A Damsel in Distress

"You wished to see me, your lordship?"

"Yes. Keggs, there are a number of outside men helping here

tonight, aren't there?"

"Indubitably, your lordship. The unprecedented scale of the

entertainment necessitated the engagement of a certain number of

supernumeraries," replied Keggs with an easy fluency which Reggie

Byng, now cooling his head on the lower terrace, would have

bitterly envied. "In the circumstances, such an arrangement was

inevitable."

"You engaged all these men yourself?"

"In a manner of speaking, your lordship, and for all practical

purposes, yes. Mrs. Digby, the 'ouse-keeper conducted the actual

negotiations in many cases, but the arrangement was in no instance

considered complete until I had passed each applicant."

"Do you know anything of an American who says he is the cousin of

the page-boy?"

"The boy Albert did introduce a nominee whom he stated to be 'is

cousin 'ome from New York on a visit and anxious to oblige. I trust

he 'as given no dissatisfaction, your lordship? He seemed a

respectable young man."

"No, no, not at all. I merely wished to know if you knew him. One

can't be too careful."

"No, indeed, your lordship."

"That's all, then."

"Thank you, your lordship."

Lord Belpher was satisfied. He was also relieved. He felt that

prudence and a steady head had kept him from making himself

ridiculous. When George presently returned with the life-saving

fluid, he thanked him and turned his thoughts to other things.

But, if the young master was satisfied, Keggs was not. Upon Keggs a

bright light had shone. There were few men, he flattered himself,

who could more readily put two and two together and bring the sum

to a correct answer. Keggs knew of the strange American gentleman

who had taken up his abode at the cottage down by Platt's farm. His

looks, his habits, and his motives for coming there had formed food

for discussion throughout one meal in the servant's hall; a

stranger whose abstention from brush and palette showed him to be

no artist being an object of interest. And while the solution put

forward by a romantic lady's-maid, a great reader of novelettes,

that the young man had come there to cure himself of some unhappy

passion by communing with nature, had been scoffed at by the

company, Keggs had not been so sure that there might not be

something in it. Later events had deepened his suspicion, which

now, after this interview with Lord Belpher, had become certainty.

The extreme fishiness of Albert's sudden production of a cousin

from America was so manifest that only his preoccupation at the

moment when he met the young man could have prevented him seeing it

before. His knowledge of Albert told him that, if one so versed as

that youth in the art of Swank had really possessed a cousin in

America, he would long ago have been boring the servants' hall with

fictions about the man's wealth and importance. For Albert not to

lie about a thing, practically proved that thing non-existent. Such

was the simple creed of Keggs.