‘Aha!’ he said, peering in.
‘You see a clay bust?’
‘That’s right. Bust, clay, one.’
‘Bring it here.’
Sir Aylmer was gaping at the bust like one who gapes at snakes in his path. He sought in vain for an explanation of its presence. His wife could have given him that explanation, but his wife was in London.
‘How the devil did that get there?’ he gasped. Lord Ickenham smiled sardonically.
‘Really, Mugsy! Good, that, eh, Bimbo?’
‘Very good.’
‘Break that thing’s head.’
‘Bust the bust? Right ho!’ said Major Plank, and did so. Lord Ickenham stooped and picked from the ruins a chamois leather bag. Before Sir Aylmer’s bulging eyes he untied the string and poured forth a glittering stream.
Major Plank’s eyes were bulging, too.
‘This must have been one of your best hauls,’ he said, looking at Sir Aylmer with open admiration.
Lord Ickenham replaced the gems in the bag and put the bag in his pocket.
‘Well, there you are,’ he said. ‘You were asking just now, Mugsy, why I had come here under a false name. It was because I hoped that if I could get into the house I might be able to settle this thing without a scandal. I knew that you were shortly to stand for Parliament and that a scandal would ruin your prospects, and I took the charitable view that you had yielded to a sudden temptation. As far as I am concerned, I am now willing to let the thing drop. I have no wish to be hard on you, now that I have recovered your ill-gotten plunder and can restore it to its owner. We all understand these irresistible temptations. Eh, Bimbo?’
‘Oh, quite.’
‘We need say no more about the matter?’ ‘Not a word.’
‘You won’t tell anyone?’
‘Except for a chap or two at the club, not a soul.’
‘Then the whole wretched affair can now be forgotten. Of course, this monstrous sentence which you have inflicted on my nephew and Sally Painter must be quashed. You agree to that, Mugsy?’ said Lord Ickenham, raising his voice, for he saw that his host was distrait.
Sir Aylmer gave that impersonation of his of a harpooned whale.
‘What?’ he said feebly.
Lord Ickenham repeated his words, and Sir Aylmer, though evidently finding it difficult to speak, said, ‘Yes, certainly.’
‘I should think so,’ said Lord Ickenham warmly. ‘Thirty days without the option for what was a mere girlish — or, in Pongo’s case, boyish — freak. It recalls the worst excesses of the Star Chamber. The trouble with you fellows who have been Governors of Crown colonies, Mugsy, is that you get so accustomed to giving our black brothers the run-around that you lose all self-restraint. Then let us go and notify Constable Potter immediately to strike the gyves from the young couple’s wrists. We shall find them, I think you said, in the scullery.’
He linked his arm in Sir Aylmer’s and led him out. As they started down the hall Major Plank could hear him urging his companion in the kindest way to pull himself together, turn over a new leaf and start life afresh with a genuine determination to go straight in the future. It only needed a little will-power, said Lord Ickenham, adding that he held it truth with him who sings to one clear harp in divers tones that men may rise on stepping stones of their dead selves to higher things.
For some moments after they had left, Major Plank stood where he was, regarding the African curios with the glazed look of a man whose brain is taking a complete rest. Then gradually there came upon him a sense of something omitted, the feeling which he had so often had in the wilds of Brazil that somewhere there was man’s work to be done and that it was for him to do it.
Then he remembered. The strawberries. He went back to the drawing-room to finish them.
P. G. Wodehouse, Uncle Dynamite
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