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Title: If--? Author: Edgar Wallace * A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook * eBook No.: 1305851h.html Language: English Date first posted: Oct 2013 Most recent update: Oct 2013 This eBook was produced by Roy Glashan. Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular paper edition. Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this file. This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.auGO TO Project Gutenberg Australia HOME PAGE
THE war had soured Hector Smith. It had drawn a line between comparative
youth and comparative middle-age. It had burst inconveniently, as wars have a
habit of bursting, upon more than one half-matured scheme of his, and had
scattered them to bits and left him the poorer. To be exact, it had left Mary
the poorer, because it was Mary's money that went, of which fact it had
become a habit of hers to remind him.
But more souring, bits of boys, the merest urchins, to be patronized or
ignored in the old days, had obtruded themselves upon his and the public's
attentions. The balance of life was over-set. The inconsiderable factors (in
which category he included these boys who now strutted consciously
be-ribboned through his world) had grown to such importance that they
overshadowed the real big things of life, such as his handicap at golf, his
bridge hands, the remarkable poverty of intelligence on the part of his
partners, and the like.
There was a time when Arthur, for example, would have been carried to the
seventh heaven by a timely half-sovereign, and would have run his long legs
off in his haste to reach the confectioner's before the cream buns were sold.
Now Arthur was a straight-limbed youth with "wings," and a record of good
service in France.
And Arthur and Mary—
Pshaw! It was absurd! Why, he remembered this dirty little kid when he was
so high! Yet, it was a fact that Mary spent most of her time with Arthur,
raved about his dancing, his beautiful manners, his perfect sympathy.
Pshaw!
Hector Smith cursed the war that forced him to listen to gruesome stories
in which he was not interested.
He opened the drawing-room door and stalked in, then stopped with a little
grimace. The inevitable Arthur was there, and the inevitable Arthur with an
embarrassed giggle made his escape with a mumbled reference to the weather.
As for Mary, she looked too good to be true.
"Hasn't that bird got a perch of his own?" snarled Hector.
"How can you speak of a man who has been wounded—?" began his
indignant partner.
Mr. Smith laughed contemptuously.
"Wounded! The first time he tried to fly he crashed, and the second time
he tried to fly he crashed, and the third time he tried to fly he
crashed!"
She tossed her head.
"I'd like to see you do it!"
Mr. Smith shrugged.
"Oh, I know it's a mistake to talk disrespectfully of your hero," he
sneered.
He was not feeling at his brightest.
"What do you mean?" she demanded with ominous calm.
"I mean, I'm fed up, that's what I mean," he snapped, and she flamed round
on him.
"And so am I!" she cried. "You're vulgar and stupid and tyrannical. The
life I've lived with you is abominable. When I married you I had
money—"
He bowed.
"That's right," he said, encouragingly,﹃throw that in my face! Didn't I
invest it for you?﹄It was an unfortunate question.
"Yes, you did," she said, bitterly. "You put it into a luminous sign
business. Luminous signs! And a month after war was declared! And the only
thing you could get out of showing a luminous sign was six months'
imprisonment!"
"How did I know there was going to be a war?" asked the exasperated
man.
"You might have guessed it," she replied, illogically.
"Could I guess that London was to be plunged in darkness? I did my best. I
should have made a million out of that fuse factory I started this
year—"
"Yes, if it hadn't been for the armistice," she scoffed.
"How did I know there was going to be peace?" he roared.
She flounced past him on her way to the door.
"Oh, you never know anything!"
"There's one thing I know," he shouted after her.
"What's that?"
"One of these fine days I'll run away to America!" Her scornful laugh came
back through the slammed door. He threw himself upon the settee. The money
was gone and the wife remained. That was his luck. If it had been the other
way about—! If only it had been the other way about! If he could only
live the years over again! If he could only be five years younger and knew
what he knew!
He sat staring at the newspaper in his hand. There was a critique of a new
play, a fairy play.
Bah! Fairies were nonsense!
He laid the newspaper down on his knees.
But suppose there were such things as fairies, and suppose they moved
about this prosaic, industrialized world as in the old days they moved
through the woodland glebes; suppose by a wave of a magic wand a man could be
transplanted back, back, back; and suppose that it were possible that the
clock should be put back, and one had consciousness of all the things that
were going to happen, the horses that were going to win races, the stocks
which were going to rise, all the great events which must occur!
He heaved a deep sigh and looked up. He half-rose from the couch, for
there before him, a bright and radiant figure in the dusky room, stood a
brilliant presence. He knew it was a fairy because it was dressed as fairies
should be dressed, and bemuse she was bathed in a flood of silvery light
which seemed to come from nowhere in particular. The little hands grasped a
wand which twinkled and glittered with light.
Recovering from his initial astonishment he looked at her aappraisingly.
He felt it would be undignified and ill-bred to regard her as a
phenomenon.
"Hector Smith," said a sweet, low voice,
"I am your fairy godmother!"
"Oh, yes." said Hector Smith, politely.
"You have expressed a wish to be five years younger. Be happy, for
to-morrow you will awake in 1914."
"Eh?" said Hector, sitting up. "I say, do you really mean that?"
She inclined her head.
"Wait a moment," said Hector, eagerly. "I must be the only one who knows
it. D'ye understand? Because if everybody else knows it I shall be in the
cart again."
She raised her wand and waved it slowly above his head.
"I must be the only one who knows that there's going to be a war and all
that sort of thing," said Hector, drowsily. A sense of languor was rapidly
overcoming him. "I don't want...."
His head fell on his chest.
He did not know how long he had slept when he awoke with a jerk. He had a
confused dream in which figured fairies and brilliant wands, and low, sweet
voices mingled, and then he remembered that he had to see Tomkins who was
liquidating his ill-fated fuse factory. He went to the study and 'phoned
Tomkins, but, amazingly enough, Tomkins was not on the 'phone. He asked
Exchange to connect him with Smith's Patent Fuse Factory, but Exchange was
ignorant that such a place had ever existed.
"The telephone service," said Hector Smith, as be hung up the receiver,
"is becoming more and more abominable."
He decided to write to the newspapers on the subject. He paused outside
the drawing-room door, for he heard his wife moving about inside, and it was
necessary to brace himself up for the ordeal. He was a little scared of Mary
in her tantrums, and more scared that his apprehension should be known to
her. But the girl who came across the room to meet him had no frown, no
reproaches. She was one beaming smile, and she ran towards him and laid her
hands upon his shoulders.
"Dearie!" she kissed him, ecstatically: then noting the gloom in his face,
"darling, whatever is the matter?"
"Matter?" he answered, suspiciously. "What's that you did? What's the
matter with you?"
She looked at him in wonder.
"Nothing is the matter with me. I just kissed you, that's all."
He heaved a sigh. How did she know he had received his directors' cheque
that day?
"How much do you want?" he asked, with resignation.
"Naughty boy, why do you say that?" she pouted. "Don't you love your
diddlelums any more?"
He stared at her.
"Look here. What's up?" he asked, desperately. "I'll buy it! What's wrong
with you?"
"Wrong?"
She was frankly astonished.
"Everything has gone wrong to-day," he growled. "I went to call up that
fellow about the fuses—"
She frowned.
"Fuses? What are fuses?"
His suspicions returned. "Don't pull my leg," he said, coldly. "I'm not in
a mood for it. Try it on the other fellow."
"What other-fellow?" He jerked his head to the door.
"He was heme just now. I heard his voice."
A smile of understanding dawned on her face.
"Who, little Arthur?"
"Yes, little Arthur," he snarled, "the little hero!"
"Don't be silly, Hector," she laughed.
"Arthur a hero!"
His rising wrath moderated. Evidently what he had said to her had done
some good. Still suspicious, and with a horrid sense of unreality, he slipped
his arm about her waist and led her to the couch. It was all unreal and
unexpected, he thought, as her golden head rested on his shoulder.
"It's a. long time since we did this," he said. "It reminds me of the raid
nights."
She straightened herself up.
"The what nights?"
"The raid nights."
She laughed. Hector in the full ardour of that period which was neither
youth nor middle-age, had been a tempestuous lover.
"Dear, you use such queer expressions!"
"Do you remember the siren?" he asked, after a pause, and her head nodded
vigorously.
"Yes, the cat—but I got you away from her."
"And how we used to go down into the cellar?" he mused. It seemed a
thousand years ago. She straightened up. It was she who was suspicion.
"We never did," she protested. "Really, Hector! I hope you're not thinking
of somebody else?"
Before he could answer Jane came in, and Jane, curiously enough, looked
much younger.
"Will there be three to dinner, madam?" asked the maid.
Mary nodded.
"Who is the third?" demanded Mr. Smith.
"Oh, no one," said his wife, airily. "I asked Arthur to stay."
He sprang to his feet.
"Arthur! Confound the fellow, hasn't he gone? I won't have him. Do you
understand. Marv. I-won't-have-him!"
Again the look of blank astonishment on her face.
"But why not?"
"He's such a nice little gentleman, sir," pleaded Jane. "He sat on my knee
and told me such funny stories."
Hector glared from the maid to his wife.
"There you are!" he said, triumphantly. "That's the sort of fellow he is!
Sits on her knee and tells her funny stories!"
To his amazement she laughed.
"It's not worth while getting angry—he can dine in the kitchen."
"In the kitchen!"
"Of course, he doesn't care," Mary went on, calmly, "so long as he goes to
the White City."
"With whom?"
"Well, I'll take him," said Mary, indifferently. "I rather like the
Roly-Poly and the Wiggle-Wag."
With a mighty effort Mr. Smith controlled himself.
"You can't go to the White City. It's been requisitioned by the Government
four years ago," he said. "The White City is closed, I tell you. It's where
the C3 men get their A1 gratuity—everybody knows that."
There was a strained silence, during which Jane tip-toed from the
room.
Hector saw something in his wife's eyes that looked like fear, and failed
to diagnose its cause.
"I'm sorry I lost my temper," he said, penitently; "the fact is I'm
jealous."
The fear was replaced by a gleam of interest.
"Jealous? Of whom?"
He made a little gesture to cover his discomfort.
"Of you—and Arthur."
"But you're mad," she gasped; "at his age—"
"At his age." said Mr. Smith, icily, "I had been thrown out of the Empire
twice."
He did not explain the degree of worldliness which this experience
implied, but he left her to gather that it represented a particularly lurid
form of precocity.
"I don't understand you to-night," she said, shaking her head.
"I don't understand myself," said Mr. Smith, rising. "I think I'll run
down to the club, I promised to meet an ace."
"An ace? I thought you'd given up cards."
"You don't understand me—this fellow brought down thirty."
"Thirty what?"
"Boche."
"It isn't 'bosh'!" she exploded. "How did he bring them down?"
Hector groaned.
"He got on their tails and crashed them," he explained, patiently.
She was shocked.
"Poor things! I suppose they broke quite easily?" she asked.
He looked at her.
"I don't know what you are talking about," he said, irritably. "I am
speaking about a fellow who has been 'mentioned' six times."
She shook her head.
"This is the first time you have mentioned him to me," she said; "what has
he done?"
"Done? Why, in the early days before he started flipping, he took a
pill-box all by himself!"
Her mouth opened.
"A whole box?" she gasped.
"You see," he explained, "he was in a tank, and when they went over the
top—"
"Over the top of the tank?" she asked, hazily.
"No, the tank went over the top and a minnie dropped in front of him."
She was interested again.
"Poor girl," she said, sympathetically, "and did he help her up?"
"No; you see, a dying pig burst just behind him."
"But what did he do with Minnie?" she demanded.
She could not grapple with pigs that flew, but Minnie was someone
tangible.
"Oh, she got him in the leg," he stated, carelessly.
She was grave now.
"I see, she wasn't a lady?"
"Of course she wasn't a lady," he wailed.
"I have told you it wasn't a lady! It was a minenwerfer."
She did not want to hear about Miss Werfer or even of a low person to whom
he made glib reference—a Miss Emma Gee. This friend of her husband's
seemed to have low tastes. He crashed people, he got on their tails.
"And Big Bertha—" Hector was saying when she stopped him.
"I don't think I want to meet your friend," she said, and made for the
door.
He didn't understand her. Usually she was as full of the jargon of the war
as the most ardent subaltern. Now she professed ignorance and demanded an
elucidation of the most commonplace phrase.
He was pondering on this fact when the maid came into the room. She stood
nervously waiting, and Hector guessed her errand.
"Well?" he growled.
"I-I thought I would ask you, sir," she faltered; "I was going to ask the
mistress if-if she would give me a little rise."
"A rise again!" he groaned. This was the third or was it the fourth
time...?
"But, sir?"
"Now listen to me," he said, severely, "I know that living is expensive,
and coals are dear, and I am willing to give you another rise. But this must
be the very last time. You can have five pounds a month, but not a penny
more."
She did not swoon. She was too well-bred a servant.
"Five pounds a month! Oh, thank you, master, thank you! Oh, you are most
good—"she grew incoherent.
Hector raised his eyebrows. He thought she was unusually grateful. His
wife returned at that moment to hear his news.
"By the way, dear, I've just raised Jane's wages."
Usually she objected to his interfering in her domestic affairs, but now
she was most amiable.
"I promised her I would—she seems a nice girl."
"Yes," said Hector. "I'm giving her five pounds a month."
His wife grasped a chair for support.
"Are you mad?" She beckoned Jane, for her earlier suspicions were now
certainties.
"Fetch a doctor," she said, under her breath. "The master isn't well. I
only pay her eighteen pounds a year."
She tried to say this in a light conversational tone, but her voice
shook.
"You only—?" Something was very wrong, and he called the maid to
him. "Ask Dr. Sawyer to step round. Mrs. Smith isn't quite herself," he
said.
"Get Dr. Thomas." demanded Mary, sharply.
Thomas! Thomas was in Mesopotamia! It was clear now. The worry of the past
years had turned her brain. It was a flattering explanation for the
preference she had lately shown to Arthur. They watched one another
apprehensively after the girl had gone, then:—
"Feel better, ducky?" he asked, huskily.
"Has that nasty wuzzy feeling gone, lovey?" her voice was a nervous
squeak.
Dr. Thomas had the flat opposite, and Dr. Thomas was coming out of his
flat when the frightened maid had literally flung herself upon him.
"They're both mad," she babbled, and the startled doctor followed her to
where two people, each standing at the extreme end of a long drawing-room,
were watching one another in silence. Hector saw him and uttered an
exclamation of astonishment.
"By Jove. I thought you were in Bagdad?"
The doctor laid his soothing hand on the other's shoulder.
"Of course—Bagdadl Ah, that's the place—we'll soon put you
right, old man."
Ignoring the implication that he wasn't right, Mr. Smith whispered
something in the other's ear.
"Of course she is," replied Thomas, indulgently, and caught Mary's eye and
Mary's significant signal.
It was at that moment that Arthur came in—Arthur in his Eton suit,
with his cherubic face stained with jam. Hector looked at him and his jaw
dropped.
"What the devil have you dressed like this for?" he demanded.
"Because I'm going to school, Mr. Smith."
"To school? How old are you?"
"Fourteen—nearly."
"Fourteen!" repeated Hector, hollowly.
"Is it possible—?"
On Mary's desk was a calendar and to this he walked.
"Nineteen fourteen! Mary, I understand all. I will explain. You're not
mad—it was the fairy—who put back the clock!—my wish was
granted!"
The doctor looked at Mary and Mary looked at the doctor.﹃I'm going to
prophesy,﹄Hector went on, excitedly. "We are going to war! The Kaiser will
abdicate! The British Army will be seven millions strong! We shall win the
war, thanks to Beatty, Haig, and Foch!"
He saw the round face of Arthur and—smack! Arthur sprawled on the
door, blubbering.
"Why did you do that?" asked the terrified Mary.
"He's going to cause me a lot of trouble," said Hector, prophetically
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