The escapade of Roger Drew

Contents

Chapter Page

I Missing.1

II Roger’s Plight.9

CHAPTER I Missing

t( TT DOESN’T seem possible that a young man I known to so many people should disappear like A a piece of thistle-down.”

Mrs. Defensor at breakfast with her daughter in a New York hotel looked up after reading some letters from home.

“Something about Captain Drew?” asked Joan Defensor.

“I was hoping there would be some word from Lamptons in London.”

“Even Lamptons are not omniscient.”

Joan Defensor went on with her work of sorting out steamer labels which lay in a pile by the side of her plate.

6 i Three trunks in the hold, six things in our cabin . 9 9

Mrs. Defensor watched her.

“I wonder if we are doing right in going back so soon.”

Joan left her seat, and went round the table, and softly smoothed her mother’s hair.

“We’ll do as you like. I think there is as much chance of finding him there as here. ’ ’

There was a likeness between the two women de¬ spite the years of age which separated them. Both were tall, both had blue grey eyes with curious points of light in them which might mean reserves of indignation tenderness, or merriment. In the elder woman, too, were memories of the lithe grace which marked the girl. Differences laid emphasis on the similarity. The touch of chestnut in the silver hair of Mrs. Defensor was in contrast with the ebon sheen which was one of the glories of Joan. The abundant smooth black hair went with a certain suave beauty, a silky fresh com¬ plexion, a straight nose, with lips full of feeling. De¬ spite an intuitive gentleness there were hidden fires in Joan Defensor. She lacked the tiny dimples which lighted her mother’s face in conversation, and gave a suggestion of youth to the woman of sixty. Indeed one had the curious feeling that in some unnameable way the daughter was the older of the two, notwithstanding her radiating youth.

“We’ll come across him sooner or later, mother. At the end of the war many young men found they had to strike out into new ways of life. He had travelled before; he went abroad again to find some new method of making a living. It’s quite commonplace. We shall certainly find out where he is, presently. And don’t forget we may be a little disappointed in Captain Drew when we meet him. We’ve never seen him.”

“We shan’t be disappointed in him. How could we be!”

A waiter knocked at the door, and came in to clear away the breakfast things, and the two women walked over to the window.

“A hero is not always handsome and charming, sometimes not even well mannered.”

Mrs. Defensor shook her head almost impatiently. “What does it matter! Trifles like that.”

MISSING

“I suppose they are trifles/’ said Joan.

Mrs. Defensor smiled but her face went back to seriousness immediately.

“How nice it would have been if Captain Drew had known Richard when he was young. Pm always thinking of Richard when he was a boy. It’s hard to picture him as a grown man.”

“I must have been about nine when he changed from knickerbockers to trousers. I was as proud as he was. I used to wish I was somebody else ’s sister so I could have fallen in love with him.”

Mrs. Defensor stood, looking out of the window, and her voice drooped.

“Do you remember how he came in drenched to the shoulders after wading into the canal to save some kittens a man tried to drown ?”

“I don’t think I was home then. I shall always remember Devonshire where we were that summer, and how he got up in the night and stole some pears from a garden because I had said Pd love to have some.”

“And Farmer Wren threatened to have him locked up. ’ ’

“And you paid about a pound a piece for the pears. I don’t think we could have been so fond of him if he had been a real good boy.”

i ‘ He was always good. ’ ’

“Do you remember when at eleven he ran away home from the preparatory school? And the fight he had in the second week after you took him back?”

“I didn’t like his fighting, but I wouldn’t have had him a coward.”

“He was no coward, mother. He never had any fear of anyone. If he had been more careful in France —”

Joan stopped herself. She always tried to keep her mother’s mind clear of that terrible morning in May when the fateful telegram came to their home in London.

“I wish dad had lived to see him grow up,” she said.

“He was very like your father as a young man, Joan. Oh that terrible war!”

Joan put her arm round her mother’s waist.

“It’s no use worrying. We’ve passed through that. He will always live for us in one way. And we really have a very happy interest in finding out this friend of his. I’m sure we can help him. That’s what Richard would have liked. ’ ’

Richard had been life’s core to Mrs. Defensor. His end had done the work which years had left un¬ finished, and she had gone from what seemed an unchal¬ lengeable youthfulness to elderliness in a period of months. Unrest had come upon her. Perfunctorily she carried on her friendships, and she showed a spas¬ modic tendency to travel — a tendency unknown to her when Richard could come home. She rested on the sadly happy thought of meeting Roger Drew, and when he disappeared without a word an affectionate obses¬ sion for the young man who had befriended Richard in his hour of helplessness provided her with an aim for which her daughter was thankful. Lawyers were set to work, without results. She fretted, and Joan was glad, for anxiety was better than apathy. Money

M

MISSING and effort were freely spent. The reason why the re¬ peated invitation of her old friend Mrs. Burton for a visit to her Virginia home across the Atlantic was accepted lay in the tardy discovery that eight months previously Roger Drew had sailed for America.

“You don’t suppose he’s dead.”

The two women were busy with their preparations for their departure when Mrs. Defensor thrust the sug¬ gestion a little fearfully at her daughter.

“His aunt would certainly have heard of it if he were dead,” said Joan. “We write to Bath every month. His aunt has promised to communicate with us directly she gets in touch about him. ’ ’

“I wish he knew we were searching.”

“He probably does. He’s avoiding us. He has no need to. I suppose his idea is that a devoted mother and a very plain daughter will feel they have a claim by old associations to enmesh him into matrimony.”

Joan laughed heartily at the thought.

‘ ‘ He need have no fear. We have had far too much bother about this young man. He is not for me thank you. Probably he will be just as evasive as a husband. ’ ’

“Joan, I don’t like to hear you joke about him that way. He may be in straits. He may have some reason for keeping away that we know nothing about.”

“Just trying to avoid two meddlesome women,” said Joan, “that’s probably the explanation. He has no desire to be done good to against his will.”

“I doubt if he even knows we are looking for him,” said Mrs. Defensor. “Why should he? He was a friend of Richard’s during the war, but after Richard’s death he didn’t think there was any need to see us.”

‘‘ He must have known we were interested in him. ’’

“I fancy he is a rather careless sort of young man.’ ’

“I only wish we had a photograph.’’

For the first time that morning Mrs. Defensor smiled.

Joan’s eyes sparkled hut not with fun. “I admire Roger Drew, I respect him, I am as grateful as you are for all that he did for Richard. But from what I learned of him from Richard’s letters he is one of the last men on earth about whom I should have sentimen¬ tal notions. When I fall in love it will be with a man, strong, self-contained, capable of great affection, steady as a rock. I don’t want a butterfly. ’ ’

“I wonder,” said Mrs. Defensor.

“All the same,” said Joan, “I’m just as anxious as you are to find out Roger Drew, and to do what we can for him. Do you know I think we have been rather impractical. ’ ’

“We have asked all our friends. We have written to a lot of people. I really don’t know what more we could have done. We can’t exactly pursue him like a criminal. ’ ’

“That depends how much we want to find him. We might have put an advertisement in the paper.”

“I don’t think that would be very nice.”

But Joan became warm about her new suggestion. Why had they not thought of such practical means before? There were the private detectives as well as the newspapers; other expedients began to frame them¬ selves. Her arguments had an unexpected result, for presently Mrs. Defensor said, “Joan, I don’t believe [ 6 ]

MISSING we should be right in going away, leaving Captain Drew here, without learning anything about him.”

“We’ve made all arrangements to go, mother. You know you want to get back home.”

“We ought to leave no stone unturned.”

Joan had a picture of her mother waiting on in New York, exhausting herself with anticipation, sapped by the daily announcement that there was no fresh news, deceiving herself with hopes of seeing a young man who might well enough he on the way to Buenos Aires or Australia. In England there would be the mild distractions of old friends, the thousand links of home. Joan bent herself to the task of persuasion, and she showed how the work of enquiry might go on in their absence, how the cables could keep them in touch, and how if necessary they could swiftly return to America. She was planning methods even as she talked, and presently she won her mother over.

It was two hours later that Merton J. Connick of Connick and Brown, the enquiry agents, was shown into the apartment of the Defensors. A big shouldered man with dull eyes he listened carefully to the story, inserting a deft query here and there.

“I don’t see that there should be any real difficulty. If you had come to us on your arrival in America you would certainly have been in touch with Captain Drew before now, I don’t know how much we can find out in two days, but I ’ll promise you that within a week you shall have news.”

“I wonder if we’ve done right,” said Mrs. Defen¬ sor after Connick had left.

“I’m quite sure we have,” said Joan.

“I would hate to make him feel uncomfortable.”

“I have an impression that it would take more than the inquiries of a firm of private detectives to make Roger Drew feel uncomfortable.”

Joan was in a glow when Connick was announced in the midst of their packing on the succeeding day. He had come with news, and he was fired with a sense of pleasing efficiency. “I have some information,” he said, “Mr. Roger Drew came to this city from Cincin¬ nati a week ago. He stayed at the Blank Club till the day before yesterday, when he left, saying that he was spending a day or two with friends.”

Questions descended on the detective. Where could he be found? Was there any possibility of fur¬ ther news before the “Latian” sailed next day? Would he send a wireless message to the ship if anything came out after their departure? Was there a hint of the friends with whom he was staying? Could not the club give some further information about him?

The detective took from his pocket-wallet a cutting from a New York newspaper of that morning, and with the immobility of professional pride handed it over to Mrs. Defensor. The paragraph concerned a commer¬ cial project, and it ended with the statement that a Mr. Roger Drew would within a few weeks be leaving for Europe in charge of American interests.

“It’s quite evident he’s here,” said Connick.

CHAPTER II Roger's Flight

T EN days before Mrs. Defensor and Joan dis¬ cussed Roger Drew in New York a man of about thirty-four, with dark hair and reflective blue eyes, standing at the window of a hotel in Cincinnati, might have been supposed to be watching with the in¬ terest of a stranger the truly American scene below, the low-browed street cars, the hurrying groups of business men in soft-brimmed hats, the old negro with the muffler round his neck gazing into the cigar store, the raucous off-handed newspaper boys, the towering oppressive regularity of the business offices opposite with their thousand windows reaching skyward and stretching unbrokenly along the street beyond range of sight from the hotel. It was a picture which might well pique contrast in the eye of a Londoner, but Roger Drew was looking through and beyond the things in front of him, surveying with a sense of disturbance his life, or at least that part of his life which was imme¬ diately ahead. Introspection had no place in Roger Drew. He was a young man of action, and in the course of adventure in many lands had rarely allowed doubt to halt him, much less disturb him and make him uncomfortable. And now by some twist of outside circumstances and his own emotions he was in a state of mental indecision, annoyance with himself, and amusement at his own feelings. He was looking blindly at that Cincinnati street.

He turned from the window, and rang his hell. Three minutes later there was a knock at the door, and John, the negro bellboy, who waited on him, came into the room. A smiling friendly person was John, who in the course of a month had come to be quite at home with this whimsical Englishman, who, with serious face said funny things, asked queer questions, and never gave less than a quarter as a tip. Roger Drew looked at him abstractedly.

“You rang, sir?”

“John, tell me what’s on at the theatres. I would like to go somewhere tonight.”

“What do you want, sir?” There is good vaude¬ ville at the Grand.”

Roger shook his head.

“A New York company is in a society play in the theatre on the square.”

“Society play?” said Roger Drew doubtfully.

“In the theatre right over here there was a new piece opened last night called ‘Nothing But The Truth’. I heard Mr. White, the manager, say it was very good, sir.”

Roger Drew looked at John, and apparently weighed up the comparative attractions of the enter¬ tainments, and then he suddenly said, “John, have you ever been in love?”

John grinned.

“About every six months, sir.”

“Yes,” said Roger Drew thoughtfully, “that’s the [ 10 ]

ROGER’S FLIGHT difficulty. What would you do, John, if you were in love with two women at once?”

John encased himself in a smile which expressed doubt, pleasure, incredulity, and sympathy.

“And suppose you had two women in love with you at the same time, John?”

John buried himself still deeper in that all envelop¬ ing smile.

“Yes, I see your difficulty,” said Roger. “The point is how to settle the matter satisfactorily to one¬ self, and there are only two methods which occur to me at the moment, one is a good dinner with a pint of sparkling Burgundy, and that is out of the question when one is suffering from the blessings of a prohibi¬ tion country, and the other is to throw oneself into the society of further pretty and attractive women and to trust to Providence. That is more or less out of the question, too, thank goodness.”

All this was a little beyond John, and his smile took on a touch of bewilderment.

“And so, John, I turn to the drama, which may or may not clarify the emotions as well as the brain.”

“Perhaps, Mr. Drew, you’d like to go to the vaude¬ ville tonight?”

“On the contrary, John, you made a suggestion of the utmost value. ‘Nothing But The Truth’ is guar¬ anteed to be amusing. I will go and see what humour is to be derived from ‘Nothing But The Truth’. Bring me up a pitcher of ice water, and ask the people down stairs to get me a ticket for the theatre.”

There is bound to be something unexpected in the actions of a young man of thirty-four who has among [ii]

his qualities that of initiative, and who for years past has been alternating between periods of drift and spasms of enthusiastic effort. The unexpectedness is likely to be interrupted by embarrassment, and em¬ barrassment had at intervals lain heavy on Roger Drew. It was frequently of a financial character. Now and again it was of a different kind.

Roger Drew walked out into the street with the full intention of going to the theatre, but by the time he had covered the hundred yards to the corner of the square he had decided to pay a visit to the Philipsons. He was very fond of Marie Philipson, but the difficulty in which he found himself was that Marie, with the devotion and romance of twenty-two, was fonder of him than he was of her. At least that was the remorseful thought of Roger, who, true to his kind, would have probably been helplessly in love with Marie if she had not displayed her own feelings so clearly. As it was Roger in her society was never without an impulse of deep tenderness, which made Marie always a possi¬ bility. Since Marie’s father was a lawyer only com¬ fortably off, and Marie had no money of her own, and Roger himself was always on the edge of poverty, there could be no question of an immediate union, and cowardly Roger wondered if his affections would stand a protracted and indefinite strain. All these considera¬ tions, with one other not yet mentioned, had caused him to decide to leave Cincinnati at short notice for New York. He was going on the following day. And then at the last moment some dormant sense of cour¬ tesy, of kindliness, sent him to say goodbye instead of writing an excuse.

ROGER’S FLIGHT

Roger came to this decision in face of the fact that little Blanche Arthur, for whom he had at times felt a real touch of passion, was to see him off at the station next morning. She was a dark haired little thing with lustrous eyes, who dabbled in painting, and who would one day he an heiress in a small way, for her mother owned part of one of Cincinnati’s principal streets. Blanche Arthur, like Marie Philipson, had swept upon him unawares. In the course of his months stay in Cincinnati, Roger had made many pleasant acquaintances, and was a popular figure in what may be designated a section of leading society in the city. Slightly enamoured of both girls from the start, he had at an early date committed his affections to each, and now, having roused emotions which put him in practical difficulties, he was flying from both.

Roger went into a restaurant for dinner, and then made for the Philipson’s apartment, where he was re¬ ceived with a hearty grip of the hand from Mr. Philip¬ son, a welcoming sentence from Mrs. Philipson, and smiling vivacity and dancing eyes on the part of Marie. The high spirits of the latter depressed him. He must get his news over quickly.

“Behold the distressed visitor/’ said Roger. “I have come to say goodbye.’’

“Goodbye?” echoed Marie.

“Telegram tonight. You know I told you the firm I am representing might want me at any time. I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“You’ll be coming back?” said Mrs. Philipson.

“Certainly,” said Roger, lying glibly. “I don’t know when, but assuredly before very long. ”

“What a shame you have to go!” said Marie, and Roger knew how much lay behind the girl’s words.

He stayed nearly an hour, and was very glad that he had only the opportunity of being alone with Marie for three minutes, when she took him into her father’s room to look at a golf prize she had won the day before. Roger knew that if he stayed longer this bright-eyed girl would so manage her parents that there would be a prolonged time together alone with each other.

“What is going to be your address in New York?” asked Marie. He gave the name of his club.

“Roger,” she said, “I feel as if I’d known you all my life.”

‘ ‘ Same here, ’ ’ said he, unflinchingly.

“You won’t forget us?” she went on.

4 ‘ The question is whether you ’ll forget me. ’ ’

“It’s not possible, Roger. You’ll really come back ?’ ’

He patted her shoulder. “What a question, what a question! ’ ’

t i Couldn’t I come and see you off tomorrow ? ’ ’

“Two of my men friends will be at the station,” said the mendacious Roger, “but of course if you like to come-”

“Oh no!” she said with sudden hesitation.

“Well then it’s goodbye for the present.”

He had never kissed her up till then, and he put his arm around her with the idea of fulfilling his part, a very pleasant and seductive part as he looked into her bright eyes. She slipped away from him. “Not

ROGER'S FLIGHT yet!” she said. He bent low, and touched the tips of her fingers with his lips.

Five minutes later he was in the street, feeling that he had virtually made an offer of marriage to Marie, and trying to forget it. He pitied Marie from the bottom of his heart. He felt himself a thorough scoundrel. And then with an effort of will he tried to think of what he was going to say to Blanche Arthur at the station the next morning.

Blanche was less difficult than he anticipated, be¬ cause, having purchased his ticket beforehand, he was able to calculate carefully the time of his arrival in the taxicab, and to leave himself just a minute and a half before going on to the platform. A little figure in a gingham frock, looking particularly youthful and en¬ trancing, stood waiting for him. He almost wished that he had come earlier. “Oh, Roger,” she said, “you’ve got to go!”

“No escape,” he said with an effort at forced cheerfulness. She held on to his arm.

“I’ve got to make bread and butter, you know,” he said. ‘‘I only wish you were coming with me.’’

“I have a surprise for you,” said Blanche, “a little thought for you to take on the journey.”

“Yes?” There was genuine anticipation in Roger as he looked at her. “I’m coming back soon you know, ’ ’ he said.

“How soon?”

“About six weeks, or a couple of months.” They were near the barrier now, and Roger was feeling in his waistcoat pocket for his ticket.

“It may be that we shall never be parted again

[is]

after that.” He really meant it for the moment, as he looked down at her and saw what a sweet little thing she was.

Blanche smiled to herself, and Roger knew it was a smile of acquiescence, and his heart smote him. “What’s this thought of yours?” he said.

“Write me when you get fixed up in New York will you?”

“Of course.”

Passengers behind were pushing up against Roger as he stood in the gateway.

“My thought is,” said Blanche quickly, “that you’ll probably see me long before that six weeks is up. Goodbye.” She turned and fled before he could say another word.

Roger passed on down the platform full of thought. He was not entirely satisfied with himself.

Chapter III

T HERE had been many a sad shake of the head at the country vicarage in Gloucestershire, where Roger’s aunt ruled a docile husband, and two strapping daughters. If he was not labelled as having gone completely to the bad, he was at least looked upon as one who had thrown away opportunity, and might soon place himself beyond the pale. Mrs. Bradley-Towner (and the Rev. John Bradley-Towner) felt that Roger was a reckless person who was inacces¬ sible to the call of responsibility. Had he chosen a different way of life he might have known the best of people, he might have found a quiet and dignified position in a Government office; George Johnson, Mrs. Towner’s second cousin, together with his late father’s friends in Lombard Street might easily have put him into a bank, or conceivably have started him in some way on the Stock Exchange. It was all very sad. Plainly could it be seen by those who knew anything of the world that Roger by years of steady work could have become a respected member of respectable society with a house at Beckenham or at Hampstead. Instead of which he was a rover without ties, without ambitions, devoid of prospects. Mrs. Bradley-Towner used to throw up her hands in a gesture which friends recog¬ nized as that of affectionate despair.

Roger at Cambridge had taken his degree at twenty-two, scraped through with the crowd, and his distinction in the University resided in the fact that he had been the leader in the famous hoax by which the authorities had been led to believe that the visit of an Asiatic potentate had been advanced a couple of days. Dignitaries with all the ceremonial befitting the occasion had received Roger Drew, disguised by himself and his fellow undergraduates, into the likeness of the potentate in question. The incident nearly brought his university career to a sudden finish, especially as it was the culmination of a disjointed series of adven¬ tures which had no connection with higher education.

He had left Cambridge three months, when the death of his father, set him adrift, practically alone in the world, with an income of about four hundred pounds a year. His aunt in that Gloucestershire vicarage essayed to take him in hand in a motherly albeit somewhat domineering sort of a way, largely ignorant of the temperament of her nephew and with chaffing carelessness he bade goodbye to her influence.

It would have been difficult for Roger Drew him¬ self to have explained the impulses which took him first to Moscow as the representative of a Lancashire firm making agricultural implements, and second to the south of France as the amateur representative of a London newspaper which specialized in society doings at the holiday resorts on the Mediterranean. In both cases he failed, failed because of a joyous energy which sent him off at tangents. It is no excuse that his vivacity reared him friends and devotees of both sexes. He wanted to make good but not enough to undergo drudgery. He journeyed to South Africa to secure a [i®]

fortune in gold mining, and discovered that modern gold mining is an occupation not at all adventurous, and just about as open to youthful initiative as work in an English cotton factory or steel foundry. Later he went to the United States as half companion, half tutor to a rich youth who was being sent to California for his health, and while in the middle of a boredom that was rapidly becoming intolerable the war broke on the world. Within six weeks Roger was back in London and had joined up. He went out to France to win his country a speedy victory, and discovered that war was a plodding and remorseless thing, touched with tragedy, but having more of mud and of blood than fame; and carrying ceaseless toil and sameness. From corporal to sergeant and then, following an en¬ gagement in which he was one of twenty-five men who were left out of one hundred and twenty, he got his commission. It was at the second battle of Ypres that he received a piece of shell in his thigh which in¬ capacitated him for seven months, and gave him the limp which was never to leave him throughout life. After that there were terrible months on the Somme, terrible in their uncertainty, their immobility, and the sense of everlastingness. Long afterwards he spoke of that period as a nightmare, split into sections by furious weeks of fighting in which to his increasing surprise he never received a hurt. He used to laugh as his own cowardice, the common cowardice of all sensitive and imaginative men, and was not afraid to laugh openly at it, even before the exploit which se¬ cured him the D. S. 0.

So he may be seen at the end of the war something [19]

of a derelict with a small gratuity from the govern¬ ment, with half his income gone as the result of fluctua¬ tions of the Stock Exchange. He sailed across the Atlantic to search the broad United States for oppor¬ tunities. He had a couple of articles accepted in New York newspapers, and at the invitation of a well-known editor wrote a witty description of an American’s trip to Europe, which was published in a weekly review. Then he had six articles rejected in succession, and he gave up the idea of journalism. He did some hack work for one of the moving picture firms, but this also quickly petered out.

Roger Drew was a young man of resource, and not lacking courage. The situation at the moment called up his reserves, for he had exactly one hundred and fifty-five dollars in his pocket, he was due to receive a hotel bill that would amount to about seventy dollars, and his quarterly income from England would not be available for a month. In his own country he would not have dreamed of the expedient which came to him, indeed even in America he had an initial qualm but he made a wry face, and then grasped the nettle. In his first search for occupation he had made himself known to a lecture agency, and he went again. There was a friendly hand shake but no business.