Tom Tiddler's Island, стр. 17
“Isn’t Ruffa a lovely place?” Jean demanded, feeling sure of her ground.
“Yes,” Hazel agreed, without enthusiasm. Then, catching Jean’s rather surprised look, she added:
“I’m not running it down on its merits; but I expect even the Garden of Eden would grow hateful it you couldn’t get out of it when you wanted to. That sounds like dreadful grousing, doesn’t it?” she admitted with a smile. “But just think of months and months and months of it. No bridge, no golf, no badminton, no shops, no newspaper in the morning, and no one to talk to except Peter, and that’s a one-sided business. I thought it was perfect at first, but after a bit the novelty wore off and I’ve felt a perfect Robinson Crusoe except that I’d no parrot to throw in a remark now and again.”
Then, apparently ashamed of having let herself go so freely, she laughed at her own complaints.
“It’s really all right. Only, I’m over the first enthusiasm.”
Jean had enough imagination to fill in the picture for herself. Evidently Mr. Arrow was so wrapped up in his scientific work that he spared no time to his niece. The other three men were not of the same class. It must have been a deadly monotonous existence for a girl, month after month. Cyril Northfleet’s arrival on the island must have been a perfect godsend.
“It must have been awfully dull,” she admitted sympathetically. “I hadn’t thought of it like that. And I know how one misses bridge. Would you care to make up for lost time? We’ll be delighted if you’ll come over for a rubber now and again.”
“Oh, I should like to,” Hazel accepted, eagerly. “It’s good of you to take pity on me.”
“Mr. Northfleet will make a fourth,” Jean explained, rather unnecessarily.
Then she remembered the roadless condition of the island.
“Don’t dress,” she stipulated, turning to Hazel. “I don’t suppose there’s a taxi on Ruffa, and you’d ruin a frock if you came over these paths in it. Wear anything you like,” she suggested vaguely. “And we don’t expect you to put on a stiff shirt, Mr. Northfleet, even if you’ve only got to turn to the east to be in your dressing-room in there.”
Northfleet smiled at the way in which she had taken up his jest about the accommodation in the shieling.
“I might turn to the east and pray for long enough,” he admitted ruefully, “but I couldn’t conjure up a dinner-jacket from my luggage. A dinner-party will be something I never expected to see on Ruffa.”
“Well, that’s that,” Jean declared in a business-like tone. “To-morrow night? Half-past seven? That’ll give us plenty of time for bridge afterwards. And now we mustn’t stay long.”
She shot a mischievous glance at Northfleet, who received the thrust imperturbably.
“We’ve got the rest of the island to explore before lunch. I suppose you’re going to bathe?” she added, turning to Hazel.
“Yes, there’s a good pool down yonder. It’s a change from the bay.”
“Well, then, to-morrow at half-past seven, if we don’t see each other before then. Come along, Colin.”
CHAPTER V
THE MAN WITH THE PISTOLS
“THEY’RE a nice pair, aren’t they, Colin?” said Jean, when they had walked well out of earshot of the shieling. “I like that Northfleet man. He’s got nice grey eyes. Why haven’t you got grey eyes, Colin, instead of these blue-green things? It would improve your looks. And I like his mouth, too. You can guess he’s got a sense of humour, without his having to guffaw to show you he sees a joke.”
“Never noticed his eyes, and I’ve known him longer than you have,” Colin admitted, placidly. “They can’t be so wonderful, after all.”
“Don’t be jealous. What I like about him is that he looks so—well, so dependable.”
Colin halted to re-light his pipe.
“I shouldn’t depend much on his ornithology, anyhow,” he grunted, between puffs. “Doesn’t know the difference between a fulmar petrel and a herring-gull. Not much of a birdist, evidently, and a poor bluffer on a weak hand.”
“He said he didn’t know much about it himself,” Jean retorted in triumph. “I don’t call that bluffing.”
Colin put his matches back in his pocket and moved on again at her side.
“This bird-watching game is all my eye, if you ask me,” he pronounced oracularly.
“Then what’s he doing here on Ruffa?” Jean demanded, with the air of having posed an unanswerable question. “He must be all right, or Mr. Craigmore wouldn’t have had him on the island. You aren’t going queer in the head, Colin, taking fancies and what not?”
“Well, what’s he doing here?” Colin repeated the question with a slightly different inflexion. “Look at it this way, Jean. He’s no birdologist. He’s a consulting chemist nowadays, unless my memory’s all wrong.”
“Do you mean he keeps a shop and makes up prescriptions?”
Jean’s enthusiasm was slightly damped. She tried to imagine Northfleet, in a white apron, selling drugs over a counter. Somehow it seemed incongruous.
“Yes, of course,” Colin agreed, with a grin. “And if you’ve got a pain in the pinny, he advises you what to take for it. That’s why he’s called a consulting chemist. It’s a superior brand.”
The grin dissipated Jean’s doubts.
“What does he do really, Colin?”
Colin decided that it was of no use trying to carry the joke further.
“It’s like this, dear. Suppose you run some factory where the process turns partly on chemistry. Something goes wrong. You can’t make out what it is. You whistle in an expert like Northfleet to go into the whole affair and find out what’s amiss. That sort of thing.”
“I don’t see anything strange in his being a consulting chemist,” said Jean stoutly.
“No more do I. It’s his way of making a living. But what I don’t see is what he’s doing on Ruffa, mistaking solans and fulmars for gulls to pass the time. Rum, I’d call it. What’s a consulting chemist doing up here, so far from his little home,