The Lunatic at Large

J >> J. Storer Clouston >> The Lunatic at Large

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And without further preamble the Lady Alicia found herself kissed at last.

He jumped out and shut the door, and the carriage with its faint halo
clattered into the darkness.

"They are wonderfully alike," he reflected.

About twenty minutes later he walked leisurely into Ashditch Junction, and
having singled out the station-master, he accosted him with an air of
beneficient consideration and inquired how soon he could catch a train for
London.

It appeared that the up express was not due for nearly three-quarters of
an hour.

"A little too long to wait," he said to himself, as he turned up the
collar of his purloined fur coat to keep out the cold, and picked another
cigar from its rightful owner's case.

By way of further defying the temperature and cementing his acquaintance
with the station-master, he offered to regale that gratified official with
such refreshments as the station bar provided. In the consumption of
whiskies-and-sodas (a beverage difficult to obtain in any quantity at
Clankwood) Mr Beveridge showed himself as accomplished as in every other
feat. In thirty-five minutes he had despatched no fewer than six, besides
completely winning the station-master's heart. As he had little more than
five minutes now to wait, he bade a genial farewell to the lady behind the
bar, and started to purchase his ticket.

Hardly had he left the door of the refreshment-room when he perceived an
uncomfortably familiar figure just arrived, breathless with running, on
the opposite platform. The light of a lamp fell on his shining face: it
was Moggridge!

A stout heart might be forgiven for sinking at the sight, but Mr Beveridge
merely turned to his now firm friends and said with his easiest air, "On
the opposite platform I perceive one of my runaway lunatics. Bring a
couple of stout porters as quickly as you can, for he is a person of much
strength and address. My name," he drew a card-case from the pocket of his
fur coat, "is, as you see, Dr Escott of Clankwood."

Meanwhile Moggridge, after hurriedly investigating the platform he was on,
suddenly spied a tall fur-coated figure on the opposite side. Without a
moment's hesitation he sprang on to the rails, and had just mounted the
other side as the station-master and two porters appeared.

Seeing his allies by his side Mr Beveridge never said a word, but,
throwing off his hat, he lowered his head, charged his keeper, and picking
him up by the knees threw him heavily on his back. Before he had a chance
of recovering himself the other three were seated on his chest employed in
winding a coil of rope round and round his prostrate form.

Two minutes later Moggridge was sitting bound hand and foot in the booking
office, addressing an amused audience in a strain of perhaps excusable
exasperation, which however merely served to impress the Ashditch
officials with a growing sense of their address in capturing so dangerous
a lunatic. In the middle of this entertaining scene the London express
steamed in, and Mr Beveridge, courteously thanking the station-master for
his assistance, stepped into a first-class carriage.

"I should be much obliged," he said, leaning on the door of his
compartment and blowing the smoke of Dr Escott's last Havannah lightly
from his lips, "if you would be kind enough to keep that poor fellow in
the station till to-morrow. It is rather too late to send him back now.
Good night, and many thanks."

He pressed a coin into the station-master's hand, which that disappointed
official only discovered on emptying his pockets at night to be an
ordinary sixpence, the guard whistled, and one by one, smoothly and slowly
and then in a bright stream, the station lamps slipped by. The last of
them flitted into the night, and the train swung and rattled by a mile a
minute nearer to London town and farther from the high stone wall. There
was no other stop, and for a long hour the adventurer sat with his legs
luxuriously stretched along the cushions looking out into a fainter
duplicate of his carriage, pierced now and then by the glitter of brighter
points as they whisked by some wayside village, or crossed by the black
shadows of trees. The whole time he smiled contentedly, doubtless at the
prospect of his parish work. All at once he seemed stirred, and, turning
in his seat, laid his face upon the window, and pulled down the blind
behind his head, so that he could see into the night. He had spied the
first bright filaments of London. Quickly they spread into a twinkling
network, and then as quickly were shut out by the first line of suburb
houses; through the gaps they grew nearer and flared cheerfully; the train
hooted over an archway, and in the road below he had a glimpse of shop
windows and crowded pavements and moving omnibuses: he was in the world
again, and at the foretaste of all this life he laughed like a delighted
child. Last of all came the spread of shining rails and the red and yellow
lights of many signals, and then the high glass roof and long lamp-lit
platforms of St Euston's Cross.

Unencumbered by luggage or plans, Mr Francis Beveridge stuck his hands
deep in his pockets and strolled aimlessly enough out of the station into
the tideway of the Euston Road. For a little he stood stock-still on the
pavement watching the throng of people and the perpetual buses and drays
and the jingling hansoms picking their way through it all.

"For a man of brains," he moralised, "even though he be certified as
insane, for probably the best of reasons, this London has surely fools
enough to provide him with all he needs and more than he deserves. I shall
set out with my lantern like a second Diogenes to look for a foolish man."

And so he strolled along again to the first opening southwards. That led
him through a region of dingy enough brick by day, but decked now with its
string of lamps and bright shop-windows here and there, and kept alive by
passing buses and cabs going and coming from the station. Farther on the
street grew gloomier, and a dark square with a grove of trees in the
middle opened off one side; but, rattle or quiet, flaring shops or
sad-looking lodgings, he found it all too fresh and amusing to hurry.

"Back to my parish again," he said to himself, smiling broadly at the
drollery of the idea. "If I'm caught to-morrow, I'll at least have one
merry night in my wicked, humorous old charge."

He reached Holborn and turned west in the happiest and most enviable of
moods; the very policemen seemed to cast a friendly eye on him; the frosty
air, he thought, made the lights burn brighter and the crowd move more
briskly than ever he had seen them. Suddenly the sight of a hairdresser's
saloon brought an inspiration. He stroked his beard, twisted his
moustaches half regretfully, and then exclaiming, "Exit Mr Beveridge,"
turned into the shop.

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

The Baron Rudolf von Blitzenberg sat by himself at a table in the
dining-room of the Hotel Mayonaise, which, as everybody knows, is the
largest and most expensive in London. He was a young man of a florid and
burly Teutonic type and the most ingenuous countenance. Being possessed of
a curious and enterprising disposition, as well as the most ample means,
he had left his ancestral castle in Bavaria to study for a few months the
customs and politics of England. In the language he was already
proficient, and he had promised himself an amusing as well as an
instructive visit. But, although he had only arrived in London that
morning, he was already beginning to feel an uncomfortable apprehension
lest in both respects he should be disappointed. Though his introductions
were the best with which the British Ambassador could supply him, they
were only three or four in number,--for, not wishing to be hampered with
too many acquaintances, he had rather chosen quality than quantity: and
now, in the course of the afternoon, he had found to his chagrin that in
every case the families were out of town. In fact, so far as he could
learn, they were not even at their own country seats. One was abroad,
another gone to the seaside to recover from the mumps, or a third paying a
round of visits.

The disappointment was sharp, he felt utterly at sea as to what he should
do, and he was already beginning to experience the loneliness of a single
mortal in a crowded hotel.

As the frosty evening was setting in and the shops were being lit, he had
strolled out into the streets in the vague hope of meeting some strange
foreign adventure, or perhaps even happily lighting upon some
half-forgotten diplomatic acquaintance. But he found the pavements crowded
with a throng who took no notice of him at all, but seemed every man and
most women of them to be pushing steadily, and generally silently, towards
a million mysterious goals. Not that he could tell they were silent except
by their set lips, for the noise of wheels and horses on so many hundreds
of miles of streets, and the cries of busmen and vendors of evening
papers, made such a hubbub that he felt before long in a maze. He lost his
way four times, and was patronisingly set right by beneficent policemen;
and at last, feeling like a man who has fallen off a precipice on to a
soft place--none the worse but quite bewildered--he struggled back to his
hotel. There he spun out his time by watching the people come and go, and
at last dressed with extra deliberation.

About eight o'clock he sat down to his solitary dinner. The great gilt and
panelled room was full of diners and bustling waiters, but there was not a
face the Baron had ever seen before. He was just finishing a plate of
whitebait when he observed a stranger enter the room and stroll in a very
self-possessed manner down the middle, glancing at the tables round him as
though he was looking either for a friend or a desirable seat. This
gentleman was tall, fair, and clean-shaved; he was dressed in a suit of
well-fitting tweeds, and his air impressed the Baron as being natural and
yet distinguished. At last his eye fell upon the Baron, who felt conscious
of undergoing a quick, critical scrutiny. The table at which that nobleman
sat was laid for two, and coming apparently to a sudden resolution, the
good-looking stranger seated himself in the vacant chair. In an agreeable
voice and with an unmistakably well-bred air he asked a waiter for the
wine-list, and then, like a man with an excellent appetite, fell to upon
the various _hors d'oeuvres_, the entire collection of which, in fact, he
consumed in a wonderfully short space of time. The Baron, being himself no
trifler with his victuals, regarded this feat with sympathetic approval,
and began to feel a little less alone in the world. His naturally open
disposition was warmed besides, owing to a slight misconception he had
fallen into, perfectly excusable however in a foreigner. He thought he had
read somewhere that port was the usual accompaniment to the first courses
of an English dinner, and as his waiter had been somewhat dilatory in
bringing him the more substantial items of the repast, he had already
drunk three claret-glasses of this cheering wine. The chill recollections
of his sixteen quarterings and the exclusiveness he had determined to
maintain as becoming to his rank were already melting, and he met the
stranger's eye with what for the life of him he could not help being a
cordial look.

His _vis-a-vis_ caught the glance, smiled back, and immediately asked,
with the most charming politeness, "Do you care, sir, to split a bottle of
champagne?"

"To--er--_shplid?_" said the Baron, with a disappointed consciousness of
having been put at a loss in his English by the very first man who had
spoken to him.

"I beg your pardon,--I am afraid I was unintelligibly idiomatic. To divide,
I should say, you consuming one-half, I the other. Am I clear, sir?"

For a moment the Baron was a little taken aback, and then recollecting
that the dining habits of the English were still new to him, he concluded
that the suggestion was probably a customary act of courtesy. He had
already come to the conclusion that the gentleman must be a person of
rank, and he replied affably, "Yah--zat is, vid pleasure. Zanks, very."

"The pleasure is mine," said the stranger--"and half the bottle," he added,
smiling.

The Baron, whose perception of humour had been abnormally increased by
this time, laughed hilariously at the infection of his new acquaintance's
smile.

"Goot, goot!" he cried. "Ach, yah, zo."

"Am I right, sir, in supposing that, despite the perfection of your
English accent, I cannot be fortunate enough to claim you as a
countryman?" asked the stranger.

The Baron's resolutions of reticence had vanished altogether before such
unexpected and (he could not but think) un-English friendliness. He
unburdened his heart with a rush.

"You have ze right. I am Deutsch. I have gom to England zis day for to
lairn and to amuse myself. But mein, vat you call?--introdogtions zey are
not inside, zat is zey are from off. Not von, all, every single gone to ze
gontry or to abroad. I am alone, I eat my dinner in zolitude, I am pleased
to meet you, sare."

A cork popped and the champagne frothed into the stranger's glass. Raising
it to his lips, he said, "Prosit!"

"Prosit!" responded the Baron, enthusiastically. "You know ze Deutsch,
sare?"

"I am safer in English, I confess."

"Ach, das ist goot, I vant for to practeese. Ve vill talk English."

"With all my heart," said the stranger. "I, too, am alone, and I hold
myself more than fortunate in making your acquaintance. It's a devilish
dull world when one can't share a bottle--or a brace of them, for the
matter of that."

"You know London?" asked the Baron.

"I used to, and I daresay my memory will revive."

"I know it not, pairhaps you can inform. I haf gom, as I say, to-day."

"With pleasure," said the stranger, readily. "In fact, if you are ever
disengaged I may possibly be able to act as showman."

"Showman!" roared the Baron, thinking he had discovered a jest. "Ha, ha,
ha! Goot, zehr goot!"

The other looked a trifle astonished for an instant, and then as he sipped
his champagne an expression of intense satisfaction came over his face.

"I can put away my lantern," he said to himself,--"I have found him."

"May I have the boldness to ask your name, sir?" he asked aloud.

"Ze Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg," that nobleman replied. "Yours,
sare--may I dare?"

"Francis Bunker, at your service, Baron."

"You are noble?" queried the Baron a little anxiously, for his prejudices
on this point were strong.

"According to your standard I believe I may say so. That's to say, my
family have borne arms for two hundred odd generations; twenty-five per
cent of them have died of good living; and the most malicious have never
accused us of brains. I myself may not be very typical, but I assure you
it isn't my ancestors' fault."

The latter part of this explanation entirely puzzled the Baron. The first
statement, though eminently satisfactory, was also a little bewildering.

"Two hondred generations?" he asked, courteously. "Zat is a vary old
family. All bore arms you say, Mistair Bonker?"

"All," replied Mr Bunker, gravely. "The first few bore tails as well."

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the Baron. "You are a fonny man I pairceive, vat you
call clown, yes?"

"What my friends call clown, and I call wit," Mr Bunker corrected.

"Vit! Ha, ha, ha!" roared the Baron, whose mind was now in an El Dorado of
humour when jokes grew like daisies. His loneliness had disappeared as if
by magic; as course succeeded course his contentment showed itself in a
perpetually beaming smile: he ceased to worry even about his friend's
pedigree, convinced in his mind that manners so delightful and
distinguished could only result from repeated quarterings and unoccupied
forefathers. Yet by the time dessert arrived and he had again returned to
his port, he began to feel an extreme curiosity to know more concerning Mr
Bunker. He himself had volunteered a large quantity of miscellaneous
information: about Bavaria, its customs and its people, more especially
the habits and history of the Blitzenberg family; about himself, his
parentage and education; all about his family ghost, his official position
as hereditary carpet-beater to the Bavarian Court, and many other things
equally entertaining and instructive. Mr Bunker, for his part, had so far
confined his confidences to his name.

"My dear Bonker," said the Baron at last--he had become quite familiar by
this time--"vat make you in London? I fear you are bird of passage. Do you
stay long?"

Mr Bunker cracked a nut, looking very serious; then he leant on one elbow,
glanced up at the ceiling pensively, and sighed.

"I hope I do not ask vat I should not," the Baron interposed, courteously.

"My dear Baron, ask what you like," replied Mr Bunker. "In a city full of
strangers, or of friends who have forgotten me, you alone have my
confidence. My story is a common one of youthful folly and present
repentance, but such as it is, you are welcome to it."

The Baron gulped down half a glass of port and leaned forward
sympathetically.

"My father," Mr Bunker continued with an air of half-sad reminiscence, "is
one of the largest landowners and the head of one of the most ancient
families in the north of England. I was his eldest son and heir. I am
still, I have every reason to believe, his eldest son, but my heirship, I
regret to say, is more doubtful. I spent a prodigal youth and a larger sum
of money than my poor father approved of. He was a strict though a kind
parent, and for the good of my health and the replenishment of the family
coffers, which had been sadly drained by my extravagance, he sent me
abroad. There I have led a roving life for the last six years, and at
last, my wild oats sown, reaped, and gathered in (and a well-filled
stackyard they made, I can assure you), I decided to return to England and
become an ornament to respectable society. Like you, I arrived in London
to-day, but only to find to my disgust that my family have gone to winter
in Egypt. So you see that at present I am like a shipwrecked sailor
clinging to a rock and waiting, with what patience I can muster, for a
boat to take me off."

"You mean," inquired the Baron, anxiously, "that you vish to go to Egypt
at vonce?"

"I had thought of it; though there is a difficulty in the way, I admit."

"You vill not stay zen here?" "My dear Baron, why should I? I have neither
friends nor----"

He stopped abruptly.

"I do not like to zink I shall lose your company so soon."

"I admit," allowed Mr Bunker, "that this fortunate meeting tempts me to
stay."

"Vy not?" said the Baron, cordially. "Can your fader not vait to see you?"

"I hardly think he will worry about me, I confess."

"Zen stay, my goot Bonker!"

"Unfortunately there is the same difficulty as stands in the way of my
going to Egypt."

"And may I inquire vat zat is?"

"To tell you the truth," replied Mr Bunker, with an air of reluctant
candour, "my funds are rather low. I had trusted to finding my father at
home, but as he isn't, why----" he shrugged his shoulders and threw himself
back in his chair.

The Baron seemed struck with an idea which he hesitated to express.

"Shall we smoke?" his friend suggested.

"Vaiter!" cried the Baron, "bring here two best cigars and two coffee!"

"A liqueur, Baron?"

"Ach, yah. Vat for you?"

"A liqueur brandy suggests itself."

"Vaiter! and two brandy."

"And now," said the Baron, "I haf an idea, Bonker."

CHAPTER II.

The Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg, as I have said, had a warm heart. He
was, besides, alone in one hundred and twenty square miles of strangers
and foreigners when he had happened upon this congenial spirit. He began
in a tone of the most ingenuous friendliness--

"I haf no friends here. My introdogtions zey are gone. Bot I haf moch
money, and I vish a, vat you say?--showman, ha, ha, ha! You haf too leetle
money and no friends and you can show. You show and I will loan you vat
you vish. May I dare to suggest?"

"My dear Baron!"

"My goot Bonker! I am in airnest, I assure. Vy not? It is vun gentleman
and anozzer."

"You are far too kind."

"It is to myself I am kind, zen. I vant a guide, a frient. It is a loan.
Do not scruple. Ven your fader goms you can pay if you please. It is
nozing to me."

"Well, my dear Baron," said Mr Bunker, like a man persuaded against his
will, "what can I say? I confess I might find a little difficulty in
replenishing my purse without resorting to disagreeable means, and if you
really wish my society, why----"

"Zen it is a bairgain?" cried the Baron.

"If you insist----"

"I insist. Vaiter! Alzo two ozzer liqueur. Ve most drink to ze bairgain,
Bonker."

They pledged each other cordially, and talked from that moment like old
friends. The Baron was thoroughly pleased with himself, and Mr Bunker
seemed no less gratified at his own good fortune. Half an hour went
quickly by, and then the Baron exclaimed, "Let us do zomzing to-night,
Bonker. I burn for to begin zis show of London."

"What would you care to do, Baron? It is rather late, I am afraid, to
think of a theatre. What do you say to a music-hall?"

"Music-hall? I haf seen zem at home. Damned amusing, das ist ze
expression, yes?"

"It is a perfect description."

"Bot," continued the Baron, solemnly, "I must not begin vid ze vickedest."

"And yet," replied his friend, persuasively, "even wickedness needs a
beginning."

"Bot, if I begin I may not stop. Zomzing more qviet ze first night. Haf
you a club?"

Mr Bunker pondered for a moment, and a curious smile stole across his
face. Then it vanished, and he answered readily, "Certainly, Baron, an
excellent idea. I haven't been to my club for so long that it never struck
me. Let us come."

"Goot!" cried the Baron, rising with alacrity.

They put on their coats (Mr Bunker's, it may be remarked, being a handsome
fur-lined garment), the porter hailed a cab, and the driver was ordered to
take them to the Regent's Club in Pall Mall. The Baron knew it by
reputation as the most exclusive in London, and his opinion of his friend
rose still higher.

They joined a jingling string of other hansoms and sped swiftly through
the exhilarating bustle of the streets. To the Baron it seemed as if a
great change had come over the city since he wandered disconsolately
before dinner. Carried swiftly to the music of the little bells through
the sharp air and the London night that is brighter than day, with a
friend by his side and a good dinner within, he marked the most
astonishing difference. All the people seemed to talk and laugh, and for
his own part he found it hard to keep his tongue still.

"I know ze name of ze Regent's," he said; "vun club of ze best, is it
not?"

"The very best club, Baron."

"Zey are all noble?"

"In many cases the receipts for their escutcheons are still in their
pockets."

Though the precise significance of this explanation was not quite clear to
the Baron, it sounded eminently satisfactory.

"Zo?" he said. "I shall be moch interested to see zem."

As they entered the club the porter stared at them curiously, and even
made a movement as though he would step out and address them; but Mr
Bunker, wishing him a courteous good evening, walked briskly up to the
hat-and-cloak racks in the hall. A young man had just hung up his hat, and
as he was divesting himself of his coat, Mr Bunker quickly took the hat
down, glanced at the name inside, and replaced it on its peg. Then he held
out his hand and addressed the young man cordially.

"Good evening, Transome, how are you?" said he, and, heedless of the look
of surprise on the other's face, he turned towards the Baron and added,
"Let me introduce the Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg--Mr Transome. The Baron
has just come to England, and I thought he couldn't begin better than by a
visit to the Regent's. Let us come into the smoking-room."

In a few minutes they were all on the best of terms. A certain perplexity,
and almost shyness, that the young man showed at first, vanished rapidly
before the Baron's cordiality and Mr Bunker's well-bred charm of manner.

They were deeply engrossed in a discussion on the reigning sovereign of
the Baron's native land, a monarch of whose enlightened policy that
nobleman spoke with pardonable pride, when two elderly gentlemen entered
the room.

"Who are these?" Mr Bunker whispered to Transome. "I know them very well,
but I am always bad at names."

"Lord Fabrigas and General M'Dermott," replied Transome.

Instantly Mr Bunker rose and greeted the new-comers.

"Good evening, Lord Fabrigas; good evening, General. You have just come in
time to be introduced to the Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg, whom you
doubtless know by reputation."

The Baron rose and bowed, and it struck him that elderly English gentlemen
were singularly stiff and constrained in their manner. Mr Bunker, however,
continued cheerfully, "We are just going to have a smoking concert. Will
you begin, Baron?"

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