Chapter 1

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Title: The Female of the Species
Date of first publication: 1928
Author: Herman Cyril McNeile
Date first posted: May 25, 2020
Date last updated: September 12, 2025
Faded Page eBook #20200556

This eBook was produced by: Stephen Hutcheson
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net

H. C. McNEILE

THE FEMALE
OF THE SPECIES

[Illustration: Bulldog Drummond]

Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.
Garden City, New York
1934

COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY HERMAN CYRIL MCNEILE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED
IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I. IN WHICH I MAKE DRUMMOND’S ACQUAINTANCE 1
II. IN WHICH I FIND A DESERTED MOTOR-CAR 17
III. IN WHICH I GET IT IN THE NECK 33
IV. IN WHICH WE GET THE SEMBLANCE OF A CLUE 47
V. IN WHICH THE LETTER ARRIVES 61
VI. IN WHICH I GET THE SECOND CLUE 75
VII. IN WHICH WE COME TO THE MERE 91
VIII. IN WHICH WE EXPLORE THE MERE 109
IX. IN WHICH WE GET THE THIRD CLUE 132
X. IN WHICH THE THIRD CLUE IS SOLVED 149
XI. IN WHICH I GO TO FRIAR’S HEEL BY DAY 168
XII. IN WHICH I WRITE MY MIND TO DRUMMOND 185
XIII. IN WHICH I GO TO FRIAR’S HEEL BY NIGHT 206
XIV. IN WHICH I MEET MRS. DRUMMOND 226
XV. IN WHICH SOME OF THE OTHERS JOIN ME 246
XVI. IN WHICH WE HAVE A REHEARSAL 262
XVII. IN WHICH THE CURTAIN RINGS DOWN 280

THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES

_Chapter I_
IN WHICH I MAKE DRUMMOND’S ACQUAINTANCE

Even now, after three months’ calm thought, I sometimes feel that I must
have dreamed the whole thing. I say to myself that this is England: that
I am sitting at lunch in my club hoping that that gluttonous lawyer
Seybourne will not take all the best part of the Stilton: that unless I
get a move on I shall be very late at Lord’s. I say all that just as I
always used to say it—particularly about Seybourne. And then it suddenly
comes over me—the events of those amazing days.

I don’t suppose anybody will believe me: I wouldn’t believe the story
myself if somebody else told it to me. As I say, I sometimes think it
must be a dream. And then I turn back my left sleeve nearly to the elbow
and look at a three-inch scar, still red and angry, though it’s healing
nicely now. And I know it was no dream.

Was it a joke? If so, it was the grimmest and most desperate jest that
has ever been cracked, and one wherein the humour was difficult to find.
Moreover, it was a joke that would have brought the propounder of it to
the gallows—had we but been able to catch her. For there was a woman at
the bottom of it, and women can suffer the death penalty in England for
murder.

No: it was no dream: no jest. It was grim, stern reality played for a
stake sufficient to crack the nerve of the principal player on our side
had he been possessed of nerves to crack. A game played against time:
where one mistake might have proved fatal.

Personally, I am a peace-loving individual of mild appearance: I like my
rubber of bridge at the club and my round of golf: I am not averse to
letting people know that I was wounded in the leg in France. Moreover, I
fail to see why I should gratuitously add the information that I was in
the horse-lines at the time, and Heaven alone knows where the bullet
came from. I mention these points merely to show that I am just a very
ordinary sort of person, and not at all of the type which seems to
attract adventure. In fact, until that amazing Whitsun, the only thing
in any way out of the ordinary which had ever happened to me was when I,
on one occasion, tried to stop a runaway horse. And the annoying thing
then was that the driver assured me he had the horse under control.
Three weeks had elapsed, and I was still in hospital, so I didn’t argue
the point.

The truth is that I am not one of those enviable men who are at their
best when in a tight corner, or when confronted with the need for
immediate action. If, as I read somewhere once, men consist of two
classes—those who can stop a dog fight and those who can’t—honesty
compels me to admit that I belong to the latter. In fact, put in a
nutshell, I am a rabbit.

And yet I wouldn’t have missed that adventure for anything. I can’t
flatter myself that I did very much: indeed, there were times when I
fear I was merely in the way. For all that, never once did a single
member of the extraordinary bunch of men who were playing on our side
say any word of reproach or irritation. They never let me feel that I
was a passenger, even when the strain was greatest.

However, enough of this preamble. I will start at the beginning. For
many years it has been my custom to spend a few days round Whitsuntide
with some old friends of mine called Tracey. They have a charming house
not far from Pangbourne—Elizabethan, and standing in delightful grounds.
There is generally a small party—perhaps a dozen in all—and I may say
that the keyword to the atmosphere of the house is peace. It may be that
I am a little old-fashioned, but the pleasure to be derived from what is
sometimes described as an evening’s jolly seems to me to be over-rated.

As usual, I went to them this year, arriving on the Thursday before
Whitsuntide. The motor met me at the station, and, having shaken
Jenkins, the chauffeur, by the hand, I got in. Somewhat to my surprise,
he did not at once drive off: he appeared to be waiting for someone
else.

“Captain Drummond, sir,” he said to me, “who is stopping at the house,
came down to get a paper.”

“Captain Drummond, Jenkins,” I mused. “Do I know him?”