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Page 46
Reggie surveyed George with a friendly eye. He had a dim
recollection of having seen him before somewhere at some time or
other, and Reggie had the pleasing disposition which caused him to
rank anybody whom he had seen somewhere at some time or other as a
bosom friend.
"Hullo! Hullo! Hullo!" he observed.
"Good morning," said George.
"Waiting for somebody?"
"No."
"How about it, then? Shall we stagger forth?"
"Delighted."
George found himself speculating upon Reggie. He was unable to
place him. That he was a friend of Maud he knew, and guessed that
he was also a resident of the castle. He would have liked to
question Reggie, to probe him, to collect from him inside
information as to the progress of events within the castle walls;
but it is a peculiarity of golf, as of love, that it temporarily
changes the natures of its victims; and Reggie, a confirmed babbler
off the links, became while in action a stern, silent, intent
person, his whole being centred on the game. With the exception of
a casual remark of a technical nature when he met George on the
various tees, and an occasional expletive when things went wrong
with his ball, he eschewed conversation. It was not till the end of
the round that he became himself again.
"If I'd known you were such hot stuff," he declared generously, as
George holed his eighteenth putt from a distance of ten feet, "I'd
have got you to give me a stroke or two."
"I was on my game today," said George modestly. "Sometimes I slice
as if I were cutting bread and can't putt to hit a haystack."
"Let me know when one of those times comes along, and I'll take you
on again. I don't know when I've seen anything fruitier than the
way you got out of the bunker at the fifteenth. It reminded me of
a match I saw between--" Reggie became technical. At the end of his
observations he climbed into the grey car.
"Can I drop you anywhere?"
"Thanks," said George. "If it's not taking you out your way."
"I'm staying at Belpher Castle."
"I live quite near there. Perhaps you'd care to come in and have a
drink on your way?"
"A ripe scheme," agreed Reggie
Ten minutes in the grey car ate up the distance between the links
and George's cottage. Reggie Byng passed these minutes, in the
intervals of eluding carts and foiling the apparently suicidal
intentions of some stray fowls, in jerky conversation on the
subject of his iron-shots, with which he expressed a deep
satisfaction.
"Topping little place! Absolutely!" was the verdict he pronounced
on the exterior of the cottage as he followed George in. "I've
often thought it would be a rather sound scheme to settle down in
this sort of shanty and keep chickens and grow a honey coloured
beard, and have soup and jelly brought to you by the vicar's wife
and so forth. Nothing to worry you then. Do you live all alone
here?"
George was busy squirting seltzer into his guest's glass.
"Yes. Mrs. Platt comes in and cooks for me. The farmer's wife next
door."
An exclamation from the other caused him to look up. Reggie Byng
was staring at him, wide-eyed.
"Great Scott! Mrs. Platt! Then you're the Chappie?"
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