Blanding Castle Omnibus

by P. G. Wodehouse

  The good turn Monty wanted Ronnie to do for him now was to go to Beach and use his influence with that obdurate butler to persuade him to cough up that manuscript.

  It was not that Monty had lost faith in Pilbeam. No doubt, if given time, Pilbeam, exercising his subtle craft, would be able to secure the thing all right. But why go to all that trouble when you could take a short cut and work the wheeze quite simply without any fuss? Besides, there was the fellow’s fee to be considered. These sleuths probably came pretty high, and a penny saved is a penny earned.

  A room-to-room search brought him to where the Last of the Fishes was once more practising cannons. He approached him with all the happy confidence of a child entering the presence of a rich and indulgent uncle.

  For Monty Bodkin was no mind-reader. He had detected no change in his friend’s manner at the end of their recent interview. It had been awkward for a moment, no doubt, that business of the tattoo-mark, but he felt that his quick thinking had passed off a tricky situation pretty neatly, satisfactorily lulling all possible suspicions.

  ‘I say, Ronnie, old lad,’ he said,’ I wonder if you could spare me a moment of your valuable time?’

  Ronnie laid the cue down carefully. For all that he had now resigned himself to the fact that Sue preferred this man to him, he was conscious of a well-defined desire to bat him over the head with the butt end. White-hot knives were gashing Ronnie Fish’s soul, and he could not but feel a very vivid distaste for the man responsible for his raw misery.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  It seemed to Monty that his friend was a bit on the chilly side, not quite the effervescing chum of the dear old embrocation days, but he carried on with only a momentary twinge of concern.

  ‘Tell me, old man, how do you stand with Beach?’

  ‘With Beach? How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, does he feel pretty feudal where you’re concerned? Would he, in fine, be inclined to stretch a point to oblige the young master?’

  Ronnie stared bleakly. He had been prepared to be civil to this man who had wrecked his life, but he was dashed if he was going to spend the evening listening to him talking drip.

  ‘What is all this bilge?’ he demanded sourly. ‘Come to the point.’

  ‘Oh, I’m coming to the point.’

  ‘Well, be quick.’

  ‘I will, I will. Here, then, is the gist or nub. Beach has got something I badly want, and he refuses to disgorge. And I thought that perhaps if you went to him and did the Young Squire a bit—exerting your influence, I mean to say, and rather throwing your weight about generally—he might prove more … what’s the word … begins with an A… amenable.’

  Ronnie glowered wearily.

  ‘I can’t understand a damn thing you’re talking about.’

  ‘Well, in a nutshell, Beach has got that book of old Gally’s and I can’t get him to let me have it.’

  ‘Why do you want it?’

  Monty decided, as he had done when talking with Lord Tilbury by the potting-shed, that manly frankness was the only policy.

  ‘You know all about that book?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That Gally won’t let it be published, I mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that he had signed a contract for it with the Mammoth Publishing Company?’

  ‘No. I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Well, he did. And his backing out has rendered poor old Pop Tilbury, the boss of same, as sick as mud. Well, naturally, I mean to say, Old Tilbury had got serial rights and book rights and American rights and every other kind of rights including the Scandinavian, and you know what a packet there is in any literary effort, that really dishes the dirt about the blue-gored. I should say, taking it one way and another, he stands to lose in the neighbourhood of twenty thousand quid if Gally sticks to his resolve not to publish. And so, to cut a long story s., old man, this Tilbury is so anxious to get hold of the manuscript that he states specifically that if I can snitch it from him he will take me back into his employment—from which, as I dare say you know, I was recently booted out.’

  ‘I thought you resigned.’

  Monty smiled sadly.

  ‘That may be the story going the round of the clubs,’ he said,’ but as a matter of actual fact I was booted out. There was a spot of technical trouble which wouldn’t interest you and into which I will not go. Suffice it to say that we did not see eye to eye as regarded the conduct of the Uncle Woggly to his Chicks department, and my services were dispensed with. So now you get the run of the scenario. The thing is a straight issue. Let me grab this MS. and turn it in to the Big Chief, and I start working again at Tilbury House.’

  ‘What do you want to do that for?’

  ‘It’s imperative. I must have a job.’

  ‘I should have thought that you would have been happy enough here.’

  ‘Ah, but I’m liable to get the sack here at any moment.’

  ‘Too bad.’

  ‘Quite bad enough,’ agreed Monty. ‘But it’ll be all right if you can induce Beach to give up that manuscript, I shall then secure a long-term contract with old Tilbury and be in a posish to marry the girl I love.’

  A strong convulsion shook Ronnie Fish. This, he considered, was pretty raw. A nice thing, taking a fellow’s girl away from him and then coming to him to ask him to help him marry her. He had credited the other with more delicacy.

  ‘You will, eh?’ he said, after a pause to master his emotion.

  ‘Positively. It’s all fixed up.’

  ‘Who is she?’ asked Ronnie sardonically. ‘Sarah Ursula Ebbsmith?’

  ‘Eh? Oh, ah,’ said Monty hastily. He had forgotten for the moment. ‘No, not poor dear Sarah. Oh, no, no, no. She’s dead. Tuberculosis. Very sad.’

  ‘You told me it was pneumonia.’

  ‘No, tuberculosis.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘This is a new one. Girl named Gertrude Butterwick.’

  Misunderstandings being always unfortunate, it was a pity, firstly, that Monty should have paused for a reverent second before uttering that sacred name and, secondly, that the girl of his dreams should have possessed a name which, one has to admit, sounded a little thin. In certain moods, a man whose mind is biased simply does not believe that there is such a name as Gertrude Butterwick. To Ronnie, noting that second’s hesitation, it was just one this man had made up on the spur of the moment, even he not having the face to tell Sue’s fiance, as he supposed him still to be, that he wanted his assistance in taking Sue from him.

  ‘Gertrude Butterwick, eh?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Fond of her?’

  ‘My dear chap!’

  ‘And I suppose she’s crazy about you?’

  ‘Oh, deeply enamoured.‘Ronnie felt suddenly listless. What, he asked himself, did it matter, anyway? What did anything matter now?

  Every man is tempted at times by the great gesture. This temptation had just come overwhelmingly upon Ronnie Fish. From the other’s words he had become confirmed in- his suspicion that somehow or other Monty since their last meeting must have lost all his money. Otherwise, why should jobs at Tilbury House be of such importance to him?

  Unless he got that job at Tilbury House, he would not be able to marry Sue. And unless he, Ronnie Fish, helped him, he would not get it.

  The Sidney Carton spirit descended upon Ronnie—with this difference, that where Sidney, if one remembers correctly, was rather pleased about the whole thing he himself felt bitter and defiant.

  Monty had taken Sue from him. Sue had gone to Monty without a pang. All right, then. All jolly right. He would show them he didn’t care. He would let them see the stuff Fishes were made of.

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘There’s no need to worry about Beach. He hasn’t got that manuscript.’

  ‘Oh, yes, he has. I saw him reading…’

  ‘He gave it to mc,’ said Ronnie. He picked up his cue and shaped at the spot ball. ‘You’ll find it in t
he chest of drawers in my room. Take the damned thing if you want it.’

  Monty gasped. No Israelite caught in a sudden manna-shower in mid-desert could have felt a greater mixture of surprise and gratification.

  ‘My dear old man!’ he began effusively.

  Ronnie did not speak. He was practising cannons.

  Chapter Ten

  The passing of the storm had left the Hon. Galahad Threepwood at rather a loose end. He was not quite sure where he wanted to go or what he wanted to do. His favourite lawn, he knew, would be too wet to walk on, his favourite deck-chair too wet to sit in. The whole world out of doors, in fact, for all that the sun was shining so brightly, was much too moist and dripping to attract a man with his feline dislike of dampness.

  After Beach had left him, he had remained for a while in the small library. Then, tiring of that, he had wandered aimlessly about the house, winding as many clocks as he could find. He was, and always had been, a great clock-winder. Eventually, he had drifted to the hall, and was now lounging on a settee there in the hope that, if he lounged long enough, somebody would come along with whom he might chat till it was time to dress for dinner. He always found this part of the evening a little depressing.

  Up to the present, he had had no luck. Monty Bodkin had come downstairs, but after Beach’s revelations he had no wish to do anything but glower sternly at Monty. Without attempting to drawn him into conversation, though he had just remembered a thirty-year-old Limerick which he would have liked to recite to someone, he watched him go into the billiard-room, where the opening door showed a glimpse of Ronnie practising cannons. Presently, he had come out again and gone upstairs, followed as before by that stern eye.

  ‘Young toad!’ muttered the Hon. Galahad severely. He was shocked at Monty, and disappointed in him. He wished he had never given him that tip on the Cesarewitch.

  Soon after this, Pilbeam had appeared, smiled weakly, and gone into the smoking-room. Here, again, there was nothing for the Hon. Galahad to work on. He had no desire to tell Limericks to Pilbeam. Apart from the fact that the fellow was conspiring with his sister Constance to steal his manuscript, he did not like the detective. Brought up in a sterner school of hairdressing, he disapproved of these modern young men who went about with their fungoid growth in sticky ridges.

  It began to look to him as if in the matter of society he had but two choices open. Clarence, who would have appreciated that Limerick once he could have been induced to bring his mind to bear upon it, was presumably down at the sty making eyes at that pig of his; and Sue, the person he really wanted to talk to, seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth. As far as he could see, he was reduced to the alternatives of going into the billiard-room and joining Ronnie, and of stepping up to the drawing-room and having a word with his sister Constance, who at this hour would no doubt be taking tea there. He was just about to adopt this second course, for he rather wanted a straight talk with Constance about that Pilbeam matter, when Sue came in from the garden.

  Immediately, the idea of tackling Connie left him. He could do that at his leisure, and he was in the mood now for something pleasanter than a brother-and-sister dog-fight. Sue’s bright personality was just the tonic he needed at this lowering point in the day’s progress. He would be unable to tell her the Limerick, it not being that sort of Limerick, but at any rate they could talk of this and that.

  He called to her, and she came over to where he sat. It was dim in the hall, but it struck him that she was not looking quite herself. The elasticity seemed to have gone out of her walk, that jaunty suppleness which he had always admired so in Dolly. But possibly this was merely his imagination. He was always inclined to read a fictitious sombreness into things when the shadows began to creep over the world and it was still too early for a cocktail.

  ‘Well, young woman.’

  ‘Hullo, Gally.’

  ‘What have you been doing with yourself?’

  ‘I was walking on the terrace.’

  ‘Get your feet wet?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Perhaps I had better go up and change my shoes, though.’

  The Hon. Galahad would have none of this. He pulled her down on to the settee beside him.

  ‘Amuse me,’ he said. ‘I’m bored.’

  ‘Poor Gally. I’m sorry.’

  ‘This,’ said the Hon. Galahad, ‘is the hour of the day that searches a man out. It makes him examine his soul. And I don’t want to examine my soul. I expect the thing looks like an old boot. So, as I say, amuse me, child. Sing to me. Dance before me. Ask me riddles.’

  ‘I’m afraid …’

  The Hon. Galahad gave her a sharp glance through his monocle. It was as he had suspected. This girl was not festive. ‘Anything the matter?’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Cigarette?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Shall I turn on the radio? There may be a lecture on Newts.’

  ‘No, don’t.’

  ‘There is something the matter?’

  ‘There isn’t, really.’

  The Hon. Galahad frowned. Then a possible solution occurred to him.

  ‘I suppose it’s the heat.’

  ‘It was hot, wasn’t it. It’s better now.’

  ‘You’re under the weather.’

  ‘I am a little.’

  ‘Thunderstorms often upset people. Are you afraid of thunder?’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘Lots of girls are. I knew one once who, whenever there was a thunderstorm, used to fling her arms round the neck of the nearest man, hugging and kissing him till it was all over. Purely nervous reaction, of course, but you should have seen the young fellows flocking round as soon as the sky began to get a little overcast. Gladys, her name was. Gladys Twistleton. Beautiful girl with large, melting eyes. Married a fellow in the Blues called Harringay. I’m told that the way he used to clear the drawing-room during the early years of their married life at the first suspicion of a rumble was a sight to be seen and remembered.’

  The Hon. Galahad had brightened. Like all confirmed raconteurs, he took on new life when the anecdotes started to come

  The Hon. Galahad swelled like a little turkey-cock. His monocle was now a perfect searchlight.

  ‘Just off be damned!” he snorted. ‘You sit down and listen to me. Just off, indeed! You can go off when I’ve finished talking to you, and not before.’

  Ronnie abandoned the snooker theory. Plainly it did not cover the facts. His moroseness had become tinged with bewilderment. It was many years since he had beheld his good-natured relative in a mood like this. It seemed to bring back the tang of the brave old days of chimney-stacks and whangees. He could think of nothing in his recent conduct that could have caused so impressive an upheaval.

  ‘Now, then,’ said the Hon. Galahad, ‘what’s all this?’

  ‘That’s just what I was going to ask,’ said Ronnie. ‘What is all this?’

  ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know.’

  ‘But I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s no good taking that attitude.’ The Hon. Galahad jerked his thumb at the door. ‘I’ve just been talking to young Sue out there.’

  A thin coating of ice seemed to creep over Ronald Fish. ‘Oh, yes?’ he said politely.

  ‘She’s crying.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ said Ronnie, still politely, but with those white-hot knives at work on his soul again. His mind was divided against itself. Part of it was pointing out passionately that it was ghastly to think of Sue in tears. The other part was raising its eyebrows and shooting its cuffs and observing with a sneer that it was blowed if it could sec what she had to cry about.

  ‘Crying, I tell you! Crying her dashed eyes out!’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  The Hon. Galahad Threepwood was himself an Old Etonian, and in his time had frequently had occasion to employ the Eton manner to the undoing of his fellow-men. There were grey-haired bookies and elderly
card-sharps going about London to this day, who still felt an occasional twinge, as of an old wound, when they recalled the agony of seeing him stare at them as Ronnie was staring and of hearing him say ‘Oh, yes?’ as Ronnie was saying it now. But this did not make his nephew’s attitude any the easier for him to endure. The whole point of the Eton manner, as of a shotgun, is that you have to be at the right end of it.

  He brought his fist down on the billiard-table with a thump.

  ‘So you’re not interested, eh? You don’t care? Well, let me tell you,’ said the Hon. Galahad, once more maltreating the billiard-table, ‘that I do care. That girl’s mother was the only woman I ever loved, and I don’t propose to have her daughter’s happiness ruined by any sawn-off young half-portion with a face like a strawberry ice who takes the notion into his beastly turnip of a head to play fast and loose with her. Understand that!’

  There were so many ramifications to this insult that Ronnie was compelled to take them in rotation.

  ‘I can’t help it if my face is like a strawberry ice,’ he said, electing to begin with that one.

  ‘It ought to be much more like a strawberry ice. You ought to be blushing yourself sick.’

  ‘And when,’ said Ronnie, feeling on safe ground here, ‘you talk about sawn-off half-portions, may I point out that I’m about an inch taller than you are?’

  ‘Rot!’ said the Hon. Galahad, stung.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You’re certainly not.’

  ‘Measure you against the wall,’ insisted Ronnie.

  ‘I’ll do nothing of the sort. And what the devil,’ demanded the Hon. Galahad, suddenly aware that the main issue of debate was becoming shelved, ‘has that got to do with it? You may be a giraffe, for all I care. The point I am endeavouring to make is that you are breaking this girl’s heart, and I’m not going to have it. She tells me your engagement is off.’