‘Haven’t you gone yet?’
‘The start of the expedition has been postponed in order that I may have a word with you. Busy?’
‘Very.’
‘Wait till Clarence sees your handiwork. He’ll have a fit. For God’s sake don’t ever let him know that it was I who got you the job. Well, young Sandy, so you’re sending the boy friend back his letters, are you?’
She started, dislodging a bill for goods supplied which had managed to get entangled in her hair.
‘I don’t know what you mean!’
‘No good trying to fool me, child. I know what’s in this parcel. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is the set-up as I see it. You were engaged to this S. G. Bagshott. For a time you thought him the only onion in the stew. Then you had a fight about something and relations deteriorated to the point where you told him those wedding bells would not ring out. Take back your ring, you said, take back the bottle of scent you gave me on my birthday, you said, and now you’re returning his letters. Am I right?’
‘More or less.’
‘And you really want me to post this parcel?’
‘Yes.’
‘This is the end, is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did the poor fish do to make you mad? How do you know the girl you saw him kissing wasn’t his aunt?’
‘I did not see him kissing a girl.’
‘Well, what put you off him? Did he step on your foot while dancing? Did he criticise your hair-do? Lose your umbrella? Take you out of a business double?’
‘If you don’t mind, Gally, I’ve a lot of work to do.’
‘What you mean is, Don’t be such a damned old Nosey Parker. All right, if you insist. But I’m going to find out what the trouble was. What does that S of his stand for?’
‘Samuel.’
‘I thought as much. It now becomes pretty certain that he’s the son of an old friend of mine and has a claim on my interest. I shall call on him and deliver this parcel in person. He’ll give me the facts, and the betting is that I shall bring you two young sundered hearts together again. Sundered hearts make me sick,’ said Gally. ‘I’ve been against them from boyhood.’
CHAPTER 3
I
Halsey Court, though situated in Mayfair and entitled to put ‘London W.1’ after its name, is not a fashionable locality. It is a small, dark, dingy cul-de-sac, far too full of prowling cats, fluttering newspapers and derelict banana skins to attract the haut monde. Dukes avoid it, marquises give it a wide berth, earls and viscounts would not settle there if you paid them. It consists of some seedy offices and a block of residential flats, Halsey Chambers, which are occupied mostly by young men of slender means who cannot afford to pick and choose and are thankful to have an inexpensive roof over their heads. Jeff Miller, the writer of novels of suspense, lived there at one time; so did Jerry Shoe-smith, editor until his services were dispensed with of the weekly paper Society Spice; and now that they had married and gone elsewhere literature was represented by Sandy Callender’s late betrothed, Samuel Galahad Bagshott.
Actually, when he had forms to fill up and information to give to an inquisitive bureaucracy, Sam described himself as a barrister, but it was his typewriter that enabled him to pay the rent and enjoy three moderately square meals a day. Like so many commencing barristers, he wrote assiduously while waiting for the briefs to start coming in. He wrote short, bright articles on fly-fishing, healthy living, muscle development, great lovers through the ages and the modern girl. He wrote light verse, reviews of novels, interviews with celebrities, chatty Guides to the Brontë country and the Land of Dickens, stories for half-witted adults, stories for retarded boys and stories for children with water on the brain. It was with the last-named section of his public in mind that he was toiling on the morning when Gally had started his drive to London. He was writing a short story about a kitten called Pinky-Poo which he hoped, if all went well and the editor’s heart was in the right place, to sell to the Yuletide number of Wee Tots.
He did not look the sort of young man from whom one would have expected stories about kittens called Pinky-Poo or indeed about kittens whose godparents had been less fanciful in their choice of names, for his appearance was distinctly on the rugged side. Tough was the adjective a stylist like Gustave Flaubert would have applied to him, though being French he would have said dur or coriace. He was large and chunky, he had been one of the Possibles in an England international Rugby trial game, and a fondness for boxing had left his nose a little out of the straight and one of his ears twisted. If he had been your guide to the Brontë country or the Land of Dickens, you would probably have felt a qualm at the thought of being alone with him on a deserted moor or down a dark alley, but your apprehensions would have been needless, for despite his intimidating looks he was inwardly, like Tipton Plimsoll’s Officer Garroway, all sweetness and light. Off the football field and outside the ring anything in the shape of mayhem would have been unthinkable to him.
He had written the words ‘There never was a naughtier kitten than Pinky-Poo’ and was leaning back in his chair with the feeling that he was off to a good start but wondering what twists and turns his narrative would now take, when the doorbell rang. Going to answer it, he found standing on the mat a small, dapper, elderly gentleman with an eyeglass who bade him a civil good morning.
‘Good morning,’ said Sam, not to be outdone in the courtesies. The thought occurred to him that this might be a solicitor bringing a brief, but he did not really hope. Solicitors, if they call on barristers, do so at their chambers in Lincoln’s Inn or wherever it may be, and they seldom wear monocles and never beam as this visitor was doing. Nor are they as a rule so rosy and robust.
That was what struck Sam immediately about Galahad Threepwood, that he looked extraordinarily fit for his years. It was the impression Gally made on everyone who met him. After the life he had led he had no right to burst with health, but he did. Where most of his contemporaries had long ago thrown in the towel and retired to cure resorts to nurse their gout, he had gone blithely on, ever rising on stepping stones of dead whiskies and sodas to higher things. He had discovered the prime grand secret of eternal youth — to keep the decanter circulating, to stop smoking only when snapping the lighter for his next cigarette and never to retire to rest before three in the morning.
‘Doesn’t he look marvellous?’ one of his nieces had once said of him. ‘It really is extraordinary that anyone who has had as good a time as he has can be so amazingly healthy. Everywhere you look you see men leading model lives and pegging out in their prime, but good old Uncle Gally, who apparently never went to bed till he was fifty, is still breezing along as perky as ever.
‘Yes?’ said Sam.
‘Mr Bagshott?’
‘Yes.’
‘My name is Threepwood.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Galahad Threepwood.’
The name touched a chord in Sam’s memory. It was one the late Berkeley Bagshott had often mentioned when in reminiscent vein. The conversation of his intimates of the old days was always inclined to turn to Gally as they probed the past.
‘Oh, really?’ he said, beaming in his turn. ‘I’ve heard my father speak of you.’
‘So you are old Boko’s son? I thought so.’
‘You were great friends, weren’t you?’
‘Bosom.’
‘That was why he had me christened Galahad, I suppose.’
‘Yes, it was a pretty thought. He told me he would have asked me to be your godfather, only he didn’t feel it would be safe. Starting you off under too much of a handicap.’
‘Well, it’s awfully nice of you to look me up. How did you find my address?’
‘It was given me by Sandy Callender as I was leaving Blandings Castle this morning.’
‘Oh?’ Sam gulped. ‘So you’ve met Sandy?’
‘I’ve known her for quite a time. We first met in New York when she was working for Chet Tipton, a pal of m
ine. He, poor chap, handed in his dinner pail and she came to London, looking for a job. I ran into her just when my sister Hermione was wanting a secretary for my brother Clarence, so I recommended her and she was signed on. This morning, as I was leaving, she gave me this parcel to post. I saw your name, the S.G. struck me as significant and I decided to deliver it in person, just in case you were the fellow I thought you might be, if you see what I mean. I don’t know what odds a bookie would have given me against your turning out to be Boko’s son, but it seemed a fair speculative venture, and the long shot came off.’
‘I see. Er — how is Sandy?’
‘Physically fizzing, spiritually not so good. She has the air of one who is brooding on something, as it might be a broken engagement or something of that kind. Am I right in supposing that this parcel contains your letters?’
Sam nodded gloomily.
‘I expect so. She told me she was going to send them back.’ There was a world of sympathy in the eye behind Gally’s monocle. As many people did, he had taken an instant liking to this son of one with whom he had so often heard the chimes of midnight, and he longed to do something to lighten his gloom. Years of membership of the old Pelican Club, where somebody was always having trouble with duns or bookies or women, had taught him how comforting it was to tell your sad story to a compassionate listener.
‘Would it,’ he said, ‘be impertinent of me, always bearing in mind that your father and I were old friends and that I may quite possibly have dandled you on my knee as a baby, if I asked what caused the rift between you and young Sandy?’
‘Not at all. But it’s rather a long story.’
‘I have all the time in the world. I’ve got to meet my brother at Barribault’s Hotel, but that’s only just round the corner and he won’t mind waiting. I’ll trickle in, shall I?’
‘Do. How about a drink?’
‘If you have a spot of whisky?’
‘The one thing I do have.’
‘Excellent. But I’m afraid I’m interrupting your work.’
‘Oh, that’s all right. I’m only writing a story about a kitten, and I had got stuck when you arrived. What can I make a kitten do?’
‘Chase its tail?’
‘But after that? I need a strong story line and a couple of situations that’ll knock the Wee Tots subscribers’ eyes out.’
‘Is it your aim to amuse the little blisters, or do you want to scare the pants off them?’
‘Either. I’m not fussy.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t help you.’
‘Then help yourself,’ said Sam hospitably, placing bottle, glass and syphon at his side.
II
Gally took a restorative draught. Refreshed, he lit a cigarette.
‘Wee Tots,’ he said meditatively. ‘I know a fellow who once edited that powerful sheet. Monty Bodkin. Ever meet him?’
‘I’ve seen him at the Drones.’
‘You are a member of the Drones Club?’ Sam gave a short, bitter laugh.
‘Am I a member of the Drones Club! Yes, Mr Threepwood—’
‘Call me Gally.’
‘May I?’
‘Of course. Everybody does. You were saying —?‘
‘Yes, Gally, I am a member of the Drones Club. If I weren’t, there wouldn’t have been this trouble between Sandy and me.’
‘She wanted you to resign?’
‘No, it wasn’t that. But I’d better begin at the beginning, hadn’t I?’
‘It sounds an excellent idea.’
Sam mused, marshalling his thoughts. Producing another glass, he mixed himself a whisky and soda. It stimulated him to speech.
‘Well, the first thing that happened was that I was rather frank about her spectacles.’
‘I don’t follow you.’
‘I mean that was what really started the unpleasantness. It got the conversation off on the wrong note. Is she wearing those damned spectacles?’
‘Never without them. A pity she’s had to take to them. They spoil her appearance.
‘That’s what I told her. I said they made her look like a horror from outer space.
‘And what had she to say in response?’
‘Oh, this and that,’ said Sam. It was plain that the memory was not one on which he cared to dwell.
Gally pursed his lips. He was a chivalrous man. In his time he had said things equally or even more offensive to silver ring bookmakers and their like, but these had invariably been of the male sex. To women from youth upward he had always prided himself on being scrupulously polite. Even on the occasion in his early days when a ballet dancer of mixed Spanish and Italian parentage had stabbed him in the leg with a hatpin, his manner had remained suave and his language guarded.
‘You ought not to have taunted her about her physical misfortunes, my boy,’ he said disapprovingly. ‘She can’t help wearing spectacles.’
‘But she can. That’s the whole point. Her eyesight’s perfect. The beastly things are made of plain glass, and she only put them on to impress Lord Emsworth.’
‘Her train of thought eludes me.’
‘She said they made her look older.’
‘Ah yes, I see what she meant. Chet Tipton never objected to her functioning without the headlights, but perhaps she feels that my brother will be more critical. And I don’t suppose my sister Hermione would approve of a secretary who looks about eighteen.’
‘More like seventeen.’
‘Yes, possibly more like seventeen. It’s an odd thing, but all girls look seventeen to me nowadays. You’ll find that yourself when you get to my age. So she took umbrage?’
‘She wasn’t too pleased.’
‘These redheads are always easily stirred. But surely that was merely a trifling tiff, to be cleared up with a kiss and an apology, not the sort of thing to put a girl permanently off the man she loved?’
‘There was more.
‘Tell me more.
‘Well, you see, there’s this house of mine … When you knew my father, did you ever stay at his house in Sussex?’
‘Great Swifts? Dozens of times. Big barracks of a place.’
‘Exactly. And costs the earth to keep up. My father left it to me, and I want to sell it.’
‘I don’t blame you.’
‘So that I can buy a partnership in a publishing firm. I don’t think I’ve much future at the Bar, but I know I would be sensational as a publisher.’
‘There’s money in publishing.’
‘You bet there is, and I want some of it.’
Gally sipped his whisky thoughtfully. It was unpleasant to have to discourage his young friend’s fresh enthusiasms, but he felt it was only kind to warn him that what he was contemplating was far from being the dead snip he seemed to suppose it. England, he knew, was full of landed proprietors anxious to unload their holdings but unable to find takers.
‘It may not be too easy to sell it. People these days haven’t much use for a big place like that.’
‘Oofy has.’
‘Who?’
‘Oofy Prosser, one of the fellows at the Drones. He’s just got married and his wife wants a country house not far from London. She’s seen Great Swifts and is crazy about it.’
‘That sounds promising. He is rich, this Prosser?’
‘Got the stuff in sackfuls. His father was Prosser’s Pep Pill; I’m sure I can stick him for at least twenty thousand pounds if the deal goes through.’
Gally’s doubts vanished. He had erred, he felt, in supposing the thing not to be a snip.
‘Well, as my brother Clarence is so fond of saying, Capital, capital, capital!’ Gally paused. He had noted a look of gloom on his companion’s face, and it surprised him that he should be despondent when his prospects were so glittering. ‘If you don’t think it capital, why don’t you think it capital?’
‘Because there’s a snag. Oofy insists on having the place done up before he’ll part with a cheque. It’s rather run down.’
‘It was a litt
le that way in your father’s time. Buckets in most of the rooms to catch the water coming through the roof and the whole outfit a good deal bitten by mice. I begin to see your difficulty. Will it cost a lot to have it done up?’
‘I think I could manage with about seven hundred pounds. But so far I’ve only been able to save two hundred.’
‘Nobody you could touch for the rest?’
‘Not a soul. Well, that was the position of affairs when this thing at the Drones happened.’
‘You’re going too fast for me. What thing at the Drones?’
‘The sweep. They had a sweep there.’
‘On the Derby?’
‘No, on which member of the club would be the next to get married. I suppose it was Oofy’s marriage that gave them the idea.’
A very sound idea. We had a similar sweep at the Pelican years ago, only there it was on who would be the next to die.’
‘Rather gruesome.
‘Oh, we didn’t mind that at the Pelican. The suggestion was enthusiastically welcomed. The favourite, of course, was old Charlie Pemberton, who was pushing ninety and was known to have had sclerosis of the liver since his early days in the Federated Malay States. I remember how elated your father was when he drew his name out of the hat. He thought he had it made. But, as so often happens, the race went to a dark horse. Buffy Struggles, poor fellow. Got run over by a hansom cab the very day after the drawing. The rankest possible outsider. But I’m interrupting your story. This sweep, you were saying?’
‘Well, of course I entered for it.’
‘Of course,’ said Gally, surprised that any other action should be considered possible. ‘How much were the tickets?’
‘Ten pounds.’
‘Ten pounds? Shillings, you must mean.
‘No, pounds. It happened to be at a time when there was an unusual lot of money about. So I put up my tenner, and Sandy gave me the devil. She said I was just throwing it away. She had been a bit austere a few weeks previously when, hoping to bump up my little savings, I speculated on the races and dropped twenty quid.’
Gally nodded. He thought he could see where the narrative was heading.