Money from Holme by Michael Innes

needed now. If Mrs Holme had stared unregardingly at Mr Holme once, this didn’t at all mean that she would do so a second time. And there was no question of her not even noticing the man. In order to reach the street she would have to pass within a couple of feet of him. And Cheel, although still so much in the dark as to the inwardness of the situation he had stumbled upon, was very sure that his scope for profitable manoeuvre in the face of it would be sadly straitened should the painter forthwith be restored – whether willingly or unwillingly – to the embrace of his not particularly sorrowful widow. He had to prevent the risk of an encounter. And he had seconds in which to manage it.
    For Hedda Holme was on her feet. As he scrambled out of his own chair (for his problem had made him a little tardy in the exercise of his accustomed good manners), she turned away from him and began to thread her way among the tables towards the bar. She couldn’t herself, at the moment, either see Sebastian Holme or be seen by him. But the breathing-space thus afforded was only fractional – and Cheel was doing no better than follow helplessly in Hedda’s wake. Then something came to his aid. It was no more than a start of memory: one occasioned by their relative postures as they moved. There it was : swaying, tightly skirted, delightfully challenging in its own right. Cheel put out his hand and pinched.
    This time, he pinched so hard that Hedda gave a loud yell. It was a sound that came like music to his ear, and he managed to stand his ground with a very tolerable stoicism as she whirled round on him. But the strength of her punch to his jaw surprised him, so that he quite genuinely staggered and toppled, and had little difficulty in making a thoroughly verisimilar business of upsetting a whole laden table as he fell.
    Not unnaturally, pandemonium broke loose. The little disturbance in the Da Vinci had been no more than a mere murmuring in the comparison. The majority of the remaining lunchers rose hastily, knocking over their chairs, spilling their coffee, and retreating with precipitation to the sides of the room. Hedda, unfortunately, was not retreating; with a resourcefulness he could only admire, she had equipped herself with an ugly looking weapon probably designed for the dissection of cold ham and was again advancing upon him rapidly. Hell, he reflected us he dodged, hath no fury like a woman pinched quite as hard as that. Hedda was also shouting. She was accusing him (he gathered as he dodged round a potted palm) not of sadism or indecency but of base ingratitude. It was true that she did have some small reason to be surprised. And so would anyone (he had grasped this crucial fact) who heard her plaint. What had just happened, although in certain situations (in a tube train, for instance, or even in a crowded picture gallery) it entertainingly does happen, precisely does not happen as a gentleman follows a lady with whom he has been quietly lunching in a respectable restaurant. Poor Hedda was plainly off her rocker.
    The shindy must, of course, abundantly have reached the little bar between the restaurant and the street. Both Sebastian Holme and the motor-salesmen would have been moved to take a peep in at it – and by this time Holme, having spotted Hedda, would certainly have made himself scarce. The crisis was over. Or it would be over as soon as he had successfully terminated the little fracas he was now involved with. For one of a sedentary habit Cheel was fortunately possessed of a very creditable degree of mobility. Evasive action afforded him no difficulty. At this moment, for instance, a couple of agile side-steps sufficed to interpose between Hedda and himself the person of an elderly and apparently infirm woman who could only hobble with the aid of a stick.
    ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Cheel murmured as he dodged her. ‘My wife is liable to these delusional states. But nobody is in any danger except myself.’