‘I never heard such nonsense in my life. How the devil can you afford to get married? You’ve got about twopence a year which your mother left you, and I don’t suppose you make enough out of those sonnets of yours to keep you in cigarettes.’
‘That’s why I want to buy this onion soup bar.’
‘And a nice fool you would look, selling onion soup.’
With a strong effort, Ricky succeeded in making no comment on this. It seemed to him that silence was best. Galling though it was to allow his companion to score debating points, it was better than to close all avenues leading to an appeasement with a blistering repartee. At the moment, moreover, he could not think of a blistering repartee.
The Duke’s moustache was rising and falling like seaweed on an ebb tide.
‘And a nice fool I’d look, going about trying to explain away a nephew who dished soup out of a tureen. It’s been bad enough having to tell my friends you write poetry. “What’s that nephew of yours doing these days?”‘ the Duke proceeded, giving an imitation of an enquiring friend with — for some reason — a falsetto voice. ‘“The Guards? Diplomatic Service? Reading for the Bar?” “No,” I tell them. “He’s writing poetry,” and there’s an awkward silence. And now you want me to have to spread it about that you’ve become a blasted soup-dispenser. Gah!’
A deep flush had spread itself over Ricky’s face. His temper, always a little inclined to be up and doing, had begun to flex its muscles like an acrobat about to do a trick.
‘As for this idea of yours of getting married …. Why do you want to get married? Hey? Why?’
‘Oh, just to score off the girl. I dislike her.’
‘What!’
‘Why do you think I want to get married? Why do people usually want to get married? I want to get married because I’ve found the most wonderful girl in the world, and I love her.’
‘You said you disliked her.’
‘I was merely trying to be funny.’
The Duke took in a mouthful of moustache, chewed it for a moment, seemed dissatisfied with the flavour and expelled it again with another forceful puff.
‘Who is she?’
‘Nobody you know.’
‘Well, who’s her father?’
‘Oh, nobody special.’
A sudden, sinister calm fell upon the Duke, causing his manner to resemble that of a volcano which is holding itself in by sheer will-power.
‘You don’t need to tell me any more. I see it all. The wench is a dashed outsider.’
‘She is not!’
‘Don’t argue with me. Well, that settles it. Not a penny do you get from me.’
‘All right. And not a pig do you get from me.’
‘Hey?’
The Duke was taken aback. It was seldom that he found himself in the position of having to deal with open mutiny in the ranks. Indeed, the experience had never happened to him before, and for an instant he was at a loss. Then he recovered himself, and the old imperious glare returned to his bulging eyes.
‘Don’t take that tone with me, young man.’
‘Not one single, solitary porker do you set your hands on,’ said Ricky. ‘My price for stealing pigs is two hundred and fifty pounds per pig per person, and if you don’t wish to meet my terms, the deal is off. If, on the other hand, you consent to pay this absurdly moderate fee for a very difficult and exacting piece of work, I on my side am willing to overlook the offensive things you have said about a girl you ought to think yourself honoured to have the chance of welcoming into the family.’
‘Stop talking like a damned fool. She’s obviously the scum of the earth. The way a man’s nephews get entangled with the dregs of the human species is enough to give one apoplexy. I absolutely forbid you to marry this female crossing-sweeper.’
Ricky drew a deep breath. His face was like a stormy sky, and his eyes bored into his uncle like bradawls.
‘Uncle Alaric,’ he said, ‘your white hairs protect you. You are an old man on the brink of the tomb —’
The Duke started.
‘What do you mean, on the brink of the tomb?’
‘On the brink of the tomb,’ repeated Ricky firmly. ‘And I am not going to shove you into it by giving you the slosh on the jaw which you have been asking for with every word you have uttered. But I would just like to say this. You are without exception the worst tick and bounder that ever got fatty degeneration of the heart through half a century of gorging food and swilling wine wrenched from the lips of a starving proletariat. You make me sick. You poison the air. Goodbye, Uncle Alaric,’ said Ricky, drawing away rather ostentatiously. ‘I think that we had better terminate this interview, or I may become brusque.’
With a parting look of a kind which no nephew should have cast at an uncle, Ricky Gilpin strode to the door and was gone. The Duke remained where he sat. He felt himself for the moment incapable of rising.
It is bad enough for a man of imperious soul to be defied by a beardless boy, and his nephew’s determination, in face of his opposition, to cling to the ballet girl or whatever she might be with whom he had become entangled would have been in itself enough to cause a temporary coma. But far more paralysing was the reflection that in alienating Ricky Gilpin he had alienated the one man who could secure the person of the Empress for him. Pig-kidnappers do not grow on every bush.
The Duke of Dunstable’s mind was one of those which readily fall into the grip of obsessions, and though reason now strove to convince him that there were prizes in life worth striving for beside the acquisition of a pig, he still felt that only that way lay happiness and contentment. He was a man who wanted what he wanted when he wanted it, and what he wanted now was the Empress of Blandings.
A cold voice, speaking at his side, roused him from his reverie.
‘Pardon me, your Grace.’
‘Hey? What’s the matter?’
Rupert Baxter continued to speak coldly. He was feeling bleakly hostile towards this old image. He disliked people who threw eggs at him. Nor was he the man to allow himself to be softened by an sportsmanlike admiration for a shot which had unquestionably been a very creditable one, showing great accuracy of aim under testing conditions.
‘A policeman has just informed me that I must move the car from the inn door.’
‘He has, has he? Well, tell him from me that he’s a blasted officious jack-in-office.’
‘With your Grace’s permission, I propose to drive it round the corner.’
The Duke did not speak. A sudden, flaming inspiration had come to him.
‘Hey, you,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’
Rupert Baxter sat down. The Duke eyed him closely, and felt that his inspiration had been sound. The secretary, he observed, had a strong, well-knit frame, admirably suited for the performance of such feats as the removal of pigs from their sties. A moment before, he had been feeling that, Ricky having failed him, he would seek in vain for an assistant to do the rough work. And now, it seemed, he had found him. From this quarter he anticipated no defiance. He was well aware of the high value which Rupert Baxter placed upon his job.
‘Ever done any pig-stealing?’ he asked.
‘I have not,’ said Rupert Baxter coldly.
‘Well, you start today,’ said the Duke.
14
It was at about three o’clock that afternoon that the Market Blandings station cab (Ed. Robinson, propr.) turned in at the gates of Blandings Castle and started creakily up the long drive. And presently Mr Pott, seated in its smelly interior, was setting eyes for the first time on the historic home of the Earls of Emsworth.
His emotions, as he did so, differed a good deal from those of the ordinary visitor in such circumstances. Claude Pott was a realist, and this tended to colour his outlook. Where others, getting their initial glimpse of this last stronghold of an old order, usually admired the rolling parkland and the noble trees or thrilled with romantic awe as they thought of what sights those grey walls must have seen in the days when knights wer
e bold, he merely felt that the owner of a place like this must unquestionably have what it takes to play Persian Monarchs.
Mr Pott, like Ricky, had arrived at Market Blandings in good spirits. Lord Bosham’s telephone call, coming through just as he was dropping off to sleep, had at first inclined him to peevishness. But when he discovered that he was talking to a client, and not only to a client but a client who was inviting him to Blandings Castle, he had become sunny to a degree. And this sunniness still lingered.
Ever since he had made Lord Emsworth’s acquaintance, Claude Pott had been sighing for a closer intimacy with one whom his experienced eye had classified immediately as the king of the mugs. There, he had felt, went one literally designed by Nature to be a good man’s opponent at Persian Monarchs, and the thought that they had met and parted like ships that pass in the night was very bitter to him. And now he was being asked to come to Lord Emsworth’s home and, what was more, was being paid for coming.
Little wonder that life looked rosy to Claude Pott. And he was still suffused with an optimistic glow, when the cab drew up at the front door and he was conducted by Beach, the butler, to the smoking-room, where he found a substantial, pink young man warming a solid trouser-seat in front of a cheerful fire.
‘Mr Claude Pott, m’lord,’ announced Beach, and withdrew with just that touch of aloofness in his manner which butlers exhibit when they would prefer not to be held responsible for peculiar visitors.
The pink young man, on the other hand, was cordiality itself.
‘Hullo, Pott. So here you are, Pott, what? Fine. Splendid. Excellent. Capital. Take a seat, dear old clue-collector. My name’s Bosham. I’m by way of being Lord Emsworth’s son. To refresh your memory, I’m the bird who rang you up.’
Mr Pott found himself unable to speak. The sight of his employer had stirred him to his depths..
Up till now, he had regarded Lord Emsworth as the most promising claim that any prospector for ore could hope to stake out, but one glance at the latter’s son told him that he had been mistaken. This was the mug of a good man’s dreams. For a long instant he stood staring silently at Lord Bosham with the same undisguised interest which stout Cortez had once displayed when inspecting the Pacific. It is scarcely exaggerating to say the Mr Pott was feeling as if a new planet had swum into his ken.
Lord Bosham, too, after that opening speech of welcome, had fallen into a thoughtful silence. Like so many men who have done their business on the mail-order system, he was reflecting, now that the parcel had been unwrapped, that it would have been more prudent to have inspected the goods before purchasing. It seemed to him, as it had seemed to Pongo Twistleton on a former occasion, that if this rummy object before him was a detective, his whole ideas about detectives would have to be revised from the bottom up.
‘You are the right Pott?’ he said.
Mr Pott seemed to find a difficulty in helping him out. The question of the rightness or wrongness of Potts appeared to be one on which he was loath to set himself up as an authority.
‘The private investigator, I mean. The bloodstain-and-magnifying-glass bloke.’
‘My card,’ said Pott, who had been through this sort of thing before. Lord Bosham examined the card, and was convinced.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Fine. Well, going back to what I was saying, here you are, what?’
‘Yes, sir.
‘I was expecting you yesterday.’
‘I’m sorry, Lord B. I’d have come if I could. But the boys at the Yard just wouldn’t let me.’
‘What yard would that be?’
‘Scotland Yard.’
‘Oh, ah, of course. You work for them, do you?’ said Lord Bosham, feeling that this was more the stuff.
‘When they get stuck, they generally call me in,’ said Pott nonchalantly. ‘This was a particularly tough job.’
‘What was it?’
‘I can’t tell you that,’ said Mr Pott, ‘my lips being sealed by the Official Secrets Act, of which you have doubtless heard.’
Lord Bosham felt that his misgivings had been unworthy. He remembered now that quite a number of the hottest detectives on his library list had been handicapped — or possibly assisted — by a misleading appearance. Buxton Black in Three Dead at Mistleigh Court and Drake Denver in The Blue Ribbon Murders were instances that sprang to the mind. The former had looked like a prosperous solicitor, the latter like a pleasure-loving young man about town. What Mr Pott looked like he could not have said on the spur of the moment, but the point was that it didn’t matter.
‘Well, let’s get down to it, shall we?’
‘I should be glad to have a brief outline of the position of affairs.’
‘Brief?’ Lord Bosham looked dubious. ‘I’m not sure about that. As a matter of fact, bloodhound, it’s rather a long and intricate story. But I’ll cut it as short as I can. Do you know what impostors are?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, we’ve got them in the house. That’s the nub of the thing. Three of them — count ‘em! Three! — all imposting away like the dickens.’
‘H’m.’
‘You may well say “H’m.” It’s a most exasperating state of affairs, and I don’t wonder my aunt’s upset. Not nice for a woman, feeling that every time she goes to her room to fetch a handkerchief or what not she may find the place littered with bounders rifling her jewel-case.’
‘Are these impostors male?’
‘Two of them are. The third, in sharp contra-distinction, is female. And speaking of her brings us to what you will probably find it convenient to register in your mind as the Baxter Theory. Do you register things in your mind, or do you use a notebook?’
‘Is Baxter an impostor?’
‘No,’ said Lord Bosham, with the air of one being fair. ‘He’s a gosh-awful tick with steel-rimmed spectacles, but he’s not an impostor. He’s the Duke’s secretary, and his theory is that these blighters are here not for what they can pouch, but in order to lure the Duke into allowing his nephew to marry the girl. Ingenious, of course, but in my opinion there is nothing to it and you may dismiss it absolutely. They are after the swag. Well, when I tell you that one of them played the confidence trick on me a couple of days ago, you will be able to estimate the sort of hell-hounds they are. Write them down in your notebook, if you use a notebook, as men who will stick at nothing.’
Mr Pott was beginning to feel fogged. If anything emerged clearly from this narrative, it seemed to him that it was the fact that the entire household was fully aware of the moral character of these miscreants. And yet they were apparently being given the run of the house and encouraged to make themselves at home.
‘But if you know that these individuals are here with criminal intent —’Why don’t we have them led off with gyves upon their wrists? My dear old cigar-ash inspector, it’s what I’d give my eye-teeth to do, but it can’t be done. You wouldn’t understand, if I explained for an hour, so just take it at this, that no — what’s that word beginning with “o”?’
‘What word beginning with “o”‘
‘That’s what I’m asking you. Opal? Oval? Ha! Got it! Overt. You must just accept the fact that no overt act can be contemplated, because it would lead to consequences which we don’t want led to. When I say “we,” I speak principally for my aunt. Personally, I don’t care if Baxter loses his job tomorrow.’
Mr Pott gave it up.
‘I don’t follow you, Lord B.’
‘I thought you wouldn’t. Still, you’ve grasped the salient fact that the place is crawling with impostors?’
Mr Pott said he had.
‘Then that’s all right. That’s all you really need to know. Your job is to keep an eye on them. See what I mean? You follow them about watchfully, and if you see them dipping into the till, you shout “Hoy!” and they cheese it. That’s simple enough? Fine,’ said Lord Bosham. ‘Capital. Excellent. Splendid. Then you can start in at once. And, by the way, you’d like something in the nature of a retaining fe
e, what?’
Mr Pott said he would, and his employer suddenly began to spray bank-notes like a fountain. It was Lord Bosham’s prudent practice, when he attended a rural meeting, as he proposed to do on the morrow, to have plenty of ready cash on his person.
‘Call it a tenner?’
‘Thank you, Lord B.’
‘Here you are, then.’
Mr Pott’s eyes were glistening a little, as he trousered the note.
‘You’ve got a lot of money there, Lord B.’
‘And I may need it before tomorrow’s sun has set. It’s the first day of the Bridgeford races, where I usually get skinned to the bone. Very hard to estimate form at these country meetings. You interested in racing?’
‘I was at one time a turf commissioner, operating in the Silver Ring.’
‘Good Lord! Were you really? My young brother Freddie was a partner in a bookie’s firm once. His father-in-law made him give it up and go over to America and peddle dog-biscuits. Absorbing work.’
‘Most.’
‘I expect you miss it, don’t you?’
‘I do at times, Lord B.’
‘What do you do for amusement these days?’
‘I like a quiet little game of cards.’
‘So do I.’ Lord Bosham regarded this twin soul with a kindly eye. Deep had spoken to deep. ‘Only the trouble is, it’s a dashed difficult thing for a married man to get. You a married man?’
‘A widower, Lord B.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep saying “Lord B.” It sounds as if you had been starting to call me something improper and changed your mind. Where was I? Oh, yes. When I’m at home, I don’t get a chance of little games of cards. My wife objects.’
‘Some wives are like that.’
‘All wives are like that. You start out in life a willing, eager sportsman, ready to take anybody on at anything, and then you meet a girl and fall in love, and when you come out of the ether you find not only that you are married but that you have signed on for a lifetime of bridge at threepence a hundred.’
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