The improvement in his condition, however, was purely physical. Spiritually, he continued in the depths. As he reviewed the position of affairs, his heart struck a new low. He had secured the photograph, yes, and that was good, as far as it went. But it did not, he perceived, go so dashed far. If Purkiss was to be one of the guests at the Jobson lunch, he was still waist-high in the soup and likely to sink without trace at any moment.
He could envisage just what would occur at the beano. His tortured mind threw the thing into a sort of dialogue scene.
The Apartment of B. M. Jobson. Afternoon. Discovered—B. M. Jobson and Purkiss. Enter Mrs. Bingo.
MRS. BINGO: Cheerio. I’m Rosie M. Banks.
JOBSON: Oh, what ho, Miss Banks. Do you know Mr. Purkiss?
MRS. BINGO: You betcher. He owns the paper my husband is editor of.
JOBSON: You’re married, then?
MRS. BINGO: Oh, rather. Name of Little.
JOBSON: Little? Little? Odd. I know a bird named Little. In fact, when I say “know”, that’s understating it a bit. He’s
been giving me the rush of a lifetime. “Bingo”, mine calls himself. Some relation, perhaps.
MRS. BINGO: But he preferred not to sketch in Mrs. Bingo’s lines. He stood there groaning in spirit. And he had just groaned for about the fifteenth time, when a car drew up before him and through a sort of mist he saw Mrs. Bingo seated at the steering-wheel.
“Oh, Bingo, darling!” cried Mrs. Bingo. “What luck finding you here. Is this where you’re lunching with your writer? What an extraordinary coincidence.”
It seemed to Bingo that if he was going to put up any kind of a story, now was the time to put it up. In a few brief moments Mrs. Bingo would be entering the presence of the Jobson, with results as already indicated, and her mind must be prepared.
But beyond a sort of mixed snort and gurgle he found himself unable to utter, and Mrs. Bingo carried on.
“I can’t stop a minute,” she said. “I’ve got to rush back to Mrs. Purkiss. She’s in great distress. When I got to her house, to pick her up and drive her here, I found her in a terrible state. Apparently her dog has been lost. I just came here to tell Miss Jobson that we shan’t be able to lunch. Will you be an angel and ring her up from the desk and explain?”
Bingo blinked. The hotel, though solidly built, seemed to be swaying above him.
“You…what was that you said? You won’t be able to lunch
with–“
“No. Mrs. Purkiss wants me with her. She’s gone to bed with a hot-water bottle. So will you ring Miss Jobson up? Then I can hurry off.”
Bingo drew a deep breath.
“Of course, of course, of course, of course, of course,” he said. “Oh, rather. Rather. Ring Miss Jobson up … tell her you and Mrs. Purkiss will not be among those present … explain fully. A simple task. Leave it to me, light of my life.”
“Thank you, darling. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” said Bingo.
She drove off, and he stood there, his eyes closed and his lips moving silently. Only once in his life before had he been conscious of this awed sense of being the favourite son of a benevolent providence. That was at his private school, when the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn, his headmaster, in the very act of raising the cane to land him a juicy one on the old spot, had ricked his shoulder and had to postpone the ceremony indefinitely.
Presently, life returned to the rigid limbs and he tottered to the bar to have one quick, followed by another rather slower. And the first person he saw there, sucking down something pink, was Purkiss. He gave him an austere look, and settled himself at the farther end of the counter. Later on, it would presumably be his nauseous task to step across and inform the man of the tragedy which had come upon his home, but the thought of holding speech with him after the way he had behaved was so revolting that he did not propose to do it until he had fortified himself with a couple of refreshers.
And he had had the first one and was waiting for the second, when he felt something pawing at his sleeve. He glanced round, and there was Purkiss with a pleading look in his eyes, like a spaniel trying to ingratiate itself with someone whom it knows to be allergic to dogs.
“Mr. Little.”
“Weil, Purkiss?”
“Mr. Little, it is in your power to do me a great kindness.”
Well, I don’t know what you would have replied to that, if you had been in Bingo’s position—addressed in this fashion, I mean, by a man who had not only given you the push but in doing so had called you at least six offensive names. Personally, I would have said “Oh?” or possibly “Ho!” and that may have been what Bingo was intending to say. But before he could get going, Purkiss proceeded.
“Mr. Little, I am faced by a disaster so hideous that the mind reels, contemplating it, and only you can save me. At any moment now, my wife will be arriving here. We are lunching with Miss Jobson. Mr. Little, I appeal to you. Will you think of some suitable story and go and stand at the door and intercept her and prevent her coming to this luncheon-party? My whole future happiness depends on this.”
At this juncture, Bingo’s second refresher arrived and he sat sipping it thoughtfully. He could make nothing of all this, but he is a pretty intelligent chap, and he was beginning to see that circumstances had arisen which might culminate in him doing a bit of good for himself.
“It is imperative that my wife does not enter Miss Jobson’s suite.”
Bingo got outside the mixture, and laid the glass down.
“Tell me the whole story in your own words, Purkiss,” he said.
Purkiss had produced a handkerchief, and was mopping his forehead with it. With his other hand he continued to massage Bingo’s arm. His whole deportment was vastly different from what it had been when he had called Bingo those six offensive names.
“It was only late this morning,” he said, “that Miss Jobson informed me on the telephone that she had invited my wife to be a guest at this luncheon-party—which, until then, I had supposed would be a tête-à-tête between her and myself. I may mention that I have concluded negotiations with Miss Jobson for the publication of her brilliant works. I had presumed that over the luncheon-table we would discuss such details as illustrations and general make-up.”
“Matters,” said Bingo coldly, “more customarily left to the editor.”
“Quite, quite, but as…yes, quite. But the point is, Mr. Little, that in order to Secure this material from Miss Jobson I had been compelled to—ah—how shall I put it–”
“Bring a little pressure to bear?”
“Precisely. Yes, it is exactly what I did. It seemed to me that the end justified the means. Wee Tots, as I saw it, was standing at the cross-roads. Let me secure the works of Bella Mae Jobson, and the dear old paper would soar beyond reach of competition. Let her, on the other hand, go to one of my trade rivals, and it would sustain a blow from which it might not recover. So I left no stone unturned.”
“And avenues?”
“Avenues, too. I explored them all.” Bingo pursed his lips.
“I have no wish to condemn you unheard, Purkiss,” he said, “but all this begins to look a bit French. Did you kiss Miss Jobson?”
A violent start shook Purkiss from stem to stern.
“No, no, no, no!” he protested vehemently. “Certainly not. Most decidedly not. Nothing of that nature whatsoever. From start to finish our relations have been conducted with the utmost circumspection on my part, complete maidenly dignity on hers. But I took her to the National Gallery, the British Museum, and a matinee at Sadler’s Wells. And then, seeing that she was weakening, I …”
His voice faltered and died away. Recovering it, he asked the barman for another of those pink ones for himself and whatever Bingo desired for Bingo. Then, when the tissue-restorers had appeared and he had drained his at a gulp, he found strength to continue.
“I gave her my wife’s Pekinese.”
“What!”
“Yes. She had admired the ani
mal when visiting my house, and I smuggled it out in a hat-box when I left home this morning and brought it to this hotel. Ten minutes later she had signed the contract. An hour later she apparently decided to include my wife in her list of guests. Two hours after that, she was informing me of this fact on the telephone, and I hastened here in the hope of being able to purloin the animal.
“But it was not to be. She had taken it for a run. Consider my position, Mr. Little. What am I to do if my wife enters Miss Jobson’s suite and finds her in possession of this dog? There will be explanations. And what will be the harvest when those explanations have been made?” He broke off, quivering in every limb. “But why are we wasting time? While we sit talking here, she may be arriving. Your post is at the door. Fly, Mr. Little!”
Bingo eyed him coldly.
“It’s all very well to say ‘Fly!’,” he said, “but the question that
springs to the lips is, ‘What is there in this for me?’ Really, Purkiss, after your recent behaviour I rather fail to see why I should sweat myself to the bone, lugging you out of messes. It is true,” he went on meditatively, “that I have just thought of a pippin of a story which cannot fail to head Mrs. Purkiss off when she arrives, but why should I bother to dish it out? At the end of this week I cease to be in your employment. It would be a very different thing, of course, if I were continuing as editor of Wee Tots “
“But you are, Mr. Little, you are.”
”—at a considerably increased salary…”
“Your salary shall be doubled.”
Bingo reflected.
“H’m!” he said. “And no more muscling in and trying to dictate the policy of the ‘Uncle Joe To His Chickabiddies’ page?”
“None, none. From now on, none. You shall have a completely free hand.”
“Then, Purkiss, you may set your mind at rest. Mrs. Purkiss will not be present at the luncheon-party.”
“You guarantee that?”
“I guarantee it,” said Bingo. “Just step along with me to the writing-room and embody the terms of our new contract in a brief letter, and I will do the needful.”
Sonny Boy
ON the question of whether Bingo Little was ethically justified in bringing his baby into the club and standing it a milk straight in the smoking-room, opinion at the Drones was sharply divided. A Bean with dark circles under his eyes said that it was not the sort of thing a chap wanted to see suddenly when he looked in for a drop of something to correct a slight queasiness after an exacting night. A more charitable Egg argued that as the child was presumably coming up for election later on, it was as well for it to get to know the members. A Pieface thought that if Bingo did let the young thug loose on the premises, he ought at least to give the committee a personal guarantee for all hats, coats and umbrellas.
“Because if ever I saw a baby that looked like something that was one jump ahead of the police,” said the Pieface, “it is this baby of Bingo’s. Definitely the criminal type. It reminds me of Edward G. Robinson.”
A Crumpet, always well informed, was able to throw a rather interesting light on the situation;
“I agree,” he said, “that Algernon Aubrey Little is not a child whom I personally would care to meet down a dark alley, but Bingo assures me that its heart is in the right place, and as for his bringing it here and lushing it up, that is readily explained. He is grateful to this baby and feels that the best is none too good for it. By doing the right thing at the right time, it recently pulled him but of a very nasty spot. It is not too much to say, he tells me, that but for its intervention a situation would have been precipitated his home life which might well have staggered humanity.”
When in the second year of his marriage to Rosie M. Banks, ie eminent female novelist, his union was blessed and this bouncing boy appeared on the London scene, Bingo’s reactions aid the Crumpet) were, I gather, very much the same as yours, introduced to the child in the nursing home, he recoiled with a startled “Oi!” and as the days went by the feeling that he had run up against something red-hot in no way diminished.
The only thing that prevented a father’s love from faltering was the fact that there was in his possession a photograph of himself at the same early age, in which he, too, looked like a homicidal fried egg. This proof that it was possible for a child, in spite of a rocky start, to turn eventually into a suave and polished boulevardier with finely chiseled features heartened him a good deal, causing him to hope for the best.
Meanwhile, however, there was no getting away from it that the little stranger was at the moment as pronounced a gargoyle as ever drained a bottle, and Bingo, finding that a horse of that name was running in the three o’clock at Plumpton, had no hesitation in putting ten pounds on it to cop. Always on the lookout for omens from on high, he thought that this must have been what the child had been sent for.
The failure of Gargoyle to finish in the first six left him in a position of considerable financial embarrassment. The tenner which he had placed on its nose was the last one he had and its loss meant that he would have to go a month without cigarettes, cocktails, and those other luxuries which to the man of refinement are so much more necessary than necessities.
For there was no glittering prospect open to him of being able to touch the head of the house for a trifle to be going on with. Mrs Bingo’s last words, before leaving for Worcestershire some two weeks previously to see her mother through a course of some treatment at the Droitwich brine baths, had contained a strong injunction to him not to bet in her absence; and any attempt on his part to palliate his action by showing that he had supposed himself to betting on a certainty would, he felt, be badly received.
No, the cash, if it was to be raised, must be raised from some other source, and in those circumstances his thoughts, as they had so often done before, turned to Oofy Prosser. That it was never a simple task to get into Oofy’s ribs, but one calculated to test the stoutest, he would have been the first to concede. But it so happened that in the last few days the club’s tame millionaire had shown himself to unexpectedly friendly. On one occasion, going into the writing room to dash off a letter to his tailor which he hoped would lead to an appeasement, Bingo had found him there, busy on what appeared to be a poem: and Oofy, after asking him if he knew any good rhymes to “eyes of blue”, had gone on to discuss the married state with him, giving it as his opinion that it was the only life. The conclusion Bingo drew was that love had at last found Oofy Prosser, and an Oofy in love, he reasoned, might—nay, must—be an Oofy in a melting mood which would lead him to scatter the stuff in heaping handfuls. It was with bright confidence, accordingly, that he made his way to the block of flats in Park Lane where the other has his lair, and it was with a feeling that his luck was in that, reaching the front door, he met Oofy coming out.
“Oh, hullo, Oofy,” he said. “Good morning, Oofy. I say, Oofy-“
I suppose years of being the official moneyed man of the Drones had given Oofy Prosser a sort of sixth sense. You might almost say that he is clairvoyant. Without waiting to hear more, he now made a quick sideways leap, like an antelope spotting a tiger, and was off in a cab, leaving Bingo standing there considering how to act for the best.
Taking a line through stoats and weasels, he decided that the only thing’ to do was to continue doggedly on the trail, so he toddled off to the Savoy Grill, whither he had heard the driver being told to drive, and arriving there some twenty minutes later found Oofy in the lobby with a girl. It was with considerable pleasure that he recognized in her an old pal, with whom in his bachelor days he had frequently trodden the measure, for this enabled him to well-well-well and horn in. And once Bingo has horned in, he is not easy to dislodge. A few minutes later, they were all seated round a table and he was telling the wine waiter to be sure to take the chill off the claret.
It didn’t occur to him at the time, but, looking back, Bingo had a feeling that Oofy would have been just as pleased if he hadn’t shown up. There was a sort of constraint at
the meal. Bingo was all right. He prattled freely. And the girl was all right. She prattled freely, too. It was just that Oofy seemed not quite to have got the party spirit. Silent. Distrait. Absent-minded. Inclined to fidget in his chair and drum on the tablecloth with his fingers.
After the coffee, the girl said, Well, she supposed she ought to be hareing to Charing Cross and catching her train—she, it appeared, being headed for a country house visit in Kent. Oofy, brightening a little, said he would come and see her off. And Bingo, faithful to his policy of not letting Oofy out of his sight, said he would come too. So they all tooled along, and after the train had pulled out Bingo, linking his arm in Oofy’s, said:
“I say, Oofy, I wonder if you would do me a trifling favour?”
Even as he spoke, he tells me he seemed to notice something odd in his companion’s manner. Oofy’s eyes had a sort of bleak glazed look in them.
“Oh?” he said distantly. “You do, do you? And what is it, my bright young limpet? What can I do for you, my adhesive old porous plaster?”
“Could you lend me a tenner, Oofy, old man?”
“No, I couldn’t.”
“It would save my life.”
“There,” said Oofy, “you have put your finger on the insuperable objection to the scheme. I see no percentage in your being alive. I wish you were a corpse, preferable a mangled one. I should like to dance on your remains.”
Bingo was surprised.
“Dance on my remains?”
“All over them.”
Bingo drew himself up. He had his pride.
Eggs, Beans and Crumpets Page 7