The Clue of the Twisted Candle

“Of course you are right in one respect,” he said at last, “but you’re altogether wrong about the children.”

“Are you married!” she demanded with no evidence of amusement.

“Didn’t you know?” he asked.

She swallowed something.

“Of course it’s no business of mine and I’m sure I hope you are very happy.”

“Perfectly happy,” said T. X. complacently. “You must come out and see me one Saturday afternoon when I am digging the potatoes. I am a perfect devil when they let me loose in the vegetable garden.”

“Shall we go on?” she said.

He could have sworn there were tears in her eyes and manlike he thought she was vexed with him at his fooling.

“I haven’t made you cross, have I?” he asked.

“Oh no,” she replied.

“I mean you don’t believe all this rot about my being married and that sort of thing?”

“I’m not interested,” she said, with a shrug of her shoulders, “not very much. You’ve been very kind to me and I should be an awful boor if I wasn’t grateful. Of course, I don’t care whether you’re married or not, it’s nothing to do with me, is it?”

“Naturally it isn’t,” he replied. “I suppose you aren’t married by any chance?”

“Married,” she repeated bitterly; “why, you will make my fourth!”

She had hardy got the words out of her mouth before she realized her terrible error. A second later she was in his arms and he was kissing her to the scandal of one aged park keeper, one small and dirty-faced little boy and a moulting duck who seemed to sneer at the proceedings which he watched through a yellow and malignant eye.

“Belinda Mary,” said T. X. at parting, “you have got to give up your little country establishment, wherever it may be and come back to the discomforts of Portman Place. Oh, I know you can’t come back yet. That ‘somebody’ is there, and I can pretty well guess who it is.”

“Who?” she challenged.

“I rather fancy your mother has come back,” he suggested.

A look of scorn dawned into her pretty face.

“Good lord, Tommy!” she said in disgust, “you don’t think I should keep mother in the suburbs without her telling the world all about it!”

“You’re an undutiful little beggar,” he said.

They had reached the Horse Guards at Whitehall and he was saying good-bye to her.

“If it comes to a matter of duty,” she answered, “perhaps you will do your duty and hold up the traffic for me and let me cross this road.”

“My dear girl,” he protested, “hold up the traffic?”

“Of course,” she said indignantly, “you’re a policeman.”

“Only when I am in uniform,” he said hastily, and piloted her across the road.

It was a new man who returned to the gloomy office in Whitehall. A man with a heart that swelled and throbbed with the pride and joy of life’s most precious possession.

CHAPTER XVIII

T. X. sat at his desk, his chin in his hands, his mind remarkably busy. Grave as the matter was which he was considering, he rose with alacrity to meet the smiling girl who was ushered through the door by Mansus, preternaturally solemn and mysterious.

She was radiant that day. Her eyes were sparkling with an unusual brightness.

“I’ve got the most wonderful thing to tell you,” she said, “and I can’t tell you.”

“That’s a very good beginning,” said T. X., taking her muff from her hand.

“Oh, but it’s really wonderful,” she cried eagerly, “more wonderful than anything you have ever heard about.”

“We are interested,” said T. X. blandly.

“No, no, you mustn’t make fun,” she begged, “I can’t tell you now, but it is something that will make you simply—” she was at a loss for a simile.

“Jump out of my skin?” suggested T. X.

“I shall astonish you,” she nodded her head solemnly.

“I take a lot of astonishing, I warn you,” he smiled; “to know you is to exhaust one’s capacity for surprise.”

“That can be either very, very nice or very, very nasty,” she said cautiously.

“But accept it as being very, very nice,” he laughed. “Now come, out with this tale of yours.”

She shook her head very vigorously.

“I can’t possibly tell you anything,” she said.

“Then why the dickens do you begin telling anything for?” he complained, not without reason.

“Because I just want you to know that I do know something.”

“Oh, Lord!” he groaned. “Of course you know everything. Belinda Mary, you’re really the most wonderful child.”

He sat on the edge of her arm-chair and laid his hand on her shoulder.

“And you’ve come to take me out to lunch!”

“What were you worrying about when I came in?” she asked.

He made a little gesture as if to dismiss the subject.

“Nothing very much. You’ve heard me speak of John Lexman?”