A Good Cigar is a Smoke

When Lancelot Bingley, the rising young artist, became engaged to Gladys Wetherby, the poetess, he naturally felt that this was a good thing and one that should be pushed along. The sooner the wedding took place, in his opinion, the better it would be. He broached the subject to her as they sat dining at the Crushed Pansy, the restaurant with a soul.

"What I would suggest," he said, "if you haven't anything particular on next week, is that we should toddle around to the registrar's and have him do his stuff. They tell me these registrar fellows make a very quick job of it. The whole thing wouldn't take more than ten minutes or so and it would be off our minds and there we would be, if you see what I mean."

A look of pain came into Gladys' face.

"I'm afraid it's not so simple as that."

"What's your problem?"

"I was thinking of Uncle Francis."

"Whose Uncle Francis?"

"My Uncle Francis."

"I didn't know you had an Uncle Francis."

"I've had him for years. He was my mother's brother. Colonel Pashley-Drake. Have you ever heard of him? He's retired now, but he used to be a famous big-game hunter."

"And how does he get into the act?"

"My mother always looked up to him very much, and when she died, she left him a chunk of money that he was to hand over to me when I married."

"I see no objection to that."

"But only if he approved of the man I was marrying. And he won't approve of my marrying an artist."

"Why not?" said Lancelot a little stiffly. "Artists are also God's creatures."

"He thinks they spend all their time having orgies in studios."

"Ridiculous."

"Or painting princesses sitting on leopardskins in the nude."

"So you think he won't give you your money?"

"The betting's against it."

"Then let's do without it. I've plenty," said Lancelot, who was more fortunate than most artists in having a nice private income.

Gladys shook her head.

"No," she said. "I need that money and I won't marry without it. I'm not going to be one of those pauper wives who have to come and plead brokenly with their husbands every time they want the price of a new hat. My pride forbids it."

And though Lancelot argued eloquently with her all through the poulet rôti au cresson course and later during the after-dinner coffee, she was not to be moved from her decision. It was a gloomy young brush-and-easel man who saw her home to her residence in Garbidge Mews, Fulham, and then went off and got plastered in a series of pubs. What, he was asking himself, would the harvest be and where did he go from here?

His hangover on the following day precluded all thought of anything except bicarbonate of soda; but after that, anguish and despair took over and he sat brooding in his studio, listless and incapable of work. If a nude princess had looked in, wanting her portrait painted, he would have had her out of it in under ten seconds. All he could do in the way of alleviating the agony that seared his soul was to play the accordion, always his solace in times of stress; and he had worked his way through Over the Rainbow and was preparing to tackle Ol' Man River when the door flew open and Gladys bounded in, her manner animated and her eyes shining, it seemed to him from a quick glance, like twin stars.

"Put away that stomach Steinway, my Prince Charming," she cried, "and listen to me, for I bring news that will make you go dancing about London like a nautch girl. I've just had a letter from Uncle Francis."

Lancelot was unable to see why this should be considered a cause for rejoicing.

"So what?" he said.

"He's asked me to find him an artist to paint his portrait, to be presented to the Explorers Club. You get the job. Don't you see what this means? You'll be closeted with him day after day; and if you can't fascinate him under those conditions, you're not the king among men I've always thought you. By the end of a couple of weeks, I confidently expect you so to have wrought upon him that he can deny you nothing. You then tell him we're going to be married and he gives you his blessing and reaches for the fountain pen and checkbook. Any questions?"

"None. I like the setup."

"I thought you would."

"It's the most wonderful---- Oh, my God!"

"Now what?"

A thought had occurred to Lancelot. As an artist, he belonged to the ultramodern school, expressing himself most readily in pictures showing a sardine can, two empty beer bottles, a bunch of carrots and a dead cat, with a large eye gleaming somewhere in the background, the whole intended to represent Paris in springtime. He doubted his capacity to work in another vein.

"Would I be any good at a portrait?"

"Good enough for a gaggle of explorers. All explorers have weak eyes through staring at the sunrise on the lower Zambezi. They won't notice a thing."

"Well, if you say so. Then what's the drill?"

"Uncle Francis has a house at Bittleton down in Sussex. You go there tomorrow, complete with brush and paints. I'll phone him to be expecting you."

Another thought occurred to Lancelot.

"I suppose I'm in for a thin time as regards meals. Don't big-game hunters live on pemmican and native maize and that sort of thing?"

"Uncle Francis doesn't. He has the most sensational cook. Every dish a poem."

"That sounds all right," said Lancelot, brightening. Being an artist, he usually made do of an evening with the knuckle end of a ham or something out of a can; but he was by no means incapable of appreciating good cooking and had often wished that the poulet rôti au cresson at the Crushed Pansy had been a bit better rôti. "I go tomorrow, you say?"

"Better, perhaps, the day after tomorrow. That'll give you time to mug up Uncle Francis' book, My Life with Rod and Gun, so that you can draw him out about wapitis, moose, zebus and mountain goats and the other things he used to shoot. He gave me a copy at Christmas, when I was expecting at least a wrist watch."

"That's how it goes," said Lancelot sympathetically.

"Yes, that's life," Gladys agreed. "And the best offer I got from a secondhand bookshop was threepence, so the volume is still in my possession. You can come and fetch it this afternoon."

"And I leave the day after tomorrow?"

"That's right. I'll come and see you off at the station."

•••

As Lancelot sat in his compartment at the appointed time waiting for the train for Bittleton to start and gazing at Gladys, who was standing on the platform, he was thinking how much he loved her and what a dreadful thought it was that they were to be separated like this. He was to learn that there were other dreadful thoughts going around. She now gave utterance to one of them.

"Oh, by the way, captain of my soul," she said, "there's one other thing. I almost forgot to tell you. Uncle Francis is rabidly opposed to smoking, so you'll have to knock it off for the duration."

A strong shudder shook Lancelot. He was a heavy smoker, in spite of having two aunts who belonged to the Anti-tobacco League and kept sending him pamphlets showing what the practice does to those who indulge in it. His jaw fell a couple of notches.

"Knock off smoking? For weeks and weeks? I couldn't."

"You'd better, or----"

"Or what?"

"Else," said Gladys, and the train moved off.

It was one of those trains that have not become attuned to the modern spirit of speed and hustle, and as it sauntered through the sunlit countryside, Lancelot had ample opportunity to weigh Gladys' parting words in his mind and examine them. And the more he weighed and examined, the less he liked the sound of them. Nor is this surprising. There are probably no words in the language that a lover more dislikes to hear on the lips of his loved one than those words "or else." They have a sinister ring calculated to chill the hardiest.

He mused. One cannot say that he was standing at a man's crossroads, for he was sitting, but it was plain to him that he was confronted with the most serious decision of his lifetime. If, on the one hand, he obeyed her behest and refrained from smoking, every nerve in his body would soon be sticking out and starting to curl at the ends and the softest chirrup of the early bird tucking into its worm outside his window would send him shooting to the ceiling, as if some fun-loving practical joker had exploded a bomb beneath his bed. He had once knocked off smoking for two or three days and he knew what it was like.

If, however, on the other hand, he took a strong line and refused to keep (continued on page 138)A Good cigar is a Smoke(continued from page 124) away from the box of 50 excellent cigars that he had brought with him, there would, he knew, be for him no wedding bells or whatever registrars substitute for them. Gladys was, as near as made no matter, an angel in human shape, but she was inclined to be imperious and of a trend of mind to resent anything in the nature of what might be called rannygazoo. And that she would class as rannygazoo a deliberate flouting of her orders was sickeningly clear to him. She would return the ring, his letters and what was left of the bottle of scent he had given her on her birthday within minutes of learning of his disobedience.

Two lines of an old poem flitted into his mind. "A woman is only a woman," the bard had said, "but a good cigar is a smoke"; and for one awful moment, he found himself agreeing with him. Then he was strong again; and it was with the resolve that at all costs he must retain her love that he alighted at Bittleton Station and a short time later was meeting the man whose rugged features he was about to record on canvas.

They were features, particularly the two chins, of an undisguised opulence Colonel Pashley-Drake was a stout man. Indeed, the thought flashed through Lancelot's mind that if he did not subject himself to a rigorous system of diet, he would shortly burst. He knew from reading his book that the colonel, when hunting big game, had frequently hidden behind a tree. To conceal him in this, the evening of his life, only a sequoia would have served. And when later they sat together at the dinner table, Lancelot got an inkling as to how this obesity had come about.

The dinner was a long one and in every respect superb. It was plain to Lancelot from the first spoonful of soup that here, as Gladys had stated, was a cook in a thousand. He mentioned this to his host, and the latter, a look of holy ecstasy in his eye, agreed that Mrs. Potter--for such was the gifted woman's name--was at the very head of her profession. After that, he did not speak very much, being otherwise occupied.

Coffee after the meal was served in a study or library, a small room tastefully decorated with the heads of various fauna that had had the misfortune to encounter the colonel when he was out with his gun. As they seated themselves, he gave Lancelot a searching look.

"I am afraid I cannot offer you a cigar," he said, and Lancelot waved a deprecating hand.

"Had you done so, I should have been obliged to refuse it, with thanks, of course, for the kind thought. I do not smoke. Smoking," said Lancelot, remembering a pamphlet sent to him by one of his aunts, "causes nervous dyspepsia, sleeplessness, headache, weak eyes, asthma, bronchitis, neurasthenia, rheumatism, lumbago, sciatica, loss of memory, impaired will power, lack of ambition, red spots on the skin and falling out of hair. I wouldn't smoke so much as a cigarette to please a dying grandfather. My friends often rally me on what they consider my finicky objection to having red spots on the skin, but I remain firm."

"You are very sensible," said Colonel Pashley-Drake with such enthusiasm that Lancelot felt that the task of fascinating him would prove even easier than Gladys had predicted. He looked forward with bright confidence to the moment--at no distant date--when he would have the old buster rolling on the floor with his paws in the air like a tickled dachshund.

The love feast became intensified as the time went on. The colonel expressed himself delighted that Lancelot had read and enjoyed his little book and spoke fluently and well on the subject of tigers he had met and what to do when confronted with a charging rhinoceros, together with many an anecdote about the selected portions of gnus, giraffes and the like that ornamented the walls. At long last, he stifled a yawn and said he thought he would be retiring for the night, and they parted in an atmosphere of the utmost cordiality.

The dinner, as has been said, had been a long and heavy one, and it and the session in the study after it had left Lancelot with a sense of repletion that only fresh air could relieve; and before going to bed, he felt the prudent thing to do was to take a half-hour stroll in the garden. He proceeded to do so; but what with the beauty of the night and the thinking of long, loving thoughts of Gladys Wetherby, he exceeded that time by a considerable margin. It was some two hours later when he felt that he ought to be turning in and he made his way back to the house--only to discover when he reached it that in his absence some hidden hand had locked the front door.

It was a blow that might have crushed a weaker man, but all artists are resourceful and the idea of trying the back door occurred to him almost immediately. He found that, too, securely fastened, and it became evident that unless he was prepared to pass the remainder of the night in the open, it would be necessary for him to break a window. This, as noiselessly as possible, he did and, climbing through, found himself in what from the smell of it he took to be the kitchen. And he was about to grope his way through the darkness in the hope of finding the door when a voice spoke, a harsh, guttural voice that jarred unpleasantly on his sensitive ear, though the most musical voice speaking at that moment would equally have given him the illusion that the top of his head had parted from its moorings.

"Who are you?" it said.

Suavity, Lancelot saw, was what he must strive for.

"It's quite all right," he said obsequiously. "I was locked out."

"Who are you?"

"My name is Lancelot Bingley. I am staying in the house. I am an artist. I am here to paint Colonel Pashley-Drake's portrait. I would not advise waking him now, but if you inquire of him in the morning, he will endorse----"

"Who are you?"

Annoyance began to compete with Lancelot's embarrassment. If voices asked you questions, he felt, they might at least take the trouble to listen to you when you answered them.

"I have already informed you in a perfectly frank manner," he began rather stiffly, "that my name is Lancelot Bingley and that I am staying----"

"Have a nut," said the voice, changing the subject.

Lancelot's teeth came together with a sharp click. Few things are more mortifying to a proud man than that he has been wasting his time being respectful to a parrot, and he burned with resentment and pique. Ignoring the bird's suggestion--in the circumstances, ill-timed and lacking in taste--that he should scratch its head, he continued groping for the door and eventually found it.

After that, everything was simple. Bounding silently up the stairs, he flung open the door of his room and, not bothering to switch on the light, flung himself on the bed. Or, rather, not precisely on the bed but on some yielding substance inside it that proved, on investigation, to be Colonel Pashley-Drake. Pardonably a little overwrought by his recent exchange of ideas with the parrot, Lancelot had mistaken his host's room--first on the left along the corridor--for his own, which, he now recalled, was the second on the left along the corridor.

The colonel was plainly emotionally disturbed. He spoke for some moments in what Lancelot thought might possibly be Swahili.

"What the devil?" he inquired at length, returning to his native tongue.

Inspiration descended on Lancelot.

"I came to ask you about the portrait. I was wondering if you wanted it full length or just head and shoulders," he said, and was interested to note that his roommate was quivering like someone doing one of the modern dances.

(continued on page 272)A Good cigar is a Smoke(continued from page 138)

"You woke me at this time of night to ask me that?"

"I thought it was a point that should he settled."

"No reason why you should come jumping on my stomach."

"No, there," Lancelot admitted, "I perhaps went a little too far. I am sorry for that."

"Not half so sorry as I am. Do you realize that if you had played a trick like that on me in the old days in West Africa, I'd have shot you like a dog?"

"Really?"

"I assure you. Like a dog."

"What sort of clog?"

"Any sort of dog. Get out of here!"

"And the portrait?"

"To hell with the portrait!"

"Tell me about the old days in West Africa," said Lancelot, hoping to mollify.

"To hell with West Africa," said the colonel.

Lancelot left the room feeling somewhat despondent. During dinner and after it, he had flattered himself that he had made a good impression on his host, hut something seemed to tell him that he had now lost ground.

•••

And what, meanwhile, of Gladys Wetherby? Working on a sonnet next morning, she was conscious of a strange unease that made it hard for her to get the lines the right length. Ever since she had seen Lancelot off in the train, she had been prey to doubts and fears. She adored him with a passion that had already produced six sonnets, a ballade and nearly a pound of vers libre, but all engaged girls have the poorest opinion of the intelligence of the men they are engaged to, and she had never wavered in her view that Lancelot's was about equal to that of a retarded child of seven. If there was a way of messing things up down at Bittleton, he would, she was convinced, spring to the task; and it was only the fact that there seemed no possible way in which he could mess up the mission on which she had sent him that had led her to entrust him with it. All he had to do was paint a portrait and, while painting it, exercise the charm she knew him to possess, and surely even Lancelot Bingley was capable of that.

Nevertheless, she continued ill at ease; and it was with more anguish than surprise that she read the telegram that reached her just as she was preparing to go out for lunch.

It ran:

Come immediately. Need your moral support sorely for am in soup. Disaster stares eyeball. Love and kisses. Lancelot.

For some moments she stood congealed, her worst fears confirmed. Then, life stealing back into the rigid limbs, she went to her bedroom and, with trembling fingers, packed a few necessaries in a suitcase. Half an hour later, she was on the train. a ticket to Bittleton in her bag; and an hour and 45 minutes after that, she entered her uncle's garden. The first thing she saw was Lancelot pacing up and down the drive, his demeanor indistinguishable from that of a cat on hot bricks.

"Lancelot!" she cried, and he came tottering toward her.

"Thank heaven you're here," he said. "I need your woman's intelligence. The storm clouds are lowering and you find me standing behind the eight ball. Perhaps you will be able to tell me what to do for the best."

"What do you mean? What has been happening?"

"You don't mind it being rather a long story?"

"Not if it is coherent."

"Oh, I think I can make it coherent. all right. Here are the facts. I suppose it may be said to have begun last night, when I jumped on your uncle's stomach--oh, purely inadvertently, but I could tell by his manner that he was annoyed. It was like this," said Lancelot, and he related briefly the events of the previous night. "But that," he went on, "wasn't the worst. The worst is yet to come. This is where the plot really begins to thicken. I had sauntered out into the garden this morning with my after-breakfast cigar----"

He paused. He thought he had heard a stepped-on cat utter a piercing yowl. But it was only Gladys commenting on what he had said.

"I told you you were not to smoke!"

"I know, I know, but I thought it would be all right if no one saw me. One must have one's smoke after breakfast, or what ate breakfasts for? Well, as I say, I sauntered out and lit up, and I hadn't puffed more than a few puffs when I heard voices. Not so good, I said to myself, not so good, and I dived into the shrubbery. The voices came nearer. Someone was approaching, or rather, I should have said that two persons were approaching, for whoever it was would hardly have been talking to himself. Though, of course, you do get that sort of thing in Shakespeare. Hamlet, to take but one case, frequently soliloquized."

"Lancelot!"

"My angel?"

"Get on with it."

"Certainly, certainly. Where was I?"

"You were smoking your cigar in the shrubbery."

"No, there you are wrong. I was in the shrubbery, yes, but I was not smoking my cigar, and I'll tell you why. In my natural perturbation at hearing these voices, I had dropped it on the lawn."

He paused again. Once more, Gladys had uttered that eldritch scream.

"Lancelot Bingley, you ought to have your head examined!"

"I will make a note of it, but don't keep interrupting me, darling, or I shall lose the thread. Well, these two approaching persons had now drawn quite close to where I lurked behind a laurel bush. They were your uncle and a globular woman whom I assumed to be the Mrs. Potter of whom I had heard so much, for she was sketching out tonight's chimer; and I don't mind telling you, it's going to be a pippin. Your uncle plainly thought so, too, for he kept saying. 'Excellent, excellent,' and things like that, and my mouth was watering freely when, all of a sudden, a female shriek or cry rent the air and, peeping cautiously round my laurel bush, I saw that they were staring fixedly at something lying on the grass and, to cut a long story short. it was my cigar."

"And they caught you?"

"No, I lurked unseen. And, of course, they didn't know it was my cigar. I gathered from their remarks that the prime suspects were the gardener, the chauffeur and the man who cleans the knives and boots. It naturally didn't occur to your uncle to pin the rap on me, because after dinner last night, I had convinced him that I was a lifelong abstainer."

Indignation brought a flush to Gladys' face.

"Then what's all the fuss about? What's the sense of sending me telegrams about disaster staring you in the eyeball, if you're in the clear?"

"I'm not in the clear."

"Yes, you are."

"No, my loved one. In the soup, yes, but not in the clear."

"I don't know what you mean."

"You will in about a split second. I am sorry to have to add that on the advice of Mrs. Potter, your uncle is having the cigar fingerprinted."

"What!"

"Yes. It appears that she has a brother or cousin or something at Scotland Yard, and she said that was always the first thing they did with a piece of evidence. Taking the dabs, I believe they call it. So your uncle said he would lock it up in his desk till it could be examined by the proper experts. So now you see why I said disaster was staring us in the eyeball. My fingerprints must be all over the damn thing and it won't take those experts five minutes to lay the crime at my door."

Gladys stood motionless, plunged in thought. A fly settled on her left eyebrow, but she ignored it. Lancelot watched her anxiously.

"Anything stirring?" he asked.

Gladys came out of her reverie.

"Yes," she said. "There's only one thing to be done. We must sneak down tonight when everyone's in bed and retrieve that cigar. I know where to find a duplicate key to Uncle Francis' desk. I used it in my childhood when he kept chocolates there. Expect me at your bedroom door about midnight."

"You think we can do it?"

"It'll be as easy as falling off a log," said Gladys.

•••

All artists are nervous, highly strung men, and Lancelot, as he waited for Gladys to come and tell him that zero hour had arrived, was not at his brightest and most debonair. He viewed the coming expedition with concern. It so happened that, for one reason or another, he had never fallen off a log; but he assumed it to be a feat well within the scope of the least gifted; and why Gladys should think it resembled the task that lay before them, he could not imagine. He could think of a dozen things that could go wrong. Suppose, to take an instance at random, the parrot overheard them and roused the house.

But when Gladys did knock on the door, something of confidence returned to him. The mere look of her was encouraging. There is nothing that so heartens a man in a crisis as the feeling that he has a woman of strong executive qualities at his side. Macbeth, it will be remembered, had this experience.

"Sit!" said Gladys, though he had not spoken; and before they set out, she had a word of advice on strategy and tactics to impart.

"Now, listen, Lancelot," she said. "We want to conduct this operation with a minimum of sound effects. Your impulse, I know, will be to trip over your feet and fall downstairs with a noise like the delivery of a ton of coals, but resist it. Play the scene quietly. OK? Right. Then let's go."

Nothing marred the success of the expedition from the outset. True, Lancelot tripped over his feet as anticipated, but a quick snatch at the banisters enabled him to avoid giving the impersonation of the delivery of a ton of coals against which she had warned him. In silence they descended the stairs and stole noiselessly into the study. Gladys produced her duplicate key and Lancelot was just saying to himself that if he had been a bookie, he would have estimated the odds on the happy ending as at least four to one, when there occurred one of those unforeseen hitches that always have to be budgeted for. Even as Gladys, key in hand, approached the desk, there came from the corridor outside, booming in the still night like the crackle of machine guns, the sound of footsteps.

It was a moment fraught with embarrassment for the young couple, but each acted with a promptitude that could scarcely be overpraised. By the time the door opened, no evidence of their presence was discernible. Gladys was concealed behind the curtains that draped the French windows, while Lancelot, with a lissome bound, had cleared the desk and was crouching behind it, doing his best not to breathe.

The first sound he heard was the click of key in lock and the opening of a drawer. There followed the scratching of a match, and suddenly there floated to his nostrils the unmistakable scent of cigar smoke. And even as he sought vainly for a solution of this mystery, the curtains parted with a rattle and he was able to catch a glimpse of the upper portions of the girl he loved. She was staring accusingly down at something beyond his range of vision: and when a sharp exclamation in Swahili broke the silence, he knew that this must be Colonel Francis Pashley-Drake.

"So!" said Gladys.

There are not many good things one can say in answer to the word "So!" and the colonel remained silent for a space. When he spoke, it was with something of his customary dignity.

"Ah, there you are, my dear. Sorry to have seemed a bit taciturn, but your abrupt appearance surprised me. I thought you were in bed and asleep. Well, no doubt it seems odd to you to find me here, but I can explain. If you knew how I am situated----"

"You are situated in an armchair with a whacking great cigar in your mouth and I shall be glad to have the inside story."

"You shall have it at once and I think it will touch your heart. You were away from home, I believe, when Mrs. Potter entered my service?"

"She had been here a year when I first saw her."

"Exactly. She was in the employment of a friend of mine when I was introduced to her superlative cooking. When he conked out--apoplexy, poor fellow, brought on, I have always thought, by overindulgence in her fried chicken, Southern style--I immediately asked her to come to me, and I was stunned when she inquired if I was a nonsmoker, adding that she held smoking to be the primary cause of all human ills and would never consider serving under the banner of an employer who indulged in the revolting practice. You follow me so far?"

"I get the picture."

"It was a tricky situation, you will admit. On the one hand, I loved cigars. On the other, I adored good food. Which to choose? The whole of that night I lay sleepless in bed, pondering; and when morning came, I knew what my decision must be, I made the great sacrifice. I told her I never smoked and, until tonight, I never have. But this morning, somebody dropped this cigar on the lawn and the sight of it shook me to my depths. I had not seen one for three years and all the old craving returned. Unable to resist the urge, I crept down here and.... Well, that is the story, my dear, and I am sure you will not let this little lapse of mine come to the ears of Mrs. Potter. I can rely on you?"

"Of course."

"Thank you, thank you. You have taken a great weight off my mind. The sun has broken through the clouds ... well, not literally, of course, for a glance at my wrist watch tells me that the hour is one-fifteen in the morning, but figuratively. Bless my soul, I have not felt so relieved since the afternoon in West Africa when a rhinoceros, charging on me with flashing eyes, suddenly sprained an ankle and had to call the whole thing off. I shudder to think what would have happened if Mrs. Potter had learned of my doings this night."

Gladys nodded. She saw his point.

"You wouldn't have been able to see her for dust."

"Precisely. She would have vanished like a dream at daybreak. But, provided you seal your lips----"

"Oh. I'll seal them."

"Thank you, my dear."

"And you, on your side, will write me a check for that little bit of cash of mine. You see, I want to get married."

"You do? Who to?"

"You know him. Lancelot Bingley."

A hoarse exclamation in some little-known Senegambian dialect escaped the colonel.

"What! You're joking!"

"I am not."

"You seriously mean you intend to marry that popeyed. pestilential young slab of damnation?"

"He is not popeyed."

"But you will concede that he is a pestilential slab of damnation?"

"I will do nothing of the sort. Lancelot is a baa-lamb."

"A baa-lamb?"

"Yes, a baa-lamb."

The colonel drew meditatively at his cigar for a moment.

"Odd you should say that," he said, "because to me he seems like something the cat brought in, and not a very fastidious cat, at that."

In his nook behind the desk, Lancelot blushed hotly. For a moment he thought of rising to his feet with a curt "I resent that remark," but prudence told him that it was better not to interrupt.

"And it is not only his looks I object to," continued the colonel. "I suppose he has kept it from you, but he goes about jumping on people's stomachs."

"Yes, he mentioned that to me."

"Well, then. You don't expect me to abet you in your crazy scheme of marrying a fellow like that. I won't give you a penny."

"Then I'll tell Mrs. Potter you're a secret smoker."

The colonel gasped. His cigar fell from his hand. He picked it up, dusted it and returned it to his lips.

"This is blackmail!"

"With the possible exception of diamonds." said Gladys, "a girl's best friend."

Silence fell. The colonel's eyes were strained and bleak. His two chins vibrated. It was plain that he was engaged in serious thought. Finally he spoke.

"Very well. I consent. I do it with the utmost reluctance, for the idea of anyone marrying that ... that ... how shall I describe him? ... well, never mind, you know what I mean ... chills me to the marrow. But there is no alternative. I cannot do without Mrs. Potter's cooking."

"You shall have it."

"And furthermore." said Lancelot, rising from behind the desk like a rocketing pheasant and causing the colonel to quiver like a smitten jelly, "you shall have all the cigars you want. I have a box of fifty--or, rather, forty-nine--upstairs in my room and I give them to you freely. And after breakfast tomorrow, I will show you a spot in the shrubbery where you can smoke your head off without fear of detection."

The colonel drew a deep breath. His eyes glowed with a strange light. His chins vibrated again, but this time with obvious ecstasy. He said a few words in Cape Dutch; then, seeing that his companions had plainly missed the gist, he obligingly translated.

"Gladys," he said. "I could wish you no better husband."