Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsThe Pall Mall Magazine, May 1929
The story so far:
BLANDINGS Castle slept in the sunshine and Beach, butler to Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, its proprietor, sat in the shade. Suddenly, Mr. Hugo Carmody, the Earl’s secretary, rose from out of a laurel bush and begged Beach to tell Miss Millicent she would find him in the rose garden at six sharp. Hugo’s furtive way was due entirely to his unpopularity with Lady Constance Keeble, his employer’s sister. Hugo had been until recently co-proprietor with Mr. Ronald Fish, Lord Emsworth’s nephew, of the Hot Spot Night Club. The club had failed and Ronald had gone off with his mother, Lady Julia Fish, to Biarritz, but only on condition that a job was found for his boyhood friend Hugo. Lord Emsworth’s previous secretary, one Baxter, had just been dismissed for throwing flowerpots at his Lordship—though certainly he was only trying to call attention to the fact that he had been locked out—so Hugo was appointed in his place, much to the disapproval of Lady Constance who disliked Hugo and began at once to scheme for Baxter’s return.
Tea time approached and with it Clarence, ninth Earl, fresh from inspecting his prize sow, Empress of Blandings, who was expected to win for the second time the silver medal at the Shropshire Show. Lady Constance and her niece Millicent were the next arrivals and soon came Gally, otherwise the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, the Earl’s brother. Far from showing signs of the wear and tear that should result from a misspent youth, Gally was extremely bright in looks and manner, and far also from trying to forget that misspent youth, he had lately embarked on the writing of his Reminiscences. “What year was it,” he now inquired, “when young Parsloe stole Lord Burper’s false teeth and pawned them in the Edgware Road?” Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe was a near neighbour, a hated rival in pig-owning of Lord Emsworth, and a friend of Lady Constance, so this was received with mixed feelings. Gally flitted away and, changing the subject, Lady Constance made inquiry as to her niece’s intentions with regard to Ronald, stating that a most charming American girl, a Miss Schoonmaker, appeared to be quite taken with him and that Hugo was not at all a nice young man, being at the moment entangled with some impossible chorus girl. “Good luck to Miss Doopenhacker,” said Millicent, and wandered off towards the rose-garden.
Her interview with Hugo was of a distinctly thunderous nature, but he was able to convince her that his friend of the chorus, by name Sue Brown, was a sister to him only. Meanwhile Miss Brown was resigning her job in favour of a more struggling friend—to the utter disgust of her agent, the kind-hearted Mr. Mortimer Mason. Outside his office Ronnie and his car waited to take her to tea. Ronnie was suffering from an attack of jealousy over Hugo who, he was informed by the stage doorkeeper, had at one time taken Miss Brown out a good deal and also over one P. Frobisher Pilbeam who had just sent her a marvellous bouquet. But she dispelled the cloud when she promised not to go out with anyone at all while Ronnie was down at Blandings. Ronnie decided to take his lady-love to the family home in Norfolk Street for an hour where, in the absence of his relations, the butler would provide tea. But as he drew up outside the house he saw Lady Constance Keeble descending the steps. Disaster was averted when Ronnie introduced Sue huskily as Miss Schoonmaker. Sue was warmly greeted and Ronnie was amazed at his own presence of mind until Sue asked what would happen when the real Miss Schoonmaker arrived at Blandings. They decided that a wire must be sent in Lady Constance’s name to put her off.
Down at Blandings Ronnie was cogitating ways and means of acquiring money and his charming Sue when he observed a caravan in the grounds. Baxter emerged asking for Lady Constance. He was shown into her boudoir where Lord Emsworth was talking to his sister. The latter was delighted but the same cannot be said about Lord Emsworth. “Of course you must come and stay with us. It will be delightful having you here again, won’t it, Clarence?” said Lady Constance.
“Eh?”
“I said, won’t it?”
“Won’t it what?”
Lady Constance’s hand trembled above the inkpot like a hovering butterfly, but she withdrew it.
CHAPTER III
(continued)
“ 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.”
Rupert Baxter stepped to the door, opened it, satisfied himself that no listeners lurked in the passage, and returned to his seat.
“Are you in any trouble, Lady Constance? Your letter seemed so very urgent.”
“I am in dreadful trouble, Mr. Baxter.”
If Rupert Baxter had been a different type of man and Lady Constance Keeble a different type of woman, he would probably at this point have patted her hand. As it was, he merely hitched his chair an inch closer to hers.
“If there is 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.”
Rupert Baxter gave his chair another hitch.
“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.
Lady Constance performed that movement with her hands which came so close to wringing.
“The book is full from beginning to end of libellous anecdotes, Mr. Baxter. About all our best friends. If it is published, we shall not have a friend left. Galahad seems to have known everybody in England when they were young and foolish and to remember everything particularly foolish and disgraceful that they did. So. . . .”
“So you want me to get hold of the manuscript and destroy it?”
Lady Constance stared, stunned by this penetration. She told herself that she might have known that she would not have to make long explanations to Rupert Baxter. His mind was like a search-light, darting hither and thither, lighting up whatever it touched.
“Yes,” she gasped. She hurried on. “It does seem, I know, an extraordinary thing to . . .”
“Not at all.”
“. . . but Lord Emsworth refuses to do anything.”
“I see.”
“You know how he is in the face of any emergency.”
“Yes, I do, indeed.”
“So supine. So helpless. So vague and altogether incompetent.”
“Precisely.”
“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.
III
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 odour, 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.
IV
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. If, at the moment, Lord Emsworth could hardly have sat for his portrait in the rôle of a benevolent uncle, there would, Ronnie felt, be a swift change of demeanour in the very near future.
“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?”
Lord Emsworth’s voice was cold, and Ronnie hastened to disabuse him of the idea.
“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.
“Pigs?”
“Pigs.”
“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. So long as he insisted on wearing an old shooting-jacket with holes in the elbows and letting his tie slip down and show the head of a brass stud, he could never hope to be completely satisfactory as a figure of outraged majesty; but he achieved as imposing an effect as his upholstery would permit. 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 lightest 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. It was all very well, he felt, a stable being optimistic about its nominee, but he was a man who could face facts. In a long and checkered life he had seen so many good things unstuck. Besides, he had his superstitions, and one of them was that counting your chickens in advance brought bad luck.
“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, red-haired 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 unneighbourly 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. He would nobble his grandmother if it suited his book. Let me tell you I’ve known young Parsloe for thirty years and I solemnly state that if his grandmother was entered in a competition for fat pigs and his commitments made it desirable for him to get her out of the way, he would dope her bran-mash and acorns without a moment’s hesitation.”
“God bless my soul!” said Lord Emsworth, deeply impressed.
“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. Couldn’t prove anything of course, but I sniffed the dog’s breath and it was like opening the kitchen door of a Soho chophouse on a summer night. 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 realised . . . 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 labours, was arrested by the voice of his nephew Ronald.
“Uncle Gally!”
The young man’s pink face had flamed to a bright crimson. His eyes gleamed strangely.
“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 stye 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 Bachelor’s 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 . . . ?
Well, why not?
Suppose. . . .
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 to-night, 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.
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.
“ ’Myes,” 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?
Hugo?
No. In many respects the ideal accomplice for an undertaking of this nature, Hugo Carmody had certain defects which automatically disqualified him. To enrol Hugo as his lieutenant would mean revealing to him the motives that lay at the back of the venture. And if Hugo knew that he, Ronnie, was endeavouring to collect funds in order to get married, the thing would be all over Shropshire in a couple of days. Short of putting it on the front page of The Daily Mail or having it broadcasted over the wireless, the surest way of obtaining publicity for anything you wanted kept dark was to confide it to Hugo Carmody. A splendid chap, but the real, genuine human colander. No, not Hugo.
Then who? . . .
Ronnie Fish sprang from his chair, threw his head back and uttered a yodel of joy so loud and penetrating that the door of the small library flew open as if he had touched a spring.
A tousled literary man emerged.
“Stop that damned noise! How the devil can I write with a row like that going on?”
“Sorry, uncle. I was just thinking of something.”
“Well, think of something else. How do you spell ‘intoxicated’?”
“One ‘x’.”
“Thanks,” said the Hon. Galahad, and vanished again.
V
In his pantry, in shirt-sleeved ease, Beach, the butler, sat taking the well-earned rest of a man whose silver is all done and who has no further duties to perform till lunch-time. A bullfinch sang gaily in a cage on the window-sill, but it did not disturb him, for he was absorbed in the Racing Intelligence page of the Morning Post.
Suddenly he rose, palpitating. A sharp rap had sounded on the door, and he was a man who reacted nervously to sudden noises. There entered his employer’s nephew, Mr. Ronald Fish.
“Hullo, Beach.”
“Sir?”
“Busy?”
“No, sir.”
“Just thought I’d look in.”
“Yes, sir.”
“For a chat.”
“Very good, sir.”
Although the butler spoke with his usual smooth courtesy, he was far from feeling easy in his mind. He did not like Ronnie’s looks. It seemed to him that his young visitor was feverish. The limbs twitched, the eyes gleamed, the blood-pressure appeared heightened, and there was a super-normal pinkness in the epidermis of the cheek.
“Long time since we had a real, cosy talk, Beach.”
“Yes, sir.”
“When I was a kid, I used to be in and out of this pantry of yours all day long.”
“Yes, sir.”
A mood of extreme sentimentality now appeared to grip the young man. He sighed like a centenarian recalling far-off, happy things.
“Those were the days, Beach.”
“Yes, sir.”
“No problems then. No worries. And even if I had worries, I could always bring them to you, couldn’t I?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Remember the time I hid in here when my Uncle Gally was after me with a whangee for putting tin-tacks on his chair?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It was a close call, but you saved me. You were staunch and true. A man in a million. I’ve always thought that if there were more people like you in the world, it would be a better place.”
“I do my best to give satisfaction, sir.”
“And how you succeed! I shall never forget your kindness in those dear old days, Beach.”
“Extremely good of you to say so, sir.”
“Later, as the years went by, I did my best to repay you, by sharing with you such snips as came my way. Remember the time I gave you Blackbird for the Manchester November Handicap?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You collected a packet.”
“It did prove a remarkably sound investment, sir.”
“Yes. And so it went on. I look back through the years, and I seem to see you and me standing side by side, each helping each, each doing the square thing by the other. You certainly always did the square thing by me.”
“I trust I shall always continue to do so, sir.”
“I know you will, Beach. It isn’t in you to do otherwise. And that,” said Ronnie, beaming on him lovingly, “is why I feel so sure that, when I have stolen my uncle’s pig, you will be there helping to feed it till I give it back.”
The butler’s was not a face that registered nimbly. It took some time for a look of utter astonishment to cover its full acreage. Such a look had spread to perhaps two-thirds of its surface when Ronnie went on.
“You see, Beach, strictly between ourselves, I have made up my mind to sneak the Empress away and keep her hidden in that gamekeeper’s cottage in the west wood and then, when Uncle Clarence is sending out S.O.S.’s and offering large rewards, I shall find it there and return it, thus winning his undying gratitude and putting him in the right frame of mind to yield up a bit of my money that I want to get out of him. You get the idea?”
The butler blinked. He was plainly endeavouring to conquer a suspicion that his mind was darkening. Ronnie nodded kindly at him as he fought for speech.
“It’s the scheme of a lifetime, you were going to say? You’re quite right. It is. But it’s one of those schemes that call for a sympathetic fellow-worker. You see, pigs like the Empress, Beach, require large quantities of food at frequent intervals. I can’t possibly handle the entire commissariat department myself. That’s where you’re going to help me, like the splendid fellow you are and always have been.”
The butler had now begun to gargle slightly. He cast a look of agonised entreaty at the bullfinch, but the bird had no comfort to offer. It continued to chirp reflectively to itself, like a man trying to remember a tune in his bath.
“An enormous quantity of food they need,” proceeded Ronnie. “You’d be surprised. Here it is in this book I took from my uncle’s desk. At least six pounds of meal a day, not to mention milk or buttermilk and bran made sloppy with swill.”
Speech at last returned to the butler. It took the form at first of a faint sound like the cry of a frightened infant. Then words came.
“But, Mr. Ronald. . . !”
Ronnie stared at him incredulously. He seemed to be wrestling with an unbelievable suspicion.
“Don’t tell me you’re thinking of throwing me down, Beach? You? My friend since I was so high?” He laughed. He could see now how ridiculous the idea was. “Of course you aren’t! You couldn’t. Apart from wanting to do me a good turn, you’ve gathered by this time with that quick intelligence of yours, that there’s money in the thing. Ten quid down, Beach, the moment you give the nod. And nobody knows better than yourself that ten quid, invested on Baby Bones for the Medbury Selling Plate at the current odds, means considerably more than a hundred in your sock on settling-day.”
“But, sir. . . . It’s impossible. . . . I couldn’t dream. . . . If ever it was found out. . . . Really, I don’t think you ought to ask me, Mr. Ronald. . . .”
“Beach!”
“Yes, but, really, sir. . . .”
Ronnie fixed him with a compelling eye.
“Think well, Beach. Who gave you Creole Queen for the Lincolnshire?”
“But, Mr. Ronald. . . .”
“Who gave you Mazzawatte for the Jubilee Stakes, Beach? What a beauty!”
A tense silence fell upon the pantry. Even the bullfinch was hushed.
“And it may interest you to know,” said Ronnie, “that just before I left London I heard of something really hot for the Goodwood Cup.”
A low gasp escaped Beach. All butlers are sportsmen, and Beach had been a butler for eighteen years. Mere gratitude for past favours might not have been enough in itself to turn the scale, but this was different. On the subject of form for the Goodwood Cup he had been quite unable to reach a satisfying decision. It had baffled him. For days he had been groping in the darkness.
“Jujube, sir?” he whispered.
“Not Jujube.”
“Ginger George?”
“Not Ginger George. It’s no use your trying to guess, for you’ll never do it. Only two touts and the stable-cat know this one. But you shall know it, Beach, the minute I give that pig back and claim my reward. And that pig needs to be fed. Beach, how about it?”
For a long minute the butler stared before him, silent. Then, as if he felt that some simple, symbolic act of the sort was what this moment demanded, he went to the bullfinch’s cage and put a green-baize cloth over it.
“Tell me just what it is you wish me to do, Mr. Ronald,” he said.
VI
The dawn of another day crept upon Blandings Castle. Hour by hour the light grew stronger till, piercing the curtains of Ronnie’s bedroom, it woke him from a disturbed slumber. He turned sleepily on the pillow. He was dimly conscious of having had the most extraordinary dream, all about stealing pigs. In this dream. . . .
He sat up with a jerk. Like cold water dashed in his face had come the realisation that it had been no dream.
“Gosh!” said Ronnie, blinking.
Few things have such a tonic effect on a young man accustomed to be a little heavy on waking in the morning as the discovery that he has stolen a prize pig overnight. Usually, at this hour, Ronnie was more or less of an inanimate mass till kindly hands brought him his early cup of tea: but to-day he thrilled all down his pyjama-clad form with a novel alertness. Not since he had left school had he “sprung out of bed,” but he did so now. Bed, generally so attractive to him, had lost its fascination. He wanted to be up and about.
He had bathed, shaved, and was slipping into his trousers when his toilet was interrupted by the arrival of his old friend Hugo Carmody. On Hugo’s face there was an expression which it was impossible to misread. It indicated as plainly as a label that he had come bearing news, and Ronnie, guessing the nature of this news, braced himself to be suitably startled.
“Ronnie!”
“Well?”
“Heard what’s happened?”
“What?”
“You know that pig of your uncle’s?”
“What about it?”
“It’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Gone!” said Hugo, rolling the word round his tongue. “I met the old boy half a minute ago, and he told me. It seems he went down to the pig-bin for a before-breakfast look at the animal, and it wasn’t there.”
“Wasn’t there?”
“Wasn’t there.”
“How do you mean, wasn’t there?”
“Well, it wasn’t. Wasn’t there at all. It had gone.”
“Gone!”
“Its room was empty and its bed had not been slept in.”
“Well, I’m dashed!” said Ronnie.
He was feeling pleased with himself. He felt he had played his part well. Just the right incredulous amazement, changing just soon enough into stunned belief.
“You don’t seem very surprised,” said Hugo.
Ronnie was stung. The charge was monstrous.
“Yes, I do,” he cried. “I seem frightfully surprised. I am surprised. Why shouldn’t I be surprised?”
“All right. Just as you say. Spring about a bit more, though, another time when I bring you these sensational items. Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” said Hugo with satisfaction. “Out of evil cometh good. It’s an ill wind that has no turning. For me this startling occurrence has been a life-saver. I’ve got thirty-six hours leave out of it. The old boy is sending me up to London to get a detective.”
“A what?”
“A detective.”
“A detective!”
Ronnie was conscious of a marked spasm of uneasiness. He had not bargained for detectives.
“From a place called the Argus Inquiry Agency.”
Ronnie’s uneasiness increased. This thing was not going to be so simple after all. He had never actually met a detective, but he had read a lot about them. They nosed about and found clues. For all he knew, he might have left a hundred clues.
“Naturally I shall have to stay the night in town. And, much as I like this place,” said Hugo, “there’s no denying that a night in town won’t hurt. I’ve got fidgety feet, and a spot of dancing will do me all the good in the world. Bring back the roses to my cheeks.”
“Whose idea was it, getting down this blighted detective?” demanded Ronnie. He knew he was not being nonchalant, but he was disturbed.
“Mine.”
“Yours, eh?”
“All mine. I suggested it.”
“You did, did you?” said Ronnie.
He directed at his companion a swift glance of a kind that no one should have directed at an old friend.
“Oh?” he said morosely. “Well, buzz off. I want to dress.”
VII
A morning spent in solitary wrestling with a guilty conscience had left Ronnie Fish thoroughly unstrung. By the time the clock over the stable struck the hour of one, his mental condition had begun to resemble that of the late Eugene Aram. He paced the lower terrace with bent head, starting occasionally at the sudden chirp of a bird, and longed for Sue. Five minutes of Sue, he felt, would make him a new man.
It was perfectly foul, mused Ronnie, this being separated from the girl he loved. There was something about Sue . . . he couldn’t describe it, but something that always seemed to act on a fellow’s whole system like a powerful pick-me-up. She was the human equivalent of those pink drinks you went and got—or, rather, which you used to go and get before a good woman’s love had made you give up all that sort of thing—at that chemist’s at the top of the Haymarket after a wild night on the moors. It must have been with a girl like Sue in mind, he felt, that the poet had written those lines “When something something something brow, a ministering angel thou!”
At this point in his meditations, a voice from immediately behind him spoke his name.
“I say, Ronnie.”
It was only his cousin Millicent. He became calmer. For an instant, so deep always is a criminal’s need for a confidant, he had a sort of idea of sharing his hideous secret with this girl, between whom and himself there had long existed a pleasant friendship. Then he abandoned the notion. His secret was not one that could be lightly shared. Momentary relief of mind was not worth purchasing at the cost of endless anxiety.
“Ronnie, have you seen Mr. Carmody anywhere?”
“Hugo? He went up to London on the ten-thirty.”
“Went up to London? What for?”
“He’s gone to a place called the Argus Inquiry Agency to get a detective.”
“What, to investigate this business of the Empress?”
“Yes.”
Millicent laughed. The idea tickled her.
“I’d like to be there to see old man Argus’s face when he finds that all he’s wanted for is to track down missing pigs. I should think he would beat Hugo over the head with a blood-stain.”
Her laughter trailed away. There had come into her face the look of one suddenly visited by a displeasing thought.
“Ronnie!” she said.
“Hullo?”
“Do you know what?”
“What?”
“This looks fishy to me.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, I don’t know how it strikes you, but this Argus Inquiry Agency is presumably on the phone. Why didn’t Uncle Clarence just ring them up and ask them to send down a man?”
“Probably didn’t think of it.”
“Whose idea was it, anyway, getting down a man?”
“Hugo’s.”
“He suggested that he should run up to town?”
“Yes.”
“I thought as much,” said Millicent darkly.
“What do you mean?”
Millicent’s eyes narrowed. She kicked moodily at a passing worm.
“I don’t like it,” she said. “It’s fishy. Too much zeal. It looks very much to me as if our Mr. Carmody had a special reason for wanting to get up to London for the night. And I think I know what the reason was. Did you ever hear of a girl named Sue Brown?”
The start which Ronnie gave eclipsed in magnitude all the other starts he had given that morning. And they had been many and severe.
“It isn’t true!”
“What isn’t true?”
“That there’s anything whatever between Hugo and Sue Brown.”
“Oh? Well, I had it from an authoritative source.”
It was not the worm’s lucky morning. It had now reached Ronnie, and he kicked at it, too. The worm had the illusion that it had begun to rain shoes.
“I’ve got to go in and make a phone call,” said Millicent, abruptly.
Ronnie scarcely noticed her departure. He had supposed himself to have been doing some pretty tense thinking all the morning, but, compared with its activity now, his brain hitherto had been stagnant.
It couldn’t be true, he told himself. Sue had said definitely that it wasn’t, and she couldn’t have been lying to him. Girls like Sue didn’t lie. And yet. . . .
The sound of the luncheon gong floated over the garden.
Well, one thing was certain. It was simply impossible to remain here at Blandings Castle, getting his mind poisoned with doubts and speculations which for the life of him he could not keep out of it. If he took the two-seater and drove off in it the moment this infernal meal was over, he could be in London before eight. He could call at Sue’s flat; receive her assurance once more that Hugo Carmody, tall and lissom though he might be, expert on the saxophone though he admittedly was, meant nothing to her; take her out to dinner and, while dining, ease his mind of that which weighed upon it. Then, fortified with comfort and advice, he could pop into the car and be back at the castle by lunch-time on the following day.
It wasn’t, of course, that he didn’t trust her implicitly. Nevertheless. . .
Ronnie went in to lunch.
CHAPTER IV
I
IF you go up Beeston Street in the south-western postal division of London and follow the pavement on the right-hand side, you come to a blind alley called Hayling Court. If you enter the first building on the left of this blind alley and mount a flight of stairs, you find yourself facing a door, on the ground-glass of which is the legend:
ARGUS
INQUIRY
AGENCY
LTD.
and below it, to one side, the smaller legend
P. Frobisher Pilbeam Mgr.
And if, at about the hour when Ronnie Fish had stepped into his two-seater in the garage of Blandings Castle, you had opened this door and gone in and succeeded in convincing the gentlemanly office-boy that yours was a bona fide visit, having nothing to do with the sale of life insurance, proprietary medicines or handsomely bound sets of Dumas, you would have been admitted to the august presence of the Mgr. himself. P. Frobisher Pilbeam was seated at his desk, reading a telegram which had arrived during his absence at lunch.
This is peculiarly an age of young men starting out in business for themselves; of rare, unfettered spirits chafing at the bonds of employment and refusing to spend their lives working forty-eight weeks in the year for a salary. Quite early in his career Pilbeam had seen where the big money lay, and decided to go after it.
As editor of that celebrated weekly scandal-sheet, Society Spice, Percy Pilbeam had had exceptional opportunities of discovering in good time the true bent of his genius: with the result that, after three years of nosing out people’s discreditable secrets on behalf of the Mammoth Publishing Company, his employers, he had come to the conclusion that a man of his gifts would be doing far better for himself nosing out such secrets on his own behalf. Considerably to the indignation of Lord Tilbury, the Mammoth’s guiding spirit, he had borrowed some capital, handed in his portfolio, and was now in an extremely agreeable financial position.
The telegram over which he sat brooding with wrinkled forehead was just the sort of telegram an Inquiry agent ought to have been delighted to receive, being thoroughly cryptic and consequently a pleasing challenge to his astuteness as a detective: but Percy Pilbeam, in his ten-minutes acquaintance with it, had come to dislike it heartily. He preferred his telegrams easier.
It ran as follows:
Be sure send best man investigate big robbery.
It was unsigned.
What made the thing particularly annoying was that it was so tantalising. A big robbery probably meant jewels, with a correspondingly big fee attached to their recovery. But you cannot scour England at random, asking people if they have had a big robbery in their neighbourhood.
Reluctantly, he gave the problem up: and, producing a pocket mirror, began with the aid of a pen nib, to curl his small and revolting moustache. His thoughts had drifted now to Sue. They were not altogether sunny thoughts, for the difficulty of making Sue’s acquaintance was beginning to irk Percy Pilbeam. He had written her notes. He had sent her flowers. And nothing had happened. She ignored the notes, and what she did with the flowers he did not know. She certainly never thanked him for them.
Brooding upon these matters, he was interrupted by the opening of the door. The gentlemanly office-boy entered. Pilbeam looked up, annoyed.
“How many times have I told you not to come in here without knocking?” he asked sternly.
The office-boy reflected.
“Seven,” he replied.
“What would you have done if I had been in conference with an important client?”
“Gone out again,” said the office-boy. Working in a Private Inquiry Agency, you drop into the knack of solving problems.
“Well, go out now.”
“Very good, sir. I merely wished to say that, while you were absent at lunch, a gentleman called.”
“Eh? Who was he?”
The office-boy, who liked atmosphere and hoped some day to be promoted to the company of Mr. Murphy and Mr. Jones, the two active assistants who had their lair on the ground floor, thought for a moment of saying that, beyond the obvious facts that the caller was a Freemason, left-handed, a vegetarian and a traveller in the East, he had made no deductions from his appearance. He perceived, however, that his employer was not in the vein for that sort of thing.
“A Mr. Carmody, sir. Mr. Hugo Carmody.”
“Ah!” Pilbeam displayed interest. “Did he say he would call again?”
“He mentioned the possibility, sir.”
“Well, if he does, inform Mr. Murphy and tell him to be ready when I ring.”
The office-boy retired, and Pilbeam returned to his thoughts of Sue. He was quite certain now that he did not like her attitude. Her attitude wounded him. Another thing he deplored was the reluctance of stage-door keepers to reveal the private addresses of the personnel of the company. Really, there seemed to be no way of getting to know the girl at all.
Eight respectful knocks sounded on the door. The office-boy though occasionally forgetful, was conscientious. He had restored the average.
“Well?”
“Mr. Carmody to see you, sir.”
Pilbeam once more relegated Sue to the hinterland of his mind. Business was business.
“Show him in.”
“This way, sir,” said the office-boy with a graceful courtliness which, even taking into account the fact that he suffered from adenoids, had an old-world flavour, and Hugo sauntered across the threshold.
Hugo felt, and was looking, quietly happy. He seemed to bring the sunshine with him. Nobody could have been more wholeheartedly attached than he to Blandings Castle and the society of his Millicent, but he was finding London, revisited, singularly attractive.
“And this, if I mistake not, Watson, is our client now,” said Hugo genially.
Such was his feeling of universal benevolence that he embraced with his good-will even the repellent-looking young man who had risen from the desk. Percy Pilbeam’s eyes were too small and too close together and he marcelled his hair in a manner distressing to right-thinking people, but to-day he had to be lumped in with the rest of the species as a man and a brother, so Hugo bestowed a dazzling smile upon him. He still thought Pilbeam should not have been wearing pimples with a red tie. One or the other if he liked. But not both. Nevertheless he smiled upon him.
“Fine day,” he said.
“Quite,” said Pilbeam.
“Very jolly, the smell of the asphalt and carbonic gas.”
“Quite.”
“Some people might call London a shade on the stuffy side on an afternoon like this. But not Hugo Carmody.”
“No?”
“No. H. Carmody finds it just what the doctor ordered.” He sat down. “Well, sleuth,” he said, “to business. I called before lunch, but you were out.”
“Yes.”
“But here I am again. And I suppose you want to know what I’ve come about?”
“When you’re ready to get round to it,” said Pilbeam patiently.
Hugo stretched his long legs comfortably.
“Well, I know you detective blokes always want a fellow to begin at the beginning and omit no detail, for there is no saying how important some seemingly trivial fact may be. Omitting birth and early education then, I am at the moment private secretary to Lord Emsworth at Blandings Castle in Shropshire. And,” said Hugo, “I maintain, a jolly good secretary. Others may think differently, but that is my view.”
“Blandings Castle?”
A thought had struck the proprietor of the Argus Inquiry Agency. He fumbled in his desk and produced the mysterious telegram. Yes, as he had fancied, it had been handed in at a place called Market Blandings.
“Do you know anything about this?” he asked pushing it across the desk.
Hugo glanced at the document.
“The old boy must have sent that after I left,” he said. “The absence of signature is, no doubt, due to mental stress. Lord Emsworth is greatly perturbed. A-twitter. Shaken to the core, you might say.”
“About this robbery?”
“Exactly. It has got right in amongst him.”
Pilbeam reached for pen and paper. There was a stern, set, bloodhound sort of look in his eyes.
“Kindly give me the details.”
Hugo pondered for a moment.
“It was a dark and stormy night. . . . No, I’m a liar. The moon was riding serenely in the sky. . . .”
“This big robbery? Tell me about it.”
Hugo raised his eyebrows.
“Big?”
“The telegram says ‘big.’ ”
“These telegraph-operators will try to make sense. You can’t stop them editing. The word should be ‘pig.’ Lord Emsworth’s pig has been stolen!”
“Pig!” cried Percy Pilbeam.
Hugo looked at him a little anxiously.
“You know what a pig is, surely? If not, I’m afraid there is a good deal of tedious spade work ahead of us.”
The roseate dreams which the proprietor of the Argus had had of missing jewels broke like bubbles. He was deeply affronted. A man of few ideals, the one deep love of his life was for this Inquiry Agency which he had created and nursed to prosperity through all the dangers and vicissitudes which beset Inquiry Agencies in their infancy. And the thought of being expected to apply its complex machinery to a search for lost pigs cut him, as Millicent had predicted, to the quick.
“Does Lord Emsworth seriously suppose that I have time to waste looking for stolen pigs?” he demanded shrilly. “I never heard such nonsense in my life.”
“Almost the exact words which all the other Hawkshaws used. Finding you not at home,” explained Hugo, “I spent the morning going round to other Agencies. I think I visited six in all, and every one of them took the attitude you do.”
“I am not surprised.”
“Nevertheless, it seemed to me that they, like you, lacked vision. This pig, you see, is a prize pig. Don’t picture to yourself, something with a kink in its tail sporting idly in the mud. Imagine, rather, a favourite daughter kidnapped from her ancestral home. This is heavy stuff, I assure you. Restore the animal in time for the Agricultural Show, and you may ask of Lord Emsworth what you will, even unto half his kingdom.”
Percy Pilbeam rose. He had heard enough.
“I will not trouble Lord Emsworth. The Argus Inquiry Agency. . . .”
“. . . does not detect pigs? I feared as much. Well, well, so be it. And now,” said Hugo, affably, “may I take advantage of the beautiful friendship which has sprung up between us to use your telephone?”
Without waiting for permission—for which, indeed, he would have had to wait some time—he drew the instrument to him and gave a number. He then began to chat again.
“You seem a knowledgeable sort of bloke,” he said. “Perhaps you can tell me where the village swains go these days when they want to dance upon the green? I have been absent for some little time from the centre of the vortex, and I have become as a child in these matters. What is the best that London has to offer to a young man with his blood up and the vine leaves more or less in his hair?”
Pilbeam was a man of business. He had no wish to converse with this client who had disappointed him and wounded his finest feelings, but it so happened that he had recently bought shares in a rising restaurant.
“Mario’s,” he replied promptly. “It’s the only place.”
Hugo sighed. Once he had dreamed that the answer to a question like that would have been “The Hot Spot.” But where was the Hot Spot now? Gone like the flowers that wither in the first frost. The lion and the lizard kept the courts where Jamshyd gloried and—after hours, unfortunately, which had started all the trouble—drank deep. Ah well, life was pretty complex.
A voice from the other end of the wire broke in on his reverie. He recognised it as that of the porter of the block of flats where Sue had her tiny abode.
“Hullo? Bashford? Mr. Carmody speaking. Will you make a long arm and haul Miss Brown to the instrument. Eh? Miss Sue Brown of course. No other Browns are any use to me whatsoever. Right ho, I’ll wait.”
The astute detective never permits himself to exhibit emotion. Pilbeam turned his start of surprise into a grave, distrait nod, as if he were thinking out deep problems. He took up his pen and drew three crosses and a squiggle on the blotting-paper. He was glad that no gentlemanly instinct had urged him to leave his visitor alone to do his telephoning.
“Mario’s, eh?” said Hugo. “What’s the band like?”
“It’s Leopold’s.”
“Good enough for me,” said Hugo with enthusiasm. He hummed a bar or two, and slid his feet dreamily about the carpet. “I’m shockingly out of practice, dash it. Well, that’s that. Touching this other matter, you’re sure you won’t come to Blandings?”
“Quite.”
“Nice place. Gravel soil, spreading views, well laid-out pleasure grounds, Company’s own water. . . . I would strongly advise you to bring your magnifying-glass and spend the summer. However, if you really feel. . . . Sue! Hullo-ullo-ullo? This is Hugo. Yes just up in town for the night on a mission of extraordinary secrecy and delicacy which I am not empowered to reveal. Speaking from the Argus Inquiry Agency, by courtesy of proprietor. I was wondering if you would care to come out and help me restore my lost youth, starting at about eight-thirty. Eh?”
A silence had fallen at the other end of the wire. What was happening was that in the hall of the block of flats Sue’s conscience was fighting a grim battle against heavy odds. Ranged in opposition to it were her loneliness, her love of dancing and her desire once more to see Hugo, who, though he was not a man one could take seriously, always cheered her up and made her laugh. And she had been needing a laugh for days.
Hugo thought he had been cut off.
“Hullo-ullo-ullo-ullo-ullo-ullo!” he barked peevishly.
“Don’t yodel like that,” said Sue. “You’ve nearly made me deaf.”
“Sorry, dear heart. I thought the machine had conked. Well, how do you react? Is it a bet?”
“I do want to see you again,” said Sue, hesitatingly.
“You shall. In person. Clean shirt, white waistcoat, the Carmody studs, and everything.”
“Well. . . .”
A psychically gifted bystander, standing in the hall of the block of flats, would have heard at this moment a faint moan. It was Sue’s conscience collapsing beneath an unexpected flank attack. She had just remembered that if she went to dine with Hugo she would learn all the latest news about Ronnie. It put the whole thing in an entirely different light. Surely Ronnie himself could have no objection to the proposed feast if he knew that all she was going for was to talk about him? She might dance a little, of course, but purely by the way. Her real motive in accepting the invitation, she now realised quite clearly, was to hear all about Ronnie.
“All right,” she said. “Where?”
“Mario’s. They tell me it’s the posh spot these days.”
“Mario’s!”
“Yes. M. for mange, A. for asthma, R. for rheumatism . . . oh, you’ve got it? All right, then. At eight-thirty.”
Hugo put the receiver back. Once more he allowed his dazzling smile to play upon the Argus’ proprietor.
“Much obliged for use of instrument,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” said Pilbeam.
“Well, I’ll be pushing along. Ring us up if you change your mind. Market Blandings 32X. If you don’t take on the job no one will. I suppose there are other sleuths in London besides the bevy I’ve interviewed to-day, but I’m not going to see them. I consider that I have done my bit and am through.” He looked about him. “Make a good thing out of this business?” he asked, for he was curious on these points and was never restrained by delicacy from seeking information.
“Quite.”
“What does the work consist of I’ve often wondered. Measuring footprints and putting the tips of your fingers together, and all that, I suppose?”
“We are frequently asked to follow people and report on their movements.”
Hugo laughed amusedly.
“Well, don’t go following me and reporting on my movements. Much trouble might ensue. Bung-oh.”
“Good-bye,” said Percy Pilbeam.
He pressed a bell on the desk, and moved to the door to show his visitor out.
II
Leopold’s justly famous band, its cheeks puffed out and its eyeballs rolling, was playing a popular melody with lots of stomp in it, and for the first time since she had accepted Hugo’s invitation to the dance, Sue, gliding round the floor, was conscious of a spiritual calm. Her conscience, quieted by the moaning of the saxophones, seemed to have retired from business. It realised, no doubt, the futility of trying to pretend that there was anything wrong in a girl enjoying this delightful exercise.
How absurd, she felt, Ronnie’s objections were. It was, considered Sue, becoming analytical, as if she were to make a tremendous fuss because he played tennis and golf with girls. Dancing was just a game like those two pastimes, and it so happened that you had to have a man with you or you couldn’t play it. To get all jealous and throaty just because one went out dancing was simply ridiculous.
On the other hand, placid though her conscience now was, she had to admit that it was a relief to feel that he would never know of this little outing.
Men were such children when they were in love. Sue found herself sighing over the opposite sex’s eccentricities. If they were only sensible, how simple life would be. It amazed her that Ronnie could ever have any possible doubt, however she might spend her leisure hours, that her heart belonged to him alone. She marvelled that he should suppose for a moment that even if she danced all night and every night with every other man in the world it would make any difference to her feelings towards him.
All the same, holding the peculiar views he did, he must undoubtedly be humoured.
“You won’t breathe a word to Ronnie about our coming here, will you, Hugo?” she said, repeating an injunction which had been her opening speech on arriving at the restaurant.
“Not a syllable.”
“I can trust you?”
“Implicitly. Telegraphic address, Discretion, Market Blandings.”
“Ronnie’s funny, you see.”
“One long scream.”
“I mean, he wouldn’t understand.”
“No. Great surprise it was to me,” said Hugo, doing complicated things with his feet, “to hear that you and the old leper had decided to team up, you could have knocked me down with a feather. Odd he never confided in his boyhood friend.”
“Well, it wouldn’t do for it to get about.”
“Are you suggesting that Hugo Carmody is a babbler?”
“You do like gossiping. You know you do.”
“I know nothing of the sort,” said Hugo with dignity. “If I were asked to give my opinion, I should say that I was essentially a strong, silent man.”
He made a complete circle of the floor in that capacity. His taciturnity surprised Sue.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Dudgeon,” said Hugo.
“What?”
“I’m sulking. That remark of yours rankles. That totally unfounded accusation that I cannot keep a secret. It may interest you to know that I, too, am secretly engaged and have never so much as mentioned it to a soul.”
“Hugo!”
“Yes. Betrothed. And so at long last came a day when Love wound his silken fetters about Hugo Carmody.”
“Who’s the unfortunate girl?”
“There is no unfortunate girl. The lucky girl. . . . Was that your foot?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry. I haven’t got the hang of these new steps yet. The lucky girl, I was saying, is Miss Millicent Threepwood.”
As if stunned by the momentousness of the announcement, the band stopped playing: and, chancing to be immediately opposite their table, the man who never revealed secrets led his partner to her chair. She was gazing at him ecstatically.
“You don’t mean that?”
“I do mean that. What did you think I meant?”
“I never heard anything so wonderful in my life!”
“Good news?”
“I’m simply delighted.”
“I’m pleased, too,” said Hugo.
“I’ve been trying not to admit it to myself, but I was very scared about Millicent. Ronnie told me the family wanted him and her to marry, and you never know what may happen when families throw their weight about. And now it’s all right!”
“Quite all right.”
The music had started again, but Sue remained in her seat.
“Not?” said Hugo, astonished.
“Not just yet. I want to talk. You don’t realise what this means to me. Besides, your dancing’s gone off, Hugo. You’re not the man you were.”
“I need practice.” He lit a cigarette and tapped a philosophical vein of thought, eyeing the gyrating couples meditatively. “It’s the way they’re always introducing new steps that bothers the man who has been living out in the woods. I have become a rusty rustic.”
“I didn’t mean you were bad. Only you used to be such a marvel. Dancing with you was like floating on a pink cloud above an ocean of bliss.”
“A very accurate description, I should imagine,” agreed Hugo. “But don’t blame me. Blame these Amalgamated Professors of the Dance, or whatever they call themselves—the birds who get together every couple of weeks or so to decide how they can make things more difficult. Amazing thing that they won’t leave well alone.”
“You must have change.”
“I disagree with you,” said Hugo. “No other walk in life is afflicted by a gang of thugs who are perpetually altering the rules of the game. When you learn to golf, the professional doesn’t tell you to bring the club up slowly and keep the head steady and roll the forearms and bend the left knee and raise the left heel and keep your eye on the ball and not sway back and a few more things, and then, after you’ve sweated yourself to the bone learning all that, suddenly add ‘of course, you understand that this is merely intended to see you through till about three weeks from next Thursday. After that the Supreme Grand Council of Consolidated Divot-Shifters will scrap these methods and invent an entirely new set!’ ”
“Is this more dudgeon?”
“No. Not dudgeon.”
“It sounds like dudgeon. I believe your little feelings are hurt because I said your dancing wasn’t as good as it used to be.”
“Not at all. We welcome criticism.”
“Well, get your mind off it and tell me all about you and Millicent and . . .”
“When I was about five,” resumed Hugo, removing his cigarette from the holder and inserting another, “I attended my first dancing-school. I’m a bit shaky on some of the incidents of the days when I was trailing clouds of glory, but I do remember that dancing-school. At great trouble and expense I was taught to throw up a rubber ball with my left hand and catch it with my right, keeping the small of the back rigid and generally behaving in a graceful and attractive manner. It doesn’t sound a likely sort of thing to learn at a dancing-school, but I swear to you that that’s what the curriculum was. Now, the point I am making . . .”
“Did you fall in love with Millicent right away, or was it gradual?”
“The point I am making is this. I became very good at throwing and catching that rubber ball. I dislike boasting, but I stood out conspicuously among a pretty hot bunch. People would nudge each other and say ‘Who is he?’ behind their hands. I don’t suppose, when I was feeling right, I missed the rubber ball more than once in twenty goes. But what good does it do me now? Absolutely none. Long before I got a chance of exhibiting my accomplishment in public and having beautiful women fawn on me for my skill, the Society of Amalgamated Professors of the Dance decided that the Rubber-Ball Glide, or whatever it was called, was out of date.”
“Is she very pretty?”
“And what I say is that all this chopping and changing handicaps a chap. I am perfectly prepared at this moment to step out on that floor and heave a rubber ball about, but it simply isn’t being done nowadays. People wouldn’t understand what I was driving at. In other words, all the time and money and trouble that I spent on mastering the Rubber-Ball Shimmy is a dead loss. I tell you, if the Amalgamated Professors want to make people cynics, they’re going the right way to work.”
“I wish you would tell me all about Millicent.”
“In a moment. Dancing, they taught me at school, dates back to the early Egyptians, who ascribed the invention to the god Thoth. The Phrygian corybantes danced in honour of somebody whose name I’ve forgotten, and every time the festival of Rhea Silvia came round the ancient Roman hoofers were there with their hair in a braid. But what was good enough for the god Thoth isn’t good enough for these blighted Amalgamated Professors! Oh no! And it’s been the same all through the ages. I don’t suppose there has been a moment in history when some poor, well-meaning devil, with ambition at one end of him and two left feet at the other, wasn’t getting it in the neck.”
“And all this,” said Sue, “because you trod on my foot for just one half-second.”
“Hugo Carmody dislikes to tread on women’s feet, even for half a second. He has his pride. Ever hear of Father Mariana?”
“No.”
“Mariana, George. Born twelve hundred and something. Educated privately and at Leipsic University. Hobbies, fishing, illuminating vellum and mangling the wurzel. You must have heard of old Pop Mariana?”
“I haven’t, and I don’t want to. I want to hear about Millicent.”
“It was the opinion of Father Mariana that dancing was a deadly sin. He was particularly down, I may mention, on the saraband. He said the saraband did more harm than the Plague. I know just how he felt. I’ll bet he had worked like a dog at twenty-five pazazas the complete course of twelve lessons, guaranteed to teach the fandango: and, just when his instructor had finally told him that he was fit to do it at the next Saturday Night Social, along came the Amalgamated Brothers with their new-fangled saraband, and where was Pop? Leaning against the wall with the other foot-and-mouth diseasers, trying to pretend dancing bored him. Did I hear you say you wanted a few facts about Millicent?”
“You did.”
“Sweetest girl on earth.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. It’s well known. All over Shropshire.”
“And she really loves you?”
“Between you and me,” said Hugo confidentially. “I don’t wonder you speak in that amazed tone. If you saw her, you’d be still more surprised. I am a man who thinks before he speaks. I weigh my words. And I tell you solemnly that that girl is too good for me.”
“But you’re a sweet darling precious pet.”
“I know I’m a sweet darling precious pet. Nevertheless I still maintain that she is too good for me. She is the nearest thing to an angel that ever came glimmering through the laurels in the quiet evenfall in the garden by the turrets of the old manorial hall.”
“Hugo! I’d no idea you were so poetical.”
“Enough to make a chap poetical, loving a girl like that.”
“And you really do love her?”
Hugo took a feverish gulp of champagne and rolled his eyeballs as if he had been a member of Leopold’s justly famous band.
“Madly. Devotedly. And when I think how I have deceived her my soul sickens.”
“Have you deceived her?”
“Not yet. But I’m going to in about five minutes. I put in a phone call to Blandings just now, and when I get through I shall tell her I’m speaking from my hotel bedroom, where I am on the point of going to bed. You see,” said Hugo confidentially, “Millicent, though practically perfect in every other respect, is one of those girls who might misunderstand this little night out of mine, did it but come to her ears. Speaking of which, you ought to see them. Like alabaster shells.”
“I know what you mean. Ronnie’s like that.”
Hugo stared.
“Ronnie?”
“Yes.”
“You mean to sit there and tell me that Ronnie’s ears are like alabaster shells?”
“No, I meant that he would be furious if he knew that I had come out dancing. And, oh, I do love dancing so,” sighed Sue.
“He must never know!”
“No. That’s why I asked you just now not to tell him.”
“I won’t. Secrecy and silence. Thank goodness there’s nobody who could tell Millicent, even if they wanted to. Ah! this must be the bringer of glad tidings, come to say my call is through. All set?” he asked the page-boy who had threaded his way through the crowd to their table.
“Yes, sir.”
Hugo rose.
“Amuse yourself somehow till I return.”
“I shan’t be dull,” said Sue.
She watched him disappear, then leaned back in her seat, watching the dancers. Her eyes were bright, and Hugo’s news had brought a flush to her cheeks. Percy Pilbeam, who had been hovering in the background, hoping for such an opportunity ever since his arrival at the restaurant, thought he had never seen her looking prettier. He edged between the tables and took Hugo’s vacated chair. There are men who, approaching a member of the other sex, wait for permission before sitting down, and men who sit down without permission. Pilbeam was one of the latter.
“Good evening,” he said.
She turned, and was aware of a nasty-looking little man at her elbow. He seemed to have materialised from nowhere.
“May I introduce myself, Miss Brown?” said this blot. “My name is Pilbeam.”
At the same moment, there appeared in the doorway and stood there raking the restaurant with burning eyes the flannel-suited figure of Ronald Overbury Fish.
III
Ronnie Fish’s estimate of the time necessary for reaching London from Blandings Castle in a sports-model two-seater had been thrown out of gear by two mishaps. Half-way down the drive the car had developed some mysterious engine-trouble, which had necessitated taking it back to the stables and having it overhauled by Lord Emsworth’s chauffeur. It was not until nearly an hour later that he had been able to resume his journey, and a blow-out near Oxford had delayed him still further. He arrived at Sue’s flat just as Sue and Hugo were entering Mario’s.
Ringing Sue’s front-door bell produced no result. Ronnie regretted that in the stress of all the other matters that occupied his mind he had forgotten to send her a telegram. He was about to creep away and have a bite of dinner at the Drones Club—a prospect which pleased him not at all, for the Drones at dinner-time was always full of hearty eggs who talked much too loud for a worried man’s nerves and might even go so far as to throw bread at him, when, descending the stairs into the hall, he came upon Bashford, the porter.
Bashford, who knew Ronnie well, said “ ’Ullo, Mr. Fish,” and Ronnie said “Hullo, Bashford,” and Bashford said the weather seemed to keep up, and Ronnie said “Yes, that’s right, it does,” and it was at this point that the porter uttered these memorable—and, as events proved, epoch-making words:
“If you’re looking for Miss Brown, Mr. Fish, I’ve an idea she’s gone to a place called Mario’s.”
He poured further details into Ronnie’s throbbing ear. Mr. Carmody had rung up on the phone, might have been ar-parse four, and he, Bashford, not listening but happening to hear, had thought he had caught something said about this place Mario’s.
“Mario’s?” said Ronnie. “Thanks, Bashford. Mario’s eh? Right!”
The porter, for Eton and Cambridge train their sons well, found nothing in the way Mr. Fish spoke to cause a thrill. Totally unaware that he had been conversing with Othello’s younger brother, he went back to his den in the basement and sat down with a good appetite to steak and chips. And Ronnie, quivering from head to foot, started the car and drove off.
Jealousy, said Shakespeare, and he was about right, is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat he feeds on. By the time Ronald Overbury Fish pushed through the swinging-door that guards the revelry at Mario’s from the gaze of the passer-by, he was, like the Othello he so much resembled, perplexed in the extreme. He felt hot all over, then cold all over, then hot again, and the waiter who stopped him on the threshold of the dining-room to inform him that evening-dress was indispensable on the dancing-floor and that flannel suits must go up to the balcony, was running a risk which would have caused his insurance company to purse its lips and shake its head.
Fortunately for him, Ronnie did not hear. He was scanning the crowd before him in an effort to find Sue.
“Plenty of room in the balcony, sir,” urged the waiter, continuing to play with fire.
This time Ronnie did become dimly aware that somebody was addressing him and he was about to turn and give the man one look, when half-way down a grove of black coats and gaily coloured frocks, he suddenly saw what he was searching for. The next moment he was pushing a path through the throng, treading on the toes of brave men and causing fair women to murmur bitterly that this sort of thing ought to be prevented by the management.
Five yards from Sue’s table, Ronnie Fish would have said that his cup was full and could not possibly be made any fuller. But when he had covered another two and pushed aside a fat man who was standing in the fairway, he realised his mistake. It was not Hugo who was Sue’s companion, but a reptilian-looking squirt with narrow eyes and his hair done in ridges. And, as he saw him, something seemed to go off in Ronnie’s brain like a released spring.
A waiter, pausing with a tray of glasses, pointed out to him that on the dancing-floor evening-dress was indispensable.
Gentlemen in flannel suits, he added, could be accommodated in the balcony.
“Plenty of room in the balcony, sir,” said the waiter.
Ronnie reached the table. Pilbeam at the moment was saying that he had wanted for a long time to meet Sue. He hoped she had got his flowers all right.
It was perhaps a natural desire to look at anything but this odious and thrusting individual who had forced his society upon her, that caused Sue to raise her eyes.
Raising them she met Ronnie’s. And, as she saw him, her conscience, which she had supposed lulled for the night, sprang to life more vociferous than ever. It had been but crouching, the better to spring.
“Ronnie!”
She started up. Pilbeam also rose. The waiter with the glasses pressed the edge of his tray against Ronnie’s elbow in a firm but respectful manner and told him that on the dancing floor evening-dress was indispensable. Gentlemen in flannel suits, however, would find ample accommodation in the balcony.
Ronnie did not speak. And it would have been better if Sue had not done so. For, at this crisis, some subconscious instinct, of the kind which is always waiting to undo us at critical moments, suggested to her dazed mind that when two men who do not know each other are standing side by side in a restaurant one ought to introduce them.
“Mr. Fish, Mr. Pilbeam,” murmured Sue.
Annotations to this novel in its book form are on this site.
The chapter and section divisions in this serial episode match those in the UK book, beginning in the middle of section ii of Chapter III.
Printer’s errors corrected above:
Magazine, p. 105a, had ‘intoxicated?’ ” and “One ‘x.’ ”; punctuation moved outside the single quotation marks as in UK book.
Magazine, p. 109a, had “a search for lost pigs cut him as Millicent had predicted, to the quick.”; comma added after ‘him’ as in books.
Magazine, p. 109b, had “Rightho, I’ll wait.”; corrected to ‘Right ho’ as in Part 2.
Magazine, p. 110a, had “eighty-thirty” twice; corrected to ‘eight-thirty’ as in all other sources.
Magazine, p. 112c, had, on successive lines of type,
…could be accommodated in the balcony,
“Plenty of room in the balcony
sir,” said the waiter.
Comma after first ‘balcony’ changed to period, and comma added after second ‘balcony’ to match book text.
Later, p. 112c, magazine had “Gentlemen in flannel suits, however. would find”; period changed to comma to match book text.
Possible errors not corrected:
Magazine, p. 21, among the headlines credits the illustrations to Albert Wilkinson, though all other episodes in this serial are illustrated by Gilbert Wilkinson.
Magazine, p. 108c, has “The office-boy though occasionally forgetful, was conscientious.” UK book matches this; US book adds a comma after ‘office-boy’.
Editorial error not corrected:
In the opening editorial synopsis, p. 21b, Mortimer Mason is described as Sue’s agent; he is actually her employer.