Mr. Campion's Lucky Day & Other Stories by Margery Allingham Read Free Book Online Page B

fifty-five and superhuman, the conversation was liable to have a one-sided quality, but there were rare occasions when the imperfectly subdued nature of the boy got out of hand. This was one of them.
    “I saw Lady Susan this afternoon. She had been crying,” he observed, rashly.
    Knowles set down a mellow spoon with great deliberation and, taking a pair of small pince-nez from his waistcoat pocket, placed them carefully on the bridge of his nose.
    “You saw Lady Susan?” he said. “Where was she?”
    “In the hall,” faltered the helpless Harold, observing only too late the abyss widening beneath his feet.
    “And where were you?”
    “At the top of the service stairs,” stuttered the boy.
    “Where you had no right to be.”
    There was a long and awful pause. Young Harold had been well grounded in the first rules of service, and “Thou shalt not give back answers” was graven on his soul.
    “The young servant,” said Knowles, giving the word its true dignity, “has to leam to serve the family with his mind, his body and his affection, but without his human nature, Harold.”
    “You must notice things and not notice them, if you take my meaning. That is to say, you must see everything, but only retain in your head those matters which may possibly concern you.
    “I remember the case of the gentleman with kleptomania who dined with his late lordship,” he observed, unexpectedly. “Now it was my duty to notice that he had a pair of very fine salt cellars in his hip pocket when he left the table, but it was not my duty to mention the fact to him or to any one else. I made a point of helping him on with his overcoat as he left, and then I ventured to suggest that the awkward bulge spoiled the set of his coat. I begged him to allow me to send a messenger round with the contents of his pocket the following morning. I was not rude, you understand, Harold; just respectfully solicitous and, of course, firm. He gave up the salt cellars rather grudgingly, I remember, and, of course, his lordship never knew.”
    The deep voice ceased, and Knowles eyed his son.
    “Quiet, impersonal, and firm; that’s the line, my boy. It takes time to learn it, but it’s worth it in the end. When you’re a good butler, you know that you’re more than a man. In your sphere you are infallible. Crises may arise, difficult situations may start up and face you, but with training you can look them in the eye and not see them, if you take me.
    “Besides,” he went on with apparent irrelevance, “there’s nothing so vulgar as vulgar curiosity.”
    Harold followed his father’s train of thought perfectly and was silent, his mind busy fitting together the odd words he had gleaned among the whispers which had been agitating the servants’ hall all day.
    Knowles, too, pondered on the unfortunate situation which had arisen above stairs and on the disastrous paragraph in the morning’s papers. However, decency and respect and even simulated ignorance he could and would enforce in his own domain below stairs, and in Knowles’ opinion it would be as well if there were another equally competent person in charge of the world outside.
    He was disturbed in his thoughts by the muffled buzzing of the front door bell. What instinct persuaded the old man to answer it himself he never rightly knew, but he strode out into the passage, swept Edward, the footman, out of the way, and mounted the service stairs with a brisk purposefulness quite unlike his usual pontifical stride.
    As he entered the main hall, which in deference to her Ladyship’s wishes was kept but softly lit, he was aware of a minor crisis. The front door was swinging wide and through it rushed the warm, rain-laden air of the city’s evening.
    Knowles had just mastered his first sense of outrage at this unheard-of indignity when he saw the visitor. Without his pince-nez Knowles was very near-sighted, and the man was standing in the darker part of the hall by the Doric columns. The old