Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsCollier’s Weekly, April 20, 1929
The Story Thus Far:
IN BLANDINGS CASTLE, England, lives Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, whose chief interest is the Empress of Blandings, his prize pig.
With Lord Emsworth lives his sister, Lady Constance Keeble; his niece, Millicent; his brother, the Honorable Galahad Threepwood; and his secretary, Hugo Carmody. Hugo and Millicent are secretly engaged. Lady Constance wants Millicent to marry her cousin Ronald; she would like Hugo replaced by Lord Emsworth’s former secretary, the Efficient Baxter, dismissed by his lordship, and invites Baxter to Blandings.
Ronnie and his mother, Lady Julia, have been at Biarritz where they met Myra Schoonmaker, a wealthy American girl, whom Lady Julia invites to visit soon at Blandings.
Hugo, Lady Constance tells Millicent, is entangled with a chorus girl, Sue Brown. Hugo convinces Millicent that this is not true, and promises not to see Sue again.
Ronnie, after the failure of his night-club, the Hot Spot, on his way to Blandings to get some of his capital from his trustee, Uncle Clarence, so that he can marry Sue, to whom he is secretly engaged, meets her at the stage door where he sees flowers sent her by Pilbeam whom she has never met.
They go to the town house, supposedly empty, for tea, but meet Lady Constance in front. Ronnie introduces Sue as Miss Schoonmaker.
III
A MOMENTARY qualm lest, in the endeavor to achieve an easy cordiality, she had made her manner a shade too patronizing, melted in the sunshine of the older woman’s smile. Lady Constance had become charming, almost effusive. She had always hoped that Ronald and Millicent would make a match of it; but, failing that, this rich Miss Schoonmaker was certainly the next best thing. And driving chummily about London together like this must surely, she thought, mean something, even in these days when chummy driving is so prevalent between the sexes. At any rate, she hoped so.
“So here you are in London!”
“Yes.”
“You did not stay long in Paris.”
“No.”
“When can you come down to Blandings?”
“Oh, very soon, I hope.”
“I am going there this evening. I only ran up for the day. I want you to drive me back, Ronald.”
Ronnie nodded silently. The crisis passed, a weakness had come upon him. He preferred not to speak, if speech could be avoided.
“Do try to come soon. The gardens are looking delightful. My brother will be so glad to see you. I was just on my way to Claridge’s for a cup of tea. Won’t you come too?”
“I’d love to,” said Sue, “but I really must be getting on. Ronnie was taking me shopping.”
“I thought you stayed in Paris to do your shopping.”
“Not all of it.”
“Well, I shall hope to see you soon.”
“Oh, yes.”
“At Blandings.”
“Thank you so much. Ronnie, I think we ought to be getting along.”
“Yes.” Ronnie’s mind was blurred, but he was clear on that point. “Yes, getting along. Pushing off.”
“Well, I’m so delighted to have seen you. My sister told me so much about you in her letters. After you have put your luggage on the car, Ronald, will you come and pick me up at Claridge’s?”
“Right ho.”
“I would like to make an early start, if possible.”
“Right ho.”
“Well, good-by for the present, then.”
“Right ho.”
“Good-by, Lady Constance.”
“Good-by.”
THE two-seater moved off, and Ronnie, taking his right hand from the wheel as it turned the corner, groped for a handkerchief, found it, and passed it over his throbbing brow.
“So that was Aunt Constance!” said Sue.
Ronnie breathed deeply.
“Nice meeting one of whom I have heard so much.”
Ronnie replaced his hand on the wheel and twiddled it feebly to avoid a dog. Reaction had made him limp.
Sue was gazing at him almost reverently.
“What genius, Ronnie! What presence of mind! If I hadn’t heard it with my own ears, I wouldn’t have believed it. Why didn’t you ever tell me you were one of those swift thinkers?”
“I didn’t know it myself.”
“Of course, I’m afraid it has complicated things a little.”
“Eh?” Ronnie started. This aspect of the matter had not struck him. “How do you mean?”
“When I was a child, they taught me a poem . . .”
Ronnie raised a suffering face to hers.
“Don’t let’s talk about your childhood now, old thing,” he pleaded. “Feeling rather shaken. Any other time . . .”
“It’s all right. I’m not wandering from the subject. I can only remember two lines of the poem. They were ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.’ You do see the web is a bit tangled, don’t you, Ronnie, darling?”
“Eh? Why? Everything looks pretty smooth to me. Aunt Constance swallowed you without a yip.”
“And when the real Miss Schoonmaker arrives at Blandings with her jewels and her twenty-four trunks?” said Sue gently.
The two-seater swerved madly across Grosvenor Street.
“Gosh!” said Ronnie.
Sue’s eyes were sparkling.
“There’s only one thing to do,” she said. “Now you’re in, you’ll have to go in deeper. You’ll have to put her off.”
“How?”
“Send her a wire saying she mustn’t come to Blandings, because scarlet fever or something has broken out.”
“I couldn’t!”
“You must. Sign it in Lady Constance’s name.”
“But suppose . . .”
“Well, suppose they do find out? You won’t be in any worse hole than you will be if she comes sailing up to the front door, all ready to stay a couple of weeks. And she will unless you wire.”
“That’s true.”
“What it means,” said Sue, “is that instead of having plenty of time to get that money out of Lord Emsworth you’ll have to work quick.” She touched his arm. “Here’s a post-office,” she said. “Go in and send that wire before you weaken.”
Ronnie stopped the car.
“You will have to do the most rapid bit of trustee-touching in the history of the world, I should think,” said Sue reflectively. “Do you think you can manage it?”
“I’ll have a jolly good prod.”
“Remember what it means.”
“I’ll do that all right. The only trouble is that in the matter of biting Uncle Clarence’s ear I’ve nothing to rely on but my natural charm. And as far as I’ve been able to make out,” said Ronnie, “he hasn’t noticed yet that I have any.”
He strode into the post-office, thinking deeply.
IT WAS the opinion of the poet Calverley, expressed in his immortal Ode to Tobacco, that there is no heaviness of the soul which will not vanish beneath the influence of a quiet smoke. Ronnie Fish would have disputed this theory. It was the third morning of his sojourn at Blandings Castle; and, taking with him a tennis-ball which he proposed to bounce before him in order to assist thought, he had wandered out into the grounds, smoking hard. And tobacco, though Turkish and costly, was not lightening his despondency at all. It seemed to Ronnie that the present was bleak and the future gray. Roaming through the sun-flooded park, he bounced his tennis-ball and groaned in spirit.
On the credit side of the ledger one single item could be inscribed. Hugo was at the castle. He had the consolation, therefore, of knowing that that tall and lissom young man was not in London, exercising his fatal fascination on Sue. But, when you had said this, you had said everything. After all, even eliminating Hugo, there still remained in the metropolis a vast population of adult males, all either acquainted with Sue or trying to make her acquaintance. The poison-sac Pilbeam, for instance. By now it might well be that that bacillus had succeeded in obtaining an introduction to her. A devastating thought.
And even supposing he hadn’t, even supposing that Sue, as she had promised, was virtuously handing the mitten to all the young thugs who surged around her with invitations to lunch and supper; where did that get a chap? What, in other words, of the future?
In coming to Blandings Castle, Ronnie was only too well aware he had embarked on an expedition, the success or failure of which would determine whether his life through the years was to be roses all the way or a dreary desert. And so far, in his efforts to win the favor and esteem of his Uncle Clarence, he seemed to have made no progress whatsoever.
On the occasions when he had found himself in Lord Emsworth’s society, the latter had looked at him sometimes as if he did not know he was there, more often as if he wished he wasn’t. It was only too plain that the collapse of the Hot Spot had left his stock in bad shape. There had been a general sagging of the market. Fish Preferred, taking the most sanguine estimate, could scarcely be quoted at more than about thirty to thirty-five.
Plunged in thought and trying without any success to conjure up a picture of a benevolent uncle patting him on the head with one hand while writing checks with the other, he had wandered some distance from the house and was passing a small spinney, when he observed in a little dell to his left a peculiar object.
It was a large yellow caravan. And what, he asked himself, was a caravan doing in the ground of Blandings Castle?
To aid him in grappling with the problem, he flung the tennis-ball at it. Upon which the door opened and a spectacled head appeared.
“Baxter!” Ronnie exclaimed.
The last person he would have expected to meet in the park of Blandings. He had heard all about that row a couple of years ago. He knew that, if his own stock with Lord Emsworth was low, that of the Efficient Baxter was down in the cellar, with no takers. Yet here the fellow was, shoving his head out of caravans as if nothing had ever happened.
“Ah, Fish!”
RUPERT BAXTER descended the steps, a swarthy-complexioned young man with a supercilious expression which had always been displeasing to Ronnie.
“What are you doing here?” asked Ronnie.
“I happened to be taking a caravan holiday in the neighborhood. And, finding myself at Market Blandings last night, I thought I would pay a visit to the place where I had spent so many happy days.”
“I see.”
“Perhaps you could tell me where I could find Lady Constance?”
“I haven’t seen her since breakfast. She’s probably about somewhere.”
“I will go and inquire. If you meet her, perhaps you would not mind mentioning that I am here.”
The Efficient Baxter strode off, purposeful as ever; and Ronnie, having speculated for a moment as to how his uncle Clarence would comport himself if he came suddenly round a corner and ran into this bit of the dead past, and having registered an idle hope that, when this happened, he might be present with a camera, inserted another cigarette in its holder and passed on his way.
Five minutes later, Lord Emsworth, leaning pensively out of the library window and sniffing the morning air, received an unpleasant shock. He could have sworn he had seen his late secretary, Rupert Baxter, cross the gravel and go in at the front door.
“Bless my soul!” said Lord Emsworth.
The only explanation that occurred to him was that Baxter, having met with some fatal accident, had come back to haunt the place. To suppose the fellow could be here in person was absurd. He decided to visit his sister Constance in her boudoir and see what she had to say about it.
“Constance, my dear.”
Lady Constance looked up from the letter she was writing.
“Well, Clarence?”
“I say, Constance, a most extraordinary thing happened just now. I was looking out of the library window and—you remember Baxter?”
“Of course I remember Mr. Baxter.”
“Well, Constance, his ghost has just walked across the gravel.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m telling you. I was looking out of the library window and I suddenly saw—”
“Mr. Baxter,” announced Beach, flinging open the door.
“Mr. Baxter!”
“Good morning, Lady Constance.”
Rupert Baxter advanced with joyous camaraderie glinting from both lenses. Then he perceived his former employer and his exuberance diminished. “Er—good morning, Lord Emsworth,” he said, flashing his spectacles austerely upon him.
There was a pause. Lord Emsworth adjusted his pince-nez and regarded the visitor dumbly. Of the relief which was presumably flooding his soul at the discovery that Rupert Baxter was still on this side of the veil, he gave no outward sign.
BAXTER was the first to break an uncomfortable silence.
“I happen to be taking a caravan holiday in this neighborhood, Lady Constance, and, finding myself near Market Blandings last night, I thought I would. . . .”
“Why, of course! We should never have forgiven you if you had not come to see us. Should we, Clarence?”
“Eh?”
“I said, should we?”
“Should we what?” said Lord Emsworth, who was still trying to adjust his mind.
Lady Constance’s lip tightened.
“Did you say you were traveling in a caravan, Mr. Baxter?”
“In a caravan. I left it in the park.”
“Well, of course, you must come and stay with us. The castle,” she continued, raising her voice a little, to compete with a sort of wordless bubbling which had begun to proceed from her brother’s lips, “is almost empty just now.”
“It is exceedingly kind of you.”
“It will be delightful having you here again. Won’t it, Clarence?”
“Eh?”
“I said, won’t it?”
“Won’t it what?”
Lady Constance’s mouth tightened.
“Will it not be delightful,” she said, catching her brother’s eye and holding it like a female Ancient Mariner, “having Mr. Baxter back at the castle again?”
“I’m going down to see my pig,” said Lord Emsworth.
A silence followed his departure, such as would have fallen had a coffin just been carried out. Then Lady Constance shook off gloom.
“Oh, Mr. Baxter, I’m so glad you were able to come. And how clever of you to come in a caravan. It prevented your arrival seeming prearranged.”
“I thought of that.”
“You think of everything.”
“Are you in any trouble, Lady Constance? Your letter seemed so very urgent.”
“I am in dreadful trouble, Mr. Baxter.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“There is nobody except you who can do anything. But I hardly like to ask you.”
“Ask me whatever you please. And if it is in my power. . . .”
“Oh, it is.”
“Tell me.”
Lady Constance hesitated.
“It seems such an impossible thing to ask of anyone.”
“Please!”
“Well . . . you know my brother?” Baxter seemed puzzled. Then an explanation of the peculiar question presented itself.
“Oh, you mean Mr. . . . ?
“Yes, yes, yes. Of course I wasn’t referring to Lord Emsworth. My brother Galahad.”
“I have never met him. Oddly enough, though he visited the castle twice during the period when I was Lord Emsworth’s secretary, I was away both times on my holiday. Is he here now?”
“Yes. Finishing his Reminiscences.”
“I saw in some paper that he was writing the history of his life.”
“And if you know what a life his has been you will understand why I am distracted.”
“Certainly I have heard stories,” said Baxter guardedly.
“The book is full from beginning to end of libelous anecdotes, Mr. Baxter. About all our best friends. If it is published, we shall not have a friend left.”
“SO YOU want me to get hold of the manuscript and destroy it?”
Lady Constance stared, stunned by this penetration.
“Yes,” she gasped. She hurried on. “It does seem, I know, an extraordinary thing to . . . But, Mr. Baxter, you are my only hope.”
Baxter removed his spectacles, polished them, and put them back again.
“I shall be delighted, Lady Constance, to do anything to help you that lies in my power. And to obtain possession of this manuscript should be an easy task. But is there only one copy of it in existence?”
“Yes, yes, yes. I am sure of that. Galahad told me that he was waiting till it was finished before sending it to the typist.”
“Then you need have no further anxiety.”
It was a moment when Lady Constance Keeble would have given much for eloquence. She sought for words that should adequately express her feelings, but could find none.
“Oh, Mr. Baxter!” she said.
Ronnie Fish’s aimlessly wandering feet had taken him westward. It was not long, accordingly, before there came to his nostrils a familiar and penetrating odor, and he found that he was within a short distance of the detached residence employed by Empress of Blandings as a combined bedroom and restaurant. A few steps, and he was enabled to observe that celebrated animal in person. With her head tucked well down and her tail wiggling with pure joie de vivre, the Empress was hoisting in a spot of lunch.
Everybody likes to see somebody eating. Ronnie leaned over the rail, absorbed. He poised the tennis-ball and with an absent-minded flick of the wrist bounced it on the silver medallist’s back. Finding the pleasant, ponging sound which resulted soothing to harassed nerves, he did it again. The Empress made excellent bouncing. She was not one of your razor-backs. She presented a wide and resistant surface. For some minutes, therefore, the pair carried on according to plan—she eating, he bouncing, until presently Ronnie was thrilled to discover that this outdoor sport of his was assisting thought. Gradually—mistily at first, then assuming shape, a plan of action was beginning to emerge from the murk of his mind.
How would this be, for instance?
If there was one thing calculated to appeal to his Uncle Clarence, to induce in his Uncle Clarence a really melting mood, it was the announcement that somebody desired to return to the Land. He loved to hear of people returning to the Land. How, then, would this be? Go to the old boy, state that one had seen the light and was in complete agreement with him that England’s future depended on checking the Drift to the Towns, and then ask for a good fat slice of capital with which to start a farm.
The project of starting a farm was one which was bound to. . . . Half a minute. Another idea on the way. Yes, here it came, and it was a pippin. Not merely just an ordinary farm, but a pig-farm! Wouldn’t Uncle Clarence leap in the air and shower gold on anybody who wanted to live in the country and breed pigs? You bet your Sunday cuffs he would. And, once the money was safely deposited to the account of Ronald Overbury Fish in Cox’s Bank, then ho! for the registrar’s hand in hand with Sue.
There was a musical plonk as Ronnie bounced the ball for the last time on the Empress’s complacent back. Then, no longer with dragging steps but treading on air, he wandered away to sketch out the last details of the scheme before going indoors and springing it.
Too often it happens that, when you get these brain-waves, you take another look at them after a short interval and suddenly detect some fatal flaw. No such disappointment came to mar the happiness of Ronnie Fish.
“I say, Uncle Clarence,” he said, prancing into the library, some half-hour later.
LORD EMSWORTH was deep in the current issue of a weekly paper of porcine interest. It seemed to Ronnie, as he looked up, that his eye was not any too chummy. This, however, did not disturb him. That eye, he was confident, would melt anon.
“I say, Uncle Clarence, you know that capital of mine.”
“That what?”
“My capital. My money. The money you’re trustee of. And a jolly good trustee,” said Ronnie handsomely. “Well, I’ve been thinking things over and I want you, if you will, to disgorge a segment of it for a sort of venture I’ve got in mind.”
He had not expected the eye to melt yet, and it did not. Seen through the glass of his uncle’s pince-nez, it looked like an oyster in an aquarium.
“You wish to start another night-club?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. Night-clubs are a mug’s game. I ought never to have touched them. As a matter of fact, Uncle Clarence, London as a whole seems to me a bit of a washout these days. I’m all for the country. What I feel is that the drift to the towns should be checked. What England wants is more blokes going back to the Land. That’s the way it looks to me.”
Ronnie Fish began to experience the first definite twinges of uneasiness. This was the point at which he had been confident that the melting process would set in. Yet, watching the eye, he was dismayed to find it as oysterlike as ever. He felt like an actor who has been counting on a round of applause and goes off after his big speech without a hand. The idea occurred to him that his uncle might possibly have grown a little hard of hearing.
“To the Land,” he repeated, raising his voice. “More blokes going back to the Land. So I want a dollop of capital to start a farm.”
He braced himself for the supreme revelation.
“I want to breed pigs,” he said reverently.
Something was wrong. There was no blinking the fact any longer. So far from leaping in the air and showering gold, his uncle merely stared at him in an increasingly unpleasant manner. Lord Emsworth had removed his pince-nez and was wiping them; and Ronnie thought that his eye looked rather less agreeable in the nude than it had done through glass.
“Pigs!” he cried, fighting against a growing alarm.
“You wish to breed pigs?”
“That’s right,” bellowed Ronnie. “Pigs!” And from somewhere in his system he contrived to dig up and fasten on his face an ingratiating smile.
Lord Emsworth replaced his pince-nez.
“And I suppose,” he said throatily, quivering from his bald head to his roomy shoes, “that when you’ve got ’em you’ll spend the whole day bouncing tennis-balls on their backs?”
Ronnie gulped. The shock had been severe. The ingratiating smile lingered on his lips, as if fastened there with pins, but his eyes were round and horrified.
“Eh?” he said feebly.
Lord Emsworth rose. He drew himself up to his full height, which was considerable, and from this eminence glared balefully down on his nephew.
“I saw you! I was on my way to the piggery and I saw you there bouncing your infernal tennis-balls on my pig’s back. Tennis-balls!” Fire seemed to stream from the pince-nez. “Are you aware that Empress of Blandings is an excessively nervous, highly-strung animal, only too ready on the slightest provocation to refuse her meals? You might have undone the work of months with your idiotic tennis-ball.”
“I’m sorry. . . .”
“What’s the good of being sorry?”
“I never thought. . . .”
“You never do. That’s what’s the trouble with you. Pig-farm!” said Lord Emsworth vehemently, his voice soaring into the upper register. “You couldn’t manage a pig-farm. You aren’t fit to manage a pig-farm. You aren’t worthy to manage a pig-farm. If I had to select somebody out of the whole world to manage a pig-farm, I would choose you last.”
RONNIE FISH groped his way to the table and supported himself on it. He had a sensation of dizziness. On one point he was reasonably clear, viz., that his Uncle Clarence did not consider him ideally fitted to manage a pig-farm, but apart from that his mind was in a whirl. He felt as if he had stepped on something and it had gone off with a bang.
“Here! What is all this?”
It was the Hon. Galahad who had spoken, and he had spoken peevishly. Working in the small library with the door ajar, he had found the babble of voices interfering with literary composition and, justifiably annoyed, had come to investigate.
“Can’t you do your reciting some time when I’m not working, Clarence?” he said. “What’s all the trouble about?”
Lord Emsworth was still full of his grievance.
“He bounced tennis-balls on my pig!”
The Hon. Galahad was not impressed. He did not register horror.
“Do you mean to tell me,” he said sternly, “that all this fuss, ruining my morning’s work, was simply about that blasted pig of yours?”
“I refuse to allow you to call the Empress a blasted pig! Good heavens!” cried Lord Emsworth passionately. “Can none of my family appreciate the fact that she is the most remarkable animal in Great Britain? No pig in the whole annals of the Shropshire Agricultural Show has ever won the silver medal two years in succession. And that, if only people will leave her alone and refrain from incessantly pelting her with tennis-balls, is what the Empress is quite certain to do. It is an unheard-of feat.”
The Hon. Galahad frowned. He shook his head reprovingly.
“Don’t you be too cocksure, my boy,” he said gravely. “I looked in at the Emsworth arms the other day for a glass of beer, and there was a fellow in there offering three to one on an animal called Pride of Matchingham. Offering it freely. Tall, redhaired fellow with a squint. Slightly bottled.”
Lord Emsworth forgot Ronnie, forgot tennis-balls, forgot in the shock of this announcement everything except that deeper wrong which so long had been poisoning his peace.
“Pride of Matchingham belongs to Sir Gregory Parsloe,” he said, “and I have no doubt that the man offering such ridiculous odds was his pig-man, Wellbeloved. As you know, the fellow used to be in my employment, but Parsloe lured him away from me by the promise of higher wages.” Lord Emsworth’s expression had now become positively ferocious. The thought of George Cyril Wellbeloved, that perjured pig-man, always made the iron enter into his soul. “It was a most abominable and unneighborly thing to do.”
THE Hon. Galahad whistled.
“So that’s it, is it? Parsloe’s pig-man going about offering three to one against the form-book, I take it?”
“Most decidedly. Pride of Matchingham was awarded second prize last year, but it is a quite inferior animal to the Empress.”
“Then you look after that pig of yours, Clarence.” The Hon. Galahad spoke earnestly. “I see what this means. Parsloe’s up to his old games, and intends to queer the Empress somehow.”
“Queer her?”
“Nobble her. Or, if he can’t do that, steal her.”
“You don’t mean that?”
“I do mean it. The man’s as slippery as a greased eel. Let me tell you a little story about young Parsloe. One or two of us used to meet at the Black Footman in Gossiter Street in the old days—they’ve pulled it down now—and match our dogs against rats in the room behind the bar. Well, I put my Towser, an admirable beast, up against young Parsloe’s Banjo on one occasion for a hundred pounds a side. And when the night came and he was shown the rats, I’m dashed if he didn’t just give a long yawn and roll over and go to sleep.
“I whistled him . . . called him . . . ‘Towser, Towser!’ . . . No good . . . Fast asleep. And my firm belief has always been that young Parsloe took him aside just before the contest was to start and gave him about six pounds of steak and onions. That’s the sort of man young Parsloe is.”
“Galahad!”
“Fact. You’ll find the story in my book.”
Lord Emsworth was tottering to the door.
“God bless my soul! I never realized . . . I must see Pirbright at once. I didn’t suspect . . . It never occurred. . . .”
The door closed behind him. The Hon. Galahad, preparing to return to his labors, was arrested by the voice of his nephew Ronald.
“Uncle Gally!”
“Well?”
“You don’t really think Sir Gregory will try to steal the Empress?”
“I certainly do. Known him for thirty years, I tell you.”
“But how could he?”
“Go to her sty at night, of course, and take her away.”
“And hide her somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“But an animal that size. Rather like looking in at the Zoo and pocketing one of the elephants, what?”
“Don’t talk like an idiot. She’s got a ring through her nose, hasn’t she?
“You mean, Sir Gregory could catch hold of the ring and she would breeze along quite calmly?”
“Certainly. Puffy Benger and I stole old Wivenhoe’s pig the night of the Bachelors Ball at Hammers Easton in the year ’95. We put it in Plug Basham’s bedroom. There was no difficulty about the thing whatsoever. A little child could have led it.”
He withdrew into the small library, and Ronnie slid limply into the chair which Lord Emsworth had risen from so majestically. He felt the need of sitting. The inspiration which had just come to him had had a stunning effect. The brilliance of it almost frightened him. That idea about starting a pig-farm had shown that this was one of his bright mornings, but he had never foreseen that he would be as bright as this.
“Golly!” said Ronnie.
Could he. . .?
No, the thing was impossible.
Was it? Why? Why was it impossible? Suppose he had a stab at it. Suppose, following his Uncle Galahad’s expert hints, he were to creep out tonight, abstract the Empress from her home, hide her somewhere for a day or two and then spectacularly restore her to her bereaved owner? What would be the result? Would Uncle Clarence sob on his neck, or would he not? Would he feel that no reward was too good for his benefactor or wouldn’t he? Most decidedly he would. Fish Preferred would soar immediately. That little matter of the advance of capital would solve itself. Money would stream automatically from the Emsworth coffers.
But could it be done? Ronnie forced himself to examine the scheme dispassionately, with a mind alert for snags.
He could detect none. A suitable hiding place occurred to him immediately—that disused gamekeeper’s cottage in the west wood. Nobody ever went there. It would be as good as a safe deposit vault.
Risk of detection? Why should there be any risk of detection? Who would think of connecting Ronald Fish with the affair?
Feeding the animal? . . .
RONNIE’S face clouded. Yes, here at last was the snag. This did present difficulties. He was vague as to what pigs ate, but he knew that they needed a lot of whatever it was. It would be no use restoring to Lord Emsworth a skeleton Empress. The cuisine must be maintained at its existing level, or the thing might just as well be left undone.
For the first time he began to doubt the quality of his recent inspiration. Scanning the desk with knitted brows, he took from the book-rest the volume entitled Pigs, and How To Make Them Pay. A glance at page 61, and his misgivings were confirmed.
“H’m, yes,” said Ronnie, having skimmed through all the stuff about barley meal and maize meal and linseed meal and potatoes and separated milk or buttermilk. This, he now saw clearly, was no one-man job. It called not only for a dashing principal but a zealous assistant.
And what assistant? . . . Who? . . . Ah!
Ronnie Fish sprang from his chair, threw his head back and uttered a yodel of joy. He had had another great inspiration!
Annotations to this novel in book form are on this site.
Printer’s error corrected above:
Magazine, p. 20b, had “he flung the tennis ball at it.”; hyphenated as ‘tennis-ball’ for consistency with other mentions.