‘Clarence!’
‘Eh?’
‘Will you please stop dithering and get on with your story.’
‘My story? Ah yes. Yes, yes, quite. Where had I got to? Ah yes. This voice — the second voice — said it was sorry to disturb me at this time of night and I said “Quite all right, my dear fellow” or it may have been “Perfectly all right, my dear fellow. By the way, who are you?” I said, and he said he was Tipton Plimsoll. “I’ve lost all my money,” he said, and I said I was sorry to hear that, and he asked me if I would lend him twenty dollars. I forget what this is in our currency, but something quite small, so I said of course I would. I should mention that he had begun by telling me that he was the man who was engaged to my niece Veronica and that he had actually stayed at the castle, though I have no recollection of it. Well, to cut a long story short, I said of course I would, and he thanked me profusely and burst into song.
It was some minutes since Lady Hermione had clutched her forehead. She repaired this omission.
‘Song?’
‘Yes, he began singing. Something, if I remember about there being a rainbow in the sky, so let’s have another cup of coffee and let’s have another piece of pie. I wasn’t at all surprised. I suppose it was a long time since he had had a square meal, and pie is very filling. They eat cheese with pie in America, which no doubt is all right for those who like it, but I wouldn’t care to do it myself Well, I asked him if he would be calling for the money in the morning, but he said no, he needed it at once. They’re like that over there. Hustle, bustle, do it now. He said would I send it by messenger and I said certainly, and I heard him asking someone called Garroway what was the address of the prison where he was.’
‘Prison?’
‘This Garroway seems to have been a knowledgeable chap, for he told him all right. Galahad used to know a policeman named Garroway, but he died years ago, so it can’t have been him. Or he? I remember being rapped on the knuckles by that governess we had when we were children, Hermione, some name like Biggs or Postlethwaite, because I couldn’t get that he/him thing right. Yes, apparently he was in custody.’
Lady Hermione had stopped clutching her forehead, probably feeling that it was using up energy and getting her nowhere. She was looking like a cook who on the night of the big dinner party suddenly discovered that the fishmonger has not sent the lobsters. Her immediate impulse was to scream, but she forced herself to speak quietly, and if her voice bore a close resemblance to a voice from the tomb, the most censorious critic can hardly blame her.
‘Clarence, is this a joke?’
‘It can’t have been much of a joke for Plimsoll. Nobody likes having to plead for money.
‘I mean, are you making up all this?’
Lord Emsworth was justly offended. It was difficult for a man as lean and limp as he was to bridle, but he came as near to bridling as was within the scope of his powers.
‘Of course I’m not making it up. Why would I make it up? And how could I if I wanted to? Dash it, do you think I’m capable of making up a story like that? I’m not Shakespeare.
‘But how can he have been in prison?’
The question surprised Lord Emsworth.
‘Well, lots of fellows do go to prison. Galahad in his younger days frequently spent the night at Bow Street and if I’m not mistaken once nearly did fourteen days without the option of a fine. He was arrested so often that he tells me he got to know most of the policemen in the West End of London by their first names. Extraordinary names some of them had, too. One of them was called Egbert. Why, bless my soul, Egbert, that’s your name, isn’t it? Shows what a small world it is.’
Too small, Lady Hermione was thinking, to be large enough to contain with anything like comfort her brother Clarence and herself. Lord Emsworth in one of his rambling moods never failed to affect her powerfully. She hoped she was a charitable woman, but the best she could find to say about the ninth Earl at this juncture was that he did not wear a monocle.
‘Good God!’ said Colonel Wedge, and this seemed to sum the situation up.
It was growing dark now and as always when the light began to fade his study and his Whipple On The Care Of The Pig called to Lord Emsworth. He edged towards the door and such was the preoccupation his tale had caused that he was through it and down the stairs before his sister or his brother-in-law had observed his going. Years of sliding away from the other sex had given him a technique second to none.
III
In the room he had left, silence, for some moments, hung like a pall. It was as if his simple narrative of night life in New York had robbed its occupants of speech. Lady Hermione’s vocal cords were the first to recover.
‘Egbert!’
‘Yes, old girl?’
‘Do you think this is true?’ ‘Must be, I’m afraid.’
‘You know how Clarence gets things muddled up.’
‘He does, I agree. As a rule, I write off anything he tells me as just babble from the padded cell. Normally, I wouldn’t take Clarence’s unsupported word if I saw the countryside flooded and he told me it had been raining. But in this case I don’t see how we can doubt. I mean to say, Tipton told him himself.’
‘Yes.’
And touched him for twenty dollars.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, there you are, then. Obviously he had been speculating on the Stock Exchange and the crash wiped him out. He isn’t the first millionaire that’s happened to, and I don’t suppose he’ll be the last.’
A gloomy silence fell. Colonel Wedge cleared his throat.
‘What steps do you propose to take, old girl?’
‘Veronica must be told.’
‘Of course. Can’t have her going blindly into marriage and having the bridegroom reveal to her in the vestry that he hasn’t a bean.’
Lady Hermione frowned. She considered that her husband was showing a lack of tact. These military men often do.
‘Money has nothing to do with it,’ she said. ‘If it were simply a matter of Tipton not being as rich as we had supposed, I would have nothing to say. But Clarence says he was in prison.’
‘I wonder what they jugged him for.’
‘Vagrancy probably or begging in the streets. What does it matter? The point is that we cannot allow Veronica to marry a man with a prison record.’
‘So you’ll write to Vee?’
‘I shall go and see her.’
‘Yes, that’s the best plan.’
‘Ring for Beach and tell him to tell Voules to have the car ready as quickly as possible. He must drive me to London tonight.’
‘You’ll get there pretty late.’
‘Too late, of course, to see her, but I will talk to her in the morning and tell her she must write to Tipton breaking the engagement.’
‘Do you think she will?’
‘Of course she will. I shall see to that. Veronica always does what I tell her.’
‘That’s true,’ said Colonel Wedge, who resembled his daughter in this respect.
He stepped to the wall and pressed the bell.
CHAPTER 5
I
The little country town of Market Blandings is one at which Shropshire points with pride, and not without reason. Its decorous High Street, its lichened church, its red-roofed shops and its age-old inns with their second storeys bulging comfortably over the pavements combine to charm the eye, and this is particularly so if that eye has been accustomed to look daily on Halsey Court, London W.1.
To Sam the place had appealed aesthetically immediately on his arrival, and on the following afternoon, as he sat with pad and pencil in the garden of the Emsworth Arms, he found its spell was being of great assistance to him professionally. It is a fact well known to all authors that there is nothing like a change of scene for stimulating the powers of invention. At Halsey Chambers Sam had had no success as a chronicler of the adventures of Pinky-Poo the kitten, but now he found the stuff simply flowing out. It was not long before he was ab
le to write ‘The End’ with the satisfactory feeling that, provided the editor was not suffering from softening of the brain, always an occupational risk with editors, a cheque from Wee Tots was to all intents and purposes in his pocket.
His task done, his thoughts, like those of every author who has completed a testing bit of work, turned in the direction of beer. At dinner on the previous night and again at lunch he had tried out that of the Emsworth Arms and found it superb. Rising, he replaced pad and pencil in his room and made for the bar. And at that precise moment Beach the butler, looking hot and exhausted, tottered into it.
His duties at the luncheon table concluded and no further buttling being required of him until the dinner hour Beach had started ponderously down the long drive of Blandings Castle and carried on through the great gate at the end of it and into the high road. Something approximating to a heat wave was in progress and the sun was very sultry, but though the poet Coward has specifically stressed the advisability of avoiding its ultraviolet ray, it was his intention to walk to the Emsworth Arms, a distance of fully two miles, and in due season to walk back again.
It would have gratified Huxley Winkworth had he known that this athletic feat was the direct result of his critique of the previous morning. His words had stung Beach at the time, for there had been a tactlessness in their candour calculated to wound, but he was a fair-minded man and realised on reflection that the child, though one might frown on his mode of expressing himself, might possibly have been right. His figure was perhaps a little too full and in need of streamlining. The sedentary life of a butler is apt to take its toll.
Of his misadventures on the way — the beads of perspiration, the laboured breath, the blister on the right foot — it is not necessary to speak. The historian passes on to the moment when, arriving at the Emsworth Arms, he limped into the bar and licking his lips surreptitiously requested the barmaid to draw him a mug of the beer which Sam had found so palatable. He felt that he had earned it.
The barmaid’s name was Marlene Wellbeloved and she was the niece of George Cyril Wellbeloved, Lord Emsworth’s former pigman. Beach had never been fond of George Cyril, considering him a low proletarian and worse than that a man with no respect for his social superiors. Word had reached him that on several occasions he had been referred to by this untouchable as ‘Old Fatty’ and ‘that stuffed shirt’, and the occasion when the other had addressed him with the frightful words ‘Hoy, cocky’ was still green in his memory. Nothing in the way of chumminess could ever exist between this degraded ex-pigman and himself, but for Marlene he had a tolerant liking, and when after a few desultory exchanges he took out the silver watch he had won in the darts tournament to see how the time was getting along and she said, ‘Oo, Mr Beach, can I look at that?’ he readily consented. He unhooked it from his waistcoat and laid it on the counter, well pleased with her girlish interest.
Her reactions were all that could have been desired. She uttered two squeaks and a giggle.
‘Why, it’s beautiful, Mr Beach!’ A very handsome trophy.’
And you really won it playing darts?’
‘I was so fortunate.’
‘Well, I think it’s lovely.’
It was as she was saying You must be terribly good at darts, Mr Beach, and Beach was deprecating her praise with a modest gesture of the hand that Constable Evans of the Market Blandings police force entered the bar. He had parked his bicycle outside and was coming in for a quick one before resuming his rounds. On seeing Beach, he temporarily forgot his mission. At the station house that morning he had heard a good one from his sergeant and he wanted to pass it along.
‘Hi, Mr Beach.’
‘Good afternoon, Mr Evans.’ ‘Got a story for you.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Not for your ears, Marlene. Come outside, Mr Beach.’
They went out together just as Sam reached the doorway. A collision was unavoidable.
‘Pardon me, sir,’ said Beach.
‘My fault. Entirely my fault. Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ said Sam.
He spoke with a gay lilt in his voice, for he was in buoyant and optimistic mood. It was not only the circumstances of having finished his story and seen the last of a kitten he had never been fond of that induced this sense of well-being. His conversation with Gally at Halsey Chambers had stimulated him, as conversations with Gally so often stimulated people. It had left him convinced that he had only to meet Sandy and inaugurate a frank round-table talk and all misunderstandings, if you could call what had passed between them a misunderstanding, would be forgotten. He would say he was sorry he had called her a ginger-haired little fathead, she would say she was sorry she had thrown the ring at him, they would kiss again with tears as the late Alfred, Lord Tennyson had so well put it and everything would be all right once more.
There was no possible doubt in his mind that Gally had been correct in describing the thing as in the bag, and the world was looking good to him. He was loving everyone he met. He had caught only a fleeting glimpse of the obese character with whom he had collided in the doorway, but he was sure he was an awfully nice obese character, once you got to know him. He liked the looks of Constable Evans and also those of Marlene Wellbeloved, whom he now approached with a charming smile and a request that she would let him have a stoup of the elixir for which the Emsworth Arms was so justly famous.
‘Nice day,’ said Marlene as she filled the order for she was a capital conversationalist. A barmaid has to be as quick as lightning with these good things. They promote a friendly atmosphere and stimulate trade.
‘Beautiful,’ said Sam with equal cordiality. ‘Hullo, has somebody been giving you a watch? Your birthday is it, or something?’
Marlene giggled. A most musical sound, Sam thought it. In the mood he was in he would have been equally appreciative of a squeaking slate pencil.
‘It’s Old Fatty’s. He won it in the darts tournament.’
‘Old Fatty? You mean the gentleman I was dancing the rumba with just now?’
‘My Uncle George always calls him Old Fatty. Uncle George is terribly funny.’
‘I’ll bet he keeps one and all in stitches. What’s it doing on the counter?’
‘He was showing it to me. He went out because Constable Evans wanted to tell him a dirty story.’
‘What was the story? You don’t happen to know?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘I must get him to tell it to me some time. Yes,’ said Sam, picking it up, ‘it’s certainly a handsome watch. Well worth winning even at the expense of having to play darts, which to my mind is about the lousiest pastime in the—’
‘World’ he would have concluded, but the word died on his lips. The door of the Emsworth Arms bar faced the road and was always kept open in fine weather and passing it, wheeling a bicycle, was a red-haired girl at the sight of whom all thoughts of beer, watches and barmaids were wiped from his mind as with a sponge. He bounded out, calling her name, and she looked round startled. Then as she saw him her eyes widened and leaping on her bicycle she rode off, gathering speed as she went. And Sam, breathing a soft expletive, ran after her, though with little hope that anything constructive would result.
As he ran, he was dimly aware of a sound like a steam whistle in his rear, but he had no leisure to give it his attention.
II
The steam-whistle-like sound which had made so little impression on Sam had proceeded from the lips of Marlene Well-beloved. It had taken her a few seconds to run to the door and come on the air, for astonishment had held her momentarily paralysed. Hers until now had been a placid existence, and nothing like this theft of valuable watches beneath her very eyes had ever marred its even tenor. The bar of the Emsworth Arms was not one of your Malemute saloons where anything may happen when a bunch of the boys start whooping it up. Its clients were of the respectable stamp of Beach the butler Jno. Robinson, proprietor of the station taxi cab, and Percy Bulstrode the chemist. It was the first time that Dangerous Dan
McGrews like the customer who had just left had swum into her ken.
She was, accordingly, deprived of speech. Then, her vocal cords in mid—season form again, she expressed her concern and agitation with an EEEEEEEEEEEE!! which probably made itself heard and excited interest in many a distant parish.
It certainly interested Beach and Constable Evans, chuckling over the sergeant’s story some dozen yards away. Her voice came to them like a bugle call to a couple of war horses. They had seen Sam emerge and start running along the road, but had thought nothing of it, attributing his mobility to an appointment suddenly remembered. When, however they realised that his departure had been the cause of Marlene Wellbeloved going EEEEEEEEEEEE!!, reason told them that there was something sinister afoot. Level-headed girls like Marlene do not go EEEEEEEEEEEE!! without solid grounds for doing so. With one accord they ran towards her the constable in the lead, Beach, who was not built for speed, lying a length or two behind.
‘Smatter?’ asked PC. Evans, always a man of few words. A trained observer he noticed that Marlene was wringing her hands, and he found the gesture significant. Coming on top of that EEEEEEEEEEEE!!, it seemed to PC. Evans that it meant something.
‘Oh, Mr Beach! Oh, Mr Beach!’
‘What is it, Miss Wellbeloved?’
‘That feller’s gone off with your watch!’ cried Marlene, her hands continuing to gyrate. ‘He put it in his pocket and ran off with it!’
The effect of these words on the two men differed substantially. They froze Beach into a statue of dismay, for his watch was very dear to him and the bereavement made him feel like one of those nineteenth-century poets who were always losing dear gazelles. He had not experienced such a sense of desolation and horror since the night when a dinner guest at the castle had asked for a little water to put in his claret. It made him wonder what the world was coming to.