P.P.S. I’m a worm.
The young clerk at the steamship offices appeared rejoiced to see Jimmy once more. With a sunny smile he snatched a pencil from his ear and plunged it into the vitals of the Atlantic.
“How about E. a hundred and eight?”
“Suits me.”
“You’re too late to go in the passenger-list, of course.”
Jimmy did not reply. He was gazing rigidly at a girl who had just come in, a girl with red hair and a friendly smile.
“So you’re sailing on the -Atlantic-, too!” she said, with a glance at the chart on the counter. “How odd! We have just decided to go back on her too. There’s nothing to keep us here and we’re all homesick. Well, you see I wasn’t run over after I left you.”
A delicious understanding relieved Jimmy’s swimming brain, as thunder relieves the tense and straining air. The feeling that he was going mad left him, as the simple solution of his mystery came to him. This girl must have heard of him in New York–perhaps she knew people whom he knew and it was on hearsay, not on personal acquaintance, that she based that dislike of him which she had expressed with such freedom and conviction so short a while before at the Regent Grill. She did not know who he was!
Into this soothing stream of thought cut the voice of the clerk.
“What name, please?”
Jimmy’s mind rocked again. Why were these things happening to him to-day of all days, when he needed the tenderest treatment, when he had a headache already?
The clerk was eyeing him expectantly. He had laid down his pencil and was holding aloft a pen. Jimmy gulped. Every name in the English language had passed from his mind. And then from out of the dark came inspiration.
“Bayliss,” he croaked.
The girl held out her hand.
“Then we can introduce ourselves at last. My name is Ann Chester. How do you do, Mr. Bayliss?”
“How do you do, Miss Chester?”
The clerk had finished writing the ticket, and was pressing labels and a pink paper on him. The paper, he gathered dully, was a form and had to be filled up. He examined it, and found it to be a searching document. Some of its questions could be answered off-hand, others required thought.
“Height?” Simple. Five foot eleven.
“Hair?” Simple. Brown.
“Eyes?” Simple again. Blue.
Next, queries of a more offensive kind.
“Are you a polygamist?”
He could answer that. Decidedly no. One wife would be ample–provided she had red-gold hair, brown-gold eyes, the right kind of mouth, and a dimple. Whatever doubts there might be in his mind on other points, on that one he had none whatever.
“Have you ever been in prison?”
Not yet.
And then a very difficult one. “Are you a lunatic?”
Jimmy hesitated. The ink dried on his pen. He was wondering.
…
In the dim cavern of Paddington Station the boat-train snorted impatiently, varying the process with an occasional sharp shriek. The hands of the station clock pointed to ten minutes to six. The platform was a confused mass of travellers, porters, baggage, trucks, boys with buns and fruits, boys with magazines, friends, relatives, and Bayliss the butler, standing like a faithful watchdog beside a large suitcase. To the human surf that broke and swirled about him he paid no attention. He was looking for the young master.
Jimmy clove the crowd like a one-man flying-wedge. Two fruit and bun boys who impeded his passage drifted away like leaves on an Autumn gale.
“Good man!” He possessed himself of the suitcase. “I was afraid you might not be able to get here.”
“The mistress is dining out, Mr. James. I was able to leave the house.”
“Have you packed everything I shall want?”
“Within the scope of a suitcase, yes, sir.”
“Splendid! Oh, by the way, give this letter to my father, will you?”
“Very good, sir.”
“I’m glad you were able to manage. I thought your voice sounded doubtful over the phone.”
“I was a good deal taken aback, Mr. James. Your decision to leave was so extremely sudden.”
“So was Columbus’. You know about him? He saw an egg standing on its head and whizzed off like a jack-rabbit.”