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Page 30
"I am. I am," said Lord Marshmoreton hastily. "The maid replied:
'They're at the wash.' Of course I am. Go on, Percy. Good God, boy,
don't take all day telling us your story."
"At that moment the fool of a policeman came up and wanted to know
what the matter was. I lost my head. I admit it freely. The
policeman grasped my shoulder, and I struck him."
"Where?" asked Lord Marshmoreton, a stickler for detail.
"What does that matter?" demanded Lady Caroline. "You did quite
right, Percy. These insolent jacks in office ought not to be
allowed to manhandle people. Tell me, what this man was like?"
"Extremely ordinary-looking. In fact, all I can remember about him
was that he was clean-shaven. I cannot understand how Maud could
have come to lose her head over such a man. He seemed to me to
have no attraction whatever," said Lord Belpher, a little
unreasonably, for Apollo himself would hardly appear attractive
when knocking one's best hat off.
"It must have been the same man."
"Precisely. If we wanted further proof, he was an American. You
recollect that we heard that the man in Wales was American."
There was a portentous silence. Percy stared at the floor. Lady
Caroline breathed deeply. Lord Marshmoreton, feeling that something
was expected of him, said "Good Gad!" and gazed seriously at a
stuffed owl on a bracket. Maud and Reggie Byng came in.
"What ho, what ho, what ho!" said Reggie breezily. He always
believed in starting a conversation well, and putting people at
their ease. "What ho! What ho!"
Maud braced herself for the encounter.
"Hullo, Percy, dear," she said, meeting her brother's accusing eye
with the perfect composure that comes only from a thoroughly guilty
conscience. "What's all this I hear about your being the Scourge of
London? Reggie says that policemen dive down manholes when they see
you coming."
The chill in the air would have daunted a less courageous girl.
Lady Caroline had risen, and was staring sternly. Percy was pulling
the puffs of an overwrought soul. Lord Marshmoreton, whose thoughts
had wandered off to the rose garden, pulled himself together and
tried to look menacing. Maud went on without waiting for a reply.
She was all bubbling gaiety and insouciance, a charming picture of
young English girlhood that nearly made her brother foam at the
mouth.
"Father dear," she said, attaching herself affectionately to his
buttonhole, "I went round the links in eighty-three this morning.
I did the long hole in four. One under par, a thing I've never done
before in my life." ("Bless my soul," said Lord Marshmoreton
weakly, as, with an apprehensive eye on his sister, he patted his
daughter's shoulder.) "First, I sent a screecher of a drive right
down the middle of the fairway. Then I took my brassey and put the
ball just on the edge of the green. A hundred and eighty yards if
it was an inch. My approach putt--"
Lady Caroline, who was no devotee of the royal and ancient game,
interrupted the recital.
"Never mind what you did this morning. What did you do yesterday
afternoon?"
"Yes," said Lord Belpher. "Where were you yesterday afternoon?"
Maud's gaze was the gaze of a young child who has never even
attempted to put anything over in all its little life.
"Whatever do you mean?"
"What were you doing in Piccadilly yesterday afternoon?" said Lady
Caroline.
"Piccadilly? The place where Percy fights policemen? I don't
understand."
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