There were no more lectures on my schedule for that morning, so I strolled back towards my own college, puffing at a meditative pipe. As the hazy smoke ascended in the clear May sunshine, vista upon vista seemed to be opening up in my imagination—and at the end of each one was inscribed the magic name, Dorothy Dupuis.

  Skilfully avoiding the bicycles in Trinity Street, I kept repeating it over and over again. It didn’t seem to suit the Profile in the very least. Somehow or other, I vaguely connected the name with an incident that didn’t suit her either. For a few moments the half memory of that incident tortured me, hanging on the brink of my conscious mind. Then it began to come back to me.

  It was at the dinner party given by the American Ambassador last vacation. What was her name—the stout lady who sat next to me at table and snorted over her soup? Lady—Lady Lusinger, that was it! I could hear her distinctly now:

  “So you are up at Cambridge, young man. Well, I have a niece there too. The men in our family go to Oxford, of course. (Snort.) But Dorothy Dupuis is a very sensible sort of girl. I might say a thoughtful girl. (Two snorts.)”

  The adjective might perhaps have been more suitably applied to the mackintosh rather than to the girl and I remembered how they had made me wince at the time. In fact, I had made an inward resolve that Dorothy Dupuis’ acquaintance would not add to the gaiety of nations. But now I blessed the American Ambassador and his dull dinner party. I blessed Lady Lusinger and I blessed every snort that she had snorted. I felt absurdly happy.

  And being happy, I had the natural instinct to share my happiness with someone else. But there was only one person at Cambridge to whom I ever talked about myself and that was Michael Grayling, who occupied the room directly below mine on “A” stair-case. He was my best and most intimate friend at college, but for the last few weeks he had been almost as difficult of approach as my next door neighbour, Julius Baumann, who lived on the fourth floor.

  The two of them were working in deadly rivalry for the Lenox Open Scholarship—Michael because he really needed the money to complete his third year at Cambridge—Baumann because he wanted to fling his success in the world’s teeth and prove that he was not only a marvelous cricketeer but a considerable classical scholar as well.

  It was with some surprise, therefore, that I saw Michael’s door standing invitingly open as I passed up the stairs. He looked up from Plato’s Republic as I entered the room. His brown eyes, I noticed, seemed very tired and there were faint parallel lines on his broad, bulgy forehead. My friend’s smile of welcome, however, was as warm and sunny as ever.

  “Doing a spot of work for a change,” he announced in the apologetic tone assumed by even the most serious minded undergraduate when caught red-handed at his studies. “I’m past all help from lectures now and have to plug along by myself in the hopes that I’ll hit on something that they will set in the papers. Not that I have an earthly chance, anyhow—unless Baumann dies or gets laid out in the Varsity Match against the M. C. C. this week.”

  The tone was light, but I knew the deep seriousness of his situation. The race, in this case, was to the swift. Baumann was brilliant; Michael was only a very creditable plodder. I made sympathetic noises with the roof of my mouth and was just about to divert my friend from his Plato with a description of the lecture and its quite unplatonic consequences, when a noise on the stairway above made me turn to look out of the door.

  Now a noise on the stairway could mean only one thing—a visitor for me. Baumann, the misanthropic man of mystery, never had visitors. A constantly sported oak and a sullen scowl barred my South African neighbour from all friendly intercourse with his fellow men.

  With a muttered excuse, I went out on to the third floor landing and left Michael to his Platonic ideals. Light footsteps were coming down from the fourth floor; a turn in the staircase revealed the fact that our visitor was a woman. Nor was it, as might have been expected, the inestimable Mrs. Bigger.

  No, it was a young woman—a girl—a girl in a shabby rain coat, and, yes—heavens, how my heart was beating—it was the Profile. The Profile on our staircase, on my floor!

  But now she was the Profile no longer, for this time I caught her head on, as it were. In the twinkling of a second I took in the interesting facts that her eyes were dark blue and that her full face did more than justice to the promise of the side view. I also noticed that a worried, unhappy expression had supplanted the earlier serenity of the lecture room.

  She was holding a handkerchief in her hand and somehow I had the impression that she had just been using it to remove the trace of tears. (I was in far too romantic a frame of mind even to imagine that she might have a cold in the nose!) Or perhaps she kept it there to conceal a perfectly natural embarrassment for, despite musical comedies and the co-educational movies, women students are not in the habit of running around in the men’s colleges at Cambridge.

  As she came toward me, I thought of a thousand marvelous things to do. I thought of a thousand marvelous things to say. It was an heroic moment, but like most of life’s great opportunities it was destined to be wasted. The mountains of my emotion had been in labor—a ridiculous mouse of conversation was born.

  “Were you looking for someone?” was my final fatuity.

  For a moment her eyes darkened with a look of annoyance and suspicion. The finely-marked eyebrows seemed almost to meet in the centre of her forehead and then her whole face suddenly smoothed itself out into a delightful smile.

  “No—yes,” she hesitated. “I wanted to—er—see Professor Long. He’s on this staircase, isn’t he?” Normally her voice must have been charming. It now sounded strained and a trifle husky.

  “Professor Long is on the ground floor,” I replied, “but he’s only in his rooms on Saturday mornings.” Everyone in Cambridge knew that Dr. Long, being almost ninety, kept very restricted office hours.

  “Thanks.” The handkerchief had now been put away and her smile was positively mischievous. “And—and lectures on Blake are well worth listening to, by the way. They are not intended as opportunities to stare at one’s neighbours.”

  “Oh, I say, I’m sorry. But—but—” here I wanted to tell her about the line of her nose and forehead, the curve of her cheek and the full, devastating effect of her profile. They seemed sufficient reason for staring at anyone. Involuntarily, however, I chose a more conventional line, and stammered out, “—But you see, I know you. That is, I know your name. I know Lady Lusinger, and she told me—”

  “And can I flatter myself that you deliberately followed me up here?” The tone was light but I thought I detected a note of anxiety beneath its lightness.

  “Oh, no—I mean, yes. Well, I don’t know what I mean, but my name is Hilary Fenton and that’s my room up there behind you and, well, couldn’t we have a date for lunch?”

  “A date for lunch!” She laughed. “It sounds like a vegetarian food crank. I loathe dates. Why not a prune and have done with it? But—” here she paused and looked straight at me for the first time, “—you must be an American.”

  “I admit the allegation and admire the—er—perspicacity of the alligator,” I said facetiously. She gave me a rather wintry smile and proceeded to edge past me down the stairs. My voice rose imploringly:

  “Seriously though, I really am not a rounder—I mean bounder. I do know you—or, at least, your name. You’re Dorothy Dupuis. I saw it on the attendance list. And Lady Lusinger did tell me to look you up.”

  She paused and her smile was so bright that I had the uncomfortable feeling that she was laughing at me rather than with me.

  “Well, I must dash on now or I’ll be late for a lecture in Kings—on the Pre-Raphaelites. I couldn’t possibly have lunch with you today, but if you’re really sure you know me, ask me some other time. Drop me a line at Clough Hall, Newnham.”

  Once again the handkerchief was produced and held up to her divine little Doric nose. She gave it a substantial blow and then passed on quickly down the stairs.

  She was gone: but the fragrance of her stayed with me. It was a surprising and unforgettable fragrance, different from anything that I had ever smelled before. It was not English. It was not French. Nor was it Oriental. Exciting without being extravagantly exotic, it hung about the age-old staircase like a faint memory of half-gotten flowers or a romance of long ago.

  But I did not stay to appreciate it. I was seized with a mad desire to catch a last glimpse of her. I wanted just to see her cross the court and go out by the gate. Accordingly I put my head out of the landing window which gave a good view of the only exit to our staircase. I waited five, I waited ten minutes. Still she did not appear.

  At the end of half an hour she came out and walked quickly across the court. I noticed that she still held her handkerchief in one hand. She had missed her lecture on the Pre-Raphaelites. She was walking away from Kings. Dr. Long had not been in his room that morning and yet she had been half an hour on our staircase since leaving me. What had she been doing? When I pulled in my head and started upstairs again, her perfume was still with me. I have always been very sensitive to perfumes. I was destined never to forget this one.

  CHAPTER II

  Beg O’ My Neighbour

  Of all the many dignitaries and functionaries that play a part in the life of a Cambridge undergraduate, perhaps the least appreciated is his bedmaker. Cruel things have been sung and written about “bedders.” Their very name lends itself to ridicule and unkind jokes. They are mocked for the better days which they invariably claim to have seen.

  They are castigated for their taking ways—no heel tap, no remnant of tea, butter or sugar is supposed to be safe from their pilfering fingers. I have even heard them accused of being superannuated Girtonians who once took the wrong turning in youth and are now expiating their peccadillos by lives of service and sacrifice. They are, indeed, a much maligned race.

  But the sublime Mrs. Bigger of “A” staircase cared for none of these things. She was, in every sense of the word, a bigger and better bedder, and I freely admit that she contributed not a little to my amusement and comfort while I was at Cambridge. In fact, until my encounter with the Profile, she was the nearest approach to a soft, feminine influence in this rugged phase of my life.

  Perhaps some womanly intuition had warned Mrs. Bigger that there was a rival near her throne on that Monday morning. Perhaps she took exception to the unconventional hours which the Profile chose to wander about the staircase—at any rate, when I returned to my room, I found the good lady showing unmistakable symptoms of the tantrums which she usually reserved for Hank, her boss, or the unneighbourly Baumann, who was notoriously the thorn in her ample flesh.

  “Hembarrassed,” she sniffed, as she emerged from my bedroom with much indignant rustling of grey alpaca, “hembarrassed, that’s wot I was, Mr. Fenton! To be caught a-empt’ing the slops by a young lady in the middle of the morning. I could of blushed for the shame of it.”

  (Mrs. Bigger’s sentiments mirror to some extent the views of a great University that does not officially recognize the existence of women students.)

  “Do you mean that she came into my room, Mrs. Bigger?” I asked, trying hard to conceal the eagerness of my curiosity.

  The purple ostrich plume on her hat quivered with indignation and outraged decorum.

  “No, hindeed, sir,” replied the good lady in the tone which was first used on Eve by the Angel with the Flaming Sword. “Nobody comes into your room when you ain’t here, Mr. Fenton—honly hover my dead body, sir. Leastways unless it’s one of yer pertickler friends like Mr. Grayling or Mr. Comstock—folks as has a right on this staircase, sir.”

  “The young lady wasn’t looking for me, then,” I asked innocently.

  Mrs. Bigger sniffed volubly. “I don’t know wot she was ’ere for, Mr. Fenton, and that’s a fact. A few minutes ’fore you come in, I went out and saw ’er on the stairs. But seein’ as how I ’ad the pail in me ’and, I popped back into yer bedroom and waited as was only modest.”

  I casually remarked that our visitor had at least been remarkably easy on the eyes.

  “’Andsome is as ’andsome does,” replied my bedmaker cryptically, “and certainly she’s ’andsome enough for that there Mr. Baumann. Not that she’s as pretty as Mary Smith—’er as works as ’ousemaid over to the Master’s Lodge—the girl as Mr. ’Ankin ’as honored with ’is attentions—”

  She sniffed again, then added generously, “Haristocratic is the word I would of used for the young lady on the stairs, Mr. Fenton. Haristocratic she was almost to the point of bein’ ’orty! As soon as I kleps me eyes on ’er, I says to meself, Well, mebbe she ain’t dressed like a lady, but you’d never mistake ’er for one.’”

  She paused on her way to the door. “But—I don’t ’old with them mecks on a young woman! I onst ’ad a niece as wore a meek, Mr. Fenton, and she come to no good, she didn’t. Two buckles,” she added darkly. (Mrs. Bigger had a decided weakness for pathological conditions and their nomenclature and was never so happy as when she was describing the complicated diseases which carried off her friends and relatives.)

  Having fired her Parthian shot at the objectional mackintosh, my bedmaker stalked from the room with one hand on her hip and the other clasping the handle of the aforementioned pail. Her departing gait, therefore, combined the lilt of Patience with the dignity of a prominent royal personage who is also to be seen wearing ostrich plumes in her hat.

  After she had left me I felt that I could not settle down to work until I had written to the Profile. And while I am on the subject of work, I want to set at rest, once and for all, the anxiety which my over-conscientious readers will doubtless feel with regard to my studies during the course of this narrative.

  I am naturally of a fairly studious turn of mind. But I had not come to Cambridge to shun delights and live laborious days exclusively. In fact my tutor had said to me some time previously, “You won’t get a first, Fenton, not if you stand on your head until the date of the Tripos. You can’t fail to get a second even if you stand on your head throughout the whole examination. Read the things you enjoy and develop your own taste.

  “But don’t overdo it or get a one-track mind. Just browse in the pastures that suit you best, but vary your diet and always get your full quota of vitamins such as Shakespeare, Milton, Donne and Wordsworth …” In short, I was predestined to mediocrity. My leisurely attitude had the divine sanction of authority. I had no reason to be worried or hag-ridden.

  I was worried now, however, as to my best method of approach in writing to the Profile. I had had so little experience with English girls and all my preconceived notions with regard to the British had been proved hopelessly wrong to date. It is not surprising, therefore, that I tore up several highly coloured flights of fancy and wasted nearly half a ream of crested note paper before I finally evolved the following piece of plain, straightforward prose:

  Dear Miss Dupuis,

  At a dinner party given by the American Ambassador last vacation I had the pleasure of meeting your aunt, Lady Lusinger. She told me that you were at Newnham and suggested that we might meet. I shall be at the “Whim” to-morrow (Tuesday) at one o’clock and shall be delighted if you can join me for lunch.

  Sincerely,

  Hilary Fenton.

  There was nothing in this sober missive at which even Lady Lusinger herself could do more than give one of her milder variety of snorts. It was a harmless elixir of milk and water. I addressed it to Clough Hall, Newnham, and ran down to catch the twelve o’clock post.

  It was when I returned to my room, some minutes later, that there occurred the second amazing incident of that already amazing day. As I pushed open my door I found to my intense surprise that Julius Baumann, my misanthropic neighbour, was standing by my fireplace obviously waiting for my return.

  Now, to those whose jaded appetites require the constant stimulus of thrills and horror, I am afraid that this chronicle to date must have appeared hopelessly dull and singularly devoid of dramatic incident. A very ordinary (if American) undergraduate has attended a lecture where he has “fallen for” a girl to whom he has subsequently spoken.

  He has written her a politely conventional letter, posted it and returned to find another undergraduate waiting in his room. Nothing in that to make a song about—let alone a mystery story. No? Well, the unexpected happens so seldom at Cambridge.

  Today it had happened twice, and yet these extraordinary happenings afterwards seemed like the quiet lull before the storm of strange incidents that were to follow—mere hors d’oeuvres preceding a regular orgy of unexpectedness.

  It should also be borne in mind that I had lived within twenty yards of Baumann for two and a half terms and he had never once passed my portal nor invited me to pass his. No shortage of cigarettes, no desire for a convivial sundowner, no primal urge for human companionship had led the South African to accord me more than a non-committal grunt when chance brought us face to face upon the staircase.

  Nor, indeed, had I ever known him to be more civil to others. His only friend was Hank, the gyp, whose claim to notice lay in the fact that he, too, came from the Orange Free State and could converse with Baumann in a strange language called Afrikaans. Nothing could have surprised me more than to find this arch recluse leaning against my mantelpiece and staring at me from dark, sombre eyes.

  “Fenton,” he said abruptly in this thick, guttural accent. “I want to speak to you. Can you come into my room for a moment?”

  I was so astonished that I could do nothing but open my mouth and shut it again. I seemed incapable of making any intelligible reply. However, there must have been a certain amount of antagonism in my speechlessness, for he seemed to think it necessary to urge me a second time.

  “Please,” he said, and there was a note almost of anguish in his voice. He was no longer the brilliant athlete whose cricket everyone admired and envied, no longer the fine classical scholar who was going to win the Lenox Scholarship and sail into an easy “first” in the Tripos—he was just a human being in what appeared to be a bad jam and, somehow or other, I could not gainsay him.