Scandal at High Chimneys Read Free

know, isn’t very much. However, I’ll go along and leave you to it. If you care to stroll into the Argyll Rooms about eleven, I’ll stand Sam for a bottle to celebrate. Good evening, Damon.”
    And Tress, having derived some amusement from all this, put on his tall hat and patted it into place. After settling his shoulders, after examining his bristly chin-whisker in the looking-glass over the fireplace, he smiled agreeably and moved away like a tame tiger. Once more the heavy door, this time caught in a draught, closed with a slam that went echoing up through a club devoted to writers, painters, musicians, and other mountebanks.
    Victor swallowed hard.
    “I know what you’re thinking of me,” he said. “I know, and I can’t blame you. But don’t make a judgment too quickly.”
    “No?”
    “No! Look here, old boy. There are any number of trains tomorrow, but your best is the Bath-and-Bristol Express. That leaves the depot in the afternoon and stops at Reading. I can write a telegram, d’ye see, so that Burbage will meet you with the carriage.”
    Clive, who had bent over to retrieve his cigar-case, straightened up.
    “Victor, do you seriously imagine I mean to do that?”
    “You must, old boy. Pray believe me!”
    “For instance,” said Clive, “you see no objection to having a sister of yours married to the gentleman who’s just left us?”
    “No; I can’t see any objection.” Victor’s voice went high. “But that’s not the point. You were right about one thing. I’d have Kate or Celia married to anybody, anybody at all reasonable or presentable, as long as they were safely away from High Chimneys and out of danger.”
    “Danger? For the last time, man, what’s wrong at High Chimneys?”
    The gaslight, vivid bluish-yellow, shone on a drop of sweat at Victor’s temple. Whipping a handkerchief out of the tail-pocket of his coat, Victor mopped his forehead. Under the edges of that handkerchief, reflected in his companion’s eyes, Clive Strickland sensed the shape of images ugly and unnatural and not well understood. Victor shut his eyes.
    “I can’t tell you,” he answered. “I can’t tell you.”

II. THE BATH-AND-BRISTOL EXPRESS
    T HE DEPOT OF THE Great Western Railway, dim and sooty and hoarse with steam, rattled to a clamour of footsteps on wooden platforms. Dogs, as usual, barked frantically at the engine; small boys escaped from their mothers to stare at it. Also, as usual, there was the middleaged lady in the voluminous crinoline, who falls into a fit of megrims five minutes before train-time and cries out that she hasn’t the courage to go.
    At one o’clock on the following afternoon, a chilly day, the Bath-and-Bristol Express was ‘getting a good head up.’ Porters had finished piling heavy luggage on the roofs of the carriages. Though this terminus had been built of iron and glass like the Crystal Palace, you still groped and coughed in London smoke. Clive Strickland did.
    ‘I am a fool,’ he was thinking guiltily. ‘Indeed, it were charitable to call me an outstanding jackass. People whose imaginations are kindled by the face of a damsel in distress, and who charge to her rescue without quite knowing what they are supposed to do, should be confined to the sort of fiction I write.’
    “Fool!” he said aloud.
    “Sir?” exclaimed the man carrying his portmanteau.
    “I beg your pardon. First-class carriage number two, seat number six.”
    “Oh, yes, sir! Very good, sir.”
    This situation was not at all humorous. He had committed himself to a course he could neither approve nor justify.
    Clive tried to put it out of his mind. A vigorous dark-haired young man, clean-shaven, in a short greatcoat and one of the new-style bowler hats, he strode towards the train. But the sense of impending disaster refused to leave him.
    Whereupon, just ahead, he saw Mr. Matthew Damon.
    Clive stopped short.
    It was not so much the shock of seeing him there as shock at the change in Mr.