The Simpkins Plot Part 37

"I shan't give him much choice," said Meldon. "I shall tell him that the thing has got to be done at once. Very few men are able to stand up to me when I take a really determined tone with them, and I shall speak in the strongest way to Simpkins. When I have, so to speak, deposited him in front of Miss King--"

"On his knees?" said the Major.

"Very probably. In these matters of detail I must of course be guided by circ.u.mstances; but when I have put him down, either on his knees or in some other posture, I shall slip away un.o.btrusively--"

"I should like to see you doing that. I don't think you could. You're generally more obtrusive than any one else I've ever met."

"Leaving them together," said Meldon, "with Callaghan watching from behind a tree, so as to be able to report to me exactly what happens.

In the meanwhile I shall stroll up the river and find the judge. If he isn't actually into a fish at the moment, I shall bring him straight down to the house and let him hear the result at once. If he has a salmon hooked, I shall of course wait till it's landed, and then bring him down. Afterwards I shall take Simpkins up to the rectory and make arrangements about the licence. We ought, bar accidents, to have the whole thing finished in the inside of a fortnight from now. After that I must leave it in the hands of O'Donoghue. He'll have to be careful how he treats Simpkins when he's called in. It won't do to make mistakes and go curing him accidentally."

"I suppose," said the Major bitterly, "that you'll employ Sabina Gallagher to make the wedding-cake. She might begin the poisoning."

"Certainly not," said Meldon. "Sabina couldn't make a wedding-cake, and in any case Simpkins won't eat enough of his own wedding-cake to do him any harm, whatever it's made of. If you were accustomed to weddings, Major, you'd know that the whole cake is invariably eaten by the postoffice officials--a most deserving cla.s.s, whom n.o.body wants to poison. Besides, in a case like this, it will be better to avoid all publicity and show. It wouldn't do to have the newspapers getting hold of the fact that Mrs. Lorimer is being married again so soon. There'd be paragraphs, and the suspicions of Simpkins would be excited. On the whole, I don't think we'll have a wedding cake, or bridesmaids, or anything of that sort. But you can be best man if you like."

"I know you don't mean a word you're saying, J. J., and that you won't really do anything."

"Wait and see."

"But if I thought you meant to cause Miss King the slightest uneasiness or discomfort, I should simply turn you straight out of my house. I wouldn't be a party for a single moment to any plan for insulting a really nice woman like Miss King."

"Don't fret about that," said Meldon. "What I'm doing is exactly what Miss King wants done. She told me so herself."

CHAPTER XX.

Sir Gilbert Hawkesby was, on the whole, a good-tempered man; but he was liable to sudden outbursts of anger of a violent kind. Lady Hawkesby knew this, and always bowed meekly to the storm. His butler knew it, and felt no resentment when he was called an incompetent fool. The barristers who practised their art in his court knew it, and always gave up pressing objectionable points on his notice when they recognised the early signs of approaching indignation. The butler and the barristers, not Lady Hawkesby, admitted that the judge's anger was invariably justified. He never lost control of himself without some good excuse. Therefore they suffered patiently, knowing that they suffered justly, and knowing also that they would not suffer long; for the judge's outbursts were as brief as they were fierce, and he bore no malice afterwards. Doyle unfortunately did not know Sir Gilbert's peculiarities, and so he was depressed and unhappy. Sabina Gallagher did not know them either, and the judge had not spared her. He had no hesitation, as Lady Hawkesby, the butler, and the barristers knew, in attacking the most defenceless people when the mood was on him, and he had used exceptionally strong language to Sabina Gallagher. It took him on this occasion longer than usual to recover his self-possession.

He gave no kiss in response to his niece's affectionate salutation. He ate the really excellent luncheon which she had prepared for him in gloomy silence and without a sign of appreciation. The gilly, who accompanied him up the river in the afternoon, came in for the last gusts of the expiring storm.

At about four o'clock Sir Gilbert hooked a fine salmon and landed him successfully. The gilly, who was a man of tact, greatly over-estimated the weight of the fish, and paid a rich compliment to the judge's skill. Miss King said all the most appropriate things in tones of warm conviction. Sir Gilbert began to feel that life was not altogether an intolerable affliction. An hour later, in a pool strongly recommended by the gilly, another fish was caught. It was inferior to the first in size, but it was a very satisfactory creature to look at. The judge's temper was quite normal when he sat down at dinner. When, at Miss King's request, he lit his cigar in the drawing-room afterwards, he began to take a humorous view of the misfortunes of the morning.

"I ought to have accepted your invitation at once, Milly, and not attempted to live at the local hotel. I never came across such a place in my life, though I have knocked about a good deal and am pretty well accustomed to roughing it. My bedroom reeked of abominable disinfectants. The floor was half an inch deep in chloride of lime.

The sheets were soaked with-- By the way, what is the name of the local parson?"

"I don't know," said Miss King. "He's an old man, and, I fancy, delicate. I've never seen him. He wasn't in church last Sunday."

"Has he a curate?"

"Yes; I believe so. But the curate is away on his holiday.

Somebody--I forget who; very likely Callaghan the gardener--told me so.

At all events, I've not seen anything of him. But what do you want with the local clergy?"

"I only want one of them," said the judge; "but I want him rather badly. The man I mean can't be a Roman Catholic priest. He has a bright red moustache. I wonder if you've come across him."

"That must be Mr. Meldon. He has a parish somewhere in England, I believe. He's over here on his holiday. I travelled in the carriage with him from Dublin. He is staying with a Major Kent."

"He's apparently quite mad," said the judge, "and ought to be shut up.

He's dangerous to society."

"He's certainly eccentric. We had a long talk in the train, and he told me a lot about his baby, which had been keeping him awake at night. I was out yachting one day with him and Major Kent."

"Don't go again," said the judge. "Your life wouldn't be safe. Is Major Kent mad too?"

"Not at all. He struck me as a very pleasant man, most considerate and kind."

"He must be very unusually kind if he tolerates Meldon. Of all the objectionable lunatics I ever met, that parson is out and away the worst."

"I shouldn't have said he was actually mad. In some ways I think he's rather clever. He preached quite a remarkable sermon last Sunday, the sort of sermon you can't help listening to."

"I can easily believe that," said the judge. "He preached me a sermon yesterday which I'm not at all likely to forget."

"Where did you meet him, Uncle Gilbert?"

"I didn't meet him. He met me. I shouldn't have dreamed of meeting him. He met me at the railway station at Donard, and invited himself to luncheon with me. He also brought a doctor whom he had along with him. Then he warned me that my life wouldn't be safe in Ballymoy. I thought he was the usual sort of fool with scare ideas about leagues and boycotting. But it wasn't that at all. He thought he'd frighten me off with stories about bad drains; said I'd be sure to die if I stayed at the hotel. He was quite right there, I must say. I should have died if I hadn't left at once."

"Were they very bad?"

"Were what very bad? Oh, the drains. Not at all. At least I daresay they were bad enough. I wasn't there long enough to find out. But I shouldn't have died of the drains in any case. I'm not the kind of man who catches diseases."

Sir Gilbert's chest swelled a little as he spoke, and he slowly puffed out a large cloud of smoke. He was justly proud of his physical health, and was accustomed to hurl defiance at microbes and to heap contempt on the doctor's art.

"I'm sure you're not," said Miss King dutifully.

"What I should have died of," said the judge, "if I had died, would have been starvation. You'll hardly believe me when I tell you that every sc.r.a.p of food I got, even the boiled egg which I ordered for breakfast, thinking it would be safe--"

Miss King had heard all about the paraffin oil before. She had indeed heard about it more than once. She did not want to hear of it again, because she feared that a repet.i.tion of the story might put her uncle into another bad temper.

"I can't understand it," she said. "How any one could be so careless as--"

"It wasn't carelessness," said the judge. "If it had been I might have given the place another trial. It was done on purpose."

"Surely not."

"I pursued the cook," said the judge, "into the fastnesses of her kitchen. She fled before me, but I ran her to earth at last in the scullery. A filthier hole I never saw. I went for her straight, and expected to be told a story about somebody or other upsetting a lamp over all her pots and pans. Instead of that, she answered me, without a sign of hesitation and said-- Now what do you think she said?"

"I can't guess. Not that she thought you'd like the flavour?"

"No. She hadn't quite the effrontery to say that. She told me that Mr. Meldon, this parson of yours who takes you out yachting, had given orders before I came that all my food was to be soaked with paraffin oil."

"Oh! But that's too absurd."

"So you'd think. So I thought at the moment. I didn't believe her. I thought that she was putting up an unusual line of defence to excuse her own gross carelessness. But I was evidently wrong. The girl seems to have been telling the truth. I think I mentioned to you the state in which I found my bed last night."

"You said it was damp."

"Damp! I never said damp. Soaking is the word I used; or at all events ought to have used. It was soaking with Condy's Fluid, as it turned out, though I didn't know at the time what the stuff was. I had an interview with the hotelkeeper himself, a ruffian of the name of Doyle, about that. I had very nearly to break the bell before I could get any one to come to me. It's a very odd thing, but he told me practically the same story; said that this man Meldon, whoever he is, had given orders to have Condy's Fluid poured all over my bed and chloride of lime shovelled on to the floor. I did not believe him at the time any more than I believed that miserable s.l.u.t of a cook the next morning. I was in such a temper when I left that I didn't think of putting their two stories together; but going over the whole thing this afternoon in my mind it struck me as rather peculiar that they should both have hit on such a grotesque sort of a lie, if it was a lie."

"Surely you don't think that Mr. Meldon--he's rather eccentric, I know, but I can scarcely believe that he'd--"