‘Bodkin.’
‘Bodkin!’
‘Your secretary, young Bodkin,’ said Pilbeam.
‘I knew it!’ Lord Emsworth shook a fist skywards, and his voice, as always in moments of emotion, became high and reedy. ‘I knew it! I suspected the fellow all along. I was convinced that he was an accomplice of Parsloe’s. I’ll dismiss him,’ cried Lord Emsworth, almost achieving an A in alt. ‘He shall go at the end of the month.’
‘It would be safer to get him off the place at once.’
‘Of course it would, my dear fellow. You are quite right. He shall be turned out immediately. Where is he? I must see him. I will go to him instantly.’
‘Better let me send him to you out here. More dignified. Don’t go to him. Let him come to you.’
‘I see what you mean.’
‘You wait here, and I’ll go and tell him you wish to see him.’
‘My dear fellow, I don’t want to put you to all that trouble.’
‘No trouble,’ Pilbeam assured him. ‘A pleasure.’
It is one of the distinguishing characteristics of your man of the world that he can keep his poise even under the most trying of conditions. Beyond a sort of whistling gasp and a sharp ‘God give me strength!’ the Hon. Galahad Threepwood displayed no emotion at Ronnie’s sensational announcement.
He did, however, gaze at his nephew as if the latter had been a defaulting bookmaker.
‘Are you crazy?’ he said.
It was a question which Ronnie found difficult to answer. Even to himself, as he now told it, the story of that great gesture of his sounded more than a little imbecile. The best, indeed, that you could really say of the great gesture, he could not help feeling, was that, like so many rash acts, it had seemed a good idea at the time. He was bright scarlet and had had occasion to straighten his tie not once but many times before he reached the end of the tale. And not even the fact that Sue, with womanly sympathy, put her arm through his and kissed him was able to bring real consolation. To his inflamed senses that kiss seemed so exactly the sort of kiss a mother might have given her idiot child.
‘You see what I mean, I mean to say,’ he concluded lamely. ‘I thought Sue had finished with me, so there didn’t seem any point in holding on to the thing any longer, and Monty said he wanted it, and so… well, there you are.’
‘You can’t blame the poor angel,’ said Sue.
‘I can,’ said the Hon. Galahad. He moved to the fire-place and pressed the bell. ‘It would surprise you how easily I could blame the poor angel. And if there was time I would. But we haven’t a moment to waste. We must get hold of young Monty without a second’s delay and choke the thing out of him. We’ll have no nonsense. I am an elderly man, past my prime, but I am willing and ready to sit on his head while you, Ronnie, kick him in the ribs. We’ll soon make him—Ah, Beach.’
The door had opened.
‘You rang, Mr Galahad?’
‘I want to see Mr Bodkin, Beach. At once.’
‘Mr Bodkin has left, sir.’
‘Left!’ cried the Hon. Galahad.
‘Left!’ shouted Ronnie.
‘Left!’ squeaked Sue.
‘It is possible that he may still be in his bedchamber, packing the last of his effects,’ said the butler, ‘but I was instructed some little while ago that he was leaving the Castle immediately. There has been trouble, sir, between Mr Bodkin and his lordship. I am unable to inform you as to what precisely eventuated, but…’
A cry like that of a tiger leaping on its prey interrupted him. Through the open door the Hon. Galahad had espied a lissom form crossing the hall. He was outside in a flash, confronting it.
‘You, there! You bloodstained Bodkin!’
‘Oh, hullo.’
The Hon. Galahad, as his opening words had perhaps sufficiently indicated, had not come for any mere exchange of courtesies.
‘Never mind the “Oh, hullo.” I want that manuscript of mine, young Bodkin, and I want it at once, so make it slippy, you sheep-faced young exile from Hell. If it’s on your person, disgorge it. If it’s in your suitcase, unpack it. And Ronnie here and I will be standing over you while you do it.’
There was an infinite sadness in Monty Bodkin’s gaze. He looked like a male Mona Lisa.
‘I haven’t got your bally manuscript.’
‘Don’t lie to me, young Bodkin.’
‘I’m not lying. Pilbeam’s got it.’
‘Pilbeam!’
Monty’s voice trembled with intense feeling.
‘I told the foul, double-crossing little blister where it was, like a silly chump, and he went off and squealed to Lord Emsworth about my letting old Tilbury out of the potting-shed, and Lord Emsworth sent for me and fired me, and while I was out of the way, being fired, he nipped up to my room and sneaked the thing.’
‘Where is he? Where is this Pilbeam?’
‘Ah,’ said Monty, ‘I’d like to know myself. Well, good-bye, all. I’m off to the Emsworth Arms.’
He strode sombrely out of the front door and down the steps. A cough sounded behind the Hon. Galahad.
‘Would there be anything further, sir?’
The Hon. Galahad drew a deep breath.
‘No thank you, Beach,’ he said. ‘I think that perhaps this will be enough to be getting on with.’
Chapter Twelve
At the moment when Monty Bodkin and the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, two minds with but a single thought, were wondering where he was and wishing they could have a word with him, Percy Pilbeam, the manuscript under his arm, had just emerged furtively from the back of the Castle. He did not wish to have anything to do with front doors. Directly he had crawled out from under Monty’s bed, dragging his treasure trove after him, he had dusted his fingers and made for the servants’ staircase. This had led him through twisting by-ways to a vast echoing stone passage, and from that to the back door was but a step. He had not encountered so much as a housemaid.
In his bearing, as he hurried along the path that skirted the kitchen garden—in the oily smirk beneath his repellent moustache, in the jaunty tilt of his snub nose, even in the terraced sweep of the brilliantine swamps of his corrugated hair—there was the look of a man who is congratulating himself on a neat bit of work. Brains, reflected Percy Pilbeam—that was what you needed in this life. Brains and the ability to seize your opportunity when it was offered to you.
He had a long walk before him. It was his intention, in order to avoid meeting any interested party, to make a wide circle round the outskirts of Lord Emsworth’s domain and strike the road to Market Blandings near Matchingham. There, no doubt, he would be able to get a lift to the Emsworth Arms. Then, having seen Lord Tilbury and arrived at some satisfactory financial arrangement with him, he proposed to take the next train to London. He had his whole plan of campaign neatly mapped out.
The one thing he had not allowed for was a sudden change in the weather. When he had left the Castle, the sun had been shining; but now it was blotted out by a dark rack of clouds. Apparently some minor storm, late for the big event, had come hurrying upand intended to hold a private demonstration of its own. There was a tentative rumble over the hills, and a raindrop splashed on his face. Before he had reached the end of the kitchen garden, quite a respectable deluge was falling.
Pilbeam, like the Hon. Galahad, hated getting wet. He looked about him for shelter, and perceived standing by itself in a small paddock not far away a squat building of red brick and timber. A man not used to country life, he had no idea what it was supposed to be, but it had a stout tiled roof beneath which he could keep dry, so he hastened thither, arriving just in time, for a moment later the world had become a shower-bath. He retreated farther into his nook and sat down on some straw.
In such a situation, the only method of passing the time is to think. Pilbeam thought. And as he did so he began to revise that scheme of his of taking the manuscript straight to Lord Tilbury.
It was a scheme which he had adopted as seem
ing to be the only one open to him. He would vastly have preferred his original idea of holding an auction sale, with Lord Tilbury and Lady Constance Keeble raising each other’s bids; but until now the fatal objection to that course had seemed to him to be that there was no safe place where he could store the goods till the auction sale was over.
A visitor at a country house with something to hide is a good deal restricted in his choice of caches. He is, indeed, more or less driven back to his bedroom. And a bedroom, as had been proved in the case of Monty Bodkin, is very far from being a safe-deposit. From the inception of their acquaintance, Pilbeam had been greatly impressed by Lady Constance’s strong personality. A woman of action, he considered, if ever there was one. If she knew that he had the manuscript and deduced that it was hidden in his bedroom, he could see her acting very swiftly. She would have the thing in her hands in half an hour.
But suppose he were to hide it in some such place as that in which he was now sitting. Things would be very different then.
He glanced round the dim interior, and felt that he was on the right track. This building was a deserted building. It did not appear to be used for anything. Presumably no one ever came here. And even if someone did happen to wander in, it would be a simple matter to hide the manuscript… under this straw, for instance.
He rose and thrust the papers under the straw. He eyed the straw appraisingly. It had as innocent look as any straw he had ever seen.
A shaft of sunlight played in the doorway. The brief storm was over. Well content, Percy Pilbeam came out and started to walk back to the Castle.
Beach met him in the hall.
‘Her ladyship is expressing a desire to see you, sir,’ said Beach, regarding him with restrained horror and loathing. The recent exchange of remarks between Monty Bodkin and the Hon. Galahad in his presence had confirmed the butler in his view that of all the human serpents that ever wriggled their way into a respectable castle this private investigator was the worst. Knowing what the manuscript of the Reminiscences meant to Mr Ronald and his betrothed, Beach, had he been younger and slimmer and in better condition and not a butler, could—for two pins—have taken Percy Pilbeam’s unpleasant neck in his hands and twisted it into a lover’s knot.
His physique and his circumstances being as they were, he merely delivered the message he had been instructed to deliver. As far as any hostile demonstration was concerned, he had to be content with letting his lip curl.
Percy Pilbeam, however, was feeling far too pleased with himself to be daunted by butlers’ curling lips. On the present occasion, moreover, he was not aware that the other’s lip was curling. He had noted the facial spasm, but attributed it to a tickling nose.
‘Lady Constance?’
‘Yes, sir. Her ladyship is in the drawing-room, awaiting you.’
What the proprietor of Rigg’s Golden Balm embrocation would have described as the delightful sensation of bien-etre began to leave Pilbeam. He stood there looking thoughtful. He twisted his moustache uneasily.
Now that the moment had actually arrived for confronting Lady Constance Keeble and informing her that he was proposing to double-cross her and hold her up and extract large sums of money from her, he felt unpleasantly weak about the knees.
‘H’m!’ said Percy Pilbeam.
And then suddenly he remembered that nature in her infinite wisdom has provided a sovereign specific against these Lady Constance Keebles.
‘Well, then, I’ll tell you what,’ he said, inspired. ‘Bring me a large bottle of champagne, and I’ll look into the matter.’
Beach withdrew to execute the commission. His demeanour, as he passed from the hall, was downcast. There in a nutshell, he was feeling, you had the tragedy of a butler’s life. His not to reason why; his not to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving; his but to go and bring bottles of champagne to mar-celled-haired snakes to whom he would greatly have preferred to supply straight cyanide.
The eternal conflict between duty and personal inclination, with duty, because one was a conscientious worker and took one’s profession reverently, winning hands down.
Her sister Julia’s report of her conversation with the Hon. Galahad, retailed to her immediately, upon the latter’s departure, had strengthened Lady Constance Keeble’s already firm view that something had got to be done without any more of what she forcefully described as dilly-dallying.
The fact that it was now three days since the task of securing the manuscript had been placed in Percy Pilbeam’s hands and that he had to all appearances accomplished absolutely nothing seemed to her to argue dilly-dallying of the worst kind, if not actual shilly-shallying. She could not understand why Sir Gregory Parsloe seemed to entertain so high an opinion of this young man’s abilities. So far as she had been able to ascertain, they were non-existent, and she said as much to Lady Julia, who agreed with her.
It was, therefore, to no warm-hearted assembly of personal admirers that Pilbeam some quarter of an hour later proceeded to betake himself. If his specific had acted a little less rapidly, he might have been frozen to the bone by the cold wave of aristocratic disapproval which poured over him as he entered the drawing-room. As it was, the sight of Lady Constance, staring haughtily from a high-backed chair like Cleopatra about to get down to brass tacks with an Ethiopian slave, merely entertained him. He thought she looked quaint. He was feeling just the slightest bit dizzy, but extraordinarily debonair. If Lady Constance at that moment had proposed a little part-singing, he would have fallen in with the suggestion eagerly.
‘You want to see me, Beach says,’ he observed, slurring the honoured name a little.
‘Sit down, Mr Pilbeam.’
The detective was glad to do so. Spiritually, he was at the peak of his form, but as regards his legs there appeared to be some slight engine trouble.
‘Now then, Mr Pilbeam, about that book.’
‘Quite,’ said Pilbeam, smiling benignly. This, he was feeling, was just the sort of thing he enjoyed—a cosy chat on current literature with cultured women. He was about to say so, when his eye, wandering to the wall, caught that of the fourth Countess—Emilia Jane, 1747-1815—and so humorous did her aspect seem to him that he lay back in his chair, laughing immoderately.
‘Mr Pilbeam!’
Before the detective had time to explain that his mirth had been caused by the fact that the fourth Countess looked exactly like Buster Keaton, Lady Constance had gone on speaking. She spoke well and vigorously.
‘I cannot understand, Mr Pilbeam, what you have been doing all this time. You know perfectly well the vital importance of getting my brother’s book into our hands. The whole thing has been clearly explained to you both by Sir Gregory Parsloe and myself. And yet you appear to have done nothing whatever about it. Sir Gregory told me you were enterprising. You seem to me to have about as much enterprise as a…’
She paused to search her mind for fauna of an admittedly unenterprising outlook on life, and Lady Julia, who had been listening with approval, supplied the word ‘slug’. The agitation which Lady Julia Fish had betrayed in the presence of her brother Galahad had passed. She had become her cool, sardonic self again. She was watching Pilbeam with a brightly interested eye, trying to diagnose the strangeness which she sensed in his manner.
‘Exactly,’ said Lady Constance, welcoming the suggestion. ‘As much enterprise as a slug.’
‘Less,’ said Lady Julia.
‘Yes, less,’ agreed Lady Constance.
‘Much less,’ said Lady Julia. ‘I’ve seen some quite nippy slugs.’
Pilbeam’s amiability waned a little. He frowned. His mind was not at its clearest, but it seemed to him that a derogatory remark had been passed.
The Pilbeams had always been a clan to stand up for themselves.
Treat them right and, if it suited their convenience, they would treat you right. But try to come it over them, and they could be very terrible. It was a Pilbeam—Ernest William of Mon Abri, Kitchener Road, Eas
t Dulwich—who sued his next-door neighbour, George Dobson, of The Elms, for throwing snails over the fence into his back garden. Another Pilbeam—Claude—once refused to give up his hat and umbrella at the Hornibrook Natural History Museum, Sydenham Hill. P. Frobisher was no unworthy kin of these sturdy fighters.
‘Did you call me a slug?’ he asked sternly.
‘In a purely Pickwickian sense,’ said Lady Julia.
‘All,’ said Pilbeam, his affability returning. ‘That’s different.’
Lady Constance resumed the speech for the prosecution.
‘You have had three whole days in which to do something, and you have not even found out where the manuscript is.’
Pilbeam smiled roguishly.
‘Oh, haven’t I?’
‘Well, have you?’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘Then why in the name of goodness, Mr Pilbeam,’ said Lady Constance, ‘did you not tell us? And why don’t you do something about it? Where is it. then? You said it was not in my brother’s desk. Did he give it to somebody else?’
‘He gave it to Beash.’
‘Beash?’ Lady Constance seemed at a loss. ‘Beash?’
‘Reading between the lines,’ said Lady Julia, ‘I think he means Beach.’
Lady Constance uttered an exclamation which was almost a battle cry. This was better than she had hoped. She felt a complete confidence in her ability to impose her will upon the domestic staff.
‘Beach?’ Her eyes lit up. ‘I will see Beach at once.’ Pilbeam chuckled heartily.
‘You may see him,’ he said, ‘but a fat lot of good that’s going to do you. A fat, fat, fat lot of good.’ Lady Julia had completed her diagnosis.
‘Forgive the personal question, Mr Pilbeam,’ she said, ‘but are you slightly intoxicated?’
‘Yes,’ said Pilbeam sunnily.
‘I thought so.’
Lady Constance was less intrigued by the detective’s physical condition than the mystical obscurity of his speech. ‘What do you mean?’
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