“Explain?” she cried. “How can you explain? You–my nephew, the heir to the title, behaving like a common rowdy in the streets of London… your name in the papers…
“If you knew the circumstances.”
“The circumstances? They are in the evening paper. They are in print.”
“In verse,” added Lord Marshmoreton. He chuckled amiably at the recollection. He was an easily amused man. “You ought to read it, my boy. Some of it was capital…”
“John!”
“But deplorable, of course,” added Lord Marshmoreton hastily. “Very deplorable.” He endeavoured to regain his sister’s esteem by a show of righteous indignation. “What do you mean by it, damn it? You’re my only son. I have watched you grow from child to boy, from boy to man, with tender solicitude. I have wanted to be proud of you. And all the time, dash it, you are prowling about London like a lion, seeking whom you may devour, terrorising the metropolis, putting harmless policemen in fear of their lives…”
“Will you listen to me for a moment?” shouted Percy. He began to speak rapidly, as one conscious of the necessity of saying his say while the saying was good. “The facts are these. I was walking along Piccadilly on my way to lunch at the club, when, near Burlington Arcade, I was amazed to see Maud.”
Lady Caroline uttered an exclamation.
“Maud? But Maud was here.”
“I can’t understand it,” went on Lord Marshmoreton, pursuing his remarks. Righteous indignation had, he felt, gone well. It might be judicious to continue in that vein, though privately he held the opinion that nothing in Percy’s life so became him as this assault on the Force. Lord Marshmoreton, who in his time had committed all the follies of youth, had come to look on his blameless son as scarcely human. “It’s not as if you were wild. You’ve never got into any scrapes at Oxford. You’ve spent your time collecting old china and prayer rugs. You wear flannel next your skin…”
“Will you please be quiet,” said Lady Caroline impatiently. “Go on, Percy.”
“Oh, very well,” said Lord Marshmoreton. “I only spoke. I merely made a remark.”
“You say you saw Maud in Piccadilly, Percy?”
“Precisely. I was on the point of putting it down to an extraordinary resemblance, when suddenly she got into a cab. Then I knew.”
Lord Marshmoreton could not permit this to pass in silence. He was a fair-minded man.
“Why shouldn’t the girl have got into a cab? Why must a girl walking along Piccadilly be my daughter Maud just because she got into a cab. London,” he proceeded, warming to the argument and thrilled by the clearness and coherence of his reasoning, “is full of girls who take cabs.”
“She didn’t take a cab.”
“You just said she did,” said Lord Marshmoreton cleverly.
“I said she got into a cab. There was somebody else already in the cab. A man. Aunt Caroline, it was the man.”
“Good gracious,” ejaculated Lady Caroline, falling into a chair as if she had been hamstrung.
“I am absolutely convinced of it,” proceeded Lord Belpher solemnly. “His behaviour was enough to confirm my suspicions. The cab had stopped in a block of the traffic, and I went up and requested him in a perfectly civil manner to allow me to look at the lady who had just got in. He denied that there was a lady in the cab. And I had seen her jump in with my own eyes. Throughout the conversation he was leaning out of the window with the obvious intention of screening whoever was inside from my view. I followed him along Piccadilly in another cab, and tracked him to the Carlton. When I arrived there he was standing on the pavement outside. There were no signs of Maud. I demanded that he tell me her whereabouts…”
“That reminds me,” said Lord Marshmoreton cheerfully, “of a story I read in one of the papers. I daresay it’s old. Stop me if you’ve heard it. A woman says to the maid: ‘Do you know anything of my husband’s whereabouts?’ And the maid replies–”
“Do be quiet,” snapped Lady Caroline. “I should have thought that you would be interested in a matter affecting the vital welfare of your only daughter.”