Jumping Jenny Read Free Page A

and after he had filled the latter, Roger noticed that he put down the tankard, which he had been holding in his right hand, and gave his left arm a jerk upwards with that hand before he could lift the bottle over the edge of the table. The disability was so obvious that Roger remarked on it.
    “Thank you,” he said, taking the tankard. “Got a bad arm?”
    “Yes. A bit of trouble from the war, you know.”
    “Philip had the whole of his left shoulder shot away,” said Philip’s wife, in an annoyed way.
    “Did you? That must be rather a nuisance to you, isn’t it? I suppose you can’t operate?”
    “Oh, yes,” Dr. Chalmers said cheerfully. “It doesn’t bother me much, really. I can drive a car, and sail a yacht, and do a bit of flying when I can get off; and operate, of course. It’s only the shoulder that’s gone, you see. I can’t raise my upper arm from the shoulder, but I can lift my forearm from the elbow. It might have been a lot worse.” He spoke quite naturally, and without any of the false embarrassment which seems to overtake most men when forced to speak of their war-wounds.
    “Rotten luck,” said Roger sincerely. “Well, here’s the best. Mrs. Chalmers, aren’t you drinking anything?”
    “Not just yet, thank you. I don’t want to make an exhibition of myself .”
    “I’m sure you wouldn’t do that,” said Roger, a little taken aback. The remark had seemed so pointed that it could only have been directed at himself, but he could not understand why Mrs. Chalmers should have thought it necessary to be so rude.
    “No, and I don’t intend to,” said Mrs. Chalmers grimly, and looked fixedly in his direction.
    The next moment Roger saw that she was not looking at him at all, but over his right shoulder. He turned round and followed her eyes.
    Several people had drifted in from the ballroom, and among them was Ronald Stratton’s sister-in-law, the woman dressed as Mrs. Pearcey. It was on her that Mrs. Chalmers’s gaze was fixed.
    She was standing by the bar, in company with a youngish, tall man whom Roger had not yet met, and he was evidently asking her what she would like.
    “I’ll have a whisky-and-soda, thanks,” she said, in a voice which was just loud enough to be a shade ostentatious. “A large one. I feel like getting drunk to-night. After all, it’s the only thing worth doing, really, isn’t it?”
    This time Roger joined in the significant glance which passed between Dr. and Mrs. Chalmers.
    He finished up his beer, made his excuses to the Chalmers, and went off to look for Ronald Stratton.
    “I must meet that woman,” he said to himself, “drunk or sober.”
IV
    Ronald was in the ballroom, twiddling with the wireless. The music to which they had been dancing had been provided by Königswusterhausen, and Ronald had decided it was too heavy; something French was indicated.
    Three persons were remonstrating with him, for no particular reason beyond the strange prejudice most people have against seeing the owner of a large wireless set twiddling its knobs. One of them Roger knew to be Ronald’s sister, Celia Stratton, a tall girl, picturesquely dressed as eighteenth-century Mary Blandy; the other two were Crippen, and a small woman dressed as a boy who was not difficult to recognise as Miss Le Neve.
    A piercing soprano voice shot out from the wireless in one momentary shriek, instantly cut off, but not quickly enough for the manipulator’s critics.
    “Leave it alone, Ronald,” begged Miss Stratton.
    “It was perfectly all right as it was,” reinforced Miss Le Neve.
    “It’s a funny thing,” pronounced Dr. Crippen with some weight, as one who has given considerable thought to the point, “that people who have a wireless can’t leave it alone for more than two seconds at a time.”
    “Blah,” said Ronald, and continued to twiddle the knob.
    A burst of jazz music rewarded him.
    “There !” he said with pride. “That’s a great deal better.”
    “It isn’t a