Blanding Castle Omnibus

by P. G. Wodehouse

  Flowers were always a magnet to Lord Emsworth, and for some happy minutes he pottered from vase to vase, sniffing.

  It was after he had sniffed for perhaps the twentieth time that the impression came to him that the room contained a curious echo. It was almost as though, each time he sniffed, some other person sniffed too. And yet the place was apparently empty. To submit the acoustics to a final test, his lordship sniffed once more. But this time the sound that followed was of a more sinister character. It sounded to Lord Emsworth exactly like a snarl.

  It was a snarl. Chancing to glance floorwards, he became immediately aware, in close juxtaposition to his ankles, of what appeared at first sight to be a lady's muff. But, this being one of his bright afternoons, he realized in the next instant that it was no muff, but a toy dog of the kind which women are only too prone to leave lying about their sitting-rooms.

  'God bless my soul!' exclaimed Lord Emsworth, piously commending his safety to Heaven, as so many of his rugged ancestors had done in rather similar circumstances on the battlefields of the Middle Ages.

  He backed uneasily. The dog followed him. It appeared to have no legs, but to move by faith alone.

  'Go away, sir!' said Lord Emsworth.

  He hated small dogs. They nipped you. Take your eye off them, and they had you by the ankle before you knew where you were. Discovering that his manoeuvres had brought him to a door, he decided to take cover. He opened the door and slipped through. Blood will tell. An Emsworth had taken cover at Agincourt.

  He was now in a bedroom, and, judging by the look of things, likely to remain there for some time. The woolly dog, foiled by superior intelligence, was now making no attempt to conceal its chagrin. It had cast off all pretence of armed neutrality and was yapping with a hideous intensity and shrillness. And ever and anon it scratched with baffled fury at the lower panels.

  'Go away, sir!' thundered his lordship.

  'Who's there?'

  Lord Emsworth leaped like a jumping bean. So convinced had he been of the emptiness of this suite of rooms that the voice, speaking where no voice should have been, crashed into his nerve centres like a shell.

  'Who is there?'

  The mystery, which had begun to assume an aspect of the supernatural, was solved. On the other side of the room was a door, and it was from behind this that the voice had spoken. It occurred to Lord Emsworth that it was merely part of the general malignity of Fate that he should have selected for a formal father-in-lawful call the moment when his daughter-in-law was taking a bath.

  He approached the door, and spoke soothingly.

  'Pray do not be alarmed, my dear.'

  'Who are you? What are you doing in my room?'

  'There is no cause for alarm—'

  He broke off abruptly, for his words had suddenly been proved fundamentally untrue. There was very vital cause for alarm. The door of the bedroom had opened, and the muff-like dog, shrilling hate, was scuttling in its peculiar legless manner straight for his ankles.

  Peril brings out unsuspected qualities in every man. Lord Emsworth was not a professional acrobat, but the leap he gave in this crisis would have justified his being mistaken for one. He floated through the air like a homing bird. From where he had been standing the bed was a considerable distance away but he reached it with inches to spare, and stood there, quivering. Below him, the woolly dog raged like the ocean at the base of a cliff.

  It was at this point that his lordship became aware of a young woman standing in the doorway through which he had just passed.

  About this young woman there were many points which would have found little favour in the eyes of a critic of feminine charm. She was too short, too square, and too solid. She had a much too determined chin. And her hair was of an unpleasing gingery hue. But the thing Lord Emsworth liked least about her was the pistol she was pointing at his head.

  A plaintive voice filtered through the bathroom door.

  'Who's there?'

  'It's a man,' said the girl behind the gun.

  'I know it's a man. He spoke to me. Who is he?'

  'I don't know. A nasty-looking fellow. I saw him hanging about the passage outside your door, and I got my gun and came along. Come on out.'

  'I can't. I'm all wet.'

  It is not easy for a man who is standing on a bed with his hands up to achieve dignity, but Lord Emsworth did the best he could.

  'My dear madam!'

  'What are you doing here?'

  'I found the door ajar—'

  'And walked in to see if there were any jewel-cases ajar, too. I think,' added the young woman, raising her voice so as to make herself audible to the unseen bather, 'it's Dopey Smith.'

  'Who?'

  'Dopey Smith. The fellow the cops said tried for your jewels in New York. He must have followed you over here.'

  'I am not Dopey Smith, madam,' cried his lordship. 'I am the Earl of Emsworth.'

  'You are?'

  'Yes, I am.'

  'Yes, you are!'

  'I came to see my daughter-in-law.'

  'Well, here she is.'

  The bathroom door opened, and there emerged a charming figure draped in a kimono. Even in that tense moment Lord Emsworth was conscious of a bewildered astonishment that such a girl could ever have stooped to mate with his son Frederick.

  'Who did you say he was?' she asked, recommending herself still more strongly to his lordship's esteem by scooping up the woolly dog and holding it securely in her arms.

  'He says he's the Earl of Emsworth.'

  'I am the Earl of Emsworth.'

  The girl in the kimono looked keenly at him as he descended from the bed.

  'You know, Jane,' she said, a note of uncertainty in her voice, 'it might be. He looks very like Freddie.'

  The appalling slur on his personal appearance held Lord Emsworth dumb. Like other men, he had had black moments when his looks had not altogether satisfied him, but he had never supposed that he had a face like Freddie's.

  The girl with the pistol uttered a stupefying whoop.

  'Jiminy Christmas!' she cried. 'Don't you see?'

  'See what?'

  'Why, it is Freddie. Disguised. Trying to get at you this way. It's just the sort of movie stunt he would think clever. Take them off, Ralph Vandeleur – I know you!'

  She reached out a clutching hand, seized his lordship's beard in a vice-like grip, and tugged with all the force of a modern girl, trained from infancy at hockey, tennis and Swedish exercises.

  It had not occurred to Lord Emsworth a moment before that anything could possibly tend to make his situation more uncomfortable than it already was. He saw now that he had been mistaken in this view. Agony beyond his liveliest dreams flamed through his shrinking frame.

  The girl regarded him with a somewhat baffled look.

  'H'm!' she said disappointedly. 'It seems to be real. Unless,' she continued, on a more optimistic note, 'he's fixed it on with specially strong fish-glue or something. I'd better try again.'

  'No, don't,' said his lordship's daughter-in-law. 'It isn't Freddie. I would have recognized him at once.'

  'Then he's a crook after all. Kindly step into that cupboard, George, while I phone for the constabulary.'

  Lord Emsworth danced a few steps.

  'I will not step into cupboards. I insist on being heard. I don't know who this woman is—'

  'My name's Jane Yorke, if you're curious.'

  'Ah! The woman who poisons my son's wife's mind against him! I know all about you.' He turned to the girl in the kimono. 'Yesterday my son Frederick implored me by telegram to come to London. I saw him at my club. Stop that dog barking!'

  'Why shouldn't he bark?' said Miss Yorke. 'He's in his own home.'

  'He told me,' proceeded Lord Emsworth, raising his voice, 'that there had been a little misunderstanding between you—'

  'Little misunderstanding is good,' said Miss Yorke.

  'He dined with that woman for a purpose.'

  'And directly
I saw them,' said Miss Yorke, 'I knew what the purpose was.'

  The Hon. Mrs Threepwood looked at her friend, wavering.

  'I believe it's true,' she said, 'and he really is Lord Emsworth. He seems to know all that happened. How could he know if Freddie hadn't told him?'

  'If this fellow is a crook from the other side, of course he would know. The thing was in Broadway Whispers and Town Gossip, wasn't it?'

  All the same—'

  The telephone bell rang sharply.

  'I assure you—' began Lord Emsworth.

  'Right!' said the unpleasant Miss Yorke, at the receiver. 'Send him right up.' She regarded his lordship with a brightly triumphant eye. 'You're out of luck, my friend,' she said. 'Lord Emsworth has just arrived, and he's on his way up now.'

  There are certain situations in which the human brain may be excused for reeling. Lord Emsworth's did not so much reel as perform a kind of dance, as if it were in danger of coming unstuck. Always a dreamy and absent-minded man, unequal to the rough hurly-burly of life, he had passed this afternoon through an ordeal which might well have unsettled the most practical. And this extraordinary announcement, coming on top of all he had been through, was too much for him. He tottered into the sitting-room and sank into a chair. It seemed to him that he was living in a nightmare.

  And certainly in the figure that entered a few moments later there was nothing whatever to correct this impression. It might have stepped straight into anybody's nightmare and felt perfectly at home right from the start.

  The figure was that of a tall, thin man with white hair and a long and flowing beard of the same venerable hue. Strange as it seemed that a person of such appearance should not have been shot on sight early in his career, he had obviously reached an extremely advanced age. He was either a man of about a hundred and fifty who was rather young for his years or a man of about a hundred and ten who had been aged by trouble.

  'My dear child!' piped the figure in a weak, quavering voice.

  'Freddie!' cried the girl in the kimono.

  'Oh, dash it!' said the figure.

  There was a pause, broken by a sort of gasping moan from Lord Emsworth. More and more every minute his lordship was feeling the strain.

  'Good God, guv'nor!' said the figure, sighting him.

  His wife pointed at Lord Emsworth.

  'Freddie, is that your father?'

  'Oh, yes. Rather. Of course. Absolutely. But he said he wasn't coming.'

  'I changed my mind,' said Lord Emsworth in a low, stricken voice.

  'I told you so, Jane,' said the girl. 'I thought he was Lord Emsworth all the time. Surely you can see the likeness now?'

  A kind of wail escaped his lordship.

  'Do I look like that?' he said brokenly. He gazed at his son once more and shut his eyes.

  'Well,' said Miss Yorke, in her detestable managing way, turning her forceful personality on the newcomer, 'now that you are here, Freddie Threepwood, looking like Father Christmas, what's the idea? Aggie told you never to come near her again.'

  A young man of his natural limpness of character might well have retired in disorder before this attack, but Love had apparently made Frederick Threepwood a man of steel. Removing his beard and eyebrows, he directed a withering glance at Miss Yorke.

  'I don't want to talk to you,' he said. 'You're a serpent in the bosom. I mean a snake in the grass.'

  'Oh, am I?'

  'Yes, you are. You poisoned Aggie's mind against me. If it hadn't been for you, I could have got her alone and told her my story as man to man.'

  'Well, let's hear it now. You've had plenty of time to rehearse it.'

  Freddie turned to his wife with a sweeping gesture.

  'I—' He paused. 'I say, Aggie, old thing, you look perfectly topping in that kimono.'

  'Stick to the point,' said Miss Yorke.

  'That is the point,' said Mrs. Freddie, not without a certain softness. 'But if you think I look perfectly topping, why do you go running around with movie-actresses with carroty hair?'

  'Red-gold,' suggested Freddie deferentially.

  'Carroty!'

  'Carroty it is. You're absolutely right. I never liked it all along.'

  'Then why were you dining with it?'

  'Yes, why?' inquired Miss Yorke.

  'I wish you wouldn't butt in,' said Freddie petulantly. 'I'm not talking to you.'

  'You might just as well, for all the good it's going to do you.'

  'Be quiet, Jane. Well, Freddie?'

  'Aggie,' said the Hon. Freddie, 'it was this way'

  'Never believe a man who starts a story like that,' said Miss Yorke.

  'Do please be quiet, Jane. Yes, Freddie?'

  'I was trying to sell that carroty female a scenario, and I was keeping it from you because I wanted it to be a surprise.'

  'Freddie darling! Was that really it?'

  'You don't mean to say—' began Miss Yorke incredulously.

  'Absolutely it. And, in order to keep in with the woman – whom, I may as well tell you, I disliked rather heartily from the start – I had to lush her up a trifle from time to time.'

  'Of course.'

  'You have to with these people.'

  'Naturally.'

  'Makes all the difference in the world if you push a bit of food into them preparatory to talking business.'

  All the difference in the world.'

  Miss Yorke, who seemed temporarily to have lost her breath, recovered it.

  'You don't mean to tell me,' she cried, turning in a kind of wild despair to the injured wife, 'that you really believe this apple sauce?'

  'Of course she does,' said Freddie. 'Don't you, precious?'

  'Of course I do, sweetie-pie.'

  'And, what's more,' said Freddie, pulling from his breast-pocket a buff-coloured slip of paper with the air of one who draws from his sleeve that extra ace which makes all the difference in a keenly-contested game, 'I can prove it. Here's a cable that came this morning from the Super-Ultra-Art Film Company, offering me a thousand solid dollars for the scenario. So another time, you, will you kindly refrain from judging your – er – fellows by the beastly light of your own – ah – foul imagination?'

  'Yes,' said his wife, 'I must say, Jane, that you have made as much mischief as anyone ever did. I wish in future you would stop interfering in other people's concerns.'

  'Spoken,' said Freddie, 'with vim and not a little terse good sense. And I may add—'

  'If you ask me,' said Miss Yorke, 'I think it's a fake.'

  'What's a fake?'

  'That cable.'

  'What do you mean, a fake?' cried Freddie indignantly. 'Read it for yourself.'

  'It's quite easy to get cables cabled you by cabling a friend in New York to cable them.'

  'I don't get that,' said Freddie, puzzled.

  'I do,' said his wife; and there shone in her eyes the light that shines only in the eyes of wives who, having swallowed their husband's story, resent destructive criticism from outsiders. And I never want to see you again, Jane Yorke.'

  'Same here,' agreed Freddie. 'In Turkey they'd shove a girl like that in a sack and drop her in the Bosphorus.'

  'I might as well go,' said Miss Yorke.

  'And don't come back,' said Freddie. 'The door is behind you.'

  The species of trance which had held Lord Emsworth in its grip during the preceding conversational exchanges was wearing off. And now, perceiving that Miss Yorke was apparently as unpopular with the rest of the company as with himself, he came gradually to life again. His recovery was hastened by the slamming of the door and the spectacle of his son Frederick clasping in his arms a wife who, his lordship had never forgotten, was the daughter of probably the only millionaire in existence who had that delightful willingness to take Freddie off his hands which was, in Lord Emsworth's eyes, the noblest quality a millionaire could possess.

  He sat up and blinked feebly. Though much better, he was still weak.

  'What was your scenario about
, sweetness?' asked Mrs Freddie.

  'I'll tell you, angel-face. Or should we stir up the guv'nor? He seems a bit under the weather.'

  'Better leave him to rest for awhile. That woman Jane Yorke upset him.'

  'She would upset anybody. If there's one person I bar, it's the blister who comes between man and wife. Not right, I mean, coming between man and wife. My scenario's about a man and wife. This fellow, you understand, is a poor cove – no money, if you see what I mean – and he has an accident, and the hospital blokes say they won't operate unless he can chip in with five hundred dollars down in advance. But where to get it? You see the situation?'

  'Oh, yes.'

  'Strong, what?'

  Awfully strong.'

  'Well, it's nothing to how strong it gets later on. The cove's wife gets hold of a millionaire bloke and vamps him and lures him to the flat and gets him to promise he'll cough up the cash. Meanwhile, cut-backs of the doctor at the hospital on the 'phone. And she laughing merrily so as not to let the millionaire bloke guess that her heart is aching. I forgot to tell you the cove had to be operated on immediately or he would hand in his dinner-pail. Dramatic, eh?'

  'Frightfully.'

  'Well, then the millionaire bloke demands his price. I thought of calling it "A Woman's Price."'

  'Splendid.'

  And now comes the blow-out. They go into the bedroom and— Oh, hullo, guv'nor! Feeling better?'

  Lord Emsworth had risen. He was tottering a little as he approached them, but his mind was at rest.

  'Much better, thank you.'

  'You know my wife, what?'

  'Oh, Lord Emsworth,' said Mrs. Freddie, 'I'm so dreadfully sorry. I wouldn't have had anything like this happen for the world. But—'

  Lord Emsworth patted her hand paternally. Once more he was overcome with astonishment that his son Frederick should have been able to win the heart of a girl so beautiful, so sympathetic, so extraordinarily rich.

  'The fault was entirely mine, my dear child. But—' He paused. Something was plainly troubling him. 'Tell me, when Frederick was wearing that beard – when Frederick was – was – when he was wearing that beard, did he really look like me?'