A Butterfly on the Wheel Part 14

"How's _he_ to know?" Lady Attwill said.

"Know!" Ellerdine retorted. "I'll bet Collingwood a fiver all _London_ knows to-night."

He looked anxiously at the other man, unable to understand how he could take things so easily, absolutely unconscious of anything underlying this unfortunate occurrence, absolutely unsuspicious of the sinister forces at work around him.

"Oh, bos.h.!.+" Collingwood answered. "Anyway, we can say we all got on the wrong train."

"'That we all got on the wrong train,'" came with parrot-like precision from the diplomatist.

"But we didn't," Lady Attwill said, looking from one to the other.

Lord Ellerdine jumped up from his chair, his face radiant with triumph.

"There you are!" he said to Collingwood. "Just what I told you!"

Lady Attwill became alive to the situation. "Oh, I see," she said; "that is the short, straight, simple tale. I see. 'We all got on the wrong train.'"

"You see, d.i.c.ky!" Collingwood said with a smile. "See how quickly Alice picks it up."

"Oh, she's used to it," said Ellerdine. "She picks up things very quickly. But tell her the sequel--that's the water-jump for me."

"Come on; let's have a look at it," said Lady Attwill.

Collingwood seemed vastly amused. He a.s.sumed the air of a comedian. His hands fluttered before him in pantomime. His handsome face became droll and merry.

"'We all stayed the night at this hotel,'" he said.

Lord Ellerdine nodded with an anxious look in his eyes towards Lady Attwill. "Now try that," he said.

"'We all stayed the night at this hotel,'" said Lady Attwill with perfect naturalness and ease.

"There you are!" said Collingwood.

The middle-aged fool in the arm-chair was quite interested and pleased.

He saw nothing of the grimness which underlay this gay, light-hearted chatter, in this gay and brilliant room. The other two, man and woman, were playing their parts most skilfully--not so much to deceive Ellerdine, but to trick themselves into the belief that they were not engaged in a very dirty, ugly business.

It's an extraordinary thing, but nevertheless perfectly true, that people who are able to infuse a sinister and tragic moment with mocking gaiety certainly provide for themselves an anodyne to the pain and fear it would otherwise bring them.

No doubt that is why the devil is generally represented as smirking or leering.

The door opened and the Scotch-French waiter with a large tray entered, followed by another also carrying a tray, but whose swarthy features and thick purple lips proclaimed him no hybrid, but a true son of the Cote d'Azur.

Lord Ellerdine jumped up. "Food!" he said. "I am starving."

Lady Attwill rose also. "Poor d.i.c.ky must always have his food," she said. "I always think he never seems quite human till he has had his breakfast. When we were down at his place together----"

Collingwood nudged her with a warning look. "Piano!" he said.

"What about?" she whispered, with a rather sardonic grin. "I don't want to play."

"The waiter, I mean," Collingwood replied.

"Bien!" she answered, seating herself in front of the cafetiere and pouring out the hot brown coffee.

Lord Ellerdine had also sat down. He looked at his as yet empty plate and drummed with his fingers upon the table-cloth. "'We all stayed the night at this hotel,'" he said in a perfectly audible voice.

"Oui, monsieur," said Jacques of Ecclefechan suddenly.

Ellerdine started and looked up, his face expressing great surprise.

"Get away," he said. "I wasn't speaking to you."

Collingwood frowned. His nerves, now, didn't seem quite under the same control as they had been before. "Laissez les autres choses, garcon.

Nous nous servirons."

"Bien, monsieur," said the waiter, with an ugly and furtive smile upon his face, which n.o.body noticed, as he left the room.

"Come on, Alice. Where's my coffee?" said Lord Ellerdine.

"There you are," she answered. "Coffee, Colling?"

Collingwood nodded. "What is there?" he asked.

Lady Attwill lifted the covers. "Omelette, bacon, sole, mushrooms."

"Sole for me."

"Bacon and mushrooms, Alice," Ellerdine remarked, quite himself again at the thought of breakfast.

"You have no idea how I buck up after a cup of coffee," he continued; "but, upon my soul, I feel like a fried flounder this morning. I don't think I shall ever be in a hotter place than that confounded train from Chalons."

"Yes, you will, d.i.c.ky," Lady Attwill remarked, taking a piece of toast from the rack.

"Oh yes, you will, d.i.c.ky," Collingwood echoed; "don't make any mistake about that."

"After all," Lady Attwill went on, "it wasn't so bad. You worried; that was what made you hot."

"You don't know anything about it. You slept like a log all the way,"

Ellerdine said.

"Easy conscience," answered the lady, beginning her breakfast with great satisfaction.

"You didn't get on the wrong train," said Ellerdine meaningly.

Collingwood put down his fish-fork. The long strain to which his nerves had been subjected, the irritation which he had so well suppressed until now, had its way with him and burst out.

"Oh, d.a.m.n it!" he said, "you two make me tired. Do shut up about the wrong train. Let's have our breakfast in peace."

Lord Ellerdine busied himself with his mushrooms. "I wish I had a hide as thick as yours, Colling, old man," he said. "You do take things smoothly. Look at him, Alice--eating away as if he was on his honeymoon!"

Collingwood glared at his _vis-a-vis_. "Honeymoon!" he said.