‘Oh, hullo, Potter,’ he said. ‘We thought we’d look in.’
‘I was anxious,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘to make the acquaintance of one of whom I had heard so much.’
Constable Potter seemed a little dazed by these civilities.
‘Ho!’ he said. ‘I didn’t catch the name, sir.’
‘Plank. Brabazon-Plank.’
There was a loud hiccough. It was Constable Potter registering astonishment; and more than astonishment, suspicion. There were few men, in Ashenden Oakshott at any rate, more gifted with the ability to recognize funny business when they were confronted with it, and here, it seemed to Harold Potter, was funny business in excelsis. He fixed on Lord Ickenham the stern and accusing gaze which he would have directed at a dog caught in the act of appearing in public without a collar.
‘Brabazon-Plank?’
‘Brabazon-Plank.’
‘You’re not the Major Brabazon-Plank I used to play cricket with at Lower Shagley in Dorsetshire.’
‘His brother.’
‘I didn’t know he had a brother.’
‘He kept things from you, did he? Too bad. Yes, I am his elder brother. Bill Oakshott was telling me you knew him.’
‘He said you was him.’
‘Surely not?’
‘Yus, he did.’ Constable Potter’s gaze grew sterner. He was resolved to probe this thing to the bottom. ‘He give me your suitcase to take to the house, and he said “This here belongs to Major Brabazon-Plank.”‘
Lord Ickenham laughed amusedly.
‘Just a slip of the tongue, such as so often occurs. He meant Brabazon-Plank, major. As opposed to my brother, who, being younger than me, is, of course, Brabazon-Plank, minor. I can understand you being confused,’ said Lord Ickenham with a commiserating glance at the officer, into whose face had crept the boiled look of one who finds the conversation becoming too abstruse. Three kippers, four eggs and half a loaf of bread, while nourishing the body, take the keen edge off the mental powers. ‘And what renders it all the more complex is that as I myself am a mining engineer by profession, anyone who wants to get straight on the Brabazon-Plank situation has got to keep steadily before him the fact that the minor is a major and the major a miner. I have known strong men to break down on realizing this. So you know my minor, the major, do you? Most interesting. It’s a small world, I often say. Well, when I say “often”, perhaps once a fortnight. Why are you looking like a stuck pig, Bill Oakshott?’
Bill came with a start out of what appeared to be a sort of trance. Pongo, who had had so many opportunities of observing his Uncle Fred in action, could have told him that a trancelike condition was almost always the result of being associated with this good old man when he was going nicely.
‘Was I?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t mention it. Ah, whom have we here?’
Mrs Stubbs had made her appearance, coming towards them with a suggestion in her manner of a lioness hastening to the aid of an imperilled cub. Annoyed by her brother’s tardiness in getting rid of these intruders, she had decided to take the matter in hand herself.
‘Oh, hullo, Mrs Stubbs,’ said Bill. ‘We were just giving your baby the once over. ‘Lord Ickenham started.
‘Your baby? Is this remarkably fine infant yours, madam?’
His bearing was so courteous, his manner so reverent that Mrs Stubbs, who had come in like a lioness, began to envisage the possibility of going out like a lamb.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said, and went so far as to curtsy. She was not a woman who often curtsied, but there was something about this distinguished-looking elderly gentleman that seemed to call for the tribute. ‘It’s my little Basil.’
‘A sweet name. And a sweet child. A starter I hope?’
‘Sir?’
‘You have entered him for the Bonny Baby contest at the fete?’
‘Oh, yes, sir.’
‘Good. Excellent. It would have been madness to hide his light under a bushel. Have you studied this outstanding infant closely, Bill Oakshott? If not, do so now,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘for you will never have a better chance of observing a classic yearling. What hocks! What pasterns! And what lungs!’ he continued, as George Basil Percival, waking, like Abou ben Adhem, from a deep dream of peace, split the welkin with a sudden howl. ‘I always mark heavily for lungs. I should explain, madam, that I am to have the honour of acting as judge at the contest to which I have referred.’
‘You are, sir?’
‘I am, indeed. Is your husband at home? No? A pity. I would have advised him to pick up a bit of easy money by putting his shirt on this child for the Bonny Baby stakes. Have you a shirt, Mr Potter? Ah, I see you have. Well, slap it on the stable’s entry and fear nothing. I have at present, of course, no acquaintance with local form, but I cannot imagine that there will be another competitor of such supreme quality as to nose him out. I see myself at the close of the proceedings raising Basil’s hand in the air with the words “The winnah!” Well, Mrs Stubbs,’ said Lord Ickenham, with a polished bow in the direction of his hostess and a kindly ‘Kitchy-kitchy’ to the coming champ, who was staring at him with what a more sensitive man would have considered offensive curiosity, ‘we must be pushing along. We have much to do. Goodbye, Mrs Stubbs. Goodbye, baby. Goodbye, off—’
He paused, the word unspoken. Constable Potter had suddenly turned and was making for the cottage at a high rate of speed, and Lord Ickenham stared after him at little blankly.
‘Gone without a cry!’ he said. ‘I suppose he forgot something.’
‘His manners,’ said Mrs Stubbs tartly. ‘The idea!’
‘Ah, well,’ said Lord Ickenham, always inclined to take the tolerant view, ‘what ate manners, if the heart be of gold? Goodbye again, Mrs Stubbs. Goodbye, baby. As I say, we must be moving. May I repeat what a privilege it has been to get together with this superb child in what I may term his training quarters and urge you once more, with all the emphasis at my disposal, to put the family shirt on him for the big event. There could be no sounder investment. Good-bye,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘goodbye, goodbye,’ and took his departure, scattering sweetness and light in all directions.
Out in the road he paused to light a cigar.
‘How absurdly simple these things are,’ he said, ‘when you have someone with elephantiasis of the brain, like myself, directing the operations. A few well-chosen words, and we baffle the constable just as we baffled Mugsy. Odd that he should have left us so abruptly. But perhaps he went in to spray his temples with eau-de-Cologne. I got the impression that he was cracking under the strain a little when I was dishing out that major and minor stuff.’
‘How did you come to think of that?’
‘Genius,’ said Lord Ickenham modestly. ‘Pure genius.’
‘I wonder if he swallowed it.’
‘I think so. I hope so.’
‘You laid it on a bit thick about that ruddy baby.’
‘Kind words are never wasted, Bill Oakshott. And now for Ashenden Manor, I think, don’t you, and the warm English welcome.’
Bill seemed uncertain.
‘Do you know, I believe I could do with some more beer.’
‘You feel faint?’
‘I do, rather.’
‘All right, then, you push on to the pub. I must try to find Pongo. Would he be in the house?’
‘No, I saw him going out.’
‘Then I will scour the countryside for him. It is vital,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘that I put him abreast of the position of affairs before he has an opportunity of spilling the beans. We don’t want him charging in when I am chatting with Mugsy and calling me “Uncle Fred”. Before we settle down to the quiet home evening to which I am looking forward so much, he must be informed that he is losing an uncle but gaining a Brazilian explorer. So for the moment, bung-ho. Where was it I told Mugsy that we would all meet? Ah, yes, at Philippi. See you there, then, when you have drunk your fill.’
In times of spiritual disturbance there is nothing like a brisk mystery thriller for taking the mind off its anxieties. Pongo’s first move after parting from Sir Aylmer Bostock had been to go to his room and get his copy of Murder in the Fog; his second to seek some quiet spot outside the grounds, where there would be no danger of meeting the ex-Governor on his return, and soothe himself with a good read. He found such a spot at the side of the road not far from the Manor gates, and soon became absorbed.
The treatment proved almost immediately effective. That interview with Sir Aylmer in the hall had filled him with numbing fears and rendered him all of a twitter, but now he found his quivering ganglia getting back to mid-season form: and, unlike the heroine of the tale in which he was immersed, who had just got trapped in the underground den of one of those Faceless Fiends who cause so much annoyance, he was feeling quite tranquil, when a shadow fell on the page, a well-remembered voice spoke his name, and he looked up to see his Uncle Fred standing before him.
If there is one occasion more than another when joy might be expected to be unconfined and happiness to reign supreme, it is surely, one would say, when a nephew in the course of a country ramble encounters an uncle who in his time has often dandled him on his knee. At such a moment one would anticipate the quick indrawing of the breath, the raising of the eyes thankfully to heaven and the meeting of hand and hand in a fervent clasp.
It is unpleasant, therefore, to have to record that in Pongo’s bosom, as he beheld Lord Ickenham, joy was not the predominating emotion. He could scarcely, indeed, have appeared more disconcerted if the Faceless Fiend from the volume in his hand had popped from its pages to confront him.
‘Uncle Fred!’ he ejaculated. The burned child fears the fire, and bitter experience had taught Pongo Twistleton to view with concern the presence in his midst of Ickenham’s fifth earl. One recalls the words, quoted in a previous chapter, of the thoughtful Crumpet. ‘Good Lord, Uncle Fred, what on earth are you doing here?’
Lord Ickenham, unlike Sir Aylmer Bostock, was a man who believed in breaking things gently. With a tale to unfold whose lightest word would harrow up his nephew’s soul and make his two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, he decided to hold it in for the time being and to work round gradually and by easy stages to what Pongo would have called the nub. With a gentle smile on his handsome face, he lowered himself to the ground and gave his moustache a twirl.
‘Just pottering to and fro, my boy, just pottering to and fro. This road is open for being pottered in at this hour, I believe.’
‘But I left you at Ickenham.’
‘The parting was agony.’
‘You told me you were going to London.’
‘So I did.’
‘You never said a word about coming here.’
‘No, but you know how it is. Things happen. One’s plans become modified.’
A passing ant paused to investigate Pongo’s wrist. He flung it from him, and the ant, alighting on its head some yards to the sou’-sou’-east, went off to warn other ants to watch out for earthquakes.
‘I might have known it,’ he cried passionately. ‘You’re going to start something.’
‘No, no.’
‘Then what’s up?’
Lord Ickenham considered the question.
‘I don’t know that I would go so far to say that anything was actually up. The word is. too strong. Certain complications have arisen, it is true, but nothing that cannot be adjusted by a couple of cool, calm men of the world who keep their heads. Let me begin at the beginning. I went to London and gave Sally dinner, and in the course of the meal she revealed why it was that she had wanted to see me so urgently. It seems that her brother Otis is in trouble again. She asked me to tell you all about it and endeavour to enlist your aid.’
As the story of Otis Painter and Sir Aylmer Bostock’s Reminiscences unfolded itself, relief poured over Pongo in a healing wave. He blamed himself for having so readily fallen a prey to the agitation which the unexpected appearance of his Uncle Fred was so apt to occasion in him. Up to this point he had been standing. He now sat down with the air of a man who is at his ease. He even laughed, a thing which he was seldom able to do when in conference with his uncle.
‘Rather funny,’ he said.
‘The matter is not without its humorous aspect,’ Lord Ickenham agreed. ‘But we must not forget that if the action goes through, Sally stands to lose a lot of money.’
‘That’s true. So she wants me to plead with the old boy and get him to settle the thing out of court. Well, I’ll do what I can.’
‘You speak doubtfully. Doesn’t he love you like a son?’
‘I wouldn’t say absolutely like a son. You see, I broke one of his African curios.’
‘You do break things, don’t you? And this has rankled?’
‘I fancy it has to some extent. When I met him in the hall just now, he gave me a nasty look and a couple of distinctly unpleasant “Ha’s!” The slant I got was that he had been thinking me over and come to the conclusion that I was a bit of a louse. Still, he may come round.’
‘Of course he will. You must persevere.’
‘Oh, rather.’
‘That’s the spirit. Keep after him, exerting all your charm. Remember what it means to Sally.’
‘Right ho. And is that really all you wanted to see me about?’
‘I think so. Except…. Now what else was it I wanted to see you about?… Ah, yes, I remember. That bust of Sally’s. The one you borrowed from my place.’
‘Oh, the old busto? Yes, of course. Well, everything went according to plan. I sneaked it in all right. A testing experience, though. If you knew what I went through, beetling across the hall with the thing in my possession, expecting every moment to feel old Bostock’s hot breath on the back of my neck!’
‘I can readily imagine it. I wonder,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘if you know how these busts are made? Sally has been explaining it to me. It is a most interesting process. You first model the clay. Then you slap on it a coat of liquid plaster.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘After that you wait a little while until the plaster becomes fairly hard, when you divide it into two neat halves and throw away the clay. You then fill the mould with plaster.’
‘Very jolly, if you like that sort of thing,’ said Pongo tolerantly. ‘How was Sally?’
‘At first, radiant. Later, somewhat perturbed.’
‘About Otis, you mean?’
‘About Otis — and other things. But let me finish telling you about the way busts are made. You fill the mould with plaster, leaving a small empty space at the top. This,’ said Lord Ickenham, feeling that he had now broken the thing sufficiently gently, ‘you utilize as a repository for any jewels that any friend of yours may wish to smuggle into the United States.’
‘What!’ Pongo shot up in a whirl of arms and legs. Another ant, which climbed on to his wrist in a rather sceptical spirit, took as impressive a toss as its predecessor had done, and might have been observed some moments later rubbing its head and telling a circle of friends that old George had been right when he had spoken of seismic disturbances. ‘You don’t mean —?‘
‘Yes. Inadvertently, intending no harm, we appear to have got away with the bust in which Sally had cached her friend Alice Vansittart’s bit of stuff. The idea came to her, apparently, shortly after you had refused to help her out. It seems a pity now that you were not more amenable. Of course, as Hamlet very sensibly remarked, there’s nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so; still, a rather sticky situation has unquestionably been precipitated. The Vansittart sails for New York next week.’
‘Oh, my gosh!’
‘You see the drama of the thing? I thought you would. Well, there it is. You will agree with me, I think, that we are in honour bound to return these trinkets. Can’t go snitching a poor girl’s little bit of jewellery. Not done. Not cricket.’
Pongo nodded. Nobody could teach him anything about nob
lesse oblige. He shrank from repeating the dreadful performance to which he had forced himself on his arrival at the house, but he quite saw that it had to be done.
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to nip over to Ickenham and get another bust. Will Coggs be able to dig me out one?’
‘No,’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘And if he could, it would not be any good. Another complication has occurred, which I must now relate to you. You remember the bust Sally did of Sir Aylmer, the one that was to have been presented to the village club, poor devils. Piqued as the result of this Otis business, he returned it to her, and I brought her down here this afternoon in my car and she crept into the house and substituted it for the one with Miss Vansittart’s jewels in it. And just as she was getting away with the latter, Lady Bostock intercepted her, took it away from her and locked it up in a cupboard in the room where the African curios are. And there it now is. So —‘
Pongo interrupted, speaking quickly and forcefully. There are limits to what noblesse obliges.
‘I know what you’re going to say,’ he cried. ‘You want me to sneak down in the middle of the night and break open the cupboard and pinch it. Well, I’m jolly well not going to do it.’
‘No, no,’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘Calm yourself, my dear boy. I would not dream of burdening you with such a responsibility. I will do the pinching.’
‘You?’
‘In person.’
‘But you can’t get into the house.’
‘I wish people wouldn’t tell me I can’t do things. It is all going to be perfectly simple. My young friend, Bill Oakshott, has invited me to stay at Ashenden Manor. He wants me to judge the Bonny Babies contest at a fete they are having here shortly. Why his choice fell upon me, one cannot say. I suppose he knew I was good. These things get about.’
Pongo gazed up at the reeling sky and sent his haggard eyes roaming over a country side that had broken into a sort of Ouled Nail muscle dance. His face was drawn, and his limbs twitched. Lord Ickenham, watching him, received the impression that he did not like the idea of his, Lord Ickenham’s, approaching visit to Ashenden Manor.
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