Rupert Morrison delivered the elixir, and looked regretfully at the television set, which was now deep in one of those parlour games designed for the feeble-minded trade. D'Arcy Standish had gone off the air ten minutes ago.
'You've missed the picture, Mr Pearce,' he said.
'Picture? What picture?'
'The spy picture that was on the TV just now. It's where this Foreign Office gentleman has these important papers,' began Mr Morrison, falling easily into his stride, 'and these spies are after them, so he gives them to his butler
'I saw it last week,' said Johnny. 'It was lousy. Absolute drivel,' he said, leaving no doubt as to how he felt about it. So much of his work had been turned down for television that he had become a stern critic of that medium.
'I do so agree with you, sir,' said Mr Morrison. Actually he had thoroughly enjoyed the picture and would gladly have sat through it a third time, but an innkeeper has to suppress his private feelings and remember that the customer is always right. 'Silly, I thought it. As if any gentleman would give an important paper to a butler to take care of. It just couldn't happen.'
'Oh, couldn't it?' said Albert Peasemarch, rising – a little unsteadily – and regarding the speaker with a glazed but compelling eye.
It is only a man of exceptional self-restraint who is able to keep himself from putting people right when they begin talking ignorantly on subjects on which he happens to be well-informed, especially if he has just had four goes of the Beetle and Wedge home-brew. Knowing that these three were not international spies – in whose presence he would naturally have been more reticent – Albert Peasemarch had no compunction in intervening in the debate and speaking freely.
'Oh, couldn't it?' he said. 'Shows what a fat lot you know about it, Mr M. It may interest you to learn that a most important paper or document has been entrusted to me this very night by a gentleman who shall be nameless, with instructions to guard it with my life. And I'm a butler, aren't I? You should think before you speak, Mr M. I will now,' said Albert Peasemarch, with the air of a kindly uncle unbending at a children's party, 'sing Drake's Drum.'
And having done so, he slapped his bowler hat on his head and took his departure, walking with care, as if along a chalk line.
CHAPTER 19
The sun was high in the sky next day when Cosmo, approaching it by a circuitous route, for he had no desire to run into his Uncle Raymond, arrived at the back door of Hammer Lodge and walked in without going through the formality of ringing the bell. He was all eagerness for a word with Albert Peasemarch on a subject very near his heart.
It was the opinion of his late employer, J. P. Boots of Boots and Brewer, export and import merchants, an opinion he had often voiced fearlessly, that Cosmo Wisdom was about as much use to a business organization as a cold in the head, and in holding this view he was substantially correct. But a man may be a total loss at exporting and importing, and still have considerable native shrewdness. Though a broken reed in the eyes of J. P. Boots, Cosmo was quite capable of drawing conclusions and putting two and two together, and on the previous night he had done so. Where Johnny Pearce and Rupert Morrison, listening to Albert Peasemarch, had classified his observations as those of a butler who has had one over the eight, Cosmo had read between the lines of that powerful speech of his. He had divined its inner significance. The nameless gentleman was Lord Ickenham and the paper or document the fatal letter. It stuck out, he considered, a mile. As he hurried to Hammer Lodge, he did not actually say 'Yoicks!' and 'Tally ho!' but that was what he was thinking.
He found Albert Peasemarch in his pantry having his elevenses, two hard-boiled eggs and a bottle of beer. Butlers always like to keep their strength up with a little something in the middle of the morning, and at the moment of Cosmo's entry Albert Peasemarch was finding his in need of all the keeping up it could get. The one defect of the Beetle and Wedge's homebrew is that its stimulus, so powerful over a given period, does not last. Time marches on, and the swashbuckling feeling it induces wears off. Albert Peasemarch, who on the previous night had gone out of the saloon bar like a lion, had come into his pantry this morning like a lamb, and a none too courageous lamb, at that. It is putting it crudely to say that he had cold feet, but the expression unquestionably covers the facts. He was all of a twitter and inclined to start at sudden noises. His reaction to the sudden noise of Cosmo's 'Good morning', spoken in his immediate rear, was to choke on a hard-boiled egg with a wordless cry and soar from his seat in the direction of the ceiling.
His relief on finding that it was not Professor Moriarty or The Ace of Spades who had spoken was extreme.
'Oh, it's you, Mr C,' he gasped, as his heart, which had crashed against his front teeth, returned slowly to its base.
'Just thought I'd look in for a chat,' said Cosmo. 'Do go on with your egg. Don't mind me.'
It was the beer rather than the egg that appealed to Albert Peasemarch at the moment. He quaffed deeply, and Cosmo proceeded.
'You certainly pulled old Morrison's leg last night with that yarn of yours about the secret document,' he said, chuckling amusedly. 'He believed every word of it. Can you beat it? Never suspected for a moment that you were just kidding him,' said Cosmo, and broke into a jolly laugh. Very droll, he seemed to suggest, it had been, the whole thing.
There was a pause, and during that pause, though it lasted but an instant, Albert Peasemarch decided to tell all. He was in the overwrought state of mind that makes a man yearn for a confidant with whom he can share the burden that has been placed upon him, and surely Mr I would agree that it was perfectly all right letting Cosmo Wisdom, the child of his half-sister by marriage, in on the ground floor. If Cosmo had still had his little black moustache, he might have hesitated, but, as we have seen, the aesthetic authorities of Brixton prison had lost no time in shaving it off. Gazing into his now unblemished face, Albert Peasemarch could see no possible objection to cleansing his bosom of the perilous stuff which was weighing on his heart. If you cannot confide in the son of the woman you love, in whom can you confide?
'But I wasn't, Mr C
'Eh?'
'I wasn't kidding him.'
Cosmo's hand flew to the barren spot where his moustache had been. At times when he was dumbfounded he always twirled it. That he was dumbfounded now was plainly to be seen. He stared incredulously at Albert Peasemarch.
'Now you're pulling my leg.'
'No, really, Mr C
'You don't mean it's true?'
'Every word of it.'
'Well, I'm blowed!'
'It was like this, Mr C. His lordship sent for me—'
'His lordship?'
'Lord Ickenham, sir.'
'You don't mean he's mixed up in this?'
'It's his document I'm taking care of, the one that was entrusted to him by the head of the Secret Service, of which he is a member.'
'Old Ickenham's in the Secret Service?'
'He is, indeed.'
Cosmo nodded.
'By Jove, yes, so he is. I remember him telling me. One forgets these things. Let's have the whole story from start to finish.'
When Albert Peasemarch had concluded his narrative, Cosmo went through the motion of twirling his lost moustache again.
'I see,' he said slowly. 'So that's how it is. He's left you holding the baby.'
'Yes, sir.'
'It looks to me as if you were in a bit of a spot.'
Albert Peasemarch assented. That, he said, was how it looked to him, too.
'I don't suppose these international spies stick at much.'
'No, sir.'
'If they get on to it that you've got that document, the mildest thing they'll do is shove lighted matches between your toes.' Cosmo mused for a space. 'Look here,' he said, struck with a happy thought. 'Why don't you give it to me?'
Albert Peasemarch stared.
'You, sir?'
'It's the only way,' said Cosmo, becoming more and more enthusiastic about the idea. 'Put yourself in the place of these spie
s. They'll soon find out old Ickenham hasn't got this document, and then they'll start asking themselves what he's done with it, and it won't take them long to realize that he must have handed it on to someone. Then what'll they say? They'll say "To who?
'Whom,' murmured Albert Peasemarch mechanically He was rather a purist. He shuddered a little, for those last words had reminded him of Lord Ickenham imitating the cry of the white owl.
'And they'll pretty soon answer that. They know you and he are friends.'
'Old comrades. Home Guard.'
'Exactly. It'll be obvious to them that he must have given the thing to you.'
Again Albert Peasemarch was reluctantly reminded of his old comrade giving his owl impersonation. He spoke with an increase of animation, for the scheme was beginning to appeal to him.
'I see what you mean, Mr C. They'd never suspect that you had it.'
'Of course they wouldn't. I hardly know old Ickenham. Is it likely he'd give important documents to a fellow who's practically a stranger? Whatever this paper is, it will be as safe with me as if it were in the Bank of England.'
'It's certainly an idea, Mr C
'Where is the thing?'
'In my bedroom, sir.'
'The first place spies would look. Go and get it.'
Albert Peasemarch went and got it. But though Cosmo extended a hand invitingly, he did not immediately place the envelope in it. His air was that of a man who lets 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would', as so often happens with cats in adages.
'There's just one thing, Mr C. I must have his lordship's permission.'
'What!'
'Can't make a move like this without consulting his lordship. But it won't take a jiffy to step over to the Hall and get his okay. Five minutes at the outside,' said Albert Peasemarch, reaching for his bowler hat.
It sometimes happens at the Beetle and Wedge that a customer, demanding home-brew and licking his lips at the prospect of getting it, is informed by the voice of doom, speaking in the person of Rupert Morrison, that he has already had enough and cannot be served. On such occasions the customer has the feeling that the great globe itself has faded, leaving not a wrack behind, and that, as in the case of bad men interrupted in their activities by the United States Marines, all is darkness, disillusionment and despair. Such a feeling came to Cosmo Wisdom now. This unforeseen check, just as he had been congratulating himself on having fought the good fight and won it, induced a sudden giddiness and swimming of the head, so that his very vision was affected and he seemed to see two Albert Peasemarches with two round faces reaching for a brace of bowler hats.
Was there, he asked himself desperately, no way out, no means of persuading this man to skip the red tape?
There was. Beside the remains of the two hard-boiled eggs, which in that sudden spasm of spiritual anguish had seemed to him for an instant four hard-boiled eggs, there stood a pepper pot. To snatch this up and project its contents into Albert Peasemarch's face was with Cosmo the work of a moment. Then, leaving the suffering man to his sneezing, he shot out into the great open spaces, where he could be alone, in his pocket the only proof that existed that he was not the author of Cocktail Time, for the motion picture rights of which the Superba-Llewellyn studio would, he hoped, shortly be bumped up to an offer of two hundred thousand dollars.
But in assuming that in the great open spaces he would be alone, he was mistaken. Scarcely had he reached them, when a voice that might have been that of an ancient sheep spoke at his elbow.
'Well met by moonlight, proud Wisdom,' it bleated, and spinning on his axis he perceived old Mr Saxby.
'Oh, hullo,' he said, when able to articulate. 'Nice morning, isn't it? The sun and all that. Well, goodbye.'
'Let us not utter that sad word,' said Mr Saxby. 'Are you on your way to the Hall? I will walk with you.'
It was a pity that Cosmo had never taken any great interest in birds, for he was afforded now an admirable opportunity of adding to his information concerning their manners and habits. In considerable detail Mr Saxby spoke of hedge sparrows he had goggled at in their homes and meadow pipits he had surprised while bathing, and, had Cosmo been an ornithologist, he would have found the old gentleman's conversation absorbing. But, like so many of us, he could take meadow pipits or leave them alone, and it was with something of the feeling he had had when released from Brixton prison that at long last he saw the human porous plaster potter off on some business of his own.
It was in the hall of Johnny Pearce's ancestral home that this happened, and at the moment of Mr Saxby's departure he was standing beside one of the comfortable, if shabby, armchairs which were dotted about in it. Into this he now sank. The nervous strain to which he had been subjected, intensified by the society of the late bird aficionado, had left him dazed. So much so that it was several minutes before he realized that he ought not to be just sitting here like this, he should be acting. The letter was still in his pocket, undestroyed. He took it out, and removed its manilla wrapping. First and foremost on the agenda paper was the putting of it to the flames – not the tearing of it up and depositing it in the wastepaper basket, for a torn-up letter can be pieced together.
There was a table beside the chair, on it an ashtray and matches. He reached for these, and was in the very act of striking one, when he became aware of a wave of some exotic scent that seemed to proceed from behind him, the sort of scent affected by those mysterious veiled women who are always stealing Naval Treaties from Government officials in Whitehall. Turning sharply, he perceived Mrs Gordon Carlisle, and with considerable emotion noted that she was holding, and in the act of raising, one of those small but serviceable rubber instruments known as coshes. At her side, on his face the contented look of one who feels that his affairs are in excellent hands, stood her husband.
It was almost immediately after this that the roof fell in, and Cosmo knew no more. J. P. Boots, in his sardonic way, would have said that he had not known much even before that.
CHAPTER 20
'Nice work, sweetie,' said Mr Carlisle, viewing the remains with satisfaction. 'Just behind the ear, that's the spot.'
'Never known it to fail,' said Gertie.
'He isn't dead, is he?'
'Oh, I shouldn't think so.'
'Just as well, maybe. Gimme the letter. And,' added Oily urgently, 'gimme that blackjack.'
'Eh?'
'Someone's coming. We've got to ditch them quick.'
'Slip 'em in your pocket.'
'And have them frisk me and find them there? Talk sense.'
'Yay, I see what you mean.' Gertie's eyes flickered about the hall. 'Look. Dump 'em in that thing over there.'
She alluded to the imitation walnut cabinet, the legacy of Johnny Pearce's Great-Uncle Walter, which had always so jarred on Lord Ickenham, and Oily approved of the suggestion. He darted across the hall, opened and slammed one of the drawers, dusted his hands and returned, just as Johnny appeared.
Johnny was on his way to get a breath of fresh air after a chat with Nannie Bruce about the new cook, concerning whose short-comings, more marked in her opinion even than those of the one who had held office two weeks previously, she had unburdened her mind in a speech containing at least three extracts from Ecclesiastes. He was in a sombre mood, having had his fill of Nannie Bruce, Ecclesiastes and paying guests, and the sight of one of these last apparently asleep in a chair would have left him uninterested, had not Cosmo at this moment slumped to the floor. A man who takes in paying guests can ignore them when they are vertical. When they become horizontal, he has to ask questions.
'What's all this?' he said, an observation which should more properly have been left to Police Constable McMurdo, who was down the passage, talking to Nannie. He had been hanging about outside the door of Johnny's study for some twenty minutes in the hope of finding an opportunity of pleading with her.
Gertie was swift to supply the desired information.
'Seems to me the guy's had some kind of a fit.'
; Oily said that that was the way it looked to him, too.
'My husband and I was passing through on our way to our room, when he suddenly keeled over. With a groan.'
'More a gurgle, sweetie.'
'Well, with whatever it was. Could have been a death rattle, of course.'
Johnny frowned darkly. Life these days, he was thinking, was just one damn thing after another. First Nannie with her cooks and Ecclesiastes, then Norbury-Smith, from whom no good woman was safe, and now this groaning, gurgling or possibly death-rattling paying guest. Had even Job, whose troubles have received such wide publicity, ever had anything on this scale to cope with?
He raised his voice in a passionate bellow.
'Nannie!'
Nannie Bruce appeared, followed by Officer McMurdo, whose air was that of a police constable who has not been making much headway.
'Nannie, phone for Doctor Welsh. Tell him to come over right away. Mr Wisdom's had a fit or something. And for heaven's sake don't start yammering about what your biblical friend would have thought of the situation. Get a move on!'
Officer McMurdo looked at him with a wistful admiration. That was telling her, he felt. That was the way to talk to the other sex. Nannie Bruce, who did not hold this view, bridled.
'There is no necessity to shout at me, Master Jonathan, nor to make a mock of the holy scriptures. And I disagree with you when you say that Mr Wisdom has had a fit. Look at the way he's lying, with his legs straight out. My Uncle Charlie suffered from fits, and he used to curl up in a ball.' She went to where Cosmo lay, scrutinized him closely and ran an expert finger over his head. 'This man,' she said, 'has been struck with a blunt instrument!'
'What!'
'There's a lump behind his ear as big as a walnut. It's a matter for the police, such,' said Nannie Bruce, eyeing Officer McMurdo coldly, 'as they are. Still, when you say telephone for Doctor Welsh, that's sense. I'll go and do it at once.'
She departed on her errand with the dignity of a woman who does not intend to be ordered about but is willing to oblige, and long before she had disappeared Police Constable McMurdo's notebook was out and his pencil licked and poised.