‘No.’
‘Mariana, George. Born twelve hundred and something. Educated privately and at Leipzig University. Hobbies, fishing, illuminating vellum and mangling the wurzel. You must have heard of old Pop Mariana?’
‘I haven’t, and I don’t want to. I want to hear about Millicent.’
‘It was the opinion of Father Mariana that dancing was a deadly sin. He was particularly down, I may mention, on the saraband. He said the saraband did more harm than the Plague. I know just how he felt. I’ll bet he had worked like a dog at twenty-five pazazas the complete course of twelve lessons, guaranteed to teach the fandango: and, just when his instructor had finally told him that he was fit to do it at the next Saturday Night Social, along came the Amalgamated Brothers with their new-fangled saraband, and where was Pop? Leaning against the wall with the other foot-and-mouth diseasers, trying to pretend dancing bored him. Did I hear you say you wanted a few facts about Millicent?’
You did.’
‘Sweetest girl on earth.’
‘Really?’
Absolutely. It’s well known. All over Shropshire.’
And she really loves you?’
‘Between you and me,’ said Hugo confidentially, ‘I don’t wonder you speak in that amazed tone. If you saw her, you’d be still more surprised. I am a man who thinks before he speaks. I weigh my words. And I tell you solemnly that that girl is too good for me.’
‘But you’re a sweet darling precious pet.’
‘I know I’m a sweet darling precious pet. Nevertheless, I still maintain that she is too good for me. She is the nearest thing to an angel that ever came glimmering through the laurels in the quiet evenfall in the garden by the turrets of the old manorial hall.’
‘Hugo! I’d no idea you were so poetical.’
‘Enough to make a chap poetical, loving a girl like that.’
‘And you really do love her?’
Hugo took a feverish gulp of champagne and rolled his eyeballs as if he had been a member of Leopold’s justly famous band.
‘Madly. Devotedly. And when I think how I have deceived her my soul sickens.’
‘Have you deceived her?’
‘Not yet. But I’m going to in about five minutes. I put in a phone call to Blandings just now, and when I get through I shall tell her I’m speaking from my hotel bedroom, where I am on the point of going to bed. You see,’ said Hugo confidentially, ‘Milli-cent, though practically perfect in every other respect, is one of those girls who might misunderstand this little night out of mine, did it but come to her ears. Speaking of which, you ought to see them. Like alabaster shells.’
‘I know what you mean. Ronnie’s like that.’
Hugo stared.
‘Ronnie?’
‘Yes.’
‘You mean to sit there and tell me that Ronnie’s ears are like alabaster shells?’
‘No, I meant that he would be furious if he knew that I had come out dancing. And, oh, I do love dancing so,’ sighed Sue.
‘He must never know!’
‘No. That’s why I asked you just now not to tell him.’
‘I won’t. Secrecy and silence. Thank goodness there’s nobody who could tell Millicent, even if they wanted to. Ah! this must be the bringer of glad tidings, come to say my call is through. All set?’ he asked the page-boy who had threaded his way through the crowd to their table.
‘Yes, sir.’
Hugo rose.
Amuse yourself somehow till I return.’
‘I shan’t be dull,’ said Sue.
She watched him disappear, then leaned back in her seat, watching the dancers. Her eyes were bright, and Hugo’s news had brought a flush to her cheeks. Percy Pilbeam, who had been hovering in the background, hoping for such an opportunity ever since his arrival at the restaurant, thought he had never seen her looking prettier. He edged between the tables and took Hugo’s vacated chair. There are men who, approaching a member of the other sex, wait for permission before sitting down, and men who sit down without permission. Pilbeam was one of the latter.
‘Good evening,’ he said.
She turned, and was aware of a nasty-looking little man at her elbow. He seemed to have materialized from nowhere.
‘May I introduce myself, Miss Brown?’ said this blot. ‘My name is Pilbeam.’
At the same moment there appeared in the doorway and stood there raking the restaurant with burning eyes the flannel-suited figure of Ronald Overbury Fish.
III
Ronnie Fish’s estimate of the time necessary for reaching London from Blandings Castle in a sports-model two-seater had been thrown out of gear by two mishaps. Half-way down the drive the car had developed some mysterious engine-trouble, which had necessitated taking it back to the stables and having it overhauled by Lord Emsworth’s chauffeur. It was not until nearly an hour later that he had been able to resume his journey, and a blowout near Oxford had delayed him still further. He arrived at Sue’s flat just as Sue and Hugo were entering Mario’s.
Ringing Sue’s front-door bell produced no result. Ronnie regretted that in the stress of all the other matters that occupied his mind he had forgotten to send her a telegram. He was about to creep away and have a bite of dinner at the Drones Club – a prospect which pleased him not at all, for the Drones at dinnertime was always full of hearty eggs who talked much too loud for a worried man’s nerves, and might even go so far as to throw bread at him, when, descending the stairs into the hall, he came upon Bashford, the porter.
Bashford, who knew Ronnie well, said ‘’Ullo, Mr Fish,’ and Ronnie said ‘Hullo, Bashford,’ and Bashford said the weather seemed to keep up, and Ronnie said ‘Yes, that’s right, it did,’ and it was at this point that the porter uttered these memorable – and, as events proved, epoch-making words:
‘If you’re looking for Miss Brown, Mr Fish, I’ve an idea she’s gone to a place called Mario’s.’
He poured further details into Ronnie’s throbbing ear. Mr Carmody had rung up on the phone, might have been ar-parse four, and he, Bashford, not listening but happening to hear, had thought he had caught something said about this place Mario’s.
‘Mario’s?’ said Ronnie. ‘Thanks, Bashford. Mario’s, eh? Right!’
The porter, for Eton and Cambridge train their sons well, found nothing in the way Mr Fish spoke to cause a thrill. Totally unaware that he had been conversing with Othello’s younger brother, he went back to his den in the basement and sat down with a good appetite to steak and chips. And Ronnie, quivering from head to foot, started the car and drove off.
Jealousy, said Shakespeare, and he was about right, is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat he feeds on. By the time Ronald Overbury Fish pushed through the swinging-door that guards the revelry at Mario’s from the gaze of the passer-by, he was, like the Othello he so much resembled, perplexed in the extreme. He felt hot all over, then cold all over, then hot again, and the waiter who stopped him on the threshold of the dining-room to inform him that evening-dress was indispensable on the dancing-floor, and that flannel suits must go up to the balcony, was running a risk which would have caused his insurance company to purse its lips and shake its head.
Fortunately for him, Ronnie did not hear. He was scanning the crowd before him in an effort to find Sue.
‘Plenty of room in the balcony, sir,’ urged the waiter, continuing to play with fire.
This time Ronnie did become dimly aware that somebody was addressing him, and he was about to turn and give the man one look, when half-way down a grove of black coats and gaily-decorated frocks he suddenly saw what he was searching for. The next moment he was pushing a path through the throng, treading on the toes of brave men and causing fair women to murmur bitterly that this sort of thing ought to be prevented by the management.
Five yards from Sue’s table, Ronnie Fish would have said that his cup was full and could not possibly be made any fuller. But when he had covered another two and pushed aside a fat man who was standing
in the fairway, he realized his mistake. It was not Hugo who was Sue’s companion, but a reptilian-looking squirt with narrow eyes and his hair done in ridges. And, as he saw him, something seemed to go off in Ronnie’s brain like a released spring.
A waiter, pausing with a tray of glasses, pointed out to him that on the dancing-floor evening-dress was indispensable.
Gentlemen in flannel suits, he added, could be accommodated in the balcony.
‘Plenty of room in the balcony, sir,’ said the waiter.
Ronnie reached the table. Pilbeam at the moment was saying that he had wanted for a long time to meet Sue. He hoped she had got his flowers all right.
It was perhaps a natural desire to look at anything but this odious and thrusting individual who had forced his society upon her, that caused Sue to raise her eyes.
Raising them, she met Ronnie’s. And, as she saw him, her conscience, which she had supposed lulled for the night, sprang to life more vociferous than ever. It had but been crouching, the better to spring.
‘Ronnie!’
She started up. Pilbeam also rose. The waiter with the glasses pressed the edge of his tray against Ronnie’s elbow in a firm but respectful manner and told him that on the dancing-floor evening-dress was indispensable. Gentlemen in flannel suits, however, would find ample accommodation in the balcony.
Ronnie did not speak. And it would have been better if Sue had not done so. For, at this crisis, some subconscious instinct, of the kind which is always waiting to undo us at critical moments, suggested to her dazed mind that when two men who do not know each other are standing side by side in a restaurant one ought to introduce them.
‘Mr Fish, Mr Pilbeam,’ murmured Sue.
Only the ringing of the bell that heralds the first round of a heavy-weight championship fight could have produced more instant and violent results. Through Ronnie’s flannel-clad body a sort of galvanic shock seemed to pass. Pilbeam! He had come expecting Hugo, and Hugo would have been bad enough. But Pilbeam! The man she had said she didn’t even know. The man she hadn’t met. The man whose gifts of flowers she had professed to resent. In person! In the flesh! Hobnobbing with her in a restaurant! By Gad, he meant to say! By George! Good Gosh!
His fists clenched. Eton was forgotten, Cambridge not even a memory. He inhaled so sharply that a man at the next table who was eating a mousse of chicken stabbed himself in the chin with his fork. He turned on Pilbeam with a hungry look. And at this moment, the waiter, raising his voice a little, for he was beginning to think that Ronnie’s hearing was slightly affected, mentioned as an interesting piece of information that the management of Mario’s preferred to reserve the dancing-floor exclusively for clients in evening-dress. But there was a bright side. Gentlemen in flannel suits could be accommodated in the balcony.
It was the waiter who saved Percy Pilbeam. Just as a mosquito may divert for an instant a hunter who is about to spring at and bite in the neck a tiger of the jungle, so did this importunate waiter divert Ronnie Fish. What it was all about, he was too overwrought to ascertain, but he knew that the man was annoying him, pestering him, trying to chat with him when he had business elsewhere. With all the force of a generous nature, sorely tried, he plugged the waiter in the stomach with his elbow. There was a crash which even Leopold’s band could not drown. The man who had stabbed himself with the fork had his meal still further spoiled by the fact that it suddenly began to rain glass. And, as regards the other occupants of the restaurant, the word ‘Sensation’ about sums the situation up.
Ronnie and the management of Mario’s now formed two sharply contrasted schools of thought. To Ronnie the only thing that seemed to matter was this Pilbeam – this creeping, slinking, cuckoo-in-the-nest Pilbeam, the Lothario who had lowered all speed records in underhand villainy by breaking up his home before he had got one. He concentrated all his faculties to the task of getting round the table, to the other side of which the object of his dislike had prudently withdrawn, and showing him in no uncertain manner where he got off.
To the management, on the other hand, the vital issue was all this broken glassware. The waiter had risen from the floor, but the glasses were still there, and scarcely one of them was in a condition ever to be used again for the refreshment of Mario’s customers. The head-waiter, swooping down on the fray like some god in the Iliad descending from a cloud, was endeavouring to place this point of viewbefore Ronnie. Assisting him with word and gesture were two inferior waiters – Waiter A and Waiter B.
Ronnie was in no mood for abstract debate. He hit the head-waiter in the abdomen, Waiter A in the ribs, and was just about to dispose of Waiter B, when his activities were hampered by the sudden arrival of reinforcements. From all parts of the room other waiters had assembled – to name but a few, Waiters C, D, E, F, G, and H – and he found himself hard pressed. It seemed to him that he had dropped into a Waiters’ Convention. As far as the eye could reach, the arena was crammed with waiters, and more coming. Pilbeam had disappeared altogether, and so busy was Ronnie now that he did not even miss him. He had reached that condition of mind which the old Vikings used to call Berserk and which among modern Malays is termed running amok.
Ronnie Fish in the course of his life had had many ambitions. As a child, he had yearned some day to become an engine-driver. At school, it had seemed to him that the most attractive career the world had to offer was that of the professional cricketer. Later, he had hoped to run a prosperous night-club. But now, in his twenty-sixth year, all these desires were cast aside and forgotten. The only thing in life that seemed really worth while was to massacre waiters; and to this task he addressed himself with all the energy and strength at his disposal.
Matters now began to move briskly. Waiter C, who rashly clutched the sleeve of Ronnie’s coat, reeled back with a hand pressed to his right eye. Waiter D, a married man, contented himself with standing on the outskirts and talking Italian. But Waiter E, made of sterner stuff, hit Ronnie rather hard with a dish containing omelette aux champignons, and it was as the latter reeled beneath this buffet that there suddenly appeared in the forefront of the battle a figure wearing a gay uniform and almost completely concealed behind a vast moustache, waxed at the ends. It was the commissionaire from the street-door; and anybody who has ever been bounced from a restaurant knows that commissionaires are heavy metal.
This one, whose name was McTeague, and who had spent many lively years in the army before retiring to take up his present duties, had a grim face made of some hard kind of wood and the muscles of a village blacksmith. A man of action rather than words, he clove his way through the press in silence. Only when he reached the centre of the maelstrom did he speak. This was when Ronnie, leaping upon a chair the better to perform the operation, hit him on the nose. On receipt of this blow, he uttered the brief monosyllable ‘Ho!’ and then, without more delay, scooped Ronnie into an embrace of steel and bore him towards the door, through which was now moving a long, large, leisurely policeman.
IV
It was some few minutes later that Hugo Carmody, emerging from the telephone-booth on the lower floor where the cocktail bar is, sauntered back into the dancing-room and was interested to find waiters massaging bruised limbs, other waiters replacing fallen tables, and Leopold’s band playing in a sort of hushed undertone like a band that has seen strange things.
‘Hullo!’ said Hugo. ‘Anything up?’
He eyed Sue inquiringly. She looked to him like a girl who has had some sort of a shock. Not, or his eyes deceived him, at all her old bright self.
‘What’s up?’ he asked.
‘Take me home, Hugo!’
Hugo stared.
‘Home? Already? With the night yet young?’
‘Oh, Hugo, take me home, quick.’
‘Just as you say,’ assented Hugo agreeably. He was now pretty certain that something was up. ‘One second to settle the bill, and then homeward ho. And on the way you shall tell me all about it. For I jolly well know,’ said Hugo, who prided hims
elf on his keenness of observation, ‘that something is – or has been – up.’
5 A PHONE CALL FOR HUGO
The Law of Great Britain is a remorseless machine, which, once set in motion, ignores first causes and takes into account only results. It will not accept shattered dreams as an excuse for shattering glassware: nor will you get far by pleading a broken heart in extenuation of your behaviour in breaking waiters. Haled on the morrow before the awful majesty of Justice at Bosher Street Police Court and charged with disorderly conduct in a public place – to wit, Mario’s Restaurant, and resisting an officer – to wit, P. C. Murgatroyd, in the execution of his duties, Ronald Fish made no impassioned speeches. He did not raise clenched fists aloft and call upon heaven to witness that he was a good man wronged. Experience, dearly bought in the days of his residence at the University, had taught him that when the Law gripped you with its talons the only thing to do was to give a false name, say nothing and hope for the best.
Shortly before noon, accordingly, on the day following the painful scenejust described, Edwin Jones, of 7 Nasturtium Villas, Cricklewood, poorer by the sum of five pounds, was being conveyed in a swift taxi-cab to his friend Hugo Carmody’s hotel, there to piece together his broken life and try to make a new start.
On the part of the man Jones himself during the ride there was a disposition towards silence. He gazed before him bleakly and gnawed his lower lip. Hugo Carmody, on the other hand, was inclined to be rather jubilant. It seemed to Hugo that after a rocky start things had panned out pretty well.
‘A nice, smooth job,’ he said approvingly. ‘I was scanning the beak’s face closely during the summing up and I couldn’t help fearing for a moment that it was going to be a case of fourteen days without the option. As it is, here you are, a free man, and no chance of your name being in the papers. A moral victory, I call it.’
Ronnie released his lower lip in order to bare his teeth in a bitter sneer.
‘I wouldn’t care if my name were in every paper in London.’
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