by Unknown
‘A touch of thwarting about it, perhaps.’
And before coming to me he had been to see my cousin Ricky, and Ricky had managed to put his back up about something. So he was in dangerous mood when he got here. And we had scarcely sat down to lunch, when up popped a soufflé looking like a diseased custard. This did not help to ease the strain. And when we had had our coffee, and the time came for him to catch his train and he told me to go to the station with him and I said I couldn’t, that seemed to touch him off. He reached for the poker and started in.’
‘Why wouldn’t you go to the station with him?’
‘I couldn’t. I was late for my dancing lesson.’
‘I was going to ask you about that. What’s this idea of your suddenly taking dancing lessons?’
‘Valerie insisted on it. She said I danced like a dromedary with the staggers.’
Pongo did not blame his sister. Indeed, in comparing her loved one to a dromedary with the staggers she had been, he thought, rather complimentary.
‘How are you coming along?’
‘I think I’m making progress. Polly assures me so. Polly says I shall be able to go to the Ball to-morrow night. The Bohemian Ball at the Albert Hall. I’m going as a Boy Scout. I want to take Valerie to it and surprise her. Polly thinks I can get by all right.’
‘But isn’t Val at Le Touquet?’
‘She’s flying back to-day.’
‘Oh, I see. Tell me, who is this Polly who has crept into your conversation?’
‘She’s the girl who’s teaching me. I met her through Ricky. She’s a friend of his. Polly Pott. A nice, sympathetic sort of girl I’d always found her, so when this business of staggering dromedaries came up, I asked her if she would give me a few lessons.’
A pang of pity for this heroine shot through Pongo. He himself was reading for the Bar and had sometimes felt like cracking under the strain of it all, but he saw that compared with Polly Pott he was on velvet. Between trying to extract some meaning from the rambling writings of the Messrs. Coke and Littleton and teaching dancing to Horace Davenport there was a substantial difference, and it was the person on whom life had thrust the latter task who must be considered to have drawn the short straw. The trouble was, he reflected, that Horace was so tall. A chap of that length didn’t really get on to what his feet were doing till some minutes after it had happened. What you wanted, of course, was to slice him in half and have two Horaces.
‘Polly Pott, eh? Any relation to Claude Pott, private investigator?’
‘His daughter. What do you know about Claude Pott, private investigator?’
Pongo stirred uneasily. Too late, he saw that he had rather invited the question.
‘Well, the fact is, old man, happening to pass the writing-table just now, and chancing inadvertently to catch sight of that document—’
‘I wish you wouldn’t read my letters.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t. But I could see that this wasn’t a letter. Just a document. So I ran my eye over it. I thought it might possibly be something with reference to which you were going to seek my advice, knowing me to be a bit of a nib in legal matters, and I felt that a lot of time would be saved if I had the res at my Wngers’ ends.’
‘And now I suppose you’ll go racing off to Valerie to tell her I had her watched by detectives while she was at Le Touquet.’
A blinding light flashed upon Pongo.
‘Great Scott! Was that what the thing was about?’
He pursed his lips – not too tightly, for he was still hoping to float that loan, but tightly enough to indicate that the Twistle-tons had their pride and resented their sisters being tailed up by detectives. Horace read his thoughts correctly.
‘Yes, I know, but you don’t realize the position, Pongo. It was the Drones Club week-end at Le Touquet. The thought of the girl I loved surrounded by about eighty-seven members of the Drones in the lax atmosphere of a foreign pleasure resort while I was far away was like a knife in my heart. Polly happened to mention that her father was a private investigator, never happier than when putting on a false nose and shadowing people, and the temptation was more than I could resist. Pongo, for Heaven’s sake don’t breathe a word about this to Valerie. If she has a fault, it is that she’s touchy. The sweetest of her sex, but a bit apt to go in off the deep end, when stirred. I can trust you?’
Pongo unpursed his lips. He understood all and pardoned all.
‘Of course, old man. She shall never learn from me. You don’t suppose I would wreck the happiness of my best friend . . . my oldest friend . . . my dearest friend . . . Horace, old top,’ said Pongo, for it was a Twistleton trait to recognize when the iron was hot, ‘I wonder if . . . I wonder whether . . . I wonder if you could possibly. . . .’
“Mr Claude Pott,” announced Webster at the door.
To Pongo Twistleton, whose idea of a private investigator was a hawk-faced man with keen, piercing eyes and the general deportment of a leopard, Claude Pott came as a complete surprise. Hawks have no chins. Claude Pott had two. Leopards pad. Pott waddled. And his eyes, so far from being keen and piercing, were dull and expressionless, seeming, as is so often the case with those who go through life endeavouring to conceal their thoughts from the world, to be covered with a sort of film or glaze.
He was a stout, round, bald, pursy little man of about fifty, who might have been taken for a Silver Ring bookie or a minor Shakespearian actor – and, oddly enough, in the course of a life in which he had played many parts, he had actually been both.
‘Good afternoon, Mr D.,’ said this gargoyle.
‘Hullo, Mr Pott. When did you get back?’
‘Last night, sir. And thinking it over in bed this morning it occurred to me that it might be best if I were to deliver the concluding portion of my report verbally, thus saving time.’
‘Oh, there’s some more?’
“Yes, sir. I will apprise you of the facts,” said Claude Pott, giving Pongo a rather hard stare, ‘when you are at liberty.’
‘Oh, that’s all right. You may speak freely before Mr Twistleton. He knows all. This is Mr Twistleton, The Subject’s brother.’
‘Pongo to pals,’ murmured that young man weakly. He was finding the hard stare trying.
The austerity of the investigator’s manner relaxed.
“Mr Pongo Twistleton? Then you must be the nephew of the Earl of Ickenham that he used to talk about.”
‘Yes, he’s my uncle.’
‘A splendid gentleman. One of the real old school. A sportsman to his fingertips.’
Pongo, though fond of his uncle, could not quite bring himself to share this wholehearted enthusiasm.
‘Yes, Uncle Fred’s all right, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Apart from being loopy to the tonsils. You know him, do you?’
‘I do indeed, sir. It was he who most kindly advanced me the money to start in business as a private investigator. So The Subject is Lord I’s niece, is she? How odd! That his lordship should have financed me in my venture, I mean, and before I know where I am, I’m following his niece and taking notes of her movements. Strange!’ said Mr Pott. ‘Queer!’
‘Curious,’ assented Pongo.
‘Unusual,’ said Claude Pott.
‘Bizarre,’ suggested Pongo.
‘Most. Shows what a small world it is.’
‘Dashed small.’
Horace, who had been listening to these philosophical exchanges with some impatience, intervened.
‘You were going to make your report, Mr Pott.’
‘Coo!’ said Claude Pott, called to order. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? Well then, Mr D., to put the thing in a nutshell, I regret to have to inform you that there’s been what you might call a bit of an unfortunate occurrence. On the nineteenth Ap., which was yesterday, The Subject, having lunched at Hotel Picardy with party consisting of two females, three males, proceeded to the golf club, where she took out her hockey-knockers and started playing round with one associate, the junior professional, self follo
wing at a cautious distance. For some time nothing noteworthy transpired, but at the fourteenth hole . . . I don’t know if you happen to be familiar with the golf links at Le Touquet, sir?’
‘Oh, rather.’
‘Then you will be aware that as you pass from the fourteenth tee along the fairway you come opposite a house with a hedge in front of it. And just as The Subject came opposite this house, there appeared behind the hedge two males, one with cocktail shaker. They started yodelling to The Subject, evidently inviting her to step along and have one, and The Subject, dismissing her associate, went through the gate in the hedge and by the time I came up was lost to sight in the house.’
A soft groan broke from Horace Davenport. He had the air of a man who was contemplating burying his face in his hands.
‘Acting in your interests, I, too, passed through the gate and crept to the window from behind which I could hear chat and revelry in progress. And I was just stooping down to investigate further, when a hand fell on my shoulder and, turning, I perceived one male. And at the same moment The Subject, poking her head out of the window, observed “Nice work, Barmy. That’s the blighter that’s been following me about all the week. You be knocking his head off, while Catsmeat phones for the police. We’ll have him sent to the guillotine for ingrowing molestation.” And I saw that there was only one course for me to pursue.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought even that,’ said Pongo, who had been following the narrative with close attention.
‘Yes, sir – one. I could clear myself by issuing a full statement.”
A sharp, agonized cry escaped Horace Davenport.
‘Yes, sir. I’m sorry, but there was no alternative. I had no desire to get embroiled with French rozzers. I issued my statement. While the male, Barmy, was calling me a trailing arbutus and the male, Catsmeat, was saying did anyone know the French for “police” and The Subject was talking about horsewhips, I explained the situation fully. It took me some time to get the facts into their heads, but I managed it finally and was permitted to depart, The Subject saying that if she ever set eyes on me again—’
‘Miss Twistleton,’ announced Webster.
‘Well, good-bye, all,’ said Claude Pott.
A critic who had been disappointed by the absence of the leopard note in Mr Pott’s demeanour would have found nothing to complain of in that of Pongo’s sister Valerie. She was a tall, handsome girl, who seemed to be running a temperature, and her whole aspect, as she came into the room, was that of some jungle creature advancing on its prey.
‘Worm!’ she said, opening the conversation.
‘Valerie, darling, let me explain!’
‘Let me explain,’ said Pongo.
His sister directed at him a stare of a hardness far exceeding that of Mr Pott.
‘Could you possibly keep your fat head out of this?’
‘No, I couldn’t keep my fat head out of it,’ said Pongo. ‘You don’t think I’m going to stand supinely by and see a good man wronged, do you? Why should you barge in here, gnashing your bally teeth, just because Horace sicked Claude Pott, private investigator, on to you? If you had any sense, you would see that it was a compliment, really. Shows how much he loves you.’
‘Oh, does it? Well—’
‘Valerie, darling!’
The girl turned to Pongo.
‘Would you,’ she said formally, ‘be good enough to ask your friend not to address me as “Valerie, darling.” My name is Miss Twistleton.’
‘Your name,’ said Pongo, with brotherly sternness, ‘will be mud if you pass up an excellent bet like good old Horace Davenport – the whitest man I know – simply because his great love made him want to keep an eye on you during Drones Club week-end.’
‘I did not—’
‘And as events have proved he was thoroughly justified in the course he took. You appear to have been cutting up like a glamour girl at a Hollywood party. What about those two males, one with cocktail shaker?’
‘I did not—’
‘And the m. you drove to Montreuil with?’
‘Yes,’ said Horace, for the first time perking up and showing a little of the Pendlebury-Davenport Wre. ‘What about the m. you drove to Montreuil with?’
Valerie Twistleton’s face was cold and hard.
‘If you will allow me to speak for a moment and not keep interrupting every time I open my mouth, I was about to say that I did not come here to argue. I merely came to inform you that our engagement is at an end, and that a notice to that effect will appear in The Times to-morrow morning. The only explanation I can think of that offers a particle of excuse for your conduct is that you have finally gone off your rocker. I’ve been expecting it for months. Look at your Uncle Alaric. Barmy to the back teeth.’
Horace Davenport was in the depths, but he could not let this pass.
‘That’s all right about my Uncle Alaric. What price your Uncle Fred?’
‘What about him?’
‘Loopy to the tonsils.’
‘My Uncle Fred is not loopy to the tonsils.’
‘Yes, he is. Pongo says so.’
‘Pongo’s an ass.’
Pongo raised his eyebrows.
‘Cannot we,’ he suggested coldly, ‘preserve the decencies of debate?’
‘This isn’t a debate. As I told you before, I came here simply to inform Mr Davenport that our engagement is jolly well terminated.’
There was a set look on Horace’s face. He took off his spectacles, and polished them with an ominous calm.
‘So you’re handing me the mitten?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘You’ll be sorry.’
‘No, I shan’t.’
‘I shall go straight to the devil.’
‘All right, trot along.’
‘I shall plunge into a riot of reckless living.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘And my first step, I may mention, will be to take Polly Pott to that Bohemian Ball at the Albert Hall.’
‘Poor soul! I hope you will do the square thing by her.’
‘I fail to understand you.’
‘Well, she’ll need a pair of crutches next day. In common fairness you ought to pay for them.’
There was a silence. Only the sound of tense breathing could be heard – the breathing of a man with whom a woman has gone just too far.
‘If you will be kind enough to buzz off,’ said Horace icily, ‘I will be ringing her up now.’
The door slammed. He went to the telephone.
Pongo cleared his throat. It was not precisely the moment he would have chosen for putting his fortune to the test, had he been free to choose, but his needs were immediate, the day was already well advanced and no business done, and he had gathered that Horace’s time in the near future was likely to be rather fully occupied. So now he cleared his throat and, shooting his cuffs, called upon the splendid Twistleton courage to nerve him for his task.
‘Horace, old man.’
‘Hullo?’
‘Horace, old chap.’
‘Hullo? Polly?’
‘Horace, old egg.’
‘Half a minute. There’s somebody talking. Well?’
‘Horace, old top, you remember what we were starting to chat about when the recent Pott blew in. What I was going to say, when we were interrupted, was that owing to circumstances over which I had no – or very little – control. . . .’
‘Buck up. Don’t take all day over it.’
Pongo saw that preambles would have to be dispensed with.
‘Can you lend me two hundred quid?’
‘No.’
‘Oh? Right ho. Well, in that case,’ said Pongo stiffly, ‘tinkerty-tonk.’
He left the room and walked round to the garage where he kept his Buffy-Porson two-seater, and instructed the proprietor to have it in readiness for him on the morrow.
‘Going far, sir?’
‘To Ickenham, in Hampshire,’ said Pongo.
He spoke moodily. He
had not planned to reveal his financial difficulties to his Uncle Fred, but he could think of no other source of revenue.
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