"It seemed a trifle odd for a moment that you should be popping around here with your hair in curlers and your little white ankles peeping out from under a dressing gown."
"Coo!" said Lana in a modest flutter. She performed a swift
adjustment of the garment's folds. "Keep your hands up."
"But I'm getting cramp."
"Serves you right."
"But listen, my dear little girl---"
"Less of it!" said Lana austerely. "It's a bit thick if a girl can't catch a burglar without having him start to flirt with her. I'm going to call the cops."
"And have them see you in curling pins?"
"What's wrong with my curling pins?"
"Nothing, nothing," said Judson hastily. "I admire them."
"And they won't see me in curling pins, because I shan't call them till I've dressed. I'm going to put you in the cellar and lock you in till they come. Skip lively."
Judson did as directed.
When coping with the New York traffic, Freddie was always a driver of silent habit. It was not till the Triborough Bridge was passed and the road had become somewhat clearer that he embarked on the narrative which he had predicted would make Mr. Bunting sit up a bit, starting Chapter One with the tale of Arnold Pinkney's smuggling activities.
"I wouldn't have thought it could be done," he concluded. "There was Pinkney, his baggage literally bursting with diamond necklaces, and there was this Customs bloke, all eagerness to catch him bending, and not a thing happened. The trunks were opened, the bloke went through them like a dose of salts, and what ensued? Not a trace of any diamond necklace. Where, one asks oneself, could he have concealed the ruddy thing? It's inexplicable. Old Pinkney isn't a man I'm fond of…he's utterly unsound on dog biscuits, and he refuses to loosen up for poor old Joe…but I don't mind telling you all this has given me a grudging respect for him. You have to take your hat off to a man who can do down the New York Customs."
Mr. Bunting agreed that it was a feat to be proud of, and expressed surprise that Mr. Pinkney should have been capable of it. It just showed, he said, that there is unsuspected good in all of us.
"Well, you promised to make me sit up, my dear Freddie," he said. "And I am sitting up. Have you similarly sensational news to tell me of Judson Phipps? You hinted, if you remember, that you could a tale unfold about him whose lightest word would harrow up my soul, freeze my young—or, rather, elderly— blood and make my two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres. What is the latest concerning Judson?"
"Oh, Juddy? Yes, I was coming to that. You know he's a two-time loser?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I mean he's had two breach of promise cases already. Well, he's engaged again."
"You don't say! "
"I don't know who she is, but he took her to lunch today and proposed over the coffee." Mr. Bunting blessed his soul.
"Amazing! The effect of the sea air, no doubt. I have often speculated," said Mr. Bunting, "as to why our Judson does these things. Is it because he is unusually susceptible or does he ask them to marry him just because he can't think of anything to say and feels he must keep the conversation going somehow? Well, more work for Bunting and Satterthwaite."
"You think there's another breach of promise case in the offing?"
"Inevitable, I should say."
"He may not want to get out of this one."
"I doubt it, Did you ever see Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury? I played the Usher in Trial by Jury once in my younger days. At a village in Hampshire in aid of the church organ fund."
"I wish I'd been there."
"Yes, you missed an unforgettable experience. But what I was going to say was that Judson Phipps always reminds me of the Defendant in that operetta. To refresh your memory, he was constantly getting engaged and then changing his mind and sneaking out of it. Judson does the same, and it always ends in him having to come to Bunting and Satterthwaite to arrange a settlement."
Mr. Bunting fell into a reverie, no doubt on the subject of prospective fees, and did not speak again till the car arrived at its destination, when he said that Freddie had a nice place here, to which Freddie responded that it was a home and he liked it.
They entered the living-room, conversing amiably, and up in her bedroom Lana Tuttle, removing the last of the hair curlers, heard their voices and burned with justifiable indignation. That a solitary burglar should have invaded her privacy was more or less what a girl had to expect if she left Bottleton East and came to America, but a group or flock of marauders, chatting with one another as if the place belonged to them, was too much. Seizing her revolver, she descended the stairs three at a time and burst into the living-room.
"Hands up!" she cried. "Oh, it's you, Mr. T. Sorry, ducks, I thought you were a burglar."
"At this time in the afternoon?"
"They keep all hours. I've got one in the cellar now. I'll bring him up, shall I, so you can have a look at him."
"Tell me, Freddie," said Mr. Bunting, "is this sort of thing the normal run of life in America? It is my first visit to that great country, and I should like to know the ropes. Sugar daddies, I learn from the Press, are frequently surprised in love nests, but does the domestic help go about with guns as a general rule and deposit burglars in cellars?"
"If you ask me, I think the girl has flipped her cork."
"The expression is new to me, but I gather that you feel that she is mentally unbalanced. Do you?"
"Looks like it. What on earth would a burglar be doing...Good Lord! Juddy!"
Judson had entered, slightly soiled from his sojourn among the coal, and he was closely followed by Lana Tuttle, who seemed to be prodding him in the small of the back with her weapon. At the sight of Freddie his sombre face lightened, excluding the portions of it which were covered with coal dust.
"Freddie! Thank God! "
"What on earth is all this about, Juddy?"
"It's a long story. Would you mind telling this girl to take her damned pistol out of my ribs."
"It's all right, Lana. This is a friend of mine."
"Well, why didn't he say so? I caught him getting away with your plaything."
"My what?"
"That bear," said Lana Tuttle. "If it is a bear."
"I can explain everything, Freddie. Just get rid of this female. That's all I ask. Oh, hullo, Mr. Bunting," said Judson, seeing him for the first time. "What are you doing in America?"
"A business trip. But I'm not too engrossed in my business to listen to what should be an interesting story." "Nor me," said Freddie. "You can leave us, Lana."
"Pop off?"
"That's right."
"Well, if you think it's safe, love," said Lana Tuttle.
When Judson told a story, as he sometimes did when flushed with wine, it was not often that he riveted the attention of his. hearers, they being inclined to interrupt at an early point in the proceedings and start to tell what they considered better ones, but on this occasion it would not be too much to say that he held his audience spellbound.
All Freddie could find to say, when he had concluded his narrative, was that the evidence seemed to point to Arnold Pinkney having, as he had unjustly suspected Lana Tuttle of doing, flipped his cork, but Mr. Bunting with his special knowledge saw deeper into the matter.
"Tell me, Judson," he said, "have you looked inside that object?"
"No. Why?"
"Has Arnold Pinkney ever had access to it?"
"Of course not. Yes, he has, though. I left it in his stateroom last night."
"And are you aware that some years back your sister smuggled in her pearls in the interior of a Felix the Cat which she had purchased at the ship's shop?"
Freddie was staring at Mr. Bunting as if the latter had been a
beautiful picture, which was far from being the case.
"You aren't suggesting?"
"It is more a matter of stating than suggesting. I have had the pleasure of a long acquaintance with your sister
, Judson, and I know how considerate she is. She would never have asked her loved one to smuggle her necklace through the Customs without giving him kindly advice on how to do it. I think if you were to open the animal...Ah, you have done so, and, as I foresaw..."
Freddie was staring at what he held in his hand. So was Judson.
"Do you mean," said the latter, appalled, "that that old crook let me go through those Customs sheds with that? Why, I might have got jugged for life! "
"He would naturally prefer that you and not he did the stretch you allude to. You spoke, Freddie?"
"If you can call saying 'Ha!' speaking."
"Did you say 'Ha!'?"
"Yes, I did, and I'll tell you why. I am now in a position to go to Pinkney and dictate terms."
"Could you sketch them out for us?"
"In a few simple words. I'm going to give Pinkney a buzz at the Plaza...What's the number?"
“I can tell you that. Plaza 3-3000."
"And inform him that I am holding this necklace in...what's the word?"
"Escrow?"
"That's right. I'm holding it in escrow till he comes through with a substantial order for Donaldson's Dog Joy and gives Joe Cardinal his money and...Have you anything to suggest?"
"You might make it a condition that he goes on a diet."
"I will."
Most people, meeting Freddie Threepwood, were struck by his remarkable resemblance to a sheep, but if they could have seen him now as he strode to the telephone and dialled, they would have realized that this was no ordinary run-of-the-mill sheep they were looking at, but a keen, brisk, alert sheep, the sort of sheep that knows all about drive and push and has been trained to develop its initiative.
"Plaza Hotel?" he said curtly. "Put me through to Mr. Arnold Pinkney's suite."
"He'll have a fit of apoplexy," said Judson, awed.
"He couldn't do better," said Freddie. "Ah, Pinkney, is that you? This is Threepwood speaking. Listen, Pinkney..."
Time Like an Ever-rolling Stream
I must confess that often I'm
A prey to melancholy
Because I do not work on Time.
Golly, it must be jolly.
No other bliss, I hold, but pales
Beside the feeling that you're
One of nine hundred—is it?—males
And females of such stature.
How very much I would enjoy,
To call Roy Alexander "Roy"
And hear him say "Hullo, dear boy!"
Not to mention mixing on easy terms with
Louis Banks
Richard Oulahan Jr.
Edward O. Cerf
Estetle Dembeck
Cecilia I. Dempster
Ed. Ogle
Robert Ajernian
Honor Balfour
Dorothy Slavin Haystead
Mark Vishniak
Old Uncle Fuerbringer and all.
The boys who run the (plural) Times
Are carefully selected;
Chaps who makes puns or Cockney rhymes
Are instantly rejected.
Each day some literary gem
By these fine lads is written,
And everyone considers them
A credit to Great Britain.
But dash it all—let's face it, what?—
Though locally esteemed as hot
For all their merits they are not,
Well, to take an instance at random,
Robert W. Boyd Jr,
Lester Bernstein
Gilbert Cant
Edwin Copps
Henry Bradford Darrach Jr.
William Forbis
Barker T. Hartshorn
Roger S. Hewlett
Carl Solberg
Jonathan Norton Leonard
Old Uncle Fuerbringer and all.
Alas, I never learned the knack
(And on Times' staff you need it)
Of writing English front to back
Till swims the mind to read it.
Tried often I've my darnedest, knows
Goodness, but with a shock I'd
Discover that once more my prose
Had failed to go all cockeyed.
So, though I wield a gifted pen,
There'll never be a moment when
I join that happy breed of men.
I allude to (among others)
Douglas Auchincloss
Louis Kronenherger
Champ Clark
Alton J. Klingen
Michael Demarest
Bernard Frizell
Theodore E. Kalem
Carter Harman
Robert Shnayerson
Harriet Bachman
Margaret Quimby
Elsie Ann Brown
Shirley Estabrook
Marion Hollander Sanders
Danuta Reszke-Birk
Deirdre Mead Ryan
F. Sydnor Trapnell
Yi Ying Sung
Content Peckham
Quinera Sarita King
Old Uncle Fuerbringer and all,
Old Uncle Fuerbringer and all.
Printer's Error
As o'er my latest book I pored,
Enjoying it immensely
I suddenly exclaimed "Good Lord! "
And gripped the volume tensely. "
Golly!" I cried. I writhed in pain.
"They've done it on me once again! "
And furrows creased my brow.
I'd written (which I thought quite good)
"Ruth, ripening into womanhood,
Was now a girl who knocked men flat
And frequently got whistled at,"
And some vile, careless, casual gook
Had spoiled the best thing in the book
By printing "not"
(Yes, "not", great Scott!)
When I had written "now".
On murder in the first degree
The Law, I knew, is rigid:
Its attitude, if A kills B,
To A is always frigid.
It counts it not a trivial slip
If on behalf of authorship
You liquidate compositors.
This kind of conduct it abhors
And seldom will allow.
Nevertheless, I deemed it best
And in the public interest
To buy a gun, to oil it well,
Inserting what is called a shell,
And go and pot
With sudden shot
This printer who had printed "not"
When I had written "now".
I tracked the bounder to his den
Through private information:
I said "Good afternoon" and then
Explained the situation:
"I'm not a fussy man," I said.
"I smile when you put 'rid' for 'red’
And 'bad' for 'bed' and 'hoad' for 'head'
And 'bolge' instead of 'bough'.
When 'wone' appears in lieu of 'wine'
Or if you alter 'Cohn' to 'Schine',
I never make a row.
I know how easy errors are.
But this time you have gone too far
By printing 'not' when you knew what
I really wrote was 'now'.
Prepare," I said, "to meet your God
Or, as you'd say, your Goo or Bod
Or possibly your Gow."
A few weeks later into court
I came to stand my trial.
The Judge was quite a decent sort,
He said "Well, cocky, I'll
Be passing sentence in a jiff,
And so, my poor unhappy stiff,
If you have anything to say,
Now is the moment. Fire away.
You have?"
I said "And how!
Me lud, the facts I don't dispute.
I did, I own it freely, shoot
This printer through the collar stud.
What else could I have done, me lud?
He's
printed 'not'..."
The Judge said "What!”
When you had written 'now'?
God bless my soul! Gadzooks! " said he
"The blighters did that once to me.
A dirty trick, I trow.
I hereby quash and override
The jury's verdict. Gosh! " he cried.
"Give me your hand. Yes, I insist,
You splendid fellow! Case dismissed."
(Cheers, and a Voice "Wow-wow! ")
A statue stands against the sky,
Lifelike and rather pretty.
'Twas recently erected by
The P.E.N, committee.
And many a passer-by is stirred,
For on the plinth, if that's the word,
In golden letters you may read
"This is the man who did the deed.
His hand set to the plough,
He did not sheathe the sword, but got
A gun at great expense and shot
The human blot who'd printed 'not'
When he had written 'now'.
He acted with no thought of self,
Not for advancement, not for pelf,
But just because it made him hot
To think the man had printed 'not'
When he had written 'now'."
A Note on Humour
It will not have escaped the notice of the discerning reader that the foregoing stories and in-between bits were intended to be humorous, and this would seem as good a time as any for me to undertake the What-is-Humour essay which every author is compelled by the rules of his Guild to write sooner or later.
In the sixteenth century they called humour 'a disorder of the blood', and though they were probably just trying to be nasty, it is not a bad description. It is, anyway, a disorder of something. To be a humourist you must see the world out of focus. You must, in other words, be slightly cockeyed. This leads you to ridicule established institutions, and as most people want to keep their faith in established institutions intact, the next thing that happens is that you get looked askance at. Statistics show that 87.03 of today's askance looks are directed at humourists, for the solid citizenry suspect them and are wondering uneasily all the time what they are going to be up to next, like baby-sitters with charges who are studying to be juvenile delinquents. There is an atmosphere of strain such as must have prevailed long ago when the king or prince or baron had one of those Shakespearian Fools around the castle, capering about and shaking a stick with a bladder and little bells attached to it. Tradition compelled him to employ the fellow, but nothing was going to make him like it.
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