‘And you don’t want him?’
‘Of course I do not want him.’
‘Well,’ said Wilfred, breaking the bad news, ‘it looks to me from where I sit as if you’d jolly well got him. He has you by the short hairs. You can’t afford to let Tippy see that letter. Once let his eye rest on it and bim go your hopes and dreams of a millionaire son-in—law.’
An uneasy silence followed. It was broken by Wilfred saying that in his opinion his cousin Veronica ought to lose no time in putting in an application for a padded cell in some not too choosy lunatic asylum. The remark roused all the mother in Lady Hermione.
‘What do you mean?’ she demanded hotly.
‘Writing a letter like that! She must have been cuckoo.’
‘I told you she was depressed.’
‘Not half as depressed as she’ll be when Tippy walks out on her. I repeat that she ought to have her head examined.’
Lady Hermione was finding her nephew’s manner, so different from his customary obsequiousness, extremely trying, but this was no time for rebuking him. It seemed to her that if these slurs on her daughter’s intelligence were to be rebutted, it would be necessary to reveal the true facts. Reluctantly she did so.
‘Veronica is not to be blamed. I was under the impression, misled by your Uncle Clarence, that Tipton had lost all his money. I naturally could not allow her to marry a pauper. One has to be practical. So I advised her to break off the engagement.
‘Oh, I see. Didn’t she object?’
‘She seemed a little upset at first.’
‘I’m not surprised. She’s nuts about Tippy.’
‘But she is a sensible girl and saw how out of the question the marriage would be.’
‘It’ll be out of the question all right if Tippy sees that letter.’
‘He will not see it. I am going to search this man’s room and find it and destroy it.’
Wilfred goggled. Years of association with her had left him with no doubt as to his Aunt Hermione being a pretty hardboiled egg, but he had never suspected her of quite such twenty-minutes-in-the-saucepan-ness as this. He had always supposed that her hardboiled eggery expressed itself in words not deeds. A gurgling sound like the wind going out of the children’s toy known as the dying duck showed how deeply he had been moved.
‘Search his room?’
‘Yes, and I want you with me.’
‘Who, me? Why me?’
‘I shall need you to stand outside the room and give me warning if you see anyone coming. I think you had better sing.’
‘Sing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sing what?’
Lady Hermione had often heard of secret societies where plotters plotted plots together, but she wondered if any plotter in any secret society had ever had so much difficulty as she was having in driving into the head of another plotter what he, the first plotter, was trying to plot. It was with an effort that she restrained herself from uttering words which would have relieved her but must inevitably have alienated the only possible ally on whose services she could call. She contented herself with a wide despairing gesture similar to her nephew’s.
‘What does it matter what you sing? I am not asking you to appear on the concert platform. You will not be performing at Covent Garden. Sing anything.’
Wilfred mentally ran through his repertoire and decided on that thing about having another cup of coffee and another piece of pie which Tipton had taught him in the course of their revels in New York. He liked both words and music, the work, he had been given to understand, of the maestro Berlin, author and composer of Alexander’s Ragtime Band and other morceaux.
‘Well, all right,’ he said, though not with any great enthusiasm. And what will you do then?’
‘I shall make my escape.
‘Down the water pipe?’
‘Through the french window and out on to the lawn. The man has been given the Garden Suite,’ said Lady Hermione bitterly. She would have resented an impostor being housed even in a garret and the Garden Suite was the choicest locality that Blandings Castle had to offer. It was where you put guests like the Duke of Dunstable, for whom the best was none too good.
His aunt’s statement that he was to play a prominent part in this cloak-and—dagger enterprise had caused Wilfred Allsop to look like a nephew on whose head the ceiling has unexpectedly fallen, and that is how he was looking as she proceeded.
‘The first thing to do is to get the man out of the way.’
‘What!’
‘Go and tell him that your Uncle Clarence is waiting to see him at the Empress’s sty.’
A very sound idea,’ said Wilfred, much relieved. Her use of the expression ‘get out of the way’ had misled him for a moment. He had feared that she was going to suggest that he waylay this synthetic Whipple and set about him with a meat axe. He would not have put it past her. The lengths to which she appeared prepared to go seemed to him infinite, and he had been feeling like Macbeth talking things over with Lady Macbeth. It was with a heart lighter than he had supposed it would ever be again that he rose and set off in quest of Sam.
Sam was still in the smoking-room when Wilfred found him, and he received his message without pleasure. In the short time in which he had known him he had conceived a great liking for Lord Emsworth and would have been glad whenever the latter wished to chat with him about the Brontë country or the Land of Dickens or indeed about anything except pigs, but something told him that it would be upon these attractive animals that his host would touch when they met. However, it being impossible to ignore the summons, he started out for the sty, taking the short cut through the kitchen garden which they had taken on the previous day, and Constable Evans, standing at the window of Beach’s pantry with a glass of port in his hand, had an excellent view of him as he passed. For an instant he stood staring, then with a brief ‘Ho’ he laid down his glass and sallied out in pursuit. No leopard on the trail could have flung itself into the chase with greater abandon. It was his first chance in months of making a pinch that amounted to anything and he was resolved to seize it.
The first thing Sam noticed on arriving at the sty was a complete shortage of Lord Emsworths and he could make nothing of it, for Wilfred had distinctly told him that his host was awaiting him there. Some mistake, he assumed, and glad of the respite he lit a cigarette. And he had scarcely done so when there was a flash and a roar and the storm which had been threatening all the afternoon broke with a violence which probably came as a surprise to the barometer Wilfred had tapped in the hall. It had predicted dirty weather, but it could hardly have anticipated anything on this scale. To Sam, whose nervous system was not at its best, what was in progress seemed to combine the outstanding qualities of the Johnstown flood and the Day of Judgment.
It was a moment to seek shelter, and most fortunately there was shelter within easy reach. At the junction between the kitchen garden and the meadow where the Empress had her headquarters there stood what looked like—and indeed was—a potting shed. Its interior, he presumed, would be stuffy and probably smelly, but these disadvantages were outweighed by the fact that it would be dry, and dryness was what he wanted—or, as he would have said when writing a review for one of the higher-browed weeklies, desiderated. He was inside it in a matter of seconds and was congratulating himself on the promptness with which he had acted, when the door slammed behind him and he heard the shooting of a bolt. It surprised and disconcerted him.
‘Hoy!’ he cried, and from outside a voice spoke, the cold, metallic voice of a policeman who has effected a fair cop.
‘You’re pinched,’ it said.
Silence followed. It had been Constable Evans’s original intention on seeing Sam enter the shed to go in after him and take him into immediate custody, but second thoughts had led to a change of plan. Better, he felt, to wait till he could bring up reinforcements. He could not forget that this particular malefactor packed a wic
ked wallop, and he had no desire to be on the receiving end of it again. So having shot the bolt and said, ‘You’re pinched’ he hastened back to Beach’s pantry to telephone the police station to send a car and an assistant, preferably a large and muscular one.
It was some slight consolation to Sam to feel that he must be getting soaked to his underlinen.
CHAPTER 10
I
It was the boast of Jno. Robinson, its proprietor, that the station taxi, though a little creaky in the joints and inclined to pant when going up hill, never failed to get its patrons to their destination sooner or later, and it had got Sandy to hers without mishap. Her first move on arrival, like a conscientious secretary, was to go and report to Lord Emsworth, whose jaw dropped slightly when he saw her, for he had been hoping that she would have been away rather longer. She then went to the small room opening off the library where she worked.
She was not long without company. Musing on life in a deck chair on the front lawn, Gally had seen her drive up, and though reluctant to stir from his comfortable seat he felt it imperative to seek her out and put her in touch with recent developments at the castle. He also proposed to chide her for sneaking off as she had done. She had behaved, he considered, with a low cunning which he deplored. He had always been a man who disliked having a fast one put over on him, and he was prepared to be somewhat stern with Sandy.
Sandy, for her part, was prepared to be somewhat stern with him. On seeing Sam emerge from the Emsworth Arms bar she had been sure that Gally was responsible for his being there, and it was at him even more than at Sam that her resentment was directed. Their meeting, consequently, was marked by a certain frostiness on both sides. She greeted him with a cold ‘Good evening’, and he said, ‘Take that lemon out of your mouth, Mona Lisa. I want a word with you.’
Sandy continued haughty. Her full height was not much, but she drew herself to what there was of it.
‘If it’s about Sam—”
‘Of course it’s about Sam.’
‘Then I don’t want to hear it.’
A less courageous man than Gally might have quailed at the iciness of her tone, but it left him undaunted.
‘What you want and what you’re going to get,’ he said, ‘are two substantially different things. Sam has told me all about that Drones Club sweepstake and the offer from the syndicate and how you tried to get him to sell out for a hundred pounds when he had only to sit tight and let nature take its course in order to clean up on a really impressive scale, and frankly I was appalled. Your mutton-headedness stunned me.’
‘I don’t consider that I was mutton-headed, as you call it.’
‘Then your standards must be very high.’
‘I had a good reason for wanting him to sell out. I knew what Tipton was like.’
‘He’s rather like a string bean, but I don’t see how that enters into it.’
‘I’m not talking about what he looks like. The sort of man he is, I mean.’
And what sort is that?’
‘Susceptible. Always falling in and out of love. When I was working for his uncle, he got engaged to a whole series of girls, and every time the engagement was broken off I supposed that this latest one would follow the usual pattern.’
‘Often a bridesmaid but never a bride, you felt? You were mistaken. His passion for Veronica is the real thing. When he fetched up here the day before yesterday, it was with the love light in his eyes and an eight-thousand-pound necklace for her in his trouser pocket. He’ll be a married man in next to no time. The date is set, the caterer notified, the bishop and assistant clergy lined up at the starting gate waiting for the flag to fall.’
‘And suppose she breaks off the engagement? Tipton’s girls always do.’
‘Not this one. Sam’s on a certainty. If ever there was a Today’s Safety Bet, this is it. My advice to you, young Sandy, is to admit you were wrong and kiss and make up. When you see him—”
‘I shan’t see him.’
‘Oh yes, you will. He’s here now.’
‘I know he is. At the Emsworth Arms.’
‘Not at the Emsworth Arms, at the castle.’
‘What!’
‘Passing for the moment under the name of Augustus Whipple.’
‘What!’
‘You do keep saying “What”, don’t you? Yes, on my advice he assumed the name of Whipple, for I felt it would endear him to Clarence, as indeed it has. And that brings me to another talking point. If ever you entertained doubts as to the wholeheartedness of his love, reflect that simply in order to be near you and plead his cause he has placed himself in a position where he has to listen to Clarence talking pig to him from morning to night. He’s suffering agonies, and all for you. So be guided by me, young Sandy, and fling yourself into his arms and murmur “Oh, Sam, can you ever forgive me?” or “Oh, Sam, let the past be forgotten” or, of course,’ said Gally, always ready to make concessions, ‘any other gag along those lines you may prefer. I’ll leave you to think it over.’
His story had shaken Sandy. It had been well said of Galahad Threepwood in his Pelican Club days that few could equal him at telling the tale. He was credited by his associates with the ability to talk the hind leg off a donkey, and the passage of the years had in no way diminished his spellbinding qualities. Half an hour ago the idea of ever speaking to Sam again in this world or the next would have seemed to Sandy so bizarre as not to deserve consideration, but now she was beginning to feel that that idea of flinging herself into his arms might have something in it.
Like so many girls with similarly coloured hair, she had a low boiling point and was easily stirred to sudden furies, but they resembled those of the storm outside, which after a sensational start had already begun to calm down, in being soon over. Looking out of the window, she saw that the Niagara of a few minutes back was now a gentle trickle and the thunder and lightning had ceased altogether. It was as if the forces of Nature felt that they had made their point and could relax, and she found herself in harmony with their softened mood.
Ever since the morning when Sam had spoken his mind to her on the subject of ginger-haired little fatheads and she had thrown the ring at him she had tried to keep resentment alive, but she had never really liked the idea of not speaking to him again in this world or the next. She had told herself that he was the obstinate pig-headed type whom no girl of sense would dream of marrying and that the severance of relations between them was the best thing that could have happened, but all the while a voice within her had kept reminding her that, even though pig-headed, he was unquestionably a lamb, and lambs are not so easily come by in these hard times that you can afford to throw them carelessly away. Remorse, in short, had gnawed her, causing her to feel almost precisely as Colonel Wedge and his wife Hermione had felt on discovering that they had rashly given the bum’s rush to a prospective son-in-law who oozed dollar bills at every pore.
On only one point had Gally left her dubious, and that was the likelihood of Tipton Plimsoll becoming a married man. She had seen so many of his false starts when she had been working for his Uncle Chet that she could not believe that any betrothal of his could possibly culminate in a wedding. Recalling his long line of fiancées, all of whom had come and gone with a quickness that deceived the eye, she was unable to picture him lined up with this latest one at the altar rails. It would be necessary, therefore, even while flinging herself into Sam’s arms, to make it quite clear to him that her views on the syndicate’s offer had in no way changed. On this she was resolved to be firm. Lamb or no lamb, he would have to accept her ruling.
She had reached this point in her meditations, when something long and string—bean-like bounded in with a ‘Hi!’ that raffled the window pane and for the first time since she had left her native America she beheld Tipton Plimsoll.
Her presence at the castle had astounded Tipton. Looking out of the smoking-room window, he had seen the station taxi drive up and a girl whom his experienced eye classified as quite a di
sh alight from it. Her appearance had seemed to him oddly familiar, but it was only when she raised her head while handing Jno. Robinson his fare that he recognised her as one of his closest and most esteemed buddies.
He was exuberantly glad to see her. He had always been devoted to Sandy. Her place in his life had been that of a kindly sister in whom he could confide whenever he fell in love with someone new and needed the services of a confidante. She had given him encouragement when he required it and sympathy when he required that, which usually happened a few weeks after he had become engaged, for his fiancées had a disconcerting knack of writing to tell him they were sorry but they had just married elsewhere, adding in a postscript that they would always look on him as a dear friend.
‘Sandy Callender as I live and breathe!’ he cried. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw you getting out of that cab. I didn’t even know you were on this side. What on earth are you doing here?’
‘I’m Lord Emsworth’s secretary. Gally Threepwood got me the job. I met him in London just when his sister was looking around for someone to work for Lord Emsworth. Well, it’s wonderful seeing you again, Tipton. How are you?’
‘Pretty spruce, thanks.’
‘That’s good. I hear you’re engaged again.’
Tipton lost some of his joyous effervescence. Not meaning to wound, she had said the wrong thing.
‘Don’t say again ,‘ he protested, ‘as if it was something I did every hour on the hour.
‘Well, isn’t it?’
Tipton was forced to concede that there was a certain amount of justice in the question.
‘Well, yes,’ he admitted, ‘I have got tangled up with a girl or two—’
‘Or three or four or five.’
‘—in my time, but that was just kid stuff This is the real thing. This is for keeps. You remember those other babes I got starry-eyed about?’
‘Doris Jimpson, Angela Thurloe, Vanessa Wainwright, Barbara Bessemer...’
‘All right, all right. No need to call the score. What I was going to say was Do you know what was wrong with them?’
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