“Good luck to you,” he said gruffly. “Don’t you come over the Alps again.”
“I’ve given up mountain climbing,” said Johnny.
He had taken his farewell of the Governor, and now the only thing to remind him of his association with the grim prison he had left was the warder who walked by his side to the station. He had some time to wait, and Johnny tried to get some information from another angle.
“No, I don’t know Jeff Legge,” said the warder, shaking his head. “I knew the old man: he was here until twelve months ago – you were here, too, weren’t you, Gray?”
Johnny nodded.
“Mr. Jeff Legge has never been over the Alps, then?” he asked sardonically.
“No, not in this prison, and he wasn’t in Parkhurst or Portland, so far as I can remember. I’ve been at both places. I’ve heard the men talking about him. They say he’s clever, which means that he’ll be putting out his tins one morning. Goodbye, Gray, and be good!”
Johnny gripped the outstretched hand of the man, and, when he was in the carriage, took out his silk handkerchief and wiped his hand of the last prison contact.
His servant was waiting for him at Paddington when he arrived that afternoon, and with him, straining at a leash, a small, lop-eared fox terrier, who howled his greeting long before Johnny had seen the group. In another second the dog was struggling in his arms, licking his face, his ears and his hair, and whining his joy at the reunion. There were tears in Johnny’s eyes when he put the dog down on the platform.
“There are a number of letters for you, sir. Will you dine at home?”
The excellent Parker might have been welcoming his master from a short sojourn at Monte Carlo, so very unemotional was he.
“Yes, I’ll dine at home,” said Johnny. He stepped into the taxicab that Parker had hired, and Spot leapt after him.
“There is no baggage, sir?” asked Parker gravely through the open window.
“There is no baggage,” said Johnny as gravely. “You had better ride back with me, Parker.”
The man hesitated.
“It would be a very great liberty, sir,” he said.
“Not so great a liberty as I have had taken with me during the past year and nine months,” said Johnny.
As the cab came out into dismal Chapel Street, the greatly daring Parker asked:
“I hope you have not had too bad a time, sir?”
Johnny laughed.
“It has not been pleasant, Parker. Prisons seldom are.”
“I suppose not, sir,” agreed Parker, and added unnecessarily: “I have never been in prison, sir.”
Johnny’s flat was in Queen’s Gate, and at the sight of the peaceful luxury of his study he caught his breath.
“You’re a fool,” he said aloud to himself.
“Yes, sir,” said the obliging Parker.
That night many men came furtively to the flat in Queen’s Gate, and Johnny, after admitting the first of these, called Parker into his small diningroom.
“Parker, I am told that during my absence in the country even staid men have acquired the habit of attending cinema performances?”
“Well, sir, I like the pictures myself,” admitted Parker.
“Then go and find one that lasts until eleven o’clock,” said Johnny.
“You mean, sir — ?”
“I mean I don’t want you here tonight.”
Parker’s face fell, but he was a good servant.
“Very good, sir,” he said, and went out, wondering sorrowfully what desperate plans his master was hatching.
At half-past ten the last of the visitors took his leave.
“I’ll see Peter tomorrow,” said Johnny, tossing the end of his cigarette into the hall fireplace. “You know nothing of this wedding, when it is to take place?”
“No, Captain. I only know Peter slightly.”
“Who is the bridegroom?”
“A swell, by all accounts – Peter is a plausible chap, and he’d pull in the right kind. A major in the Canadian Army, I’ve heard, and a very nice man. Peter can catch mugs easier than some people can catch flies—”
“Peter was never a mug-catcher,” said John Gray sharply.
“I don’t know,” said the other. “There’s one born every minute.”
“But they take a long time to grow up, and the women get first pluck,” said Johnny good-humouredly.
Parker, returning at 11.15, found his master sitting before a fireplace which was choked with burnt paper.
Johnny reached Horsham the next afternoon soon after lunch, and none who saw the athletic figure striding up the Horsham Road would guess that less than two days before he had been the inmate of a convict cell.
He had come to make his last desperate fight for happiness. How it would end, what argument to employ, he did not know. There was one, and one only, but that he could not use.
As he turned into Down Road he saw two big limousines standing one behind the other, and wondered what social event was in progress.
Manor Hill stood aloof from its suburban neighbours, a sedate, redbrick house, its walls gay with clematis. Johnny avoided the front gates and passed down a side path which, as he knew, led to the big lawn behind, where Peter loved to sun himself at this hour.
He paused as he emerged into the open. A pretty parlourmaid was talking to an elderly man, who wore without distinction the livery of a butler. His lined face was puckered uncomfortably, and his head was bent in a listening attitude, though it was next to impossible for a man totally deaf to miss hearing all that was said.
“I don’t know what sort of houses you’ve been in, and what sort of people you’ve been working for, but I can tell you that if I find you in my room again, looking in my boxes, I shall tell Mr Kane. I won’t have it, Mr. Ford!”
“No, miss,” said the butler, huskily.
It was not, Johnny knew, emotion which produced the huskiness. Barney Ford had been husky from his youth – probably squawked huskily in his cradle.
“If you are a burglar and trying to keep your hand in, I understand it,” the girl continued hotly, “but you’re supposed to be a respectable man! I won’t have this underhand prying and sneaking. Understand that! I won’t have it!”
