Part 2 (1/2)

A Pompeian bath room with ta.s.sellated floor, marble walls and marble ceiling. The bath was sunk in the floor. Across hot water pipes, plated with silver, hung towels of huck-a-back, white towels with cardinal red fringes. Here too, most un-Pompeian stood a wonderful dressing table, one solid slab of gla.s.s, with razors set out, manicure instruments, brushes, powder pots, scent bottles.

Jones came into this place, walked round it like a cat in a strange larder, gauged the depth of the bath, glanced at the things on the table, and was in the act of picking up one of the manicure implements, when a sound from the bed room drew his attention.

Someone was moving about there.

Someone who seemed altering the position of chairs and arranging things.

He judged it to be the servant who had answered the bell; he considered that it was better to have the thing out now, and have done with it. He wanted a full explanation, and bravely, but with the feelings of a man who is entering a dental parlour, he came to the bath room door.

A pale faced, agile-looking young man with glossy black hair, a young man in a sleeved waistcoat, a young man carrying a s.h.i.+rt and set of pink silk undergarments over his left arm, was in the act of placing a pair of patent leather boots with kid tops upon the floor. A gorgeous dressing gown lay upon the bed. It had evidently been placed there by the agile one.

Jones had intended to ask explanations. That intention shrivelled, somehow, in the act of speech. What he uttered was a very mildly framed request.

”Er--can I have my clothes, please?” said Jones.

”Yes, my Lord,” replied the other. ”I am placing them out.”

The instantaneous anger raised by the patent fact that he was being guyed by the second apparition was as instantly checked by the recollection of Rochester. Here was another practical joke. This house was evidently Rochester's--the whole thing was plain. Well, he would show that tricky spirit how he could take a joke and turn it on the maker. Like Brer Rabbit he determined to lie low.

He withdrew into the bath room and sat down on the rush bottomed chair by the table, his temper coiled, and ready to fly out like a spring. He was seated like this, curling his toes and nursing his resolve, when the Agile One, with an absolute gravity that disarmed all anger, entered with the dressing gown. He stood holding it up, and Jones, rising, put it on. Then the A. O. filled the bath, trying the temperature with a thermometer, and so absorbed in his business that he might have been alone.

The bath filled, he left the room, closing the door.

He had thrown some crystals into the water, scenting it with a perfume fragrant and refres.h.i.+ng, the temperature was just right, and as Jones plunged and wallowed and lay half floating, supporting himself by the silver plated rails arranged for that purpose, the idea came to him that if the practical joke were to continue as pleasantly as it had begun, he, for one, would not grumble.

Soothed by the warmth his mind took a clearer view of things.

If this were a jest of Rochester's, as most certainly it was, where lay the heart of it? Every joke has its core, and the core of this one was most evidently the likeness between himself and Rochester.

If Rochester were a Lord and if this were his house, and if Rochester had sent him--Jones--home like a bundle of goods, then the extraordinary likeness would perhaps deceive the servants and maybe other people as well. That would be a good joke, promising all sorts of funny developments. Only it was not a joke that any man of self respect would play. But Rochester, from those vague recollections of his antics, did not seem burdened with self respect. He seemed in his latter developments crazy enough for anything.

If he had done this, then the servants were not in the business; they would be under the delusion that he, Jones, was Rochester, doped and robbed and dressed in another man's clothes and sent home.

Rochester, turning up later in the morning, would have a fine feast of humour to sit down to.

This seemed plain. The born practical joker coming on his own twin image could not resist making use of it. This explanation cleared the situation, but it did not make it a comfortable one. If the servants discovered the imposition before the arrival of Rochester things would be unpleasant. He must act warily, get downstairs and escape from the place as soon as possible. Later on he would settle with Rochester. The servants, if they were not partners in the joke, had taken him on his face value, his voice had evidently not betrayed him. He felt sure on this point. He left the bath and, drying himself, donned the dressing gown. Tooth paste and a tooth brush stood on a gla.s.s tray by a little basin furnished with hot and cold water taps, and now, so strangely are men const.i.tuted, the main facts of his position were dwarfed for a second by the consideration that he had no tooth brush of his own.

Just that little thing brought his energies to a focus and his growing irritation.

He, opened the bed-room door. The glossy haired one was putting links in the sleeves of a s.h.i.+rt.

”Get me a tooth brush--a new one,” said Jones, brusquely, almost brutally. ”Get it quick.”

”Yes, my Lord.”

He dropped the s.h.i.+rt and left the room swiftly, but not hurriedly, taking care to close the door softly behind him.

It was the first indication to Jones of a method so complete and a mechanism so perfectly const.i.tuted, that jolts were all but eliminated.

”I believe if I'd asked that guy for an elephant,” he said to himself, ”he'd have acted just the same--do they keep a drug store on the premises?”