“/Sixteen!/” said the professor between his teeth. Then he picked up his ball.

I won the seventh hole.

I won the eighth hole.

The ninth we halved, for in the black depths of my soul I had formed a plan of fiendish subtlety. I intended to allow him to win—with extreme labour—eight holes in succession.

Then, when hope was once more strong in him, I would win the last, and he would go mad.

I watched him carefully as we trudged on. Emotions chased one another across his face. When he won the tenth hole he merely refrained from oaths. When he won the eleventh a sort of sullen pleasure showed in his face. It was at the thirteenth that I detected the first dawning of hope. From then onward it grew.

When, with a sequence of shocking shots, he took the seventeenth hole in seven, he was in a parlous condition. His run of success had engendered within him a desire for conversation. He wanted, as it were, to flap his wings and crow. I could see Dignity wrestling with Talkativeness. I gave him the lead.

“You have got your form now,” I said.

Talkativeness had it. Dignity retired hurt. Speech came from him in a rush. When he brought off an excellent drive from the eighteenth tee, he seemed to forget everything.

“Me dear boy,”—he began; and stopped abruptly in some confusion. Silence once more brooded over us as we played ourselves up the fairway and on to the green.

He was on the green in four. I reached it in three. His sixth stroke took him out.

I putted carefully to the very mouth of the hole.

I walked up to my ball and paused. I looked at the professor. He looked at me.

“Go on,” he said hoarsely.

Suddenly a wave of compassion flooded over me. What right had I to torture the man like this?

“Professor,” I said.

“Go on,” he repeated.

“That looks a simple shot,” I said, eyeing him steadily, “but I might miss it.”

He started.

“And then you would win the Championship.”

He dabbed at his forehead with a wet ball of a handkerchief.

“It would be very pleasant for you after getting so near it the last two years.”

“Go on,” he said for the third time. But there was a note of hesitation in his voice.

“Sudden joy,” I said, “would almost certainly make me miss it.”

We looked at each other. He had the golf fever in his eyes.

“If,” I said slowly, lifting my putter, “you were to give your consent to my marriage with Phyllis—”

He looked from me to the ball, from the ball to me, and back to the ball. It was very, very near the hole.

“Why not?” I said.

He looked up, and burst into a roar of laughter.

“You young devil,” said he, smiting his thigh, “you young devil, you’ve beaten me.”

“On the contrary,” I said, “you have beaten me.”

I left the professor at the Club House and raced back to the farm. I wanted to pour my joys into a sympathetic ear. Ukridge, I knew, would offer that same sympathetic ear. A good fellow, Ukridge. Always interested in what you had to tell him; never bored.

“Ukridge!” I shouted.

No answer.

I flung open the dining-room door. Nobody.

I went into the drawing-room. It was empty. I drew the garden, and his bedroom. He was not in either.

“He must have gone for a stroll,” I said.

I rang the bell.

The Hired Retainer appeared, calm and imperturbable as ever.

“Sir?”

“Oh, where is Mr. Ukridge, Beale?”

“Mr. Ukridge, sir,” said the Hired Retainer nonchalantly, “has gone.”

“Gone!”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Ukridge and Mrs. Ukridge went away together by the three o’clock train.”

Chapter 21.

The Calm Before the Storm

“Beale,” I said, “are you drunk?”

“Wish I was, sir,” said the Hired Man.

“Then what on earth do you mean? Gone? Where have they gone to?”

“Don’t know, sir. London, I expect.”

“London? Why?”

“Don’t know, sir.”

“When did they go? Oh, you told me that. Didn’t they say why they were going?”

“No, sir.”

“Didn’t you ask! When you saw them packing up and going to the station, didn’t you do anything?”

“No, sir.”

“Why on earth not?”

“I didn’t see them, sir. I only found out as they’d gone after they’d been and went, sir. Walking down by the Net and Mackerel, met one of them coastguards. ‘Oh,’ says he, ‘so you’re moving?’ ‘Who’s a-moving?’ I says to him. ‘Well,’ he says to me, ‘I seen your Mr. Ukridge and his missus get into the three o’clock train for Axminster. I thought as you was all a-moving.’ ‘Ho,’ I says, ‘Ho,’ wondering, and I goes on. When I gets back, I asks the missus did she see them packing their boxes, and she says, No, she says, they didn’t pack no boxes as she knowed of. And blowed if they had, Mr. Garnet, sir.”

“What! They didn’t pack!”

“No, sir.”

We looked at one another.

“Beale,” I said.

“Sir?”

“Do you know what I think?”

“Yes, sir.”

“They’ve bolted.”

“So I says to the missus, sir. It struck me right off, in a manner of speaking.”

“This is awful,” I said.

“Yes, sir.”

His face betrayed no emotion, but he was one of those men whose expression never varies. It’s a way they have in the Army.

“This wants thinking out, Beale,” I said.

“Yes, sir.”

“You’d better ask Mrs. Beale to give me some dinner, and then I’ll think it over.”

“Yes, sir.”

I was in an unpleasant position. Ukridge by his defection had left me in charge of the farm. I could dissolve the concern, I supposed, if I wished, and return to London, but I particularly desired to remain in Combe Regis. To complete the victory I had won on the links, it was necessary for me to continue as I had begun. I was in the position of a general who has conquered a hostile country, and is obliged to soothe the feelings of the conquered people before his labours can be considered at an end. I had rushed the professor. It must now be my aim to keep him from regretting that he had been rushed. I must, therefore, stick to my post with the tenacity of an able-bodied leech. There would be trouble. Of that I was certain. As soon as the news got about that Ukridge had gone, the deluge would begin. His creditors would abandon their passive tactics, and take active steps. There was a chance that aggressive measures would be confined to the enemy at our gates, the tradesmen of Combe Regis. But the probability was that the news would spread, and the injured merchants of Dorchester and Axminster rush to the scene of hostilities.

I summoned Beale after dinner and held a council of war. It was no time for airy persiflage. I said, “Beale, we’re in the cart.”

“Sir?”

“Mr. Ukridge going away like this has left me in a most unpleasant position. I would like to talk it over with you. I daresay you know that we—that Mr. Ukridge owes a considerable amount of money round about here to tradesmen?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, when they find out that he has—er—”

“Shot the moon, sir,” suggested the Hired Retainer helpfully.

“Gone up to town,” I amended. “When they find out that he has gone up to town, they are likely to come bothering us a good deal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I fancy that we shall have them all round here to-morrow. News of this sort always spreads quickly. The point is, then, what are we to do?”

He propounded no scheme, but stood in an easy attitude of attention, waiting for me to continue.

I continued.

“Let’s see exactly how we stand,” I said. “My point is that I particularly wish to go on living down here for at least another fortnight. Of course, my position is simple. I am Mr. Ukridge’s guest. I shall go on living as I have been doing up to the present. He asked me down here to help him look after the fowls, so I shall go on looking after them. Complications set in when we come to consider you and Mrs. Beale. I suppose you won’t care to stop on after this?”