Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsCollier’s Weekly, June 8, 1929
The Story Thus Far:
In Blandings Castle, England, live Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, whose chief interest is the Empress of Blandings, his prize pig; his sister, Lady Constance Keeble; his niece, Millicent; his brother, the Honorable Galahad Threepwood; his secretary, Hugo Carmody, secretly engaged to Millicent; and his nephew, Ronald Fish, secretly engaged to Sue Brown, a chorus girl.
Ronnie steals the Empress and hides her in a disused cottage, planning to “find” her later, thus gaining his trustee’s gratitude and a share of his own capital.
P. Frobisher Pilbeam, detective, is summoned.
Due to a misunderstanding in which Pilbeam is involved, Ronnie breaks his engagement with Sue, and Millicent hers with Hugo. Sue goes to Blandings to see Ronnie, masquerading as Miss Schoonmaker, a wealthy American girl, whom Ronnie’s mother had invited to Blandings. Ronnie and Millicent become engaged.
Galahad puts in the reminiscences he plans to publish soon a story about Sir Gregory Parsloe, who offers Pilbeam £500 to steal the manuscript.
Hugo and Millicent, seeking refuge from the rain, meet in the Empress’ cottage where they find Beach, the butler, come to feed her. They make up their differences and take the Empress to hide her in a more secure place, hoping to gain Lord Emsworth’s good will by returning her later.
The Efficient Baxter, Lady Constance’s guest at Blandings, tells Lord Emsworth that he saw Beach with the Empress.
X
BLANDINGS CASTLE basked in the afterglow of a golden summer evening. The air was cool and sweet, and the earth sent up a healing fragrance. Little stars were peeping down from a rain-washed sky.
To Ronnie Fish, slumped in an armchair in his bedroom on the second floor, the excellent weather conditions brought no spiritual uplift. He could see the sunset, but it left him cold. He could hear the thrushes calling in the shrubberies, but did not think much of them. It is, in short, in no sunny mood that we reintroduce Ronald Overbury Fish to the reader of this chronicle.
The meditations of a man who has recently proposed to and been accepted by a girl some inches taller than himself, for whom he entertains no warmer sentiment than a casual feeling that, take her for all in all, she isn’t a bad sort of egg, must of necessity tend towards the somber: they could hardly, by any stretch of the imagination, be regarded as optimistic. For, if the truth must be told, Ronnie had begun definitely to repent of the impulse which had led him to ask Millicent to be his wife. And now in his bedroom, he was regretting it more than ever.
Like most people who have made a defiant and dramatic gesture and then have leisure to reflect, he was oppressed by a feeling that he had gone considerably farther than was prudent. Samson, as he heard the pillars of the temple begin to crack, must have felt the same. Gestures are all very well while the intoxication lasts. The trouble is that it lasts such a very little while.
In asking Millicent to marry him, he had gone, he now definitely realized, too far. He had overdone it. It was not that he had any objections to Millicent as a wife. He had none whatever—provided she were somebody else’s wife. What was so unpleasant was the prospect of being married to her himself.
He groaned in spirit, and became aware that he was no longer alone. The door had opened, and his friend Hugo Carmody was in the room. He noted with a dull surprise that Hugo was in the conventional costume of the English gentleman about to dine. He had not supposed the hour so late.
“Hullo,” said Hugo. “Not dressed? The gong’s gone.”
IT NOW became clear to Ronnie that he simply was not equal to facing his infernal family at the dinner-table. He supposed that Millicent had spread the news of their engagement by this time, and that meant discussion, wearisome congratulations, embraces from his Aunt Constance, chaff of the vintage of 1895 from his Uncle Galahad—in short, fuss and gabble. And he was in no mood for fuss and gabble. Pot-luck with a tableful of Trappist monks he might just have endured, but not a hearty feed with the family.
“I don’t want any dinner.”
“No dinner?”
“No.”
“Ill or something?”
“No.”
“But you don’t want any dinner? I see. Rummy! However, your affair, of course. It begins to look as if I should have to don the nose-bag alone. Beach tells me that Baxter also will be absent from the trough. He’s upset about something, it seems, and has asked for a snort and sandwiches in the smoking-room. And as for the pustule Pilbeam,” said Hugo grimly, “I propose to interview him at the earliest possible date. And after that he won’t want any dinner, either.”
“Where are the rest of them?”
“Didn’t you know?” said Hugo, surprised. “They’re dining over at Old Parsloe’s. Your aunt, Lord Emsworth, old Galahad, and Millicent.” He coughed. A moment of some slight embarrassment impended. “I say, Ronnie, old man, while on the subject of Millicent.”
“Well?”
“You know that engagement of yours?”
“What about it?”
“It’s off.”
“Off!”
“Right, off. A wash-out. She’s changed her mind.”
“What!”
“Yes. She’s going to marry me. I may tell you we have been engaged for weeks—one of those secret betrothals—but we had a row. Row now over. Complete reconciliation. She asked me to break it to you gently that in the circs she proposes to return you to store.”
A thrill of ecstasy shot through Ronnie. He felt as men on the scaffold feel when the messenger bounds in with the reprieve.
“Well, that’s the first bit of good news I’ve had for a long time,” he said.
“You mean you didn’t want to marry Millicent?”
“Of course I didn’t.”
“Not so much of the ‘of course’, laddie,” said Hugo, offended.
“She’s an awfully nice girl. . . .”
“An angel. Shropshire’s leading seraph.”
“ . . . but I’m not in love with her any more than she’s in love with me.”
“IN THAT case,” said Hugo, with justifiable censure, “why propose to her? A goofy proceeding, it seems to me.” He clicked his tongue. “Of course! I see what happened. You grabbed Millicent to score off Sue, and she grabbed you to score off me. And now, I suppose you’ve fixed it up with Sue again. Very sound. Couldn’t have made a wiser move. She’s obviously the girl for you.”
Ronnie winced. The words had touched a nerve. He had been trying not to think of Sue, but without success. Her picture insisted on rising before him. Not being able to exclude her from his thoughts, he had tried to think of her bitterly.
“I haven’t,” he cried.
Extraordinary how difficult it was, even now, to think bitterly of Sue. Sue was Sue. That was the fundamental fact that hampered him. Try as he might to concentrate it on the tragedy of Mario’s restaurant, his mind insisted on slipping back to earlier scenes of sunshine and happiness.
“You haven’t?” said Hugo, damped.
That Ronnie could possibly be in ignorance of Sue’s arrival at the castle never occurred to him. Long ere this, he took it for granted, they must have met. And he assumed, from the equanimity with which his friend had received the news of the loss of Millicent, that Sue and he must have had just such another heart-to-heart talk as had taken place in the room above the gamekeeper’s cottage. The dour sullenness of Ronnie’s face made his kindly heart sink.
“You mean you haven’t fixed things up?”
“No.”
Ronnie writhed. Sue in his car. Sue up the river. Sue in his arms to the music of sweet saxophones. Sue laughing. Sue smiling. Sue in the Springtime, with the little breezes ruffling her hair. . . .
He forced his mind away from these weakening visions. Sue at Mario’s . . . That was better. . . . Sue letting him down. . . . Sue hobnobbing with the blister Pilbeam. . . . That was much better.
“I think you’re being very hard on that poor little girl, Ronnie.”
“Don’t call her a poor little girl.”
“I will call her a poor little girl,” said Hugo firmly. “To me, she is a poor little girl, and I don’t care who knows it. I don’t mind telling you that my heart bleeds for her. Bleeds profusely. And I must say I should have thought. . . .”
“I don’t want to talk about her.”
“ . . . after her doing what she has done. . . .”
“I don’t want to talk about her, I tell you.”
Hugo sighed. He gave it up. The situation was what they called an impasse. Too bad. His best friend and a dear little girl like that parted forever. Two jolly good eggs sundered for all eternity. Oh, well, that was Life.
“If you want to talk about anything,” said Ronnie, “you had much better talk about this engagement of yours.”
“Only too glad, old man. Was afraid it might bore you, or would have touched more freely on the subject.”
“I suppose you realize the family will squash it flat?”
“Oh, no, they won’t.”
“You think my Aunt Constance is going to leap about and bang the cymbals?”
“The Keeble, I admit,” said Hugo, with a faint shiver, “may make her presence felt to some extent. But I rely on the ninth earl’s support and patronage. Before long, I shall be causing the ninth to look on me as a son.”
“How?”
FOR a moment Hugo almost yielded to the temptation to confide in this friend of his youth. Then he realized the unwisdom of such a course. By an odd coincidence, he was thinking exactly the same of Ronnie as Ronnie at an earlier stage of this history had thought of him. Ronnie, he considered, though a splendid chap, was not fitted to be a repository of secrets. A babbler. A sieve. The sort of fellow who would spread a secret hither and thither all over the place before nightfall.
“Never mind,” he said. “I have my methods.”
“What are they?”
“Just methods,” said Hugo, “and jolly good ones. Well, I’ll be pushing off. I’m late. Sure you won’t come down to dinner? Then I’ll be going. It is imperative that I get hold of Pilbeam with all possible speed. Don’t want the sun to go down on my wrath. All has ended happily in spite of him, but that’s no reason why he shouldn’t be massacred. I look on myself as a man with a public duty.”
For some minutes after the door had closed, Ronnie remained humped up in his chair. Then, in spite of everything, there began to creep upon him a desire for food, too strong to be resisted. Perfect health and a tealess afternoon spent in the open had given him a compelling appetite. He still shrank from the thought of the dining-room. Fond as he was of Hugo, he simply could not stand his conversation tonight. A chop at the Emsworth Arms would meet the case. He could get down there in five minutes in his two-seater.
HE ROSE. His mind, as he moved to the door, was not entirely occupied with thoughts of food. Hugo’s parting words had turned it in the direction of Pilbeam again.
What had brought Pilbeam to the castle he did not know. But, now that he was here, let him look out for himself! A couple of minutes alone with P. Frobisher Pilbeam was just the medicine his bruised soul required. Apparently, from what he had said, Hugo also entertained some grievance against the man. It could be nothing compared with his own.
Pilbeam. The cause of all his troubles. Pilbeam! The snake in the grass. Pilbeam! . . . Yes. . . . His heart might be broken, his life a wreck, but he could still enjoy the faint consolation of dealing faithfully with Pilbeam.
He went out into the corridor. And, as he did so, Percy Pilbeam came out of the room opposite.
Pilbeam had dressed for dinner with considerable care. Owing to the fact that Lord Emsworth, in his woolen-headed way, had completely forgotten to inform him of the exodus to Matchingham Hall, he was expecting to meet a gay and glittering company at the meal and had prepared himself accordingly. Looking at the result in the mirror, he had felt a glow of contentment. This glow was still warming him as he passed into the corridor. As his eyes fell on Ronnie, it faded abruptly.
In the days of his editorship of Society Spice, that frank and fearless journal, P. Frobisher Pilbeam had once or twice had personal encounters with people having no cause to wish him well. They had not appealed to him. He was a man who found no pleasure in physical violence. And that physical violence threatened now was only too sickeningly plain. It was foreshadowed in the very manner in which this small but sturdy young man confronting him had begun to creep forward. Pilbeam, who was an F. R. Z. S., had seen leopards at the Zoo creep just like that.
Years of conducting a weekly scandal-sheet, followed by a long period of activity as a private inquiry agent, undoubtedly train a man well for the exhibition of presence of mind in sudden emergencies. One finds it difficult in the present instance to overpraise Percy Pilbeam’s ready resource. Had a great military strategist been present, he would have nodded approval. With the grim menace of Ronnie Fish coming closer and closer, Percy Pilbeam did exactly what Napoleon, Hannibal or the great Duke of Marlborough would have done. Reaching behind him for the handle and twisting it sharply, he slipped through the door of his bedroom, banged it, and was gone. Many an eel has disappeared into the mud with less smoothness and celerity.
If the leopard which he resembled had seen its prey vanish into the undergrowth just before dinner-time, it would probably have expressed its feelings in exactly the same kind of short, rasping cry as proceeded from Ronnie Fish, witnessing this masterly withdrawal. For an instant he was completely taken aback. Then he plunged for the door and plunged into the room.
HE STOOD, baffled. Pilbeam had vanished. To Ronnie’s astonished eyes the apartment appeared entirely free from detectives in any shape or form whatever. There was the bed. There were the chairs. There was the carpet, the dressing-table and the book-shelf. But of private inquiry agents there was a complete shortage.
How long this miracle would have continued to afflict him, one cannot say. His mind was still dealing dazedly with it, when there came to his ears a sharp click, as of a key being turned in the lock. It seemed to proceed from a cupboard at the other side of the room.
Old Miles Fish, Ronnie’s father, might, as Lord Emsworth asserted, have been the biggest fool in the Brigade of Guards, but his son could reason and deduce. Springing forward, he tugged at the handle of the cupboard door. The door stood fast.
At the same moment there filtered through it the sound of muffled breathing.
RONNIE was already looking grim. He now looked grimmer. He placed his lips to the panel.
“Come out of that!”
The breathing stopped.
“All right,” said Ronnie, with a hideous calm. “Right jolly ho! I can wait.”
For some moments there was silence. Then from the beyond a voice spoke in reply.
“Be reasonable!” said the voice.
“Reasonable?” said Ronnie thickly. “Reasonable, eh?” He choked. “Come out! I only want to pull your head off,” he added, with a note of appeal.
The voice became conciliatory.
“I know what you’re upset about,” it said.
“You do, eh?”
“Yes, I quite understand. But I can explain everything.”
“What?”
“I say I can explain everything.”
“You can, can you?”
“Quite,” said the voice.
Up till now Ronnie had been pulling. It now occurred to him that pushing might possibly produce more satisfactory results. So he pushed. Nothing, however, happened. Blandings Castle was a house which rather prided itself on its solidity. Its walls were walls and its doors doors. No jimcrack work here. The cupboard creaked, but did not yield.
“I say!”
“Well?”
“I wish you’d listen. I tell you I can explain everything. About that night at Mario’s, I mean. I know exactly how it is. You think Miss Brown is fond of me. I give you my solemn word she can’t stand the sight of me. She told me so herself.”
A pleasing thought came to Ronnie.
“You can’t stay in there all night,” he said.
“I don’t want to stay in here all night.”
“Well, come on out, then.”
The voice became plaintive.
“I tell you she had never set eyes on me before that night at Mario’s. She was dining with that fellow Carmody, and he went out and I came over and introduced myself. No harm in that, was there?”
Ronnie wondered if kicking would do any good. A tender feeling for his toes, coupled with the reflection that his uncle Clarence might have something to say if he started breaking up cupboard doors, caused him to abandon the scheme. He stood, breathing tensely.
“Just a friendly word, that’s all I came over to say. Why shouldn’t a fellow introduce himself to a girl and say a friendly word?”
“I wish I’d got there earlier.”
“I’d have been glad to see you,” said Pilbeam courteously.
“Would you?”
“Quite.”
“I shall be glad to see you,” said Ronnie, “when I can get this damned door open.”
Pilbeam began to fear asphyxiation. The air inside the cupboard was growing closer. Peril lent him the inspiration which it so often does.
“Look here,” he said, “are you Ronnie?”
Ronnie turned pinker.
“I don’t want any of your dashed cheek.”
“No, but listen. Is your name Ronnie?”
Silence without.
“Because, if it is,” said Pilbeam, “you’re the fellow she’s come here to see.”
More silence.
“She told me so. In the garden this evening. She came here calling herself Miss Shoemaker or some such name, just to see you. That ought to show you that I am not the man she’s keen on.”
The silence was broken by a sharp exclamation.
“What’s that?”
Pilbeam repeated his remark. A growing hopefulness lent an almost finicky clearness to his diction.
“Come out!” cried Ronnie.
“That’s all very well, but—”
“Come out, I want to talk to you.”
“You are talking to me.”
“I don’t want to bellow this through a door. Come on out. I swear I won’t touch you.”
It was not so much Pilbeam’s faith in the knightly word of the Fishes that caused him to obey the request as a feeling that, if he stayed cooped up in this cupboard much longer, he would get a rush of blood to the head. Already he was beginning to feel as if he were breathing a solution of dust and mothballs. He emerged. His hair was rumpled, and he regarded his companion warily. He had the air of a man who has taken his life in his hands. But the word of the Fishes held good. As far as Ronnie was concerned, the war appeared to be over.
“What did you say? She’s here?”
“Quite.”
“What do you mean, quite?”
“Certainly. Quite. She got here just before I did. Haven’t you seen her?”
“No.”
“Well, she’s here. She’s in the room they call the Garden Room. I heard her tell that old bird Galahad so. If you go there now,” said Pilbeam insinuatingly, “you could have a quiet word with her before she goes down to dinner.”
“And she said she had come here to see me?”
“Yes. To explain about that night at Mario’s. And what I say,” proceeded Pilbeam warmly, “is, if a girl didn’t love a fellow, would she come to a place like this, calling herself Miss Shoolbred or something, simply to see him? I ask you!” said Pilbeam.
RONNIE did not answer. His feelings held him speechless. He was too deep in a morass of remorse to be able to articulate. Indeed, he was in a frame of mind so abashed that he almost asked Pilbeam to kick him. The thought of how he had wronged his blameless Sue was almost too bitter to be borne. It bit like a serpent and stung like an adder.
From the surge and riot of his reflections one thought now emerged clearly, shining like a beacon on a dark night. The Garden Room!
Turning without a word, he shot out of the door as quickly as Percy Pilbeam a short while ago had shot in. And Percy Pilbeam, with a deep sigh, went to the dressing-table, took up the brush, and began to restore his hair to a state fit for the eyes of the nobility and gentry. This done, he smoothed his mustache and went downstairs to the drawing-room.
THE drawing-room was empty. And to Pilbeam’s surprise it continued to be empty for quite a considerable time. He felt puzzled. He had expected to meet a reproachful host with an eye on the clock and a haughty hostess clicking her tongue. As the minutes crept by and his solitude remained unbroken, he began to grow restless.
He wandered about the room, staring at the pictures, straightening his tie and examining the photographs on the little tables. The last of these was one of Lord Emsworth, taken apparently at about the age of thirty, in long whiskers and the uniform of the Shropshire Yeomanry. He was gazing at this with the fascinated horror which it induced in anyone who saw it suddenly for the first time, when the door at last opened and with a sinking sensation of apprehension Pilbeam beheld the majestic form of Beach.
For an instant he stood eyeing the butler with that natural alarm which comes to all of us when in the presence of a man who a few short hours earlier has given us one look and made us feel like a condemned food product. Then his tension relaxed.
It has been well said that for every evil in this world Nature supplies an antidote. If butlers come, can cocktails be far behind? Beach was carrying a tray with glasses and a massive shaker on it, and Pilbeam, seeing these, found himself regarding their formidable bearer almost with equanimity.
“A cocktail, sir?”
“Thanks.”
He drained the glass. His whole outlook on life was now magically different. Quite suddenly he had begun to feel equal to a dozen butlers, however glazed their eyes might be.
And it might have been an illusion caused by gin and vermouth, but this butler seemed to have changed considerably for the better since their last meeting. His eye, though still glassy, had lost the old basilisk quality. There appeared now, in fact, to be something so positively lighthearted about Beach’s whole demeanor that the proprietor of the Argus Inquiry Agency was emboldened to plunge into conversation.
“Nice evening.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Nice after the storm.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Came down a bit, didn’t it?”
“The rain was undoubtedly extremely heavy, sir. Another cocktail?”
“Thanks.”
The relighting of the beacons had the effect of removing from Pilbeam the last trace of diffidence and shyness. He saw now that he had been entirely mistaken in this butler. Encountering him in the hall at the moment of his arrival, he had supposed him supercilious and hostile. He now perceived that he was a butler and a brother. More like Old King Cole, that jolly old soul, indeed, than anybody Pilbeam had met for months.
“I got caught in it,” he said affably.
“Indeed, sir?”
“Yes; Lord Emsworth had been showing me some photographs of that pig of his. . . . By the way, in strict confidence . . . what’s your name?”
“Beach, sir.”
“In strict confidence, Beach, I know something about that pig.”
“Indeed, sir.”
“Yes. Well, after I had seen the photographs, I went for a walk in the park and it rained a bit and I got pretty wet. In fact I don’t mind telling you I had to get under cover and take my trousers off to dry.”
He laughed merrily.
“Another cocktail, sir?”
“Making three in all?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Pilbeam.
For some moments he sat, pensive and distrait, listening to the strains of a brass band which seemed to have started playing somewhere in the vicinity. Then his floating thoughts drifted back to the mystery which had been vexing him before this delightful butler’s entry.
“Where is everybody?” he asked.
“His lordship and her ladyship and Mr. Galahad and Miss Threepwood are dining at Matchingham Hall.”
“What! With old Pop Parsloe?”
“With Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, yes, sir.”
Pilbeam chuckled.
“Well, well, well! Quick worker, old Parsloe. Don’t you think so, Beach? I mean, you advise him to do a thing, to act in a certain way, to adopt a certain course of action, and he does it right away. You agree with me, Beach?”
“I fear my limited acquaintance with Sir Gregory scarcely entitles me to offer an opinion, sir.”
“Talking of old Parsloe, Beach . . . you did say your name was Beach?”
“Yes, sir.”
“With a capital B?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, talking of old Parsloe, Beach, I could tell you something about him. Something he’s up to.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“But I’m not going to. Respect client’s confidence. Lips sealed. Professional secret.”
“Yes, sir?”
“As you rightly say, yes. Any more of that stuff in the shaker, Beach?”
“A little, sir, if you consider it judicious.”
“That’s just what I do consider it. Start pouring.”
THE detective sipped luxuriously, fuller and fuller every moment of an uplifting sense of well-being. If the friendship which had sprung up between himself and the butler was possibly a little one-sided, on the one side on which it did exist it was warm, even fervent. It seemed to Pilbeam that for the first time since he had arrived at Blandings Castle he had found a real chum, a kindred soul in whom he might confide. And he was filled with an overwhelming desire to confide in somebody.
“As a matter of fact, Beach,” he said, “I could tell you all sorts of things about all sorts of people. Practically everybody in this house I could tell you something about. What’s the name of that chap with the light hair, for instance? The old boy’s secretary.”
“Mr. Carmody, sir?”
“Carmody! That’s the name. I’ve been trying to remember it. Well, I could tell you something about Carmody.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“Yes. Something about Carmody that would interest you very much. I saw Carmody this afternoon when Carmody didn’t see me.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“Yes. Where is Carmody?”
“I imagine he will be down shortly, sir. Mr. Ronald also.”
“Ronald!” Pilbeam drew in his breath sharply. “There’s a tough baby, Beach. That Ronnie. Do you know what he wanted to do just now? Murder me!”
In Beach’s opinion, for he did not look on Percy Pilbeam as a very necessary member of society, this would have been a commendable act, and he regretted that its consummation had been prevented. He was also feeling that the conscientious butler he had always prided himself on being would long ere this have withdrawn and left this man to talk to himself. But even the best of butlers have human emotions, and the magic of Pilbeam’s small-talk held Beach like a spell. It reminded him of the Gossip page of Society Spice, a paper to which he was a regular subscriber. He was piqued and curious. So far, it was true, his companion had merely hinted, but something seemed to tell him that, if he lingered on, a really sensational news item would shortly emerge.
HE HAD never been more right in his life. Pilbeam by this time had finished the fourth cocktail and the urge to confide had become overpowering. He looked at Beach, and it nearly made him cry to think that he was holding anything back from such a splendid fellow.
“And do you know why he wanted to murder me, Beach?”
It scarcely seemed to the butler that the action required anything in the nature of a reasoned explanation, but he murmured the necessary response:
“I could not say, sir.”
“Of course you couldn’t. How could you? You don’t know. That’s why I’m telling you. Well, listen. He’s in love with a girl in the chorus at the Regal, a girl named Sue Brown, and he thought I had been taking her out to dinner. That’s why he wanted to murder me, Beach.”
“Indeed, sir?”
The butler spoke calmly, but he was deeply stirred. He had always flattered himself that the inmates of Blandings Castle kept few secrets from him, but this was something new.
“Yes. That was why. I had the dickens of a job holding him off, I can tell you. Do you know what saved me, Beach?”
“No, sir.”
“Presence of mind. I put it to him—to Ronnie—I put it to Ronnie as a reasonable man that, if this girl loved me, would she have come to this place, pretending to be Miss Shoemaker, simply so as to see him?”
“Sir!”
“Yes, that’s who Miss Shoemaker is, Beach. She’s a chorus girl called Sue Brown, and she’s come here to see Ronnie.”
Beach stood transfixed. His eyes swelled bulbously from their sockets. He was incapable of even an “Indeed, sir?”
He was still endeavoring to assimilate this extraordinary revelation when Hugo Carmody entered the room.
“Ah!” said Hugo, his eye falling on Pilbeam. He stiffened. He stood looking at the detective like Schopenhauer’s butcher at the selected lamb.
“Leave us, Beach,” he said, in a grave, deep voice.
The butler came out of his trance.
“Sir?”
“Pop off.”
“Very good, sir.”
The door closed.
“I’ve been looking for you, viper,” said Hugo.
“Have you, Carmody?” said Percy Pilbeam effervescently. “I’ve been looking for you, too. Got something I want to talk to you about. Each looking for each. Or am I thinking of a couple of other fellows? Come right in, Carmody, and sit down. Good old Carmody! Jolly old Carmody! Splendid old Carmody! Well, well, well, well, well!”
If the lamb mentioned above had suddenly accosted the above-mentioned butcher in a similar strain of hearty camaraderie, it could have hardly disconcerted him more than Pilbeam with these cheery words disconcerted Hugo. His stern, set gaze became a gaping stare.
Then he pulled himself together. What did words matter? He had no time to bother about words. Action was what he was after. Action!
“I don’t know if you’re aware of it, worm,” he said, “but you came jolly near to blighting my life.”
“Doing what, Carmody?”
“Blighting my life.”
“List to me while I tell you of the Spaniard who blighted my life,” sang Percy Pilbeam, letting it go like a lark in the springtime. He had never felt happier or in more congenial society. “How did I blight your life, Carmody?”
“You didn’t.”
“You said I did.”
“I said you tried to.”
“Make up your mind, Carmody.”
“Don’t keep calling me Carmody.”
“But, Carmody,” protested Pilbeam, “it’s your name, isn’t it? Certainly it is. Then why try to hush it up, Carmody? Be frank and open. I don’t mind people knowing my name. I glory in it. It’s Pilbeam—Pilbeam—Pilbeam—that’s what it is—Pilbeam!”
“In about thirty seconds,” said Hugo, “it will be Mud.”
It struck Percy Pilbeam for the first time that in his companion’s manner there was a certain peevishness.
“Something the matter?” he asked, concerned.
“I’ll tell you what’s the matter.”
“Do, Carmody, do,” said Pilbeam. “Do, do, do. Confide in me. I like your face.”
He settled himself in a deep armchair and, putting the tips of his fingers together, after a little preliminary difficulty in making them meet, leaned back, all readiness to listen to whatever trouble it was that was disturbing this new friend of his.
“Some days ago, insect,” began Hugo.
Pilbeam opened his eyes.
“Speak up, Carmody,” he said. “Don’t mumble.”
Hugo’s fingers twitched.
“Some days ago,” he began again, “I called at your office. And after we had talked of this and that, I left. I discovered later that immediately upon my departure you had set your foul spies on my trail and had instructed them to take notes of my movements and report on them. The result being that I came jolly close to having my bally life ruined. And, if you want to know what I’m going to do, I’m going to haul you out of that chair and turn you round and kick you hard and go on kicking you till I kick you out of the house. And if you dare to shove your beastly little nose back inside the place, I’ll disembowel you.”
PILBEAM unclosed his eyes. He regarded Hugo not exactly with severity but with distinct reproach.
“Nothing,” he said, “could be fairer than that. Nevertheless, that’s no reason why you should go about stealing pigs.”
Hugo had often read stories in which people reeled and would have fallen, had they not clutched at whatever it was that they clutched at. He had never expected to undergo that experience himself. But it is undoubtedly the fact that, if he had not at this moment gripped the back of a chair, he would have been hard put to it to remain perpendicular.
“Pig-pincher!” said Pilbeam austerely, and closed his eyes again.
Hugo, having established his equilibrium by means of the chair, had now moved away. He was making a strong effort to recover his morale. He picked up the photograph of Lord Emsworth in his Yeomanry uniform and looked at it absently; then, as if it had just dawned upon him, put it down with a shudder, like a man who finds that he has been handling a snake.
“What do you mean?” he said thickly.
Pilbeam’s eyes opened.
“What do I mean? What do you think I mean? I mean you’re a pig-pincher. That’s what I mean. You go to and fro, sneaking pigs and hiding them in caravans.”
Hugo took up Lord Emsworth’s photograph again, saw what he was doing, and dropped it quickly. Pilbeam had closed his eyes once more, and, looking at him, Hugo could not repress a reluctant thrill of awe. He had often read about the superhuman intuition of detectives, but he had never before been privileged to observe it in operation. Then an idea occurred to him.
“Did you see me?”
“Yes, I see you, Carmody,” said Pilbeam playfully. “Peep-bo!”
“Did you see me put that pig in the caravan?”
Pilbeam nodded eleven times in rapid succession.
“Certainly I saw you, Carmody. Why shouldn’t I see you, considering I’d been caught in the rain and taken shelter in the caravan and was in there with my trousers off, trying to dry them because I’m subject to lumbago?”
“I didn’t see you.”
“No, Carmody, you did not. And I’ll tell you why, Carmody. Because I heard a girl’s voice outside saying ‘Be quick, or somebody will come along!’ and I hid. You don’t suppose I would let a sweet girl see me in knee-length mesh-knit underwear, do you? Not done, Carmody,” said Pilbeam, severely.
HUGO was experiencing the bitterness which comes to all criminals who discover too late that they have undone themselves by trying to be clever. It had seemed at the time such a good idea to remove the Empress from the gamekeeper’s cottage in the west wood and place her in Baxter’s caravan, where nobody would think of looking. How could he have anticipated that the caravan would be bulging with blighted detectives?
At this tense moment, the door opened, and Beach appeared.
“I beg your pardon, sir, but do you propose to wait any longer for Mr. Ronald?”
“Certainly not,” said Pilbeam. “Who the devil’s Mr. Ronald, I should like to know? I didn’t come to this place to do a fast-cure. I want my dinner, and I want it now. And if Mr. Ronald doesn’t like it, he can do the other thing.” He strode in a dominating manner to the door. “Come along, Carmody. Din-dins.”
Hugo had sunk into a chair.
“I don’t want any dinner,” he said, dully.
“You don’t want any dinner?”
“No.”
Pilbeam shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
“The man’s an ass,” he said.
He headed for the stairs. His manner seemed to indicate that he washed his hands of Hugo.
Beach lingered.
“Shall I bring you some sandwiches, sir?”
“No, thanks. What’s that?”
A loud crash had sounded. The butler went to the door and looked out.
“It is Mr. Pilbeam, sir. He appears to have fallen downstairs.”
For an instant a look of hope crept into Hugo’s careworn face.
“Has he broken his neck?”
“Apparently not, sir.”
“Ah,” said Hugo regretfully.
Annotations to this novel in book form are on this site.
Printer’s errors corrected above:
p. 26a: Magazine used the incorrect form impassée where all other versions have impasse.
p. 26c: Magazine had “had began to creep forward”; corrected to “begun”.
p. 54a: Magazine had a paragraph break in “Ronnie had been pulling. It now occurred”; closed up to one paragraph as in other versions.
p. 54a: Magazine had “Its walls were walls and it doors doors.”
p. 55b: Magazine had “an unlifting sense of well-being”; corrected to ‘uplifting’ as in both book editions.
Editorial error:
p. 55a: Magazine mentions “the relighting of the beacons” which makes no sense here, since a previous paragraph mentioning “all through his system beacon-fires seemed to burst into being” has been omitted in this version.