by Unknown
Part 2
CHAPTER 12
She dismounted with lissom grace, beaming welcomingly. Since I had last seen her, she had washed off the stains of travel and changed her frock and was looking spruce and dapper. Why she should have bothered to smarten herself up, when she was only going to meet a bird in patched grey flannel trousers and a turtleneck sweater, I was at a loss to understand, but girls will, of course, be girls.
‘Hullo, Bertie,’ she said. ‘Are you paying a neighbourly call on Boko?’
I replied that that was about what it amounted to, but added that first I required a few moments of her valuable time.
‘Listen, Nobby,’ I said.
She didn’t, of course. I’ve never met a girl yet who did. Say ‘Listen’ to any member of the delicately nurtured sex, and she takes it as a cue to start talking herself. However, as the subject she introduced proved to be the very one I had been planning to ventilate, the desire to beat her brains out with a brick was not so pronounced as it would otherwise have been.
‘What have you been doing to inflame Stilton, Bertie? I met him just now and asked if he had seen you, and he turned vermilion and gnashed every tooth in his head. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more incandescent copper.’
‘He didn’t explain?’
‘No. He simply pedalled on furiously, as if he had been competing in a six-day bicycle race and had just realized he was dropping behind the leaders. What was the trouble?’
I tapped her on the arm with a grave forefinger.
‘Nobby,’ I said, ‘there has been a bit of a mix-up. What’s that word that begins with “con”?’
‘Con?’
‘I’ve heard Jeeves use it. There’s a cat in it somewhere.’
‘What on earth are you drivelling about?’
‘Concatenation,’ I said, getting it. ‘Owing to an unfortunate concatenation of circumstances, Stilton is viewing me with concern. He has got the idea rooted in his bean that I’ve come down here to try to steal Florence from him.’
‘Have you?’
‘My dear young blister,’ I said, with some impatience, ‘would anybody want to steal Florence? Do use your intelligence. But, as I say, this unfortunate concatenation has led him to suspect the worst.’
And in a few simple words I gave her the run of the scenario, featuring the Young Lochinvar aspect of the matter. When I had finished, she made one of those foolish remarks which do so much to confirm a man in his conviction that women as a sex should be suppressed.
‘You should have told him you were guiltless of the charge.’
I tut-tutted impatiently.
‘I did tell him I was guiltless of the charge, and a fat lot he believed me. He continued to hot up, finally reaching a condition of so much Fahrenheit that I was surprised he didn’t run me in on the spot. In which connection, you might have told me he was a cop.’
‘I forgot to.’
‘It would have spared me a very disconcerting shock. When I heard someone calling my name and looked round and saw him cycling towards me in the complete rig-out of a rural policeman, I nearly got the vapours.’
She laughed – a solo effort. Nothing in the prevailing circumstances made me feel like turning it into a duet.
‘Poor old Stilton!’
‘Yes, that’s all very well, but—’
‘I think it’s rather sporting of him, wanting to earn his living, instead of sitting on the knee of that uncle of his and helping himself out of his pockets.’
‘I dare say, but—’
‘Florence doesn’t. And it’s rather funny, because it was she who turned his thoughts in that direction. She talked Socialism to him, and made him read Karl Marx. He’s very impressionable.’
I agreed with her there. I had never forgotten the time at Oxford when somebody temporarily converted him to Buddhism. It led to a lot of unpleasantness with the authorities, I recall, he immediately starting to cut chapel and go and meditate beneath the nearest thing the neighbourhood could provide to a bo tree.
‘She’s furious now, and says he was a fool to take her literally.’
She paused, in order to laugh again, and I seized the opportunity to get a word in edgeways.
‘Exactly. As you state, she is furious. And that’s just the aspect of the matter that I want to discuss. I could put up with a green-eyed Stilton, a Stilton who turns vermilion and gnashes the molars at the mention of my name. I don’t say it could ever be pleasant, going about knowing that the Force was gnashing its teeth at you, but one learns to take the rough with the smooth. The real trouble is that I believe Florence is weakening on him.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘She’s just been talking to me about him. She used the expression “pigheaded”, and said she was sick and tired of the whole thing and really didn’t know what she was going to do about it. Her whole attitude seemed to me that of a girl on the very verge of giving her heart-throb the raspberry and returning the ring and presents. You spot the frightful menace?’
‘You mean that if she breaks it off with Stilton, she may consider taking you on again?’
‘That’s what I mean. The peril is appalling. Owing to another unfortunate concatenation of circumstances, my stock has recently gone up with her to a fearful extent, and anything may happen at any moment.’
And I briefly outlined the Spindrift-Spinoza affair. When I had concluded, a meditative look came into her face.
‘Do you know, Bertie,’ she said, ‘I’ve often thought that, of all the multitude Florence has been engaged to, you were the one she really wanted?’
‘Oh, my gosh!’
‘It’s your fault for being so fascinating.’
‘I dare say, but too late to do anything about that now.’
‘Still, I don’t see what you’ve got to worry about. If she proposes to you, just blush a little and smile tremulously and say “I’m sorry – so, so sorry. You have paid me the greatest compliment a woman can pay a man. But it cannot be. So shall we be pals – just real pals?” That’ll fix her.’
‘It won’t do anything of the sort. You know what Florence is like. Propose, forsooth! She’ll just notify me that the engagement is on again, like a governess telling a young charge to eat his spinach. And if you think I’ve got the force of character to come back with a nolle prosequi—’
‘With a what?’
‘One of Jeeves’s gags. It means roughly “Nuts to you!” If, I say, you think I’m capable of asserting myself and giving her the bird, you greatly overestimate the Wooster fortitude. She must be reconciled to Stilton. It is the only way. Listen, Nobby. I wrote you a letter yesterday, giving my views on Florence and urging you to employ every means in your power to open Stilton’s eyes to what he was in for. Have you read it?’
‘Every syllable. It gripped me tremendously. I never knew you had such a vivid prose style. It reminded me of Ernest Hemingway. You don’t by any chance write under the name of Ernest Hemingway, do you?’
I shook the head.
‘No. The only thing I’ve ever written was an article for “Milady’s Boudoir” on What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing. It appeared under my own name. But what I want to say is, pay no attention to that letter. I am now wholeheartedly in favour of the match. The wish to save Stilton has left me. The chap I have my eye on for saving purposes is B. Wooster. When chatting with Florence, therefore, boost Stilton in every possible way. Make her see what a prize she has got. And if you have any influence with him, endeavour to persuade him to chuck all this policeman nonsense and stand for Parliament, as she wants him to.’
‘I’d love to see Stilton in Parliament.’
‘So would I, if it means healing this rift.’
‘Wouldn’t he be a scream!’
‘Not necessarily. There are bigger fatheads than Stilton among our legislators – dozens of them. They would probably shove him in the Cabinet. So push it along, young Nobby.’
‘I’ll do what I can. But S
tilton isn’t the easiest person to persuade, once the trend of his mind has set in any direction. You remember the deaf adder?’
‘What deaf adder?’
‘The one that stopped its ear, and would not listen to the voice of the charmers, charming never so wisely. That’s Stilton. However, as I say, I’ll do what I can. And now let’s go and rout Boko out. I’m dying to hear what happened at that lunch of his.’
‘You haven’t seen Uncle Percy, then?’
‘Not yet. He was out. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing. I was only thinking that, if you had, you would have got an eye-witness’s report from him,’ I said, and was conscious of a pang of pity for my old friend and a hope that by this time he would have succeeded in thinking up a reasonably good story to cover the binge in question.
The sound of a typewriter greeted us as we crossed the threshold, indicating that Boko was still at work on that letter to Uncle Percy. It ceased abruptly as Nobby yoo-hooed, and when we passed on into the sitting-room, he was hastily dropping a sheet of paper into the basket.
‘Oh, hullo, darling,’ he said brightly. Watching him bound from his chair and fold Nobby in a close embrace, the casual observer would have supposed him to have had nothing on his mind except the hair which he had apparently not brushed for days. ‘I was just roughing out a morceau.’
‘Oh, angel, have we interrupted the flow?’
‘Not at all, not a-tall.’
‘I was so anxious to hear how the lunch went off.’
‘Of course, of course. I’ll tell you all about it. By the way, Bertie, Jeeves delivered your effects. They are in the spare room. Delighted to put you up, of course. Too bad about that fire.’
‘What fire?’ asked Nobby.
‘Jeeves tells me that Edwin has succeeded in burning Wee Nooke to the ground. Correct, Bertie?’
‘Quite correct. It was his last Friday’s act of kindness.’
‘What a shame!’ said Nobby, with a womanly sympathy that well became her.
Boko, however, looked on the bright side.
‘Personally,’ he said, ‘I consider that Bertie has got off lightly. He appears not to have been even singed. A burned house is a mere bagatelle. Generally, when Edwin is trying to catch up with his acts of kindness, human life is imperilled. The mind flits back to the time when he mended my egg boiler. Occasionally, when I am much occupied with a job of work, sparing no effort to give my public of my best, I rise early, before my housekeeper turns up in the morning. On these occasions, it is my practice to boil myself a refreshing egg, using one of those patent machines for the purpose. You know the sort of thing I mean. It rings an alarm, hopes you’ve slept well, pours water on the coffee, lights a flame underneath and gets action on the egg. Well, the day after Edwin had fixed some trifling flaw in the apparatus, the egg was scarcely in position when it flew at me like a bullet, catching me on the tip of the nose and knocking me base over apex. I bled for hours. So I maintain that if you got off with a mere fire that destroyed your house, you are sitting pretty.’
Nobby speculated as to the chances of somebody some day murdering Edwin, and we agreed that the hour must eventually produce the man.
‘And now,’ said Boko, still with that strange brightness which, knowing the facts, I could not but admire, ‘you will want to hear all about the lunch. Well, it was a great success.’
‘Darling!’
‘Yes, a notable success. I think I have made an excellent start.’
‘Were you bright?’
‘Very bright.’
‘And genial?’
‘The word understates it.’
‘Angel!’ said Nobby, and kissed him about fifteen times in rapid succession.
‘Yes,’ said Boko, ‘I think I have got him on the run. It is difficult to tell with a man like that, who conceals his emotions behind a poker face, but I believe he’s weakening. And we never expected him to fall on my neck right away, did we? It was agreed that the lunch was merely to prepare the soil.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Oh, this and that. The subject of spiders, I remember, was one that came up.’
‘Spiders?’
‘He seemed interested in spiders.’
‘I never knew that.’
‘Just a side of his character which he hasn’t happened to reveal to you, I suppose. And then, of course, after talking of this and that, we talked of that and this.’
‘There weren’t any awkward pauses?’
‘I didn’t notice any. No, he rather prattled on, as it were, especially towards the end.’
‘Did you tell him what a lot of money you were making?’
‘Oh, yes, I touched on that.’
‘I hope you explained that you were a steady young fellow and were bound to go on making it? That’s what worries him. He thinks you may blow up at any moment.’
‘Like Wee Nooke.’
‘You see, when he was a young man, just starting in the shipping business, Uncle Percy used to go about with rather a rackety set in London, and he knew a lot of writers who made quite a bit from time to time and spent it all in a couple of days and then had to live on what they could borrow. My darling father was one of them.’
This was news to me. I had never pictured Uncle Percy as a bird who had gone about with rackety sets as a young man. In fact, I had never pictured him as ever having been a young man at all. It’s always the way. If an old buster has a bristling moustache, a solid, lucrative business and the manners of a bear aroused while hibernating, you do not probe into his past and ask yourself whether he, too, in his day may not have been one of the boys.
‘I covered that point,’ said Boko. ‘It was one of the first I stressed. The modern author, I told him, is keen and hard-headed. He is out for the stuff, and when he gets it he salts it away.’
‘That ought to have pleased him.’
‘Oh, it did.’
‘Then everything’s fine.’
‘Splendid.’
‘All we need now is for Bertie to do his act.’
‘Exactly. The future hinges on Bertie.’
‘When he pleads—’
‘Ah, I didn’t mean quite that. I’m afraid you are not abreast of the quick rush and swirl of recent events. I doubt if it would be any good for Bertie to plead now. His name has become mud.’
‘Mud?’
‘“Mud”, I think, is the mot juste, Bertie?’
I was obliged to concede that this was more or less so.
‘Uncle Percy,’ I explained, ‘has got it into his head that I aided and encouraged Edwin in his fire-bug activities. This has put me back in the betting a good bit, considered as a pleader. I should find it difficult now to sway him like a reed.’
‘Then where are we?’ said Nobby, registering anguish.
Boko patted her encouragingly on the shoulder.
‘We’re all right. Don’t you worry.’
‘But if Bertie can’t plead—’
‘Ah, but you’re forgetting how versatile he is. What you are overlooking is the scullery-window-breaking side of his nature. That is what is going to see us through. Brooding tensely over this business, I have had an idea, and it is a pippin. Suppose, I said to myself, I were to save the heavy’s home from being looted by a midnight marauder, that would make him feel I had the right stuffin me, I fancy. He would say “Egad! A fine young fellow, this Fittleworth!” would he not?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘You speak doubtfully.’
‘I was only thinking that there isn’t much chance of that happening. There hasn’t been a burglary in Steeple Bumpleigh for centuries. Stilton was complaining about it only the other day. He said the place gave an ambitious young copper no scope.’
‘These things can be arranged.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘It only needs a little organization. There is going to be a burglary in Steeple Bumpleigh this very night. Bertie will attend to it.’
There
was only one comment to make on this, and I made it.
‘Hey!’ I cried.
‘Don’t interrupt, Bertie,’ said Boko reprovingly. ‘It prevents one marshalling one’s thoughts. Here in a nutshell is the scheme I have evolved. Somewhere in the small hours, Bertie and I make our way to the Hall. We approach the scullery window. He busts it. I raise the alarm. He pops off—’
‘Ah!’ I said. It was the first point he had mentioned of which I found myself approving.
‘– while I stay on, to accept the plaudits of all and be fawned on. I don’t see how it can fail. The one thing a sturdy householder of the Worplesdon type dislikes is having the house he is holding broken into, and anyone who nips such a venture in the bud creeps straight into his heart. Before the night is out, I expect to have him promising to dance at our wedding.’
‘Darling! It’s wonderful!’
It was Nobby who said that, not me. I was still chewing the lower lip in open concern. I should have remembered, I was telling myself, that that play of Boko’s, to which I alluded earlier, had been one of those mystery thrillers, and that it was only natural that some such set-up as this should have occurred to his diseased mind.
I mean to say, you get a chap whose thoughts run persistently in the direction of screams in the night and lights going out and mysterious hands appearing through the wall and people rushing about shouting ‘Here comes The Shadow!’ and it is inevitable that that will be the sort of stuff he will dish out in an emergency. I resolved there and then that I would put in a firm nolle prosequi. Nobody is more anxious than Bertram Wooster to lend a helping hand to Love’s young dream, but there are limits to what he is prepared to sign on for, and sharply defined limits, at that.
Nobby’s joyous animation had died away a bit. Like me, she was chewing the lip.
‘Yes, it’s wonderful. But—’
‘I don’t like to hear that word “but”.’
‘I was only going to say, How do you explain?’
‘Explain?’
‘Your being there to raise alarms and be fawned on.’
‘Perfectly simple. My love for you is the talk of Steeple Bumpleigh. What more natural than that I should have come to stand beneath your window, gazing up at it?’