The Man with Two Left Feet Read Free

‘It’s a lot of good my staying here now, isn’t it?’
    â€˜I should say it was—to me. Don’t be in a hurry. You’re thinking that, now we know all about you, your utility as a sleuth has waned to some extent. Is that it?’
    â€˜Well?’
    â€˜Well, why worry? What does it matter to you? You don’t get paid by results, do you? Your boss said “Trail along.” Well, do it, then. I should hate to lose you. I don’t suppose you know it, but you’ve been the best mascot this tour that I’ve ever come across. Right from the start we’ve been playing to enormous business. I’d rather kill a black cat than lose you. Drop the disguises, and stay with us. Come behind all you want, and be sociable.’
    A detective is only human. The less of a detective, the more human he is. Henry was not much of a detective, and his human traits were consequently highly developed. From a boy, he had never been able to resist curiosity. If a crowd collected in the street he always added himself to it, and he would have stopped to gape at a window with ‘Watch this window’ written on it, if he had been running for his life from wild bulls. He was, and always had been, intensely desirous of someday penetrating behind the scenes of a theatre.
    And there was another thing. At last, if he accepted this invitation, he would be able to see and speak to Alice Weston, and interfere with the manoeuvres of the hatchet-faced man, on whom he had brooded with suspicion and jealousy since that first morning at the station. To see Alice! Perhaps, with eloquence, to talk her out of that ridiculous resolve of hers!
    â€˜Why, there’s something in that,’ he said.
    â€˜Rather! Well, that’s settled. And now, touching that sweep, who
is
it?’
    â€˜I can’t tell you that. You see, so far as that goes, I’m just where I was before. I can still watch—whoever it is I’m watching.’
    â€˜Dash it, so you can. I didn’t think of that,’ said Jelliffe, who possessed a sensitive conscience. ‘Purely between ourselves, it isn’t
me
, is it?’
    Henry eyed him inscrutably. He could look inscrutable at times.
    â€˜Ah!’ he said, and left quickly, with the feeling that, however poorly he had shown up during the actual interview, his exit had been good. He might have been a failure in the matter of disguise, but nobody could have put more quiet sinister-ness into that ‘Ah!’ It did much to soothe him and ensure a peaceful night’s rest.
    On the following night, for the first time in his life, Henry found himself behind the scenes of a theatre, and instantly began to experience all the complex emotions which come to the layman in that situation. That is to say, he felt like a cat which has strayed into a strange hostile backyard. He was in a new world, inhabited by weird creatures, who flitted about in an eerie semi-darkness, like brightly coloured animals in a cavern.
    The Girl from Brighton
was one of those exotic productions specially designed for the Tired Business Man. It relied for a large measure of its success on the size and appearance of its chorus, and on their constant change of costume. Henry, as a consequence, was the centre of a kaleidoscopic whirl of feminine loveliness, dressed to represent such varying flora and fauna as rabbits, Parisian students, colleens, Dutch peasants, and daffodils. Musical comedy is the Irish stew of the drama. Anything may be put into it, with the certainty that it will improve the general effect.
    He scanned the throng for a sight of Alice. Often as he had seen the piece in the course of its six weeks’ wandering in the wilderness he had never succeeded in recognizing her from the front of the house. Quite possibly, he thought, she might be on the stage already, hidden in a rose tree or some other shrub, ready at the signal to burst forth upon the audience in short skirts;