Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsCollier’s Weekly, May 11, 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 him live his sister, Lady Constance Keeble; his niece, Millicent; his brother, the Honorable Galahad Threepwood, now writing his Reminiscences to the dismay of many respectable men whom he knew in their young and wild days; his secretary, Hugo Carmody, secretly engaged to Millicent; and his nephew, Ronald Fish, secretly engaged to Sue Brown, a chorus girl. When Ronnie and Sue accidentally met Lady Constance in London, Ronnie introduced Sue as Miss Schoonmaker, a wealthy American girl whom he and his mother, Lady Julia, had met at Biarritz and whom Lady Julia invited to visit at Blandings. He wires the real Miss Schoonmaker in Lady Constance’s name not to come to Blandings because of an epidemic there.
Ronnie steals the Empress and hides her in a disused cottage, planning to “find” her later, thus gaining his uncle’s undying gratitude and a share of his own capital which he needs to marry Sue and which his uncle holds as trustee. Hugo is sent to London to get a detective from the Argus Inquiry Agency, Mgr. P. Frobisher Pilbeam (an admirer of Sue’s whom she has avoided meeting), to find the pig. Pilbeam refuses to take the case.
Hugo and Sue are dining and dancing at Mario’s that evening. When he goes out to telephone Millicent, Pilbeam appears and takes this opportunity to approach Sue. Ronnie, come to London to see Sue, traces her to Mario’s and arrives while Pilbeam is with her. He is so enraged that he breaks their engagement.
The next day Sue is lunching with Hugo at his hotel when he receives a telephone call from Millicent, breaking their engagement.
VI
SUE stared at Hugo, bewildered.
“Broken off the engagement?”
“Broken off the engagement.”
In moments of stress, the foolish question is always the one that comes uppermost in the mind.
“Are you sure?”
Hugo emitted a sound which resembled the bursting of a paper bag. He would have said himself, if asked, that he was laughing mirthlessly.
“Sure? Not much doubt about it.”
“But why?”
“She knows all.”
“All what?”
“Everything, you poor fish,” said Hugo, forgetting in a strong man’s agony the polish of the Carmodys. “She’s found out that I took you to dinner last night.”
“What!”
“She has.”
“But how?”
The paper bag exploded again. A look of intense bitterness came into Hugo’s face.
“If ever I meet that slimy, slinking marcell-waved by-product Pilbeam again,” he said, “let him commend his soul to God! If he has time,” he added.
He took the brandy-and-soda from the waiter, and eyed Sue dully.
“Anything on similar lines for you?”
“No, thanks.”
“Just as you like. It’s not easy for a man in my position to realize,” said Hugo, drinking deeply, “that refusing a brandy-and-soda is possible. I shouldn’t have said, offhand, that it could be done.”
Sue was a warm-hearted girl. In the tragedy of this announcement she had almost forgotten her own troubles.
“Tell me all about it, Hugo.”
He put down the empty glass.
“I CAME up from Blandings yesterday,” he said, “to interview the Argus Inquiry Agency on the subject of sending a man down to investigate the theft of Lord Emsworth’s pig.”
Sue would have liked to hear more about this pig, but she knew that this was no time for questions.
“I went to the Argus and saw this wen Pilbeam, who runs it.”
Again Sue would have liked to speak. Once more she refrained. She felt as if she were at a sick bed, hearing a dying man’s last words. On such occasions one does not interrupt.
“Meanwhile,” proceeded Hugo tonelessly, “Millicent, suspecting—and I am surprised at her having a mind like that; I always looked on her as a pure, white soul—suspecting that I might be up to something in London, got the Argus on the long-distance telephone and told them to follow my movements and report to her. And, apparently, just before she called me up, she had been talking to them on the wire and getting their statement.
“All this she revealed to me in short, burning sentences, and then she said that if I thought we were still engaged, I could have three more guesses. But to save me trouble, she would tell me the right answer, viz.: No wedding-bells for me. And to think,” said Hugo, picking up the glass and putting it down again, after inspection, with a hurt and disappointed look, “that I actually rallied this growth Pilbeam on the subject of following people and reporting on their movements. Yes, I assure you, rallied him blithely. Just as I was leaving his office, we kidded merrily back and forth. And then I went out into the world, happy and carefree, little knowing that my every step was dogged by a blasted bloodhound. Well, all I can say is that, if Ronnie wants this Pilbeam’s gore, and I gather that he does, he will jolly well have to wait till I’ve helped myself.”
Sue, womanlike, blamed the woman.
“I don’t think Millicent can be a very nice girl,” she said, primly.
“An angel,” said Hugo. “Always was. Celebrated for it. I don’t blame her.”
“I do.”
“I don’t.”
“I do.”
“WELL, have it your own way,” said Hugo handsomely. He beckoned to the waiter. “Another of the same, please.”
“This settles it,” said Sue.
Her eyes were sparkling. Her chin had a resolute tilt.
“Settles what?”
“While you were at the telephone, I had an idea.”
“I have had ideas in my time,” said Hugo. “Many of them. At the moment, I have but one. To get within arm’s length of the man Pilbeam and twist his greasy neck till it comes apart in my hands. ‘What do you do here?’ I said. ‘Measure footprints?’ ‘We follow people and report on their movements,’ said he. ‘Ha, ha!’ I laughed carelessly. ‘Ha, ha!’ laughed he. General mirth and jollity. And all the while . . .”
“Hugo, will you listen!”
“And this is the bitter thought that now strikes me. What chance have I of scooping out the man’s insides with my bare hands? I’ve got to go back to Blandings on the two-fifteen, or I lose my job. Leaving him unscathed in his bally lair, chuckling over my downfall and following some other poor devil’s movements.”
“Hugo!”
The broken man passed a weary hand over his forehead.
“You spoke?”
“I’ve been speaking for the last ten minutes, only you won’t listen.”
“Say on,” said Hugo, listlessly starting on the second restorative.
“Have you ever heard of a Miss Schoonmaker?”
“I seem to know the name. Who is she?”
“Me.”
Hugo lowered his glass, pained.
“Don’t talk drip to a broken-hearted man,” he begged. “What do you mean?”
“When Ronnie was driving me in his car, we met Lady Constance.”
“A blister,” said Hugo. “Always was. Generally admitted all over Shropshire.”
“She thought I was this Miss Schoonmaker.”
“Why?”
“Because Ronnie said I was.”
Hugo sighed hopelessly.
“Complex. Complex. My God! How complex.”
“It was quite simple and natural. Ronnie had just been telling me about this girl—how he had met her at Biarritz and that she was coming to Blandings and so on, and when he saw Lady Constance looking at me with frightful suspicion it suddenly occurred to him to say that I was her.”
“That you were Lady Constance?”
“No, idiot. Miss Schoonmaker. And now I’m going to wire her—Lady Constance, not Miss Schoonmaker, in case you were going to ask—saying that I’m coming to Blandings right away.”
“Pretending to be Miss Schoonmaker?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head.
“Imposs.”
“Why?”
“Absolutely out of the q.”
“Why? Lady Constance is expecting me. Do be sensible.”
“I’m being sensible all right. But somebody is gibbering and, naming no names, it’s you. Don’t you realize that, just as you reach the front door, this Miss Schoonmaker will arrive in person, dishing the whole thing?”
“No, she won’t.”
“Why won’t she?”
“Because Ronnie sent her a telegram, in Lady Constance’s name, saying that there’s scarlet fever or something at Blandings and she wasn’t to come.”
Hugo’s air of the superior critic fell from him like a garment. He sat up in his chair. So moved was he that he spilled his brandy-and-soda and did not give it so much as a look of regret. He let it soak into the carpet, unheeded.
“Sue!”
“Once I’m at Blandings, I shall be able to see Ronnie and make him be sensible.”
“That’s right.”
“And then you’ll be able to tell Millicent that there couldn’t have been much harm in my being out with you last night, because I’m engaged to Ronnie.”
“That’s right, too.”
“Can you see any flaws?”
“Not a flaw.”
“I suppose, as a matter of fact, you’ll give the whole thing away five minutes after I have arrived by calling me Sue.”
Hugo waved an arm buoyantly.
“Don’t give the possibility another thought,” he said. “If I do, I’ll cover it up adroitly by saying I meant ‘Schoo.’ Short for Schoonmaker. And now go and send her another telegram. Keep on sending telegrams. Leave nothing to chance. Send a dozen and pitch it strong. Say that Blandings Castle is ravaged with disease. Not merely scarlet fever. Scarlet fever and mumps. Not to mention housemaid’s knee, diabetes, measles, shingles, and the botts. We’re onto a big thing, my Susan. Let us push it along.”
SUNSHINE, calling to all right-thinking men to come out and revel in its heartening warmth, poured in at the windows of the great library of Blandings Castle. But to Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, much as he liked sunshine as a rule, it brought no cheer. His face drawn, his pince-nez askew, his tie drooping away from its stud like a languorous lily, he sat staring sightlessly before him. He looked like something that had just been prepared for stuffing by a taxidermist.
A moralist, watching Lord Emsworth in his travail, would have reflected smugly that it cuts both ways, this business of being a peer of the realm with large private means and a good digestion. Unalloyed prosperity, he would have pointed out in his offensive way, tends to enervate; and in this world of ours, full of alarms and uncertainties, where almost anything is apt to drop suddenly on top of your head without warning at almost any moment, what one needs is to be tough and alert.
When some outstanding disaster happens to the ordinary man, it finds him prepared. Years of missing the 8:45, taking the dog for a run on rainy nights, endeavoring to abate smoky chimneys and coming down to breakfast and discovering that they have burned the bacon again, have given his soul a protective hardness, so that by the time his wife’s relations arrive for a long visit he is ready for them.
Lord Emsworth had had none of this salutary training. Fate, hitherto, had seemed to spend its time thinking up ways of pampering him. He ate well, slept well, and had no money troubles. He grew the best roses in Shropshire. He had won a first prize for pumpkins at that county’s Agricultural Show, a thing no Earl of Emsworth had ever done before. And, just previous to the point at which this chronicle opens, his younger son Frederick had married the daughter of an American millionaire and had gone to live three thousand miles away from Blandings Castle, with lots of good, deep water in between him and it. He had come to look on himself as Fate’s spoiled darling.
CAN we wonder, then, that in the agony of this sudden, treacherous blow he felt stunned and looked eviscerated? Is it surprising that the sunshine made no appeal to him? May we not consider him justified, as he sat there, in swallowing a lump in his throat like an ostrich gulping down a brass door-knob?
The answer to these questions, in the order given, is No, No, and Yes.
The door of the library opened, revealing the natty person of his brother Galahad. Lord Emsworth straightened his pince-nez and looked at him apprehensively. Knowing how little reverence there was in the Hon. Galahad’s composition and how tepid was his interest in the honorable struggle for supremacy of Fat Pigs, he feared that the other was about to wound him in his bereavement with some jarring flippancy. Then his gaze softened and he was conscious of a soothing feeling of relief. There was no frivolity in his brother’s face, only a gravity which became him well.
The Hon. Galahad sat down, hitched up the knees of his trousers, cleared his throat, and spoke in a tone that could not have been more sympathetic or in better taste.
“Bad business, this, Clarence.”
“Appalling, my dear fellow.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
Lord Emsworth shrugged his shoulders hopelessly. He generally did when people asked him what he was going to do about things.
“I am at a loss,” he confessed. “I do not know how to act. What young Carmody tells me has completely upset all my plans.”
“Carmody?”
“I sent him to the Argus Inquiry Agency in London to engage the service of a detective. It is a firm that Sir Gregory Parsloe once mentioned to me, in the days when we were on better terms. He said, in rather a meaning way, I thought, that if ever I had any trouble of any sort that needed expert and tactful handling, these were the people to go to. I gathered that they had assisted him in some matter the details of which he did not confide to me, and had given complete satisfaction.”
“Parsloe!” said the Hon. Galahad, and sniffed.
“So I sent young Carmody to London to approach them about finding the Empress. And now he tells me that his errand proved fruitless. They were firm in their refusal to trace missing pigs.”
“Just as well.”
“What do you mean?”
“Save you a lot of unnecessary expense. There’s no need for you to waste money employing detectives.”
“I thought that possibly the trained mind. . . .”
“I can tell you who’s got the Empress. I’ve known it all along.”
“What!”
“Certainly.”
“Galahad!”
“It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
Lord Emsworth felt his nose.
“Is it?” he said doubtfully.
“I’ve just been talking to Constance. . .”
“Constance?” Lord Emsworth opened his mouth feebly. “She hasn’t got my pig?”
“I’ve just been talking to Constance,” repeated the Hon. Galahad, “and she called me some very unpleasant names.”
“She does, sometimes. Even as a child, I remember. . . .”
“Most unpleasant names. A senile mischief-maker, among others, and a meddling old penguin. And all because I told her that the man who had stolen Empress of Blandings was young Gregory Parsloe.”
“Parsloe!”
“Parsloe. Surely it’s obvious! I should have thought it would have been clear to the meanest intelligence.”
FROM boyhood up, Lord Emsworth had possessed an intelligence about as mean as an intelligence can be without actually being placed under restraint. Nevertheless, he found his brother’s theory incredible.
“Parsloe?”
“Don’t keep saying ‘Parsloe.’ ”
“But, my dear Galahad . . . !”
“It stands to reason.”
“You don’t really think so?”
“Of course I think so. Have you forgotten what I told you the other day?”
“Yes,” said Lord Emsworth. He always forgot what people told him the other day.
“About young Parsloe,” said the Hon. Galahad impatiently. “About his nobbling my dog Towser.”
Lord Emsworth started. It all came back to him. A hard expression crept into the eyes behind the pince-nez, which emotion had just jerked crooked again.
“To be sure. Towser. Your dog. I remember.”
“He nobbled Towser, and he’s nobbled the Empress. Dash it, Clarence, use your intelligence. Who else except young Parsloe had any interest in getting the Empress out of the way? And, if he hadn’t known there was some dirty work being planned, would that pig-man of his, Brotherhood or whatever his name is, have been going about offering three to one on Pride of Matchingham? I told you at the time it was fishy.”
The evidence was damning, and yet Lord Emsworth found himself once more a prey to doubt. Of the blackness of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe’s soul he had, of course, long been aware. But could the man actually be capable of the Crime of the Century? A fellow-landowner? A justice of the peace? A man who grew pumpkins? A baronet?
“But, Galahad . . . A man in Parsloe’s position . . . ?”
“What do you mean—a man in his position? Do you suppose a fellow changes his nature just because a cousin of his dies and he comes into a baronetcy? Haven’t I told you a dozen times that I’ve known young Parsloe all his life? Known him intimately. He was always as hot as mustard and as wide as Leicester Square.
“Ask anybody who used to go around town in those days. When they saw young Parsloe coming, strong men winced and hid their valuables. He hadn’t a penny except what he could get by telling the tale, and he always did himself like a prince. When I knew him first, he was living down on the river at Shepperton. His old father, the Dean, had made an arrangement with the keeper of the pub there to give him breakfast and bed and nothing else. ‘If he wants dinner, he must earn it,’ the old boy said. And do you know how he used to earn it? He trained that mongrel of his, Banjo, to go and do tricks in front of parties that came to the place in steam launches. And then he would stroll up and hope his dog was not annoying them and stand talking till they went in to dinner and then go in with them and pick up the wine-list, and before they knew what was happening he would be bursting with their champagne and cigars.”
“But even so . . .”
“I remember him running up to me outside that pub one afternoon—the Jolly Miller it was called—his face shining with positive ecstasy. ‘Come in, quick!’ he said. ‘There’s a new barmaid, and she hasn’t found out yet I’m not allowed credit.’ ”
“But, Galahad . . .”
“And if young Parsloe thinks I’ve forgotten a certain incident that occurred in the early summer of the year ’95, he’s very much mistaken. He met me in the Haymarket and took me into the Two Goslings for a drink—there’s a hat-shop now where it used to be—and after we’d had it he pulls a sort of dashed little top affair out of his pocket, a thing with numbers written round it. Said he’d found it and wondered who thought of these ingenious little toys and insisted on our spinning it for half-crowns.
“ ‘You take the odd numbers, I’ll take the even,’ says young Parsloe. And before I could fight my way out into the fresh air, I was ten pounds seven and sixpence in the hole. And I discovered next morning that they make those beastly things so that if you push the stem through and spin them the wrong way up you’re bound to get an even number. And when I asked him the following afternoon to show me that top again, he said he’d lost it.
“That’s the sort of fellow young Parsloe was. And you expect me to believe that inheriting a baronetcy and settling down in the country has made him so dashed pure and high-minded that he wouldn’t stoop to nobbling a pig.”
Lord Emsworth uncoiled himself. Cumulative evidence had done its work. His eyes glittered.
“The scoundrel!”
“Tough nut, always was.”
“What shall I do?”
“Look him squarely in the eye and tax him with his crime.”
“I will! Immediately.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Look him squarely in the eye!”
“And tax him!”
“And tax him.” Lord Emsworth had reached the hall and was peering agitatedly to right and left. “Where the devil’s my hat?”
“You don’t need a hat to tax a man with stealing a pig,” said the Hon. Galahad.
IN HIS study at Matchingham Hall in the neighboring village of Much Matchingham, Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe sat gazing at the current number of a weekly paper. We have seen that weekly paper before. On that occasion it was in the plump hands of Beach. And, oddly enough, what had attracted Sir Gregory’s attention was the very item which had interested the butler:
But whereas Beach, perusing this, had chuckled, Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe shivered, like one who on a country ramble suddenly perceives a snake in his path.
Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe of Matchingham Hall, seventh baronet of his line, was one of those men who start their lives well, skid for awhile, and then slide back onto the straight-and-narrow path and stay there. That is to say, he had been, up to the age of twenty, a blameless boy and from the age of thirty-one, when he had succeeded to the title, a practically blameless Bart. So much so that now, in his fifty-second year, he was on the eve of being accepted by the local Unionist Committee as their accredited candidate for the forthcoming by-election in the Bridgeford and Shifley Parliamentary Division of Shropshire.
THE years had turned Sir Gregory into a man of portly habit, and, as portly men do in moments of stress, he puffed. But, puff he ever so shrewdly, he could not blow away that paragraph. It was still there, looking up at him, when the door opened and the butler announced Lord Emsworth and Mr. Galahad Threepwood.
Sir Gregory’s first emotion on seeing the taxing party file into the room was one of pardonable surprise. Aware of the hard feelings which George Cyril Wellbeloved’s transference of his allegiance had aroused in the bosom of that gifted pig-man’s former employer, he had not expected to receive a morning call from the Earl of Emsworth. As for the Hon. Galahad, he had ceased to be on cordial terms with him as long ago as the winter of the year nineteen hundred and six.
Then, following quickly on the heels of surprise, came indignation. That the author of the Reminiscences should be writing scurrilous stories about him with one hand and strolling calmly into his private study with, so to speak, the other, occasioned him the keenest resentment. He drew himself up and was in the very act of staring haughtily, when the Hon. Galahad broke the silence.
“Young Parsloe,” said the Hon. Galahad, speaking in a sharp, unpleasant voice, “your sins have found you out!”
It had been the baronet’s intention to inquire to what he was indebted for the pleasure of this visit, and to inquire it icily; but at this remarkable speech the words halted on his lips.
“Eh?” he said blankly.
The Hon. Galahad was regarding him through his monocle rather as a cook eyes a black beetle on discovering it in the kitchen sink. It was a look which would have aroused pique in a slug, and once more the Squire of Matchingham’s bewilderment gave way to wrath.
“What the devil do you mean?” he demanded.
“See his face?” asked the Hon. Galahad in a rasping aside.
“I’m looking at it now,” said Lord Emsworth.
“Guilt written upon it.”
“Plainly,” agreed Lord Emsworth.
The Hon. Galahad, who had folded his arms in a menacing manner, unfolded them and struck the desk a smart blow.
“Be very careful, Parsloe! Think before you speak. And, when you speak, speak the truth. I may say, by way of a start, that we know all.”
How low an estimate Sir Gregory Parsloe had formed of his visitors’ collective sanity was revealed by the fact that it was actually to Lord Emsworth that he now turned as the more intelligent one of the pair.
“Emsworth! Explain! What the deuce are you doing here? And what the devil is that old image talking about?”
Lord Emsworth had been watching his brother with growing admiration. The latter’s spirited opening of the case for the prosecution had won his hearty approval.
“You know,” he said curtly.
“I should say he dashed well does know,” said the Hon. Galahad. “Parsloe, produce that pig.”
Sir Gregory pushed his eyes back into their sockets a split second before they would have bulged out of his head beyond recovery. He did his best to think calm, soothing thoughts. He had just remembered that he was a man who had to be careful about blood pressure.
“Pig?”
“Pig.”
“Did you say pig?”
“Pig.”
“What pig?”
“He says ‘What pig?’ ”
“I heard him,” said Lord Emsworth.
Sir Gregory Parsloe again had trouble with his eyes.
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
The Hon. Galahad unfolded his arms again and smote the desk a blow which unshipped the cover of the ink-pot.
“Parsloe,” he cried, “you sheep-faced, shambling exile from Hell. Disgorge that pig immediately!”
“My Empress,” added Lord Emsworth.
“Precisely. Empress of Blandings. The pig you stole last night.”
Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe rose slowly from his chair. The Hon. Galahad pointed an imperious finger at him, but he ignored the gesture. His blood-pressure was now hovering around the hundred-and-fifty mark.
“Do you mean to tell me that you seriously accuse. . . .”
“Parsloe, sit down!”
Sir Gregory choked.
“I always knew, Emsworth, that you were as mad as a coot.”
“As a what?” whispered his lordship.
“Coot,” said the Hon. Galahad curtly. “Sort of duck.” He turned to the defendant again. “Vituperation will do you no good, young Parsloe. We know you have stolen that pig.”
“I haven’t stolen any damned pig. What would I want to steal a pig for?”
The Hon. Galahad snorted.
“What did you want to nobble my dog Towser for in the back room of the Black Footman in the spring of the year ’97?” he said. “To queer the favorite, that’s why you did it. And that’s what you’re after now, trying to queer the favorite again. Oh, we can see through you all right, young Parsloe. We read you like a book.”
SIR GREGORY had stopped worrying about his blood-pressure. No amount of calm, soothing thoughts could do it any good now.
“You’re crazy! Both of you. Stark, staring mad.”
“Parsloe, will you or will you not cough up that pig?”
“I have not got your pig.”
“That is your last word, is it?”
“I haven’t seen the creature.”
“Why a coot?” asked Lord Emsworth, who had been brooding for some time in silence.
“Very well,” said the Hon. Galahad. “If that is the attitude you propose to adopt, there is no course before me but to take steps. And I’ll tell you the steps I’m going to take, young Parsloe. I see now that I have been foolishly indulgent. I have allowed my kind heart to get the better of me. Often and often, when I’ve been sitting at my desk, I’ve remembered a good story that simply cried out to be put into my Reminiscences, and every time I’ve said to myself, ‘No,’ I’ve said; ‘that would wound young Parsloe. Good as it is, I can’t use it. I must respect young Parsloe’s feelings.’
“Well, from now on there will be no more forbearance. Unless you restore that pig, I shall insert in my book every dashed thing I can remember about you—starting with our first meeting, when I came into Romano’s and was introduced to you while you were walking round the supper-table with a soup-tureen on your head and stick of celery in your hand, saying that you were a sentry outside Buckingham Palace. The world shall know you for what you are—the only man who was ever thrown out of the Café de l’Europe for trying to raise the price of a bottle of champagne by raffling his trousers at the main bar. And, what’s more, I’ll tell the full story of the prawns.”
A SHARP cry escaped Sir Gregory. His face had turned a deep magenta. In these affluent days of his middle age, he always looked rather like a Regency buck who had done himself well for years among the flesh-pots. He now resembled a Regency buck who, in addition to being on the verge of apoplexy, has been stung in the leg by a hornet.
“I will,” said the Hon. Galahad firmly. “The full, true and complete story of the prawns, omitting nothing.”
“What was the story of the prawns, my dear fellow?” asked Lord Emsworth.
“Never mind. I know. And young Parsloe knows. And if Empress of Blandings is not back in her sty this afternoon, you will find it in my book.”
“But I keep telling you,” cried the suffering baronet, “that I know nothing whatever about your pig.”
“Ha!”
“I’ve not seen the animal since last year’s agricultural show.”
“Ho!”
“I didn’t know it had disappeared till you told me.”
The Hon. Galahad stared fixedly at him through the black-rimmed monocle. Then, with a gesture of loathing, he turned to the door.
“Come, Clarence!” he said.
“Are we going?”
“Yes,” said the Hon. Galahad with quiet dignity. “There is nothing more that we can do here. Let us get away from this house before it is struck by a thunderbolt.”
THE gentlemanly office-boy who sat in the outer room of the Argus Inquiry Agency read the card which the stout visitor had handed to him and gazed at the stout visitor with respect and admiration. He tapped on the door of the inner office.
“A gentleman to see me?” asked Percy Pilbeam.
“A baronet to see you, sir,” corrected the office-boy. “Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, Matchingham Hall, Salop.”
“Show him in immediately,” said Pilbeam with enthusiasm.
He rose and pulled down the lapels of his coat. Things, he felt, were looking up. He remembered Sir Gregory Parsloe. One of his first cases. He had been able to recover for him some letters which had fallen into the wrong hands. He wondered, as he heard the footsteps outside, if his client had been indulging in correspondence again.
From the baronet’s sandbagged expression, as he entered, such might well have been the case. It is the fate of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe to come into this chronicle puffing and looking purple. He puffed and looked purple now.
“I have called to see you, Mr. Pilbeam,” he said, after the preliminary civilities had been exchanged and he had lowered his impressive bulk into a chair, “because I am in a position of serious difficulty.”
“If there is any way in which I can assist you, Sir Gregory . . . Perhaps you will tell me the facts from the beginning?”
“The beginning?” Sir Gregory pondered. “Well, let me put it this way. At one time, Mr. Pilbeam, I was younger than I am today.”
“Quite.”
“Poorer.”
“No doubt.”
“And less respectable. And during that period of my life I unfortunately went about a good deal with a man named Threepwood.”
“Galahad Threepwood?”
“YOU know him?” said Sir Gregory, surprised.
Pilbeam chuckled reminiscently.
“I know his name. I wrote an article about him once, when I was editing a paper called Society Spice. Number One of the Thriftless Aristocrats series. The snappiest thing I ever did in my life. They tell me he called twice at the office with a horsewhip, wanting to see me.”
Sir Gregory exhibited concern.
“You have met him, then?”
“I have not.”
“Would he have heard your name?”
“No. There was a very strict rule in the Spice office that the names of the editorial staff were not to be divulged.”
“Ah!” said Sir Gregory, relieved.
His relief gave place to indignation. There was an inconsistency about the Hon. Galahad’s behavior which he found revolting.
“He cut up rough, did he, because you wrote things about him in your paper? And yet he doesn’t seem to mind writing things himself about other people, damn him. That’s quite another matter. A different thing altogether. Oh, yes!”
“Does he write? I didn’t know.”
“He’s writing his Reminiscences at this very moment. He’s down at Blandings Castle, finishing them now. And the book’s going to be full of stories about me. That’s why I’ve come to see you. Dashed, infernal, damaging stories, which’ll ruin my reputation in the county. There’s one about some prawns. . . .”
WORDS failed Sir Gregory. He sat puffing. Pilbeam nodded gravely. He understood the position now. As to what his client expected him to do about it, however, he remained hazy.
“But if these stories you speak of are libelous . . .”
“What has that got to do with it? They’re true.”
“The greater the truth, the greater the . . .”
“Oh, I know all about that,” interrupted Sir Gregory impatiently. “And a lot of help it’s going to be to me. A jury could give me the heaviest damages on record and it wouldn’t do me a bit of good. I may tell you, Mr. Pilbeam, apart from any other consideration, that I am on the point of being accepted by our local Unionist Committee as their candidate at the next election. And if that old pest’s book is published, they will drop me like a hot coal. Now do you understand?”
Pilbeam picked up a pen, and with it scratched his chin thoughtfully. He liked to take an optimistic view with regard to his clients’ affairs, but he could not conceal from himself that Sir Gregory appeared to be out of luck.
“H’m!” he said. “Well, in the circumstances, I really don’t see what is to be done except . . .”
“. . . get hold of the manuscript and destroy it, you were about to say? Exactly. That’s precisely what I’ve come to ask you to do for me.”
Pilbeam opened his mouth, startled. He had not been about to say anything of the kind.
“Steal the manuscript?”
“Only possible way.”
“But that’s rather a tall order, isn’t it, Sir Gregory?”
“Not,” replied the baronet ingratiatingly, “for a clever young fellow like you.”
The flattery left Pilbeam cold. His distant, unenthusiastic manner underwent no change.
“How could I get into the place?”
“I should have thought you would have found a dozen ways.”
“Not even one,” Pilbeam assured him.
“Why couldn’t you go there as a butler or something?”
Percy Pilbeam’s only reply to this was a tolerant smile. He raised the pen and scratched his head with it.
“Scarcely feasible,” he said. And again that rather pitying smile flitted across his face.
The sight of it brought Sir Gregory to the boil. He felt an irresistible desire to say something to wipe it away. It reminded him of the smiles he had seen on the faces of bookmakers in his younger days when he had suggested backing horses with them on credit.
“Well, have it your own way,” he snapped. “But it may interest you to know that to get that manuscript into my possession I am willing to pay five hundred pounds. And five hundred pounds is a lot of money, Mr. Pilbeam.”
The point was one which he had no need to stress. Percy Pilbeam had grasped it without assistance, and his face grew wan with thought. The day might come when the proprietor of the Argus Inquiry Agency would remain unmoved by the prospect of adding five hundred pounds to his bank balance, but it had not come yet.
“A check for five hundred the moment that old weasel’s manuscript is in my hands,” said Sir Gregory, insinuatingly.
A moment before, Pilbeam’s mind had been an inert mass. Now, abruptly, it began to function like a dynamo.
Get into Blandings Castle? Why, of course he could get into Blandings Castle. And not sneak in, either, with a trousers-seat itching in apprehension of the kick that should send him out again, but bowl proudly up to the front door in his two-seater and hand his suitcase to the butler and be welcomed as the honored guest.
Until now he had forgotten, for he had deliberately set himself to forget, the outrageous suggestion of that young idiot whose name escaped him that he should come to Blandings and hunt about for lost pigs. It had wounded his self-respect so deeply at the time that he had driven it from his thoughts. Now it all came back to him. And the young man’s parting words, he recalled, had been that if ever he changed his mind the commission would still be open.
“I will take this case, Sir Gregory,” he said.
“Woof?”
“You may rely on my being at Blandings Castle by tomorrow evening at the latest. I have thought of a way of getting there. I have a plan.”
“Woof!” said Sir Gregory.
“When you arrive home, I want you to invite Mr. Galahad Threepwood to dinner tomorrow night.”
The baronet shook like a jelly. Wrath and amazement fought within him. Ask the man to dinner? After what had occurred?
“As many others of the Blandings Castle party as you think fit, of course, but Mr. Threepwood without fail. Once he is out of the house, my path will be clear.”
WRATH and amazement died away. The baronet had grasped the idea. The beauty and simplicity of the stratagem stirred his admiration. But was it not, he felt, a simpler matter to issue such an invitation than to get it accepted? A vivid picture rose before his eyes of the Hon. Galahad as he had last seen him.
Then there came to him the blessed, healing thought of Lady Constance Keeble. He would send the invitation to her and—yes, dash it!—he would tell her the full facts, put his cards on the table and trust to her sympathy and proper feeling to enlist her in the cause. He had long been aware that her attitude towards the Reminiscences resembled his own. He could rely on her to help him. He could also rely on her somehow—by what strange feminine modes of coercion he, being a bachelor, could only guess at—to deliver the Hon. Galahad Threepwood at Matchingham Hall in time for dinner. Women, he knew, had this strange power over their near relations.
“Splendid!” he said. “Excellent! Capital! Woof! I’ll see it’s done.”
“Then you can leave the rest to me.”
“You think, if I can get him out of the house, you will be able to secure the manuscript?”
“Certainly.”
Sir Gregory rose and extended a trembling hand.
“Mr. Pilbeam,” he said, with deep feeling, “coming to see you was the wisest thing I ever did in my life.”
“Quite,” said Percy Pilbeam.
Annotations to this novel in book form are on this site.
Printer’s errors corrected above:
Magazine, p. 24a, had “as you reach the front door, this, Miss Schoonmaker will arrive”; comma after “this” removed as in both book versions.
Magazine, p. 24b, had “He looked like something that has just been prepared”; corrected to “had” as in both book versions.
Magazine, p. 57a, had “trained that mongrel of his, Bango, to go and do tricks”; corrected to “Banjo” as in all other sources.
Magazine, p. 57a, had “parties that come to the place”; corrected to “came” as in all other sources.
Magazine, p. 58a, had “George Cyril Wellbeloved’s tranference of his allegiance”; corrected to “transference”.
Magazine, p. 58a, had “It has been the baronet’s intention to inquire”; corrected to “had”.
Magazine, p. 58b, omitted closing quotation mark after “the year ’97?”
Editorial discrepancy not corrected:
Magazine, p. 59a, reads “rather like a Regency buck who had done himself well for years”; this appears as “who has done himself well” in UK magazine and both book versions.