‘It must have gone.’
‘If it was ever there.’
‘Oh, it was there.’
‘So you say.’
During these exchanges the Duke, with some idea of picking up the table, the clock, the bowl, the other bowl, the ashtray, the calendar and the wedding photograph of Lady Constance and her mate, had approached nearer to his visitor, and as he did so the feeling he had had for some time that it was a little close in here became accentuated. He halted, sniffed, and made an interesting discovery.
‘Emsworth,’ he said, ‘you smell to heaven.’
Lord Emsworth, too, had been conscious of an aroma. Just a suspicion of the scent of new-mown hay, he would have said.
‘You’ve been rolling in something.’
Enlightenment came to Lord Emsworth.
‘Ah yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, quite. I fell in the sty, Alaric.’
‘You did what?’
‘I had gone to see the Empress, and I tripped and fell in the sty. It was a little muddy.’
From the very start of this conversation the Duke had been blowing at his moustache at frequent intervals, but never with the vigour which this statement provoked. He sent it shooting up now as if his aim was to loosen it from its foundations. It has not been stated in this chronicle that he had large outstanding ears, rather like the handles of a Greek amphora. We mention them at this juncture because he was feeling that he could not believe them. It was in an almost awed voice that he said:
‘You went to see that foul pig of yours at this time of night?’
It naturally pained Lord Emsworth to hear the three times silver medallist at the Shropshire Agricultural Show so described, but he was in no position to protest.
‘That was how I came to be in your room, Alaric. I was locked out, and your window was open.’
The Duke was still wrestling with the facts placed before him and trying to make some sense of them.
‘Why did you go and see your foul pig at this time of night?’
Lord Emsworth was able to answer that.
‘I had a dream about her. I dreamed she had been slimming.’
An odd guttural sound escaped the Duke. His eyes bulged, and his moustache shot nosewards. He passed a hand over his forehead.
‘And that made you … at this time of night …’ He paused, as if recognizing that it was hopeless to do justice to the occasion with mere words. ‘You’d better go to bed,’ he said at length.
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Lord Emsworth. He did not often find himself agreeing with Alaric, but he did this time. ‘Good night, Alaric. I hope you are comfortable in here.’
‘I am when people don’t come barging in and upsetting all the furniture at one in the morning.’
‘Quite,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘Quite, quite, quite. Yes, of course, exactly.’
He went out and up the stairs, accompanied by a rich smell of pig, but he did not immediately go to his room. Half-way there a thought occurred to him. He would, he realized, have little chance of sleeping unless he soothed his ruffled spirit by reading awhile in some good book with a strong pig interest, and he had left an extremely well-written work on his favourite subject in the portrait gallery that morning, when he had gone to look at the picture of the young woman who reminded him so much of the Empress. It would be pleasant to take another look at her now.
He went there, and switched on the light.
4
It was about time, Gally reflected as he returned all fresh and rosy from the bathroom, to be putting that picture where it belonged. Then it would be off his mind and he could divert his thoughts in other directions.
As he made his way along the dark corridor he was feeling the agreeable glow which is a good man’s reward for doing acts of kindness to his fellows. Admittedly much had still to be done before Johnny’s affairs could be said to be in apple pie order, but he had removed—or was on the point of removing—one of the burdens weighing on him. No danger now of ruin overwhelming the Bender Gallery in which the poor young fish had so large a financial interest. As far as that was concerned, there was nothing more to worry about, and a few well-chosen words from one who in his time had made bookies cry would soon adjust the matter of the incandescent popsy.
It was as he meditated with perhaps a touch of smugness on his godson’s luck in having a wise elder to whom he could always turn when in difficulties that a sight he had not expected to see brought him to an abrupt halt. Under the door of the portrait gallery a streak of light was shining, indicating that others beside himself were abroad in the night.
He drew back. It was plain that he would have to conduct this mission of his in a less nonchalant spirit than he had anticipated. It would be necessary to be devious and snaky, and with this object in mind he retreated some paces to a spot where darkness would hide him when his fellow prowler emerged.
As to the identity of this prowler and his motives in visiting the portrait gallery at such a time he was completely fogged. The possibility that it might be the Blandings Castle ghost he rejected. Ghosts do, of course, keep late hours, but they do not switch on electric lights. The Blandings Castle ghost, moreover, if he remembered correctly the stories he had heard in childhood, went about with its head under its arm, which would be a handicap to a spectre when looking at pictures.
He had just reached the conclusion that the mystery was insoluble, when the door flew open and Lord Emsworth shot out and started to descend the stairs at an impressive pace. Eyeing him, Gally was reminded of the night when, wishing to take his mind off the troubles on which he had for some days been brooding, he and a fellow altruist had inserted in their friend Plug Basham’s bedroom after he had retired to rest a pig covered with phosphorus and had then beaten the gong. Plug, coming down the stairs three at a time, had shown much the same agitation as that now exhibited by Lord Emsworth. He wondered what had occurred to disturb his brother so deeply.
This, however, was not the time for standing speculating on first causes. There was work to be done. The portrait gallery being unoccupied, he hastened there, hung his reclining nude and returned to his base. And he was relaxing there with a cigarette and a novel of suspense, when there came a tapping at the door and the face of Lord Emsworth appeared round it. He still seemed agitated.
‘Oh, Galahad,’ he said, ‘I am so glad you are awake. I was afraid you might be asleep.’
‘As early as this? Most unusual if I had been. Take a seat, Clarence. Delighted you dropped in. What’s on your mind?’
‘I have had a shock, Galahad.’
‘Nothing better, they say, for the adrenal glands.’
‘And I came to ask your advice.’
‘It is at your disposal, as always. What seems to be the trouble?’
‘I was wondering if I ought to tell him tonight.’
‘Tell who?’
‘Alaric.’
‘Tell him what?’
‘That his picture has been stolen. I was in the portrait gallery just now, and it had gone.’
‘Gone? You astound me, Clarence. You mean it wasn’t there?’
‘Exactly. My first impulse was to go and inform Alaric immediately.’
‘Of course.’
‘But when I reached his door, I found myself hesitating. You see, most unfortunately I had disturbed his sleep a little earlier, and he had been rather upset about it.’
‘How did that happen?’
‘I had gone to see the Empress, and while I was in the sty—’
‘In the sty?’
‘Yes, she had gone to bed, and I went in, and I fell in the sty.’
‘I thought I noticed something. You might open the window another inch or two. But you were saying?’
‘When I got back, I found that someone had bolted the front door.’
‘Now who could that have been?’
‘And Alaric’s french window was open, and all would have been well, if it had not been for the cat.’
‘Cat?’
<
br /> ‘A cat bumped my leg with its head, and I jumped and upset a table. It made a good deal of noise, and Alaric came out of the bedroom, and he refused to believe that the cat had been there. It was all very unpleasant.’
‘Must have been.’
‘And I came to ask you if you think it is absolutely necessary to wake him again.’
Gally pondered. It would, of course, be simple for him to set his brother’s mind at rest by saying ‘First, my dear Clarence, let us go to the portrait gallery and assure ourselves that you are not in error in supposing the picture to have gone. Those optical illusions are not uncommon. It may still be hanging from its hook as snug as a bug in a rug’. But he could not conceal it from himself that a good deal of wholesome fun was to be obtained from waking for a second time an already hotted-up Duke and observing his reactions. And how good it would be for his adrenal glands. Living a placid life down in Wiltshire and seeing nobody but a lot of dull neighbours, his adrenal glands did not get stimulated from one year’s end to another. It was only humane to take this opportunity of giving them a prod.
‘I think so, Clarence. I feel very strongly that we must tell him at once.’
‘We?’
‘I shall of course come with you, to lend you moral support.’
‘You will?’
‘Of course.’
‘You are very kind, Galahad.’
‘I try to be, Clarence, I try to be. I don’t think we ought to leave it all to the Boy Scouts.’
5
It had not taken the Duke long to fall asleep again. He was one of those fortunate men who have no need to count sheep but drop off directly the head touches the pillow. Short though the interval had been since Lord Emsworth’s departure, loud snores were proceeding from his bedroom as the two callers entered the garden suite. They ceased abruptly when Gally hammered on the door with the shoe which had made so small an appeal to the recent cat, accompanying the gesture with a cheery ‘Bring out your dead’.
The Duke sat up. His first impression was that the house was on fire, but he revised this view when Lord Emsworth put his lips to the keyhole and bleated ‘Could you spare a moment, Alaric?’ Although nothing could have been more politely phrased than the query, it brought him out of bed with a single leap, full of homicidal thoughts. That Emsworth, of whom he had been confident that he had seen the last, should be playing a return date was in his opinion more than a man could be expected to endure. And when, flinging open the door, he saw that Gally also was present, words—perhaps fortunately— failed him. It was left to Gally to set the conversational ball rolling.
‘A very hearty good morning to you, Dunstable,’ he said. ‘You look astonishingly bright and happy. But I’m afraid those bubbling high spirits of yours are going to sag a bit when you hear what we have come to say. Clarence has an amazing story to relate. Relate your amazing story, Clarence.’
‘Er,’ said Lord Emsworth.
‘That’s not all there is of it,’ Gally assured the Duke. ‘There’s a lot more, and the dramatic interest mounts steadily as it goes on.’
‘Do you know what time it is?’ the Duke demanded, finding speech. ‘It’s two o’clock in the blasted morning,’ and Gally said he had supposed it was something like that. He would, he said, be thinking of bed in another hour or so, for nothing was better for the health than turning in early, ask any well-known Harley Street physician.
‘But first the amazing story, and as Clarence shows a tendency to blow up in his lines, perhaps we shall get on quicker if I do the relating. We bring grave news, Dunstable, news which will make your knotted and combined locks to part and each particular hair to stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine. You know that picture of yours, the one of the one-girl nudist colony.’
‘Two o’clock! Past two! And you come here—’
‘It was in the portrait gallery. Note my choice of tense. I use the past deliberately. It was in the portrait gallery, but it isn’t. One might put it that Annie doesn’t live there any more.’
‘What the devil are you talking about?’
‘It’s quite true, Alaric,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘I went to the portrait gallery just now to get a book I had left there, and the picture had disappeared. I was shocked and astounded.’
‘To what conclusion, then,’ said Gally, ‘do we come? If credit is to be given to the testimony of the witness Clarence, somebody with a liking for reclining nudes must have pinched it.’
‘What!’
‘Well, reason it out for yourself.’
For some moments bewilderment was the only emotion visible on the Duke’s face. Then abruptly it changed to righteous wrath. He was not a man whom ideas often struck, but one had just struck him with the force of a bullet, and in the circumstances this was not surprising. It did not require a Sherlock Holmes to solve the riddle. Doctor Watson could have done it easily. Turning as purple as the stripe on his pyjamas, he gulped twice, blew at his moustache, allowed his eyes to protrude in the manner popularized by snails and in a voice of thunder uttered a single word.
‘Trout!’
Then, as if fearing that he had not made himself sufficiently clear, he added:
‘Trout, curse him! Trout, the larcenous hellhound! Trout, the low-down sneak thief! I might have known it, dammit. I ought to have guessed he would be up to something like this. He doesn’t want to pay for the thing like a gentleman, so he steals it. But if he thinks he’ll get away with it, he’s very much mistaken. I’ll confront him. I’ll tax him with his crime. I’ll make him return my picture if I have to stick lighted matches between his toes.’
Seeing that Lord Emsworth was gaping like the goldfish to which his sister Constance had so often compared him when he failed to grasp the gist, Gally came to his assistance with a brief footnote.
‘Dunstable was hoping to sell the picture to Trout, but apparently Trout prefers to get it for nothing, his view being that a penny saved is a penny earned. I’ve known other men to think along the same lines.’
The Duke continued to sketch out his plans.
‘I shall go to him and say “Trout, you have three seconds to produce that reclining nude,” and if he raises the slightest objection, I shall twist his head off at the roots and make him swallow it,’ he said, and Gally agreed that nothing could be fairer than that. Trout, he said, could scarcely fail to applaud such a reasonable attitude.
‘I’ll go to his room and put it up to him without an instant’s delay. Which is his room?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Gally. ‘Which is Trout’s room, Clarence?’
‘I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you, Galahad,’ said Lord Emsworth, surprised that anyone should suppose that he knew anything. ‘There are fifty-two bedrooms in the castle. Many of them are of course unoccupied, as for instance the one where Queen Elizabeth slept and a number of those known as state rooms, but I imagine Mr. Trout would be in one of the others.
Connie is sure to have put him somewhere.’
‘Then the thing to do,’ said the Duke, who could reason things out as well as the next man, ‘is to go and ask Connie.’
It was unfortunate that during this conversation Lord Emsworth should once again have been standing near the table on which the Duke had replaced the two bowls (now empty), the clock, the ash-tray, the calendar and the photograph of James Schoonmaker and Lady Constance on their wedding day, for as these appalling words penetrated to his consciousness he made another of his convulsive leaps and the table and its contents crashed to the floor in the old familiar manner, causing the Duke to exclaim ‘Good God, Emsworth!’ and Gally to warn ‘his brother against getting into a rut.
He was impervious to reproaches.
‘But, Alaric!’
‘Now what?’
‘You can’t wake Connie at this time of night!’
‘Can’t I!’
‘I don’t know what she will say.’
‘Then let’s go and find out,’ said Gally in his helpful way. ‘
No need,’ he added, for he was a humane man and had no wish to see his brother’s adrenal glands stimulated beyond their capacity, ‘for you to come, Clarence. Dunstable and I can manage all right, and you ought to be in bed. Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.’
6
To say that Lady Constance was glad to see her visitors when they knocked at her door some minutes later would be an over-statement. She was plainly stirred, and her gaze, resting first on Gally, had in it something of a Medusa quality. Only when she saw the Duke did the flame in her eye diminish in intensity. There was no outrage of which she did not think Galahad capable, but she could not believe that Alaric would come disturbing her slumbers without some good reason.
The Duke was the first to speak. A lesser man would have been taken aback by the spectacle of this majestic woman with a mud pack on her face, but he was not a lesser man.
‘Hoy!’ he said. ‘Where’s Trout’s room, Connie?’
She answered question with question.
‘What in the world are you doing, Alaric, wandering about the house at this time of night?’
The Duke had a short way with this sort of thing. He had not climbed two flights of stairs to take part in a quiz show.
‘Never mind what I’m doing wandering about the house. If you really want to know, I’m looking for the reptile Trout.’
‘Why on earth do you want Mr. Trout? If you’ve something to say to him, why can’t it wait till you meet him at breakfast?’
‘Because it can’t, that’s why it can’t. He’ll have made his getaway long before breakfast. I only hope he hasn’t made it already.’
So unequal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation was Lady Constance that she actually turned for support to her brother Galahad.
‘I don’t understand. What does he mean, Galahad?’
Gally was helpful, as always.
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