‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘I only put that in to make it sound better. As a matter of fact, it was Grandpapa.’
‘What do you mean, it was Grandpapa? Who was Grand-papa?’
‘The miscreant.’
‘Are you telling me that your grandfather —’
Words failed the Duke. His opinion of Lord Emsworth’s I.Q. was, as we know, low, but he was unable to credit him with the supreme pottiness necessary for the perpetration of an act like the one they were discussing. Then, thinking again, he felt that there might be something in what the boy said. After all, from making an exhibition of oneself by maundering over a pig to sneaking out at daybreak and cutting tent ropes is but a step.
‘What makes you think that?’ he said, now definitely agog.
George would have liked to say, ‘You know my methods. Apply them,’ but it would have wasted time, and lie was anxious to get on with his story.
‘Shall I tell it you from the beginning, omitting no detail, however slight?’
‘Certainly, certainly,’ said the Duke, and would have added, ‘I am all ears,’ if the expression had been familiar to him. He wished the boy had a voice in a rather lower register, but in consideration of the importance of what he had to communicate he was willing to be squeaked at.
George marshalled his thoughts.
‘I was in the kitchen at five o’clock this morning—’
‘What were you doing there at such an hour?’
‘Oh, just looking around,’ said George guardedly. He knew that there was a school of thought that disapproved of these double breakfasts of his, and nothing to be gained by imparting information which might be relayed to Lady Constance, the head of that school. ‘I sort of happened to go in.’
‘Well?’
‘And I hadn’t been there more than about a couple of ticks when Grandpapa entered. He had a knife on his person.’
‘A knife?’
‘A whacking great scimitar.’
‘How do you mean, on his person?’
‘Well, actually he was brandishing it. His manner was strange, and there was a wild glitter in his eyes. So I said to myself, “Ho! “‘
‘You said what?’
‘Ho!’
‘Why “Ho!”‘
‘Well, wouldn’t you have said “Ho!”?’
The Duke considered the question, and saw that the lad had a point there.
‘No doubt I should have been surprised,’ he admitted.
‘So was I. That’s why I said “Ho!”‘
‘To yourself?’
‘Of course. You can’t go about saying “Ho!” to people out loud. So when he went out, I followed him.’
‘Why?’
‘Use your loaf, big boy,’ pleaded George. ‘You know my methods. Apply them,’ he said, happy to get it in at last. ‘I wanted to see what he was up to.’
‘Of course. Yes, quite understandable. And—?’
‘He headed for the lake. I trickled after him, taking advantage of every inch of cover, and he made a beeline for that tent and started sawing away at the ropes.’
A sudden suspicion darted into the Duke’s mind. He puffed a menacing moustache.
‘If this is some silly joke of yours, young man —’
‘I swear it isn’t. I tell you I was watching him the whole time. He didn’t see me because I was well concealed behind a neighbouring bush, but I was an eye-witness throughout. Did you ever read The Hound of the Baskervilles?’
For an instant the Duke received the impression that the pottiness of Lord Emsworth had been inherited by his grandson, with an assist from the latter’s father, the ninth Earl’s elder son, Lord Bosham, whom he knew to be one of England’s less bright minds. You don’t, he reasoned, read hounds, you gallop after them on horses, shouting “Yoicks!” or possibly “Tally-ho!” Then it occurred to him that the lad might be referring to some book or other. He inquired whether this was so, and received an answer in the affirmative.
‘I was thinking of the bit where Holmes and Watson are lurking in the mist, waiting for the bad guy to start things moving. It was rather like that, only there wasn’t any mist.’
‘So you saw him clearly?’
‘With the naked eye.’
‘And he was cutting the ropes?’
‘With the naked knife.’
The Duke relapsed into a gloomy silence. Like many another thinker before him, he was depressed by the reflection that nothing ever goes just right in this fat-headed world. Always there is the fatal snag in the path that pulls you up sharp when the happy ending seems in sight.
A man of liberal views, he had no objection whatsoever to a little gentlemanly blackmail, and here, you would have said, the luck of the Dunstables had handed him the most admirable opportunity for such blackmail. All he had to do was to go to Lord Emsworth, tell him that his sins had found him out, demand the Empress as the price of his silence, and the wretched man would have no option but to meet his terms. The thing was a walkover. In the bag, as he believed the expression was nowadays.
Such had been his thoughts as he listened to the boy’s story, but now despondency had set in. The whole project, he saw, became null and void because of one small snag — that proof of the crime depended solely on the unsupported word of the witness George. If Emsworth, as he was bound to do, pleaded not guilty to the charge, who was going to believe the testimony of a child with ginger hair and freckles, whose reputation as a teller of truth had never been one to invite scrutiny? His evidence would be laughed out of court, and he would be dashed lucky if he were not sent to bed without his supper and deprived of his pocket money for months and months.
Engrossed in these sombre thoughts, he was only dimly aware that the squeaky voice was continuing to squeak. It seemed to be saying something about motion pictures, a subject in which he had never taken even a tepid interest.
‘Shut up, boy, and pop off,’ he grunted.
‘But I thought you’d like to know,’ said George, pained.
‘If you think I want to hear about a lot of greasy actors grinning on a screen, you are very much mistaken.’
‘But this wasn’t a greasy, grinning actor, it was Grandpapa.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I was telling you I took pictures of Grandpapa with my camera.’
The Duke quivered as if he had been the sea monster he rather closely resembled and a harpoon had penetrated his skin.
‘In the act of cutting those ropes?’ he gasped.
‘That’s right. I’ve got the film upstairs in my room. I was going to take it into Market Blandings this afternoon to have it developed.’
The Duke quivered again, his emotion such that he could scarcely speak.
‘You must do nothing of the sort. And you must not say a word of this to anyone.’
Well, of course, I won’t. I only told you because I thought you’d think it was funny.’
‘It is very far from funny. It is extremely serious. Do you realize what would happen when the man developed that film, as you call it, and recognized your grandfather?’
‘Coo! I never thought of that. You mean he’d blow the gaff? Spread the story hither and thither? Squeal on him?’
‘Exactly. And your grandfather’s name in the county would be—’
‘Mud?’
‘Precisely. Everyone would think he was potty.’
‘He is rather potty.’
‘Not so potty as he would seem if that film were made public. Dash it, they’d certify him without blinking an eye.’
‘Who would?’
‘The doctors, of course.’
‘You mean he’d be put in a loony bin?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Coo!’
George could see now why his companion had said it was serious. He was very fond of Lord Emsworth, and would have hated to find him winding up in a padded cell. He felt in his pocket and produced a bag of acid drops, always a great hel
p to thought. Chewing one of these, he sat pondering in silence. The Duke resumed his remarks.
‘Do you understand what I am saying?’
George nodded.
‘I dig you, Chief.’
‘Don’t say “I dig you” and don’t call me “chief”. Bring the thing to me, and I’ll take care of it. It’s not safe in the hands of a mere child like you.’
‘Okay, big boy.’
‘And don’t call me big boy,’ said the Duke.
2
There was a contented smile on Lord Ickenham’s face as he settled himself in his hammock after leaving Lord Emsworth. It gratified him to feel that he had allayed the latter’s fears and eased his mind. Nothing like a pep talk, he was thinking, and he was deep in a pleasant reverie when a voice spoke his name and he perceived Lord Emsworth at his side, drooping like a tired lily. Except when he had something to prop himself against, there was always a suggestion of the drooping floweret about the master of Blandings Castle. He seemed to work on a hinge somewhere in the small of his back, and people searching for something nice to say of him sometimes described him as having a scholarly stoop. Lord Ickenham had become accustomed to this bonelessness and no longer expected his friend to give any evidence of possessing vertebrae, but the look of anguish on his face was new, and it shocked him. He rose from the hammock with lissom leap, full of sympathy and concern.
‘Good heavens, Emsworth! What’s the matter? Is something wrong?’
For some moments it seemed as though speech would prove beyond the ninth earl’s powers and that he would continue indefinitely to give his rather vivid impersonation of a paralysed deaf mute. But eventually he spoke.
‘I’ve just seen Dunstable,’ he said.
Lord Ickenham remained perplexed. The situation did not appear to him to have been clarified. He, personally, would always prefer not to see the Duke, a preference shared by the latter’s many acquaintances in Wiltshire and elsewhere, but it did not disturb him unduly when he had to, and he found it strange that his companion should be of less stern stuff.
‘Unavoidable, don’t you think when he’s staying in the house?’ he said. ‘There he is, I mean to say, and you can’t very well help running into him from time to time. But perhaps he said something to upset you?’
The anguished look in Lord Emsworth’s eyes became more anguished. It was as if the question had touched an exposed nerve. He gulped for a moment, reminding Lord Ickenham of a dog to which he was greatly attached, which made a similar sound when about to give up its all after a too busy day among the fleshpots.
‘He said he wanted the Empress.’
‘Who wouldn’t?’
‘And I’ve got to give her to him.’
‘You’ve what?’
‘The alternative was too terrible to contemplate. He threatened, if I refused, to tell Constance that it was I who cut those tent ropes.’
Lord Ickenham began to feel a little impatient. He had already told this man, in words adapted to the meanest intelligence, what course to pursue, should suspicion fall upon him.
‘My dear fellow, don’t you remember what I said to you in the library? Stick to stout denial.’
‘But he has proof.’
‘Proof?’
‘Eh? Yes, proof. It seems that my grandson George took photographs of me with his camera, and Dunstable now has the film in his possession. And I gave George that camera for his birthday! “This will keep you out of mischief, George, my boy,” I remember saying. Out of mischief!’ said Lord Emsworth bitterly, his air that of a grandfather regretting that he had ever been so foolish as to beget a son who in his turn would beget a son of his own capable of using a camera. There were, he was feeling, far too many grandsons in the world and far too many cameras for them to take pictures of grandfathers with. His view of grandsons was, in short, at the moment jaundiced, and as, having told his tale, he moved limply away, he was thinking almost as harshly of George as of the Duke of Dunstable.
Lord Ickenham returned to his hammock. He always thought more nimbly when in a recumbent position, and it was plain to him that a considerable amount of nimble thinking was now called for. Hitherto, his endeavours to spread sweetness and light and give service with a smile had been uniformly successful, but a man whose aim in life it is to do the square thing by his fellows is never content to think with modest pride of past triumphs; it is the present on which he feels the mind must be fixed, and it was to Lord Emsworth’s problem that he gave the full force of his powerful intellect.
It was a problem which undoubtedly presented certain points of interest, and at the moment he confessed himself unable to see how it was to be solved. Given the unhappy man’s panic fear of having Lady Constance’s attention drawn to his recent activities, there seemed no course for Lord Emsworth to pursue but to meet the Duke’s terms. It was one of those occasions, more frequent in real life than on the television and motion picture screens, when the bad guy comes out on top and the good guy gets the loser’s end. The Duke of Dunstable might not look like a green bay tree, but everything pointed to the probability of him flourishing like one.
He was musing thus, and had closed his eyes in order to muse the better, when a stately figure approached the hammock and stood beside it. Shrewdly realizing that there was but the slimmest chance of her brother Clarence remembering to tell Lord Ickenham that his presence was desired in her boudoir, Lady Constance had rung for Beach and sent him off to act as a substitute messenger. The butler coughed respectfully, and Lord Ickenham opened his eyes.
‘Pardon me for disturbing you, m’lord —’
‘Not at all, Beach, not at all,’ said Lord Ickenham heartily. He was always glad to chat with this pillar of Blandings, for a firm friendship had sprung up between them during his previous sojourn at the castle, and this second visit had cemented it. ‘Something on your mind?’
‘Her ladyship, m’lord.’
‘What about her?’
‘If it is convenient to you m’lord, she would be glad to see you for a moment in her boudoir.’
This struck Lord Ickenham as unusual. It was the first time his hostess had gone out of her way to seek his company, and he was not sure that he liked the look of things. He had never considered himself psychic, but he was conscious of a strong premonition that trouble was about to raise its ugly head.
‘Any idea what she wants?’
Butlers rarely display emotion, and there was nothing in Beach’s manner to reveal the sympathy he was feeling for one who, in his opinion, was about to face an ordeal somewhat comparable to that of the prophet Daniel when he entered the lion’s den.
‘I rather fancy, m’lord, her ladyship wishes to confer with you on the subject of Mr Meriwether. With reference to the gentleman’s name being in reality the Reverend Cuthbert Bailey.’
Once in his cowboy days Lord Ickenham, injudiciously standing behind a temperamental mule, had been kicked by the animal in the stomach. He felt now rather as he had felt then, though only an involuntary start showed that he was not his usual debonair self.
‘Oh,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Oh. So she knows about that?’
‘Yes, m’lord.’
‘How did you come to get abreast?’
‘I was inadvertently an auditor of his lordship’s conversation with her ladyship. I chanced to be passing the door, and his lordship had omitted to close it.’
‘And you stopped, looked and listened?’
‘I I had paused to tie my shoelace,’ said Beach with dignity. found it impossible not to overhear what his lordship was saying.’
‘And what was he saying?’
He was informing her ladyship that Miss Briggs, having discovered Mr Meriwether’s identity, was seeking to compel the gentleman to assist her in her project of stealing his lordship’s pig, but that Mr Meriwether refused to be a party to the undertaking, having scruples. It was in the course of his remarks on this subject that his lordship revealed that Mr Meriwether was not Mr Meriwether,
but Mr Bailey.’
Lord Ickenham sighed. In principle he approved of his young friend’s rigid code of ethics, but there was no denying that that high-mindedness of his could be inconvenient, lowering as it did his efficiency as a plotter. The ideal person with whom to plot is the furtive, shifty-eyed man who stifled his conscience at the age of six and would not recognize a scruple if you served it up to him on an individual blue plate with béarnaise sauce.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘How did Lady Constance take this piece of hot news?’
‘She appeared somewhat stirred, m’lord.’
‘One sees how she might well be. And now she wants to have a word with me?’
‘Yes, m’lord.’
‘To thresh the thing out, no doubt, and consider it from every angle. Oh, what a tangled web we weave, Beach, when first we practise to deceive.’
‘We do, indeed, m’lord.’
‘Well, all right,’ said Lord Ickenham, rising. ‘I can give her five minutes.’
3
The time it had taken Beach to deliver his message and Lord Ickenham to make the journey between lawn and boudoir was perhaps ten minutes, and with each of those minutes Lady Constance’s wrath had touched a new high. At the moment when her guest entered the room she had just been thinking how agreeable it would be to skin him with a blunt knife, and the genial smile he gave her as he came in seemed to go through her nervous system like a red-hot bullet through butter. ‘My tablets — Meet it is I set it down that one may smile and smile and be a villain. At least, I’m sure it may be so in Blandings Castle,’ she was saying to herself.
‘Beach says you want to see me, Lady Constance,’ said Lord Ickenham, smiling another affectionate smile. His manner was that of a man looking forward to a delightful chat on this and that with an attractive woman, and Lady Constance, meeting the smile head on, realized that in entertaining the idea of skinning him with a blunt knife she had been too lenient. Not a blunt knife, she was thinking, but some such instrument as the one described by the poet Gilbert as looking far less like a hatchet than a dissipated saw.
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