A Damsel in Distress

At about the time that George Bevan's train was leaving Waterloo, a

grey racing car drew up with a grinding of brakes and a sputter of

gravel in front of the main entrance of Belpher Castle. The slim

and elegant young man at the wheel removed his goggles, pulled out

a watch, and addressed the stout young man at his side.

"Two hours and eighteen minutes from Hyde Park Corner, Boots. Not

so dusty, what?"

His companion made no reply. He appeared to be plunged in thought.

He, too, removed his goggles, revealing a florid and gloomy face,

equipped, in addition to the usual features, with a small moustache

and an extra chin. He scowled forbiddingly at the charming scene

which the goggles had hidden from him.

Before him, a symmetrical mass of grey stone and green ivy, Belpher

Castle towered against a light blue sky. On either side rolling

park land spread as far as the eye could see, carpeted here and

there with violets, dotted with great oaks and ashes and Spanish

chestnuts, orderly, peaceful and English. Nearer, on his left, were

rose-gardens, in the centre of which, tilted at a sharp angle,

appeared the seat of a pair of corduroy trousers, whose wearer

seemed to be engaged in hunting for snails. Thrushes sang in the

green shrubberies; rooks cawed in the elms. Somewhere in the

distance sounded the tinkle of sheep bells and the lowing of cows.

It was, in fact, a scene which, lit by the evening sun of a perfect

spring day and fanned by a gentle westerly wind, should have

brought balm and soothing meditations to one who was the sole

heir to all this Paradise.

But Percy, Lord Belpher, remained uncomforted by the notable

co-operation of Man and Nature, and drew no solace from the

reflection that all these pleasant things would one day be his own.

His mind was occupied at the moment, to the exclusion of all other

thoughts, by the recollection of that painful scene in Bow Street

Police Court. The magistrate's remarks, which had been tactless and

unsympathetic, still echoed in his ears. And that infernal night in

Vine Street police station . . . The darkness . . . The hard bed. . .

The discordant vocalising of the drunk and disorderly in the

next cell. . . . Time might soften these memories, might lessen the

sharp agony of them; but nothing could remove them altogether.

Percy had been shaken to the core of his being. Physically, he was

still stiff and sore from the plank bed. Mentally, he was a

volcano. He had been marched up the Haymarket in the full sight of

all London by a bounder of a policeman. He had been talked to like

an erring child by a magistrate whom nothing could convince that he

had not been under the influence of alcohol at the moment of his

arrest. (The man had said things about his liver, kindly

be-warned-in-time-and-pull-up-before-it-is-too-late things, which

would have seemed to Percy indecently frank if spoken by his

medical adviser in the privacy of the sick chamber.) It is perhaps

not to be wondered at that Belpher Castle, for all its beauty of

scenery and architecture, should have left Lord Belpher a little

cold. He was seething with a fury which the conversation of Reggie

Byng had done nothing to allay in the course of the journey from

London. Reggie was the last person he would willingly have chosen

as a companion in his hour of darkness. Reggie was not soothing. He

would insist on addressing him by his old Eton nickname of Boots

which Percy detested. And all the way down he had been breaking out

at intervals into ribald comments on the recent unfortunate

occurrence which were very hard to bear.