"Color Scheme" - читать интересную книгу автора (Marsh Ngaio)

Chapter VI Arrival of Septimus Falls

Friday, the day before the concert, marked the beginning of a crescendo in the affairs of Wai-ata-tapu. It began at breakfast. The London news bulletin was more than usually ominous and the pall of depression that was in the background of all New Zealanders’ minds at that time seemed to drag a little nearer. Colonel Claire, looking miserable, ate his breakfast in silence. Questing and Simon were both late for this meal, and one glance at Simon’s face convinced Dikon that something had happened to disturb him. He had black marks under his eyes and an air of angry satisfaction. Mr. Questing, too, looked as if he had not slept well. He spared them his customary sallies of matutinal playfulness. Since their drive to Harpoon two days ago, Dikon had tried to adjust his idea of Mr. Questing to that of a paid enemy agent. He had even kept awake for an hour or two beyond his usual time watching the face of Rangi’s Peak. But, although Mr. Questing announced his intention each night of dining at the hotel in Harpoon and had not returned when the rest of the party went to bed, the Peak changed from wine to purple and from purple to black outside Dikon’s window and no points of light had pricked its velvet surface. At last he lost patience with watching and fell asleep. On both mornings he woke with a dim recollection of hearing a car come round the house to the garage. Simon, he knew, had watched each night and he felt sure that the second vigil had been fruitful. Dikon fancied that Questing had delivered a final notice to the Claires, as at Friday’s breakfast they bore an elderly resemblance to the Babes in the Wood. They ate nothing and he caught them looking at each other with an air of bewilderment and despair.

Smith, who seemed to be really shaken by his jump from the bridge, breakfasted early, a habit that kept up the tradition that he worked for his keep.

The general atmosphere of discomfort and suspense was aggravated by the behaviour of Huia, who, after placing a plate of porridge before Dr. Ackrington, burst into tears and ran howling from the room.

“What the devil’s the matter with the girl?” he demanded. “I’ve said nothing.”

“It’s Eru Saul,” said Barbara. “He’s been waiting for her again when she goes home, Mummy.”

“Yes, dear. Ssh!” Mrs. Claire leant towards her husband and said in her special voice: “I think, dear, that you should speak to young Saul. He’s not a desirable type.”

“Oh, damn!” muttered the Colonel.

Mr. Questing pushed his chair back and walked quickly from the room.

“That’s the joker you ought to speak to, Dad,” said Simon, jerking his head at the door. “You’ve only got to look at the way he carries on with — ”

“Please, dear!” said Mrs. Claire, and the party relapsed into silence.

Gaunt breakfasted in his room. On the previous evening he had been restless and irritable, unable to work or read. He had left Dikon to his typewriter and, on an unaccountable impulse, elected to drive himself along the appalling coastal road to the north. He was in a state of excitement which Dikon found ridiculous and disturbing. During six years of employment Dikon had found their association pleasant and amusing. His early hero-worship of Gaunt had long ago been replaced by a tolerant and somewhat detached affection, but ten days at Wai-ata-tapu had wrought an alarming change in this attitude. It was as if the Claires, muddle-headed, gentle, and perhaps a little foolish, had proved to be a sort of touchstone to which Gaunt had been brought and found wanting. And yet Dikon, distressed by this change, could not altogether agree with his own judgment. It was the business of the dress for Barbara, he recognized, that had irritated him most. He had accused Gaunt of a gross error in taste and yet he himself had learnt to mistrust and deride the very attitude of mind that the Claires upheld. Was it not, in fact, an ungenerous attitude that forbade the acceptance of a generous gift, an attitude of self-righteous snobbism?

And exploring unhappily the backwaters of his own impulses he asked himself finally if perhaps he resented the gift because he was not the author of it.

The rural mail-car passed along the main highway at about eleven o’clock in the morning, and any letters for the Springs were left in a tin post-box on the top gate. Parcels too big for the box were merely dumped beneath it. The morning was overcast and Gaunt was in a fever lest the Claires should delay the trip to the gate and the parcel from Sarah Snappe be rained upon. Dikon gathered that the gift was to remain anonymous but doubted Gaunt’s ability to deny himself the pleasure of enacting the part of fairy godfather. “He will drop some arch hint and betray himself,” Dikon thought angrily. “And even if she refuses the blasted dress she’ll be more besotted on him than ever.”

After breakfast Mrs. Claire and Barbara, assisted in a leisurely manner by Huia, bucketed into their household duties with their customary air of laying back their ears and rushing their fences. Simon, who usually fetched the mail, disappeared and presently it began to rain.

“The oaf!” Gaunt fulminated. “He will lurch up the hill an hour late and bring down a mass of repellent pulp.”

“I can go up if you like, sir. The man always sounds his horn if he has anything for us. I can go as soon as I hear it.”

“They would guess that we expected something. Even Colly — No, they must fetch their own detestable mail. She must receive her parcel at their hands. I want to see it, though. I can stroll out for my own letters. Good God, a second deluge is descending upon us. Perhaps, after all, Dikon, you had better go for a stroll and casually pick up the mail.”

Dikon looked at the rods of water that now descended with such force that they spurted off the pumice in fans, and asked his employer if he did not think it would seem a little eccentric to stroll in such weather. “Besides, sir,” he pointed out, “the mail-car cannot possibly arrive for two hours and my stroll would be ridiculously protracted.”

“You have been against me from the outset,” Gaunt muttered. “Very well, I shall dictate for an hour.”

Dikon followed him indoors, sat down, and produced his shorthand pad. He was dying to ask Simon if he had succeeded in his vigil.

Gaunt walked up and down and began to dictate. “The actor” he said, “is a modest warm-hearted fellow. Being, perhaps, more highly sensitized than his fellow man he is more sensitive. .” Dikon hesitated. “Well, what’s wrong with that?” Gaunt demanded.

“Sensitized, sensitive!”

“Death and damnation!.. he is more responsive, then, to the more subtle …”

“More, sir, and more.”

“Then delete the second more. How often am I to implore you to make these paltry amendments without disturbing me? …to the subtle nuances, the delicate half-tones of emotion. I had always been conscious of this gift, if it is one, in myself.

“Do you mind repeating that, sir? The rain makes such a din on the iron roof I can scarcely hear you. I got the subtle nuances.”

“Am I, then, to compose at the full pitch of my lungs?”

“I could trot after you with my little pad in my hand.”

“A preposterous suggestion.”

“It’s leaving off, now.”

The rain stopped with the abruptness of subtropical downpours, and the ground and roofs of Wai-ata-tapu began to steam. Gaunt became less restive and the dictation proceeded along lines that Dikon, in his new mood of open-eyed criticism, considered all too typical of almost any theatrical autobiography. But perhaps Gaunt would rescue his book by taking a line of defiant egoism. He seemed to be drifting that way. There was a growing flavour of: “This is the life story of a damn’ good actor who isn’t going to spoil it with gestures of false modesty”; a fashionable attitude, and no doubt Gaunt had decided to adopt it.

At ten o’clock Gaunt went down to the Springs with Colly in attendance, and Dikon hurried away in search of Simon. He found him in his cabin, a scrupulously tidy room where wireless magazines and text-books were set out on a working bench. He was in consultation with Smith, who broke ofï in the middle of some mumbled recital and with a grudging acknowledgment of Dikon’s greeting sloped away.

In contrast to Smith, Simon appeared to be almost cordial. Dikon was not quite sure how he stood with this curious young man, but he had a notion that his passive acceptance of the rôle cast for him in the lake incident as the remover of Barbara, and his suggestion that Simon should drive the car, had given him a kind of status. He thought that Simon disapproved of him on general principles as a parasite and a freak, but didn’t altogether dislike him.

“Here!” said Simon. “Can you beat it? Questing’s been telling Bert Smith he won’t put him off after all, when he cleans us up. He’s going to keep him on and give him good money. What d’you make of that?”

“Sudden change, isn’t it?”

“You bet it’s sudden. D’you get the big idea, though?”

“Does he want to keep him quiet?” Dikon suggested cautiously.

“I’ll say! Too right he wants to keep him quiet. He’s windy. He’s had one pop at rubbing Bert out and he’s made a mess of it. He daren’t come at that game again so he’s trying the other stuff. ‘Keep your mouth shut and it’s O.K. by me.’ ”

“But honestly —”

“Look, Mr. Bell, don’t start telling me it’s ‘incredible.’ You’ve been getting round with theatrical sissies for so long you don’t know a real man when you see one.”

“My dear Claire,” said Dikon with some heat, “may I suggest that speaking in the back of your throat and going out of your way to insult everybody that doesn’t is not the sole evidence of virility. And if real men spend their time trying to kill and bribe each other, I infinitely prefer my theatrical sissies.” Dikon removed his spectacles and polished them with his handkerchief. “And if,” he added, “you mean what I imagine you to mean by ‘sissies,’ allow me to tell you you’re a liar. And furthermore, don’t call me Mr. Bell. I’m afraid you’re an inverted snob.”

Simon stared at him. “Aw, dickon!” he said at last, and then turned purple. “I’m not calling you by your Christian name,” he explained hurriedly. “That’s a kind of expression. Like you’d say, ‘Come off it.’ ”

“Oh.”

“And sissy is just a chap who’s kind of weak. You know. Too tired to take the trouble. English!”

“Like Winston Churchill?”

“Aw, to hell!” roared Simon, and then grinned. “All right, all right!” he said. “You win. I apologize.”

Dikon blinked. “Well,” he said sedately, “I call that very handsome of you. I also apologize. And now, do tell me the latest news of Questing. I swear I shan’t boggle at sabotage, homicide, espionage, or incendiarism. What, if anything, have you discovered?”

Simon rose and shut the door. He then shoved a packet of cigarettes at Dikon, leant back with his elbows on his desk and, with his own cigarette jutting out of the corner of his mouth, embarked on his story.

“Wednesday night,” he said, “was a wash-out. He went into Harpoon and had tea at the pub. You call it ‘dinnah.’ The pub keeper’s a cobber of his. Bert Smith was in town and he says Questing was there all right. He gave Bert a lift home. Bert was half-shickered or he’d have been too windy to take it. He’s on the booze again after that show at the crossing. It was then Questing put it up to him he could stay on after we’d got the boot. Yes, Wednesday night’s out of it. But last night’s different. I suppose he got his tea in town, all right, but he went over to the Peak. About seven o’clock I biked down to the level crossing — and, by the way, that light’s working O.K. I hid up in the scrub. Three hours later, along comes Mr. Questing in his bus. Where he gets the juice is just nobody’s business. He steams off up the Peak road. I lit off to a possie I’d taped out beforehand. It’s a bit of a bluff that sticks out on the other side of the inlet. Opposite the Peak, sort of. At the end of a rocky spit. I had to wade the last bit. The Peak’s at the end of a long neck, you know. The seaward side’s all cliff, but you can climb up a fence line. But the near face is easy going. There’s still a trace of a track the Maori people used when they buried their dead in the old crater. About half-way up it twists and you could strike out from there to the seaward face. There’s a bit of a shelf above the cliff. You can’t see it from most places, but you can from where I was. I picked that was where he’d go. From my possie you look across the harbour to it, see? It was a pretty solid bike ride, but I reckoned I’d make it quicker than Questing’d climb the Peak track. He’s flabby. I had to crawl up the rock to get where I wanted. Wet to the middle, I was. Did I get cold! I’ll say. And soon after I’d got there she blew up wet from the sea. It was lovely.”

“You don’t mean to say you bicycled to that headland beyond Harpoon? It must be seven miles.”

“Yeh, that’s right. I beat Questing hands down, too. I sat on that ruddy bluff I till I just about froze to the rock, and I’ll bet you anything you like I never took me eyes off the Peak. I looked right across the harbour. There’s a big ship in and she was loading in the blackout. Gee, I’d like to know what she was loading. I bet Bert Smith knows. He’s cobbers with some of the wharfies, him and Eru Saul. Eru and Bert get shickered with the wharfies. They were shickered last night, Bert says. I don’t think it’s so hot going round with — ”

“The Peak and Mr. Questing,” Dikon reminded him.

“O.K. Well, just when I thought I’d been had for a mug, it started. A little point of light right where I told you on the seaward face. Popping in and out.”

“Could you read it?”

“Neow!” said Simon angrily in his broadest twang. “If it was Morse it was some code. Just a lot of t’s and i’s and s’s. He wouldn’t use plain language. You bet he wouldn’t. There’d be a system of signals. A long flash repeated three times at intervals of a minute. ‘Come in. I’m talking to you.’ Then the message. Say five short flashes: ‘Ship in port.’ That’d be repeated three times. Then the day when she sails. One long flash: ‘To-night.’ Two short flashes: ‘To-morrow.’ Three short flashes: ‘To-morrow night.’ Repeat. Then a long interval, and the whole show all over again. What I reckon,” Simon concluded, and inhaled a prodigious draught of smoke.

“But did you, in fact, see the sequence you’ve described?”

With maddening deliberation Simon ground out his cigarette, made several small backward movements of his head which invested him with an extraordinary air of complacency, and said: “Six times at fifteen-minute intervals. The end signal was three flashes each time.”

“Was it, by George!” Dikon murmured.

“ ’Course I haven’t got the reading O.K. May be something quite different.”

“Of course.” They stared at each other, a sense of companionship weaving between them.

“But I’d like to know what that ship’s loading,” Simon said.

“Was there any answering flash out at sea? I couldn’t know less about such things.”

“I didn’t pick it. But I don’t reckon she’d do anything. If it’s a raider I reckon she’d come in close on the north side of the Peak, so’s to keep it between herself and Harpoon, and wait to see. There’s nothing but bays and rough stuff up the coast north of the Peak.”

“How long did you stay?”

“Till there was no more signalling. The tide was in by then. By heck, I didn’t much enjoy wading back. He beat me to it coming home. Me blinking tyre had gone flat on me and I had to pump up three times. His bus was in the garage. By cripey he’s a beaut. Wait till I get him. That’ll be the day.”

“What will you do about it?”

“Bike into town and go to the police station.”

“I’ll ask for the car.”

“Heck, no. I’ll bike. Here, you’d better not say anything to him.”

“Who?”

Simon jerked his head.

“Gaunt? I can’t promise not to do that. You see we’ve discussed Questing so much, and Colly talks to Gaunt and you’ve talked to Colly. And anyway,” said Dikon, “I can’t suddenly begin keeping him in the dark about things. You’ve got a fantastic idea of Gaunt. He’s — dear me, how embarrassing the word still is — he’s a patriot. He gave the entire profit of the last three weeks’ Shakespearean season in Melbourne to the war effort.”

“Huh,” Simon grunted. “Money.”

“It’s what’s wanted. And I’d like to talk to him about last night for another reason. He took the car out after dinner. Once in a blue moon he gets a sudden idea he wants to drive. He may have noticed a light out to sea. He said he’d go up the coast road to the north.”

“And what he’s done to the car is nobody’s business. It’s a terrible road. Have you looked at her? Covered in mud and scratched all over the wings. It’s not his fault he didn’t bust up the back axle in a pot-hole. He’s a shocking driver.”

Dikon decided to ignore this. “What about Dr. Ackrington?” he said. “After all he was the first to suspect something. Oughtn’t you to take his advice before you make a move?”

“Uncle James doesn’t see things my way,” said Simon aggressively, “and I don’t see things his way. He thinks I’m crude and I think he’s a nark and a dug-out.”

“Nevertheless I think I should tell him.”

“I dunno where he’s got to.”

“He’s returning to-morrow, isn’t he? Wait till he comes before you do anything.”

A motor horn sounded on the main road.

“Is that the mail?” cried Dikon.

“That’s right. What about it?”

Dikon looked out of the window. “It’s beginning to rain again.”

“What of it?”

“Nothing, nothing,” said Dikon in a hurry.

It was Barbara, after all, who went first to get the mail. Dikon saw her run out of the house with her mackintosh over her shoulders, and heard Mrs. Claire call out something about the rain spoiling the bread. Of course. It was the day for the bread, thought Dikon, who had reached the secondary stage of occupation when the routine of a household is becoming familiar. With an extraordinary sensation of approaching disaster he watched Barbara go haring up the hill in the rain. “But it’s ridiculous,” he told himself, “to treat a mere incident as if it was an epic. What the devil has come upon me that I can do nothing but fidget like an old woman over this damn’ girl’s clothes? Blast her clothes. Either she refuses or she accepts them. Either she guesses who sent for them or she doesn’t. The affair will merely become an anecdote, amusing or dull. To hell with it.”

The little figure ran over the brow of the hill and disappeared.

Dikon, obeying orders, went to tell his employer that the mail was in.

Barbara was happy as she ran up the hill. The rain was soft on her face; thin like mist, and warm. The scent of wet earth was more pungent than the reek of sulphur, and a light breeze brought a sensation of the ocean across the hills. Her spirit rose to meet it, and all the impending disasters of Wai-ata-tapu could not check her humour. It was impossible for Barbara to be unhappy that morning. She had received in small doses during the past week an antidote to unhappiness. With each little sign of friendliness and interest from Gaunt, and he had given her many such signs, her spirit danced. Barbara had not been protected against green-sickness by inoculations of calf-love. Unable to compete with the few neighbouring families whom her parents considered “suitable,” and prevented by a hundred reservations and prejudices from forming friendships with the “unsuitable,” she had ended by forming no friendships at all. Occasionally she would be asked to some local festivity, but her clothes were all wrong, her face unpainted, and her manner nervous and uneven. She alarmed the young men with her gusts of frightened laughter and her too eager attentiveness. If her shyness had taken any other form she might have found someone to befriend her, but as it was she hovered on the outside of every group, making her hostess uneasy or irritable, refusing to recognize the rising misery of her own loneliness. She was happier when she was no longer invited and settled down to her course of emotional starvation, hardly aware, until Gaunt came, of her sickness. How, then, could the financial crisis, still only half-realized by Barbara, cast more than a faint shadow over her new exhilaration? Geoffrey Gaunt smiled at her, quiet prim Mr. Bell sought her out to talk to her. And, though she would never have admitted it, Mr. Questing’s behaviour, odious and terrifying as it had been at the time, was not altogether ungratifying in retrospect. As for his matrimonial alternative to financial disaster, she contrived to hide the memory of it under a layer of less disturbing recollections.

The parcel from Sarah Snappe lay under the mail-box, half obscured by tussock and loaves of bread. At first she thought it had been left there by mistake, then that it was for Gaunt or Dikon Bell; then she read her own name. Her brain skipped about among improbabilities. Unknown Auntie Wynne had sent another lot of alien and faintly squalid cast-offs. This was the first of her conjectures. Only when she was fumbling with the wet string did she notice the smart modern lettering on the label and the New Zealand stamps and postmark.

It lay under folds of tissue-paper, immaculately folded.

She might have knelt there in the wet grass for much longer if a gentle drift of rain had not dimmed the three steel stars. With a nervous movement of her hands she thrust down the lid of the box and pulled the wrapping paper over it. Still she knelt before it, haloed in mist, bewildered, her hands pressed upon the parcel. Simon came upon her there. She turned and looked at him with a glance half-radiant, half-incredulous.

“It’s not meant for me,” she said.

He asked what was in the parcel. By this time she had taken off her mackintosh and wrapped the box in it. “A black dress,” she said, “with three stars on it. Other things, underneath. Another box. I didn’t look past the dress. It’s not meant for me.”

“Auntie Wynne.”

“It’s not one of Auntie Wynne’s dresses. It’s new. It came from Auckland. There must be another Barbara Claire.”

“You’re nuts,” said Simon. “I suppose she’s sent the money or something. Why the heck have you taken your mac off? You’ll get wet.”

Barbara rose to her feet clutching the enormous package. “It’s got my name on it. Barbara Claire, Wai-ata-tapu Spa, via Harpoon. There’s an envelope inside, too, with my name on it.”

“What was in it?”

“I didn’t look.”

“You’re dopey.”

“It can’t be for me.”

“Gee whiz, you’re mad. Here, what about the bread and the rest of the mail?”

“I didn’t look.”

“Aw, hell, you’re mad as a meat-axe.” Simon opened the letter-box. “There’s a postcard from Uncle James. He’s coming back to-night. A telegram for Mum from Auckland. That’s funny. And a whole swag for the boarders. Yes, and look at the bread kicking round in the dirt. No trouble to you. Wait on.”

But Barbara, clutching the parcel, was running down the hill in the rain.

Gaunt waited on the verandah in his dressing gown; “very dark and magnificent,” thought Dikon maliciously. Whatever the fate of the dress, whatever Barbara’s subsequent reaction, Gaunt had his reward, Dikon thought, when she ran across the pumice and laid the parcel on the verandah table, calling her mother.

“Hullo,” said Gaunt. “Had a birthday?”

“No. It’s something that’s happened. I can’t understand it.” She was unwrapping the mackintosh from the parcel. Her hands, stained with housework but not yet thickened, shook a little. She unfolded the wrapping paper.

“Is it china that you handle it so gingerly?”

“No. It’s— My hands!” She ran down the verandah to the bathroom. Simon came slowly across the pumice with the bread and walked through the house.

“Did you tell them what to write?” Gaunt asked Dikon.

“Yes.”

Barbara returned, shouting for her mother. Mrs. Claire and the Colonel appeared looking as if they anticipated some new catastrophe.

“Barbie, not quite so noisy, my dear,” said her mother. She glanced at her celebrated visitor and smiled uncertainly. Her husband and her brother did not stroll about the verandah in exotic dressing gowns, but she had begun to formulate a sort of spare code of manners for Gaunt, who, as Dikon had not failed to notice, spoke to her nicely and repeatedly of his mother.

Barbara lifted the lid from her box. Her parents, making uncertain noises, stared at the dress. She took up the envelope. “How can it be for me?” she said, and Dikon saw that she was afraid to open the envelope.

“Good Lord!” her father ejaculated. “What on earth have you been buying?”

“I haven’t, Daddy. It’s—”

“From Auntie Wynne. How kind,” said Mrs. Claire.

“That’s not Wynne’s writing,” said the Colonel suddenly.

“No.” Barbara opened the envelope and a large card fell on the black surface of the dress. The inscription in green ink had been written across it somewhat flamboyantly and in an extremely feminine script. Barbara read it aloud.

“If you accept it, then its worth is great.”

“That’s all,” said Barbara, and her parents began to look baffled and mulish. Simon appeared and repeated his suggestion that the Aunt had sent a cheque to the shop in Auckland.

“But she’s never been to Auckland,” said the Colonel crossly. “How can a woman living in Poona write cheques to shops she’s never heard of in New Zealand? The thing’s absurd.”

“I must say,” said Mrs. Claire, “that although it’s very kind of dear Wynne, I think it’s always nice not to make mysteries. You must write and thank her just the same, Barbie, of course.”

“But I repeat, Agnes, that it’s not from Wynne.”

“How can we tell, dear, when she doesn’t write her name? That’s what I mean when I say we would rather she put in a little note as usual.”

“It’s not her writing. Green ink and loud flourishes! Ridiculous.”

“I suppose she wanted to puzzle us.”

Colonel Claire suddenly walked away, looking miserable.

“Mayn’t we see the dress?” asked Gaunt.

Barbara drew it from the box and sheets of tissue-paper fell from it as she held it up. The three stars shone again in the folds of the skirt. It was a beautifully simple dress.

“But it’s charming,” Gaunt said. “It couldn’t be better. Do you likeit?”

“Like it?” Barbara looked at him and her eyes filled with tears. “It’s so beautiful,” she said, “that I can’t believe it’s true.”

“There are more things in the box, aren’t there? Shall I hold the dress?”

He took it from her and she knelt on the chair, exploring feverishly. Dikon, whose orders had been to give Sarah Snappe carte-blanche, saw that she had taken him at his word. The shell-coloured satin was dull and heavy and the lace delicately rich. There seemed to be a complete set of garments. Barbara folded them back, lifted an extraordinarily pert and scanty object, turned crimson in the face and hurriedly replaced it. Her mother stepped between her and Gaunt. “Wouldn’t it be best if you took your parcel indoors, dear?” she said with poise. Barbara blundered through the door with the box and, to her mother’s evident dismay, Gaunt followed, holding the dress. A curious scene was enacted in the dining-room. Barbara hesitated between rapture and embarrassment, as Gaunt actually began to inspect the contents of the box while Mrs. Claire attempted to catch his attention with a distracted résumé of the distant Wynne’s dual office of aunt and godmother, Dikon looked on, and Simon read the morning paper. The smaller boxes were found to contain shoes and stockings. “Bless my soul,” said Gaunt lightly. “It’s a trousseau.”

Colonel Claire appeared briefly in the doorway. “It must be James,” he said, and walked away again, quickly.

“Uncle James!” cried Barbara. “Mother, could it be Uncle James?”

“Perhaps Wynne wrote to James,” began her mother, and Simon said from behind his paper: “She doesn’t know him.”

“She knows of him,” said Mrs. Claire gravely.

“You’ve got that telegram in your hand, Mum,” said Simon. “Why don’t you read it? It might have something to do with Barbie’s clothes.”

They all stared at her while she read the telegram. Her expression suggested astonishment, followed by the liveliest consternation. “Oh, no,” she cried out at last. “We can’t have another. Oh dear!”

“What’s up?” asked Simon.

“It’s from a Mr. Septimus Falls. He says he’s got lumbago and is coming for a fortnight. What am I to do?”

“Put him off.”

“I can’t. There’s no address. It just says ‘Kindly reserve single room Friday and arrange treatment lumbago staying fortnight Septimus Falls.’ Friday. Friday!” wailed Mrs. Claire. “What are we to do? That’s to-day.”

Mr. Septimus Falls arrived by train and taxi at 4:30, within a few minutes of Dr. Ackrington, who picked up his own car in Harpoon. By some Herculean effort the Claires had made ready for Mr. Falls. Simon moved into his cabin, Barbara moved into Simon’s room, Barbara’s room was made ready for Mr. Falls. He turned out to be a middle-aged Englishman, tall but bent forward at a wooden angle and leaning heavily on his stick. He was good-looking, well-mannered, and inclined to be bookishly facetious.

“I’m so sorry not to give you longer warning,” said Mr. Falls, grunting slightly as he came up the steps. “But this wretched incubus of a disease came upon me quite suddenly yesterday evening. I happened to see your advertisement in the paper and the doctor I consulted agreed that I should try thermal treatment.”

“But we have no advertisement in the papers,” said Mrs. Claire.

“I assure you I saw one. Unless, by any frightful chance, I’m come to the wrong Wai-ata-tapu Hot Springs. Your name is Questing, I hope?”

Mrs. Claire turned pink and replied gently: “My name is Claire, but you have made no other mistake. May I help you to your room?”

He apologized and thanked her, but added that he could still totter under his own steam. He seemed to be delighted with the dubious amenities of Barbara’s room. “I can’t tell you,” he said in a friendly manner, “how deeply I have grown to detest suites. I have been living in hotels for six months and have become so moulded to the en suite tradition that I assure you I have quite a struggle before I can bring myself to wear a spotted tie with a striped suit. It makes everything very difficult. Now this — ” he looked at Barbara’s pieces of furniture, which, under the brief influence of a domestic magazine, she had painted severally in the primary colours — “this will restore me to normal in no time.”

The taxi driver brought his luggage, which was of two sorts. Three extremely new suitcases consorted with a solitary small one which was much worn and covered with labels. Mrs. Claire had never seen so many labels. In addition to partially removed records of English and continental hotels, New Zealand place names jostled each other over the lid. He followed her glance and said: “You are thinking that I am ‘Monsieur Traveller, one who would disable all the benefits of his own country,’ and so forth. The fact is the evil brute got lost and has followed some other Falls all over the country. Would you care for the evening paper? The news, alas, is as usual.”

She thanked him confusedly, and retired with the paper to the verandah where she found her brother in angry consultation with Barbara. Dikon stood diffidently in the background.

“Well, old boy,” said Mrs. Claire, and kissed him warmly. “Lovely to have you with us again.”

“No need to cry over me. I haven’t been to the South Pole,” said Dr. Ackrington, but he returned her kiss, and in the next second attacked his niece. “Will you stop making faces at me? Am I in the habit of lying? Why should I bestow raiment upon you, you silly girl?”

“But truly, Uncle James? Word of honour?”

“I believe he knows something about it!” Mrs. Claire exclaimed very archly. “Weren’t we silly-billies? We thought of a fairy godmother, but we never guessed it might be a fairy godfather at work, did we? Dear James,” and she kissed him again. “But you shouldn’t.”

“Merciful Creator,” apostrophized Dr. Ackrington, “do I look like a fairy! Is it likely that I, who for the past decade have urged upon this insane household the virtues of economy, and investment — is it likely that I should madly lavish large sums of money upon feminine garments? And pray, Agnes, why are you gaping at that paper? Surely you didn’t expect the war news to be anything but disastrous?”

Mrs. Claire gave him the paper and pointed silently to a paragraph in the advertisement columns. Barbara read over his shoulder —

The paper shook in Dr. Ackrington’s hand, but he said nothing. His sister pointed to the personal column.

“Mr. Geoffrey Gaunt, the famous English actor, is at present a guest at Wai-ata-tapu Spa. He is accompanied by Mr. Dikon Bell, his private secretary.”

“James!” Mrs. Claire cried out. “Remember your dyspepsia, dear. It’s so bad for you!”

Her brother, white to the lips and trembling, presented the formidable spectacle of a man transported by rage. “After all,” Mrs. Claire added timidly, “it is going to be true, dear, we’re afraid. He will be manager very soon. Of course it’s inconsiderate not to wait. Poor Edward — ”

“To hell with poor Edward!” whispered Dr. Ackrington. “Have you eyes! Can you read! Will you forget for one moment the inevitable consequences of poor Edward’s imbecility, and tell me how I am to interpret THAT?” His quivering finger pointed to the penultimate phrase of the advertisement. “Medical supervision. Medical supervision! My God, the fellow means ME!” Dr. Ackrington’s voice broke into a surprising falsetto. He glared at Barbara, who immediately burst into a hoot of terrified laughter. He uttered a loud oath, crushed the newspaper into a ball, and flung it at her feet. “Certifiable lunatics, the lot of you!” he raged, and turned blindly along the verandah towards his own room.

Before he could reach it, however, Mr. Septimus Falls, doubled over his stick, came out of his own room. The two limping gentlemen hurried towards each other. A collision seemed imminent and Dikon cried out involuntarily: “Dr. Ackrington! Look out, sir.”

They halted, facing each other. Mr. Falls said mellifluously: “Doctor Ackrington? How do you do, sir? I was about to make inquiries. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Septimus Falls. You, I take it, are the medical superintendent.”

Mrs. Claire, Dikon, and Barbara drew in their breaths sharply as Dr. Ackrington clenched his fists and began to stutter. Mr. Falls, with the experimental wariness of those suffering from lumbago, straightened himself slightly and looked mildly into Dr. Ackrington’s face. “I hope to benefit greatly by your treatment,” he said. “Can it possibly be Dr. James Ackrington? If so I am indeed fortunate. I had heard that New Zealand was so happy as to — But I am sure I recognize you. The photograph in Some Aspects of the Study of Comparative Anatomy, you know. Well, well, this is the greatest pleasure.”

“Did you say your name was Septimus Falls?”

“Yes.”

“Good God.”

“I can hardly hope that my small activities have come to your notice.”

“Here!” said Dr. Ackrington abruptly. “Come to my room.”