Chapter XI: Salute the Cavalier

I

The Felix Waites, as every one knows, are the most exclusive people in Hampstead. And since the war, with its attendant new people, the family have become so aristocratic that they can scarcely speak, for Mrs. Felix Waite says that every one talks too much nowadays. The Felix Waites are understood to spend most of their time in the country, where they entertain only very small parties. There was a time when they spent anxious moments about their only son, Thomas, but all that is over now. Once upon a time young Thomas did the superman on them about a chorus-girl, and broke away. Young Thomas had never fancied himself as an aristocrat, and so he did not marry the chorus-girl at once; but he said he would, and in the meanwhile he concentrated on making money. He was understood to be making big money--so big that he could inhabit a suite of rooms at the Ritz for a week, sign the bill in pencil, and get away before the hotel clerks had rubbed the dazzle of his sapphire tie-pin out of their eyes. But one day young Thomas forgot to wear his tie-pin, whereupon he adjourned to Brixton Prison for two days and four hours, which he spent in trying to imagine the expression on his father’s face on hearing of his son’s latest telegraphic address. However, Mr. Felix Waite paid up like a gentleman, as he did everything else like a gentleman. That is the only time a Felix Waite has ever stayed with King George, but they do not mention it. Whether the chorus girl became a footlight-favourite or just faded away was never known. Young Thomas married county.

It occurred to Mrs. Felix Waite during the season of 1922 that she might give a garden-party. There was a something about a garden-party, a certain elegance which, Mrs. Felix Waite thought, was lacking in a ball. Every one, after all, can give a ball. Whereas, except for the King and the Queen, very few can give a garden-party in London, for the central idea of a garden-party is that it be held in a garden, and gardens in London are rarer than the jewels on the Mikado’s brow. Now Mrs. Felix Waite had a spacious garden; and about it the walls were so high that the youth of Hampstead Heath had to stand on each other’s shoulders to catch a glimpse of the garden life of the gentry.

II

The garden-party was a great success. Quite half the people who were asked came, and nearly all the people who weren’t. The fact that it poured with rain from three o’clock onwards might have interfered with the pleasure of the company, had not Mrs. Felix Waite been a woman of invention and, with great presence of mind, held the garden-party in her spacious drawing-rooms; thereby, some have thought, changing the garden-party into an At Home or Afternoon Reception, but that is a matter for argument.

Among those present was Mr. Michael Wagstaffe, the young gentleman with the broken nose who called himself, with perhaps too much pomp, the cavalier of the streets; a list of what other people called him might be of interest, but could have no bearing on this story. It was not a habit with the cavalier of the streets to go to garden-parties, or to parties of any kind, for in London there were not a few people who would have been pleased to meet him just once more. However, on this occasion, he had happened to be passing Mrs. Felix Waite’s house towards six o’clock, and, hearing music and being thirsty, had walked in. Not long after, he walked out. But he had not walked more than a few yards when some one caught his shoulder, and an abrupt voice said:

“Come back, you!”

Mr. Michael Wagstaffe turned round. “I never drink with strangers,” he said proudly.

“Come on, now,” said the gruff man impatiently. “No one can leave that house just yet. And we want you particularly--to ask you a few questions.”

“A detective!” sighed Mr. Wagstaffe. “I knew it! For his clothes are very plain.”

They started back, the plain-clothes man holding his arm. It was still raining hard--one of those afternoons when people paid to watch it rain on a nice new tarpaulin at the new tennis-courts at Wimbledon.

“I return under protest,” said Mr. Wagstaffe, “though I wouldn’t object to an umbrella as well.”

“We know _you_,” the plain-clothes man grinned disagreeably. “We know _you_. And I’ve had my eye on you in there--you weren’t invited, you weren’t.”

They walked up the soaked red strip of carpet into the spacious portico, through the spacious portico into the spacious Lounge Hall, and so into a little room. The garden-party, it seemed, was still in full swing in the drawing-rooms; there was music, there was gaiety, but in the little room downstairs were only the plain-clothes man and the cavalier of the streets. Methodically, the plain-clothes man began to search the cavalier’s pockets. Contentedly, the cavalier let him.

“If it’s cigarette-cards for your children you’re looking for,” he said, “I’m afraid I left my collection at home. And if it’s not cigarette-cards, what the hell _are_ you looking for?”

“Diamonds,” said the detective. “Off with your shoes now.”

“I always was a devil for diamonds. Whose diamond?”

“Lady of the house lost famous diamond-ring. Come on now, off with your shoes.”

“If you are worthy enough to untie them,” grinned Mr. Wagstaffe, and held out a wet and rather muddy shoe. But there were no diamond-rings in Mr. Wagstaffe’s shoes.

“Good-bye,” said Mr. Wagstaffe amiably.

“_Au revoir_,” the detective grinned. He was annoyed. “You’ll see more of me, _Mr._ Wagstaffe. Call on you soon, perhaps.”

The young man turned round at the door.

“Going to search all the guests?” he asked.

“’Course not. But you had no right in the house. You was loitering suspiciously.”

“Going to search the other people who came unasked?” asked Mr. Wagstaffe gently.

“Don’t pull any of that on me, young man,” said the plain-clothes man. “You was the suspicious character on the premises when the diamond-ring was stolen, and you’ll hear more of it.”

The cavalier of the streets advanced gently upon the plain-clothes man, and gently he smiled upon him.

“If you knew more of your London,” said he, “you would know that there were at least five other suspicious characters in this house, of whom not more than two could have been invited. And the next time you come near me you had better bring a posse along with you for protection, for at one more word from you I will smite you in such a manner that if you don’t fall down instantly I shall have to run behind you to see what’s holding you up. Good-afternoon.”

As Mr. Wagstaffe emerged from the little room into the spacious hall a young lady passed him towards the door. She passed swiftly, intently, and sweetly, for she was a pretty young lady. She was dressed like a flower, a flower from a garden sweeter than the spacious garden of Mrs. Waite, and as she passed by the cavalier of the streets a faint scent pierced the rain-sodden air of the outer hall.

“Chypre,” thought Mr. Wagstaffe, for it was his business to know these things.

“Good-afternoon,” said Mr. Wagstaffe amiably; but the young lady, the very smart young lady, passed him without a glance into a waiting taxi-cab outside.

The cavalier of the streets whistled gently as he walked away in the rain. He walked not because he liked walking, but because he had not the price of a taxi in the world, because the Underground was offensive to his sensitive nerves, and because busses bored him.

III

In an obscure but not unclean street towards the northern fringe of Soho there is to be found by the seeker after experience a restaurant, where gentlemen in Mr. Wagstaffe’s predicament may dine very passably; and, on having inscribed the bill with their temporarily worthless signatures, pay on some happier day. Very seldom, indeed, had the cavalier of the streets actually fallen to this pass; these were his most unfortunate days; and not even a bottle of the Rhine wine for which M. Stutz was famous--for such was the name of the polite and amiable _patron_ of the Mont Agel Restaurant--was, on this evening, able to support him in the sardonic optimism with which he had always parried the most cruel thrusts of a vagabond destiny.

Than the year 1922 there has never been a more dolorous year for gentlemen of enterprise, as instance the luckless experiences of Mr. Gerald Lee Bevan and Mr. Bottomley; and though the cavalier of the streets was not only a gentleman of enterprise but also of imagination, even he could not imagine money where money was not. Whereat he was depressed.

But money, though naturally of the first importance in an adventurous life, was not the immediate cause of Mr. Wagstaffe’s depression as he dallied with a morsel of caviare and a piece of toast _Melba_. A face haunted his memory. A lovely face it was, mature and gracious and remote--ah, from him how remote! This face (and with it grey eyes, witty and understanding eyes) had happened to him in the course of a most unfortunate episode some months ago. He would never see her again--or, rather, she would never see him. She would look through him, the cavalier of the streets who had blackmailed her and then repented of his sin because of the beauty of her face and the bravery of her voice. But he would certainly see her, as an outcast in a wilderness may, through the leaves and tree-trunks of his prison, just glimpse a brilliant figure in a noble pageant; for the face that haunted him was of the world, and, in these days of many illustrated journals, had acquired an international reputation as one of the five leading faces of Europe. Thus, it had come to pass that the cavalier of the streets, meshed in a hopeless admiration, nowadays found little pleasure in his way of life; nor did the pursuit and beguiling of Mugs, which had been his source of income and entertainment ever since he had acquired a taste for it at the University of Oxford, any longer divert him. The face of his lady love, ever haunting his memory, deprived him of his wonted pleasure in living dangerously. Whereat he was depressed.

“I must leave England,” he thought. “I must go to some foreign city and lead a quite different life. But to leave England requires money; and to lead a quite different life also requires money.” He came to a sudden decision; made the gesture of payment upon the bill, and, thanking the courtly M. Stutz, left the restaurant, and walked swiftly westwards through the twilight of the streets.

IV

Indifferent to all about him, the young man strode on his way through the festive crowds that only the most inclement weather can prevent from promenading Oxford Street on a night in June. He saw nothing, he heard nothing; he was in a great hurry; and it was only as his determined steps were brought almost to a standstill by the great concourse of people about Oxford Circus that his eyes found leisure to examine the placards of the evening journals which were exhibited at the mouth of the Tube Station. “Countess Divorces Husband.” Well, thought he, she couldn’t very well divorce her brother, could she? “Famous Diamond Stolen.” Ah! “Garden Party Thief.” “£2000 Ring Stolen at Society Function.” “Society Hostess Robbed.” It’s almost worth it for her, he thought cattishly, to be called a Society Hostess. And he grinned, and, assuming a fierce expression, which it was not difficult for him to do under the angle of his dilapidated felt hat, he parted the crowds about him and went his way. Maybe it was that the placards had had a stimulating effect on him, or maybe it was that he needed violent exercise, but now he walked even more swiftly than before, oblivious of the remarks which his arrogant passage aroused from the leisurely promenaders.

Soon he turned into a quiet street, and from that into another; and came at last to a large building which, despite the name of Lyonesse Mansions, was a block of flats of the meaner sort. He entered and strode up and up, until the genteel strip of carpet on the stairway gave up all pretence of being a genteel strip of carpet and frankly became a drugget of the consistency of a Gruyère cheese.

To the very top of Lyonesse Mansions strode the cavalier of the streets, and when further progress was barred by a mean-looking door he banged upon that door without restraint, once, twice, thrice; and was then opposed by a feminine person who had all the attributes and mannerisms of a Slut, but was in reality a respectable woman with a vote, the wife of a chauffeur who lived in a neighbouring Mews and whose comforts she increased by doing a bit of charing here and there. She was doing a bit of it here at the moment, and seemed inclined to resent any interruption on behalf of both herself and her employer, for before he had said a word she had snapped “Out,” and only the dexterous shoe of the cavalier of the streets prevented the door from being slammed in his face.

“You’ll get a sore throat if you snarl like that,” he advised her kindly, and pushed past her into the narrow little hall. Thoughtfully, he looked at the three closed doors with which the narrow little hall was decorated; and, by the abstracted expression of his face, seemed to be in a place far removed from the comments on his manners, appearance, and antecedents, if any, which the char-lady, having left the open doorway, poured into his ear.

Then, having thought out his thought, he strode to the middle door and flung it open. The room was dimly lit, which was just as well, for there was in it but one ornament which might have repaid a more exact scrutiny; and that was a girl, who, dressed for solitude in a faded blue _peignoir_, her fair hair loose about her shoulders, a copy of the _Sketch_ in her hands, lay negligently on a wretched sofa. She was a pretty girl; that has been remarked before; but then she had been dressed like a flower, a flower from a garden sweeter than the spacious garden of Mrs. Felix Waite, and now she was dressed like nothing at all; and the faded blue of her covering was stained by a flat yellow packet of cigarettes. She was obviously no lady, and had given up pretending she was.

“You dirty beast! How dare you come here!” cried the pretty girl, amazement turning to disgust, disgust to anger. But the cavalier of the streets, still framed in the doorway, his head uncovered, only smiled at her. And in his smile there was no hint of apology for the intrusion which his hostess seemed to resent so deeply.

“Good-evening, Betty,” said he, in a friendly way. “Just thought I’d come and look at you, you know. Pretty Betty! You last remarkably well, I must say. How are you, child?” And he advanced into the room, threw his hat on a chair, dug his hands into his pockets, and grinned at her again; while her eyes, pretty blue eyes hardened by despair, stared up at him in helpless anger.

“Michael,” she said bitterly, “you are the world’s worst man. Why can’t you leave me alone?--my Gawd, why can’t you leave me alone?” And as her voice rose, her eyes swept him in utter contempt.

“You poor kid, I _have_ left you alone,” he told her gently, wearily. The fact that the cavalier of the streets had at one time been a gentleman was apparent in the way he took abuse. Abuse made him tired. “I haven’t been near you for years, Betty, so it’s no good your handing me any rough stuff about _that_....”

His gentleness provoked her. The pretty girl sat up in her disorder, and the expression on her face was not pretty. He smiled curiously, thinking of a very young man up at Magdalen College and of a very pretty girl at a flower-shop near the station, and how the young man had loved the pretty girl from a distance, until one day he had realised that the pretty girl was very willing to be loved by him; whereupon she had got the sack from the flower-shop, and had come up to London for to be a chorus-girl, and in due course the young man had forgotten her....

“Anyway,” he added, “I didn’t leave you so stranded as that Thomas Felix Waite fellow.”

Shame that the blue of the pretty girl’s eyes was so hard, so wretched and so hard. “Oh, yes,” she sneered; “there ain’t much to choose between you two rotten gentlemen!” And she laughed; and then, because she was a girl, she sobbed. “Oh, Christ, why’ve I always been so wretched!”

He was silent for what seemed a long time. Her sobs spent themselves quietly in the depths of her self-pity, and at last he said softly: “Anyway, Betty, you’ve got your own back on the Felix Waite family now. You’ll be able to go back to the country, as you’ve always wanted to, and live comfortably for a time. Or perhaps you’ll be able to start a little shop of some kind.”

She stared at him in immense amazement, but he was looking out of the little window....

“Michael Wagstaffe,” she breathed, “what the blazes are you talking about?”

“A diamond ring worth £2000,” said Michael Wagstaffe to the window.

“Balmy!” she jeered at him.

“Hand it over, Betty,” said the cavalier of the streets sharply. He stared down her frightened incredulous look. “It’s no good your saying you haven’t got it, because I guessed you had when I saw you leaving the Felix Waite house this evening, and I _know_ you have now I’ve seen your face....” She began shrilly, but he snapped her up. “Now don’t be silly, child. It’s no good your being selfish with it because you’ll never be able to get rid of it on your own, and you’ll only get copped if you try. I know about these things. So hand it over and try not to look as though I was boring you with a tale about potatoes sprouting from the Albert Memorial. We’ll go halves on it, I’m telling you. But you’ll have to trust me.”

She leapt up, faced him, a figure of tense fury. “I trust _you_! You poor silly cad, I trust _you_! Get away from my sight before----” And she suddenly realised that she had not denied having the diamond-ring, that he had provoked her outburst, that he was laughing at her. She threw herself down on the sofa again and fumbled in the yellow packet for a cigarette.

“Clever, aren’t you!” she sneered.

“Only by contrast,” smiled the cavalier of the streets. “I shall have to find it myself, then?”

She made a move as though to spring from the sofa, but it was only a little move, for she knew her man, and he was standing just beside her. “You’re just a blamed fool,” was all she said.

“Don’t move, Betty,” he begged her gently. “Please don’t move. Because I don’t want to have to tie you up. All I want to do is to find that diamond-ring. It’s silly of you to put me to the trouble of having to look for it, but even so I shall give you half of whatever I get for it, for which you must thank my late mother for the way she brought me up.” He seemed to have fallen into a conversational vein; he heeded not the contemptuous sounds with which the pretty girl--now, alas! not so pretty as she had been--sought to disturb the even tenor of his conversation; and all the while his eyes were busy about the room, a largish and dingy bed-sitting-room, the bed being inadequately hidden in an alcove behind a frayed green curtain.

“You see, Betty dear,” he went on, “I have come to a point in my life when I must have money or bust. I am telling you this that you may know I shall not spend half your ill-gotten gains in riotous living. I am tired of riotous living, Betty. I am tired of my life, I am tired of England. And so I am going abroad, far abroad, and there I shall make a new start”--she tried frantically to jump up, but he caught her wrist and held it--“make a new start, as I was saying. You will not see me again for a long time, Betty, and when you do, you will see a rich and generous man, for I shall never forget that I owe you a good turn for the wrong I did you. But to go abroad and to begin an entirely new life I need money. And so,” and his eyes still wandered thoughtfully about the room, “I must find your diamond-ring, sell it for you, and keep half the proceeds as commission....”

“Even if it was here,” jeered the pretty girl, “you’d never find it. You think you’re the only clever one in the world, don’t you?” But there was not much conviction in her voice.

“No, I’ve always said you had brains, Betty. You are no fool; and I shall conduct my investigations on those premises. But don’t move--” and his hand fell sharply on her wrist again, while his eyes still thoughtfully embraced every corner of the room. “Now, if you were a fool, where would you hide a stolen diamond-ring so that your maid would not find it? You would hide it in a far corner of a drawer, or under a pile of linen, or you would sew it into the lining of a dress, or bury it in a hole in the floor--in fact, Betty dear, if you were a fool you would hide that diamond-ring in some secret place which any char-woman or detective searching this room would find at once. But you are not a fool. Now, if you are a student of Edgar Allan Poe, which I doubt, you will remember his tale about a young Frenchman called Duval, or Dupin, I forget which, who found a purloined letter, after the Paris police had searched in vain for it for weeks, in the most obvious place in the robber’s house: which was, of course, the letter-rack. Now what, I ask myself, is the most obvious place in this room in which to hide a stolen diamond-ring? The answer at once leaps to my mind, my eyes wander to a dilapidated-looking arm-chair a few yards away and fix on a hand-bag which is lying in the seat thereof. It is a pretty hand-bag, unpretentious but decorative; and a diamond-ring in your hand-bag would be quite safe from the prying fingers of your maid or char-woman for the simple reason that she has long ago given up hoping that she will find any money in it. But I am neither your maid nor your char-woman, and--oh!” She had bitten the hand that held her wrist, and only by a very quick effort did he restrain her from reaching the arm-chair on which lay the hand-bag. “Allow me,” he said politely, nursing his hand. “I will get it for you.” Swiftly he got it--and the diamond-ring lay in his open palm.

All fight had left the pretty girl; she sat listlessly on the sofa and gave way to her misery.

“Oh, you beast, you beast!” she kept whispering between dry sobs.

The cavalier of the streets stared at the stone in his hand. It winked and glittered, a bright white light on a dingy palm in a dingy room, arrogantly daring the eye with its innumerable carats. He whistled softly, in wonder. “And they say,” he murmured, “that diamonds aren’t fashionable nowadays!”

From the diamond in his palm he looked at the bowed head of the girl. He said harshly:

“Haven’t I told you I’m going to give you half of what I get?”

“I don’t want to sell it,” sobbed the girl. “I got reasons. You wouldn’t understand--_you_ wouldn’t understand anything to do with sentiment. You was born without a heart, Michael Wagstaffe. When young Thomas Felix Waite loved me he promised me that he’d get that diamond-ring from his mother and give it to me. I didn’t want it then, nor believe him, but he went on so about it that I came to fix my mind on it. And then one day he left me--just like that, without a word. He was a weak idiot, but I loved him--_you_ wouldn’t understand. And when he left me my mind somehow ran on that diamond-ring he’d promised me--I wanted it, d’you see, as I might want some money that’s owing to me. God’s treated me pretty rough, I thought, and so He owes me that diamond-ring just so as I can look at it now and then. And I been thinking about it months and months, not thinking to steal it, you know, but just wanting it. _You_ wouldn’t understand how soft a girl gets when she’s eaten up with loneliness in a big place like London. Why didn’t you let me be at Oxford, Michael, living with my father? And so when I saw this garden-party billed in the Society columns this morning, I just thought I’d try to get in and have a look at the diamond on her hand. I never thought she’d be fool enough to take it off in that catch-as-catch-can crowd to show to a friend, and then lay it on the edge of the fight-for-a-cup-of-tea-table to grab a cake which she could have done well without, she being already so fat with over-feeding....” And for the first time she looked up at the young man, who stood above her absently playing with the glittering toy in his hand. She stared at him with babyish, unbelieving eyes. “Gawd, you’re a bad kind of man, Michael Wagstaffe. You’re very bad.”

“You don’t want to sell it, then?” he asked sardonically.

“I want the diamond--my diamond!” she whispered. “Give me back my diamond-ring, Michael Wagstaffe. It’ll do for the sun you’ve took from me since we met at Oxford....”

He smiled at her suddenly. “Here you are, pretty Betty,” he said, and held out the diamond.

But Betty was afraid; she didn’t believe the _beau geste_. Few _beaux gestes_ had come pretty Betty’s way. “Don’t play with me,” she whispered.

“Go on, take the damn thing. I’ll swim the Channel.” There was no doubt about it now. She stretched out her hand to his, to the glittering thing in his palm; but her hand never reached the glittering thing. He followed her staring, terrified eyes to the door behind him.

“Evening, _Mr._ Wagstaffe,” said the plain-clothes man with a grin; and he fixed a delighted eye on the glittering thing in the palm of Mr. Wagstaffe’s hand. “How’s business with diamonds to-night?”

“Rotten,” said Mr. Wagstaffe slowly. “Girl’s afraid even to touch it.”

The plain-clothes man was delighted with himself; he didn’t hurry; he turned to the two constables who filled the doorway behind him. “See, boys! There’s not a thief in the world who won’t take a stolen jool to show off to his best girl. That’s why I’ve kept you chasing this smart young man all evening--I knew he had it, but I wanted to catch him in _flagrante delicto_, which is Latin for making a fool of himself.” He possessed himself of the ring from the young man’s hand. “Sorry to have disturbed you, miss. I didn’t like doing it, but he was such a long time in here, and he’s given us the go-by so often, that I thought I’d come up and fetch him, as he and I are going the same way home to-night. Come on, _Mr._ Wagstaffe.”

The pretty girl, who had sat like a numbed thing, stirred violently; she opened her mouth: “But----”

“I’m glad,” said the cavalier sharply, “to see that you took my advice about bringing a posse with you. I’m coming.”

“But I----” began Betty, incredulously, desperately.

“That’s all right, miss,” the detective soothed her. “He won’t be any more trouble to you for sixteen months or so.”

“Look here, I took----” began Betty furiously, as they moved to the door.

“Good-night, pretty Betty,” called the cavalier of the streets. “I’m sorry about the wrong I did you at Oxford. But I’ll do you a good turn one day....”

Betty rushed frantically towards them, but the detective slammed the door in her face; and through the flimsy panels she heard the gay voice of the cavalier of the streets:

“Come, gentlemen, remove the body.”