The Disappearing Eye

"Adventures are to the adventurous," said Cannington, with the air of a man who believes that he is saying something undeniably smart.

"Good Lord!" I retorted, twisting the motor car round a corner. "Since when has the British subaltern given up his leisure to reading Beaconsfield's novels?"

Cannington serenely puffed his cigarette into a brighter glow. "I don't know what you're talking about, old chap," said he indifferently.

"I talk of 'Ixion in Heaven,' or--if you prefer it--of 'Coningsby.' Beaconsfield was so enamoured of his apothegm that he inserted it in both tales."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Cannington again, and his puzzled look proved that he spoke the truth. "A chap called Marr wrote that in my sister's album, and told her it was his own."

"I daresay; more ideas are stolen than pocket-handkerchiefs, according to Balzac. And, after all, Beaconsfield may have cribbed the saying."

"Oh! I see what you are driving at: Marr copied it out of a book."

"Undoubtedly, unless he lived before 'Coningsby' and 'Ixion' were written--somewhere about the beginning of the nineteenth century."

"Oh! Marr isn't so old as that," protested the boy, chuckling; "although he isn't a spring chicken, by any means. What Mabel sees in him, I can't for the life of me imagine."

"Humph! You were never renowned for imagination, Cannington," I said kindly, "and in your particular case it doesn't much matter. You're the man behind the gun, and all you have to do is to fire against the seen enemy."

"Huh! Why, half the firing is against the unseen enemy. If I haven't got your rotten imagination, Vance, I've got common-sense, and that's what you jolly well need."

"Rash youth, to speak thus to the man at the wheel. Don't you know that, with a little dexterity, I could shoot you into yonder ditch?"

"You'd travel with me," he sniggered.

"Why not? It would be an excellent advertisement for a popular playwright."

"Playwright be hanged! You only write beastly melodramas."

"Precisely; that is why I am popular. And if I'm not a playwright, what am I?"

"A carpenter. You collar other people's ideas----"

"Like your friend Marr," I interpolated.

"And knock them into weird shapes for second-rate theatres."

"Not at all," I rejoined tartly, for the criticism piqued me. "I scour the country in search of flesh and blood tragedies, and improve them into moral lessons for the British Public. But you're talking all round the shop, my lad. Who is this Marr, of whom your sister approves, and why does he write down other people's ideas in her album?"

"Wentworth Marr." Cannington lighted another cigarette, and explained: "He's a well-preserved old buck of--I should say--fifty, and looks forty. Unmarried, with heaps of tin and no family. Mabel likes him."

"And he likes Lady Mabel, or loves her. Which is it?"

"Well"--Cannington drawled this out reluctantly--"he's in love with her, sure enough. And, of course, Mabel is as poor as I am, and Marr having no end of shekels, you see----"

"What about Dick Weston?" I broke in abruptly.

"Oh, he's too much taken up with his inventions to bother about love. Poor Mab feels it," sighed Cannington, "so she flirts with Marr."

"To keep her hand in, I suppose. She'll burn her fingers. Tell me all about it, boy, if it will relieve your mind."