Piccadilly Jim | Page 5

all about an angel-child--I suppose it's meant to be Ogden--being stolen and hidden and all that. It's odd that she should write stories like this. You wouldn't expect it of her."
"Your aunt," said Mr. Pett, "lets her mind run on that sort of thing a good deal. She tells me there was a time, not so long ago, when half the kidnappers in America were after him. She sent him to school in England--or, rather, her husband did. They were separated then--and, as far as I can follow the story, they all took the next boat and besieged the place."
"It's a pity somebody doesn't smuggle him away now and keep him till he's a better boy."
"Ah!" said Mr. Pett wistfully.
Ann looked at him fixedly, but his eyes were once more on his paper. She gave a little sigh, and turned to her work again.
"It's quite demoralising, typing aunt Nesta's stories," she said. "They put ideas into one's head."
Mr. Pett said nothing. He was reading an article of medical interest in the magazine section, for he was a man who ploughed steadily through his Sunday paper, omitting nothing. The typewriter began tapping again.
"Great Godfrey!"
Ann swung round, and gazed at her uncle in concern. He was staring blankly at the paper.
"What's the matter?"
The page on which Mr. Pett's attention was concentrated was decorated with a fanciful picture in bold lines of a young man in evening dress pursuing a young woman similarly clad along what appeared to be a restaurant supper-table. An enjoyable time was apparently being had by both. Across the page this legend ran:
PICCADILLY JIM ONCE MORE
The Recent Adventures of Young Mr. Crocker
of New York and London
It was not upon the title, however, nor upon the illustration that Mr. Pett's fascinated eye rested. What he was looking at was a small reproduction of a photograph which had been inserted in the body of the article. It was the photograph of a woman in the early forties, rather formidably handsome, beneath which were printed the words:
Mrs. Nesta Ford Pett
Well-Known Society Leader and Authoress
Ann had risen and was peering over his shoulder. She frowned as she caught sight of the heading of the page. Then her eye fell upon the photograph.
"Good gracious! Why have they got aunt Nesta's picture there?"
Mr. Pett breathed a deep and gloomy breath.
"They've found out she's his aunt. I was afraid they would. I don't know what she will say when she sees this."
"Don't let her see it."
"She has the paper downstairs. She's probably reading it now."
Ann was glancing through the article.
"It seems to be much the same sort of thing that they have published before. I can't understand why the Chronicle takes such an interest in Jimmy Crocker."
"Well, you see he used to be a newspaper man, and the Chronicle was the paper he worked for."
Ann flushed.
"I know," she said shortly.
Something in her tone arrested Mr. Pett's attention.
"Yes, yes, of course," he said hastily. "I was forgetting."
There was an awkward silence. Mr. Pett coughed. The matter of young Mr. Crocker's erstwhile connection with the New York Chronicle was one which they had tacitly decided to refrain from mentioning.
"I didn't know he was your nephew, uncle Peter."
"Nephew by marriage," corrected Mr. Pett a little hurriedly. "Nesta's sister Eugenia married his father."
"I suppose that makes me a sort of cousin."
"A distant cousin."
"It can't be too distant for me."
There was a sound of hurried footsteps outside the door. Mrs. Pett entered, holding a paper in her hand. She waved it before Mr. Pett's sympathetic face.
"I know, my dear," he said backing. "Ann and I were just talking about it."
The little photograph had not done Mrs. Pett justice. Seen life-size, she was both handsomer and more formidable than she appeared in reproduction. She was a large woman, with a fine figure and bold and compelling eyes, and her personality crashed disturbingly into the quiet atmosphere of the room. She was the type of woman whom small, diffident men seem to marry instinctively, as unable to help themselves as cockleshell boats sucked into a maelstrom.
"What are you going to do about it?" she demanded, sinking heavily into the chair which her husband had vacated.
This was an aspect of the matter which had not occurred to Mr. Pett. He had not contemplated the possibility of actually doing anything. Nature had made him out of office hours essentially a passive organism, and it was his tendency, when he found himself in a sea of troubles, to float plaintively, not to take arms against it. To pick up the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and fling them back was not a habit of his. He scratched his chin and said nothing. He went on saying nothing.
"If Eugenia had had any sense, she would have foreseen what would happen if she took the boy away