Gally patted her hand.
‘Of course you must stay, my dear child. Your moral support is invaluable. And one of these days you’re sure to come up with some terrific idea which will solve all our difficulties. A brainy girl like you? Don’t tell me. I shouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t one fermenting inside you at this very moment.’
‘Well, as a matter of fact –’
‘I told you so.’
‘I was just going to suggest something when Miss Donaldson came along.’
‘You may speak freely before Miss Donaldson, who has been associated with me in a number of my cases.’
Maudie looked about her cautiously. They were alone and unobserved. In the drawing-room Lord Vosper was now singing something so full – judging by the sound – of anguish that they were fortunate in not being able to distinguish the words. Even the melody was affecting Penny unpleasantly.
‘What I thought was this. Why don’t you steal Tubby’s old Pig?’
‘What!’
A momentary fear that she had said something unladylike flitted through Maudie’s mind, but she dismissed it. She had known Gally too long to suppose that he was capable of being shocked.
‘Well, he seems to be doing everything he can to queer your old pig, so why shouldn’t you start? Attack … what’s that thing you hear people say?’
‘Attack is the best form of defence?’
‘That’s right. If I were you, I’d sneak over to his house and wait till there was nobody around –’
Gally patted her hand again.
‘What you propose, my dear Maudie,’ he said, ‘would, of course, be the ideal solution, and the suggestion strengthens the high opinion I had already formed of your resource and intelligence. But there are obstacles in the way. The catch is that there would be somebody around.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I have it from an authoritative source. Just before dinner I was called to the telephone. It was young Parsloe. He had rung me up, he said, to warn me that if I was contemplating any off-colour work, I would do well to think twice, because he had provided his pig man, Wellbeloved, with a stout shot-gun and Wellbeloved had a roving commission to blaze away with it at all intruders. So there the matter rests. I don’t know how accurate a marksman the blighter is, but I certainly don’t propose to ascertain by personal inquiry. It would be foreign to my policy to have to take all my meals standing up for the next few weeks because George Cyril Wellbeloved had planted a charge of small shot in my … well, that is neither here nor there. As I was saying, with the broad, general idea of pinching Parsloe’s pig I am wholly in sympathy. We could put it in that gamekeeper’s shack in the west wood and keep it incommunicado there indefinitely. But things being as they are –’
Maudie nodded.
‘I see. Then there’s nothing to be done?’
‘Nothing, I’m afraid, so long as George Cyril Wellbeloved –’
He broke off. The voice of Sebastian Beach had spoken at his elbow, causing him to leap like a lamb in springtime. Absorbed in his remarks, he had had no inkling that there were butlers present.
‘You made me bite my tongue, Beach,’ he said reproachfully.
‘I am sorry, Mr Galahad. I should have coughed.’
‘Or tooted your horn. What is it?’
‘A person has called, asking to see you, sir. The man Wellbeloved, Mr Galahad.’
‘Wellbeloved?’ Gally stiffened formidably. ‘You mean that this renegade pig man, this latter-day Benedict Arnold, this degraded specimen of pond life, is here?’
‘I left him in my pantry, sir. He expressed himself as very desirous of having a word with you. The matter, he said, was one of urgency.’
An idea struck Gally. He slapped his forehead. ‘My God! Perhaps he has come to betray Parsloe. Perhaps he wants to change sides again. Like Long John Silver. Did you ever read Treasure Island, Beach?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Ass! Or do you think he is here as a spy? No,’ said Gally, having mused a moment, ‘it can’t be that, or why does he want to see me? Would a spy in the pay of Napoleon Bonaparte have come to the British camp before the battle of Waterloo, asking for a word with the Duke of Wellington? I doubt it. Well, I must certainly hear what he has to say. Lead on, Beach, lead on.’
‘If you will step this way, Mr Galahad.’
The departure of the most gifted conversationalist of the little group caused another of those long silences. Maudie was a woman who seldom spoke unless spoken to, and any disposition Penny might have had towards small talk was checked by the wailing of Lord Vosper’s reedy tenor. He was now singing something about ‘You’re breaking my heart, we’re drifting apart, as I knew at the start it would be,’ and no girl who is headed for the altar with the wrong man can prattle when she hears that sort of thing.
Once again it was Lord Emsworth who broke the spell. Hopeful that by now his brother Galahad might have removed himself, he came out of the drawing-room to have another try for that tête-à-tête, only to discover that though the terrace was free from Galahads, it had become all stocked up with Penny Donaldsons. He paused, and said ‘Er’.
There was another longish silence.
‘The moon,’ said Lord Emsworth, indicating it.
‘Yes,’ said Maudie.
‘Bright,’ said Lord Emsworth, paying it a well-deserved tribute.
‘Yes,’ said Maudie.
‘Very bright,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘Oh, very, very bright,’ and seemed for a moment about to converse with easy fluency. But inspiration failed him, and with a ‘Quite, quite. Capital’, he disappeared again.
Penny regarded his retreating back with a listless eye.
‘Do you think he’s had a couple?’ she asked.
It was precisely what had suggested itself to Maudie. In her Criterion days she had encountered many a customer who had behaved in just such a manner, and her seasoned eye could detect little difference between her host and the scores of exuberant young men whom she had seen in the old days conducted gently from her bar with the bouncer’s hand caressing their elbow.
Then a more charitable view supervened.
‘Of course, he’s very absent-minded.’
‘Yes, I believe he is.’
‘Gally was saying so only just now.’
‘Oh, yes?’
Maudie hesitated.
‘Talking of Gally,’ she said, ‘he was telling me yesterday that you —’
‘Yes?’
‘He was telling me about you. He said you had gone and got engaged to the wrong young man.’
‘Quite true.’
Maudie felt relieved. Like all women, she took a passionate interest in the love lives of other women and was longing for a cosy talk about Penny’s and she feared that she might have spoken out of turn and given offence.
‘Well, that’s how it goes,’ she said. ‘That happened to me once. Someone rang me up on the telephone one morning and said “Hoy!”, and I said “Yes?”, and he said “This is Tubby”, and I said “Hullo, Tubby”, and he said “Hullo, Maudie — I say, will you marry me?”, and I said “Rather, of course I will”, because I was very much in love with him at the time and quite pleased that he had mentioned it. And it was only after we had made all the plans for the honeymoon that I found it wasn’t the Tubby I’d thought it was, but another Tubby whom I didn’t like at all. And there I was, engaged to him. I often laugh when I think of it.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Oh, I gave him the bird. I told him to go fry an egg.’
‘Lucky you could.’
‘Why, any girl can break off an engagement, can’t they?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because if I did, Lady Constance would write and tell Father, and Father would have me shipped back to America on the next boat, and I would never see Jerry again. He can’t keep coming over to America with ocean liners charging the earth, the way they do.’
<
br /> ‘I see what you mean. You would be sundered by the seas.’
‘Sundered like nobody’s business.’
‘Well, that is a nice bit of box fruit, isn’t it?’
Penny was agreeing that the expression ‘A nice bit of box fruit’ unquestionably summed up the position of affairs, when out came Lord Emsworth again. For centuries the Emsworths had been noted for their dogged courage, and this time he was resolved that Operation Maudie should be carried through.
‘Er,’ said Lord Emsworth.
‘Er, Mrs Bunbury,’ said Lord Emsworth.
‘Er, Mrs Bunbury, I – ah – I am just going down to have a look at the Empress,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘I wonder if you would care to join me?’
‘I’d love to,’ said Maudie.
‘Capital, capital,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘Capital, capital, capital, capital.’
They had scarcely gone, when there was a patter of feet and Gally appeared.
Even in the uncertain light cast by the moon it was easy to see that Gally was in radiant spirits. His eyes were sparkling, his whole demeanour that of a man who has found the blue bird. Whatever had passed between him and George Cyril Wellbeloved, it was plain that it had acted on him like a tonic.
His opening words left no room for doubt on this point.
‘I do believe in fairies!’ he said. ‘There is a Santa Claus! Penny, do you know what?’
‘What?’
‘Listen attentively. This gargoyle Wellbeloved has been pouring out his heart to me. It appears that Parsloe, wishing to keep the fellow alert and on his toes, ruthlessly ordered him to go on the wagon, and furthermore gave instructions to all the pubs in Market Blandings that they weren’t to serve him. Did this blot the sunshine from Wellbeloved’s life, you ask? It did. The poor chap was in despair. Then he remembered that I was a man with a feeling heart, and he came over here to ask me to do something about it.’
‘You mean plead with Parsloe?’
‘No, no, no. You can’t plead with a hard nut like Parsloe. The man has no bowels of compassion. He wanted me to give him a drink. You see the tremendous significance of this?’
‘No.’
‘You disappoint me. I’d have thought you would have grasped it in an instant. Why, dash it, it means that the coast is clear. The menace of that shot-gun has ceased to function. I have instructed Beach to lush this Wellbeloved up in his pantry, and he will continue to lush him up till the stuff comes trickling out of the top of his head, while I, taking the car, nip over to Parsloe’s lair and remove his pig to that shack in the west wood of which I spoke. Any questions?’
‘Yes,’ said Penny. ‘Isn’t Parsloe’s pig pretty big?’
‘Enormous. It bestrides the narrow world like a Colossus.’
‘Then how are you going to remove it?’
‘My dear child, pigs have rings through their noses. This facilitates pulling and hauling.’
‘You’ll never be able to do it.’
‘What do you mean, I’ll never be able to do it? Of course I’ll be able to do it. When Puffy Benger and I stole old Wivenhoe’s pig the night of the Bachelors’ Ball at Hammer’s Easton, we had to get it up three flights of stairs before we could put it in Plug Basham’s bedroom, and we found the task an absurdly easy one. A little child could have led it. Why, my nephew Ronald, from motives which I have not the leisure to go into now, once stole the Empress, and I resent the suggestion that I am incapable of performing a task within the scope of a young poop like Ronnie Fish. Never be able to do it, forsooth!’ said Gally, burning with honest indignation. ‘I can do it on my head. I can do it blindfolded, with one arm tied behind me. So if you wish to be in this, Penny Donaldson, get moving. Come, Watson, come. The game is afoot!’
3
It was some ten minutes later that Gloria Salt, who had been sitting silent and pensive in the amber drawing-room, rose from her chair and said that if Lady Constance didn’t mind, she would say good night. One or two things to attend to before turning in, she explained, and glided out.
For a long instant after she had left, Lord Vosper, who had gallantly opened the door for her, stood motionless, the handle in his hand, a strange light in his eyes. The sound of her voice, the scent of her perfume, the sight of her so near to him that he could have slapped her between the shoulder-blades – not that he would have, of course – had affected him powerfully. Standing there, he was wrestling with an almost overmastering urge to dash after her and fold her in his arms and beg her to let bygones be bygones.
It is too often the way. A girl whom we have set on a pedestal calls us an overbearing louse, and love dies. Goodbye to all that, we say to ourselves, wondering what we could ever have seen in her. And then she suddenly pops up out of a trap at the house where we are staying, and before we can say ‘What ho!’ love has sprung from the obituary column and is working away at the old stand more briskly than ever.
Lord Vosper became calmer. What a writer of radio drama would have called the moment of madness, sheer madness, passed and Reason returned to her throne. He rebuked himself for having allowed his thoughts to wander in such a dubious direction. He had received his early education at Harrow, and Old Harrovians, he reminded himself, when they have plighted their troth to Girl A, do not go about folding Girl B in their arms. Old Etonians, yes. Old Rugbeians, possibly. But not Old Harrovians. With a sigh and a gesture of resignation he closed the door and returned to the piano. Resuming his seat on the music stool, he began to sing once more.
‘The sun is dark (tiddle-om) … The skies are grey (tiddle-om) … since my sweetie (pom) … went away,’ sang Orlo Vosper, and Gloria Salt, in her bedroom above, clenched her hands as the words came floating in through the open window and stared before her with unseeing eyes.
Youth, according to most authorities, is the season for gaiety and happiness, but one glance at this girl would have been enough to show that nobody was likely to sell that idea to her. Her lovely face was twisted with pain, her dark eyes dull with anguish. If she had appeared, looking as she was looking now, in one of the old silent films, there would have been flashed on the screen some such caption as:
BUT CAME A DAY WHEN REMORSE GNAWED GLORIA SALT. THINKING OF WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN HER PROUD HEART ACHES.
And such a caption would have been roughly correct.
To Gloria Salt, as well as to Lord Vosper, the past few days had been days of severe strain, filling her with emotions so violent that she had become more like a volcano than a girl with a handicap of six at St Andrews. Arriving at Blandings Castle and finding herself confronted first crack out of the box by a man whom in that very instant she realized that she loved more passionately than ever, she had received a severe shock. Nor was the turmoil in her soul in any way lessened by the discovery that, since last heard of, he had gone and got engaged to that saffron-haired midget one saw bobbing about the place, answering, she understood, to the name of Penelope Donaldson.
Forced, this afternoon, to play mixed doubles with Jerry Vail against her lost lover, partnered by the midget, she had drained the bitter cup, the ordeal being rendered still more testing by the fact that the midget, displaying unexpected form at the net, had kept killing her warmest returns. And tonight she had been listening to Orlo Vosper’s singing.
It was, in short, the last moment when a man with as many chins as Sir Gregory Parsloe should have thrust himself on her notice. And this he now unfortunately did. We have said that Gloria Salt’s eyes, as she stared before her, were unseeing, but at this juncture the mists cleared and they began to focus. And the first thing they saw was the photograph of Sir Gregory on the dressing-table.
Strolling through the jungles of Brazil, the traveller sometimes sees a barefoot native halt with a look of horror, his body rigid except for a faint vibration of the toes. He has seen a scorpion in his path. It was with just such a look of horror that Gloria gazed at the photograph of Sir Gregory Parsloe. Very imprudently, he had had himself taken side face and, eyeing
those chins, she winced and caught her breath sharply. She took another look, and her mind was made up. She had thought it could be done, but she saw now that it could not be done. There are shots which are on the board, and shots which are not. It might be that some day some girl, veiled in white, would stand at the altar rails beside this vast expanse of Baronet while the organ played ‘The Voice That Breathed O’er Eden’, but that girl would not be G. Salt.
With a sudden, impulsive movement she snatched the photograph from its frame and with a quick flick of the wrist sent it skimming through the open window. Then, hurrying to the desk, she took pen and paper and began to write.
Half an hour later Sebastian Beach, crossing the hall, heard his name spoken and, turning, saw that what had come into his life was a sinuous form clad in some clinging material which accentuated rather than hid its graceful outlines.
‘Miss?’ he said.
This, he knew, was the fiancée of the Professor Moriarty of Matchingham Hall and as such to be viewed with concern and apprehension, but twenty years of butling had trained him to wear the mask, and there was nothing in his manner to suggest that he was feeling like a nervous character in a Gerald Vail story trapped in a ruined mill by one-eyed Chinamen.
‘I want this note taken to Sir Gregory Parsloe,’ said Gloria. ‘Could someone go over with it in the morning?’
Sinister, felt Beach, very sinister. Dispatches, probably in code. But he replied with his customary courtesy.
‘The communication can be delivered tonight miss. Sir Gregory’s pig man is at this moment in my pantry. I will entrust it to his care.’
‘Thank you, Beach.’
‘Not at all, miss. The individual will be leaving shortly on his bicycle.’
If, thought Beach, he is able to ride a bicycle with all that stuff in him. He moved ponderously off. He was on his way to the cellar for a bottle of Bollinger. Mr Galahad’s instructions had been that in the matter of entertaining their guest the sky was to be regarded as the limit, and George Cyril Wellbeloved had expressed a desire for that beverage. He had heard it mentioned, he said, by Sir Gregory’s butler, his friend Herbert Binstead, and had often wondered what it was and wished he could have a pop at it.
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