Pelham Wodehouse - The Coming of Bill

She went upstairs. Her intention was to look in at the nursery and satisfy herself that all was well with William Bannister. She had given Mamie specific instructions as to his care on her departure; but you never knew. Perhaps her keen eye might be able to detect some deviation from the rules she had laid down.

It detected one at once. The nursery was empty. According to schedule, the child should have been taking his bath.

She went downstairs again. Keggs was waiting in the hall. He had foreseen this return. He had allowed her to go upstairs with his story but half heard because that appealed to his artistic sense. This story, to his mind, was too good to be bolted at a sitting; it was the ideal serial.

"Keggs."

"Madam?"

"Where is Master William?"

"I fear I do not know, madam."

"When did he go out? It is seven o'clock; he should have been in an hour ago."

"I have been making inquiries, madam, and I regret to inform you that nobody appears to have seen Master William all day."

"What?"

"It not being my place to follow his movements, I was unaware of this until quite recently, but from conversation with the other domestics, I find that he seems to have disappeared!"

"Disappeared?"

A glow of enjoyment such as he had sometimes experienced when the ticker at the Cadillac Hotel informed him that the man he had backed in some San Francisco fight had upset his opponent for the count began to permeate Keggs.

"Disappeared, madam," he repeated.

"Perhaps Mrs. Winfield took him with her to Tuxedo."

"No, madam. Mrs. Winfield was alone. I was present when she drove away."

"Send Mamie to me at once," said Mrs. Porter.

Keggs could have whooped with delight had not such an action seemed to him likely to prejudice his chances of retaining a good situation. He contented himself with wriggling ecstatically. "The young person is not in the house, madam."

"Not in the house? What business has she to be out? Where is she?"

"I could not tell you, madam." Keggs paused, reluctant to deal the final blow, as a child lingers lovingly over the last lick of ice-cream in a cone. "I last saw her at about five o'clock, driving off with Mr. Winfield in an automobile."

"What!"

Keggs was content. His climax had not missed fire. Its staggering effect was plain on the face of his hearer. For once Mrs. Porter's poise had deserted her. Her one word had been a scream.

"She did not tell me her destination, madam," went on Keggs, making all that could be made of what was left of the situation after its artistic finish. "She came in and packed a suit-case and went out again and joined Mr. Winfield in the automobile, and they drove off together."

Mrs. Porter recovered herself. This was a matter which called for silent meditation, not for chit-chat with a garrulous butler.

"That will do, Keggs."

"Very good, madam."

Keggs withdrew to his pantry, well pleased. He considered that he had done himself justice as a raconteur. He had not spoiled a good story in the telling.

Mrs. Porter went to her room and sat down to think. She was a woman of action, and she soon reached a decision.

The errant pair must be followed, and at once. Her great mind, playing over the situation like a searchlight, detected a connection between this elopement and the disappearance of William Bannister. She had long since marked Kirk down as a malcontent, and she now labelled the absent Mamie as a snake in the grass who had feigned submission to her rule, while meditating all the time the theft of the child and the elopement with Kirk. She had placed the same construction on Mamie's departure with Kirk as had Mr. Penway, showing that it is not only great minds that think alike.

A latent conviction as to the immorality of all artists, which had been one of the maxims of her late mother, sprang into life. She blamed herself for having allowed a nurse of such undeniable physical attractions to become a member of the household. Mamie's very quietness and apparent absence of bad qualities became additional evidence against her now, Mrs. Porter arguing that these things indicated deep deceitfulness. She told herself, what was not the case, that she had never trusted that girl.

But Lora Delane Porter was not a woman to waste time in retrospection. She had not been in her room five minutes before her mind was made up. It was improbable that Kirk and his guilty accomplice had sought so near and obvious a haven as the studio, but it was undoubtedly there that pursuit must begin. She knew nothing of his way of living at that retreat, but she imagined that he must have appointed some successor to George Pennicut as general factotum, and it might be that this person would have information to impart.

The task of inducing him to impart it did not daunt Mrs. Porter. She had a just confidence in her powers of cross-examination.

She went to the telephone and called up the garage where Ruth's automobiles were housed. Her plan of action was now complete. If no information were forthcoming at the studio, she would endeavour to find out where Kirk had hired the car in which he had taken Mamie away. He would probably have secured it from some garage near by. But this detective work would be a last resource. Like a good general, she did not admit of the possibility of failing in her first attack.

And, luck being with her, it happened that at the moment when she set out, Mr. Penway, feeling pretty comfortable where he was, abandoned his idea of going out for a stroll along Broadway and settled himself to pass the next few hours in Kirk's armchair.

Mr. Penway's first feeling when the bell rang, rousing him from his peaceful musings, was one of mild vexation. A few minutes later, when Mrs. Porter had really got to work upon him, he would not have recognized that tepid emotion as vexation at all.

Mrs. Porter wasted no time. She perforated Mr. Penway's spine with her eyes, reduced it to the consistency of summer squash, and drove him before her into the studio, where she took a seat and motioned him to do the same. For a moment she sat looking at him, by way of completing the work of subjection, while Mr. Penway writhed uneasily on his chair and thought of past sins.

"My name is Mrs. Porter," she began abruptly.

"Mine's Penway," said the miserable being before her. It struck him as the only thing to say.

"I have come to inquire about Mr. Winfield."

As she paused Mr. Penway felt it incumbent upon him to speak again.

"Dear old Kirk," he mumbled.

"Nothing of the kind," said Mrs. Porter sharply. "Mr. Winfield is a scoundrel of the worst type, and if you are as intimate a friend of his as your words imply, it does not argue well for your respectability."

Mr. Penway opened his mouth feebly and closed it again. Having closed it, he reopened it and allowed it to remain ajar, as it were. It was his idea of being conciliatory.

"Tell me." Mr. Penway started violently. "Tell me, when did you last see Mr. Winfield?"

"We went to Long Beach together this afternoon."

"In an automobile?"

"Yes."

"Ah! Were you here when Mr. Winfield left again?"

For the life of him Mr. Penway had not the courage to say no. There was something about this woman's stare which acted hypnotically upon his mind, never at its best as early in the evening.

He nodded.

"There was a young woman with him?" pursued Mrs. Porter.

At this moment Mr. Penway's eyes, roving desperately about the room, fell upon the bottle of Bourbon which Kirk's kindly hospitality had provided. His emotions at the sight of it were those of the shipwrecked mariner who see a sail. He sprang at it and poured himself out a stiff dose. Before Mrs. Porter's disgusted gaze he drained the glass and then turned to her, a new man.

The noble spirit restored his own. For the first time since the interview had begun he felt capable of sustaining his end of the conversation with ease and dignity.