He swallowed once or twice, and his colour deepened, which took a bit of doing, for even when his soul is in repose he always looks like a clerical beetroot. It was as though the collar he buttons at the back was choking him. In a hoarse voice he said:
‘Bertie.’
‘Hullo?’
‘Bertie.’
‘Still here, old man, and hanging on your lips.’
‘Bertie, are you busy just now?’
‘Not more than usual.’
‘You could get away for a day or two?’
‘I suppose one might manage it.’
‘Then can you come to Totleigh?’
‘To stay with you, do you mean?’
‘No, to stay at Totleigh Towers.’
I stared at the man, wide-eyed as the expression is. Had it not been that I knew him to be abstemiousness itself, rarely indulging in anything stronger than a light lager, and not even that during Lent, I should have leaped to the conclusion that there beside me sat a curate who had been having a couple. My eyebrows rose till they nearly disarranged my front hair.
‘Stay where? Stinker, you’re not yourself, or you wouldn’t be gibbering like this. You can’t have forgotten the ordeal I passed through last time I went to Totleigh Towers.’
‘I know. But there’s something Stiffy wants you to do for her. She wouldn’t tell me what it was, but she said it was most important and that you would have to be on the spot to do it.’
I drew myself up. I was cold and resolute.
‘You’re crazy, Stinker!’
‘I don’t see why you say that.’
‘Then let me explain where your whole scheme falls to the ground. To begin with, is it likely that after what has passed between us Sir Watkyn B. would issue an invitation to one who has always been to him a pain in the neck to end all pains in the neck? If ever there was a man who was all in favour of me taking the high road while he took the low road, it is this same Bassett. His idea of a happy day is one spent with at least a hundred miles between him and Bertram.’
‘Madeline would invite you, if you sent her a wire asking if you could come for a day or two. She never consults Sir Watkyn about guests, it’s an understood thing that she has anyone she wants to at the house.’
This I knew to be true, but I ignored the suggestion and proceeded remorselessly.
‘In the second place, I know Stiffy. A charming girl whom, as I was telling Emerald Stoker, I am always prepared to clasp to my bosom, at least I would be if she wasn’t engaged to you, but one who is a cross between a ticking bomb and a poltergeist. She lacks that balanced judgment which we like to see in girls. She gets ideas, and if you care to call them bizarre ideas, it will be all right with me. I need scarcely remind you that when I last visited Totleigh Towers she egged you on to pinch Constable Eustace Oates’s helmet, the one thing a curate should shrink from doing if he wishes to rise to heights in the Church. She is, in short, about as loony a young shrimp as ever wore a wind-swept hair-do. What this commission is that she has in mind for me we cannot say, but going by the form book I see it as something totally unfit for human consumption. Didn’t she even hint at its nature?’
‘No. I asked, of course, but she said she would rather keep it under her hat till she saw you.’
‘She won’t see me.’
‘You won’t come to Totleigh?’
‘Not within fifty miles of the sewage dump.’
‘She’ll be terribly disappointed.’
‘You will administer spiritual solace. That’s your job. Tell her these things are sent to try us.’
‘She’ll probably cry.’
‘Nothing better for the nervous system. It does something, I forget what, to the glands. Ask any well-known Harley Street physician.’
I suppose he saw that my iron front was not to be shaken, for he made no further attempt to sell the idea to me. With a sigh that seemed to come up from the soles of the feet, he rose, said goodbye, knocked over the glass from which I had been refreshing myself and withdrew.