Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsThe Pall Mall Magazine, June 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. 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.
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.
Millicent’s 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 Mr. Mason’s 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 and stated that Mr. Pilbeam was so far a stranger to her. 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 again at Blandings Ronnie was not less astonished than his uncle when Baxter turned up in a caravan in the grounds. Lady Constance had summoned him secretly in her horror at the idea of Gally’s reminiscences being published. Baxter agreed to get hold of the manuscript and destroy it.
Ronnie meanwhile was cogitating ways and means of acquiring money and his charming Sue. An attempt at borrowing money from his uncle to start a pig farm did not meet with success. During the resulting argument Gally appeared and mentioned his suspicion that Sir Gregory Parsloe would stick at nothing to clear the way for the victory in the forthcoming show of his own prize pig, Pride of Matchingham. Ronnie was stunned by a bright idea. Suppose he stole the Empress, hid her for a day or two and then spectacularly restored her to his uncle Clarence. And Beach was the man to help him.
That night the deed was done.
Next day Ronnie’s troubles began. Hugo, full of zeal, advised his uncle to call in the Argus Private Inquiry Agency to locate the Empress, and himself went up to town to start the ball rolling. Millicent asked Ronnie if he too thought that Hugo had a special reason for wanting to go up to town, and if that special reason was Sue Brown. Ronnie decided he would run up to call on Sue, not that he didn’t trust her implicitly! Nevertheless. . . .
P. Frobisher Pilbeam, Manager of the Argus Agency, was inclined to scorn the idea of investigating a pig robbery, but Hugo’s silver tongue prevailed. Business done, Hugo decided a platonic evening with Sue would cheer him up and telephoned her from Pilbeam’s office to meet him at Mario’s. Pilbeam saw a chance of a long-desired introduction to Sue; he too decided to go to Mario’s.
During the evening Hugo left Sue for a minute to telephone Millicent that he was spending a quiet evening in his hotel bedroom. Pilbeam’s chance had come. He walked up and introduced himself to Sue. At that moment Ronald Overbury Fish, having tracked Sue to Mario’s, appeared in the doorway and strode across the room. “Mr. Fish, Mr. Pilbeam,” murmured Sue dazedly.
CHAPTER IV—Continued
ONLY the ringing of the bell that heralds the first round of a heavy-weight championship fight could have produced more instant and violent results. Through Ronnie’s flannel-clad body a sort of galvanic shock seemed to pass. Pilbeam! He had come expecting Hugo, and Hugo would have been bad enough. But Pilbeam! The man she had said she didn’t even know! The man she hadn’t met! The man whose gifts of flowers she had professed to resent. In person! In the flesh! Hobnobbing with her in a restaurant! By Gad, he meant to say! By George! Good Gosh!
His fists clenched. Eton was forgotten, Cambridge not even a memory. He inhaled so sharply that a man at the next table who was eating a mousse of chicken stabbed himself in the chin with his fork. He turned on Pilbeam with a hungry look. And at this moment the waiter, raising his voice a little, for he was beginning to think that Ronnie’s hearing was slightly affected, mentioned as an interesting piece of information that the management of Mario’s preferred to reserve the dancing-floor exclusively for clients in evening dress. But there was a bright side. Gentlemen in flannel suits could be accommodated in the balcony.
It was the waiter who saved Percy Pilbeam. Just as a mosquito may divert for an instant a hunter who is about to spring at and bite in the neck a tiger of the jungle, so did this importunate waiter divert Ronnie Fish. What it was all about, he was too overwrought to ascertain, but he knew that the man was annoying him, pestering him, trying to chat with him when he had business elsewhere. With all the force of a generous nature, sorely tried, he plugged the waiter in the stomach with his elbow. There was a crash which even Leopold’s band could not drown. The man who had stabbed himself with the fork had his meal still further spoiled by the fact that it suddenly began to rain glass. And, as regards the other occupants of the restaurant, the word “Sensation” about sums the situation up.
Ronnie and the management of Mario’s now formed two sharply contrasted schools of thought. To Ronnie the only thing that seemed to matter was this Pilbeam—this creeping, slinking, cuckoo-in-the-nest Pilbeam, the Lothario who had lowered all speed records in underhand villainy by breaking up his home before he had got one. He concentrated all his faculties to the task of getting round the table, to the other side of which the object of his dislike had prudently withdrawn, and showing him in no uncertain manner where he got off.
To the management, on the other hand, the vital issue was all this broken glassware. The waiter had risen from the floor, but the glasses were still there and scarcely one of them was in a condition ever to be used again for the refreshment of Mario’s customers. The head-waiter, swooping down on the fray like some god in the Iliad descending from a cloud, was endeavouring to place this point of view before Ronnie. Assisting him with word and gesture were two inferior waiters—Waiter A. and Waiter B.
Ronnie was in no mood for abstract debate. He hit the head waiter in the abdomen, Waiter A. in the ribs, and was just about to dispose of Waiter B., when his activities were hampered by the sudden arrival of reinforcements. From all parts of the room other waiters had assembled—to name but a few, Waiters C., D., E., F., G., and H.—and he found himself hard pressed. It seemed to him that he had dropped into a Waiters’ Convention. As far as the eye could reach, the arena was crammed with waiters, and more coming. Pilbeam had disappeared altogether, and so busy was Ronnie now that he did not even miss him. He had reached that condition of mind which the old Vikings used to call berserk and which among modern Malays is termed running amok.
Ronnie Fish in the course of his life had had many ambitions. As a child, he had yearned some day to become an engine-driver. At school, it had seemed to him that the most attractive career the world had to offer was that of the professional cricketer. Later, he had hoped to run a prosperous night-club. But now, in his twenty-sixth year, all these desires were cast aside and forgotten. The only thing in life that seemed really worth while was to massacre waiters: and to this task he addressed himself with all the energy and strength at his disposal.
Matters now began to move briskly. Waiter C., who rashly clutched the sleeve of Ronnie’s coat, reeled back with a hand pressed to his right eye. Waiter D., a married man, contented himself with standing on the outskirts and talking Italian. But Waiter E., made of sterner stuff, hit Ronnie rather hard with a dish containing omelette aux champignons: and it was as the latter reeled beneath this buffet that there suddenly appeared in the forefront of the battle a figure wearing a gay uniform and almost completely concealed behind a vast moustache, waxed at the ends. It was the commissionaire from the street-door: and anybody who has ever been bounced from a restaurant knows that commissionaires are heavy metal.
This one, whose name was McTeague, and who had spent many lively years in the army before retiring to take up his present duties, had a grim face made of some hard kind of wood and the muscles of a village blacksmith. A man of action rather than words, he clove his way through the press in silence. Only when he reached the centre of the maelstrom did he speak. This was when Ronnie, leaping on to a chair the better to perform the operation, hit him on the nose. On receipt of this blow, he uttered the brief monosyllable “Ho!” and then, without more delay, scooped Ronnie into an embrace of steel and bore him towards the door, through which was now moving a long, large leisurely policeman.
IV
It was some few minutes later that Hugo Carmody, emerging from the telephone-booth on the lower floor where the cocktail bar is, sauntered back into the dancing-room and was interested to find waiters massaging bruised limbs, other waiters replacing fallen tables, and Leopold’s band playing in a sort of hushed undertone like a band that has seen strange things.
“Hullo!” said Hugo. “Anything up?”
He eyed Sue inquiringly. She looked to him like a girl who has had some sort of a shock. Not, or his eyes deceived him, at all her old bright self.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Take me home, Hugo!”
Hugo stared.
“Home? Already? With the night yet young?”
“Oh, Hugo, take me home, quick.”
“Just as you say,” assented Hugo agreeably. He was now pretty certain that something was up. “One second to settle the bill, and then homeward ho. And on the way you shall tell me all about it. For I jolly well know,” said Hugo, who prided himself on his keenness of observation, “that something is—or has been—up.”
CHAPTER V
THE Law of Great Britain is a remorseless machine which, once set in motion, ignores first causes and takes into account only results. It will not accept shattered dreams as an excuse for shattering glassware; nor will you get far by pleading a broken heart in extenuation of your behaviour in breaking waiters. Haled on the morrow before the awful majesty of Justice at Bosher Street Police Court and charged with disorderly conduct in a public place—to wit, Mario’s Restaurant, and resisting an officer—to wit, P.C. Murgatroyd, in the execution of his duties, Ronald Fish made no impassioned speeches. He did not raise clenched fists aloft and call upon Heaven to witness that he was a good man wronged. Experience, dearly bought in the days of his residence at the University, had taught him that when the Law gripped you with its talons the only thing to do was to give a false name, say nothing and hope for the best.
Shortly before noon, accordingly, on the day following the painful scene just described, Edwin Jones, of 7 Nasturtium Villas, Cricklewood, poorer by the sum of five pounds, was being conveyed in a swift taxi-cab to his friend Hugo Carmody’s hotel, there to piece together his broken life and try to make a new start.
On the part of the man Jones himself during the ride there was a disposition towards silence. He gazed before him bleakly and gnawed his lower lip. Hugo Carmody, on the other hand, was inclined to be rather jubilant. It seemed to Hugo that, after a rocky start, things had panned out pretty well.
“A nice, smooth job,” he said approvingly. “I was scanning the beak’s face closely during the summing up and I couldn’t help fearing for a moment that it was going to be a case of fourteen days without the option. As it is, here you are, a free man, and no chance of your name being in the papers. A moral victory, I call it.”
Ronnie released his lower lip in order to bare his teeth in a bitter sneer.
“I wouldn’t care if my name were in every paper in London.”
“Oh, come, old loofah! The honoured name of Fish?”
“What do I care about anything now?”
Hugo was concerned. This morbid strain, he felt, was unworthy of a Nasturtium Villas Jones.
“Aren’t you rather tending to make a bit too much heavy weather over this?”
“Heavy weather!”
“I think you are. After all, when you come right down to it, what has happened? You find poor little Sue . . .”
“Don’t call her ‘poor little Sue’!”
“You find the party of the second part,” amended Hugo, “at a dance place. Well, why not? What, if you follow me, of it? Where’s the harm in her going out to dance?”
“With a man she swore she didn’t know!”
“Well, at the time when you asked her, probably she didn’t know him. Things move quickly in a great city. I wish I had a quid for every girl I’ve been out dancing with, whom I hadn’t known from Eve a couple of days before.”
“She promised me she wouldn’t go out with a soul.”
“Ah, but with a merry twinkle in her eye, no doubt? I mean to say, you can’t expect a girl nowadays to treat a promise like that seriously. I mean, dash it, be reasonable!”
“And with that little worm of all people!”
Hugo cleared his throat. He was conscious of a slight embarrassment. He had not wished to touch on this aspect of the affair, but Ronnie’s last words gave a Carmody and a gentleman no choice.
“As a matter of fact, Ronnie, old man,” he said, “you are wrong in supposing that she went to Mario’s with the above Pilbeam. She went with me. Blameless Hugo, what. I mean, more like a brother than anything.”
Ronnie declined to be comforted.
“I don’t believe you.”
“My dear chap!”
“I suppose you think you’re damned clever, trying to smooth things over. She was at Mario’s with Pilbeam.”
“I took her there.”
“You may have taken her. But she was dining with Pilbeam.”
“Nothing of the kind.”
“Do you think I can’t believe my own eyes? It’s no use your saying anything, Hugo, I’m through with her. She’s let me down. Less than a week I’ve been away,” said Ronnie, his voice trembling, “and she lets me down. Well, it serves me right for being such a fool as to think she ever cared a curse for me.”
He relapsed into silence. And Hugo, after turning over in his mind a few specimen remarks, decided not to make them. The cab drew up before the hotel, and Ronnie, getting out, uttered a wordless exclamation.
“No, let me,” said Hugo considerately. A bit rough on a man, he felt, after coughing up five quid to the hell-hounds of the Law, to be expected to pay the cab. He produced money and turned to the driver. It was some moments before he turned back again, for the driver, by the rules of the taxi-chauffeurs’ Union, kept his petty cash tucked into his underclothing. When he did so, he was considerably astonished to find that Ronnie, while his back was turned, had, in some unaccountable manner, become Sue. The changeling was staring unhappily at him from the exact spot where he had left his old friend.
“Hullo!” he said.
“Ronnie’s gone,” said Sue.
“Gone?”
“Yes. He walked off as quick as he could round the corner when he saw me. He . . .” Sue’s voice broke. “He didn’t say a word.”
“How did you get here?” asked Hugo. There were other matters, of course, to be discussed later, but he felt he must get this point cleared up first.
“I thought you would bring him back to your hotel, and I thought that if I could see him I could . . . say something.”
Hugo was alarmed. He was now practically certain that this girl was going to cry, and if there was one thing he disliked it was being with crying girls in a public spot. He would not readily forget the time when a female named Yvonne Something had given way to a sudden twinge of neuralgia in his company not far from Piccadilly Circus, and an old lady had stopped and said it was brutes like him who caused all the misery in the world.
“Come inside,” he urged quickly. “Come and have a cocktail or a cup of tea or a bun or something. I say,” he said, as he led the way into the hotel lobby and found two seats in a distant corner, “I’m frightfully sorry about all this. I can’t help feeling it’s my fault.”
“Oh, no.”
“If I hadn’t asked you to dinner . . .”
“It isn’t that that’s the trouble. Ronnie might have been a little cross for a minute or two if he had found you and me together, but he would soon have got over it. It was finding me with that horrid little man Pilbeam. You see, I told him—and it was quite true—that I didn’t know him.”
“Yes, so he was saying to me in the cab.”
“Did he—what did he say?”
“Well, he plainly resented the Pilbeam, I’m afraid. His manner, when touching on the Pilbeam, was austere. I tried to drive into his head that that was just an accidental meeting and that you had come to Mario’s with me, but he would have none of it. I fear, old thing, there’s nothing to be done but leave the whole binge to Time, the Great Healer.”
A page-boy was making a tour of the lobby. He seemed to be seeking a Mr. Gargery.
“If only I could get hold of him and make him listen. I haven’t been given a chance to explain.”
“You think you could explain, even if given a chance?”
“I could try. Surely he couldn’t help seeing that I really loved him, if we had a real talk?”
“And the trouble is, you’re here and he’ll be back at Blandings in a few hours. Difficult,” said Hugo, shaking his head. “Complex.”
“Mr. Carmody,” chanted the page-boy, coming nearer. “Mr. Carmody.”
“Hi!” cried Hugo.
“Mr. Carmody? Wanted on the telephone, sir.”
Hugo’s face became devout and saint-like.
“Awfully sorry to leave you for an instant,” he said, “but do you mind if I rush? It must be Millicent. She’s the only person who knows I’m here.”
He sped away, and Sue, watching him, found herself choking with sudden tears. It seemed to emphasise her forlornness so, this untimely evidence of another love-story that had not gone awry. She seemed to be listening to that telephone conversation, hearing Hugo’s delighted yelps as the voice of the girl he loved floated to him over the wire.
She pulled herself together. Beastly of her to be jealous of Hugo just because he was happy. . . .
Sue sat up abruptly. She had an idea.
It was a breath-taking idea, but simple. It called for courage, for audacity, for a reckless disregard of consequences, but nevertheless it was simple.
“Hugo,” she cried, as that lucky young man returned and dropped into the chair at her side. “Hugo, listen!”
“I say,” said Hugo.
“I’ve suddenly thought . . .”
“I say,” said Hugo.
“Do listen!”
“I say,” said Hugo, “that was Millicent on the ’phone.”
“Was it? How nice. Listen, Hugo . . .”
“Speaking from Blandings.”
“Yes. But . . .”
“And she has broken off the engagement!”
“What!”
“Broken off the bally engagement,” repeated Hugo. He signalled urgently to a passing waiter. “Get me a brandy and soda, will you?” he said. His face was pale and set. “A stiffish brandy and soda, please.”
“Brandy and soda, sir?”
“Yes,” said Hugo. “Stiffish.”
CHAPTER VI
SUE stared at him, bewildered.
“Broken off the engagement?”
“Broken off the engagement.”
In moments of stress, the foolish question is always the one that comes uppermost in the mind.
“Are you sure?”
Hugo emitted a sound which resembled the bursting of a paper bag. He would have said himself, if asked, that he was laughing mirthlessly.
“Sure? Not much doubt about it.”
“But why?”
“She knows all.”
“All what?”
“Everything, you poor fish,” said Hugo, forgetting in a strong man’s agony the polish of the Carmodys. “She’s found out that I took you to dinner last night.”
“What!”
“She has.”
“But how?”
The paper bag exploded again. A look of intense bitterness came into Hugo’s face.
“If ever I meet that slimy, slinking, marcelle-waved by-product Pilbeam again,” he said, “let him commend his soul to God! If he has time,” he added.
He took the brandy and soda from the waiter, and eyed Sue dully.
“Anything on similar lines for you?”
“No, thanks.”
“Just as you like. It’s not easy for a man in my position to realise,” said Hugo, drinking deeply, “that refusing a brandy and soda is possible. I shouldn’t have said, off-hand, that it could be done.”
Sue was a warm-hearted girl. In the tragedy of this announcement she had almost forgotten that she had troubles herself.
“Tell me all about it, Hugo.”
He put down the empty glass.
“I came up from Blandings yesterday,” he said, “to interview the Argus Inquiry Agency on the subject of sending a man down to investigate the theft of Lord Emsworth’s pig.”
Sue would have liked to hear more about this pig, but she knew that this was no time for questions.
“I went to the Argus and saw this wen Pilbeam, who runs it.”
Again Sue would have liked to speak. Once more she refrained. She felt as if she were at a sick-bed, hearing a dying man’s last words. On such occasions one does not interrupt.
“Meanwhile,” proceeded Hugo tonelessly, “Millicent, suspecting—and I am surprised at her having a mind like that. I always looked on her as a pure, white soul—suspecting that I might be up to something in London, got the Argus on the long-distance telephone and told them to follow my movements and report to her. And, apparently, just before she called me up, she had been talking to them on the wire, and getting their statement. All this she revealed to me in short, burning sentences, and then she said that if I thought we were still engaged, I could have three more guesses. But, to save me trouble, she would tell me the right answer—viz. no wedding-bells for me. And to think,” said Hugo, picking up the glass and putting it down again, after inspection, with a hurt and disappointed look, “that I actually rallied this growth Pilbeam on the subject of following people and reporting on their movements. Yes, I assure you. Rallied him blithely. Just as I was leaving his office, we kidded merrily back and forth. And then I went out into the world, happy and care-free, little knowing that my every step was dogged by a blasted bloodhound. Well, all I can say is that, if Ronnie wants this Pilbeam’s gore, and I gather that he does, he will jolly well have to wait till I’ve helped myself.”
Sue, womanlike, blamed the woman.
“I don’t think Millicent can be a very nice girl,” she said, primly.
“An angel,” said Hugo. “Always was. Celebrated for it. I don’t blame her.”
“I do.”
“I don’t.”
“I do.”
“Well, have it your own way,” said Hugo handsomely. He beckoned to the waiter. “Another of the same, please.”
“This settles it,” said Sue.
Her eyes were sparkling. Her chin had a resolute tilt.
“Settles what?”
“While you were at the telephone, I had an idea.”
“I have had ideas in my time,” said Hugo. “Many of them. At the moment, I have but one. To get within arm’s length of the yam Pilbeam and twist his greasy neck till it comes apart in my hands. ‘What do you do here?’ I said. ‘Measure footprints?’ ‘We follow people and report on their movements,’ said he. ‘Ha, ha!’ I laughed carelessly. ‘Ha, ha!’ laughed he. General mirth and jollity. And all the while . . .”
“Hugo, will you listen!”
“And this is the bitter thought that now strikes me. What chance have I of scooping out the man’s inside with my bare hands? I’ve got to go back to Blandings on the two-fifteen, or I lose my job. Leaving him unscathed in his bally lair, chuckling over my downfall and following some other poor devil’s movements.”
“Hugo!”
The broken man passed a weary hand over his forehead.
“You spoke?”
“I’ve been speaking for the last ten minutes, only you won’t listen.”
“Say on,” said Hugo, listlessly starting on the second restorative.
“Have you ever heard of a Miss Schoonmaker?”
“I seem to know the name. Who is she?”
“Me.”
Hugo lowered his glass, pained.
“Don’t talk drip to a broken-hearted man,” he begged. “What do you mean?”
“When Ronnie was driving me in his car, we met Lady Constance Keeble.”
“A blister,” said Hugo. “Always was. Generally admitted all over Shropshire.”
“She thought I was this Miss Schoonmaker.”
“Why?”
“Because Ronnie said I was.”
Hugo sighed hopelessly.
“Complex. Complex. My God! How complex.”
“It was quite simple and natural. Ronnie had just been telling me about this girl—how he had met her at Biarritz and that she was coming to Blandings and so on, and when he saw Lady Constance looking at me with frightful suspicion it suddenly occurred to him to say that I was her.”
“That you were Lady Constance.”
“No, idiot. Miss Schoonmaker. And now I’m going to wire her—Lady Constance, not Miss Schoonmaker, in case you were going to ask—saying that I’m coming to Blandings right away.”
“Pretending to be this Miss Schoonmaker?”
“Yes.”
Hugo shook his head.
“Imposs.”
“Why?”
“Absolutely out of the q.”
“Why? Lady Constance is expecting me. Do be sensible.”
“I’m being sensible all right. But somebody is gibbering and, naming no names, it’s you. Don’t you realise that, just as you reach the front door, this Miss Schoonmaker will arrive in person, dishing the whole thing?”
“No, she won’t.”
“Why won’t she?”
“Because Ronnie sent her a telegram, in Lady Constance’s name, saying that there’s scarlet fever or something at Blandings and she wasn’t to come.”
Hugo’s air of the superior critic fell from him like a garment. He sat up in his chair. So moved was he that he spilled his brandy and soda and did not give it so much as a look of regret. He let it soak into the carpet, unheeded.
“Sue!”
“Once I’m at Blandings, I shall be able to see Ronnie and make him be sensible.”
“That’s right.”
“And then you’ll be able to tell Millicent that there couldn’t have been much harm in my being out with you last night, because I’m engaged to Ronnie.”
“That’s right, too.”
“Can you see any flaws?”
“Not a flaw.”
“I suppose, as a matter of fact, you’ll give the whole thing away in the first five minutes by calling me Sue.”
Hugo waved an arm buoyantly.
“Don’t give the possibility another thought,” he said. “If I do, I’ll cover it up adroitly by saying I meant ‘Schoo.’ Short for Schoonmaker. And now go and send her another telegram. Keep on sending telegrams. Leave nothing to chance. Send a dozen and pitch it strong. Say that Blandings Castle is ravaged with disease. Not merely scarlet fever. Scarlet fever and mumps. Not to mention housemaid’s knee, diabetes, measles, shingles, and the botts. We’re on to a big thing, my Susan. Let us push it along.”
CHAPTER VII
SUNSHINE, calling to all right-thinking men to come out and revel in its heartening warmth, poured in at the windows of the great library of Blandings Castle. But to Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, much as he liked sunshine as a rule, it brought no cheer. His face drawn, his pince-nez askew, his tie drooping away from its stud like a languorous lily, he sat staring sightlessly before him. He looked like something that had just been prepared for stuffing by a taxidermist.
A moralist, watching Lord Emsworth in his travail, would have reflected smugly that it cuts both ways, this business of being a peer of the realm with large private means and a good digestion. Unalloyed prosperity, he would have pointed out in his offensive way, tends to enervate; and in this world of ours, full of alarms and uncertainties, where almost anything is apt to drop suddenly on top of your head without warning at almost any moment, what one needs is to be tough and alert.
When some outstanding disaster happens to the ordinary man, it finds him prepared. Years of missing the 8.45, taking the dog for a run on rainy nights, endeavouring to abate smoky chimneys and coming down to breakfast and discovering that they have burned the bacon again, have given his soul a protective hardness, so that by the time his wife’s relations arrive for a long visit he is ready for them.
Lord Emsworth had had none of this salutary training. Fate, hitherto, had seemed to spend its time thinking up ways of pampering him. He ate well, slept well, and had no money troubles. He grew the best roses in Shropshire. He had won a first prize for Pumpkins at that county’s Agricultural Show, a thing no Earl of Emsworth had ever done before. And, just previous to the point at which this chronicle opens, his younger son Frederick had married the daughter of an American millionaire and had gone to live three thousand miles away from Blandings Castle, with lots of good, deep water in between him and it. He had come to look on himself as Fate’s spoiled darling.
Can we wonder, then, that in the agony of this sudden, treacherous blow he felt stunned and looked eviscerated? Is it surprising that the sunshine made no appeal to him? May we not consider him justified, as he sat there, in swallowing a lump in his throat like an ostrich gulping down a brass doorknob?
The answer to these questions, in the order given, is No, No, and Yes.
The door of the library opened, revealing the natty person of his brother Galahad. Lord Emsworth straightened his pince-nez and looked at him apprehensively. Knowing how little reverence there was in the Hon. Galahad’s composition and how tepid was his interest in the honourable struggles for supremacy of Fat Pigs, he feared that the other was about to wound him in his bereavement with some jarring flippancy. Then his gaze softened and he was conscious of a soothing feeling of relief. There was no frivolity in his brother’s face, only a gravity which became him well. The Hon. Galahad sat down, hitched up the knees of his trousers, cleared his throat, and spoke in a tone that could not have been more sympathetic or in better taste.
“Bad business, this, Clarence.”
“Appalling, my dear fellow.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
Lord Emsworth shrugged his shoulders hopelessly. He generally did when people asked him what he was going to do about things.
“I am at a loss,” he confessed. “I do not know how to act. What young Carmody tells me has completely upset all my plans.”
“Carmody?”
“I sent him to the Argus Inquiry Agency in London to engage the services of a detective. It is a firm that Sir Gregory Parsloe once mentioned to me, in the days when we were on better terms. He said, in rather a meaning way, I thought, that if ever I had any trouble of any sort that needed expert and tactful handling, these were the people to go to. I gathered that they had assisted him in some matter the details of which he did not confide to me, and had given complete satisfaction.”
“Parsloe!” said the Hon. Galahad, and sniffed.
“So I sent young Carmody to London to approach them about finding the Empress. And now he tells me that his errand proved fruitless. They were firm in their refusal to trace missing pigs.”
“Just as well.”
“What do you mean?”
“Save you a lot of unnecessary expense. There’s no need for you to waste money employing detectives.”
“I thought that possibly the trained mind . . .”
“I can tell you who’s got the Empress. I’ve known it all along.”
“What!”
“Certainly.”
“Galahad!”
“It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
Lord Emsworth felt his nose.
“Is it?” he said doubtfully.
“I’ve just been talking to Constance . . .”
“Constance?” Lord Emsworth opened his mouth feebly. “She hasn’t got my pig?”
“I’ve just been talking to Constance,” repeated the Hon. Galahad, “and she called me some very unpleasant names.”
“She does, sometimes. Even as a child, I remember . . .”
“Most unpleasant names. A senile mischief-maker, among others, and a meddling old penguin. And all because I told her that the man who had stolen Empress of Blandings was young Gregory Parsloe.”
“Parsloe!”
“Parsloe. Surely it’s obvious? I should have thought it would have been clear to the meanest intelligence.”
From boyhood up, Lord Emsworth had possessed an intelligence about as mean as an intelligence can be without actually being placed under restraint. Nevertheless, he found his brother’s theory incredible.
“Parsloe?”
“Don’t keep saying ‘Parsloe.’ ”
“But, my dear Galahad . . . !”
“It stands to reason.”
“You don’t really think so?”
“Of course I think so. Have you forgotten what I told you the other day?”
“Yes,” said Lord Emsworth. He always forgot what people told him the other day.
“About young Parsloe,” said the Hon. Galahad impatiently. “About his nobbling my dog Towser.”
Lord Emsworth started. It all came back to him. A hard expression crept into the eyes behind the pince-nez, which emotion had just jerked crooked again.
“To be sure. Towser. Your dog. I remember.”
“He nobbled Towser, and he’s nobbled the Empress. Dash it, Clarence, use your intelligence. Who else except young Parsloe had any interest in getting the Empress out of the way? And, if he hadn’t known there was some dirty work being planned, would that pig-man of his, Brotherhood, or whatever his name is, have been going about offering three to one on Pride of Matchingham? I told you at the time it was fishy.”
The evidence was damning, and yet Lord Emsworth found himself once more a prey to doubt. Of the blackness of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe’s soul he had, of course, long been aware. But could the man actually be capable of the Crime of the Century? A fellow-landowner? A Justice of the Peace? A man who grew pumpkins? A Baronet?”
“But, Galahad. . . . A man in Parsloe’s position . . . ?”
“What do you mean a man in his position? Do you suppose a fellow changes his nature just because a cousin of his dies and he comes into a baronetcy? Haven’t I told you a dozen times that I’ve known young Parsloe all his life? Known him intimately. He was always as hot as mustard and as wide as Leicester Square. Ask anybody who used to go around Town in those days. When they saw young Parsloe coming, strong men winced and hid their valuables. He hadn’t a penny except what he could get by telling the tale, and he always did himself like a prince. When I knew him first, he was living down on the river at Shepperton. His old father, the Dean, had made an arrangement with the keeper of the pub there to give him breakfast and bed and nothing else. ‘If he wants dinner, he must earn it,’ the old boy said. And do you know how he used to earn it? He trained that mongrel of his, Banjo, to go and do tricks in front of parties that came to the place in steam-launches. And then he would stroll up and hope his dog was not annoying them and stand talking till they went in to dinner and then go in with them and pick up the wine-list, and before they knew what was happening he would be bursting with their champagne and cigars. That’s the sort of fellow young Parsloe was.”
“But even so . . .”
“I remember him running up to me outside that pub one afternoon—the Jolly Miller it was called, his face shining with positive ecstasy. ‘Come in, quick!’ he said. ‘There’s a new barmaid, and she hasn’t found out yet I’m not allowed credit.’ ”
“But, Galahad . . .”
“And if young Parsloe thinks I’ve forgotten a certain incident that occurred in the early summer of the year ’95, he’s very much mistaken. He met me in the Haymarket and took me into the Two Goslings for a drink—there’s a hat-shop now where it used to be—and after we’d had it he pulls a sort of dashed little top affair out of his pocket, a thing with numbers written round it. Said he’d found it in the street and wondered who thought of these ingenious little toys and insisted on our spinning it for half-crowns. ‘You take the odd numbers, I’ll take the even,’ says young Parsloe. And before I could fight my way out into the fresh air, I was ten pounds seven and sixpence in the hole. And I discovered next morning that they make those beastly things so that if you push the stem through and spin them the wrong way up, you’re bound to get an even number. And when I asked him the following afternoon to show me that top again, he said he’d lost it. That’s the sort of fellow young Parsloe was. And you expect me to believe that inheriting a baronetcy and settling down in the country has made him so dashed pure and high-minded that he wouldn’t stoop to nobbling a pig.”
Lord Emsworth uncoiled himself. Cumulative evidence had done its work. His eyes glittered, and he breathed stertorously.
“The scoundrel!”
“Tough nut, always was.”
“What shall I do?”
“Do? Why, go to him right away and tax him.”
“Tax him?”
“Yes. Look him squarely in the eye and tax him with his crime.”
“I will! Immediately.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Look him squarely in the eye!”
“And tax him!”
“And tax him.” Lord Emsworth had reached the hall and was peering agitatedly to right and left. “Where the devil’s my hat? I can’t find my hat. Somebody’s always hiding my hat. I will not have my hats hidden.”
“You don’t need a hat to tax a man with stealing a pig,” said the Hon. Galahad, who was well versed in the manners and rules of good Society.
In his study at Matchingham Hall in the neighbouring village of Much Matchingham, Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe sat gazing at the current number of a weekly paper. We have seen that weekly paper before. On that occasion it was in the plump hands of Beach. And, oddly enough, what had attracted Sir Gregory’s attention was the very item which had interested the butler.
“The Hon. Galahad Threepwood, brother of the Earl of Emsworth. A little bird tells us that ‘Gally’ is at Blandings Castle, Shropshire, the ancestral seat of the family, busily engaged in writing his Reminiscences. As every member of the Old Brigade will testify, they ought to be as warm as the weather, if not warmer!”
But whereas Beach, perusing this, had chuckled, Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe shivered, like one who on a country ramble suddenly perceives a snake in his path.
Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe of Matchingham Hall, seventh baronet of his line, was one of those men who start their lives well, skid for awhile, and then slide back on to the straight and narrow path and stay there. That is to say, he had been up to the age of twenty a blameless boy and from the age of thirty-one, when he had succeeded to the title, a practically blameless Bart. So much so that now, in his fifty-second year, he was on the eve of being accepted by the local Unionist Committee as their accredited candidate for the forthcoming by-election in the Bridgeford and Shifley Parliamentary Division of Shropshire.
But there had been a decade in his life, that dangerous decade of the twenties, when he had accumulated a past so substantial that a less able man would have been compelled to spread it over a far longer period. It was an epoch in his life to which he did not enjoy looking back, and years of irreproachable Barthood had enabled him, as far as he personally was concerned, to bury the past. And now it seemed this pestilential companion of his youth was about to dig it up again.
The years had turned Sir Gregory into a man of portly habit: and, as portly men do in moments of stress, he puffed. But, puff he never so shrewdly, he could not blow away that paragraph. It was still there, looking up at him, when the door opened and the butler announced Lord Emsworth and Mr. Galahad Threepwood.
Sir Gregory’s first emotion on seeing the taxing party file into the room was one of pardonable surprise. Aware of the hard feelings which George Cyril Wellbeloved’s transference of his allegiance had aroused in the bosom of that gifted pig-man’s former employer, he had not expected to receive a morning call from the Earl of Emsworth. As for the Hon. Galahad, he had ceased to be on cordial terms with him as long ago as the winter of the year nineteen hundred and six.
Then, following quickly on the heels of surprise, came indignation. That the author of the Reminiscences should be writing scurrilous stories about him with one hand and strolling calmly into his private study with, so to speak, the other occasioned him the keenest resentment. He drew himself up and was in the very act of staring haughtily, when the Hon. Galahad broke the silence.
“Young Parsloe,” said the Hon. Galahad, speaking in a sharp, unpleasant voice, “your sins have found you out!”
It had been the baronet’s intention to inquire to what he was indebted for the pleasure of this visit, and to inquire it icily; but at this remarkable speech the words halted on his lips.
“Eh?” he said blankly.
The Hon. Galahad was regarding him through his monocle rather as a cook eyes a black-beetle on discovering it in the kitchen sink. It was a look which would have aroused pique in a slug, and once more the Squire of Matchingham’s bewilderment gave way to wrath.
“What the devil do you mean?” he demanded.
“See his face?” asked the Hon. Galahad in a rasping aside.
“I’m looking at it now,” said Lord Emsworth.
“Guilt written upon it.”
“Plainly,” agreed Lord Emsworth.
The Hon. Galahad, who had folded his arms in a menacing manner, unfolded them and struck the desk a smart blow.
“Be very careful, Parsloe! Think before you speak. And, when you speak, speak the truth. I may say, by way of a start, that we know all.”
How low an estimate Sir Gregory Parsloe had formed of his visitors’ collective sanity was revealed by the fact that it was actually to Lord Emsworth that he now turned as the more intelligent one of the pair.
“Emsworth! Explain! What the deuce are you doing here? And what the devil is that old image talking about?”
Lord Emsworth had been watching his brother with growing admiration. The latter’s spirited opening of the case for the prosecution had won his hearty approval.
“You know,” he said curtly.
“I should say he dashed well does know,” said the Hon. Galahad. “Parsloe, produce that pig!”
Sir Gregory pushed his eyes back into their sockets a split second before they would have bulged out of his head beyond recovery. He did his best to think calm, soothing thoughts. He had just remembered that he was a man who had to be careful about his blood-pressure.
“Pig?”
“Pig.”
“Did you say ‘pig’?”
“Pig.”
“What pig?”
“He says ‘What pig’?”
“I heard him,” said Lord Emsworth.
Sir Gregory Parsloe again had trouble with his eyes.
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
The Hon. Galahad unfolded his arms again and smote the desk a blow that unshipped the cover of the ink-pot.
“Parsloe, you sheep-faced, shambling exile from Hell,” he cried. “Disgorge that pig immediately!”
“My Empress,” added Lord Emsworth.
“Precisely. Empress of Blandings. The pig you stole last night.”
Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe rose slowly from his chair. The Hon. Galahad pointed an imperious finger at him, but he ignored the gesture. His blood-pressure was now hovering around the hundred-and-fifty mark.
“Do you mean to tell me that you seriously accuse . . .”
“Parsloe, sit down!”
Sir Gregory choked.
“I always knew, Emsworth, that you were as mad as a coot.”
“As a what?” whispered his lordship.
“Coot,” said the Hon. Galahad curtly. “Sort of duck.” He turned to the defendant again. “Vituperation will do you no good, young Parsloe. We know that you have stolen that pig.”
“I haven’t stolen any damned pig. What would I want to steal a pig for?”
The Hon. Galahad snorted.
“What did you want to nobble my dog Towser for in the back room of the Black Footman in the spring of the year ’97?” he said. “To queer the favourite, that’s why you did it. And that’s what you’re after now, trying to queer the favourite again. Oh, we can see through you all right, young Parsloe. We read you like a book.”
Sir Gregory had stopped worrying about his blood-pressure. No amount of calm, soothing thoughts could do it any good now.
“You’re crazy! Both of you. Stark, staring mad.”
“Parsloe, will you or will you not cough up that pig?”
“I have not got your pig.”
“That is your last word, is it?”
“I haven’t seen the creature.”
“Why a coot?” asked Lord Emsworth, who had been brooding for some time in silence.
“Very well,” said the Hon. Galahad. “If that is the attitude you propose to adopt, there is no course before me but to take steps. And I’ll tell you the steps I’m going to take, young Parsloe. I see now that I have been foolishly indulgent. I have allowed my kind heart to get the better of me. Often and often, when I’ve been sitting at my desk, I’ve remembered a good story that simply cried out to be put into my Reminiscences, and every time I’ve said to myself, ‘No,’ I’ve said. ‘That would wound young Parsloe. Good as it is, I can’t use it. I must respect young Parsloe’s feelings.’ Well, from now on there will be no more forbearance. Unless you restore that pig, I shall insert in my book every dashed thing I can remember about you—starting with our first meeting, when I came into Romano’s and was introduced to you while you were walking round the supper-table with a soup-tureen on your head and stick of celery in your hand, saying that you were a sentry outside Buckingham Palace. The world shall know you for what you are—the only man who was ever thrown out of the Café de l’Europe for trying to raise the price of a bottle of champagne by raffling his trousers at the main bar. And, what’s more, I’ll tell the full story of the prawns.”
A sharp cry escaped Sir Gregory. His face had turned a deep magenta. In these affluent days of his middle age, he always looked rather like a Regency buck who has done himself well for years among the flesh-pots. He now resembled a Regency buck who, in addition to being on the verge of apoplexy, has been stung in the leg by a hornet.
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 book, beginning in the middle of section iii of chapter IV, except that section ii of chapter VII, beginning “In his study at Matchingham Hall”, is not marked that way in the magazine.
Printer’s errors corrected above:
Magazine, p. 27c, had “bell that heralds the first sound”; corrected to ‘first round’ as in the UK book.
Magazine, p. 27c, had “had come expecting, Hugo,”; comma removed after ‘expecting’.
Magazine, p. 29a, had “He had not wished to touch on his aspect of the affair”; changed to ‘this aspect’ as in books.
Magazine, p. 110b, had “He looked like something that has just been prepared for stuffing”; changed to “had” as in books.
Magazine, p. 112b, had an extraneous closing double quotation mark after ‘blood-pressure.’
Magazine, p. 112c, had an extraneous closing single quotation mark after “do it any good now.”