‘Why, of course. I had forgotten. It’s in my desk. I’ll go and get it.’
‘Well?’ said Sir Aylmer a few moments later. Lady Bostock was skimming through the document.
‘She says he is tall and slender, with large, lustrous eyes. ‘‘There you are! This chap hasn’t got lustrous eyes. ‘‘Wouldn’t you say his eyes were lustrous?’ ‘Certainly not. Like a couple of damned poached eggs. What else?’
‘He is very amusing.’ ‘You see!’
‘Oh!’
‘What?’
‘She says William used to know him as a boy.’
‘She does? Then William’s evidence will clinch the thing. Where is he? WILLIAM! WILLIAM!! WILLIAM!!!’
It is rarely that this sort of thing does not produce results. Bill Oakshott, who was still on the terrace, smoking his pipe and pondering over his numerous misfortunes, came clattering up the stairs as if pulled at the end of a string.
The fear — or hope — that his uncle was being murdered left him as he entered the room, but not his bewilderment at the summons.
‘Hullo?’ he said gropingly.
‘Oh, there you are,’ said Sir Aylmer, who was still bellowing out of the window. ‘William, this fellow who calls himself Reginald Twistleton, how about him?’
‘How about him?’
‘Exactly. How about him?’
‘How do you mean, how about him?’
‘Good God, boy, can’t you understand plain English? I mean How about him?’
Lady Bostock explained.
‘We are terribly upset, William. Your uncle thinks that the man who came yesterday is not Reginald, but an impostor pretending to be Reginald.’
‘What on earth gives him that idea?’
‘Never mind what on earth gives me that idea,’ said Sir Aylmer, nettled. ‘You knew Reginald Twistleton as a boy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. That’s established,’ said Sir Aylmer, borrowing from Constable Potter’s non-copyright material. ‘Now, then. When you saw him yesterday, did you recognize him?’
‘Of course.’
‘Don’t say “Of course” in that airy way. When had you seen him last?’
‘About twelve years ago.’
‘Then how can you be sure you recognized him?’
‘Well, he looked about the same. Grown a bit, of course.’
‘Have you discussed boyhood days with him?’
‘No.’
‘Have you asked him a single question, the response to which would prove that he had known you as a boy?’
‘Why, no.’
‘There you are, then.’
‘But he answers to the name of Pongo.’
Sir Aylmer snorted.
‘Of course he answers to the name of Pongo. Do you suppose that an impostor, when addressed as Pongo by somebody claiming to be an old friend of the man he was impersonating, would not have the elementary intelligence to dissemble? Your evidence is completely valueless.’
‘Sorry.’
‘No good being sorry. Well, I shall have to look into the thing for myself. I shall take the car and go over to Ickenham Hall. The real Reginald is Ickenham’s nephew, so the old lunatic will presumably have a photograph of him somewhere on the premises. A glance at that will settle the matter. ‘‘What a splendid idea, Aylmer!’
‘Yes,’ said Sir Aylmer, who thought well of it himself. ‘Just occurred to me.’
He shot from the room as if propelled from a rude sling in the hands of a Brazilian native, and hurried down the stairs. In the hall he was obliged to check his progress for an instant in order to glare at Pongo, who like a murderer returning to the scene of his crime, had come thither to gaze at the substitute bust and ask himself for the hundredth time what were its chances of getting by.
‘Ha!’ said Sir Aylmer.
‘Oh, hullo,’ said Pongo, smiling weakly.
Sir Aylmer eyed him with that blend of horror and loathing with which honest men eye those who call themselves Twistleton when they are really Edwin Smith of 11, Nasturtium Road, East Dulwich, especially when these latter smile like minor gangsters caught in the act of committing some felony. It seemed to him that if ever he had seen furtive guilt limned on a human face, he had seen it now.
‘Ha!’ he said again, and went off to get his car.
A few minutes after he had steered it out into the road, tooting fiercely, for he was a noisy driver, another car, coming from the opposite direction, drew up outside the gate.
At its wheel was Lord Ickenham, and beside him Sally.
6
Lord Ickenham cast an alert eye up the curving drive, and gave his moustache a carefree twiddle. His air was that of a man who has arrived at some joyous tryst. A restful night and a good lunch had brought his always resilient nature to a fine pitch of buoyancy and optimism. There is an expression in common use which might have been invented to describe the enterprising peer at moments such as this; the expression ‘boomps-a-daisy’. You could look askance at his methods, you could shake your head at him in disapproval and click your tongue in reproof, but you could not deny that he was boomps-a-daisy.
‘This might be the place, don’t you think?’ he said.
‘It is.’
‘You speak confidently.’
‘Well, I’ve been here before. When I was doing the bust.’ ‘Didn’t Mugsy come to the studio?’
‘Of course not. Great men like him don’t come to the studios of poor working girls.’
Lord Ickenham took her point.
‘True,’ he said. ‘I can’t get used to the idea of young Mugsy Bostock being a big pot. To me he remains permanently a pie-faced stripling bending over a chair while I assure him that what is about to occur is going to hurt me more than it does him. A black lie, of course. I enjoyed it. One of the hardest things in life is to realize that people grow up. Nothing, for instance, can convince me that I am not a sprightly young fellow of twenty-five, and, as for Pongo, the idea of him being old enough to contemplate marriage fills me with a perpetual astonishment. To me, he still wears sailor suits.’
‘He must have looked sweet in a sailor suit.’
‘No, he didn’t. He looked foul. Like a ballet girl in a nautical musical comedy. But enough of this idle chatter. The time has come,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘to discuss strategy and tactics.’
He spoke with the gay lilt in his voice which had so often in the past struck a chill into the heart of his nephew.
‘Strategy and tactics,’ he repeated. ‘Here is the house. We have the bust. All that is needed is to effect an entry into the former, carrying the latter. This, accordingly, I shall now proceed to do. You spoke?’
‘No, I only sort of gurgled. I was going to say “How?” but I mustn’t, must I, because of Columbus and the boys in the back room.’
Lord Ickenham seemed amazed.
‘My dear girl, you are surely not worrying yourself about the simple mechanics of the thing? There are a thousand ways, all child’s play to one of my gifts. If I droop my moustache, thus, do I look like a man come to inspect the drains?’
‘No.’
‘If I turn it up at the ends, so, do I suggest the representative of a journal of rural interest, anxious to obtain Mugsy’s views on the mangel-wurzel situation?’
‘Not a bit.’
‘Then I must try something else. I wonder if Mugsy has a parrot.’
‘I know he hasn’t. Why?’
‘Didn’t Pongo ever tell you of our afternoon at The Cedars, Mafeking Road, Mitching Hill?’
‘No. What was The Cedars, Mafeking Road, Mitching Hill?’
‘A suburban villa, heavily fortified and supposed to be impregnable. But I got in with absurd ease. One moment, I was outside its barred gates, lashed by an April shower; the next, in the sitting-room, toasting my toes at the gas. fire. I told the maid I had come from the bird shop to clip the parrot’s claws and slipped Pongo in with the statement that he was Mr Walkinshaw, my assistant, who appli
ed the anaesthetic. I’m surprised he never mentioned it. I don’t like the way he seems to have kept things from you. An unhealthy spirit. Yes, I think I may say with all due modesty that I am at my best when impersonating officials from bird shops who have called to prune the parrot, and I am sorry to hear you say that Mugsy has not got one. Not that I’m surprised. Only the gentler, kindlier type of man keeps a parrot and makes of it a constant friend. Ah, well, no doubt I shall be able to effect an entry somehow.’
‘And what do you do then?’
‘That’s the easy part. I have the bust under my coat, I engage Mugsy in conversation, and at a selected moment I suddenly say “Look behind you!” He looks behind him, and while his back is turned I switch the busts and come away. So let’s go.’
‘Wait,’ said Sally.
‘Is this a time for waiting? The Ickenhams have never waited.’
‘Well, they’re going to start now. I’ve a much better plan.’ ‘Better than mine?’ said Lord Ickenham incredulously.
‘Better in every way,’ said Sally firmly. ‘Saner and simpler.’ Lord Ickenham shrugged his shoulders.
‘Well, let’s hear it. I’ll bet I’m not going to like it.’
‘You don’t have to like it. You are going to stay in the car —‘‘Absurd.’
‘— While I take that bust to the house.’
‘Ridiculous. I knew it was going to be rotten.’
‘I shall try, of course, to put the deal through unobserved. But if I am observed, I shall have my story ready, which is more than you would have done.’
‘I would have had twenty stories ready, each better than the last.’
‘Each crazier than the last. Mine will be a good one, carrying conviction in every syllable. I shall say I came to see Sir Aylmer —‘
‘I wish you would call him Mugsy. It’s friendlier.’
‘I won’t call him Mugsy. I shall say I came to see Sir Aylmer, bringing the bust with me, in the hope that I could persuade him to relent and accept it after all.’
‘Loathsome.’
‘I may even cry a little.’
‘Revolting. Where’s your pride?’
‘The worst that can happen is that he will show me to the door and dismiss me with a cold gesture.’
‘And then,’ said Lord Ickenham, brightening, ‘we will start all over again, this time putting the affair in older and wiser hands than yours. Well, all right. On that understanding I don’t mind you trying your way. I don’t like it. It’s tame. It degrades me to the position of a super supporting a star, and you get all the fun. Still, carry on if you must. I shall stay here and sulk.’
He lit a cigar, and watched her as she walked up the drive. At the point where it curved out of sight, she turned and waved her hand, and he waved back, filled with a not unmanly emotion. Good old Sally, he was feeling. What a girl!
Lord Ickenham was a man with many friends in the United States where he had spent twenty years of his life, and of all these friends the one of whom he had been fondest was the late George Painter, that amiable and impecunious artist with whom he had shared so many of the joys and sorrows of an agreeably chequered youth. He had loved George, and he loved his daughter Sally.
Sally was just the sort of girl that appealed to him most, the sort America seems to turn out in thousands, gay, grave and adventurous, enjoying life with an almost Ickenhamian relish and resolutely refusing to allow its little difficulties to daunt her spirit.
How admirably, for instance, after the first shock, she had reacted to that unquestionably nasty wallop he had handed her in the lobby of Barribault’s Hotel. No tears, no wringing of the hands, no profitless reproaches and recriminations. In the best and deepest sense of the words, a pippin of a girl. And why Pongo had let her go, simply from some finnicky objection to being disembowelled by New York port officials, baffled Lord Ickenham. It was one of the things that make a man who is getting on in years despair of the younger generation.
Time marched on. He looked at his watch. About now, he felt, she would be nearing the front door; about now, doing the quick glide through the hall and the rapid substitution of bust for bust. It would not be long before he saw her again, no doubt threading her way cautiously through the bushes that fringed the drive. He kept a keen eye riveted on those, but when she did appear she was walking in full view, and the first thing that attracted his attention was the fact that her hands were empty. At some point in her progress to and from the house, it would seem, she and her precious burden had parted company.
He could make nothing of this. His eyebrows rose in a silent query. Her face, he saw, was grave. It wore a strained look.
As she reached the car, however, her normal gaiety of disposition seemed to assert itself. She broke into a gurgling laugh, and his eyebrows rose again.
‘We are amused?’
‘Well, it was funny,’ said Sally. ‘I can’t help laughing, though the absolutely rock-bottom worst has happened, Uncle Fred. We really are up against it now. You’ll never guess.’
‘I shan’t try. Tell me.’
Sally leaned against the side of the car. Her face had become grave once more.
‘I must have a cigarette first.’
‘Nerves vibrating?’
‘I’m shattered.’
She smoked in silence for a moment.
‘Ready?’
‘Waiting.’
‘Very well, then, here it comes. When I got to the house, I found the front door open, which seemed to me about as big a piece of luck as I could want —’
‘Always mistrust too much luck at the outset of any enterprise,’ said Lord Ickenham judicially. ‘It’s simply part of Fate’s con game. But I mustn’t interrupt you. Go on.’
‘I looked carefully over both shoulders. Nobody seemed to be about. I listened. I couldn’t hear anybody in the hall. Everything was silent. So I sneaked in.’
‘Quite.’
‘And tiptoed across the hall.’
‘You couldn’t have done better.’
‘And put the bust…. Shall I call it Bust A, to distinguish it from Bust B?’
‘By all means.’
‘You’ve got them clear? Bust A was the one I was toting, and Bust B the one with poor Alice’s jewels in it.’
‘Exactly.’
Sally drew at her cigarette. Her manner was absent, as if she were reliving an episode which had affected her deeply. She came to herself with something of the air of a sleeper awakening.
‘Where was I?’
‘Tiptoeing across the hall.’
‘Yes, of course. Sorry to be so goofy.’
‘Quite all right, my child.’
‘I tiptoed across the hall and shifted Bust B from its stand and put Bust A in its place and gathered up Bust B and started to come away … fairly quickly. No sense in hanging around, I mean.’
‘None whatever. Never outstay your welcome.’
‘And just as I got to the door of the room where Sir Aylmer keeps his collection of African curios, out came Lady Bostock from the drawing-room.’
‘Dramatic.’
‘I’ll say it was dramatic. The memory of that moment is going to haunt me for the rest of my life. I don’t suppose I shall sleep again for months and months and months.’
‘We all sleep too much.’
‘She said “Who’s that?”‘
‘And you, I suppose, said “Me,” meaning that it was you.’
‘I hadn’t time to say anything, because she suddenly leaped forward with a sort of pitying cluck —‘
‘A what?’
‘A cluck. Of pity. Like a nice hen. She really is a good sort, Uncle Fred. I had never realized it before. When I was down here, doing the bust, she always seemed stiff and distant. But it was just her manner. She has a heart of gold.’
‘A neat phrase, that. I must remember it. In what way did she exhibit this golden heart?’
‘Why, by swooping down on me and grabbing the bust and saying in a hoarse whi
sper that she knew exactly why I had brought it and that she was terribly sorry for me and had begged Sir Aylmer to change his mind, but he wouldn’t, so she would keep the bust and send me a cheque secretly and everything would be all right. And then she went into the collection room and locked it up in a cupboard, hurriedly, like a murderer concealing the body. And then she hustled me out. She didn’t actually say “Fly!” but it amounted to that. And it all happened so quickly that there wasn’t a thing I could do.’
‘And there the bust is?’
‘Yes. Locked up in a cupboard in Sir Aylmer’s collection room with all Alice’s jewels in it. Tie that for a disaster, Uncle Fred.’
All through the narrative, Lord Ickenham had been reviving like a watered flower.
His air, as it reached its culminating point, was that of one hearing tidings of great joy. ‘Disaster?’ he said exuberantly. ‘What do you mean, disaster? This is the most admirable thing that could have happened. I now have something I can get my teeth into. It is no longer a question merely of effecting an entry into the house, but of getting myself established there. And if there is one thing I enjoy more than another, it is getting established in other people’s houses. It brings the roses to my cheeks and tones up my whole system. Here is the immediate procedure, as I see it. You will drive on to Ickenham, which will serve us as a base, and I will take my suitcase and put up at the local inn and weave my subtle schemes. Expect sensational results shortly.’
‘You are really going to establish yourself at the house?’
‘I am.’
‘And I still mustn’t say “How?”‘
‘You certainly must not. You just leave everything to me, confident that I shall act for the best, as always. But you look grave, my child. I hope not from any lack of faith in my vision and enterprise?’
‘I was thinking of Pongo. What will he do, when you suddenly appear?’
‘I should imagine he will get the start of his young life and skip like the high hills. And an excellent thing, too. Pongo is a chap who wants taking out of himself.’
The car drove off, and Lord Ickenham hoisted his suitcase and set off for the village. He was just wishing that he had thought of asking Sally to drop him at the inn, for it was a heavy suitcase, when something large and tomato-coloured loomed up before him, and he recognized Bill Oakshott.
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