was Mr. Peters' voice that invited him to enter.

Mr. Peters, partially arrayed in the correct garb for gentlemen about to dine, was standing in front of the mirror, wrestling with his evening tie. As Ashe entered he removed his fingers and anxiously examined his handiwork. It proved unsatisfactory. With a yelp and an oath, he tore the offending linen from his neck.

"Damn the thing!"

It was plain to Ashe that his employer was in no sunny mood. There are few things less calculated to engender sunniness in a naturally bad-tempered man than a dress tie that will not let itself be pulled and twisted into the right shape. Even when things went well, Mr. Peters hated dressing for dinner. Words cannot describe his feelings when they went wrong.

There is something to be said in excuse for this impatience: It is a hollow mockery to be obliged to deck one's person as for a feast when that feast is to consist of a little asparagus and a few nuts.

Mr. Peters' eye met Ashe's in the mirror.

"Oh, it's you, is it? Come in, then. Don't stand staring. Close that door quick! Hustle! Don't scrape your feet on the floor. Try to look intelligent. Don't gape. Where have you been all this while? Why didn't you come before? Can you tie a tie? All right, then—do it!"

Somewhat calmed by the snow-white butterfly-shaped creation that grew under Ashe's fingers, he permitted himself to be helped into his coat. He picked up the remnant of a black cigar from the dressing-table and relit it.

"I've been thinking about you," he said.

"Yes?" said Ashe.

"Have you located the scarab yet?"

"No."

"What the devil have you been doing with yourself then? You've had time to collar it a dozen times."

"I have been talking to the butler."

"What the devil do you waste time talking to butlers for? I suppose you haven't even located the museum yet?"

"Yes; I've done that."

"Oh, you have, have you? Well, that's something. And how do you propose setting about the job?"

"The best plan would be to go there very late at night."

"Well, you didn't propose to stroll in in the afternoon, did you? How are you going to find the scarab when you do get in?"

Ashe had not thought of that. The deeper he went into this business the more things did there seem to be in it of which he had not thought.

"I don't know," he confessed.

"You don't know! Tell me, young man, are you considered pretty bright, as Englishmen go?"

"I am not English. I was born near Boston."

"Oh, you were, were you? You blanked bone-headed, bean-eating boob!" cried Mr. Peters, frothing over quite unexpectedly and waving his arms in a sudden burst of fury. "Then if you are an American why don't you show a little more enterprise? Why don't you put something over? Why do you loaf about the place as though you were supposed to be an ornament? I want results—and I want them quick!

"I'll tell you how you can recognize my scarab when you get into the museum. That shameless old green-goods man who sneaked it from me has had the gall, the nerve, to put it all by itself, with a notice as big as a circus poster alongside of it saying that it is a Cheops of the Fourth Dynasty, presented"—Mr. Peters choked—"presented by J. Preston Peters, Esquire! That's how you're going to recognize it."

Ashe did not laugh, but he nearly dislocated a rib in his effort to abstain from doing so. It seemed to him that this act on Lord Emsworth's part effectually disposed of the theory that Britons have no sense of humor. To rob a man of his choicest possession and then thank him publicly for letting you have it appealed to Ashe as excellent comedy.

"The thing isn't even in a glass case," continued Mr. Peters. "It's lying on an open tray on top of a cabinet of Roman coins. Anybody who was left alone for two minutes in the place could take it! It's criminal carelessness to leave a valuable scarab about like that. If Lord Jesse James was going to steal my Cheops he might at least have had the decency to treat it as though it was worth something."

"But it makes it easier for me to get it," said Ashe consolingly.

"It's got to be made easy if you are to get it!" snapped Mr. Peters. "Here's another thing: You say you are going to try for it late at night. Well, what are you going to do if anyone catches you prowling round at that time? Have you considered that?"

"No."

"You would have to say something, wouldn't you? You wouldn't chat about the weather, would you? You wouldn't discuss the latest play? You would have to think up some mighty good reason for being out of bed at that time, wouldn't you?"

"I suppose so."

"Oh, you do admit that, do you? Well, what you would say is this: You would explain that I had rung for you to come and read me to sleep. Do you understand?"

"You think that would be a satisfactory explanation of my being in the museum?"

"Idiot! I don't mean that you're to say it if you're caught actually in the museum. If you're caught in the museum the best thing you can do is to say nothing, and hope that the judge will let you off light because it's your first offense. You're to say it if you're found wandering about on your way there."

"It sounds thin to me."

"Does it? Well, let me tell you that it isn't so thin as you suppose, for it's what you will actually have to do most nights. Two nights out of three I have to be read to sleep. My indigestion gives me insomnia." As though to push this fact home, Mr. Peters suddenly bent double. "Oof!" he said. "Wow!" He removed the cigar from his mouth and inserted a digestive tabloid. "The lining of my stomach is all wrong," he added.

It is curious how trivial are the immediate causes that produce revolutions. If Mr. Peters had worded his complaint differently Ashe would in all probability have borne it without active protest. He had been growing more and more annoyed with this little person who buzzed and barked and bit at him, yet the idea of definite revolt had not occurred to him. But his sufferings at the hands of Beach, the butler, had reduced him to a state where he could endure no further mention of stomachic linings. There comes a time when our capacity for listening to detailed data about the linings of other people's stomachs is exhausted.

He looked at Mr. Peters sternly. He had ceased to be intimidated by the fiery little man and regarded him simply as a hypochondriac, who needed to be told a few useful facts.

"How do you expect not to have indigestion? You take no exercise and you smoke all day long."

The novel sensation of being criticized—and by a beardless youth at that—held Mr. Peters silent. He started convulsively, but he did not speak. Ashe, on his pet subject, became eloquent. In his opinion dyspeptics cumbered the earth. To his mind they had the choice between health and sickness, and they deliberately chose the latter.

"Your sort of man makes me angry. I know your type inside out. You overwork and shirk exercise, and let your temper run away with you, and smoke strong cigars on an empty stomach; and when you get indigestion as a natural result you look on yourself as a martyr, nourish a perpetual grouch, and make the lives of everybody you meet miserable. If you would put yourself into my hands for a month I would have you eating bricks and thriving on them. Up in the morning, Larsen Exercises, cold bath, a brisk rubdown, sharp walk—"

"Who the devil asked your opinion, you impertinent young hound?" inquired Mr. Peters.

"Don't interrupt—confound you!" shouted Ashe. "Now you have made me forget what I was going to say."

There was a tense silence. Then Mr. Peters began to speak:

"You—infernal—impudent—"

"Don't talk to me like that!"

"I'll talk to you just—"

Ashe took a step toward the door. "Very well, then," he said. "I'll quit! I'm through! You can get somebody else to do this job of yours for you."

The sudden sagging of Mr. Peters' jaw, the look of consternation that flashed on his face, told Ashe he had found the right weapon—that the game was in his hands. He continued with a feeling of confidence:

"If I had known what being your valet involved I wouldn't have undertaken the thing for a hundred thousand dollars. Just because you had some idiotic prejudice against letting me come down here as your secretary, which would have been the simple and obvious thing, I find myself in a position where at any moment I may be publicly rebuked by the butler and have the head stillroom maid looking at me as though I were something the cat had brought in."

His voice trembled with self-pity.

"Do you realize a fraction of the awful things you have let me in for? How on earth am I to remember whether I go in before the chef or after the third footman? I shan't have a peaceful minute while I'm in this place. I've got to sit and listen by the hour to a bore of a butler who seems to be a sort of walking hospital. I've got to steer my way through a complicated system of etiquette.

"And on top of all that you have the nerve, the insolence, to imagine that you can use me as a punching bag to work your bad temper off! You have the immortal rind to suppose that I will stand for being nagged and bullied by you whenever your suicidal way of living brings on an attack of indigestion! You have the supreme gall to fancy that you can talk as you please to me!

"Very well! I've had enough of it. I resign! If you want this scarab of yours recovered let somebody else do it. I've retired from business."

He took another step toward the door. A shaking hand clutched at his sleeve.

"My boy—my dear boy—be reasonable!"

Ashe was intoxicated with his own oratory. The sensation of bullyragging a genuine millionaire was new and exhilarating. He expanded his chest and spread his feet like a colossus.

"That's all very well," he said, coldly disentangling himself from the hand. "You can't get out of it like that. We have got to come to an understanding. The point is that if I am to be subjected to your—your senile malevolence every time you have a twinge of indigestion, no amount of money could pay me to stop on."

"My dear boy, it shall not occur again. I was hasty."

Mr. Peters, with agitated fingers, relit the stump of his cigar.

"Throw away that cigar!"

"My boy!"

"Throw it away! You say you were hasty. Of course you were hasty; and as long as you abuse your digestion you will go on being hasty. I want something better than apologies. If I am to stop here we must get to the root of things. You must put yourself in my hands as though I were your doctor. No more cigars. Every morning regular exercises."

"No, no!"

"Very well!"

"No; stop! Stop! What sort of exercises?"

"I'll show you to-morrow morning. Brisk walks."

"I hate walking."

"Cold baths."

"No, no!"

"Very well!"

"No; stop! A cold bath would kill me at my age."

"It would put new life into you. Do you consent to the cold baths? No? Very well!"

"Yes, yes, yes!"

"You promise?"

"Yes, yes!"

"All right, then."

The distant sound of the dinner gong floated in.

"We settled that just in time," said Ashe.

Mr. Peters regarded him fixedly.

"Young man," he said slowly, "if, after all this, you fail to recover my Cheops for me I'll—I'll—By George, I'll skin you!"

"Don't talk like that," said Ashe. "That's another thing you have got to remember. If my treatment is to be successful you must not let yourself think in that way. You must exercise self-control mentally. You must think beautiful thoughts."

"The idea of skinning you is a beautiful thought!" said Mr. Peters wistfully.

* * *

In order that their gayety might not be diminished—and the food turned to ashes in their mouths by the absence from the festive board of Mr. Beach, it was the custom for the upper servants at Blandings to postpone the start of their evening meal until dinner was nearly over above-stairs. This enabled the butler to take his place at the head of the table without fear of interruption, except for the few moments when coffee was being served.

Every night shortly before half-past eight—at which hour Mr. Beach felt that he might safely withdraw from the dining-room and leave Lord Emsworth and his guests to the care of Merridew, the under-butler, and James and Alfred, the footmen, returning only for a few minutes to lend tone and distinction to the distribution of cigars and liqueurs—those whose rank entitled them to do so made their way to the housekeeper's room, to pass in desultory conversation the interval before Mr. Beach should arrive, and a kitchen maid, with the appearance of one who has been straining at the leash and has at last managed to get free, opened the door, with the announcement: "Mr. Beach, if you please, dinner is served." On which Mr. Beach, extending a crooked elbow toward the housekeeper, would say, "Mrs. Twemlow!" and lead the way, high and disposedly, down the passage, followed in order of rank by the rest of the company, in couples, to the steward's room.

For Blandings was not one of those houses—or shall we say hovels?—where the upper servants are expected not only to feed but to congregate before feeding in the steward's room. Under the auspices of Mr. Beach and of Mrs. Twemlow, who saw eye to eye with him in these matters, things were done properly at the castle, with the correct solemnity. To Mr. Beach and Mrs. Twemlow the suggestion that they and their peers should gather together in the same room in which they were to dine would have been as repellent as an announcement from Lady Ann Warblington, the chatelaine, that the house party would eat in the drawing-room.

When Ashe, returning from his interview with Mr. Peters, was intercepted by a respectful small boy and conducted to the housekeeper's room, he was conscious of a sensation of shrinking inferiority akin to his emotions on his first day at school. The room was full and apparently on very cordial terms with itself. Everybody seemed to know everybody and conversation was proceeding in a manner reminiscent of an Old Home Week.

As a matter of fact, the house party at Blandings being in the main a gathering together of the Emsworth clan by way of honor and as a means of introduction to Mr. Peters and his daughter, the bride-of-the-house-to-be, most of the occupants of the housekeeper's room were old acquaintances and were renewing interrupted friendships at the top of their voices.

A lull followed Ashe's arrival and all eyes, to his great discomfort, were turned in his direction. His embarrassment was relieved by Mrs. Twemlow, who advanced to do the honors. Of Mrs. Twemlow little need be attempted in the way of pen portraiture beyond the statement that she went as harmoniously with Mr. Beach as one of a pair of vases or one of a brace of pheasants goes with its fellow. She had the same appearance of imminent apoplexy, the same air of belonging to some dignified and haughty branch of the vegetable kingdom.

"Mr. Marson, welcome to Blandings Castle!"

Ashe had been waiting for somebody to say this, and had been a little surprised that Mr. Beach had not done so. He was also surprised at the housekeeper's ready recognition of his identity, until he saw Joan in the throng and deduced that she must have been the source of information.

He envied Joan. In some amazing way she contrived to look not out of place in this gathering. He himself, he felt, had impostor stamped in large characters all over him.

Mrs. Twemlow began to make the introductions—a long and tedious process, which she performed relentlessly, without haste and without scamping her work. With each member of the aristocracy of his new profession Ashe shook hands, and on each member he smiled, until his facial and dorsal muscles were like to crack under the strain. It was amazing that so many high-class domestics could be collected into one moderate-sized room.

"Miss Simpson you know," said Mrs. Twemlow, and Ashe was about to deny the charge when he perceived that Joan was the individual referred to. "Mr. Judson, Mr. Marson. Mr. Judson is the Honorable Frederick's gentleman."

"You have not the pleasure of our Freddie's acquaintance as yet, I take it, Mr. Marson?" observed Mr. Judson genially, a smooth-faced, lazy-looking young man. "Freddie repays inspection."

"Mr. Marson, permit me to introduce you to Mr. Ferris, Lord Stockheath's gentleman."

Mr. Ferris, a dark, cynical man, with a high forehead, shook Ashe by the hand.

"Happy to meet you, Mr. Marson."

"Miss Willoughby, this is Mr. Marson, who will take you in to dinner. Miss Willoughby is Lady Mildred Mant's lady. As of course you are aware, Lady Mildred, our eldest daughter, married Colonel Horace Mant, of the Scots Guards."

Ashe was not aware, and he was rather surprised that Mrs. Twemlow should have a daughter whose name was Lady Mildred; but reason, coming to his rescue, suggested that by our she meant the offspring of the Earl of Emsworth and his late countess. Miss Willoughby was a light-hearted damsel, with a smiling face and chestnut hair, done low over her forehead.

Since etiquette forbade that he should take Joan in to dinner, Ashe was glad that at least an apparently pleasant substitute had been provided. He had just been introduced to an appallingly statuesque lady of the name of Chester, Lady Ann Warblington's own maid, and his somewhat hazy recollections of Joan's lecture on below-stairs precedence had left him with the impression that this was his destined partner. He had frankly quailed at the prospect of being linked to so much aristocratic hauteur.

When the final introduction had been made conversation broke out again. It dealt almost exclusively, so far as Ashe could follow it, with the idiosyncrasies of the employers of those present. He took it that this happened down the entire social scale below stairs. Probably the lower servants in the servants' hall discussed the upper servants in the room, and the still lower servants in the housemaids' sitting-room discussed their superiors of the servants' hall, and the stillroom gossiped about the housemaids' sitting-room.

He wondered which was the bottom circle of all, and came to the conclusion that it was probably represented by the small respectful boy who had acted as his guide a short while before. This boy, having nobody to discuss anybody with, presumably sat in solitary meditation, brooding on the odd-job man.

He thought of mentioning this theory to Miss Willoughby, but decided that it was too abstruse for her, and contented himself with speaking of some of the plays he had seen before leaving London. Miss Willoughby was an enthusiast on the drama; and, Colonel Mant's military duties keeping him much in town, she had had wide opportunities of indulging her tastes. Miss Willoughby did not like the country. She thought it dull.

"Don't you think the country dull, Mr. Marson?"

"I shan't find it dull here," said Ashe; and he was surprised to discover, through the medium of a pleased giggle, that he was considered to have perpetrated a compliment.

Mr. Beach appeared in due season, a little distrait, as becomes a man who has just been engaged on important and responsible duties.

"Alfred spilled the hock!" Ashe heard him announce to Mrs. Twemlow in a bitter undertone. "Within half an inch of his lordship's arm he spilled it."

Mrs. Twemlow murmured condolences. Mr. Beach's set expression was of one who is wondering how long the strain of existence can be supported.

"Mr. Beach, if you please, dinner is served."

The butler crushed down sad thoughts and crooked his elbow.

"Mrs. Twemlow!"

Ashe, miscalculating degrees of rank in spite of all his caution, was within a step of leaving the room out of his proper turn; but the startled pressure of Miss Willoughby's hand on his arm warned him in time. He stopped, to allow the statuesque Miss Chester to sail out under escort of a wizened little man with a horseshoe pin in his tie, whose name, in company with nearly all the others that had been spoken to him since he came into the room, had escaped Ashe's memory.

"You were nearly making a bloomer!" said Miss Willoughby brightly. "You must be absent-minded, Mr. Marson—like his lordship."

"Is Lord Emsworth absent-minded?"

Miss Willoughby laughed.

"Why, he forgets his own name sometimes! If it wasn't for Mr. Baxter, goodness knows what would happen to him."

"I don't think I know Mr. Baxter."

"You will if you stay here long. You can't get away from him if you're in the same house. Don't tell anyone I said so; but he's the real master here. His lordship's secretary he calls himself; but he's really everything rolled into one—like the man in the play."

Ashe, searching in his dramatic memories for such a person in a play, inquired whether Miss Willoughby meant Pooh-Bah, in "The Mikado," of which there had been a revival in London recently. Miss Willoughby did mean Pooh-Bah.

"But Nosy Parker is what I call him," she said. "He minds everybody's business as well as his own."

The last of the procession trickled into the steward's room. Mr. Beach said grace somewhat patronizingly. The meal began.

"You've seen Miss Peters, of course, Mr. Marson?" said Miss Willoughby, resuming conversation with the soup.

"Just for a few minutes at Paddington."

"Oh! You haven't been with Mr. Peters long, then?"

Ashe began to wonder whether everybody he met was going to ask him this dangerous question.

"Only a day or so."

"Where were you before that?"

Ashe was conscious of a prickly sensation. A little more of this and he might as well reveal his true mission at the castle and have done with it.

"Oh, I was—that is to say——"

"How are you feeling after the journey, Mr. Marson?" said a voice from the other side of the table; and Ashe, looking up gratefully, found Joan's eyes looking into his with a curiously amused expression.

He was too grateful for the interruption to try to account for this. He replied that he was feeling very well, which was not the case. Miss Willoughby's interest was diverted to a discussion of the defects of the various railroad systems of Great Britain.

At the head of the table Mr. Beach had started an intimate conversation with Mr. Ferris, the valet of Lord Stockheath, the Honorable Freddie's "poor old Percy"—a cousin, Ashe had gathered, of Aline Peters' husband-to-be. The butler spoke in more measured tones even than usual, for he was speaking of tragedy.

"We were all extremely sorry, Mr. Ferris, to read of your misfortune."

Ashe wondered what had been happening to Mr. Ferris.

"Yes, Mr. Beach," replied the valet, "it's a fact we made a pretty poor show." He took a sip from his glass. "There is no concealing the fact—I have never tried to conceal it—that poor Percy is not bright."

Miss Chester entered the conversation.

"I couldn't see where the girl—what's her name? was so very pretty. All the papers had pieces where it said she was attractive, and what not; but she didn't look anything special to me from her photograph in the Mirror. What his lordship could see in her I can't understand."

"The photo didn't quite do her justice, Miss Chester. I was present in court, and I must admit she was svelte—decidedly svelte. And you must recollect that Percy, from childhood up, has always been a highly susceptible young nut. I speak as one who knows him."

Mr. Beach turned to Joan.

"We are speaking of the Stockheath breach-of-promise case, Miss Simpson, of which you doubtless read in the newspapers. Lord Stockheath is a nephew of ours. I fancy his lordship was greatly shocked at the occurrence."

"He was," chimed in Mr. Judson from down the table. "I happened to overhear him speaking of it to young Freddie. It was in the library on the morning when the judge made his final summing up and slipped it into Lord Stockheath so proper. 'If ever anything of this sort happens to you, you young scalawag,' he says to Freddie—"

Mr. Beach coughed. "Mr. Judson!"

"Oh, it's all right, Mr. Beach; we're all in the family here, in a manner of speaking. It wasn't as though I was telling it to a lot of outsiders. I'm sure none of these ladies or gentlemen will let it go beyond this room?"

The company murmured virtuous acquiescence.

"He says to Freddie: 'You young scalawag, if ever anything of this sort happens to you, you can pack up and go off to Canada, for I'll have nothing more to do with you!'—or words to that effect. And Freddie says: 'Oh, dash it all, gov'nor, you know—what?'"

However short Mr. Judson's imitation of his master's voice may have fallen of histrionic perfection, it pleased the company. The room shook with mirth.

"Mr. Judson is clever, isn't he, Mr. Marson?" whispered Miss Willoughby, gazing with adoring eyes at the speaker.

Mr. Beach thought it expedient to deflect the conversation. By the unwritten law of the room every individual had the right to speak as freely as he wished about his own personal employer; but Judson, in his opinion, sometimes went a trifle too far.

"Tell me, Mr. Ferris," he said, "does his lordship seem to bear it well?"

"Oh, Percy is bearing it well enough."

Ashe noted as a curious fact that, though the actual valet of any person under discussion spoke of him almost affectionately by his Christian name, the rest of the company used the greatest ceremony and gave him his title with all respect. Lord Stockheath was Percy to Mr. Ferris, and the Honorable Frederick Threepwood was Freddie to Mr. Judson; but to Ferris, Mr. Judson's Freddie was the Honorable Frederick, and to Judson Mr. Ferris' Percy was Lord Stockheath. It was rather a pleasant form of etiquette, and struck Ashe as somehow vaguely feudal.

"Percy," went on Mr. Ferris, "is bearing it like a little Briton—the damages not having come out of his pocket! It's his old father—who had to pay them—that's taking it to heart. You might say he's doing himself proud. He says it's brought on his gout again, and that's why he's gone to Droitwich instead of coming here. I dare say Percy isn't sorry."

"It has been," said Mr. Beach, summing up, "a most unfortunate occurrence. The modern tendency of the lower classes to get above themselves is becoming more marked every day. The young female in this case was, I understand, a barmaid. It is deplorable that our young men should allow themselves to get into such entanglements."

"The wonder to me," said the irrepressible Mr. Judson, "is that more of these young chaps don't get put through it. His lordship wasn't so wide of the mark when he spoke like that to Freddie in the library that time. I give you my word, it's a mercy young Freddie hasn't been up against it! When we were in London, Freddie and I," he went on, cutting through Mr. Beach's disapproving cough, "before what you might call the crash, when his lordship cut off supplies and had him come back and live here, Freddie was asking for it—believe me! Fell in love with a girl in the chorus of one of the theaters. Used to send me to the stage door with notes and flowers every night for weeks, as regular as clockwork.

"What was her name? It's on the tip of my tongue. Funny how you forget these things! Freddie was pretty far gone. I recollect once, happening to be looking round his room in his absence, coming on a poem he had written to her. It was hot stuff—very hot! If that girl has kept those letters it's my belief we shall see Freddie following in Lord Stockheath's footsteps."

There was a hush of delighted horror round the table.

"Goo'," said Miss Chester's escort with unction. "You don't say so, Mr. Judson! It wouldn't half make them look silly if the Honorable Frederick was sued for breach just now, with the wedding coming on!"

"There is no danger of that."

It was Joan's voice, and she had spoken with such decision that she had the ear of the table immediately. All eyes looked in her direction. Ashe was struck with her expression. Her eyes were shining as though she were angry; and there was a flush on her face. A phrase he had used in the train came back to him. She looked like a princess in disguise.

"What makes you say that, Miss Simpson?" inquired Judson, annoyed. He had been at pains to make the company's flesh creep, and it appeared to be Joan's aim to undo his work.

It seemed to Ashe that Joan made an effort of some sort as though she were pulling herself together and remembering where she was.

"Well," she said, almost lamely, "I don't think it at all likely that he proposed marriage to this girl."

"You never can tell," said Judson. "My impression is that Freddie did. It's my belief that there's something on his mind these days. Before he went to London with his lordship the other day he was behaving very strange. And since he came back it's my belief that he has been brooding. And I happen to know he followed the affair of Lord Stockheath pretty closely, for he clipped the clippings out of the paper. I found them myself one day when I happened to be going through his things."

Beach cleared his throat—his mode of indicating that he was about to monopolize the conversation.

"And in any case, Miss Simpson," he said solemnly, "with things come to the pass they have come to, and the juries—drawn from the lower classes—in the nasty mood they're in, it don't seem hardly necessary in these affairs for there to have been any definite promise of marriage. What with all this socialism rampant, they seem so happy at the idea of being able to do one of us an injury that they give heavy damages without it. A few ardent expressions, and that's enough for them. You recollect the Havant case, and when young Lord Mount Anville was sued? What it comes to is that anarchy is getting the upper hand, and the lower classes are getting above themselves. It's all these here cheap newspapers that does it. They tempt the lower classes to get above themselves.

"Only this morning I had to speak severe to that young fellow, James, the footman. He was a good young fellow once and did his work well, and had a proper respect for people; but now he's gone all to pieces. And why? Because six months ago he had the rheumatism, and had the audacity to send his picture and a testimonial, saying that it had cured him of awful agonies, to Walkinshaw's Supreme Ointment, and they printed it in half a dozen papers; and it has been the ruin of James. He has got above himself and don't care for nobody."

"Well, all I can say is," resumed Judson, "that I hope to goodness nothing won't happen to Freddie of that kind; for it's not every girl that would have him."

There was a murmur of assent to this truth.

"Now your Miss Peters," said Judson tolerantly—"she seems a nice little thing."

"She would be pleased to hear you say so," said Joan.

"Joan Valentine!" cried Judson, bringing his hands down on the tablecloth with a bang. "I've just remembered it. That was the name of the girl Freddie used to write the letters and poems to; and that's who it is I've been trying all along to think you reminded me of, Miss Simpson. You're the living image of Freddie's Miss Joan Valentine."

Ashe was not normally a young man of particularly ready wit; but on this occasion it may have been that the shock of this revelation, added to the fact that something must be done speedily if Joan's discomposure was not to become obvious to all present, quickened his intelligence. Joan, usually so sure of herself, so ready of resource, had gone temporarily to pieces. She was quite white, and her eyes met Ashe's with almost a hunted expression.

If the attention of the company was to be diverted, something drastic must be done. A mere verbal attempt to change the conversation would be useless. Inspiration descended on Ashe.

In the days of his childhood in Hayling, Massachusetts, he had played truant from Sunday school again and again in order to frequent the society of one Eddie Waffles, the official bad boy of the locality. It was not so much Eddie's charm of conversation which had attracted him—though that had been great—as the fact that Eddie, among his other accomplishments, could give a lifelike imitation of two cats fighting in a back yard; and Ashe felt that he could never be happy until he had acquired this gift from the master.

In course of time he had done so. It might be that his absences from Sunday school in the cause of art had left him in later years a trifle shaky on the subject of the Kings of Judah, but his hard-won accomplishment had made him in request at every smoking concert at Oxford; and it saved the situation now.

"Have you ever heard two cats fighting in a back yard?" he inquired casually of his neighbor, Miss Willoughby.

The next moment the performance was in full swing. Young Master Waffles, who had devoted considerable study to his subject, had conceived the combat of his imaginary cats in a broad, almost Homeric, vein. The unpleasantness opened with a low gurgling sound, answered by another a shade louder and possibly more querulous. A momentary silence was followed by a long-drawn note, like rising wind, cut off abruptly and succeeded by a grumbling mutter. The response to this was a couple of sharp howls. Both parties to the contest then indulged in a discontented whining, growing louder and louder until the air was full of electric menace. And then, after another sharp silence, came war, noisy and overwhelming.

Standing at Master Waffles' side, you could follow almost every movement of that intricate fray, and mark how now one and now the other of the battlers gained a short-lived advantage. It was a great fight. Shrewd blows were taken and given, and in the eye of the imagination you could see the air thick with flying fur. Louder and louder grew the din; and then, at its height, it ceased in one crescendo of tumult, and all was still, save for a faint, angry moaning.

Such was the cat fight of Master Eddie Waffles; and Ashe, though falling short of the master, as a pupil must, rendered it faithfully and with energy.

To say that the attention of the company was diverted from Mr. Judson and his remarks by the extraordinary noises which proceeded from Ashe's lips would be to offer a mere shadowy suggestion of the sensation caused by his efforts. At first, stunned surprise, then consternation, greeted him. Beach, the butler, was staring as one watching a miracle, nearer apparently to apoplexy than ever. On the faces of the others every shade of emotion was to be seen.

That this should be happening in the steward's room at Blandings Castle was scarcely less amazing than if it had taken place in a cathedral. The upper servants, rigid in their seats, looked at each other, like Cortes' soldiers—"with a wild surmise."

The last faint moan of feline defiance died away and silence fell on the room. Ashe turned to Miss Willoughby.

"Just like that!" he said. "I was telling Miss Willoughby," he added apologetically to Mrs. Twemlow, "about the cats in London. They were a great trial."

For perhaps three seconds his social reputation swayed to and fro in the balance, while the company pondered on what he had done. It was new; but it was humorous—or was it vulgar? There is nothing the English upper servant so abhors as vulgarity. That was what the steward's room was trying to make up its mind about.

Then Miss Willoughby threw her shapely head back and the squeal of her laughter smote the ceiling. And at that the company made its decision. Everybody laughed. Everybody urged Ashe to give an encore. Everybody was his friend and admirer—-everybody but Beach, the butler. Beach, the butler, was shocked to his very core. His heavy-lidded eyes rested on Ashe with disapproval. It seemed to Beach, the butler, that this young man Marson had got above himself.

* * *

Ashe found Joan at his side. Dinner was over and the diners were making for the housekeeper's room.

"Thank you, Mr. Marson. That was very good of you and very clever." Her eyes twinkled. "But what a terrible chance you took! You have made yourself a popular success, but you might just as easily have become a social outcast. As it is, I am afraid Mr. Beach did not approve."

"I'm afraid he didn't. In a minute or so I'm going to fawn on him and make all well."

Joan lowered her voice.

"It was quite true, what that odious little man said. Freddie Threepwood did write me letters. Of course I destroyed them long ago."

"But weren't you running the risk in coming here that he might recognize you? Wouldn't that make it rather unpleasant for you?"

"I never met him, you see. He only wrote to me. When he came to the station to meet us this evening he looked startled to see me; so I suppose he remembers my appearance. But Aline will have told him that my name is Simpson."

"That fellow Judson said he was brooding. I think you ought to put him out of his misery."

"Mr. Judson must have been letting his imagination run away with him. He is out of his misery. He sent a horrid fat man named Jones to see me in London about the letters, and I told him I had destroyed them. He must have let him know that by this time."

"I see."

They went into the housekeeper's room. Mr. Beach was standing before the fire. Ashe went up to him. It was not an easy matter to mollify Mr. Beach. Ashe tried the most tempting topics. He mentioned swollen feet—he dangled the lining of Mr. Beach's stomach temptingly before his eyes; but the butler was not to be softened. Only when Ashe turned the conversation to the subject of the museum did a flicker of animation stir him.

Mr. Beach was fond and proud of the Blandings Castle museum. It had been the means of getting him into print for the first and only time in his life. A year before, a representative of the Intelligencer and Echo, from the neighboring town of Blatchford, had come to visit the castle on behalf of his paper; and he had begun one section of his article with the words: "Under the auspices of Mr. Beach, my genial cicerone, I then visited his lordship's museum—" Mr. Beach treasured the clipping in a special writing-desk.

He responded almost amiably to Ashe's questions. Yes; he had seen the scarab—he pronounced it scayrub—which Mr. Peters had presented to his lordship. He understood that his lordship thought very highly of Mr. Peters' scayrub. He had overheard Mr. Baxter telling his lordship that it was extremely valuable.

"Mr. Beach," said Ashe, "I wonder whether you would take me to see Lord Emsworth's museum?"

Mr. Beach regarded him heavily.

"I shall be pleased to take you to see his lordship's museum," he replied.

* * *

One can attribute only to the nervous mental condition following the interview he had had with Ashe in his bedroom the rash act Mr. Peters attempted shortly after dinner.

Mr. Peters, shortly after dinner, was in a dangerous and reckless mood. He had had a wretched time all through the meal. The Blandings chef had extended himself in honor of the house party, and had produced a succession of dishes, which in happier days Mr. Peters would have devoured eagerly. To be compelled by considerations of health to pass these by was enough to damp the liveliest optimist. Mr. Peters had suffered terribly. Occasions of feasting and revelry like the present were for him so many battlefields, on which greed fought with prudence.

All through dinner he brooded on Ashe's defiance and the horrors which were to result from that defiance. One of Mr. Peters' most painful memories was of a two weeks' visit he had once paid to Mr. Muldoon in his celebrated establishment at White Plains. He had been persuaded to go there by a brother millionaire whom, until then, he had always regarded as a friend. The memory of Mr. Muldoon's cold shower baths and brisk system of physical exercise still lingered.

The thought that under Ashe's rule he was to go through privately very much what he had gone through in the company of a gang of other unfortunates at Muldoon's froze him with horror. He knew those health cranks who believed that all mortal ailments could be cured by cold showers and brisk walks. They were all alike and they nearly killed you. His worst nightmare was the one where he dreamed he was back at Muldoon's, leading his horse up that endless hill outside the village.

He would not stand it! He would be hanged if he'd stand it! He would defy Ashe. But if he defied Ashe, Ashe would go away; and then whom could he find to recover his lost scarab?

Mr. Peters began to appreciate the true meaning of the phrase about the horns of a dilemma. The horns of this dilemma occupied his attention until the end of the dinner. He shifted uneasily from one to the other and back again. He rose from the table in a thoroughly overwrought condition of mind. And then, somehow, in the course of the evening, he found himself alone in the hall, not a dozen feet from the unlocked museum door.

It was not immediately that he appreciated the significance of this fact. He had come to the hall because its solitude suited his mood. It was only after he had finished a cigar—Ashe could not stop his smoking after dinner—that it suddenly flashed on him that he had ready at hand a solution of all his troubles. A brief minute's resolute action and the scarab would be his again, and the menace of Ashe a thing of the past. He glanced about him. Yes; he was alone.

Not once since the removal of the scarab had begun to exercise his mind had Mr. Peters contemplated for an instant the possibility of recovering it himself. The prospect of the unpleasantness that would ensue had been enough to make him regard such an action as out of the question. The risk was too great to be considered for a moment; but here he was, in a position where the risk was negligible!

Like Ashe, he had always visualized the recovery of his scarab as a thing of the small hours, a daring act to be performed when sleep held the castle in its grip. That an opportunity would be presented to him of walking in quite calmly and walking out again with the Cheops in his pocket, had never occurred to him as a possibility.

Yet now this chance was presenting itself in all its simplicity, and all he had to do was to grasp it. The door of the museum was not even closed. He could see from where he stood that it was ajar.

He moved cautiously in its direction—not in a straight line as one going to a museum, but circuitously as one strolling without an aim. From time to time he glanced over his shoulder. He reached the door, hesitated, and passed it. He turned, reached the door again—and again passed it. He stood for a moment darting his eyes about the hall; then, in a burst of resolution, he dashed for the door and shot in like a rabbit.

At the same moment the Efficient Baxter, who, from the shelter of a pillar on the gallery that ran around two-thirds of the hall, had been eyeing the peculiar movements of the distinguished guest with considerable interest for some minutes, began to descend the stairs.

Rupert Baxter, the Earl of Emsworth's indefatigable private secretary, was one of those men whose chief characteristic is a vague suspicion of their fellow human beings. He did not suspect them of this or that definite crime; he simply suspected them. He prowled through life as we are told the hosts of Midian prowled.

His powers in this respect were well-known at Blandings Castle. The Earl of Emsworth said: "Baxter is invaluable—positively invaluable." The Honorable Freddie said: "A chappie can't take a step in this bally house without stumbling over that damn feller, Baxter!" The manservant and the maidservant within the gates, like Miss Willoughby, employing that crisp gift for characterization which is the property of the English lower orders, described him as a Nosy Parker.

Peering over the railing of the balcony and observing the curious movements of Mr. Peters, who, as a matter of fact, while making up his mind to approach the door, had been backing and filling about the hall in a quaint serpentine manner like a man trying to invent a new variety of the tango, the Efficient Baxter had found himself in some way—why, he did not know—of what, he could not say—but in some nebulous way, suspicious.

He had not definitely accused Mr. Peters in his mind of any specific tort or malfeasance. He had merely felt that something fishy was toward. He had a sixth sense in such matters.

But when Mr. Peters, making up his mind, leaped into the museum, Baxter's suspicions lost their vagueness and became crystallized. Certainty descended on him like a bolt from the skies. On oath, before a notary, the Efficient Baxter would have declared that J. Preston Peters was about to try to purloin the scarab.

Lest we should seem to be attributing too miraculous powers of intuition to Lord Emsworth's secretary, it should be explained that the mystery which hung about that curio had exercised his mind not a little since his employer had given it to him to place in the museum. He knew Lord Emsworth's power of forgetting and he did not believe his account of the transaction. Scarab maniacs like Mr. Peters did not give away specimens from their collections as presents. But he had not divined the truth of what had happened in London.

The conclusion at which he had arrived was that Lord Emsworth had bought the scarab and had forgotten all about it. To support this theory was the fact that the latter had taken his check book to London with him. Baxter's long acquaintance with the earl had left him with the conviction that there was no saying what he might not do if left loose in London with a check book.

As to Mr. Peters' motive for entering the museum, that, too, seemed completely clear to the secretary. He was a curio enthusiast himself and he had served collectors in a secretarial capacity; and he knew, both from experience and observation, that strange madness which may at any moment afflict the collector, blotting out morality and the nice distinction between meum and tuum, as with a sponge. He knew that collectors who would not steal a loaf if they were starving might—and did—fall before the temptation of a coveted curio.

He descended the stairs three at a time, and entered the museum at the very instant when Mr. Peters' twitching fingers were about to close on his treasure. He handled the delicate situation with eminent tact. Mr. Peters, at the sound of his step, had executed a backward leap, which was as good as a confession of guilt, and his face was rigid with dismay; but the Efficient Baxter pretended not to notice these phenomena. His manner, when he spoke, was easy and unembarrassed.

"Ah! Taking a look at our little collection, Mr. Peters? You will see that we have given the place of honor to your Cheops. It is certainly a fine specimen—a wonderfully fine specimen."

Mr. Peters was recovering slowly. Baxter talked on, to give him time. He spoke of Mut and Bubastis, of Ammon and the Book of the Dead. He directed the other's attention to the Roman coins.

He was touching on some aspects of the Princess Gilukhipa of Mitanni, in whom his hearer could scarcely fail to be interested, when the door opened and Beach, the butler, came in, accompanied by Ashe. In the bustle of the interruption Mr. Peters escaped, glad to be elsewhere, and questioning for the first time in his life the dictum that if you want a thing well done you must do it yourself.

"I was not aware, sir," said Beach, the butler, "that you were in occupation of the museum. I would not have intruded; but this young man expressed a desire to examine the exhibits, and I took the liberty of conducting him."

"Come in, Beach—come in," said Baxter.

The light fell on Ashe's face, and he recognized him as the cheerful young man who had inquired the way to Mr. Peters' room before dinner and who, he had by this time discovered, was not the Honorable Freddie's friend, George Emerson—or, indeed, any other of the guests of the house. He felt suspicious.

"Oh, Beach!"

"Sir?"

"Just a moment."

He drew the butler into the hall, out of earshot.

"Beach, who is that man?"

"Mr. Peters' valet, sir."

"Mr. Peters' valet!"

"Yes, sir."

"Has he been in service long?" asked Baxter, remembering that a mere menial had addressed him as "old man."

Beach lowered his voice. He and the Efficient Baxter were old allies, and it seemed right to Beach to confide in him.

"He has only just joined Mr. Peters, sir; and he has never been in service before. He told me so himself, and I was unable to elicit from him any information as to his antecedents. His manner struck me, sir, as peculiar. It crossed my mind to wonder whether Mr. Peters happened to be aware of this. I should dislike to do any young man an injury; but it might be anyone coming to a gentleman without a character, like this young man. Mr. Peters might have been deceived, sir."

The Efficient Baxter's manner became distraught. His mind was working rapidly.

"Should he be informed, sir?"

"Eh! Who?"

"Mr. Peters, sir—in case he should have been deceived?"

"No, no; Mr. Peters knows his own business."

"Far from me be it to appear officious, sir; but—"

"Mr. Peters probably knows all about him. Tell me, Beach, who was it suggested this visit to the museum? Did you?"

"It was at the young man's express desire that I conducted him, sir."

The Efficient Baxter returned to the museum without a word. Ashe, standing in the middle of the room, was impressing the topography of the place on his memory. He was unaware of the piercing stare of suspicion that was being directed at him from behind.

He did not see Baxter. He was not even thinking of Baxter; but Baxter was on the alert. Baxter was on the warpath. Baxter knew!



CHAPTER VI

Among the compensations of advancing age is a wholesome pessimism, which, though it takes the fine edge off of whatever triumphs may come to us, has the admirable effect of preventing Fate from working off on us any of those gold bricks, coins with strings attached, and unhatched chickens, at which ardent youth snatches with such enthusiasm, to its subsequent disappointment. As we emerge from the twenties we grow into a habit of mind that looks askance at Fate bearing gifts. We miss, perhaps, the occasional prize, but we also avoid leaping light-heartedly into traps.

Ashe Marson had yet to reach the age of tranquil mistrust; and when Fate seemed to be treating him kindly he was still young enough to accept such kindnesses on their face value and rejoice at them.

As he sat on his bed at the end of his first night in Castle Blandings, he was conscious to a remarkable degree that Fortune was treating him well. He had survived—not merely without discredit, but with positive triumph—the initiatory plunge into the etiquette maelstrom of life below stairs. So far from doing the wrong thing and drawing down on himself the just scorn of the steward's room, he had been the life and soul of the party. Even if to-morrow, in an absent-minded fit, he should anticipate the groom of the chambers in the march to the table, he would be forgiven; for the humorist has his privileges.

So much for that. But that was only a part of Fortune's kindnesses. To have discovered on the first day of their association the correct method of handling and reducing to subjection his irascible employer was an even greater boon. A prolonged association with Mr. Peters on the lines in which their acquaintance had begun would have been extremely trying. Now, by virtue of a fortunate stand at the outset, he had spiked the millionaire's guns.

Thirdly, and most important of all, he had not only made himself familiar with the locality and surroundings of the scarab, but he had seen, beyond the possibility of doubt, that the removal of it and the earning of the five thousand dollars would be the simplest possible task. Already he was spending the money in his mind. And to such lengths had optimism led him that, as he sat on his bed reviewing the events of the day, his only doubt was whether to get the scarab at once or to let it remain where it was until he had the opportunity of doing Mr. Peters' interior good on the lines he had mapped out in their conversation; for, of course, directly he had restored the scarab to its rightful owner and pocketed the reward, his position as healer and trainer to the millionaire would cease automatically.

He was sorry for that, because it troubled him to think that a sick man would not be made well; but, on the whole, looking at it from every aspect, it would be best to get the scarab as soon as possible and leave Mr. Peters' digestion to look after itself. Being twenty-six and an optimist, he had no suspicion that Fate might be playing with him; that Fate might have unpleasant surprises in store; that Fate even now was preparing to smite him in his hour of joy with that powerful weapon, the Efficient Baxter.

He looked at his watch. It was five minutes to one. He had no idea whether they kept early hours at Blandings Castle or not, but he deemed it prudent to give the household another hour in which to settle down. After which he would just trot down and collect the scarab.

The novel he had brought down with him from London fortunately proved interesting. Two o'clock came before he was ready for it. He slipped the book into his pocket and opened the door.

All was still—still and uncommonly dark. Along the corridor on which his room was situated the snores of sleeping domestics exploded, growled and twittered in the air. Every menial on the list seemed to be snoring, some in one key, some in another, some defiantly, some plaintively; but the main fact was that they were all snoring somehow, thus intimating that, so far as this side of the house was concerned, the coast might be considered clear and interruption of his plans a negligible risk.

Researches made at an earlier hour had familiarized him with the geography of the place. He found his way to the green-baize door without difficulty and, stepping through, was in the hall, where the remains of the log fire still glowed a fitful red. This, however, was the only illumination, and it was fortunate that he did not require light to guide him to the museum.

He knew the direction and had measured the distance. It was precisely seventeen steps from where he stood. Cautiously, and with avoidance of noise, he began to make the seventeen steps.

He was beginning the eleventh when he bumped into somebody— somebody soft—somebody whose hand, as it touched his, felt small and feminine.

The fragment of a log fell on the ashes and the fire gave a dying spurt. Darkness succeeded the sudden glow. The fire was out. That little flame had been its last effort before expiring, but it had been enough to enable him to recognize Joan Valentine.

"Good Lord!" he gasped.

His astonishment was short-lived. Next moment the only thing that surprised him was the fact that he was not more surprised. There was something about this girl that made the most bizarre happenings seem right and natural. Ever since he had met her his life had changed from an orderly succession of uninteresting days to a strange carnival of the unexpected, and use was accustoming him to it. Life had taken on the quality of a dream, in which anything might happen and in which everything that did happen was to be accepted with the calmness natural in dreams.

It was strange that she should be here in the pitch-dark hall in the middle of the night; but—after all—no stranger than that he should be. In this dream world in which he now moved it had to be taken for granted that people did all sorts of odd things from all sorts of odd motives.

"Hello!" he said.

"Don't be alarmed."

"No, no!"

"I think we are both here for the same reason."

"You don't mean to say—"

"Yes; I have come here to earn the five thousand dollars, too, Mr. Marson. We are rivals."

In his present frame of mind it seemed so simple and intelligible to Ashe that he wondered whether he was really hearing it the first time. He had an odd feeling that he had known this all along.

"You are here to get the scarab?"

"Exactly."

Ashe was dimly conscious of some objection to this, but at first it eluded him. Then he pinned it down.

"But you aren't a young man of good appearance," he said.

"I don't know what you mean. But Aline Peters is an old friend of mine. She told me her father would give a large reward to whoever recovered the scarab; so I—"

"Look out!" whispered Ashe. "Run! There's somebody coming!"

There was a soft footfall on the stairs, a click, and above Ashe's head a light flashed out. He looked round. He was alone, and the green-baize door was swaying gently to and fro.

"Who's that? Who's there?" said a voice.

The Efficient Baxter was coming down the broad staircase.

A general suspicion of mankind and a definite and particular suspicion of one individual made a bad opiate. For over an hour sleep had avoided the Efficient Baxter with an unconquerable coyness. He had tried all the known ways of wooing slumber, but they had failed him, from the counting of sheep downward. The events of the night had whipped his mind to a restless activity. Try as he might to lose consciousness, the recollection of the plot he had discovered surged up and kept him wakeful.

It is the penalty of the suspicious type of mind that it suffers from its own activity. From the moment he detected Mr. Peters in the act of rifling the museum and marked down Ashe as an accomplice, Baxter's repose was doomed. Nor poppy nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy sirups of the world, could ever medicine him to that sweet sleep which he owed yesterday.

But it was the recollection that on previous occasions of wakefulness hot whisky and water had done the trick, which had now brought him from his bed and downstairs. His objective was the decanter on the table of the smoking-room, which was one of the rooms opening on the gallery that looked down on the hall. Hot water he could achieve in his bedroom by means of his stove.

So out of bed he had climbed and downstairs he had come; and here he was, to all appearances, just in time to foil the very plot on which he had been brooding. Mr. Peters might be in bed, but there in the hall below him stood the accomplice, not ten paces from the museum's door. He arrived on the spot at racing speed and confronted Ashe.

"What are you doing here?"

And then, from the Baxter viewpoint, things began to go wrong. By all the rules of the game, Ashe, caught, as it were, red-handed, should have wilted, stammered and confessed all; but Ashe was fortified by that philosophic calm which comes to us in dreams, and, moreover, he had his story ready.

"Mr. Peters rang for me, sir."

He had never expected to feel grateful to the little firebrand who employed him, but he had to admit that the millionaire, in their late conversation, had shown forethought. The thought struck him that but for Mr. Peters' advice he might by now be in an extremely awkward position; for his was not a swiftly inventive mind.

"Rang for you? At half-past two in the morning!"

"To read to him, sir."

"To read to him at this hour?"

"Mr. Peters suffers from insomnia, sir. He has a weak digestion and pain sometimes prevents him from sleeping. The lining of his stomach is not at all what it should be."

"I don't believe a word of it."

With that meekness which makes the good man wronged so impressive a spectacle, Ashe produced and exhibited his novel.

"Here is the book I am about to read to him. I think, sir, if you will excuse me, I had better be going to his room. Good night, sir."

He proceeded to mount the stairs. He was sorry for Mr. Peters, so shortly about to be roused from a refreshing slumber; but these were life's tragedies and must be borne bravely.

The Efficient Baxter dogged him the whole way, sprinting silently in his wake and dodging into the shadows whenever the light of an occasional electric bulb made it inadvisable to keep to the open. Then abruptly he gave up the pursuit. For the first time his comparative impotence in this silent conflict on which he had embarked was made manifest to him, and he perceived that on mere suspicion, however strong, he could do nothing. To accuse Mr. Peters of theft or to accuse him of being accessory to a theft was out of the question.

Yet his whole being revolted at the thought of allowing the sanctity of the museum to be violated. Officially its contents belonged to Lord Emsworth, but ever since his connection with the castle he had been put in charge of them, and he had come to look on them as his own property. If he was only a collector by proxy he had, nevertheless, the collector's devotion to his curios, beside which the lioness' attachment to her cubs is tepid; and he was prepared to do anything to retain in his possession a scarab toward which he already entertained the feelings of a life proprietor.

No—not quite anything! He stopped short at the idea of causing unpleasantness between the father of the Honorable Freddie and the father of the Honorable Freddie's fiancee. His secretarial position at the castle was a valuable one and he was loath to jeopardize it.

There was only one way in which this delicate affair could be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. It was obvious from what he had seen that night that Mr. Peters' connection with the attempt on the scarab was to be merely sympathetic, and that the actual theft was to be accomplished by Ashe. His only course, therefore, was to catch Ashe actually in the museum. Then Mr. Peters need not appear in the matter at all. Mr. Peters' position in those circumstances would be simply that of a man who had happened to employ, through no fault of his own, a valet who happened to be a thief.

He had made a mistake, he perceived, in locking the door of the museum. In future he must leave it open, as a trap is open; and he must stay up nights and keep watch. With these reflections, the Efficient Baxter returned to his room.

Meantime Ashe had entered Mr. Peters' bedroom and switched on the light. Mr. Peters, who had just succeeded in dropping off to sleep, sat up with a start.

"I've come to read to you," said Ashe.

Mr. Peters emitted a stifled howl, in which wrath and self-pity were nicely blended.

"You fool, don't you know I have just managed to get to sleep?"

"And now you're awake again," said Ashe soothingly. "Such is life! A little rest, a little folding of the hands in sleep, and then bing!—off we go again. I hope you will like this novel. I dipped into it and it seems good."

"What do you mean by coming in here at this time of night? Are you crazy?"

"It was your suggestion; and, by the way, I must thank you for it. I apologize for calling it thin. It worked like a charm. I don't think he believed it—in fact, I know he didn't; but it held him. I couldn't have thought up anything half so good in an emergency."

Mr. Peters' wrath changed to excitement.

"Did you get it? Have you been after my—my Cheops?"

"I have been after your Cheops, but I didn't get it. Bad men were abroad. That fellow with the spectacles, who was in the museum when I met you there this evening, swooped down from nowhere, and I had to tell him that you had rung for me to read to you. Fortunately I had this novel on me. I think he followed me upstairs to see whether I really did come to your room."

Mr. Peters groaned miserably.

"Baxter," he said; "He's a man named Baxter—Lord Emsworth's private secretary; and he suspects us. He's the man we—I mean you—have got to look out for."

"Well, never mind. Let's be happy while we can. Make yourself comfortable and I'll start reading. After all, what could be pleasanter than a little literature in the small hours? Shall I begin?"

* * *

Ashe Marson found Joan Valentine in the stable yard after breakfast the next morning, playing with a retriever puppy. "Will you spare me a moment of your valuable time?"

"Certainly, Mr. Marson."

"Shall we walk out into the open somewhere—where we can't be overheard?"

"Perhaps it would be better."

They moved off.

"Request your canine friend to withdraw," said Ashe. "He prevents me from marshaling my thoughts."

"I'm afraid he won't withdraw."

"Never mind. I'll do my best in spite of him. Tell me, was I dreaming or did I really meet you in the hall this morning at about twenty minutes after two?"

"You did."

"And did you really tell me that you had come to the castle to steal—"

"Recover."

"—Recover Mr. Peters' scarab?"

"I did."

"Then it's true?"

"It is."

Ashe scraped the ground with a meditative toe.

"This," he said, "seems to me to complicate matters somewhat."

"It complicates them abominably!"

"I suppose you were surprised when you found that I was on the same game as yourself."

"Not in the least."

"You weren't!"

"I knew it directly I saw the advertisement in the Morning Post. And I hunted up the Morning Post directly you had told me that you had become Mr. Peters' valet."

"You have known all along!"

"I have."

Ashe regarded her admiringly.

"You're wonderful!"

"Because I saw through you?"

"Partly that; but chiefly because you had the pluck to undertake a thing like this."

"You undertook it."

"But I'm a man."

"And I'm a woman. And my theory, Mr. Marson, is that a woman can do nearly everything better than a man. What a splendid test case this would make to settle the Votes-for-Women question once and for all! Here we are—you and I—a man and a woman, each trying for the same thing and each starting with equal chances. Suppose I beat you? How about the inferiority of women then?"

"I never said women were inferior."

"You did with your eyes."

"Besides, you're an exceptional woman."

"You can't get out of it with a compliment. I'm an ordinary woman and I'm going to beat a real man."

Ashe frowned.

"I don't like to think of ourselves as working against each other."

"Why not?"

"Because I like you."

"I like you, Mr. Marson; but we must not let sentiment interfere with business. You want Mr. Peters' five thousand dollars. So do I."

"I hate the thought of being the instrument to prevent you from getting the money."

"You won't be. I shall be the instrument to prevent you from getting it. I don't like that thought, either; but one has got to face it."

"It makes me feel mean."

"That's simply your old-fashioned masculine attitude toward the female, Mr. Marson. You look on woman as a weak creature, to be shielded and petted. We aren't anything of the sort. We're terrors! We're as hard as nails. We're awful creatures. You mustn't let my sex interfere with your trying to get this reward. Think of me as though I were another man. We're up against each other in a fair fight, and I don't want any special privileges. If you don't do your best from now onward I shall never forgive you. Do you understand?"

"I suppose so."

"And we shall need to do our best. That little man with the glasses is on his guard. I was listening to you last night from behind the door. By the way, you shouldn't have told me to run away and then have stayed yourself to be caught. That is an example of the sort of thing I mean. It was chivalry—not business."

"I had a story ready to account for my being there. You had not."

"And what a capital story it was! I shall borrow it for my own use. If I am caught I shall say I had to read Aline to sleep because she suffers from insomnia. And I shouldn't wonder if she did—poor girl! She doesn't get enough to eat. She is being starved—poor child! I heard one of the footmen say that she refused everything at dinner last night. And, though she vows it isn't, my belief is that it's all because she is afraid to make a stand against her old father. It's a shame!"

"She is a weak creature, to be shielded and petted," said Ashe solemnly.

Joan laughed.

"Well, yes; you caught me there. I admit that poor Aline is not a shining example of the formidable modern woman; but—" She stopped. "Oh, bother! I've just thought of what I ought to have said—the good repartee that would have crushed you. I suppose it's too late now?"

"Not at all. I'm like that myself—only it is generally the next day when I hit the right answer. Shall we go back? . . . She is a weak creature, to be shielded and petted."

"Thank you so much," said Joan gratefully. "And why is she a weak creature? Because she has allowed herself to be shielded and petted; because she has permitted man to give her special privileges, and generally—No; it isn't so good as I thought it was going to be."

"It should be crisper," said Ashe critically. "It lacks the punch."

"But it brings me back to my point, which is that I am not going to imitate her and forfeit my independence of action in return for chivalry. Try to look at it from my point of view, Mr. Marson. I know you need the money just as much as I do. Well, don't you think I should feel a little mean if I thought you were not trying your hardest to get it, simply because you didn't think it would be fair to try your hardest against a woman? That would cripple me. I should not feel as though I had the right to do anything. It's too important a matter for you to treat me like a child and let me win to avoid disappointing me. I want the money; but I don't want it handed to me."

"Believe me," said Ashe earnestly, "it will not be handed to you. I have studied the Baxter question more deeply than you have, and I can assure you that Baxter is a menace. What has put him so firmly on the right scent I don't know; but he seems to have divined the exact state of affairs in its entirety—so far as I am concerned, that is to say. Of course he has no idea you are mixed up in the business; but I am afraid his suspicion of me will hit you as well. What I mean is that, for some time to come, I fancy that man proposes to camp out on the rug in front of the museum door. It would be madness for either of us to attempt to go there at present."

"It is being made very hard for us, isn't it? And I thought it was going to be so simple."

"I think we should give him at least a week to simmer down."

"Fully that."

"Let us look on the bright side. We are in no hurry. Blandings Castle is quite as comfortable as Number Seven Arundell Street, and the commissariat department is a revelation to me. I had no idea English servants did themselves so well. And, as for the social side, I love it; I revel in it. For the first time in my life I feel as though I am somebody. Did you observe my manner toward the kitchen maid who waited on us at dinner last night? A touch of the old noblesse about it, I fancy. Dignified but not unkind, I think. And I can keep it up. So far as I am concerned, let this life continue indefinitely."

"But what about Mr. Peters? Don't you think there is danger he may change his mind about that five thousand dollars if we keep him waiting too long?"

"Not a chance of it. Being almost within touch of the scarab has had the worst effect on him. It has intensified the craving. By the way, have you seen the scarab?"

"Yes; I got Mrs. Twemlow to take me to the museum while you were talking to the butler. It was dreadful to feel that it was lying there in the open waiting for somebody to take it, and not be able to do anything."

"I felt exactly the same. It isn't much to look at, is it? If it hadn't been for the label I wouldn't have believed it was the thing for which Peters was offering five thousand dollars' reward. But that's his affair. A thing is worth what somebody will give for it. Ours not to reason why; ours but to elude Baxter and gather it in."

"Ours, indeed! You speak as though we were partners instead of rivals."

Ashe uttered an exclamation. "You've hit it! Why not? Why any cutthroat competition? Why shouldn't we form a company? It would solve everything."

Joan looked thoughtful.

"You mean divide the reward?"

"Exactly—into two equal parts."

"And the labor?"

"The labor?"

"How shall we divide that?"

Ashe hesitated.

"My idea," he said, "was that I should do what I might call the rough work; and—"

"You mean you should do the actual taking of the scarab?"

"Exactly. I would look after that end of it."

"And what would my duties be?"

"Well, you—you would, as it were—how shall I put it? You would, so to speak, lend moral support."

"By lying snugly in bed, fast asleep?"

Ashe avoided her eye.

"Well, yes—er—something on those lines."

"While you ran all the risks?"

"No, no. The risks are practically nonexistent."

"I thought you said just now that it would be madness for either of us to attempt to go to the museum at present." Joan laughed. "It won't do, Mr. Marson. You remind me of an old cat I once had. Whenever he killed a mouse he would bring it into the drawing-room and lay it affectionately at my feet. I would reject the corpse with horror and turn him out, but back he would come with his loathsome gift. I simply couldn't make him understand that he was not doing me a kindness. He thought highly of his mouse and it was beyond him to realize that I did not want it.

"You are just the same with your chivalry. It's very kind of you to keep offering me your dead mouse; but honestly I have no use for it. I won't take favors just because I happen to be a female. If we are going to form this partnership I insist on doing my fair share of the work and running my fair share of the risks—the practically nonexistent risks."

"You're very—resolute."

"Say pig-headed; I shan't mind. Certainly I am! A girl has got to be, even nowadays, if she wants to play fair. Listen, Mr. Marson; I will not have the dead mouse. I do not like dead mice. If you attempt to work off your dead mouse on me this partnership ceases before it has begun. If we are to work together we are going to make alternate attempts to get the scarab. No other arrangement will satisfy me."

"Then I claim the right to make the first one."

"You don't do anything of the sort. We toss up for first chance, like little ladies and gentlemen. Have you a coin? I will spin, and you call."

Ashe made a last stand.

"This is perfectly—"

"Mr. Marson!"

Ashe gave in. He produced a coin and handed it to her gloomily.

"Under protest," he said.

"Head or tail?" said Joan, unmoved.

Ashe watched the coin gyrating in the sunshine.

"Tail!" he cried.

The coin stopped rolling.

"Tail it is," said Joan. "What a nuisance! Well, never mind— I'll get my chance if you fail."

"I shan't fail," said Ashe fervently. "If I have to pull the museum down I won't fail. Thank heaven, there's no chance now of your doing anything foolish!"

"Don't be too sure. Well, good luck, Mr. Marson!"

"Thank you, partner."

They shook hands.

As they parted at the door, Joan made one further remark: "There's just one thing, Mr. Marson."

"Yes?"

"If I could have accepted the mouse from anyone I should certainly have accepted it from you."



CHAPTER VII

It is worthy of record, in the light of after events, that at the beginning of their visit it was the general opinion of the guests gathered together at Blandings Castle that the place was dull. The house party had that air of torpor which one sees in the saloon passengers of an Atlantic liner—that appearance of resignation to an enforced idleness and a monotony to be broken only by meals. Lord Emsworth's guests gave the impression, collectively, of being just about to yawn and look at their watches.

This was partly the fault of the time of year, for most house parties are dull if they happen to fall between the hunting and the shooting seasons, but must be attributed chiefly to Lord Emsworth's extremely sketchy notions of the duties of a host.

A host has no right to interne a regiment of his relations in his house unless he also invites lively and agreeable outsiders to meet them. If he does commit this solecism the least he can do is to work himself to the bone in the effort to invent amusements and diversions for his victims. Lord Emsworth had failed badly in both these matters. With the exception of Mr. Peters, his daughter Aline and George Emerson, there was nobody in the house who did not belong to the clan; and, as for his exerting himself to entertain, the company was lucky if it caught a glimpse of its host at meals.

Lord Emsworth belonged to the people-who-like-to-be-left-alone- to-amuse-themselves-when-they-come-to-a-place school of hosts. He pottered about the garden in an old coat—now uprooting a weed, now wrangling with the autocrat from Scotland, who was theoretically in his service as head gardener—-dreamily satisfied, when he thought of them at all, that his guests were as perfectly happy as he was.

Apart from his son Freddie, whom he had long since dismissed as a youth of abnormal tastes, from whom nothing reasonable was to be expected, he could not imagine anyone not being content merely to be at Blandings when the buds were bursting on the trees.

A resolute hostess might have saved the situation; but Lady Ann Warblington's abilities in that direction stopped short at leaving everything to Mrs. Twemlow and writing letters in her bedroom. When Lady Ann Warblington was not writing letters in her bedroom—which was seldom, for she had an apparently inexhaustible correspondence—she was nursing sick headaches in it. She was one of those hostesses whom a guest never sees except when he goes into the library and espies the tail of her skirt vanishing through the other door.

As for the ordinary recreations of the country house, the guests could frequent the billiard room, where they were sure to find Lord Stockheath playing a hundred up with his cousin, Algernon Wooster—a spectacle of the liveliest interest—or they could, if fond of golf, console themselves for the absence of links in the neighborhood with the exhilarating pastime of clock golf; or they could stroll about the terraces with such of their relations as they happened to be on speaking terms with at the moment, and abuse their host and the rest of their relations.

This was the favorite amusement; and after breakfast, on a morning ten days after Joan and Ashe had formed their compact, the terraces were full of perambulating couples. Here, Colonel Horace Mant, walking with the Bishop of Godalming, was soothing that dignitary by clothing in soldierly words thoughts that the latter had not been able to crush down, but which his holy office scarcely permitted him to utter.

There, Lady Mildred Mant, linked to Mrs. Jack Hale, of the collateral branch of the family, was saying things about her father in his capacity of host and entertainer, that were making her companion feel like another woman. Farther on, stopping occasionally to gesticulate, could be seen other Emsworth relations and connections. It was a typical scene of quiet, peaceful English family life.

Leaning on the broad stone balustrade of the upper terrace, Aline Peters and George Emerson surveyed the malcontents. Aline gave a little sigh, almost inaudible; but George's hearing was good.

"I was wondering when you are going to admit it," he said, shifting his position so that he faced her.

"Admit what?"

"That you can't stand the prospect; that the idea of being stuck for life with this crowd, like a fly on fly paper, is too much for you; that you are ready to break off your engagement to Freddie and come away and marry me and live happily ever after."

"George!"

"Well, wasn't that what it meant? Be honest!"

"What what meant?"

"That sigh."

"I didn't sigh. I was just breathing."

"Then you can breathe in this atmosphere! You surprise me!" He raked the terraces with hostile eyes. "Look at them! Look at them—crawling round like doped beetles. My dear girl, it's no use your pretending that this sort of thing wouldn't kill you. You're pining away already. You're thinner and paler since you came here. Gee! How we shall look back at this and thank our stars that we're out of it when we're back in old New York, with the elevated rattling and the street cars squealing over the points, and something doing every step you take. I shall call you on the 'phone from the office and have you meet me down town somewhere, and we'll have a bite to eat and go to some show, and a bit of supper afterward and a dance or two; and then go home to our cozy—-"

"George, you mustn't—really!"

"Why mustn't I?"

"It's wrong. You can't talk like that when we are both enjoying the hospitality—"

A wild laugh, almost a howl, disturbed the talk of the most adjacent of the perambulating relations. Colonel Horace Mant, checked in mid-sentence, looked up resentfully at the cause of the interruption.

"I wish somebody would tell me whether it's that American fellow, Emerson, or young Freddie who's supposed to be engaged to Miss Peters. Hanged if you ever see her and Freddie together, but she and Emerson are never to be found apart. If my respected father-in-law had any sense I should have thought he would have had sense enough to stop that."

"You forget, my dear Horace," said the bishop charitably; "Miss Peters and Mr. Emerson have known each other since they were children."

"They were never nearly such children as Emsworth is now," snorted the colonel. "If that girl isn't in love with Emerson I'll be—I'll eat my hat."

"No, no," said the bishop. "No, no! Surely not, Horace. What were you saying when you broke off?"

"I was saying that if a man wanted his relations never to speak to each other again for the rest of their lives the best thing he could do would be to herd them all together in a dashed barrack of a house a hundred miles from anywhere, and then go off and spend all his time prodding dashed flower beds with a spud—dash it!"

"Just so; just so. So you were. Go on, Horace; I find a curious comfort in your words."

On the terrace above them Aline was looking at George with startled eyes.

"George!"

"I'm sorry; but you shouldn't spring these jokes on me so suddenly. You said enjoying! Yes—reveling in it, aren't we!"

"It's a lovely old place," said Aline defensively.

"And when you've said that you've said everything. You can't live on scenery and architecture for the rest of your life. There's the human element to be thought of. And you're beginning—"

"There goes father," interrupted Aline. "How fast he is walking! George, have you noticed a sort of difference in father these last few days?"

"I haven't. My specialty is keeping an eye on the rest of the Peters family."

"He seems better somehow. He seems to have almost stopped smoking—and I'm very glad, for those cigars were awfully bad for him. The doctor expressly told him he must stop them, but he wouldn't pay any attention to him. And he seems to take so much more exercise. My bedroom is next to his, you know, and every morning I can hear things going on through the wall—father dancing about and puffing a good deal. And one morning I met his valet going in with a pair of Indian clubs. I believe father is really taking himself in hand at last."

George Emerson exploded.

"And about time, too! How much longer are you to go on starving yourself to death just to give him the resolution to stick to his dieting? It maddens me to see you at dinner. And it's killing you. You're getting pale and thin. You can't go on like this."

A wistful look came over Aline's face.

"I do get a little hungry sometimes—late at night generally."

"You want somebody to take care of you and look after you. I'm the man. You may think you can fool me; but I can tell. You're weakening on this Freddie proposition. You're beginning to see that it won't do. One of these days you're going to come to me and say: 'George, you were right. I take the count. Me for the quiet sneak to the station, without anybody knowing, and the break for London, and the wedding at the registrar's.' Oh, I know! I couldn't have loved you all this time and not know. You're weakening."

The trouble with these supermen is that they lack reticence. They do not know how to omit. They expand their chests and whoop. And a girl, even the mildest and sweetest of girls—even a girl like Aline Peters—cannot help resenting the note of triumph. But supermen despise tact. As far as one can gather, that is the chief difference between them and the ordinary man.

A little frown appeared on Aline's forehead and she set her mouth mutinously.

"I'm not weakening at all," she said, and her voice was—for her—quite acid. "You—you take too much for granted."

George was contemplating the landscape with a conqueror's eye.

"You are beginning to see that it is impossible—this Freddie foolishness."

"It is not foolishness," said Aline pettishly, tears of annoyance in her eyes. "And I wish you wouldn't call him Freddie."

"He asked me to. He asked me to!"

Aline stamped her foot.

"Well, never mind. Please don't do it."

"Very well, little girl," said George softly. "I wouldn't do anything to hurt you."