Blanding Castle Omnibus

by P. G. Wodehouse

  'Where have you been, Roberta?' asked Lady Wickham, as her daughter came within earshot of the normal tone of voice. 'I have been looking everywhere for you.'

  'Anything special, mother?'

  'Mr Gandle wants to go to Hertford. He has to get some books. I think you had better drive him in your car.'

  'Oh, mother!'

  Mr Potter, watching from his chair, observed a peculiar expression flit into Lady Wickham's face. Had he been her English publisher, instead of merely her prospective American publisher, he would have been familiar with that look. It meant that Lady Wickham was preparing to exercise her celebrated will-power.

  'Roberta,' she said, with dangerous quiet, 'I particularly wish you to drive Mr Gandle to Hertford.'

  'But I had promised to go over and play tennis at the Crufts'.'

  'Mr Gandle is a much better companion for you than a young waster like Algy Crufts. You must run over and tell him that you cannot play to-day.'

  A few minutes later a natty two-seater drew up at the front door of the Crufts' residence down the road; and Bobbie Wickham, seated at the wheel, gave tongue.

  'Algy!'

  The flannel-clad form of Mr Algernon Crufts appeared at a window.

  'Hullo! Down in a jiffy.'

  There was an interval. Then Mr Crufts joined her on the drive.

  'Hullo! I say, you haven't brought your racket, you poor chump,' he said.

  'Tennis is off,' announced Bobbie briefly. 'I've got to drive Clifford Gandle in to Hertford.' She paused. 'I say, Algy, shall I tell you something?'

  'What?'

  'Between ourselves.'

  Absolutely.'

  'Mother wants me to marry Clifford Gandle.'

  Algy Crufts uttered a strangled exclamation. Such was his emotion that he nearly swallowed the first eight inches of his cigarette-holder.

  'Marry Clifford Gandle!'

  'Yes. She's all for it. She says he would have a steadying influence on me.'

  'Ghastly! Take my advice and give the project the most absolute go-by. I was up at Oxford with the man. A blighter, if ever there was one. He was President of the Union and all sorts of frightful things.'

  'It's all very awkward. I don't know what to do.'

  'Kick him in the eye and tell him to go to blazes. That's the procedure.'

  'But it's so hard not to do anything mother wants you to do. You know mother.'

  'I do,' said Mr Crufts, who did.

  'Oh, well,' said Bobbie, 'you never know. There's always the chance that she may take a sudden dislike to him for some reason or other. She does take sudden dislikes to people.'

  'She does,' said Mr Crufts. Lady Wickham had disliked him at first sight.

  'Well, let's hope she will suddenly dislike Clifford Gandle. But I don't mind telling you, Algy, that at the moment things are looking pretty black.'

  'Keep smiling,' urged Mr Crufts.

  'What's the good of smiling, you fathead?' said Bobbie morosely.

  Night had fallen on Skeldings Hall. Lady Wickham was in her study, thinking those great thoughts which would subsequently be copyrighted in all languages, including the Scandinavian. Bobbie was strolling somewhere in the grounds, having eluded Mr Gandle after dinner. And Mr Gandle, baffled but not defeated, had donned a light overcoat and gone out to try to find Bobbie.

  As for Mr Potter, he was luxuriating in restful solitude in a punt under a willow by the bank of the moat.

  From the first moment he had set eyes on it, Hamilton Potter had loved the moat at Skeldings Hall. Here, by the willow, it broadened out almost into the dimensions of a lake; and there was in the glitter of stars on its surface and the sleepy rustling of birds in the trees along its bank something infinitely soothing. The healing darkness wrapped the publisher about like a blanket; the cool night-wind fanned caressingly a forehead a little heated by Lady Wickham's fine old port; and gradually, lulled by the beauty of the scene, Mr Potter allowed himself to float into one of those reveries which come to publishers at moments such as this.

  He mused on jackets and remainders and modes of distribution; on royalties and advertisements and spring lists and booksellers' discounts. And his random thoughts, like fleeting thistledown, had just drifted to the question of the growing price of pulp-paper, when from somewhere near by there came the sound of a voice, jerking him back to the world again.

  'Oh, let the solid ground not fail beneath my feet before that I have found what some have found so sweet,' said the voice.

  A moderate request, one would have supposed; and yet it irritated Mr Potter like the bite of a mosquito. For the voice was the voice of Clifford Gandle.

  'Robertah,' proceeded the voice, and Mr Potter breathed again. He had taken it for granted that the man had perceived and was addressing himself. He gathered now that his presence had not been discovered.

  'Robertah,' said Mr Gandle, 'surely you cannot have been blind to the na-chah of my feelings? Surely you must have guessed that it was love that—'

  Hamilton Potter congealed into a solid mass of frozen horror. He was listening-in on a proposal of marriage.

  The emotions of any delicate-minded man who finds himself in such a position cannot fail to be uncomfortable; and the greater his delicacy of mind the more acute must the discomfort be. Mr Potter, being, as are all publishers, more like a shrinking violet than anything else in the world, nearly swooned. His scalp tingled; his jaw fell; and his toes began to open and shut like poppet-valves.

  'Heart of my heart—' said Mr Gandle.

  Mr Potter gave a convulsive shudder. And the punt-pole, which had been resting on the edge of the boat, clattered down with a noise like a machine-gun.

  There was a throbbing silence. Then Mr Gandle spoke sharply.

  'Is anybody they-ah?'

  There are situations in which a publisher can do only one thing. Raising himself noiselessly, Mr Potter wriggled to the side of the punt and lowered himself into the water.

  'Who is they-ah?'

  Mr Potter with a strong effort shut his mouth, which was trying to emit a howl of anguish. He had never supposed that water could be so cold. Silently he waded out towards the opposite bank. The only thing that offered any balm in this black moment was the recollection that his hostess had informed him that the moat was not more than four feet deep.

  But what Lady Wickham had omitted to inform him was that in one or two places there were ten-foot holes. It came, therefore, as a surprise to Mr Potter, when, after he had travelled some six yards, there happened to him that precise disaster which Mr Gandle, in his recent remarks, had expressed himself as so desirous of avoiding. As the publisher took his next step forward, the solid ground failed beneath his feet.

  'Oosh!' ejaculated Mr Potter.

  Clifford Gandle was a man of swift intuition. Hearing the cry and becoming aware at the same time of loud splashing noises, he guessed in one masterly flash of inductive reasoning that someone had fallen in. He charged down the bank and perceived the punt. He got into the punt. Bobbie Wickham got into the punt. Mr Gandle seized the pole and propelled the punt out into the waste of waters.

  'Are you they-ah?' inquired Mr Gandle.

  'Glub!' exclaimed Mr Potter.

  'I see him,' said Bobbie. 'More to the left.'

  Clifford Gandle drove the rescuing craft more to the left, and was just digging the pole into the water when Mr Potter, coming up for the third time, found it within his reach. The partiality of drowning men for straws is proverbial; but, as a class, they are broad-minded and will clutch at punt-poles with equal readiness. Mr Potter seized the pole and pulled strongly; and Clifford Gandle, who happened to be leaning his whole weight on it at the moment, was not proof against what practically amounted to a formal invitation. A moment later he had joined Mr Potter in the depths.

  Bobbie Wickham rescued the punt-pole, which was floating away on the tide, and peered down through the darkness. Stirring things were happening below. Clifford Gandle had grasped Mr Potter. Mr Pott
er had grasped Clifford Gandle. And Bobbie, watching from above, was irresistibly reminded of a picture she had seen in her childhood of alligators fighting in the River Hooghly. She raised the pole, and, with the best intentions, prodded at the tangled mass.

  The treatment proved effective. The pole, taking Clifford Gandle shrewdly in the stomach, caused him to release his grip on Mr Potter; and Mr Potter, suddenly discovering that he was in shallow water again, did not hesitate. By the time Clifford Gandle had scrambled into the punt he was on dry land, squelching rapidly towards the house.

  A silence followed his departure. Then Mr Gandle, expelling the last pint of water from his mouth, gave judgment.

  'The man must be mad!'

  He found some more water which he had overlooked, and replaced it.

  'Stark, staring mad!' he repeated. 'He must have deliberately flung himself in.'

  Bobbie Wickham was gazing out into the night; and, had the visibility been better, her companion might have observed in her expression the raptness of inspiration.

  'There is no other explanation. The punt was they-ah, by the bank, and he was hee-yah, right out in the middle of the moat. I've suspected for days that he was unbalanced. Once I found him hiding in a cupboard. Crouching there with a wild gleam in his eyes. And that brooding look of his. That strange brooding look. I've noticed it every time I've been talking to him.'

  Bobbie broke the silence, speaking in a low, grave voice.

  'Didn't you know about poor Mr Potter?'

  'Eh?'

  'That he has suicidal mania?'

  Clifford Gandle drew in his breath sharply.

  'You can't blame him,' said Bobbie. 'How would you feel if you came home one day and found your wife and your two brothers and a cousin sitting round the dinner-table stone dead?'

  'What!'

  'Poisoned. Something in the curry.' She shivered. 'This morning I found him in the garden gloating over a book called "Ethics of Suicide."'

  Clifford Gandle ran his fingers through his dripping hair.

  'Something ought to be done!'

  'What can you do? The thing isn't supposed to be known. If you mention it to him, he will simply go away; and then mother will be furious, because she wants him to publish her books in America.'

  'I shall keep the closest watch on the man.'

  'Yes, that's the thing to do,' agreed Bobbie.

  She pushed the punt to the shore. Mr Gandle, who had begun to feel chilly, leaped out and sped to the house to change his clothes. Bobbie, following at a more leisurely pace, found her mother standing in the passage outside her study. Lady Wickham's manner was perturbed.

  'Roberta!'

  'Yes, mother?'

  'What in the world has been happening? A few moments ago Mr Potter ran past my door, dripping wet. And now Clifford Gandle has just gone by, also soaked to the skin. What have they been doing?

  'Fighting in the moat, mother.'

  'Fighting in the moat? What do you mean?'

  'Mr Potter jumped in to try and get away from Mr Gandle, and then Mr Gandle went in after him and seized him round the neck, and they grappled together for quite a long time, struggling furiously. I think they must have had a quarrel.'

  'What on earth would they quarrel about?'

  'Well, you know what a violent man Clifford Gandle is.'

  This was an aspect of Mr Gandle's character which Lady Wickham had not perceived. She opened her penetrating eyes.

  'Clifford Gandle violent?'

  'I think he's the sort of man who takes sudden dislikes to people.'

  'Nonsense!'

  'Well, it all seems very queer to me,' said Bobbie.

  She passed on her way upstairs; and, reaching the first landing, turned down the corridor till she came to the principal guest-room. She knocked delicately. There were movements inside, and presently the door opened, revealing Hamilton Potter in a flowered dressing-gown.

  'Thank Heaven you're safe!' said Bobbie.

  The fervour of her tone touched Mr Potter. His heart warmed to the child.

  'If I hadn't been there when Mr Gandle was trying to drown you—'

  Mr Potter started violently.

  'Trying to drown me?' he gasped.

  Bobbie's eyebrows rose.

  'Hasn't anybody told you about Mr Gandle – warned you? Didn't you know he was one of the mad Gandles?'

  'The – the—'

  'Mad Gandles. You know what some of these very old English families are like. All the Gandles have been mad for generations back.'

  'You don't mean – you can't mean—' Mr Potter gulped. 'You can't mean that Mr Gandle is homicidal?'

  'Not normally. But he takes sudden dislikes to people.'

  'I think he likes me,' said Mr Potter, with a certain nervous satisfaction. 'He has made a point of seeking me out and giving me his views on – er – various matters.'

  'Did you ever yawn while he was doing it?'

  Mr Potter blenched.

  'Would – would he mind that very much?'

  'Mind it! You lock your door at night, don't you, Mr Potter?'

  'But this is terrible.'

  'He sleeps in this corridor.'

  'But why is the man at large?'

  'He hasn't done anything yet. You can't shut a man up till he has done something.'

  'Does Lady Wickham know of this?'

  'For goodness' sake don't say a word to mother. It would only make her nervous. Everything will be quite all right, if you're only careful. You had better try not to let him get you alone.'

  'Yes,' said Mr Potter.

  The last of the mad Gandles, meanwhile, having peeled off the dress-clothes moistened during the recent water-carnival, had draped his bony form in a suit of orange-coloured pyjamas, and was now devoting the full force of a legislator's mind to the situation which had arisen.

  He was a long, thin young man with a curved nose which even in his lighter moments gave him the appearance of disapproving things in general; and there had been nothing in the events of the last hour to cause any diminution of this look of disapproval. For we cannot in fairness but admit that, if ever a mad Gandle had good reason to be mad, Clifford Gandle had at this juncture. He had been interrupted at the crucial point of proposal of marriage. He had been plunged into water and prodded with a punt-pole. He had sown the seeds of a cold in the head. And he rather fancied that he had swallowed a newt. These things do not conduce to sunniness in a man.

  Nor did an inspection of the future do anything to remove his gloom. He had come to Skeldings for rest and recuperation after the labours of an exhausting Session, and now it seemed that, instead of passing his time pleasantly in the society of Roberta Wickham, he would be compelled to devote himself to acting as a guardian to a misguided publisher.

  It was not as if he liked publishers, either. His relations with Prodder and Wiggs, who had sold forty-three copies of his book of political essays – 'Watchman, What of the Night?' – had not been agreeable.

  Nevertheless, this last of the Gandles was a conscientious man. He had no intention of shirking the call of duty. The question of whether it was worth while preventing a publisher committing suicide did not present itself to him.

  That was why Bobbie's note, when he read it, produced such immediate results.

  Exactly when the missive had been delivered, Clifford Gandle could not say. Much thought had rendered him distrait, and the rustle of the paper as it was thrust under his door did not reach his consciousness. It was only when, after a considerable time, he rose with the intention of going to bed that he perceived lying on the floor an envelope.

  He stooped and picked it up. He examined it with a thoughtful stare. He opened it.

  The letter was brief. It ran as follows: –

  'What about his razors?'

  A thrill of dismay shot through him.

  Razors!

  He had forgotten them.

  Clifford Gandle did not delay. Already it might be that he was too late. He hu
rried down the passage and tapped at Mr Potter's door.

  'Who's there?'

  Clifford Gandle was relieved. He was in time.

  'Can I come in?'

  'Who is that?'

  'Gandle.'

  'What do you want?'

  'Can you – er – lend me a razah?'

  'A what?'

  A razah.'

  There followed a complete silence from within. Mr Gandle tapped again.

  Are you they-ah?'

  The silence was broken by an odd rumbling sound. Something heavy knocked against the woodwork. But that the explanation seemed so improbable, Mr Gandle would have said that this peculiar publisher had pushed a chest of drawers against the door.

  'Mr Pottah!'

  More silence.

  Are you they-ah, Mr Pottah?'

  Additional stillness. Mr Gandle, wearying of a profitless vigil, gave the thing up and returned to his room.

  The task that lay before him, he now realized, was to wait awhile and then make his way along the balcony which joined the windows of the two rooms; enter while the other slept, and abstract his weapon or weapons.

  He looked at his watch. The hour was close on midnight. He decided to give Mr Potter till two o'clock.

  Clifford Gandle sat down to wait.

  Mr Potter's first action, after the retreating foot-steps had told him that his visitor had gone, was to extract a couple of nerve pills from the box by his bed and swallow them. This was a rite which, by the orders of his medical adviser, he had performed thrice a day since leaving America – once half an hour before breakfast, once an hour before luncheon, and again on retiring to rest.

  In spite of the fact that he now consumed these pills, it seemed to Mr Potter that he could scarcely be described as retiring to rest. After the recent ghastly proof of Clifford Gandle's insane malevolence, he could not bring himself to hope that even the most fitful slumber would come to him this night. The horror of the thought of that awful man padding softly to his door and asking for razors chilled Hamilton Potter to the bone.

  Nevertheless, he did his best. He switched off the light and, closing his eyes, began to repeat in a soft undertone a formula which he had often found efficacious.