THE YELLOW STREAK

CHAPTER I

THE MASTER OF HARKINGS


Of all the luxuries of which Hartley Parrish's sudden rise to wealth
gave him possession, Bude, his butler, was the acquisition in which he
took the greatest delight and pride. Bude was a large and
comfortable-looking person, triple-chinned like an archdeacon,
bald-headed except for a respectable and saving edging of dark down,
clean-shaven, benign of countenance, with a bold nose which to the
psychologist bespoke both ambition and inborn cleverness. He had a
thin, tight mouth which in itself alone was a symbol of discreet
reticence, the hall-mark of the trusted family retainer.


Bude had spent his life in the service of the English aristocracy. The
Earl of Tipperary, Major-General Lord Bannister, the Dowager Marchioness
of Wiltshire, and Sir Herbert Marcobrunner, Bart., had in turn watched
his gradual progress from pantry-boy to butler. Bude was a man whose
maxim had been the French saying, "_Je prends mon bien où je le
trouve_."

In his thirty years' service he had always sought to discover and draw
from those sources of knowledge which were at his disposal. From
MacTavish, who had supervised Lord Tipperary's world-famous gardens, he
had learnt a great deal about flowers, so that the arrangement of the
floral decorations was always one of the features at Hartley Parrish's
_soigné_ dinner-parties. From Brun, the unsurpassed _chef_, whom Lord
Bannister had picked up when serving with the Guards in Egypt, he had
gathered sufficient knowledge of the higher branches of the cuisine to
enable Hartley Parrish to leave the arrangement of the menu in his
butler's hands.

Bude would have been the first to admit that, socially speaking, his
present situation was not the equal of the positions he had held. There
was none of the staid dignity about his present employer which was
inborn in men like Lord Tipperary or Lord Bannister, and which Sir
Herbert Marcobrunner, with the easy assimilative faculty of his race,
had very successfully acquired. Below middle height, thick-set and
powerfully built, with a big head, narrow eyes, and a massive chin,
Hartley Parrish, in his absorbed concentration on his business, had no
time for the acquisition or practice of the Eton manner.

It was characteristic of Parrish that, seeing Bude at a dinner-party at
Marcobrunner's, he should have engaged him on the spot. It took Bude a
week to get over his shock at the manner in which the offer was made.
Parrish had approached him as he was supervising the departure of the
guests. Waving aside the footman who offered to help him into his
overcoat, Parrish had asked Bude point-blank what wages he was getting.
Bude mentioned the generous remuneration he was receiving from Sir
Herbert Marcobrunner, whereupon Parrish had remarked:

"Come to me and I'll double it. I'll give you a week to think it over.
Let my secretary know!"

After a few discreet enquiries, Bude, faithful to his maxim, had
accepted Parrish's offer. Marcobrunner was furiously angry, but, being
anxious to interest Parrish in a deal, sagely kept his feelings to
himself. And Bude had never regretted the change. He found Parrish an
exacting, but withal a just and a generous master, and he was not long
in realizing that, as long as he kept Harkings, Parrish's country place
where he spent the greater part of his time, running smoothly according
to Parrish's schedule, he could count on a life situation.

The polish of manner, the sober dignity of dress, acquired from years of
acute observation in the service of the nobility, were to be seen as, at
the hour of five, in the twilight of this bleak autumn afternoon, Bude
moved majestically into the lounge-hall of Harkings and leisurely
pounded the gong for tea.

The muffled notes of the gong swelled out brazenly through the silent
house. They echoed down the softly carpeted corridors to the library
where the master of the house sat at his desk. For days he had been
immersed in the figures of the new issue which Hornaway's, the vast
engineering business of his creation, was about to put on the market.
They reverberated up the fine old oak staircase to the luxurious Louis
XV bedroom, where Lady Margaret Trevert lay on her bed idly smiling
through an amusing novel. They crashed through the thickly padded baize
doors leading to the servants' hall, where, at sixpence a hundred,
Parrish's man, Jay, was partnering Lady Margaret's maid against Mrs.
Heever, the housekeeper, and Robert, the chauffeur, at a friendly game
of bridge. And they even boomed distantly into the far-away
billiard-room and broke into the talk which Robin Greve was having with
Mary Trevert.