Laughing Gas (9 page)

I recognized the voice
. It was that of my Cousin Egre
mont. I remembered that he had said he was coming to pay me a visit in order to sample my cellar, and I might have known he would not let the grass grow under his feet.

'Reggie, old bird. Are you in, Reggie?'

Well, you know how it is. There are moments when you don't want to meet people. You just don't feel in the mood. I was, as I had told Ann Bannister, extremely fond of old Eggy, and in the past - as, for example, on the occasion of that New Year's Eve party of which he had spoken - I had often been glad of his company; but now I found myself shrinking from it. I felt that he would be surprised at finding a golden-haired child where he had expected to find a carroty-haired cousin, and there would be all sorts of tedious questionings and probings, and I simply wasn't equal to it.

So, to avoid the distasteful encounter, I just slid noiselessly from the chair and ducked down behind it, hoping that when he came in and saw nobody in the room he would go away again.

A fat chance, of course. I should have known his psychology better. Eggy isn't the sort of chap who goes away from rooms in which there is Scotch whisky just because they are empty. Let the fixings be there, and he does not worry about missing hosts. He came right in and made for the sideboard like a homing pigeon. I couldn't see him, but I heard a musical plashing, then a gollup, then another musical plashing, then another gollup, then a third musical plashing, and I could read his actions like a book. He had had a couple quick, and was now preparing to have another at his leisure.

Over this one he seemed disposed to linger a bit. The first fierce thirst was slaked, and he could now dally, so to speak and, as it were, rol
l the stuff round his tongue. I
heard him wander across the room, and the crackle of a match and a wisp of smoke rising to the ceiling showed that he had found my cigars. A moment later, there happened what I might have known would happen. He came over to the arm-chair and sank into it with a luxurious whoof. It was the only comfortable chair in the room, so naturally he had made a bee-line for it.

So there we were - he plainly all set for a cosy afternoon, and I crouching up against the wall, a bally prisoner. If I had been the Naval Treaty in a safe-deposit box at the Admiralty, I couldn't have been more securely tucked away.

It was one of those situations which make a chap wrinkle the brow and wonder how to act for the best, and I was engaged in doing this when there was a knocking at the front door.

Apparently someone stood without

Chapter
8

'Come
in,' called Eggy.

I couldn't see, of course, who it was who entered in response to this invitation, but from the fact that he now rose I gathered that the new arrival must be a girl of sorts. You don't get old Eggy hoisting himself out of arm-chairs just to greet the male sex. The voice that spoke told me I was right. It was a crisp, authoritative voice, but definitely female.

'Good afternoon,' it said.

'Good afternoon,' said Eggy.

'Are you the owner of this bungalow?'

'Oh, no.'

'You seem to be making yourself at home.'

'Oh, that's all right. It
belongs to a chap called Haver
shot, and I'm his flesh and blood. Havershot's. He's my cousin.'

'I see.'

'And on his behalf - I feel sure he would spring to the task, if he were here - may I offer you a spot?' 'A what?'

'A snifter. I can recommend the Scotch.'

'Are you suggesting that I should drink liquor?'

'That's the idea.'

'Well, let me tell you, Mr Man, —'

'- ering.'

'Pardon?’

'The name is Mannering.'

'Oh? Well, let me tell you, Mr Mannering, that I don't drink liquor. I have come here collecting subscriptions for the Temple of the New Dawn.'

'The - what was that again?'

'Haven't you ever heard of the Temple of the New Dawn?'

'Not that I remember.'

'Haven't you ever heard
of Sister Lora Luella Stott?'

'No. Who is she?'

'She is the woman who is leading California out of the swamp of alcohol.'

'Good God!' I could tell by Eggy's voice that he was interested. 'Is there a swamp of alcohol in these parts? What an amazing country America is. Talk about every modern convenience. Do you mean you can simply go there and
lap?
'

'I was speaking figuratively.'

'I knew there was a catch,' said Eggy, disappointed. 'Sister Lora Luella is converting California to true temperance.' 'How perfectly frightful.'

There was a silence. From her next words, I fancied that the female must have been examining Eggy with a certain intentness, for she said:

'My! You look terrible.'

Eggy said there was no need to be personal. She said yes, there was.

'You're all twitchy, and your eyes are like a fish's. And your skin!'

'It's the best I've got,' said Eggy, a bit stiffly, it seemed to me.

'Yes, and it's the best you'll always have, so long as you go on steeping yourself in that foul stuff. Do you know what that is you're drinking?'

'White Thistle.'

'Black ruin. Shall I tell you what Sister Lora Luella Stott would do if she were here?' 'What?'

'She would dash the glass from your hand.'

'Oh?' said Eggy, and I'm not sure it wasn't 'Ho?' 'She would, would she?'

'That's what she'd do. And she would be right. Even a poor human wreck like you is worth saving.'

'Poor human wreck?'

'That was what I said.'

'Ho?' said Eggy, quite distinctly this time.

There was another silence.

'Tell me,' said Eggy at length, and there was hauteur in his voice. 'Just tell me this, Miss —' 'Prescott.'

'Just tell me this, Miss Prescott. Are you by any chance under the impression - have you allowed yourself to run away with the foolish notion - are you really such a poor judge of form as to imagine that I am stinko?'

'If by "stinko" you mean —'

'I mean stinko. Listen,' said Eggy, with a certain quiet pride. 'British Constitution. Truly rural. The Leith police dismisseth us. She stood at the door of Burgess's fish-sauce shop in Ethelbertha Street, Oswaldtwistle, welcoming him in. Now what?'

I must say I couldn't have found an answer to that, but the female did.

'Pshaw!' Very educational for the kiddies, no doubt, but that doesn't mean a thing. All those silly shibboleths.'

'I can say that, too. Silly shibboleths. There. Ethelbertha Oswaldtwistle stood at the door of Burgess's fish-sauce shop, dismissing the Leith police with silly shibboleths. You hear? As clear as a bell. And you cast innuendos on my sobriety.'

'Pshaw!' said the female, continuing. 'The mere fact that you can say all that makes it all the worse. It means that you have passed the stage where your tongue goes back on you and are headed straight for the danger-line. I know what I'm talking about. My father used to drink till he saw the light, and he prided himself on being able to say anything at any time of the day or night, no matter how swacked he might be, without tripping over a syllable. I always remember what the doctor said to him. "That's only a wayside station," the doc. said. "You're an express and you don't stop at the wayside stations. But, oh boy! Wait till you hit that terminus." '

'Terminus?'

'He meant when he would begin to see things —' 'Don't talk about seeing things I' '- and hear voices —'

'And don't,' said Eggy, 'talk about hearing voices!'

'That's just what I am going to talk about. Somebody's got to do something to snap you out of it. I'm being your best friend, really. You ought to be thanking me on your knees for warning you. Yes, sir, unless you pull up mighty quick, you're slated to get yours. I know the symptoms. What made Pop see the light was meeting a pink rabbit that asked him for a match, and something like that's going to happen to you if you don't take a brace on yourself. So think it over. Well, I mustn't stay here all afternoon, talking to you. I've my subscriptions to collect. How do you feel about a small donation to the cause?'

'Pshaw I' said Eggy, rather cleverly coming back at her with her own stuff.

'Well, I wasn't counting on it,' said the female. 'But you just remember what I've told you.'

She apparently popped off at this point, for the armchair gave a scrunch as Eggy dropped into it again. I could hear him breathing heavily.

Now, during this conversation, though I had been listening attentively to every word, I suppose what they call my subconscious mind must have been putting in a lot of solid work without my knowing it. Because when I turned to my personal affairs once more, I found that my whole mental outlook had changed. I had switched completely round from my former view of things and now saw that in avoiding Eggy I had been making a strategic error.

That frightful hunger for doughnuts and the rest of the outfit was still gnawing me, and I now perceived that something constructive might be done about it. Eggy, instead of being a pest, might prove a life-saver. He wasn't a millionaire, of course, but he had a comfortable income and would surely, I felt, be good for the price of an all-day sucker, if properly approached. I rose, accordingly, with the intention of making a touch.

Mark you, I can see now, looking back, that the moment was ill-chosen. But this didn't occur to me at the time. All I was thinking about was getting the needful. And so, as I say, I rose.

The prospect whom I was planning to contact, as they call it in America, was leaning back in the arm-chair, still breathing in that rather stertorous manner, and my head came up just behind his. I was thus nicely placed for addressing my remarks to his left ear.

'Eggy,' I said.

I remember once, when a kid - from what motive I cannot recall, but no doubt just in a spirit of clean fun -hiding in a sort of alcove
on the main staircase at Biddle
ford Castle and saying 'Bool' to a butler who was coming up with a tray containing a decanter, a syphon, and glasses. Biddleford is popularly supposed to be haunted by a Wailing Lady, and the first time the butler touched ground was when he came up against a tiger-skin rug in the hall two flights down. And I had always looked on this as the high spot in emotional expression until, as I have related, I rose quietly from behind the arm-chair and said: 'Eggy.'

The old boy's reaction wasn't quite so immediate as the butler's had been. The latter had got off the mark instantly, as if he had had the wings of a dove, but Eggy for perhaps six seconds just sat in a frozen kind of way, staring straight in front of him without moving a muscle. Then his head came slowly round and our eyes met.

This was the point at which he really buckled down to it. It was now that after a leisurely start he showed a genuine flash of speed. One piercing scream escaped his lips, and it was still ringing in the air when I found myself alone. Despite the fact that he had been lying back in an arm-chair when the idea of moving occurred to him, Egremont Mannering was through the front door in - I should say - considerably under a second and a quarter. He was just a blur and a whizzing noise.

I hurried to the window and peered cautiously out. I was curious to see where the dear old chap had landed. At the rate at which he had been travelling, it seemed incredible that he could still be in California, but to my surprise there he was, only a few yards away. I suppose he must have braked very quickly.

With him was a girl in beige, and when she spoke I knew that this must be our recent caller. Presumably she had been starting to walk away, when that fearful yell had brought her back to get the news bulletin. Eggy was clutching at her arm, like a drowning man at a straw.

I must say the girl's appearance surprised me a bit. From the tone of her voice and the general trend of her conversation I had somehow got the impression of somebody of the Beulah Brinkmeyer type, but she was quite pretty in, I admit, a rather austere kind of way. She looked like a vicar's daughter who plays hockey and ticks off the villagers when they want to marry their deceased wives' sisters.

'Now what?' she said.

Eggy continued to clutch at her arm.

'Woof!' he said. 'In there
'

'What's in there?'

'A ghastly imp's in there. It poked its head over the back of my chair - absolutely cheek by jowl — and said: "Eggy, old top, I've come for you, Eggy! " '

'It did.'

'You bet it did. "I've come for you, Eggy, old top," it said. Dashed familiar. I'd never met the little bounder in my life.'

'You're sure it wasn't a pink rabbit?' 'No, no, no. It was an imp. Do you think I don't know an imp when I see one?' 'What sort of imp?'

'The very worst type. I disliked it at first sight.' The girl pursed her lips. 'Well, I warned you.'

'Yes, but how was I to know it was going to happen to me right away like that? It was the awful suddenness of the thing that jarred me. This cad of an imp just appeared. Without a word of warning.'