The Pall Mall Magazine, September 1929
 

CHAPTER XIII (continued)

 

“ I SAY, Beach, I’ve been waiting here hours and hours. Where’s this dinner I heard you were beating gongs about?”

“Dinner is ready, sir, but I put it back some little while, as gentlemen aren’t punctual in the summer time.”

Pilbeam considered this statement. It sounded to him as if it would make rather a good song-title. Gentlemen aren’t punctual in the summertime, in the summertime (I said, In the summertime), So take me back to that old Kentucky Shack. . . . He tried to fit it to the music which the brass band was playing, but it did not go very well and he gave it up.

“Where is everybody?” he asked.

“His lordship and her ladyship and Mr. Galahad and Miss Threepwood are dining at Matchingham Hall.”

“What! With old Pop Parsloe?”

“With Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, yes, sir.”

Pilbeam chuckled.

“Well, well, well! Quick worker, old Parsloe. Don’t you think so, Beach? I mean, you advise him to do a thing, to act in a certain way, to adopt a certain course of action, and he does it right away. You agree with me, Beach?”

“I fear my limited acquaintance with Sir Gregory scarcely entitles me to offer an opinion, sir.”

“Talking of old Parsloe, Beach . . . you did say your name was Beach?”

“Yes, sir.”

“With a capital B?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, talking of old Parsloe, Beach, I could tell you something about him. Something he’s up to.”

“Indeed, sir?”

“But I’m not going to. Respect client’s confidence. Lips sealed. Professional secret.”

“Yes, sir?”

“As you rightly say, yes. Any more of that stuff in the shaker, Beach?”

“A little, sir, if you consider it judicious.”

“That’s just what I do consider it. Start pouring.”

The detective sipped luxuriously, fuller and fuller every moment of an uplifting sense of well-being. If the friendship which had sprung up between himself and the butler was possibly a little one-sided, on the one side on which it did exist it was warm, even fervent. It seemed to Pilbeam that for the first time since he had arrived at Blandings Castle he had found a real chum, a kindred soul in whom he might confide. And he was filled with an overwhelming desire to confide in somebody.

“As a matter of fact, Beach,” he said, “I could tell you all sorts of things about all sorts of people. Practically everybody in this house I could tell you something about. What’s the name of that chap with the light hair, for instance? The old boy’s secretary.”

“Mr. Carmody, sir?”

“Carmody! That’s the name. I’ve been trying to remember it. Well, I could tell you something about Carmody.”

“Indeed, sir?”

“Yes. Something about Carmody that would interest you very much. I saw Carmody this afternoon when Carmody didn’t see me.”

“Indeed, sir?”

“Yes. Where is Carmody?”

“I imagine he will be down shortly, sir. Mr. Ronald also.”

“Ronald!” Pilbeam drew in his breath sharply. “There’s a tough baby, Beach. That Ronnie. Do you know what he wanted to do just now? Murder me!”

In Beach’s opinion, for he did not look on Percy Pilbeam as a very necessary member of society, this would have been a commendable act, and he regretted that its consummation had been prevented. He was also feeling that the conscientious butler he had always prided himself on being would long ere this have withdrawn and left this man to talk to himself. But even the best of butlers have human emotions, and the magic of Pilbeam’s small-talk held Beach like a spell. It reminded him of the Gossip page of Society Spice, a paper to which he was a regular subscriber. He was piqued and curious. So far, it was true, his companion had merely hinted, but something seemed to tell him that, if he lingered on, a really sensational news-item would shortly emerge.

He had never been more right in his life. Pilbeam by this time had finished the fourth cocktail and the urge to confide had become overpowering. He looked at Beach, and it nearly made him cry to think that he was holding anything back from such a splendid fellow.

“And do you know why he wanted to murder me, Beach?”

It scarcely seemed to the butler that the action required anything in the nature of a reasoned explanation, but he murmured the necessary response.

“I could not say, sir.”

“Of course you couldn’t. How could you? You don’t know. That’s why I’m telling you. Well, listen. He’s in love with a girl in the chorus at the Regal, a girl named Sue Brown, and he thought I had been taking her out to dinner. That’s why he wanted to murder me, Beach.”

“Indeed, sir?”

The butler spoke calmly, but he was deeply stirred. He had always flattered himself that the inmates of Blandings Castle kept few secrets from him, but this was something new.

“Yes. That was why. I had the dickens of a job holding him off, I can tell you. Do you know what saved me, Beach?”

“No, sir.”

“Presence of mind. I put it to him—to Ronnie—I put it to Ronnie as a reasonable man that, if this girl loved me, would she have come to this place, pretending to be Miss Shoemaker, simply so as to see him?”

“Sir!”

“Yes, that’s who Miss Shoemaker is. Beach. She’s a chorus-girl called Sue Brown, and she’s come here to see Ronnie.”

Beach stood transfixed. His eyes swelled bulbously from their sockets. He was incapable of even an “Indeed, sir?”

He was still endeavouring to assimilate this extraordinary revelation when Hugo Carmody entered the room.

“Ah!” said Hugo, his eye falling on Pilbeam. He stiffened. He stood looking at the detective like Schopenhauer’s butcher at the selected lamb.

“Leave us, Beach,” he said, in a grave, deep voice.

The butler came out of his trance.

“Sir?”

“Pop off.”

“Very good, sir.”

The door closed.

“I’ve been looking for you, viper,” said Hugo.

“Have you, Carmody?” said Percy Pilbeam effervescently. “I’ve been looking for you, too. Got something I want to talk to you about. Each looking for each. Or am I thinking of a couple of other fellows? Come right in, Carmody, and sit down. Good old Carmody! Jolly old Carmody! Splendid old Carmody! Well, well, well, well, well!”

If the lamb mentioned above had suddenly accosted the above-mentioned butcher in a similar strain of hearty camaraderie, it could have hardly disconcerted him more than Pilbeam with these cheery words disconcerted Hugo. His stern, set gaze became a gaping stare.

Then he pulled himself together. What did words matter? He had no time to bother about words. Action was what he was after. Action!

“I don’t know if you’re aware of it, worm,” he said, “but you came jolly near to blighting my life.”

“Doing what, Carmody?”

“Blighting my life.”

“List to me while I tell you of the Spaniard who blighted my life,” sang Percy Pilbeam, letting it go like a lark in the Spring-time. He had never felt happier or in more congenial society.

“How did I blight your life, Carmody?”

“You didn’t.”

“You said I did.”

“I said you tried to.”

“Make up your mind, Carmody.”

“Don’t keep calling me Carmody.”

“But, Carmody,” protested Pilbeam, “it’s your name, isn’t it? Certainly it is. Then why try to hush it up, Carmody? Be frank and open. I don’t mind people knowing my name. I glory in it. It’s Pilbeam—Pilbeam—Pilbeam—that’s what it is—Pilbeam!”

“In about thirty seconds,” said Hugo, “it will be Mud.”

It struck Percy Pilbeam for the first time that in his companion’s manner there was a certain peevishness.

“Something the matter?” he asked, concerned.

“I’ll tell you what’s the matter.”

“Do, Carmody, do,” said Pilbeam. “Do, do, do. Confide in me. I like your face.”

He settled himself in a deep arm-chair and, putting the tips of his fingers together after a little preliminary difficulty in making them meet, leaned back, all readiness to listen to whatever trouble it was that was disturbing this new friend of his.

“Some days ago, insect,” began Hugo.

Pilbeam opened his eyes.

“Speak up, Carmody,” he said. “Don’t mumble.”

Hugo’s fingers twitched. He regarded his companion with a burning eye, and wondered why he was wasting time talking instead of at once proceeding to the main business of the day and knocking the fellow’s head off at the roots. What saved Pilbeam was the reclining position he had assumed. If you are a Carmody and a sportsman, you cannot attack even a viper, if it persists in lying back on its spine and keeping its eyes shut.

“Some days ago,” he began again, “I called at your office. And after we had talked of this and that, I left. I discovered later that immediately upon my departure you had set your foul spies on my trail and had instructed them to take notes of my movements and report on them. The result being that I came jolly close to having my bally life ruined. And, if you want to know what I’m going to do, I’m going to haul you out of that chair and turn you round and kick you hard and go on kicking you till I kick you out of the house. And if you dare to shove your beastly little nose back inside the place, I’ll disembowel you.”

Pilbeam unclosed his eyes. He regarded Hugo not exactly with severity but with distinct reproach.

“Nothing,” he said, “could be fairer than that. Nevertheless, that’s no reason why you should go about stealing pigs.”

Hugo had often read stories in which people reeled and would have fallen, had they not clutched at whatever it was that they clutched at. He had never expected to undergo that experience himself. But it is undoubtedly the fact that, if he had not at this moment gripped the back of a chair, he would have been hard put to it to remain perpendicular.

“Pig-pincher!” said Pilbeam austerely, and closed his eyes again.

Hugo, having established his equilibrium by means of the chair, had now moved away. He was making a strong effort to recover his morale. He picked up the photograph of Lord Emsworth in his Yeomanry uniform and looked at it absently: then, as if it had just dawned upon him, put it down with a shudder, like a man who finds that he had been handling a snake.

“What do you mean?” he said thickly.

Pilbeam’s eyes opened.

“What do I mean? What do you think I mean? I mean you’re a pig-pincher. That’s what I mean. You go to and fro, sneaking pigs and hiding them in caravans.”

Hugo took up Lord Emsworth’s photograph again, saw what he was doing, and dropped it quickly. Pilbeam had closed his eyes once more, and, looking at him, Hugo could not repress a reluctant thrill of awe. He had often read about the superhuman intuition of detectives, but he had never before been privileged to observe it in operation. Then an idea occurred to him.

“Did you see me?”

“What say, Carmody?”

“Did you see me?”

“Yes, I see you, Carmody,” said Pilbeam playfully. “Peep-bo!”

“Did you see me put that pig in the caravan?”

Pilbeam nodded eleven times in rapid succession.

“Certainly, I saw you Carmody. Why shouldn’t I see you, considering I’d been caught in the rain and taken shelter in the caravan and was in there with my trousers off, trying to dry them because I’m subject to lumbago?”

“I didn’t see you.”

“No, Carmody, you did not. And I’ll tell you why, Carmody. Because I heard a girl’s voice outside saying ‘Be quick, or somebody will come along!’ and I hid. You don’t suppose I would let a sweet girl see me in knee-length mesh-knit underwear, do you? Not done, Carmody,” said Pilbeam, severely. “Not cricket.”

Hugo was experiencing the bitterness which comes to all criminals who discover too late that they have undone themselves by trying to be clever. It had seemed at the time such a good idea to remove the Empress from the gamekeeper’s cottage in the west wood and place her in Baxter’s caravan, where nobody would think of looking. How could he have anticipated that the caravan would be bulging with blighted detectives?

At this tense moment, the door opened and Beach appeared.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but do you propose to wait any longer for Mr. Ronald?”

“Eh?”

“Certainly not,” said Pilbeam. “Who the devil’s Mr. Ronald, I should like to know? I didn’t come to this place to do a fast-cure. I want my dinner, and I want it now. And if Mr. Ronald doesn’t like it, he can do the other thing.” He strode in a dominating manner to the door. “Come along, Carmody. Din-dins.”

Hugo had sunk into a chair.

“I don’t want any dinner,” he said, dully.

“You don’t want any dinner?”

“No.”

“No dinner?”

“No.”

Pilbeam shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

“The man’s an ass,” he said.

He headed for the stairs. His manner seemed to indicate that he washed his hands of Hugo.

Beach lingered.

“Shall I bring you some sandwiches, sir?”

“No, thanks. What’s that?”

A loud crash had sounded. The butler went to the door and looked out.

“It is Mr. Pilbeam, sir. He appears to have fallen downstairs.”

For an instant a look of hope crept into Hugo’s careworn face.

“Has he broken his neck?”

“Apparently not, sir.”

“Ah,” said Hugo regretfully.

 

CHAPTER XIV
I

THE Efficient Baxter had retired to the smoking-room shortly before half-past seven. He desired silence and solitude, and in this cosy haven he got both. For a few minutes nothing broke the stillness but the slow ticking of a clock on the mantelpiece. Then from the direction of the hall there came a new sound, faint at first but swelling and swelling to a frenzied blare, seeming to throb through the air with a note of passionate appeal like woman wailing for her demon lover. It was that tocsin of the soul, that muezzin of the country-house, the dressing-for-dinner gong.

Baxter did not stir. The summons left him unmoved. He had heard it, of course. Butler Beach was a man who swung a pretty gong-stick. He had that quick fore-arm flick and wristy follow-through which stamp the master. If you were anywhere within a quarter of a mile or so, you could not help hearing him. But the sound had no appeal for Baxter. He did not propose to go in to dinner. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts.

They were not the sort of thoughts with which most men would have wished to be left alone, being both dark and bitter. That expedition to the gamekeeper’s cottage in the west wood had not proved a pleasure-trip for Rupert Baxter. Reviewing it in his mind, he burned with baffled rage.

And yet everybody had been very nice to him—very nice and tactful. True, at the moment of the discovery that the cottage contained no pig and appeared to have been pigless from its foundation, there had been perhaps just the slightest suspicion of constraint. Lord Emsworth had grasped his ivory-knobbed stick a little more tightly and had edged behind Beach in a rather noticeable way, his manner saying more plainly than was agreeable, “If he springs, be ready!” And there had come into the butler’s face a look, hard to bear, which was a blend of censure and pity. But after that both of them had been charming.

Lord Emsworth had talked soothingly about light and shade effects. He had said—and Beach had agreed with him—that in the darkness of a thunderstorm anybody might have been deceived into supposing that he had seen a butler feeding a pig in the gamekeeper’s cottage. It was probably, said Lord Emsworth—and Beach thought so, too—a bit of wood sticking out of the wall or something. He went on to tell a longish story of how he himself, when a boy, had fancied he had seen a cat with flaming eyes. He had concluded by advising Baxter—and Beach said the suggestion was a good one—to hurry home and have a nice cup of hot tea and go to bed.

His attitude in short, could not have been pleasanter or more considerate. Yet Baxter, as he sat in the smoking-room, burned, as stated, with baffled rage.

The door handle turned. Beach stood on the threshold.

“If you have changed your mind, sir, about taking dinner, the meal is quite ready.”

He spoke as friend to friend. There was nothing in his manner to suggest that the man he addressed had ever accused him of stealing pigs. As far as Beach was concerned, all was forgotten and forgiven.

But the milk of human kindness, of which the butler was so full, had not yet been delivered on Baxter’s doorstep. The hostility in his eye, as he fixed it on his visitor, was so marked that a lesser man than Beach might have been disconcerted.

“I don’t want any dinner.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Bring me that whisky and soda, quick.”

“Yes, sir.”

The door closed as softly as it had opened, but not before a pang like a red-hot needle had pierced the ex-secretary’s bosom. It was caused by the fact that he had distinctly heard the butler, as he withdrew, utter a pitying sigh.

It was the sort of sigh which a kind-hearted man would have given on peeping into a padded cell in which some old friend was confined, and Baxter resented it with all the force of an imperious nature. He had not ceased to wonder what, if anything, could be done about it when the refreshments arrived, carried by James the footman. James placed them gently on the table, shot a swift glance of respectful commiseration at the patient, and passed away.

The sigh had cut Baxter like a knife. The look stabbed him like a dagger. For a moment he thought of calling the man back and asking him what the devil he meant by staring at him like that, but wiser counsels prevailed. He contented himself with draining a glass of whisky and soda and swallowing two sandwiches.

This done, he felt a little—not much, but a little—better. Before, he would gladly have murdered Beach and James and danced on their graves. Now, he would have been satisfied with straight murder.

However, he was alone at last. That was some slight consolation. Beach had come and gone. Footman James had come and gone. Everybody else must by now be either at Matchingham Hall or assembled in the dining-room. On the solitude which he so greatly desired there could be no further intrusion. He resumed his meditations.

For a time these dealt exclusively with the recent past, and were, in consequence, of a morbid character. Then, as the grateful glow of the whisky began to make itself felt, a softer mood came to Rupert Baxter. His mind turned to thoughts of Sue.

Men as efficient as Rupert Baxter do not fall in love in the generally accepted sense of the term. Their attitude towards the tender passion is more restrained than that of the ordinary feckless young man who loses his heart at first sight with a whoop and a shiver. Baxter approved of Sue. We cannot say more. But this approval, added to the fact that he had been informed by Lady Constance that the girl was the only daughter of a man who possessed sixty million dollars, had been enough to cause him to ear-mark her in his mind as the future Mrs. Baxter. In that capacity he had docketed her and filed her away at the first moment of their meeting.

Naturally, therefore, the remarks which Lord Emsworth had let fall in her hearing had caused him grave concern. It hampers a man in his wooing if the girl he has selected starts with the idea that he is as mad as a coot. He congratulated himself on the promptitude with which he had handled the situation. That letter which he had written her could not fail to put him right in her eyes.

Rupert Baxter was a man in whose lexicon there was no such word as failure. An heiress like this Miss Schoonmaker would not, he was aware, lack for suitors: but he did not fear them. If only she were making a reasonably long stay at the castle, he felt that he could rely on his force of character to win the day. In fact, it seemed to him that he could almost hear the wedding-bells ringing. Then, coming out of his dreams, he realised that it was the telephone.

He reached for the instrument with a frown, annoyed at the interruption, and spoke with an irritated sharpness.

“Hullo?”

A ghostly voice replied. The storm seemed to have affected the wires.

“Speak up!” barked Baxter.

He banged the telephone violently on the table. The treatment, as is so often the case, proved effective.

“Blandings Castle?” said the voice, no longer ghostly.

“Yes.”

“Post Office, Market Blandings, speaking. Telegram for Lady Constance Keeble.”

“I will take it.”

The voice became faint again. Baxter went through the movements as before.

“Lady Constance Keeble, Blandings Castle, Market Blandings, Shropshire, England,” said the voice, recovering strength, as if it had shaken off a wasting sickness. “Handed in at Paris.”

“Where?”

“Paris, France.”

“Oh? Well?”

The voice gathered volume.

“ ‘Terribly sorry hear news . . . ’ ”

“What?”

“ ‘News.’ ”

“Yes?”

“ ‘Terribly sorry hear news stop Quite understand stop So disappointed shall be unable come to you later as going back America at end of month stop Do hope we shall be able arrange something when I return next year stop Regards stop!’ ”

“Yes?”

“Signed ‘Myra Schoonmaker.’ ”

“Signed—what?”

“Myra Schoonmaker.”

Baxter’s mouth had fallen open. The forehead above the spectacles was wrinkled, the eyes behind them staring blankly and with a growing horror.

“Shall I repeat?”

“What?”

“Do you wish the message repeated?”

“No,” said Baxter in a choking voice.

He hung up the receiver. There seemed to be something crawling down his back. His brain was numbed.

Myra Schoonmaker! Telegraphing from Paris!

Then who was this girl who was at the castle calling herself by that preposterous name? An impostor, an adventuress. She must be.

And if he made a move to expose her she would revenge herself by showing Lord Emsworth that letter of his.

In the agitation of the moment he had risen to his feet. He now sat down heavily.

That letter . . . !

He must recover it. He must recover it at once. As long as it remained in the girl’s possession, it was a pistol pointed at his head. Once let Lord Emsworth become acquainted with those very frank criticisms of himself which it contained, and not even his ally, Lady Constance, would be able to restore him to his lost secretaryship. The ninth Earl was a mild man, accustomed to bowing to his sister’s decrees, but there were limits beyond which he could not be pushed.

And Baxter yearned to be back at Blandings Castle in the position he had once enjoyed. Blandings was his spiritual home. He had held other secretaryships—he held one now, at a salary far higher than that which Lord Emsworth had paid him—but never had he succeeded in recapturing that fascinating sense of power, of importance, of being the man who directed the destinies of one of the largest houses in England.

At all costs he must recover that letter. And the present moment, he perceived, was ideal for the venture. The girl must have the thing in her room somewhere, and for the next hour at least she would be in the dining-room. He would have ample opportunity for a search.

He did not delay. Thirty seconds later, he was mounting the stairs, his face set, his spectacles gleaming grimly. A minute later, he reached his destination. No good angel, aware of what the future held, stood on the threshold to bar his entry. The door was ajar. He pushed it open and went in.

 

II

Blandings Castle, like most places of its size and importance, contained bedrooms so magnificent that they were never used. With their four-poster beds and their superb but rather oppressive tapestries, they had remained untenanted since the time when Queen Elizabeth, dodging from country-house to country-house in that restless, snipe-like way of hers, had last slept in them. Of the guest-rooms still in commission, the most luxurious was that which had been given to Sue.

At the moment when Baxter stole cautiously in, it was looking its best in the gentle evening light. But Baxter was not in sight-seeing mood. He ignored the carved bedstead, the cosy arm-chairs, the pictures, the decorations, and the soft carpet into which his feet sank. The beauty of the sky through the French windows that gave on to the balcony drew but a single brief glance from him. Without delay, he made for the writing-desk which stood against the wall near the bed. It seemed to him a good point of departure for his search.

There were several pigeon-holes in the desk. They contained single sheets of notepaper, double sheets of notepaper, postcards, envelopes, telegraph-forms, and even a little pad on which the room’s occupant was presumably expected to jot down any stray thoughts and reflections on Life which might occur to him or her before turning in for the night. But not one of them contained the fatal letter.

He straightened himself and looked about the room. The drawer of the dressing-table now suggested itself as a possibility. He left the desk and made his way towards it.

The primary requisite of dressing-tables being a good supply of light, they are usually placed in a position to get as much of it as possible. This one was no exception. It stood so near to the open windows that the breeze was ruffling the tassels on its lamp-shades: and Baxter, arriving in front of it, was enabled for the first time to see the balcony in its entirety.

And, as he saw it, his heart seemed to side-slip. Leaning upon the parapet and looking out over the sea of gravel that swept up to the front door from the rhododendron-fringed drive, stood a girl. And not even the fact that her back was turned could prevent Baxter identifying her.

For an instant he remained frozen. Even the greatest men congeal beneath the chill breath of the totally unexpected. He had assumed as a matter of course that Sue was down in the dining-room, and it took him several seconds to adjust his mind to the unpleasing fact that she was up on her balcony. When he recovered his presence of mind sufficiently to draw noiselessly away from the line of vision, his first emotion was one of irritation. This chopping and changing, this eleventh-hour alteration of plans, these sudden decisions to remain upstairs when they ought to be downstairs, were what made women as a sex so unsatisfactory.

To irritation succeeded a sense of defeat. There was nothing for it, he realised, but to give up his quest and go. He started to tip-toe silently to the door, agreeably conscious now of the softness and thickness of the Axminster pile that made it possible to move unheard, and had just reached it, when from the other side there came to his ears a sound of chinking and clattering—the sound, in fact, which is made by plates and dishes when they are carried on a tray to a guest who, after a long railway journey, has asked her hostess if she may take dinner in her room.

Practice makes perfect. This was the second time in the last three hours that Baxter had found himself trapped in a room in which it was vitally urgent that he should not be discovered: and he was getting the technique of the thing. On the previous occasion, in the small library, he had taken to himself wings like a bird and sailed out of the window. In the present crisis, such a course, he perceived immediately, was not feasible. The way of an eagle would profit him nothing. Soaring over the balcony, he would be observed by Sue and would, in addition, unquestionably break his neck. What was needed here was the way of a diving-duck.

And so, as the door handle turned, Rupert Baxter, even in this black hour efficient, dropped on all-fours and slid under the bed as smoothly as if he had been practising for weeks.

 

III

Owing to the restricted nature of his position and the limited range of vision which he enjoys, virtually the only way in which a man who is hiding under a bed can entertain himself is by listening to what is going on outside. He may hear something of interest, or he may hear only the draught sighing along the floor: but, for better or for worse, that is all he is able to do.

The first sound that came to Rupert Baxter was that made by the placing of the tray on the table. Then, after a pause, a pair of squeaking shoes passed over the carpet and squeaked out of hearing. Baxter recognised them as those of Footman Thomas, a confirmed squeaker.

After this, somebody puffed, causing him to deduce the presence of Beach.

“Your dinner is quite ready, miss.”

“Oh, thank you.”

The girl had apparently come in from the balcony. A chair scraped to the table. A savoury scent floated to Baxter’s nostrils, causing him acute discomfort. He had just begun to realise how extremely hungry he was and how rash he had been, firstly to attempt to dine off a couple of sandwiches and secondly to undertake a mission like his present one without a square meal inside him.

“That is chicken, miss. En casserole.”

Baxter had deduced as much, and was trying not to let his mind dwell on it. He uttered a silent groan. In addition to the agony of having to smell food, he was beginning to be conscious of a growing cramp in his left leg. He turned on one side and did his best to emulate the easy nonchalance of those Indian fakirs who, doubtless from the best motives, spend the formative years of their lives lying on iron spikes.

“It looks very good.”

“I trust you will enjoy it, miss. Is there anything further that I can do for you?”

“No, thank you. Oh, yes. Would you mind fetching that manuscript from the balcony. I was reading it out there, and I left it on the chair. It’s Mr. Threepwood’s book.”

“Indeed, miss? An exceedingly interesting compilation, I should imagine?”

“Yes, very.”

“I wonder if it would be taking a liberty, miss, to ask you to inform me later, at your leisure, if I make any appearance in its pages.”

“You?”

“Yes, miss. From what Mr. Galahad has let fall from time to time, I fancy it was his intention to give me printed credit as his authority for certain of the stories which appear in the book.”

“Do you want to be in it?”

“Most decidedly, miss. I should consider it an honour. And it would please my mother.”

“Have you a mother?”

“Yes, miss. She lives at Eastbourne.”

The butler moved majestically on to the balcony, and Sue’s mind had turned to speculation about his mother and whether she looked anything like him, when there was a sound of hurrying feet without, the door flew open, and Beach’s mother passed from her mind like the unsubstantial fabric of a dream. With a little choking cry she rose to her feet. Ronnie was standing before her.

 

CHAPTER XV

 

AND meanwhile, if we may borrow an expression from a sister art, what of Hugo Carmody?

It is a defect unfortunately inseparable from any such document as this faithful record of events in and about Blandings Castle that the chronicler, in order to give a square deal to each of the individuals whose fortunes he has undertaken to narrate, is compelled to flit abruptly from one to the other in the manner popularised by the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag. The activities of the Efficient Baxter seeming to him to demand immediate attention, he was reluctantly compelled some little while back to leave Hugo in the very act of reeling beneath a crushing blow. The moment has now come to return to him.

The first effect on a young man of sensibility and gentle upbringing of the discovery that an unfriendly detective has seen him placing stolen pigs in caravans is to induce a stunned condition of mind, a sort of mental coma. The face lengthens. The limbs grow rigid. The tie slips sideways and the shirt-cuffs recede into the coat-sleeves. The subject becomes temporarily, in short, a total loss.

It is perhaps as well, therefore, that we did not waste valuable time watching Hugo in the process of digesting Percy Pilbeam’s sensational announcement, for it would have been like looking at a statue. If the reader will endeavour to picture Rodin’s Thinker in a dinner-jacket and trousers with braid down the sides, he will have got the general idea. At the instant when Hugo Carmody makes his reappearance, life has just begun to return to the stiffened frame.

And with life came the dawning of intelligence. This ghastly snag which had popped up in his path was too big, reflected Hugo, for any man to tackle. It called for a woman’s keener wit. His first act on emerging from the depths, therefore, was to leave the drawing-room and totter downstairs to the telephone. He got the number of Matchingham Hall and, establishing communications with Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe’s butler urged him to summon Miss Millicent Threepwood from the dinner-table. The butler said in rather a reproving way that Miss Threepwood was at the moment busy drinking soup. Hugo, with the first flash of spirit he had shown for a quarter of an hour, replied that he didn’t care if she was bathing in it. “Fetch her,” said Hugo, and almost added the words “You scurvy knave.” He then clung weakly to the receiver, waiting, and in a short while a sweet, but agitated, voice floated to him across the wire.

“Hugo?”

“Millicent?”

“Is that you?”

“Yes. Is that you?”

“Yes.”

Anything in the nature of misunderstanding was cleared away. It was both of them.

“What’s up?”

“Everything’s up.”

“How do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you,” said Hugo, and did so. It was not a difficult story to tell. Its plot was so clear that a few whispered words sufficed.

“You don’t mean that?” said Millicent, the tale concluded.

“I do mean that.”

“Oh, golly!” said Millicent.

Silence followed. Hugo waited palpitatingly. The outlook seemed to him black. He wondered if he had placed too much reliance in woman’s wit. That “Golly!” had not been hopeful.

“Hugo!”

“Hullo?”

“This is a bit thick.”

“Yes,” agreed Hugo. The thickness had not escaped him.

“Well, there’s only one thing to do.”

A faint thrill passed through Hugo Carmody. One would be enough. Woman’s wit was going to bring home the bacon after all.

“Listen!”

“Well?”

“The only thing to do is for me to go back to the dining-room and tell Uncle Clarence you’ve found the Empress.”

“Eh?”

“Found her, fathead.”

“How do you mean?”

“Found her in the caravan.”

“But weren’t you listening to what I was saying?” There were tears in Hugo’s voice. “Pilbeam saw us putting her there.”

“I know.”

“Well, what’s our move when he says so?”

“Stout denial.”

“Eh?”

“We stoutly deny it,” said Millicent.

The thrill passed through Hugo again, stronger than before. It might work. Yes, properly handled, it would work. He poured broken words of love and praise into the receiver.

“That’s right,” he cried. “I see daylight. I will go to Pilbeam and tell him privily that if he opens his mouth I’ll strangle him.”

“Well, hold on. I’ll go and tell Uncle Clarence. I expect he’ll be out in a moment to have a word with you.”

“Half a minute! Millicent!”

“Well?”

“When am I supposed to have found this ghastly pig?”

“Ten minutes ago, when you were taking a stroll before dinner. You happened to pass the caravan and you heard an odd noise inside and you looked to see what it was and there was the Empress and you raced back to the house to telephone.”

“But, Millicent! Half a minute!”

“Well?”

“The old boy will think Baxter stole her.”

“So he will! Isn’t that splendid? Well, hold on.”

Hugo resumed his vigil. It was some moments later that a noise like the clucking of fowls broke out at the Matchingham Hall end of the wire. He deduced correctly that this was caused by the ninth Earl of Emsworth endeavouring to clothe his thoughts in speech.

“Kuk-kuk-kuk . . .”

“Yes, Lord Emsworth?”

“Kuk-Carmody!”

“Yes, Lord Emsworth?”

“Is this true?”

“Yes, Lord Emsworth.”

“You’ve found the Empress?”

“Yes, Lord Emsworth.”

“In that feller Baxter’s caravan?”

“Yes, Lord Emsworth.”

“Well, I’ll be damned!”

“Yes, Lord Emsworth.”

So far Hugo Carmody had found his share of the dialogue delightfully easy. On these lines he would have been prepared to continue it all night. But there was something else besides “Yes, Lord Emsworth” that he must now endeavour to say. “There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune:” and that tide, he knew, would never rise higher than at the present moment. He swallowed twice to unlimber his vocal chords.

“Lord Emsworth,” he said, and, though his heart was beating fast, his voice was steady, “there is something I would like to take this opportunity of saying. It will come as a surprise to you, but I hope not as an unpleasant surprise. I love your niece Millicent, and she loves me, Lord Emsworth. We have loved each other for many weeks and it is my hope that you will give your consent to our marriage. I am not a rich man, Lord Emsworth. In fact, strictly speaking, except for my salary I haven’t a bean in the world. But my Uncle Lester owns Rudge Hall in Worcestershire—I daresay you have heard of the place? You turn to the left off the main road to Birmingham and go about a couple of miles . . . well, anyway, it’s a biggish sort of place in Worcestershire and my Uncle Lester owns it and the property is entailed and I’m next in succession . . . I won’t pretend that my Uncle Lester shows any indications of passing in his checks, he was extremely fit last time I saw him, but, after all, he’s getting on and all flesh is as grass and, as I say, I’m next man in, so I shall eventually succeed to quite a fairish bit of the stuff and a house and park and rent-roll and all that, so what I mean is, it isn’t as if I wasn’t in a position to support Millicent later on, and if you realised, Lord Emsworth, how we love one another I’m sure you would see that it wouldn’t be playing the game to put any obstacles in the way of our happiness, so what I’m driving at, if you follow me, is, may we charge ahead?”

There was dead silence at the other end of the wire. It seemed as if this revelation of a good man’s love had struck Lord Emsworth dumb. It was only some moments later, after he had said “Hullo!” six times and “I say, are you there?” twice that it was borne in upon Hugo that he had wasted two hundred and eighty words of the finest eloquence on empty space.

His natural chagrin at this discovery was sensibly diminished by the sudden sound of Millicent’s voice in his ear.

“Hullo!”

“Hullo!”

“Hullo!”

“Hullo!”

“Hugo!”

“Hullo!”

“I say, Hugo!” She spoke with the joyous excitement of a girl who has just emerged from the centre of a family dog-fight. “I say, Hugo, things are hotting up here properly. I sprung it on Uncle Clarence just now that I want to marry you!”

“So did I. Only he wasn’t there.”

“I said ‘Uncle Clarence, aren’t you grateful to Mr. Carmody for finding the Empress?’ and he said ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, to be sure. Capital boy! Capital boy! Always liked him.’ And I said ‘I suppose you wouldn’t by any chance let me marry him?’ and he said, ‘Eh, what? Marry him?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Marry him.’ And he said ‘Certainly, certainly, certainly, certainly, by all means.’ And then Aunt Constance had a fit, and Uncle Gally said she was a kill-joy and ought to be ashamed of herself for throwing the gaff into love’s young dream, and Uncle Clarence kept on saying ‘Certainly, certainly, certainly.’ I don’t know what old Parsloe thinks of it all. He’s sitting in his chair, looking at the ceiling and drinking hock. The butler left at the end of round one. I’m going back to see how it’s all coming out. Hold the line.”

A man for whom Happiness and Misery are swaying in the scales three miles away, and whose only medium of learning the result of the contest is a telephone wire, is not likely to ring off impatiently. Hugo sat tense and breathless, like one listening in on the radio to a championship fight in which he has a financial interest. It was only when a cheery voice spoke at his elbow that he realised that his solitude had been invaded, and by Percy Pilbeam at that.

Percy Pilbeam was looking rosy and replete. He swayed slightly and his smile was rather wider and more pebble-beached than a total abstainer’s would have been.

“Hullo, Carmody,” said Percy Pilbeam.

It came to Hugo that he had something to say to this man.

“Here, you!” he cried.

“Yes, Carmody?”

“Do you want to be battered to a pulp?”

“No, Carmody.”

“Then listen. You didn’t see me put that pig in the caravan. Understand?”

“But I did, Carmody.”

“You didn’t—not if you want to go on living.”

Percy Pilbeam appeared to be in a mood not only of keen intelligence but of the utmost reasonableness and amiability.

“Say no more, Carmody,” he said agreeably. “I take your point. You want me not to tell anybody I saw you put that caravan in the pig. Quite, Carmody, quite.”

“Well, bear it in mind.”

“I will, Carmody. Oh yes, Carmody, I will. I’m going for a stroll outside, Carmody. Care to join me?”

“Go to hell!”

“Quite,” said Percy Pilbeam.

He tacked unsteadily to the door, aimed himself at it and passed through. And a moment later Millicent’s voice spoke.

“Hugo?”

“Hullo?”

“Oh, Hugo, darling, the battle’s over. We’ve won. Uncle Clarence has said ‘Certainly’ sixty-five times, and he’s just told Aunt Constance that if she thinks she can bully him she’s very much mistaken. It’s a walk-over. They’re all coming back right away in the car. Uncle Clarence is an angel.”

“So are you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Not such an angel as you are.”

“Much more of an angel than I am,” said Hugo, in the voice of one trained to the appraising and classifying of angels.

“Well, anyway, you precious old thing, I’m going to give them the slip and walk home along the road. Get out Ronnie’s two-seater and come and pick me up and we’ll go for a drive together, miles and miles through the country. It’s the most perfect evening.”

“You bet it is!” said Hugo fervently. “What I call something like an evening. Give me two minutes to get the car out and five to make the trip and I’ll be with you.”

“ ’At-a-boy!” said Millicent.

“ ’At-a-baby!” said Hugo.

 

CHAPTER XVI

 

SUE stood still, wide-eyed. This was the moment which she had tried to picture to herself a hundred times. And always her imagination had proved unequal to the task. Sometimes she had seen Ronnie in her mind’s eye cold, aloof, hostile; sometimes gasping and tottering, dumb with amazement; sometimes pointing a finger at her like a character in a melodrama and denouncing her as an impostor. The one thing for which she had not been prepared was what happened now.

Eton and Cambridge train their sons well. Once they have grasped the fundamental fact of life that all exhibitions of emotion are bad form, bombshells cannot disturb their poise and earthquakes are lucky if they get so much as an “Eh, what?” from them. But Cambridge has its limitations, and so has Eton. And remorse had goaded Ronnie Fish to a point where their iron discipline had ceased to operate. He was stirred to his depths, and his scarlet face, his rumpled hair, his starting eyes and his twitching fingers all proclaimed the fact.

“Ronnie!” cried Sue.

It was all she had time to say. The thought of what she had done for his sake; the thought that for love of him she had come to Blandings Castle under false colours—an impostor—faced at every turn by the risk of detection—liable at any moment to be ignominiously exposed and looked at through a lorgnette by his Aunt Constance; the thought of the shameful way he had treated her . . . all these thoughts were racking Ronald Fish with a searing anguish. They had brought the hot blood of the Fishes to the boil, and now, face to face with her, he did not hesitate.

He sprang forward, clasped her in his arms, hugged her to him. To Baxter’s revolted ears, though he tried not to listen, there came in a husky cataract the sound of a Fish’s self-reproaches. Ronnie was saying what he thought of himself, and his opinion appeared not to be high. He said he was a beast, a brute, a swine, a cad, a hound and a worm. If he had been speaking of Percy Pilbeam, he could scarcely have been less complimentary.

Even up to this point, Baxter had not liked the dialogue. It now became perfectly nauseating. Sue said it had all been her fault. Ronnie said, No, his. No, hers, said Sue. No, his, said Ronnie. No, hers, said Sue. No, altogether his, said Ronnie. It must have been his, he pointed out, because, as he had observed before, he was a hound and a worm. He now went further. He revealed himself as a blister, a tick and a perishing outsider.

“You’re not!”

“I am!”

“You’re not!”

“I am!”

“Of course you’re not!”

“I certainly am!”

“Well, I love you anyway.”

“You can’t.”

“I do.”

“You can’t.”

“I do.”

Baxter writhed in silent anguish.

“How long?” said Baxter to his immortal soul. “How long?” The question was answered with a startling promptitude. From the neighbourhood of the French windows there sounded a discreet cough. The debaters sprang apart, two minds with but a single thought.

“Your manuscript, miss,” said Beach sedately.

Sue looked at him. Ronnie looked at him. Sue until this moment had forgotten his existence. Ronnie had supposed him downstairs, busy about his butlerine duties. Neither seemed very glad to see him.

Ronnie was the first to speak.

“Oh—hullo, Beach!”

There being no answer to this except “Hullo, sir!”, which is a thing that butlers do not say, Beach contented himself with a benignant smile. It had the unfortunate effect of making Ronnie think that the man was laughing at him, and the Fishes are men at whom butlers may not lightly laugh. He was about to utter a heated speech, indicating this, when the injudiciousness of such a course presented itself to his mind. Beach must be placated. He forced his voice to a note of geniality.

“So there you are, Beach?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I suppose all this must seem tolerably rummy to you?”

“No, sir.”

“No?”

“I had already been informed, Mr. Ronald, of the nature of your feelings towards this lady.”

“What!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who told you?”

“Mr. Pilbeam, sir.”

Ronnie uttered a gasp. Then he became calmer. He had suddenly remembered that this man was his ally, his accomplice, linked to him not only by a friendship dating back to his boyhood but by the even stronger bond of a mutual crime. Between them there need be no reserves. Delicate though the situation was, he now felt equal to it.

“Beach,” he said. “How much do you know?”

“All, sir.”

“All?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Such as——?”

Beach coughed.

“I am aware that this lady is a Miss Sue Brown. And, according to my informant, she is employed in the chorus of the Regal Theatre.”

“Quite the Encyclopædia, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want to marry Miss Brown, Beach.”

“I can readily appreciate such a desire on your part, Mr. Ronald,” said the butler with a paternal smile.

Sue caught at the smile.

“Ronnie! He’s all right. I believe he’s a friend.”

“Of course he’s a friend! Old Beach. One of my earliest and stoutest pals.”

“I mean, he isn’t going to give us away.”

“Me, miss?” said Beach, shocked. “Certainly not.”

“Splendid fellow, Beach!”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Beach,” said Ronnie, “the time has come to act. No more delay. I’ve got to make myself solid with Uncle Clarence at once. Directly he gets back to-night, I shall go to him and tell him that Empress of Blandings is in the gamekeeper’s cottage in the west wood, and then, while he’s still weak, I shall spring on him the announcement of my engagement.”

“Unfortunately, Mr. Ronald, the animal is no longer in the cottage.”

“You’ve moved it?”

“Not I, sir. Mr. Carmody. By a most regrettable chance Mr. Carmody found me feeding it this afternoon. He took it away and deposited it in some place of which I am not cognizant, sir.”

“But, good heavens, he’ll dish the whole scheme. Where is he?”

“You wish me to find him, sir?”

“Of course I wish you to find him. Go at once and ask him where that pig is. Tell him it’s vital.”

“Very good, sir.”

Sue had listened with bewilderment to this talk of pigs.

“I don’t understand, Ronnie.”

Ronnie was pacing the room in agitation. Once he came so close to where Baxter lay in his snug harbour that the ex-secretary had a flashing glimpse of a sock with a lavender clock. It was the first object of beauty that he had seen for a long time, and he should have appreciated it more than he did.

“I can’t explain now,” said Ronnie. “It’s too long. But I can tell you this. If we don’t get that pig back, we’re in the soup.”

“Ronnie!”

Ronnie had ceased to pace the room. He was standing in a listening attitude.

“What’s that?”

He sprang quickly to the balcony, looked over the parapet and came softly back.

“Sue!”

“What?”

“It’s that blighter Pilbeam,” said Ronnie in a guarded undertone. “He’s climbing up the waterspout!”

 

CHAPTER XVII

 

FROM the moment when it left the door of Matchingham Hall and started on its journey back to Blandings Castle, a silence as of the tomb had reigned in the Antelope car which was bringing Lord Emsworth, his sister, Lady Constance Keeble, and his brother, the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, home from their interrupted dinner-party. Not so much as a syllable proceeded from one of them.

In the light of what Millicent, an eyewitness at the Front, had told Hugo over the telephone of the family battle which had been raging at Sir Gregory Parsloe’s table, this will appear strange. If ever three people with plenty to say to one another were assembled together in a small space, these three, one would have thought, were those three. Lady Constance alone might have been expected to provide enough conversation to keep the historian busy for hours.

The explanation, like all explanations, is simple. It is supplied by that one word Antelope.

Owing to the fact that some trifling internal ailment had removed from the active list the Hispano-Suiza in which Blandings Castle usually went out to dinner, Voules, the chauffeur, had had to fall back upon this secondary and inferior car; and anybody who has ever owned an Antelope is aware that there is no glass partition inside it, shutting off the driver from the cash customers. He is right there in their midst, ready and eager to hear everything that is said and to hand it on in due course to the Servants’ Hall.

In these circumstances, though the choice seemed one between speech and spontaneous combustion, the little company kept their thoughts to themselves. They suffered, but they did it. It would be difficult to find a better illustration of all that is implied in the fine old phrase noblesse oblige. At Lady Constance we point with particular pride. She was a woman and silence weighed hardest on her.

There were times during the drive when even the sight of Voules’ large, red ears, all pricked up to learn the reason for this sudden and sensational return, was scarcely sufficient to restrain Lady Constance Keeble from telling her brother Clarence just what she thought of him. From boyhood up, he had not once come near to being her ideal man: but never had he sunk so low in her estimation as at the moment when she heard him giving his consent to the union of her niece Millicent with a young man who, besides being penniless, had always afflicted her with a nervous complaint for which she could find no name, but which is known to scientists as the heeby-jeebies.

Nor had he re-established himself in any way by his outspoken remarks on the subject of the Efficient Baxter. He had said things about Baxter which no admirer of that energetic man could forgive. The adjectives mad, crazy, insane, gibbering—and, worse, potty—had played in and out of his conversation like flashes of lightning. And from the look in his eye she gathered that he was still saying them all over again to himself.

Her surmise was correct. To Lord Emsworth the events of this day had come as a stunning revelation. On the strength of that flower-pot incident two years ago, he had always looked on Baxter as mentally unbalanced: but, being a fair-minded man, he had recognised the possibility that a quiet, regular life and freedom from worries might, in the interval which had elapsed since his late secretary’s departure from the castle, have effected a cure. Certainly the man had appeared quite normal on the day of his arrival. And now into the space of a few hours he had crammed enough variegated lunacy to equip all the March Hares in England and leave some over for the Mad Hatters.

The ninth Earl of Emsworth was not a man who was easily disturbed. His was a calm which, as a rule, only his younger son Frederick could shatter. But it was not proof against the sort of thing that had been going on to-day. No matter how placid you may be, if you find yourself in close juxtaposition with a man who, when he is not hurling himself out of windows, is stealing pigs and trying to make you believe they were stolen by your butler, you begin to think a bit. Lord Emsworth was thoroughly upset. As the car bowled up the drive, he was saying to himself that nothing could surprise him now.

And yet something did. As the car turned the corner by the rhododendrons and wheeled into the broad strip of gravel that faced the front door, he beheld a sight which brought the first sound he had uttered since the journey began bursting from his lips.

“Good God!”

The words were spoken in a high, penetrating tenor and they made Lady Constance jump as if they had been pins running into her. This unexpected breaking of the great silence was agony to her taut nerves.

“What is the matter?”

“Matter? Look! Look at that fellow!”

Voules took it upon himself to explain. Never having met Lady Constance socially, as it were, he ought perhaps not to have spoken. He considered, however, that the importance of the occasion justified the solecism.

“A man is climbing the waterspout, m’lady.”

“What! Where? I don’t see him.”

“He has just got into the balcony outside one of the bedrooms,” said the Hon. Galahad.

Lord Emsworth went straight to the heart of the matter.

“It’s that fellow Baxter!” he exclaimed.

The summer day, for all the artificial aid lent by daylight saving, was now definitely over, and gathering night had spread its mantle of dusk over the world. The visibility, therefore, was not good: and the figure which had just vanished over the parapet of the balcony of the Garden Room had been unrecognisable except to the eye of intuition. This, however, was precisely the sort of eye that Lord Emsworth possessed.

He reasoned closely. There were, he knew, on the premises of Blandings Castle other male adults besides Rupert Baxter; but none of these would climb up waterspouts and disappear over balconies. To Baxter, on the other hand, such a pursuit would seem the normal, ordinary way of passing an evening. It would be his idea of wholesome relaxation. Soon, no doubt, he would come out on to the balcony again and throw himself to the ground. That was the sort of fellow Baxter was—a man of strange pleasures.

And so, going, as we say, straight to the heart of the matter, Lord Emsworth, jerking the pince-nez off his face in his emotion, exclaimed:

“It’s that fellow Baxter!”

Not since a certain day in their mutual nursery many years ago had Lady Constance gone to the length of actually hauling off and smiting her elder brother on the head with the flat of an outraged hand: but she came very near to doing it now. Perhaps it was the presence of Voules that caused her to confine herself to words.

“Clarence, you’re an idiot!”

Even Voules could not prevent her saying that. After all, she was revealing no secrets. The chauffeur had been in service at the castle quite long enough to have formed the same impression for himself.

Lord Emsworth did not argue the point. The car had drawn up now outside the front door. The front door was open, as always of a summer evening, and the ninth Earl, accompanied by his brother Galahad, hurried up the steps and entered the hall. And, as they did so, there came to their ears the sound of running feet. The next moment the flying figure of Percy Pilbeam came into view, taking the stairs four at a time.

“God bless my soul!” said Lord Emsworth.

If Pilbeam heard the words or saw the speaker, he gave no sign of having done so. He was plainly in a hurry. He shot through the hall and, more like a startled gazelle than a private inquiry agent, vanished down the steps. His shirt-front was dark with dirt-stains, his collar had burst from its stud, and it seemed to Lord Emsworth, in the brief moment during which he was able to focus him, that he had a black eye. The next instant, there descended the stairs and flitted past with equal speed the form of Ronnie Fish.

Lord Emsworth got an entirely wrong conception of the affair. He had no means of knowing what had taken place in the Garden Room where Pilbeam, inspired by alcohol and flushed with the thought that now was the time to get into that apartment and possess himself of the manuscript of the Hon. Galahad’s reminiscences, had climbed the waterspout to put the plan into operation. He knew nothing of the detective’s sharp dismay at finding himself unexpectedly confronted with the menacing form of Ronnie Fish. He was ignorant of the lively and promising mix-up which had been concluded by Pilbeam’s tempestuous dash for life. All he saw was two men fleeing madly for the open spaces, and he placed the obvious interpretation upon this phenomenon.

Baxter, he assumed, had run amok and had done it with such uncompromising thoroughness that strong men ran panic-stricken before him.

Mild though the ninth Earl was by nature, a lover of rural peace and the quiet life, he had, like all Britain’s aristocracy, the right stuff in him. It so chanced that during the years when he had held his commission in the Shropshire Yeomanry the motherland had not called to him to save her. But, had that call been made, Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, would have answered it with as prompt a “Bless my soul! Of course. Certainly!” as any of his Crusader ancestors. And in his sixtieth year the ancient fire still lingered. The Hon. Galahad, who had returned to watch the procession through the front door with a surprised monocle, turned back and found that he was alone. Lord Emsworth had disappeared. He now beheld him coming back again. On his amiable face was a look of determination. In his hand was a gun.

“Eh? What?” said the Hon. Galahad, blinking.

The head of the family did not reply. He was moving towards the stairs. In just that same silent purposeful way had an Emsworth advanced on the foe at Agincourt.

A sound as of disturbed hens made the Hon. Galahad turn again.

“Galahad! What is all this? What is happening?”

The Hon. Galahad placed his sister in possession of the facts as known to himself.

“Clarence has just gone upstairs with a gun.”

“With a gun!”

“Yes. Looked like mine, too. I hope he takes care of it.” He perceived that Lady Constance had also been seized with the urge to climb. She was making excellent time up the broad staircase. So nimbly did she move that she was on the second landing before he came up with her.

And, as they stood there, a voice made itself heard from a room down the corridor.

“Baxter! Come out! Come out, Baxter, my dear fellow, immediately.”

In the race for the room from which the words had appeared to proceed, Lady Constance, getting off to a good start, beat her brother by a matter of two lengths. She was thus the first to see a sight unusual even at Blandings Castle, though strange things had happened there from time to time.

Her young guest, Miss Schoonmaker, was standing by the window, looking excited and alarmed. Her brother Clarence, pointing a gun expertly from the hip, was staring fixedly at the bed. And from under the bed, a little like a tortoise protruding from its shell, there was coming into view the spectacled head of the Efficient Baxter.

 

CHAPTER XVIII

 

A MAN who has been lying under a bed for a matter of some thirty minutes and, while there, has been compelled to listen to the sort of dialogue which accompanies a lovers’ reconciliation seldom appears at his best or feels his brightest. There was fluff in Baxter’s hair, dust on his clothes, and on Baxter’s face a scowl of concentrated hatred of all humanity. Lord Emsworth, prepared for something pretty wild looking, found his expectations exceeded. He tightened his grasp on the gun, and to ensure a more accurate aim raised the butt of it to his shoulder, closing one eye and allowing the other to gleam along the barrel.

“I have you covered, my dear fellow,” he said mildly.

Rupert Baxter had not yet begun to stick straws in his hair, but he seemed on the verge of that final piece of self-expression.

“Don’t point that damned thing at me!”

“I shall point it at you,” replied Lord Emsworth with spirit. He was not a man to be dictated to in his own house. “And at the slightest sign of violence . . .”

“Clarence!” It was Lady Constance who spoke. “Put that gun down.”

“Certainly not.”

“Clarence!”

“Oh, all right.”

“And now, Mr. Baxter,” said Lady Constance, proceeding to dominate the scene in her masterly way. “I am sure you can explain.”

Her agitation had passed. It was not in this strong woman to remain agitated long. She had been badly shaken but her faith in her idol still held good. Remarkable as his behaviour might appear, she was sure that he could account for it in a perfectly satisfactory manner.

Baxter did not speak. His silence gave Lord Emsworth the opportunity of advancing his own views.

“Explain?” He spoke petulantly, for he resented the way in which his sister had thrust him from the centre of the stage. “What on earth is there to explain? The thing’s obvious.”

“Can’t say I’ve quite got to the bottom of it,” murmured the Hon. Galahad. “Fellow under bed. Why? Why under bed? Why here at all?”

Lord Emsworth hesitated. He was a kind-hearted man, and he felt that what he had to say would be better said in Baxter’s absence. However, there seemed no way out of it, so he proceeded.

“My dear Galahad, think!”

“Eh?”

“That flower-pot affair. You remember?”

“Oh!” Understanding shone in the Hon. Galahad’s monocle. “You mean . . . ?”

“Exactly.”

“Yes, yes. Of course. Subject to these attacks, you mean?”

“Precisely.”

This was not the first time Lady Constance Keeble had had the opportunity of hearing a theory ventilated by her brothers which she found detestable. She flushed brightly.

“Clarence!”

“My dear?”

“Kindly stop talking in that offensive way.”

“God bless my soul!” Lord Emsworth was stung. “I like that. What have I said that is offensive?”

“You know perfectly well.”

“If you mean that I was telling Galahad in the most delicate way that poor Baxter here is not quite . . .”

“Clarence!”

“All very well to say ‘Clarence!’ like that. You know yourself he isn’t right in the head. Didn’t he throw flower-pots at me? Didn’t he leap out of a window this very afternoon? Didn’t he try to make me think that Beach . . .”

Baxter interrupted. There were certain matters on which he considered silence best, but this was one on which he could speak freely.

“Lord Emsworth!”

“Eh?”

“It has now come to my knowledge that Beach was not the prime mover in the theft of your pig. But I have ascertained that he was an accessory.”

“A what?”

“He helped,” said Baxter, grinding his teeth a little. “The man who committed the actual theft was your nephew, Ronald.”

Lord Emsworth turned to his sister with a triumphant gesture, like one who has been vindicated.

“There! Now perhaps you’ll say he’s not potty? It won’t do, Baxter, my dear fellow,” he went on, waggling a reproachful gun at his late employee. “You really mustn’t excite yourself by making up these stories.”

“Bad for the blood-pressure,” agreed the Hon. Galahad.

“The Empress was found this evening in your caravan,” said Lord Emsworth.

“What!”

“In your caravan. Where you put her when you stole her. And, bless my soul,” said Lord Emsworth, with a start, “I must be going and seeing that she is put back in her stye. I must find Pirbright. I must . . .”

“In my caravan?” Baxter passed a feverish hand across his dust-stained forehead. Illumination came to him. “Then that’s what that fellow Carmody did with the animal!”

Lord Emsworth had had enough of this. Empress of Blandings was waiting for him. Counting the minutes to that holy reunion, he chafed at having to stand here listening to these wild ravings.

“First Beach, then Ronald, then Carmody! You’ll be saying I stole her next, or Galahad here, or my sister Constance. Baxter, my dear fellow, we aren’t blaming you. Please don’t think that. We quite see how it is. You will overwork yourself, and of course nature demands the penalty. I wish you would go quietly to your room, my dear fellow, and lie down. All this must be very bad for you.”

Lady Constance intervened. Her eye was aflame, and she spoke like Cleopatra telling an Ethiopian slave where he got off.

“Clarence, will you kindly use whatever slight intelligence you may possess? The theft of your pig is one of the most trivial and unimportant things that have ever happened in this world, and I consider the fuss that has been made about it quite revolting. But whoever stole the wretched animal . . .”

Lord Emsworth blenched. He stared as if wondering if he had heard aright.

“. . . and wherever it has been found, it was certainly not Mr. Baxter who stole it. It is, as Mr. Baxter says, much more likely to have been a young man like Mr. Carmody. There is a certain type of young man, I believe, to which Mr. Carmody belongs, which considers practical joking amusing. Do ask yourself, Clarence, and try to answer the question as reasonably as is possible for a man of your mental calibre: what earthly motive would Mr. Baxter have for coming to Blandings Castle and stealing pigs?”

It may have been the feel of the gun in his hand which awoke in Lord Emsworth old memories of dashing days with the Shropshire Yeomanry and lent him some of the hot spirit of his vanished youth. The fact remains that he did not wilt beneath his sister’s dominating eye. He met it boldly, and boldly answered back.

“And ask yourself, Constance,” he said, “what earthly motive Mr. Baxter has for anything he does.”

“Yes,” said the Hon. Galahad loyally. “What motive has our friend Baxter for coming to Blandings Castle and scaring girls stiff by hiding under beds?”

Lady Constance gulped. They had found the weak spot in her defences. She turned to the man who she still hoped could deal efficiently with this attack.

“Mr. Baxter!” she said, as if she were calling on him for an after-dinner speech.

But Rupert Baxter had had no dinner. And it was perhaps this that turned the scale. Quite suddenly there descended on him a frenzied desire to be out of this, cost what it might. An hour before, half an hour before, even five minutes before, his tongue had been tied by a still lingering hope that he might yet find his way back to Blandings Castle in the capacity of private secretary to the Earl of Emsworth. Now, he felt that he would not accept that post, were it offered to him on bended knee.

A sudden overpowering hatred of Blandings Castle and all it contained gripped the Efficient Baxter. He marvelled that he had ever wanted to come back. He held at the present moment the well-paid and responsible position of secretary and adviser to J. Horace Jevons, the American millionaire, a man who not only treated him with an obsequiousness and respect which were balm to his soul, but also gave him such sound advice on the investment of money that already he had trebled his savings. And it was this golden-hearted Chicagoan whom he had been thinking of deserting, purely to satisfy some obscure sentiment which urged him to return to a house which, he now saw, he loathed as few houses have been loathed since human beings left off living in caves.

His eyes flashed through their lenses. His mouth tightened.

“I will explain!”

“I knew you would have an explanation,” cried Lady Constance.

“I have. A very simple one.”

“And short, I hope?” asked Lord Emsworth, restlessly. He was aching to have done with all this talk and discussion and to be with his pig once more. To think of the Empress languishing in a beastly caravan was agony to him.

“Quite short,” said Rupert Baxter.

The only person in the room who so far had remained entirely outside this rather painful scene was Sue. She had looked on from her place by the window, an innocent bystander. She now found herself drawn abruptly into the maelstrom of the debate. Baxter’s spectacles were raking her from head to foot, and he had pointed at her with an accusing forefinger.

“I came to this room,” he said, “to try to recover a letter which I had written to this lady who calls herself Miss Schoonmaker.”

“Of course she calls herself Miss Schoonmaker,” said Lord Emsworth, reluctantly dragging his thoughts from the Empress. “It’s her name, my dear fellow. That,” he explained gently, “is why she calls herself Miss Schoonmaker. God bless my soul!” he said, unable to restrain a sudden spurt of irritability. “If a girl’s name is Schoonmaker, naturally she calls herself Miss Schoonmaker.”

“Yes, if it is. But hers is not. It is Brown.”

“Listen, my dear fellow,” said Lord Emsworth soothingly. “You are only exciting yourself by going on like this. Probably doing yourself a great deal of harm. Now, what I suggest is, that you go to your room and put a cool compress on your forehead and lie down and take a good rest. I will send Beach up to you with some nice bread and milk.”

“Rum and milk,” amended the Hon. Galahad. “It’s the only thing. I knew a fellow in the year ’97 who was subject to these spells—you probably remember him, Clarence. Bellamy. Barmy Bellamy we used to call him—and whenever . . .”

“Her name is Brown!” repeated Baxter, his voice soaring in a hysterical crescendo. “Sue Brown. She is a chorus-girl at the Regal Theatre in London. And she is apparently engaged to be married to your nephew Ronald.”

Lady Constance uttered a cry. Lord Emsworth expressed his feelings with a couple of tuts. The Hon. Galahad alone was silent. He caught Sue’s eye, and there was concern in his gaze.

“I overheard Beach saying so in this very room. He said he had had the information from Mr. Pilbeam. I imagine it to be accurate. But in any case, I can tell you this much. Whoever she is, she is an impostor who has come here under a false name. While I was in the smoking-room some time back, a telegram came through on the telephone from Market Blandings. It was signed Myra Schoonmaker, and it had been handed in in Paris this afternoon. That is all I have to say,” concluded Baxter. “I will now leave you, and I sincerely hope I shall never set eyes on any of you again. Good evening!”

His spectacles glinting coldly, he strode from the room and in the doorway collided with Ronnie, who was entering.

“Can’t you look where you’re going?” he asked.

“Eh?” said Ronnie.

“Clumsy idiot!” said the Efficient Baxter, and was gone.

In the room he had left, Lady Constance Keeble had become a stony figure of menace. She was not at ordinary times a particularly tall woman, but she seemed now to tower like something vast and awful: and Sue quailed before her.

“Ronnie!” cried Sue weakly.

It was the cry of the female in distress, calling to her mate. Just so in prehistoric days must Sue’s cave-woman ancestress have cried to the man behind the club when suddenly cornered by the sabre-toothed tiger which Lady Constance Keeble so closely resembled.

“Ronnie!”

“What’s all this?” asked the last of the Fishes.

He was breathing rather quickly, for the going had been fast. Pilbeam, once out in the open, had shown astonishing form at the short sprint. He had shaken off Ronnie’s challenge twenty yards down the drive, and plunged into a convenient shrubbery, and Ronnie, giving up the pursuit, had come back to Sue’s room to report. It occasioned him some surprise to find that in his absence it had become the scene of some sort of public meeting.

“What’s all this?” he said, addressing that meeting.

Lady Constance wheeled round upon him.

“Ronald, who is this girl?”

“Eh?” Ronnie was conscious of a certain uneasiness, but he did his best. He did not like his aunt’s looks, but then he never had. Something was evidently up, but it might be that airy nonchalance would save the day. “You know her, don’t you? Miss Schoonmaker? Met her with me in London.”

“Is her name Brown? And is she a chorus-girl?”

“Why, yes,” admitted Ronnie. It was a bombshell, but Eton and Cambridge stood it well. “Why, yes,” he said, “as a matter of fact, that’s right.”

Words seemed to fail Lady Constance. Judging from the expression on her face this was just as well.

“I’d been meaning to tell you about that,” said Ronnie. “We’re engaged.”

Lady Constance recovered herself sufficiently to find one word.

“Clarence!”

“Eh?” said Lord Emsworth. His thoughts had been wandering.

“You heard?”

“Heard what?”

Beyond the stage of turbulent emotion, Lady Constance had become suddenly calm and icy.

“If you have not been sufficiently interested to listen,” she said, “I may inform you that Ronald has just announced his intention of marrying a chorus-girl.”

“Oh, ah?” said Lord Emsworth. Would a man of Baxter’s outstandingly unbalanced intellect, he was wondering, have remembered to feed the Empress regularly? The thought was like a spear quivering in his heart. He edged in agitation towards the door, and had reached it when he perceived that his sister had not yet finished talking to him.

“So that is all the comment you have to make, is it?”

“Eh? What about?”

“The point I have been endeavouring to make you understand,” went on Lady Constance, with laborious politeness, “is that your nephew Ronald has announced his intention of marrying into the Regal Theatre chorus.”

“Who?”

“Ronald. This is Ronald. He is anxious to marry Miss Brown, a chorus-girl. This is Miss Brown.”

“How do you do?” said Lord Emsworth. He might be vague, but he had the manners of the old school.

Ronnie interposed. The time had come to play the ace of trumps.

“She isn’t an ordinary chorus-girl.”

“From the fact of her coming to Blandings Castle under a false name,” said Lady Constance, “I imagine not. It shows unusual enterprise.”

“What I mean,” continued Ronnie, “is, I know what a bally snob you are, Aunt Constance—no offence, but you know what I mean—keen on birth and family and all that sort of rot . . . well, what I’m driving at is that Sue’s father was in the Guards.”

“A private? Or a corporal?”

“Captain. A fellow named . . .”

“Cotterleigh,” said Sue in a small voice.

“Cotterleigh,” said Ronnie.

“Cotterleigh!”

It was the Hon. Galahad who had spoken. He was staring at Sue open-mouthed.

“Cotterleigh? Not Jack Cotterleigh?”

“I don’t know whether it was Jack Cotterleigh,” said Ronnie. “The point I’m making is that it was Cotterleigh and that he was in the Irish Guards.”

The Hon. Galahad was still staring at Sue.

“My dear,” he cried, and there was an odd sharpness in his voice, “Was your mother Dolly Henderson, who used to be a Serio at the old Oxford and the Tivoli?”

Not for the first time Ronald Fish was conscious of a feeling that his Uncle Galahad ought to be in some kind of a home. He would drag in Dolly Henderson! He would stress the Dolly Henderson note at just this point in the proceedings! He would spoil the whole thing by calling attention to the Dolly Henderson aspect of the matter, just when it was vital to stick to the Cotterleigh, and nothing but the Cotterleigh. Ronnie sighed wearily. Padded cells, he felt, had been invented specially for the Uncle Galahads of this world, and the Uncle Galahads, he considered, ought never to be permitted to roam about outside them.

“Yes,” said Sue. “She was.”

The Hon. Galahad was advancing on her with outstretched hands. He looked like some father in melodrama welcoming the prodigal daughter.

“Well, I’m dashed!” he said. He repeated three times that he was in this condition. He seized Sue’s limp paws and squeezed them fondly. “I’ve been trying to think all this while who it was that you reminded me of, my dear girl. Do you know that in the years ’96, ’97, and ’98, I was madly in love with your mother myself? Do you know that if my infernal family hadn’t shipped me off to South Africa I would certainly have married her? Fact, I assure you. But they got behind me and shoved me on to the boat and when I came back I found that young Cotterleigh had cut me out. Well!”

It was a scene which some people would have considered touching. Lady Constance Keeble was not one of them.

“Never mind about that now. Galahad,” she said. “The point is . . .”

“The point is,” retorted the Hon. Galahad warmly, “that that young Fish there wants to marry Dolly Henderson’s daughter, and I’m for it. And I hope, Clarence, that you’ll have some sense for once in your life and back them up like a sportsman.”

“Eh?” said the ninth Earl. His thoughts had once more been wandering. Even assuming that Baxter had fed the Empress, would he have given her the right sort of food and enough of it?

“You see for yourself what a splendid girl she is.”

“Who?”

“This girl.”

“Charming,” agreed Lord Emsworth courteously, and returned to his meditations.

“Clarence!” cried Lady Constance, jerking him out of them.

“Eh?”

“You are not to consent to this marriage!”

“Who says so?”

“I say so. And think what Julia will say.”

She could not have advanced a more impressive argument. In this chronicle the Lady Julia Fish, relict of the late Major-General Sir Miles Fish, C.B.O., of the Brigade of Guards, has made no appearance. We, therefore, know nothing of her compelling eye, her dominant chin, her determined mouth, and her voice, which, at certain times—as, for example, when rebuking a brother—could raise blisters on a sensitive skin. Lord Emsworth was aware of all these things. He had had experience of them from boyhood. His idea of happiness was to be where Lady Julia Fish was not. And the thought of her coming down to Blandings Castle and tackling him in his library about this business froze him to the marrow. It had been his amiable intention until this moment to do whatever the majority of those present wanted him to do. But now he hesitated.

“You think Julia wouldn’t like it?”

“Of course Julia would not like it.”

“Julia’s an ass,” said the Hon. Galahad.

Lord Emsworth considered this statement, and was inclined to agree with it. But it did not alter the main point.

“You think she would make herself unpleasant about it?”

“I do.”

“In that case . . .” Lord Emsworth paused. Then a strange, soft light came into his eyes. “Well, see you all later,” he said. “I’m going down to look at my pig.”

His departure was so abrupt that it took Lady Constance momentarily by surprise, and he was out of the room and well down the corridor before she could recover herself sufficiently to act. Then she, too, hurried out. They could hear her voice diminishing down the stairs. It was calling “Clarence!”

The Hon. Galahad turned to Sue. His manner was brisk, yet soothing.

“A shame to inflict these fine old English family rows on a visitor,” he said, patting her shoulder as one who, if things had broken right and there had not been a regular service of boats to South Africa in the ’nineties, might have been her father. “What you need, my dear, is a little rest and quiet. Come along, Ronald, we’ll leave you. The place to continue this discussion is somewhere outside this room. Cheer up, my dear. Everything may come out all right yet.”

Sue shook her head.

“It’s no good,” she said hopelessly.

“Don’t you be too sure,” said the Hon. Galahad.

“I’ll jolly well tell you one thing,” said Ronnie. “I’m going to marry you, whatever happens. And that’s that. Good heavens! I can work, can’t I?”

“What at?” asked the Hon. Galahad.

“What at? Why—er—why, at anything.”

“The market value of any member of this family,” said the Hon. Galahad, who harboured no illusions about his nearest and dearest, “is about threepence-ha-penny per annum. No. What we’ve got to do is get round old Clarence somehow, and that means talk and argument, which had better take place elsewhere. Come along, my boy. You never know your luck. I’ve seen stickier things than this come out right in my time.”

 

CHAPTER XIX

 

SUE stood on the balcony, looking out into the night. Velvet darkness shrouded the world, and from the heart of it came the murmur of rustling trees and the clean, sweet smell of earth and flowers. A little breeze had sprung up, stirring the ivy at her side. Somewhere in it a bird was chirping drowsily, and in the distance sounded the tinkle of running water.

She sighed. It was a night made for happiness. And she was quite sure now that happiness was not for her.

A footstep sounded behind her, and she turned eagerly.

“Ronnie?”

It was the voice of the Hon. Galahad Threepwood that answered.

“Only me, I’m afraid, my dear. May I come on to your balcony? God bless my soul, as Clarence would say, what a wonderful night!”

“Yes,” said Sue doubtfully.

“You don’t think so?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I bet you don’t. I know I didn’t, that night when my old father put his foot down and told me I was leaving for South Africa on the next boat. Just such a night as this it was, I remember.” He rested his arms on the parapet. “I never saw your mother after she was married,” he said.

“No?”

“No. She left the stage and . . . Oh well, I was rather busy at the time—lot of heavy drinking to do, and so forth—and somehow we never met. The next thing I heard—two or three years ago—was that she was dead. You’re very like her, my dear. Can’t think why I didn’t spot the resemblance right away.”

He became silent. Sue did not speak. She slid her hand under his arm. It was all that there seemed to do. A corncrake began to call monotonously in the darkness.

“That means rain,” said the Hon. Galahad. “Or not. I forget which. Did you ever hear your mother sing that song . . . No, you wouldn’t. Before your time. About young Ronald,” he said, abruptly.

“What about him?”

“Fond of him?”

“Yes.”

“I mean really fond?”

“Yes.”

“How fond?”

Sue leaned out over the parapet. At the foot of the wall beneath her Percy Pilbeam, who had been peering out of a bush, popped his head back again. For the detective, possibly remembering with his subconscious mind stories heard in childhood of Bruce and the spider, had refused to admit defeat and returned by devious ways to the scene of his disaster. Five hundred pounds is a lot of money, and Percy Pilbeam was not going to be deterred from attempting to earn it by the fact that at his last essay he had only just succeeded in escaping with his life. The influence of his potations had worn off to some extent, and he was his calm, keen self again. It was his intention to lurk in these bushes till the small hours, if need be, and then to attack the waterspout again and so to the Garden Room where the manuscript of the Hon. Galahad’s reminiscences lay. You cannot be a good detective if you are easily discouraged.

“I can’t put it into words,” said Sue.

“Try.”

“No. Everything you say straight out about the way you feel about anybody always sounds silly. Besides, to you Ronnie isn’t the sort of man you could understand anyone raving about. You look on him just as something quite ordinary.”

“If that,” said the Hon. Galahad critically.

“Yes, if that. Whereas to me he’s something . . . rather special. In fact, if you really want to know how I feel about Ronnie, he’s the whole world to me. There! I told you it would sound silly. It’s like something out of a song, isn’t it? I’ve worked in the chorus of that sort of song a hundred times. Two steps left, two steps right, kick, smile, both hands on heart—because he’s all the wo-orld to me-ee! You can laugh if you like.”

There was a momentary pause.

“I’m not laughing,” said the Hon. Galahad. “My dear, I only wanted to find out if you really cared for that young Fish . . .”

“I wish you wouldn’t call him ‘that young Fish.’ ”

“I’m sorry, my dear. It seems to describe him so neatly. Well, I just wanted to be quite sure you really were fond of him, because . . .”

“Well?”

“Well, because I’ve just fixed it all up.”

She clutched at the parapet.

“What!”

“Oh, yes,” said the Hon. Galahad. “It’s all settled. I don’t say that you can actually count on an aunt-in-law’s embrace from my sister Constance—in fact, if I were you, I wouldn’t risk it. She might bite you—but, apart from that, everything’s all right. The wedding bells will ring out. Your young man’s in the garden somewhere. You had better go and find him and tell him the news. He’ll be interested.”

“But . . . but . . .”

Sue was clutching his arm. A wild impulse was upon her to shout and sob. She had no doubts now as to the beauty of the night.

“But . . . how? Why? What has happened?”

“Well . . . You’ll admit I might have married your mother?”

“Yes.”

“Which makes me a sort of honorary father to you.”

“Yes.”

“In which capacity, my dear, your interests are mine. More than mine, in fact. So what I did was to make your happiness the Price of the Papers. Ever see that play? No, before your time. It ran at the Adelphi before you were born. There was a scene where . . .”

“What do you mean?”

The Hon. Galahad hesitated a moment.

“Well, the fact of the matter is, my dear, knowing how strongly my sister Constance has always felt on the subject of those Reminiscences of mine, I went to her and put it to her squarely. ‘Clarence,’ I said to her, ‘is not the sort of man to make any objection to anyone marrying anybody, so long as he isn’t expected to attend the wedding. You’re the real obstacle,’ I said. ‘You and Julia. And if you come round, you can talk Julia over in five minutes. You know how she relies on your judgment.’ And then I said that, if she gave up acting like a barbed-wire entanglement in the path of true love, I would undertake not to publish the Reminiscences.”

Sue clung to his arm. She could find no words.

Percy Pilbeam, who, for the night was very still, had heard all, could have found many. Nothing but the delicate nature of his present situation kept him from uttering them, and that only just. To Percy Pilbeam it was as if he had seen five hundred pounds flutter from his grasp like a vanishing blue bird. He raged dumbly. In all London and the Home Counties there were few men who liked five hundred pounds better than P. Frobisher Pilbeam.

“Oh!” said Sue. Nothing more. Her feelings were too deep. She hugged his arm. “Oh!” she said, and again “Oh!”

She found herself crying, and was not ashamed.

“Now, come!” said the Hon. Galahad protestingly. “Nothing so very extraordinary in that, was there? Nothing so exceedingly remarkable in one pal helping another?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t say it,” said the Hon. Galahad, much relieved. “Why, bless you, I don’t care whether the damned things are published or not. At least . . . No, certainly I don’t . . . Only cause a lot of unpleasantness. Besides, I’ll leave the dashed book to the Nation and have it published in a hundred years and become the Pepys of the future, what? Best thing that could have happened. Homage of Posterity and all that.”

“Oh!” said Sue.

The Hon. Galahad chuckled.

“It is a shame, though, that the world will have to wait a hundred years before it hears the story of young Gregory Parsloe and the prawns. Did you get to that when you were reading the thing this evening?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t read very much,” said Sue. “I was thinking of Ronnie rather a lot.”

“Oh? Well, I can tell you. You needn’t wait a hundred years. It was at Ascot, the year Martingale won the Gold Cup . . .”

Down below, Percy Pilbeam rose from his bush. He did not care now if he were seen. He was still a guest at this hole of a castle, and if a guest cannot pop in and out of bushes if he likes, where does British hospitality come in? It was his intention to shake the dust of Blandings off his feet, to pass the night at the Emsworth Arms, and on the morrow to return to London, where he was appreciated.

“Well, my dear, it was like this. Young Parsloe . . .”

Percy Pilbeam did not linger. The story of the prawns meant nothing to him. He turned away, and the summer night swallowed him. Somewhere in the darkness an owl hooted. It seemed to Pilbeam that there was derision in the sound. He frowned. His teeth came together with a little click.

If he could have found it, he would have had a word with that owl.

the end

 

---

 

Annotations to this novel in its book form are on this site.
The chapter and section divisions in this serial episode match those in books, beginning in the middle of section iii of Chapter XIII.

 

Printer’s errors corrected above:
Magazine, p. 63b, had “were, in consequence of a morbid character”; comma added after ‘consequence’ as in all other sources.
Magazine, p. 64a, had “An imposter, an adventuress.”; changed to “impostor” as in books and for consistency with Ch. XVI, p. 82c of magazine.
Magazine, p. 65a, had “to enduce a stunned condition of mind”; changed to “induce” as in books and for consistency with earlier parts of this serial.
Magazine, p. 65c, had “to untimber his vocal chords”; changed to “unlimber” as in other sources.
Magazine, p. 82a, had “I sprung it on. Uncle Clarence”; extraneous period removed.
Magazine, p. 82b, had “outside, Carmody, Care to join me?”; second comma changed to period as in other sources.
Magazine, p. 83b, had “Well, I love you any way.”; changed to “anyway” as in other sources.
Magazine, p. 84b, had “they suffered, but they did it.”; changed to “They”.
Magazine, p. 84b, had “hand it on in due course to the Servant’s Hall”; changed to “Servants’ ” as in other parts and as in books.
Magazine, p. 85a, had “through the hall and more like a startled gazelle”; comma added following ‘and’ as in books.
Magazine, p. 85a, had “rural peace and the quite life”; changed to “quiet” as in other sources.
Magazine, p. 86a, had “She had been badly shaken but her faith in her idol still held good.”; comma added after ‘shaken’ as in both books (sentence omitted from US magazine).
Magazine, p. 86b, had “There is a certain type of young man I believe to which Mr. Carmody belongs”; commas added before and after ‘I believe’ as in all other sources.
Magazine, p. 89b, had “I’m sorry my dear.”; comma added after ‘sorry’ as in books.
Magazine, p. 89b, had: “embrace from my sister Constance—in fact, if I were you, I wouldn’t risk it. She might bite you, but, apart from that, everything’s all right.”; comma and space changed to a dash: “might bite you—but, apart” as in other sources.

Text differences not corrected:
Magazine, p. 85b, has “something pretty wild looking” as in US book; US magazine and UK book have “wild-looking”.
Magazine, p. 86a, has «in her masterly way. “I am sure you can explain.”» as in UK book; US book and magazine have comma after ‘way’.

 

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