At several points during the meal. Who is she?'
'Her bitterest social rival up in Liverpool'
'Do they have social rivals up in Liverpool?'
'You bet they do, in droves. I gather that it is nip and tuck between the Trotter and the Blenkinsop as to who shall be the uncrowned queen of Liverpudlian society. Sometimes one gets her nose in front, sometimes the other. It's like what one used to read about the death struggles for supremacy in New York's Four Hundred in the old days. But why am I telling you all this? You ought to be out there in the sunset, racing after Percy and bucking him up with your off-colour stories. You have a fund of off-colour stories, I presume?'
'Oh, rather.'
'Then get going, laddie. Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more, or close the wall up with our English dead. Yoicks! Tally-ho! Hark for'ard!' she added, reverting to the argot of the hunting field.
Well, when Aunt Dahlia tells you to get going, you get going, if you know what's good for you. But I was in no cheery mood as I made my way into the great open spaces. That look of Percy's had told me he was going to be a hard audience. It had had in it much of the austerity which I had noticed in Stilton Cheesewright's Uncle Joseph during our get-together at Vinton Street police court.
It was with not a little satisfaction, accordingly, that I found on arriving in the open no signs of him. Relieved, I abandoned the chase and started to stroll hither and thither, taking the air. And I hadn't taken much of it, when there he was, rounding a rhododendron bush in my very path.
CHAPTER 10
If it hadn't been for the whiskers, I don't believe I would have recognized him. It was only about ten minutes since he had shoved his face in at the door of Aunt Dahlia's lair, but in that brief interval his whole aspect had changed. No longer the downcast duck in a thunderstorm from whom I had so recently parted, he had become gay and bobbish. His air was jaunty, his smile bright, and there was in his demeanour more than a suggestion of a man who might at any moment break into a tap dance. It was as if he had spent a considerable time watching that trick of Freddie Widgeon's with the two corks and the bit of string.
'Hullo there, Wooster,' he cried buoyantly, and you would have supposed that finding Bertram in his midst had just about made his day. Taking a stroll, eh?'
I said Yes I was taking a stroll, and he beamed as though feeling that I could have pursued no wiser and more admirable course. 'Sensible chap, Wooster,' he seemed to be saying. 'He takes strolls.'
There was a short intermission here, during which he looked at me lovingly and slid his feet about a bit in the manner of one trying out dance steps. Then he said it was a beautiful evening, and I endorsed this.
'The sunset,' he said, indicating it.
'Very fruity,' I agreed, for the whole horizon was aflame with glorious technicolor.
'Seeing it,' he said, 'I am reminded of a poem I wrote the other day for Parnassus. Just a little thing I dashed off. You might care to hear it.'
'Oh, rather.'
'It's called "Caliban At Sunset".'
'What at sunset?'
'Caliban.'
He cleared his throat, and began:
I stood with a man
Watching the sun go down.
The air was full of murmurous summer scents
And a brave breeze sang like a bugle
From a sky that smouldered in the west,
A sky of crimson, amethyst and gold and sepia
And blue as blue as were the eyes of Helen
When she sat
Gazing from some high tower in Ilium
Upon the Grecian tents darkling below.
And he,
This man who stood beside me,
Gaped like some dull, half-witted animal
And said,
'I say,
Doesn't that sunset remind you
Of a slice
Of underdone roast beef?'
He opened his eyes, which he had closed in order to render the morceau more effectively.
'Bitter, of course.'
'Oh, frightfully bitter.'
'I was feeling bitter when I wrote it. I think you know a man named Cheesewright. It was he I had in mind. Actually, we had never stood watching a sunset together, but I felt it was just the sort of thing he would have said if he had been watching a sunset, if you see what I mean. Am I right?'
'Quite right.'
A soulless clod, don't you think?'
'Soulless to the core.'
'No finer feelings?'
'None.'
'Would I be correct in describing him as a pumpkin-headed oaf?'
'Quite correct.'
'Yes,' he said, 'she is well out of it.'
'She?'
'Florence.'
'Oh, ah. Well out of what?'
He eyed me speculatively, heaving gently like a saucepan of porridge about to reach the height of its fever. I am a man who can observe and deduce, and it was plain to me, watching him sizzle, that something had happened pretty recently in his affairs which had churned him up like a seidlitz powder, leaving him with but two alternatives – (a) to burst where he stood and (b) to decant his pent-up emotions on the first human being who came along. No doubt he would have preferred this human being to have been of a non-Wooster nature, but one imagines that he was saying to himself that you can't have everything and that he was in no position to pick and choose.
He decided on Alternative B.
'Wooster,' he said, placing a hand on my shoulder, 'may I ask you a question? Has your aunt told you that I love Florence Craye?'
'She did mention it, yes.'
'I thought she might have done. She is not what I would call a reticent woman, though of course with many excellent qualities. I was forced to take her into my confidence soon after my arrival here, because she asked me why the devil I was going about looking like a dead codfish.'
'Or like Hamlet?'
'Hamlet or a dead codfish. The point is immaterial. I confessed to her that it was because I loved Florence with a consuming passion and had discovered that she was engaged to the oaf Cheesewright. It had been, I explained, as if I had received a crushing blow on the head.'
'Like Sir Eustace Willoughby.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'In The Mystery of the Pink Crayfish. He was conked on the bean in his library one night, and if you ask me it was the butler who did it. But I interrupted you.'
'You did.'
'I'm sorry. You were saying it was as if you had received a crushing blow on the head.'
'Exactly. I reeled beneath the shock.'
'Must have been a nasty jar.'
'It was. I was stunned. But now... You remember that telegram your aunt gave me to give to Florence?'
'Ah, yes, the telegram.'
'It was from Cheesewright, breaking the engagement.'
I had no means of knowing, of course, what his form was when reeling beneath shocks, but I doubted whether he could have put up a performance topping mine as I heard these words. The sunset swayed before my eyes as if it were doing the shimmy, and a bird close by which was getting outside its evening worm looking for an instant like two birds, both flickering.
'What!' I gurgled, rocking on my base.
'Yes.'
'He's broken the engagement?'
'Precisely.'
'Oh, golly! Why?'
He shook his head.
'Ah, that I couldn't tell you. All I know is that I found Florence in the stable yard tickling a cat behind the ear, and I came up and said "Here's a telegram for you," and she said "Really? I suppose it's from D'Arcy" I shuddered at the name, and while I was shuddering, she opened the envelope. It was a long telegram, but she had not read more than the first words when she uttered a sharp cry. "Bad news?" I queried. Her eyes flashed, and a cold, proud look came into her face. "Not at all," she replied. "Splendid news. D'Arcy Cheesewright has broken the engagement."'
'Gosh!'
'You may well say "Go
sh!"'
'She didn't tell you any more than that?'
'No. She said one or two incisive things about Cheesewright with which I thoroughly concurred and strode off in the direction of the kitchen garden. And I came away, walking, as you may well imagine, on air. I deprecate the modern tendency to use slang, but I am not ashamed to confess that what I was saying to myself was the word "Whoopee!" Excuse me, Wooster, I must now leave you. I can't keep still.'
And with these words he pranced off like a mustang, leaving me to face the changed conditions alone.
It was with a brooding sense of peril that I did so. And if you are saying 'But why, Wooster? Surely everything is pretty smooth? What matter if the girl's nuptials with Cheesewright have been cancelled, when here is Percy Gorringe all ready and eager to take up the white man's burden?' I reply Ah, but you've not seen Percy Gorringe.' I mean to say, I couldn't picture Florence, however much on the rebound, accepting the addresses of a man who voluntarily wore side-whiskers and wrote poems about sunsets. Far more likely, it seemed to me, that having a vacant date on her hands she would once again reach out for the old and tried – viz. poor old Bertram. It was what she had done before, and these things tend to become a habit.
I was completely at a loss to imagine what could have caused this in-and-out running on Stilton's part. The thing didn't make sense. When last seen, it will be remembered, he had had all the earmarks of one about whom Love had twined its silken fetters. His every word at that parting chat of ours had indicated this beyond peradventure and doubt. Dash it, I mean, you don't go telling people you will break their spines in four places if they come oiling round the adored object unless you have more than a passing fancy for the bally girl.
So what had occurred to dim the lamp of love and all that sort of thing?
Could it be, I asked myself, that the strain of growing that moustache had proved too much for him? Had he caught sight of himself in the mirror about the third day – the third day is always the danger spot – and felt that nothing in the way of wedded bliss could make the venture worth while? Called upon to choose between the woman he loved and a hairless upper lip, had he cracked, with the result that the lip had had it by a landslide?
With a view to getting the inside stuff straight from the horse's mouth, I hurried to the kitchen garden, where, if Percy was to be relied on, Florence would now be, probably pacing up and down with lowered head.
She was there with lowered head, though not actually pacing up and down. She was bending over a gooseberry bush, eating gooseberries in an overwrought sort of way. Seeing me, she straightened up, and I snapped into the res without preamble.
'What's all this I hear from Percy Gorringe?' I said.
She swallowed a gooseberry with a passionate gulp that spoke eloquently of the churned-up soul, and I saw, as Percy's words had led me to expect, that she was madder than a wet hen. Her whole aspect was that of a girl who would have given her year's dress allowance for the privilege of beating G. D'Arcy Cheese-wright over the head with a parasol.
I continued.
'He says there has been a rift within the lute.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'You and Stilton. According to Percy, the lute is not the lute it was. Stilton has broken the engagement, he tells me.'
'He has. I'm delighted, of course.'
'Delighted? You like the set-up?'
'Of course I do. What girl would not be delighted who finds herself unexpectedly free from a man with a pink face and a head that looks as if it had been blown up with a bicycle pump?'
I clutched the brow. I am a pretty astute chap, and I could see that this was not the language of love. I mean, if you had heard Juliet saying a thing like that about Romeo, you would have raised the eyebrows in quick concern, wondering if all was well with the young couple.
'But when I saw him last, everything seemed perfectly okeydoke. I could have sworn that, however reluctantly, he had reconciled himself to growing that moustache.'
She stooped and took another gooseberry.
'It has nothing to do with moustaches,' she said, reappearing on the surface. The whole thing is due to the fact that D'Arcy Cheesewright is a low, mean, creeping, crawling, slinking, spying, despicable worm,' she proceeded, dishing out the words from between clenched teeth. 'Do you know what he did?'
'I haven't a notion.'
She refreshed herself with a further gooseberry and returned to the upper air, breathing a few puffs of flame through the nostrils.
'He sneaked round to that night club yesterday and made inquiries.'
'Oh, my gosh!'
'Yes. You wouldn't think a man could stoop so low, but he bribed people and was allowed to look at the head waiter's book and found that a table had been reserved that night in your name. This confirmed his degraded suspicions. He knew that I had been there with you. I suppose,' said Florence, diving at the gooseberry bush once more and starting to strip it of its contents, 'a man gets a rotten, spying mind like that from being a policeman.'
To say that I was appalled would not be putting it any too strongly. I was, moreover, astounded. It was a revelation to me that a puff-faced poop like Stilton could have been capable of detective work on this uncanny scale. I had always respected his physique, of course, but had supposed that the ability to fell an ox with a single blow more or less let him out. Not for an instant had I credited him with reasoning powers which might well have made Hercule Poirot himself draw the breath in with a startled 'What ho'. It just showed how one ought never to underestimate a man simply because he devotes his life to shoving oars into rivers and pulling them out again, his being about as silly a way of passing the time as could be hit upon.
No doubt, as Florence had said, this totally unforeseen snakiness was the result of his having been, if only briefly, a member of the police force. One presumes that when the neophyte has been issued his uniform and regulation boots, the men up top take him aside and teach him a few things likely to be of use to him in his chosen profession. Stilton, it was plain, had learned his lesson well and, if one did but know, was probably capable of measuring blood stains and collecting cigar ash.
However, it was only a fleeting attention that I gave to this facet of the situation. My thoughts were concentrated on something of far greater pith and moment, as Jeeves would say. I allude to the position – now that the man knew all – of B. Wooster, which seemed to me sticky to a degree. Florence, having sated herself with gooseberries, was starting to move off, and I arrested her with a sharp 'Hoy!'
'That telegram,' I said.
'I don't want to talk about it.'
'I do. Was there anything about me in it?'
'Oh, yes, quite a lot.'
I swallowed a couple of times and passed a finger round the inside of my collar. I had thought there might be.
'Did he hint at any plans he had with regard to me?'
'He said he was going to break your spine in five places.'
'Five places?'
'I think he said five. Don't you let him,' said Florence warmly, and it was nice, of course, to know that she disapproved. 'Breaking spines! I never heard of such a thing. He ought to be ashamed of himself
And she moved off in the direction of the house, walking like a tragedy queen on one of her bad mornings.
What I have heard Jeeves call the glimmering landscape was now fading on the sight, and it was getting on for the hour when dressing-gongs are beaten. But though I knew how rash it is ever to be late for one of Anatole's dinners, I could not bring myself to go in and don the soup-and-fish. I had so much to occupy the mind that I lingered on in a sort of stupor. Winged creatures of the night kept rolling up and taking a look at me and rolling off again, but I remained motionless, plunged in thought. A man pursued by a thug like D'Arcy Cheesewright has need of all the thought he can get hold of.
And then, quite suddenly, out of the night that covered me, black as a pit from pole to pole, there shone a gleam of light. It spread, illuminatin
g the entire horizon, and I realized that, taken by and large, I was sitting pretty.
You see, what I had failed till now to spot was the fact that Stilton hadn't a notion that I was at Brinkley Thinking me to be in the metropolis, it was there that he would be spreading his dragnet. He would call at the flat, ring bells, get no answer and withdraw, baffled. He would haunt the Drones, expecting me to drop in, and eventually, when I didn't so drop, would slink away, baffled again. 'He cometh not,' he would say, no doubt grinding his teeth, and a fat lot of good that would do him.
And of course, after what had occurred, there was no chance of him visiting Brinkley. A man who has broken off his engagement doesn't go to the country house where he knows the girl to be. Well, I mean, I ask you. Naturally he doesn't. If there was one spot on earth which could be counted on as of even date to be wholly free from Cheesewrights, it was Brinkley Court, Brinkley-cum-Snodsfield-in-the-Marsh, Worcestershire.
Profoundly relieved, I picked up the feet and hastened to my room with a song on my lips. Jeeves was there, not actually holding a stop-watch but obviously shaking his head a bit over the young master's tardiness. His left eyebrow quivered perceptibly as I entered.
'Yes, I know I'm late, Jeeves,' I said, starting to shed the upholstery. 'I went for a stroll.'
He accepted the explanation indulgently.
'I quite understand, sir. It had occurred to me that, the evening being so fine, you were probably enjoying a saunter in the grounds. I told Mr Cheesewright that this was no doubt the reason for your absence.'
CHAPTER 11
Half in and half out of the shirt, I froze like one of those fellows in the old fairy stories who used to talk out of turn to magicians and have spells cast upon them. My ears were sticking up like a wirehaired terrier's, and I could scarcely believe that they had heard aright.
'Mr Chuch?' I quavered. 'What's that, Jeeves?'
'Sir?'
'I don't understand you. Are you saying... are you telling me... are you actually asserting that Stilton Cheesewright is on the premises?'
'Yes, sir. He arrived not long ago in his car. I found him waiting here. He expressed a desire to see you and appeared chagrined at your continued absence. Eventually, the dinner-hour becoming imminent, he took his departure. He is hoping, I gathered from his remarks, to establish contact with you at the conclusion of the meal.'