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RUGGLES of RED GAP

By Harry Leon Wilson

1915



{Illustration: "I TAKE IT YOU FAILED TO WIN THE HUNDRED POUNDS, SIR?"}



{Dedication}
TO HELEN COOKE WILSON




CHAPTER ONE


At 6:30 in our Paris apartment I had finished the Honourable George,
performing those final touches that make the difference between a man
well turned out and a man merely dressed. In the main I was not
dissatisfied. His dress waistcoats, it is true, no longer permit the
inhalation of anything like a full breath, and his collars clasp too
closely. (I have always held that a collar may provide quite ample
room for the throat without sacrifice of smartness if the depth be at
least two and one quarter inches.) And it is no secret to either the
Honourable George or our intimates that I have never approved his
fashion of beard, a reddish, enveloping, brushlike affair never nicely
enough trimmed. I prefer, indeed, no beard at all, but he stubbornly
refuses to shave, possessing a difficult chin. Still, I repeat, he was
not nearly impossible as he now left my hands.

"Dining with the Americans," he remarked, as I conveyed the hat,
gloves, and stick to him in their proper order.

"Yes, sir," I replied. "And might I suggest, sir, that your choice be
a grilled undercut or something simple, bearing in mind the undoubted
effects of shell-fish upon one's complexion?" The hard truth is that
after even a very little lobster the Honourable George has a way of
coming out in spots. A single oyster patty, too, will often spot him
quite all over.

"What cheek! Decide that for myself," he retorted with a lame effort
at dignity which he was unable to sustain. His eyes fell from mine.
"Besides, I'm almost quite certain that the last time it was the
melon. Wretched things, melons!"

Then, as if to divert me, he rather fussily refused the correct
evening stick I had chosen for him and seized a knobby bit of
thornwood suitable only for moor and upland work, and brazenly quite
discarded the gloves.

"Feel a silly fool wearing gloves when there's no reason!" he
exclaimed pettishly.

"Quite so, sir," I replied, freezing instantly.

"Now, don't play the juggins," he retorted. "Let me be comfortable.
And I don't mind telling you I stand to win a hundred quid this very
evening."

"I dare say," I replied. The sum was more than needed, but I had cause
to be thus cynical.

"From the American Johnny with the eyebrows," he went on with a quite
pathetic enthusiasm. "We're to play their American game of
poker--drawing poker as they call it. I've watched them play for near
a fortnight. It's beastly simple. One has only to know when to bluff."

"A hundred pounds, yes, sir. And if one loses----"

He flashed me a look so deucedly queer that it fair chilled me.

"I fancy you'll be even more interested than I if I lose," he remarked
in tones of a curious evenness that were somehow rather deadly. The
words seemed pregnant with meaning, but before I could weigh them I
heard him noisily descending the stairs. It was only then I recalled
having noticed that he had not changed to his varnished boots, having
still on his feet the doggish and battered pair he most favoured. It
was a trick of his to evade me with them. I did for them each day all
that human boot-cream could do, but they were things no sensitive
gentleman would endure with evening dress. I was glad to reflect that
doubtless only Americans would observe them.

So began the final hours of a 14th of July in Paris that must ever be
memorable. My own birthday, it is also chosen by the French as one on
which to celebrate with carnival some one of those regrettable events
in their own distressing past.

To begin with, the day was marked first of all by the breezing in of
his lordship the Earl of Brinstead, brother of the Honourable George,
on his way to England from the Engadine. More peppery than usual had
his lordship been, his grayish side-whiskers in angry upheaval and his
inflamed words exploding quite all over the place, so that the
Honourable George and I had both perceived it to be no time for
admitting our recent financial reverse at the gaming tables of Ostend.
On the contrary, we had gamely affirmed the last quarter's allowance
to be practically untouched--a desperate stand, indeed! But there was
that in his lordship's manner to urge us to it, though even so he
appeared to be not more than half deceived.

"No good greening me!" he exploded to both of us. "Tell in a
flash--gambling, or a woman--typing-girl, milliner, dancing person,
what, what! Guilty faces, both of you. Know you too well. My word,
what, what!"

Again we stoutly protested while his lordship on the hearthrug rocked
in his boots and glared. The Honourable George gamely rattled some
loose coin of the baser sort in his pockets and tried in return for a
glare of innocence foully aspersed. I dare say he fell short of it.
His histrionic gifts are but meagre.

"Fools, quite fools, both of you!" exploded his lordship anew. "And,
make it worse, no longer young fools. Young and a fool, people make
excuses. Say, 'Fool? Yes, but so young!' But old and a fool--not a
word to say, what, what! Silly rot at forty." He clutched his
side-whiskers with frenzied hands. He seemed to comb them to a more
bristling rage.

"Dare say you'll both come croppers. Not surprise me. Silly old
George, course, course! Hoped better of Ruggles, though. Ruggles
different from old George. Got a brain. But can't use it. Have old
George wed to a charwoman presently. Hope she'll be a worker. Need to
be--support you both, what, what!"

I mean to say, he was coming it pretty thick, since he could not have
forgotten that each time I had warned him so he could hasten to save
his brother from distressing mesalliances. I refer to the affair with
the typing-girl and to the later entanglement with a Brixton milliner
encountered informally under the portico of a theatre in Charing Cross
Road. But he was in no mood to concede that I had thus far shown a
scrupulous care in these emergencies. Peppery he was, indeed. He
gathered hat and stick, glaring indignantly at each of them and then
at us.

"Greened me fair, haven't you, about money? Quite so, quite so! Not
hear from you then till next quarter. No telegraphing--no begging
letters. Shouldn't a bit know what to make of them. Plenty you got to
last. Say so yourselves." He laughed villainously here. "Morning,"
said he, and was out.

"Old Nevil been annoyed by something," said the Honourable George
after a long silence. "Know the old boy too well. Always tell when
he's been annoyed. Rather wish he hadn't been."

So we had come to the night of this memorable day, and to the
Honourable George's departure on his mysterious words about the
hundred pounds.

Left alone, I began to meditate profoundly. It was the closing of a
day I had seen dawn with the keenest misgiving, having had reason to
believe it might be fraught with significance if not disaster to
myself. The year before a gypsy at Epsom had solemnly warned me that a
great change would come into my life on or before my fortieth
birthday. To this I might have paid less heed but for its disquieting
confirmation on a later day at a psychic parlour in Edgware Road.
Proceeding there in company with my eldest brother-in-law, a
plate-layer and surfaceman on the Northern (he being uncertain about
the Derby winner for that year), I was told by the person for a trifle
of two shillings that I was soon to cross water and to meet many
strange adventures. True, later events proved her to have been
psychically unsound as to the Derby winner (so that my brother-in-law,
who was out two pounds ten, thereby threatened to have an action
against her); yet her reference to myself had confirmed the words of
the gypsy; so it will be plain why I had been anxious the whole of
this birthday.

For one thing, I had gone on the streets as little as possible, though
I should naturally have done that, for the behaviour of the French on