So great was the shock that for some moments it kept him silent, and before he could recover speech Archie had explained.
“It’s a birthday present from Lucille, don’t you know,”
Mr. Brewster crushed down the breezy speech he had intended to utter.
“Lucille gave me–that?” he muttered.
He swallowed pathetically. He was suffering, but the iron courage of the Brewsters stood him in good stead. This man was no weakling. Presently the rigidity of his face relaxed. He was himself again. Of all things in the world he loved his daughter most, and if, in whoever mood of temporary insanity, she had brought herself to suppose that this beastly daub was the sort of thing he would like for a birthday present, he must accept the situation like a man. He would on the whole have preferred death to a life lived in the society of the Wigmore Venus, but even that torment must be endured if the alternative was the hurting of Lucille’s feelings.
“I think I’ve chosen a pretty likely spot to hang the thing, what?” said Archie cheerfully. “It looks well alongside those Japanese prints, don’t you think? Sort of stands out.”
Mr. Brewster licked his dry lips and grinned a ghastly grin.
“It does stand out!” he agreed.
CHAPTER XXVI
A TALE OF A GRANDFATHER
Archie was not a man who readily allowed himself to become worried, especially about people who were not in his own immediate circle of friends, but in the course of the next week he was bound to admit that he was not altogether easy in his mind about his father-in- law’s mental condition. He had read all sorts of things in the Sunday papers and elsewhere about the constant strain to which captains of industry are subjected, a strain which sooner or later is only too apt to make the victim go all blooey, and it seemed to him that Mr. Brewster was beginning to find the going a trifle too tough for his stamina. Undeniably he was behaving in an odd manner, and Archie, though no physician, was aware that, when the American business-man, that restless, ever-active human machine, starts behaving in an odd manner, the next thing yon know is that two strong men, one attached to each arm, are hurrying him into the cab bound for Bloomingdale.
He did not confide his misgivings to Lucille, not wishing to cause her anxiety. He hunted up Reggie van Tuyl at the club, and sought advice from him.
“I say, Reggie, old thing–present company excepted–have there been any loonies in your family?”
Reggie stirred in the slumber which always gripped him in the early afternoon.
“Loonies?” he mumbled, sleeply. “Rather! My uncle Edgar thought he was twins.”
“Twins, eh?”
“Yes. Silly idea! I mean, you’d have thought one of my uncle Edgar would have been enough for any man.”
“How did the thing start?” asked Archie.
“Start? Well, the first thing we noticed was when he began wanting two of everything. Had to set two places for him at dinner and so on. Always wanted two seats at the theatre. Ran into money, I can tell you.”
“He didn’t behave rummily up till then? I mean to say, wasn’t sort of jumpy and all that?”
“Not that I remember. Why?”
Archie’s tone became grave.
“Well, I’ll tell you, old man, though I don’t want it to go any farther, that I’m a bit worried about my jolly old father-in-law. I believe he’s about to go in off the deep-end. I think he’s cracking under the strain. Dashed weird his behaviour has been the last few days.”
“Such as?” murmured Mr. van Tuyl.
“Well, the other morning I happened to be in his suite–incidentally he wouldn’t go above ten dollars, and I wanted twenty-five-and he suddenly picked up a whacking big paper-weight and bunged it for all he was worth.”
“At you?”
“Not at me. That was the rummy part of it. At a mosquito on the wall, he said. Well, I mean to say, do chappies bung paper-weights at mosquitoes? I mean, is it done?”
“Smash anything?”
“Curiously enough, no. But he only just missed a rather decent picture which Lucille had given him for his birthday. Another foot to the left and it would have been a goner.”