One of the pleasantest, yet perhaps most dangerous, points about Simon Pettigrew's condition was his un-English open-heartedness towards strangers—strangers that pleased him. A disposition, in fact, to chum up with anything that appealed to him, without question, without thought. Affable strangers, pretty girls—it was all the same to Simon.
Now, when Bobby Ravenshaw went into the cigar merchant's, leaving Simon outside, he had not noticed particularly a large Dragon-Fly car, claret-coloured and adorned with a tiny monogram on the door-panel, which was standing in front of the shop immediately on the right. It was the property of the Hon. Dick Pugeot, and just as Bobby disappeared into the tobacconist's the Hon. Dick appeared from the doorstep of the next-door shop.
Dick Pugeot, late of the Guards, was a big, yellow man, quite young, perhaps not more[Pg 155] than twenty-five, yet with a serious and fatherly face and an air that gave him another five years of apparent age. This serious and fatherly appearance was deceptive. With the activity of a gnat, a disregard of all consequences, a big fortune, a good heart, and a taste for fun of any sort as long as it kept him moving, Dick Pugeot was generally in trouble of some kind or another. His crave for speed on the road was only equal to his instinct for fastness in other respects, but, up to this, thanks to luck and his own personality, he had, with the exception of a few endorsed licences and other trifles of that sort, always escaped.
But once he had come very near to a real disaster. Some eighteen months ago he found himself involved with a lady, a female shark in the guise of an angel, a—to put it in his own language—"bad 'un."
The bad 'un had him firmly hooked. She was a Countess, too! and fried and eaten he undoubtedly would have been had not the wisdom of an uncle saved him.
"Go to my solicitor, Pettigrew," said the uncle. "If she were an ordinary card-sharper I would advise you to go to Marcus Abraham, but, seeing what she is, Pettigrew is the man. He wouldn't take up an ordinary case of this[Pg 156] sort, but, seeing what she is, and considering that you are my nephew, he'll do it—and he knows all the ins and outs of her family. There's nothing he doesn't know about us."
"Us" meaning people of high degree.
Pugeot went, and Simon took up the case, and in forty-eight hours the fish was off the hook, frantically grateful. He presented Simon with a silver wine-cooler and then forgot him, till this moment, when, coming out of Spud and Simpson's shop, he saw Simon standing on the pavement smoking a cigar and watching the pageant of the street.
Simon's new clothes and holiday air and straw hat put him off for a moment, but it was Pettigrew right enough.
"Hello, Pettigrew!" said Pugeot.
"Hello," said Simon, pleased with the heartiness and appearance of this new friend.
"Why, you look quite gay," said Pugeot. "What are you up to?"
"Out for some fun," said Simon. "What are you up to?"
"Same as you," replied Pugeot, delighted, amused, and surprised at Simon's manner and reply, the vast respect he had for his astuteness greatly amplified by this evidence of mundane leanings. "Get into the car; I've got to call[Pg 157] at Panton Street for a moment, and then we'll go and have luncheon or something."
He opened the car door and Simon hopped in; then he gave the address to the driver and the car drove off.
"Well, I never expected to see you this morning," said Pugeot. "Never can feel grateful enough to you either—you've nothing special to do, have you? Anywhere I can drive you to?"
"I've got to see a girl," said Simon, "but she can wait."
Pugeot laughed.
That explained the summer garb and straw hat, but the frankness came to him with the weest bit of a shock. However, he was used to shocks, and if old Simon Pettigrew was running after girls it was no affair of his. It was a good joke, though, despite the fact that he could never tell it. Pugeot was not the man to tell tales out of school.
"Look here," said Simon, suddenly producing his notes, "I want to change a hundred; been trying to do it in a lot of shops. You can't have any fun without some money."
"Don't you worry," said Pugeot. "This is my show."
"I want to change a hundred," said Simon,[Pg 158] with the persistency of Toddy wanting to see the wheels go round.
"Well, I'll get you change, though you don't really want it. Why, you've got two hundred there—and a tenner!"
"It's not too much to have a good time with."
"Oh my!" said Pugeot. "Well, if you're on the razzle-dazzle, I'm with you, Pettigrew. I feel safe with you, in a way; there's not much you don't know."
"Not much," said Simon, puffing himself.
The car stopped.
"A minute," said Pugeot. Out he jumped, transacted his business, and was back again under five minutes. There was a new light in his sober eye.
"Let's go and have a slap at the Wilderness," said he, lowering his voice a tone. "You know the Wilderness. I can get you in—jolly good fun."
"Right," said Simon.
Pugeot gave an address to the driver and off they went. They stopped in a narrow street and Pugeot led the way into a house.
In the hall of this house he had an interview with a pale-faced individual in black, an evil, weary-looking person who handed Simon a[Pg 159] visitors' book to sign. They then went into a bar, where Simon imbibed a cocktail, and from the bar they went upstairs.
Pugeot opened a door and disclosed Monte Carlo.
A Monte Carlo shrunk to one room and one table. This was the Wilderness Club, and around the table were grouped men of all ages and sizes, some of them of the highest social standing.
The stakes were high.
Just as a child gobbles a stolen apple, so these gentlemen seemed to be trying to make as much out of their furtive business as they could and get away, winners or losers, as soon as possible lest worse befel them. Added to the uneasiness of the gambler was the uneasiness of the law-breaker, the two uneasinesses, combined making a mental cocktail that, to a large number of the frequenters, had a charm far above anything to be obtained in a legitimate gambling-shop on the Continent.
This place supplied Oppenshaw with some of his male patients.
Pugeot played and lost, and then Simon plunged.
They were there an hour, and in that hour Simon won seven hundred pounds!
Then Pugeot, far more delighted than he, dragged him away.
It was now nearly one o'clock, and downstairs they had luncheon, of a sort, and a bottle of cliquot, of a sort.
"You came in with two hundred and you are going out with nine," said Pugeot. "I am so jolly glad—you have the luck. When we've finished we'll go for a great tearing spin and get the air. You'd better get a cap somewhere; that straw hat will be blown to Jericho. You've never seen Randall drive? He beats me. We'll run round to my rooms and get coats—the old car is a Dragon-Fly. I want to show you what a Dragon-Fly can really do on the hard high-road out of sight of traffic. Two Benedictines, please."
They stopped at Scott's, where Simon invested in a cap; then they went to Pugeot's rooms, where overcoats were obtained. Then they started.
Pugeot was nicknamed the Baby—Baby Pugeot—and the name sometimes applied. Mixed with his passion for life, he loved fresh air and a good many innocent things, speed amongst them. Randall, the chauffeur, seemed on all fours with him in the latter respect, and the Dragon-Fly was an able instrument. Clearing[Pg 161] London, they made through Sussex for the sea. The day was perfect and filled for miles with the hum of the Dragon-Fly. At times they were doing a good seventy miles, at times less; then came the Downs and a vision of the sea—seacoast towns through which they passed picking up petrol and liquid refreshments. At Hastings, or somewhere, where they indulged in a light and early dinner, the vision of Cerise, always like a guardian angel, arose before the remains of the mind of Simon, and her address. He wanted to go there at once, which was manifestly impossible. He tried to explain her to Pugeot, who at the same time was trying to explain a dark-eyed girl he had met at a dance the week before last and who was haunting him. "Can't get her blessed eyes out of my head, my dear chap; and she's engaged two deep to a chap in the Carabineers, without a cent to his name and a pile of debts as big as Mount Ararat. She won't be happy—that's what's gettin' me; she won't be happy. How can she be happy with a chap like that, without a cent to his name and a pile of debts? Lord, I can't understand women, they're beyond me. Waiter, confound you! do you call this stuff asparagus? Take it away! Not a cent to her name—and tied to him for years, maybe. I mean to say, it's[Pg 162] absurd.... What were you saying? Oh yes, I'll take you there—it's only round the corner, so to speak. Randall will do it. The Dragon-Fly'll have us there in no time. Do you remember, was this Hastings or Bognor? Waiter, hi! Is this Hastings or Bognor? All your towns are so confoundedly alike there's no telling which is which, and I've been through twenty. Hastings, that'll do; put your information down in the bill—if you can find room for it. You needn't be a bit alarmed, old chap, she'll be there all right. You said you sent her those flowers? Well, that will keep her all right and happy. I mean to say, she'll be right—absolutely—I know women from hoof to mane. No, no pudding. Bill, please."
Then they were out in the warm summer twilight listening to a band. Then they were getting into the car, and Pugeot was saying to Simon:
"It's a jolly good thing we've got a teetotum driver. What you say, old chap?"
Then the warm and purring night took them and sprinkled stars over them, and a great moon rose behind, which annoyed Pugeot, who kept looking back at it, abusing it because the reflection from the wind-screen got in his eyes. Then they burst a tyre and Pugeot, instantly[Pg 163] becoming condensedly clever and active and clear of speech, insisted on putting on the spare wheel himself. He had a long argument with Randall as to which was the front and which was the back of the wheel—not the sideways front and back, but the foreways front and back, Randall insisting gently that it did not matter. Then the wheel on and all the nuts re-tested by Randall—an operation which Pugeot took as a sort of personal insult; the jack was taken down, and Pugeot threw it into a ditch. They would not want it again as they had not another spare wheel, and it was a nuisance anyhow, but Randall, with the good humour and patience which came to him from a salary equal to the salary of a country curate, free quarters and big tips and perquisites, recovered the jack and they started.
A town and an inn that absolutely refused to serve the smiling motorists with anything stronger than "minerals" was passed. Then ten miles further on the lights of a town hull down on the horizon brought the dry "insides" to a dear consideration of the position.
The town developing an inn, Randall was sent, as the dove from the ark, with a half-sovereign, and returned with a stone demijohn and two glasses. It was beer.