Laughing Gas (29 page)

It was a dashed sight more than the bike was. The thing was a mere
macedoine.
I concluded my post-mortem and turned away. Not by means of this majestic ruin could I win to safety.

It seemed to me that the best thing I could do would be to wait till the hired car came to fetch the kid and get him to give me a lift to this Chillicothe place of his, which would at least take me into another State, and I went to the house to ask him if this would be all right. I found him in the kitchen, preparing to get busy with a large frying-pan, and he said it would be quite all right. Glad of my company, he was decent enough to say.

'And you'll be sitting pretty, once you're over the State line,' he said. 'They can't get at you there.'

'You're sure of that?'

'Sure I'm sure. They'd have to extradicate you, or whatever it's called.' A horn tooted without.

'Hello,' he said. 'Somebody at the door. If it's for me, tell 'em I'm not ready yet.' I was struck by a disquieting thought. 'Suppose it's somebody for me?' 'The cops, you mean? Couldn't be.' 'It might.'

'Well, if it is, poke 'em in the snoot.'

It was with a good deal of uneasiness that I made my way to the front door and opened it. I had not this child's simple faith in snoot-poking as a panacea for all ills. Outside, a car was standing, and my relief was substantial on perceiving that it was not a police car, but just one of those diseased old two-seaters which are so common in Hollywood.

Somebody was getting out of it. Somebody who seemed strangely familiar. 'Golly
I
' I exclaimed.

I had recognized our caller. It was my cousin Eggy.

Chapter 28

This
human suction-pump being absolutely the last chap I was expecting to see, I just stood there and gaped at him as he wriggled out. It took him a moment or two to get clear, for this was a pint-size two-seater and he is one of those long, thin, straggly fellows, built rather on the lines of a caterpillar or a hose-pipe. However, he managed it at last and came forward with a cheery 'What
ho!'
Or, rather, with a cheery What' and a sort of gargling gurgle.
For before he could add the 'ho!
' he saw me standing in the doorway and the spectacle seemed to wipe speech from his lips. He shot back as if he had collided with something red-hot, and for perhaps a quarter of a minute stood blinking and making a low rattling noise in the recesses of his throat.

Then he smiled a sickly smile.

'Hullo,' he said.

'Hullo.'

'Good morning, George.' 'George?'

'I mean, Good morning, Eddie.' 'Eddie?'

'That is to say, Good morning, Fred.'

I snatched at what appeared to me the only possible explanation, though even at his best I had never seen the old boy quite like this.

'You're blotto,' I said.

'Nothing of the kind.'

'You must be. If you can't see that I'm Reggie. What's all this rot about George and Eddie and Fred?' He blinked again. 'You mean you really
are
Reggie?' 'Of course.'

He stood for a moment mopping his forehead, then spoke in an injured voice.

'I wish you wouldn't do this sort of thing, Reggie. I've had to speak to you about it before.'

'What sort of thing?'

'Why, suddenly popping up in places where no one would ever dream you could possibly be and confronting a chap who's expecting to see somebody totally different. A most unpleasant shock it gave me, seeing you standing there, when I had expected to see George, or Fred or Eddie. Naturally I thought that you must be George or Fred or Eddie and that my eyes had gone back on me again. You ought to have more consideration. Put yourself in the other fellow's place. Think how you would feel in his position.'

I was astonished.

'Do you know George and Fred and Eddie?'

'Of course I do. Splendid chaps.'

'Are you aware that they are kidnappers?'

'They may be kidnappers in their spare time. I met them at the Temple of die New Dawn. They're churchwardens there, and pretty highly thought of by the flock. Eddie lent me his hymn-book at evensong yesterday, and we had a lemonade after the service, and they asked me to look in this morning for lunch and a round of golf. Nice fellows. No side about them. Do you know the Temple of the New Dawn, Reggie?'

'I've heard of it.'

'You ought to join us. Wonderful place. A girl called Mabel Prescott put me on to it. It's a sort of combination of a revival meeting and a Keeley Cure Institute. I signed on yesterday.'

'About time, I should think.'

'The nick of time. I was pretty far gone.'

'You've been pretty far gone for years.'

'Yes, but in these last two days things have come to a head, if you know what I mean. It's really been most extraordinary. I was going along just the same as usual,

without a care in the world, mopping it up here, sopping it up there, when all of a sudden I had a sort of collapse. I went right to pieces.' 'Yes?'

'I assure you. It was like Mabel was saying. I didn't stop at way-stations: I went right on and hit the terminus. The first thing I knew, my eyesight had gone phut. The symptoms were rather odd. I started seeing astral bodies. Have you ever been annoyed by astral bodies, Reggie? Most unpleasant. They poke their heads up from behind chairs.'

'What do they do that for?'

'I can't imagine. A whim, no doubt.'

'May be just a hobby?'

'Call it a hobby if you like. Anyway, they do. Mine did. It was the astral body of a child star named Joey Cooley. I happened to be out at your bungalow at the Garden of the Hesperides, and there he was, right behind the chair. When I say "he", I mean, of course, his wraith or phantasm.'

'I see.'

'So did I, and it gave me a hell of a jolt. But I think I should have carried on, considering it a mere passing weakness, had it not been for what occurred the very next day. I'm going to tell you something now that you will find it very hard to believe, Reggie, old man. Yesterday morning I had to go and give an elocution lesson to this same Joey Cooley, and after the natural embarrassment of seeing in the flesh one whom I had met only the day before as a phantasm or wraith, we got down to it. I said to him: "What you want to do, laddie, is to watch your
'ow
V.They're rotten. Say: 'How now, brown cow, why do you frown beneath the bough?' " and do you know what I could have sworn I heard him reply?'

'What?'

'That he was you! Just imagine! "It may interest you to know," he said, "that I
am your cousin Reggie Haver
shot." '

'He did?*

'Positively. "I might mention in passing," he said, "that I am your cousin Reggie Havershot." ' 'Well, well.'

'Exactly. I saw at once what it meant. In addition to my eyes handing in their portfolio, my ears had gone west also. Well, I know when I'm licked. I tooled straight round to the Temple of the New Dawn and asked for an entrance form. And as I say, that's how I came to know George and Fred and Eddie. Where are they, by the way?'

'They said something about going to church.'

'Ah? They meant the Temple. Matins start at eleven. I'd better go and join them there. And now tell me, Reggie, how on earth do you come to be —' He broke off, and started to sniff. 'I say, do you smell something burning?'

I sniffed, too.

'Yes, I do seem to —What's the matter?' I asked, for he had given a sudden jump and was now stepping slowly back, his eyes a bit enlarged and his tongue moving over his lips.

He seemed to brace himself.

'It's nothing,' he said, 'nothing. Just a trifling relapse. A slight return of the old trouble. I suppose I must expect this sort of thing for a little while. You remember we were speaking of Joey Cooley's astral body? Well, it's in again. Just behind you. Don't encourage it. Pretend not to notice it.'

I turned. The Cooley kid was standing in the doorway, holding a smoking frying-pan from which proceeded a hideous niff of burned sausages.

'Say,' he said.

'Voices,' said Eggy, wincing. 'It spoke.'

'Say, I don't seem to be fixing these sausages just right,' said the kid. 'They sort of curl up and turn black on me. Hello, who's this?'

I gave him a warning glance.

'You haven't forgotten your elocution teacher?' I said meaningly. 'Eh?'

'Yesterday morning. Your elocution teacher. Chap who came to teach you elocution.'

'Oh, sure. Sure. Yes, my elocution teacher. I remember. How are you, elocution teacher? How's tricks?'

Eggy came forward cautiously.

'Are you real ?' he asked.

'I guess so.'

'Do you mind if I prod you?' 'Go ahead,'

Eggy did so, and heaved a relieved sigh.

'Ah
I
It wasn't that I doubted your word. It was only — It's all most confusing,' he said, a little petulantly. 'I mean, sometimes you're real and sometimes you're not. There seems to be no fixed rule. Well, I still don't see what you're doing here.'

'I'm trying to cook me some sausages, but I don't seem to do it so good. Can you cook sausages?'

'Oh, rather. At school, I was an adept. I could fry a sausage on the end of a pen. Would you like me to come and help you?'

'Will you?'

'Certainly.'

He started off, and I leaped forward and detained him by grabbing at his coat. Until this moment, what with talking of other things, I had forgotten that this was the man who had let Ann down with a thud by callously breaking off their engagement.

'Wait
I
' I said. 'Before you go, Egremont Mannering, I want a full explanation.'

'What of?'

'Your scurvy behaviour.' He seemed surprised.

'What do you mean? I haven't been scurvy.'
'Ha!'
I said, laughing a hard laugh. 'Your engagement is broken, isn't it? You've oiled out of marrying Ann, haven't you? If you don't call it scurvy, winning a girl's love and then saying: "April fool, it's all off 1" there are some who do. I appeal to you, young Cooley.'

'Sounds pretty scurvy to me.'

'As it would to any fine-minded child,' I said.

Eggy seemed all taken aback.

'But, dash it, all that has nothing to do with me.'

'Ha! You hear that, Cooley?'

'I mean, it wasn't I who broke off the engagement. It was
Ann.' I was stunned. 'What!'
'Certainly.'

'She broke off the engagement?'

'Exactly. Last night. I looked in to tell her about my joining the Temple, and she gave me the push. Very sweetly and in the kindliest spirit, but she gave me the push. And if you want to know what I think was the reason, throw your mind back to what I was telling you a couple of nights ago at that party. You were urging me to swear off, and I said that if I did Ann would chuck me, because it was only to reform me that she had taken me on at all. You follow the psychology, Cooley?'

'Sure.'

'If a girl gets engaged to a chap to reform him and he goes and reforms on his own,
it
makes her feel silly.'

'Sure. It's what happened in
Pickled Lovers.'

'That's what it must have been, you see. Come on, young Cooley. Sausages ho
!'

I grabbed his coat again.

'No, waitl' I said. 'Wait I Don't go yet, Eggy. You don't appreciate the nub.' 'How do you mean, the nub?'

'I mean the poignancy of the situation. When Ann gave you the push last night, she was self-supporting. She had a good job in prospect. To-day, she is on the rocks. The job has fallen through. I happen to know that she is more or less broke. So somebody's got to look after her. Other-

wise, all that stands between her and the bread-line is the chance of really getting taken on as a dentist's assistant.' 'Not really?'

'Absolutely. She would have to wear a white dress and say: "Mr Burwash will see you now".' 'She wouldn't like that.' 'She would hate it.'

'It would make her feel like a bird in a gilded cage.'

'Exactly like a bird in a gilded cage. So there's only one thing to be done. You must go to her and ask her to take you on again.'

'Oh, but I can't do that.'

'Of course you can.'

'I can't. There are technical difficulties in the way. The fact is, old man, immediately after Ann had given me the air last night, I toddled round to Mabel Prescott and I'm now engaged to her.'

'What!'

'Yes. And she isn't the sort of girl you can go to the day after you've become betrothed to her and tell her you've changed your mind. She's - well, I would call her rather a touchy girl. A queen of her sex, mind you, and I love her madly, but touchy.'

'Oh,
dash
it!'

'The best I could expect if I went and told her there was a change in the programme would be to have my neck wrung and my remains trampled on. But listen,' said Eggy. 'Ann's all right. Why can't she just go on being nursemaid to this young sausage merchant here?'