RALLYING ROUND PERCY
It Archie through the whole of a long to how and the and sky of life can cloud over and with what a man who that his are on solid ground can himself in Fate’s gumbo. He recalled, with the with which one such things, that that he had from his without a in the world, his by the that Lucille would be him for a space. He had in his bath. Yes, he had like a linnet. And now—
Some men would have the of Mr. George Benham from their mind as having nothing to do with themselves, but Archie had been of this stuff. The that Mr. Benham, from being an with he had occasionally in New York, had no upon him him little. He to see his in trouble. On the other hand, what he do? To Miss Silverton out and with her—even if he did it without cooing—would an them which, told him, might her manner after Lucille’s return with just that of Auld Lang Syne which makes so awkward.
His whole being from to Miss Silverton that which the female is so to turn into an ell; and when, just as he was about to go in to dinner, he met her in the and she at him and him that her was now recovered, he away like a of the prairie, and, his of the table d’hote in the same room with the creature, off to the smoking-room, where he did the best he with sandwiches and coffee.
Having got through the time as best he till eleven o’clock, he up to bed.
The room to which he and Lucille had been by the management was on the second floor, sunny by day and at night with and of the pines. Hitherto Archie had always taking a final on the the woods, but, to-night such was his that he prepared to go to directly he had closed the door. He to the to his pyjamas.
His thought, when after a second no were visible, was that this was another of those which on days when life goes wrong. He the for a third time with an eye. From every of Lucille’s, but no pyjamas. He was a soft to on a point-to-point for his missing property, when something in the his and him for a moment puzzled.
He have that Lucille did not a négligé. Why, she had told him a dozen times that was a colour which she did not like. He perplexedly; and as he did so, from near the window came a soft cough.
Archie and the room to as close a as that which he had upon the cupboard. Nothing was visible. The window opening on to the wide. The was empty.
“Urrf!”
This time there was no possibility of error. The had come from the of the window.
Archie was of a pringly about the of his closely-cropped back-hair, as he moved across the room. The was uncanny; and, as he tip-toed the window, old stories, read in moments with of light in the room, through his mind. He had the feeling—precisely as every in those had had—that he was not alone.
Nor was he. In a an arm-chair, up, with his on the of the wicker-work, a bulldog.
“Urrf!” said the bulldog.
“Good God!” said Archie.
There was a pause in which the looked at Archie and Archie looked at the bulldog.
Normally, Archie was a dog-lover. His was so great as to prevent him stopping, when in the street, and himself to any dog he met. In a house, his act was to the population, roll it on its or backs, and it in the ribs. As a boy, his had been to a surgeon; and, though the years had him of his career, he all about dogs, their points, their manners, their customs, and their in and in health. In short, he loved dogs, and, had they met under conditions, he would have been on excellent terms with this one the space of a minute. But, as were, he from and to dumbly.
And then his eye, aside, with the objects: a pink dressing-gown, over the of a chair, an suit-case, and, on the bureau, a photograph in a of a in evening-dress he had in his life.
Much has been of the of the who, returning to his home, it out of all recognition; but have neglected the theme—far more poignant—of the man who goes up to his room in an hotel and it full of somebody else’s dressing-gowns and bulldogs.
Bulldogs! Archie’s jumped and with a movement, two somersaults, and stopped beating. The truth, its way slowly through the concrete, had at last to his brain. He was not only in somebody else’s room, and a woman’s at that. He was in the room to Miss Vera Silverton.
He not it. He would have been prepared to the last he borrow from his father-in-law on the that he had no error in the number over the door. Yet, nevertheless, such was the case, and, though his were at the moment, he was to that it him to withdraw.
He to the door, and, as he did so, the to turn.
The cloud which had settled on Archie’s mind abruptly. For an he was to think about a hundred times more than was his wont. Good had him to easy of the electric-light switch. He it back, and was in darkness. Then, and to the floor, he under the bed. The of his against what appeared to be some of or support, unless it had been there by the maker as a practical joke, on the of this of thing some day, with the of the opening door. Then the light was on again, and the in the gave a woofle.
“And how is mamma’s angel?”
Rightly that the had not been to himself and that no social that he reply, Archie pressed his against the and said nothing. The question was not repeated, but from the other of the room came the of a dog.
“Did he think his had and was up?”
The picture which these up Archie with that for the might-have-been which is always so painful. He was his position physically as well as distressing. It was under the bed, and the were than anything he had encountered. Also, it appeared to be the of the at the Hotel Hermitage to use the space the as a for all the which they off the carpet, and much of this was itself into his nose and mouth. The two which Archie would have liked most to do at that moment were to kill Miss Silverton—if possible, painfully—and then to the of his life sneezing.
After a period he a open, and noted the as promising. As the old married man, he that it the away of hair-pins. About now the woman would be looking at herself in the with her down. Then she would it. Then she would it up into thingummies. Say, ten minutes for this. And after that she would go to and turn out the light, and he would be able, after her a of time to go to sleep, to out and leg it. Allowing at a three-quarters of—
“Come out!”
Archie stiffened. For an a came to him that this remark, like the others, might be to the dog.
“Come out from under that bed!” said a voice. “And mind how you come! I’ve got a pistol!”
“Well, I to say, you know,” said Archie, in a voice, from his like a and as as a man can who has just his against the leg of a bed, “I all this rummy, but—”
“For the love of Mike!” said Miss Silverton.
The point to Archie well taken and the on the expressed.
“What are you doing in my room?”
“Well, if it comes to that, you know—shouldn’t have mentioned it if you hadn’t the up in the of chit-chat—what are you doing in mine?”
“Yours?”
“Well, there’s been a of some somewhere, but this was the room I had last night,” said Archie.
“But the desk-clerk said that he had asked you if it would be satisfactory to you it up to me, and you said yes. I come here every summer, when I’m not working, and I always have this room.”
“By Jove! I now. The did say something to me about the room, but I was of something else and it over the top. So that’s what he was talking about, was it?”
Miss Silverton was frowning. A moving-picture director, her face, would have that she was disappointment.
“Nothing right for me in this world,” she said, regretfully. “When I of your leg out from under the bed, I did think that was all up for a and, at last, I close my and see the thing in the papers. On the page, with photographs: ‘Plucky Actress Captures Burglar.’ Darn it!”
“Fearfully sorry, you know!”
“I just needed something like that. I’ve got a Press-agent, and I will say for him that he eats well and well and has just to cash his monthly cheque without what he into the bank for, but of that you can take it from me he’s not one of the world’s workers! He’s about as much solid use to a girl with as a pain in the ribs. It’s three since he got me into print at all, and then the thing he think up was that my breakfast-fruit was an apple. Well, I ask you!”
“Rotten!” said Archie.
“I did think that for once my had gone to work and was doing something for me. ‘Stage Star and Midnight Marauder,’” Miss Silverton, wistfully. “‘Footlight Favourite Foils Felon.’”
“Bit thick!” Archie, sympathetically. “Well, you’ll be wanting to to and all that of rot, so I may as well be popping, what! Cheerio!”
A came into Miss Silverton’s eyes.
“Wait!”
“Eh?”
“Wait! I’ve got an idea!” The had gone from her manner. She was and alert. “Sit down!”
“Sit down?”
“Sure. Sit and take the off the arm-chair. I’ve of something.”
Archie sat as directed. At his the him from the basket.
“Do they know you in this hotel?”
“Know me? Well, I’ve been here about a week.”
“I mean, do they know who you are? Do they know you’re a good citizen?”
“Well, if it comes to that, I they don’t. But—”
“Fine!” said Miss Silverton, appreciatively. “Then it’s all right. We can on!”
“Carry on!”
“Why, sure! All I want is to the thing into the papers. It doesn’t to me if it out later that there was a mistake and that you weren’t a trying for my after all. It makes just as good a either way. I can’t think why that me before. Here have I been kicking you weren’t a burglar, when it doesn’t amount to a hill of you are or not. All I’ve got to do is to out and and the hotel, and they come in and pinch you, and I give the to the papers, and everything’s fine!”
Archie from his chair.
“I say! What!”
“What’s on your mind?” Miss Silverton, considerately. “Don’t you think it’s a scheme?”
“Nifty! My dear old soul! It’s frightful!”
“Can’t see what’s with it,” Miss Silverton. “After I’ve had someone New York on the long-distance ’phone and give the to the papers you can explain, and they’ll let you out. Surely to you don’t object, as a personal to me, to an hour or two in a cell? Why, they haven’t got a prison at all out in these parts, and you’ll be locked in a room. A child of ten do it on his head,” said Miss Silverton. “A child of six,” she emended.
“But, it—I mean—what I to say—I’m married!”
“Yes?” said Miss Silverton, with the of interest. “I’ve been married myself. I wouldn’t say it’s a thing, mind you, for those that like it, but a little of it goes a long way. My husband,” she proceeded, reminiscently, “was a man. I gave him a two-weeks’ try-out, and then I told him to go on travelling. My second husband—now, he wasn’t a in any of the word. I once—”
“You don’t the point. The old point! You fail to it. If this thing comes out, my wife will be most sick!”
Miss Silverton him with surprise.
“Do you to say you would let a little thing like that in the way of my on the page of all the papers—with photographs? Where’s your chivalry?”
“Never mind my chivalry!”
“Besides, what it if she a little sore? She’ll soon over it. You can put that right. Buy her a box of candy. Not that I’m for myself. What I always say is, it may taste good, but look what it to your hips! I give you my word that, when I gave up candy, I eleven the week. My second husband—no, I’m a liar, it was my third—my third husband said—Say, what’s the big idea? Where are you going?”
“Out!” said Archie, firmly. “Bally out!”
A light in Miss Silverton’s eyes.
“That’ll be all of that!” she said, the pistol. “You right where you are, or I’ll fire!”
“Right-o!”
“I it!”
“My dear old soul,” said Archie, “in the in France I had off like that at me all day and every day for close on five years, and here I am, what! I to say, if I’ve got to choose here and being in your room by the local and having the thing into the papers and all of trouble happening, and my wife the wind up and—I say, if I’ve got to choose—”
“Suck a and start again!” said Miss Silverton.
“Well, what I to say is, I’d much take a of a in the old bean than that. So it off and the best o’ luck!”
Miss Silverton the pistol, into a chair, and into tears.
“I think you’re the man I met!” she sobbed. “You know perfectly well the would send me into a fit!”
“In that case,” said Archie, relieved, “cheerio, good luck, pip-pip, toodle-oo, and good-bye-ee! I’ll be shifting!”
“Yes, you will!” Miss Silverton, energetically, with from her collapse. “Yes, you will, I by no means suppose! You think, just I’m no with a pistol, I’m helpless. You wait! Percy!”
“My name is not Percy.”
“I said it was. Percy! Percy, come to muzzer!”
There was a from the arm-chair. A on the carpet. Out into the room, himself along as though sleep had his joints, and through his nose, moved the bulldog. Seen in the open, he looked more than he had done in his basket.
“Guard him, Percy! Good dog, him! Oh, heavens! What’s the with him?”
And with these the woman, a of anguish, herself on the the animal.
Percy was, indeed, in shape. He unable to his across the room. There was a in his back, and, as his touched him, he out plaintively,
“Percy! Oh, what is the with him? His nose is burning!”
Now was the time, with of the enemy’s occupied, for Archie to have from the room. But never, since the day when at the age of eleven he had a large, damp, and with a three miles and deposited him on the best sofa in his mother’s drawing-room, had he been able to the of a dog in trouble.
“He look bad, what!”
“He’s dying! Oh, he’s dying! Is it distemper? He’s had distemper.”
Archie the with the of the expert. He his head.
“It’s not that,” he said. “Dogs with make a of noise.”
“But he is making a noise!”
“No, he’s making a noise. Great and snifting. Not the same thing at all. I to say, when they they snift, and when they they—as it were—snuffle. That’s how you can tell. If you ask me”—he passed his hand over the dog’s back. Percy another cry. “I know what’s the with him.”
“A of a man him at rehearsal. Do you think he’s internally?”
“It’s rheumatism,” said Archie. “Jolly old rheumatism. That’s all that’s the trouble.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely!”
“But what can I do?”
“Give him a good bath, and mind and him well. He’ll have a good sleep then, and won’t have any pain. Then, thing to-morrow, you want to give him of soda.”
“I’ll that.”—“I’ll it for you. You ought to give him from ten to twenty three times a day in an of water. And him with any good embrocation.”
“And he won’t die?”
“Die! He’ll live to be as old as you are!-I to say—”
“I you!” said Miss Silverton, emotionally.
Archie hastily.
“No, no, not! Nothing like that required, really!”
“You’re a darling!”
“Yes. I no. No, no, really!”
“I don’t know what to say. What can I say?”
“Good night,” said Archie.
“I wish there was something I do! If you hadn’t been here, I should have gone off my head!”
A great idea across Archie’s brain.
“Do you want to do something?”
“Anything!”
“Then I do wish, like a dear sweet soul, you would to New York to-morrow and go on with those rehearsals.”
Miss Silverton her head.
“I can’t do that!”
“Oh, right-o! But it isn’t much to ask, what!”
“Not much to ask! I’ll that man for kicking Percy!”
“Now listen, dear old soul. You’ve got the all wrong. As a of fact, old Benham told me himself that he has the and respect for Percy, and wouldn’t have him for the world. And, you know it was more a of push than a kick. You might almost call it a light shove. The is, it was dark in the theatre, and he was it for some or other, no with the best motives, and he to his toe on the old bean.”
“Then why didn’t he say so?”
“As as I make out, you didn’t give him a chance.”
Miss Silverton wavered.
“I always going after I’ve walked out on a show,” she said. “It so weak!”
“Not a of it! They’ll give three and think you a topper. Besides, you’ve got to go to New York in any case. To take Percy to a vet., you know, what!”
“Of course. How right you always are!” Miss Silverton again. “Would you be if I to the show?”
“I’d go about the hotel! Great of mine, Benham. A old bean, and very cut up about the whole affair. Besides, think of all the out of work—the and the what-d’you-call-’ems!”
“Very well.”
“You’ll do it?”
“Yes.”
“I say, you are one of the best! Absolutely like mother made! That’s fine! Well, I think I’ll be saying good night.”
“Good night. And thank you so much!”
“Oh, no, not!”
Archie moved to the door.
“Oh, by the way.”
“Yes?”
“If I were you, I think I should catch the very train you can to New York. You see—er—you ought to take Percy to the vet. as soon as you can.”
“You do think of everything,” said Miss Silverton.
“Yes,” said Archie, meditatively.
