United States or Georgia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
One man sat in it, and by an amazing chance I knew him. His name was Marmaduke Jopley, and he was an offence to creation. He was a sort of blood stockbroker, who did his business by toadying eldest sons and rich young peers and foolish old ladies. 'Marmie' was a familiar figure, I understood, at balls and polo-weeks and country houses.
Soon the villages were left behind, then the farms, and then even the wayside cottage. Presently we came to a lonely moor where the night was blackening the sunset gleam in the bog pools. Here we stopped, and I obligingly reversed the car and restored to Mr Jopley his belongings. 'A thousand thanks, I said. 'There's more use in you than I thought. Now be off and find the police.
Very likely I would not be admitted, but it would ease my conscience to try. I walked down Jermyn Street, and at the corner of Duke Street passed a group of young men. They were in evening dress, had been dining somewhere, and were going on to a music-hall. One of them was Mr Marmaduke Jopley. He saw me and stopped short. 'By God, the murderer! he cried. 'Here, you fellows, hold him!
I asked a man afterwards why nobody kicked him, and was told that Englishmen reverenced the weaker sex. Anyhow there he was now, nattily dressed, in a fine new car, obviously on his way to visit some of his smart friends. A sudden daftness took me, and in a second I had jumped into the tonneau and had him by the shoulder. 'Hullo, Jopley, I sang out. 'Well met, my lad! He got a horrid fright.
He made me describe the two fellows in the car very closely, and seemed to be raking back in his memory. He grew merry again when he heard of the fate of that ass Jopley. But the old man in the moorland house solemnized him. Again I had to describe every detail of his appearance. 'Bland and bald-headed and hooded his eyes like a bird ... He sounds a sinister wild-fowl!
Word Of The Day