Читаем Piccadilly Jim полностью

The sight of Jimmy, however, roused Mrs. Pett from her literary calm. To her eye, after what Lord Wisbeach had revealed there was something sinister in the very way in which he walked into the room. He made her flesh creep. In "A Society Thug" (Mobbs and Stifien, $1.35 net, all rights of translation reserved, including the Scandinavian) she had portrayed just such a man—smooth, specious, and formidable. Instinctively, as she watched Jimmy, her mind went back to the perfectly rotten behaviour of her own Marsden Tuke (it was only in the last chapter but one that they managed to foil his outrageous machinations), and it seemed to her that here was Tuke in the flesh. She had pictured him, she remembered, as a man of agreeable exterior, the better calculated to deceive and undo the virtuous; and the fact that Jimmy was a presentable-looking young man only made him appear viler in her eyes. In a word, she could hardly have been in less suitable frame of mind to receive graciously any kind of a request from him. She would have suspected ulterior motives if he had asked her the time.

Jimmy did not know this. He thought that she eyed him a trifle frostily, but he did not attribute this to any suspicion of him. He tried to ingratiate himself by smiling pleasantly. He could not have made a worse move. Marsden Tuke's pleasant smile had been his deadliest weapon. Under its influence deluded people had trusted him alone with their jewellery and what not.

"Aunt Nesta," said Jimmy, "I wonder if I might ask you a personal favour."

Mrs. Pett shuddered at the glibness with which he brought out the familiar name. This was superTuke. Marsden himself, scoundrel as he was, could not have called her "Aunt Nesta" as smoothly as that.

"Yes?" she said at last. She found it difficult to speak.

"I happened to meet an old friend of mine this morning. He was very sorry for himself. It appears that—for excellent reasons, of course—you had dismissed him. I mean Jerry Mitchell."

Mrs. Pett was now absolutely appalled. The conspiracy seemed to grow more complicated every moment. Already its ramifications embraced this man before her, a trusted butler, and her husband's late physical instructor. Who could say where it would end? She had never liked Jerry Mitchell, but she had never suspected him of being a conspirator. Yet, if this man who called himself Jimmy Crocker was an old friend of his, how could he be anything else?

"Mitchell," Jimmy went on, unconscious of the emotions which his every word was arousing in his hearer's bosom, "told me about what happened yesterday. He is very depressed. He said he could not think how he happened to behave in such an abominable way. He entreated me to put in a word for him with you. He begged me to tell you how he regretted the brutal assault, and asked me to mention the fact that his record had hitherto been blameless." Jimmy paused. He was getting no encouragement, and seemed to be making no impression whatever. Mrs. Pett was sitting bolt upright in her chair in a stiffly defensive sort of way. She had the appearance of being absolutely untouched by his eloquence. "In fact," he concluded lamely, "he is very sorry."

There was silence for a moment.

"How do you come to know Mitchell?" asked Mrs. Pett.

"We knew each other when I was over here working on the Chronicle. I saw him fight once or twice. He is an excellent fellow, and used to have a right swing that was a pippin—I should say extremely excellent. Brought it up from the floor, you know."

"I strongly object to prize-fighters," said Mrs. Pett, "and I was opposed to Mitchell coming into the house from the first."

"You wouldn't let him come back, I suppose?" queried Jimmy tentatively.

"I would not. I would not dream of such a thing."

"He's full of remorse, you know."

"If he has a spark of humanity, I have no doubt of it."

Jimmy paused. This thing was not coming out as well as it might have done. He feared that for once in her life Ann was about to be denied something on which she had set her heart. The reflection that this would be extremely good for her competed for precedence in his mind with the reflection that she would probably blame him for the failure, which would be unpleasant.

"He is very fond of Ogden really."

"H'm," said Mrs. Pett.

"I think the heat must have made him irritable. In his normal state he would not strike a lamb. I've known him to do it."

"Do what?"

"Not strike lambs."

"Isch," said Mrs. Pett—the first time Jimmy had ever heard that remarkable monosyllable proceed from human lips. He took it—rightly—to be intended to convey disapproval, scepticism, and annoyance. He was convinced that this mission was going to be one of his failures.

"Then I may tell him," he said, "that it's all right?"

"That what is all right?"

"That he may come back here?"

"Certainly not."