The constable, I say, was riding without his hands: and but for this the disaster, when it occurred, might not have been so complete. I was a bit of a cyclist myself in my youth – I think I have mentioned that I once won a choir boys’ handicap at some village sports – and I can testify that when you are riding without your hands, privacy and a complete freedom from interruption are of the essence. The merest suggestion of an unexpected Scottie connecting with the ankle bone at such a time, and you swoop into a sudden swerve. And, as everybody knows, if the hands are not firmly on the handlebars, a sudden swerve spells a smeller.
And so it happened now. A smeller – and among the finest I have ever been privileged to witness – was what this officer of the law came. One moment he was with us, all merry and bright; the next he was in the ditch, a sort of macédoine of arms and legs and wheels, with the terrier standing on the edge, looking down at him with that rather offensive expression of virtuous smugness which I have often noticed on the faces of Aberdeen terriers in their clashes with humanity.
And as he threshed about in the ditch, endeavouring to unscramble himself, a girl came round the corner, an attractive young prune upholstered in heather-mixture tweeds, and I recognized the familiar features of S. Byng.
After what Gussie had said, I ought to have been expecting Stiffy, of course. Seeing an Aberdeen terrier, I should have gathered that it belonged to her. I might have said to myself: If Scotties come, can Stiffy be far behind?
Stiffy was plainly vexed with the policeman. You could see it in her manner. She hooked the crook of her stick over the Scottie’s collar and drew him back; then addressed herself to the man, who had now begun to emerge from the ditch like Venus rising from the foam.
‘What on earth,’ she demanded, ‘did you do that for?’
It was no business of mine, of course, but I couldn’t help feeling that she might have made a more tactful approach to what threatened to be a difficult and delicate conference. And I could see that the policeman felt the same. There was a good deal of mud on his face, but not enough to hide the wounded expression.
‘You might have scared him out of his wits, hurling yourself about like that. Poor old Bartholomew, did the ugly man nearly squash him flat?’
Again I missed the tactful note. In describing this public servant as ugly, she was undoubtedly technically correct. Only if the competition had consisted of Sir Watkyn Bassett, Oofy Prosser of the Drones, and a few more fellows like that, could he have hoped to win to success in a beauty contest. But one doesn’t want to rub these things in. Suavity is what you need on these occasions. You can’t beat suavity.
The policeman had now lifted himself and bicycle out of the abyss, and was putting the latter through a series of tests, to ascertain the extent of the damage. Satisfied that it was slight, he turned and eyed Stiffy rather as old Bassett had eyed me on the occasion when I had occupied the Bosher Street dock.
‘I was proceeding along the public highway,’ he began, in a slow, measured tone, as if he were giving evidence in court, ‘and the dorg leaped at me in a verlent manner. I was zurled from the bersicle –’
Stiffy seized upon the point like a practised debater.
‘Well, you shouldn’t ride a bicycle. Bartholomew hates bicycles.’
‘I ride a bersicle, miss, because if I didn’t I should have to cover my beat on foot.’
‘Do you good. Get some of the fat off you.’
‘That,’ said the policeman, no mean debater himself, producing a notebook from the recesses of his costume and blowing a water-beetle off it, ‘is not the point at issue. The point at issue is that this makes twice that the animal has committed an aggravated assault on my person, and I shall have to summons you once more, miss, for being in possession of a savage dorg not under proper control.’
The thrust was a keen one, but Stiffy came back strongly.
‘Don’t be an ass, Oates. You can’t expect a dog to pass up a policeman on a bicycle. It isn’t human nature. And I’ll bet you started it, anyway. You must have teased him, or something, and I may as well tell you that I intend to fight this case to the House of Lords. I shall call this gentleman as a material witness.’ She turned to me, and for the first time became aware that I was no gentleman, but an old friend. ‘Oh, hallo, Bertie.’
‘Hallo, Stiffy.’
‘When did you get here?’
‘Oh, recently.’
‘Did you see what happened?’
‘Oh, rather. Ringside seat throughout.’
‘Well, stand by to be subpoenaed.’
‘Right ho.’
The policeman had been taking a sort of inventory and writing it down in the book. He was now in a position to call the score.
‘Piecer skin scraped off right knee. Bruise or contusion on left elbow. Scratch on nose. Uniform covered with mud and’ll have to go and be cleaned. Also shock – severe. You will receive the summons in due course, miss.’
He mounted his bicycle and rode off, causing the dog Bartholomew to make a passionate bound that nearly unshipped him from the restraining stick. Stiffy stood for a moment looking after him a bit yearningly, like a girl who wished that she had half a brick handy. Then she turned away, and I came straight down to brass tacks.
‘Stiffy,’ I said, ‘passing lightly over all the guff about being charmed to see you again and how well you’re looking and all that, have you got a small, brown, leather-covered notebook that Gussie Fink-Nottle dropped in the stable yard yesterday?’
She did not reply, seeming to be musing – no doubt on the recent Oates. I repeated the question, and she came out of the trance.
‘Notebook?’
‘Small, brown, leather-covered one.’
‘Full of a lot of breezy personal remarks?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Yes, I’ve got it.’
I flung the hands heavenwards and uttered a joyful yowl. The dog Bartholomew gave me an unpleasant look and said something under his breath in Gaelic, but I ignored him. A kennel of Aberdeen terriers could have rolled their eyes and bared the wisdom tooth without impairing this ecstatic moment.
‘Gosh, what a relief!’
‘Does it belong to Gussie Fink-Nottle?’
‘Yes.’
‘You mean to say that it was Gussie who wrote those really excellent character studies of Roderick Spode and Uncle Watkyn? I wouldn’t have thought he had it in him.’
‘Nobody would. It’s a most interesting story. It appears –’
‘Though why anyone should waste time on Spode and Uncle Watkyn when there was Oates simply crying out to be written about, I can’t imagine. I don’t think I have ever met a man, Bertie, who gets in the hair so consistently as this Eustace Oates. He makes me tired. He goes swanking about on that bicycle of his, simply asking for it, and then complains when he gets it. And why should he discriminate against poor Bartholomew in this sickening way? Every red-blooded dog in the village has had a go at his trousers and he knows it.’
‘Where’s that book, Stiffy?’ I said, returning to the res.
‘Never mind about books. Let’s stick to Eustace Oates. Do you think he means to summons me?’
I said that, reading between the lines, that was rather the impression I had gathered, and she made what I believe is known as a moue … Is it moue? … Shoving out the lips, I mean, and drawing them quickly back again.
‘I’m afraid so, too. There is only one word for Eustace Oates, and that is “malignant”. He just goes about seeking whom he may devour. Oh, well, more work for Uncle Watkyn.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I shall come up before him.’
‘Then he does still operate, even though retired?’ I said, remembering with some uneasiness the conversation between this ex-beak and Roderick Spode in the collection room.
‘He only retired from Bosher Street. You can’t choke a man off magistrating, once it’s in his blood. He’s a Justice of the Peace now. He holds a sort of Star
Chamber court in the library. That’s where I always come up. I’ll be flitting about, doing the flowers, or sitting in my room with a good book, and the butler comes and says I’m wanted in the library. And there’s Uncle Watkyn at the desk, looking like Judge Jeffreys, with Oates waiting to give evidence.’
I could picture the scene. Unpleasant, of course. The sort of thing that casts a gloom over a girl’s home life.
‘And it always ends the same way, with him putting on the black cap and soaking me. He never listens to a word I say. I don’t believe the man understands the ABC of justice.’
‘That’s how he struck me, when I attended his tribunal.’
‘And the worst of it is, he knows just what my allowance is, so can figure out exactly how much the purse will stand. Twice this year he’s skinned me to the bone, each time at the instigation of this man Oates – once for exceeding the speed limit in a built-up area, and once because Bartholomew gave him the teeniest little nip on the ankle.’
I tut-tutted sympathetically, but I was wishing that I could edge the conversation back to that notebook. One so frequently finds in girls a disinclination to stick to the important subject.
‘The way Oates went on about it, you would have thought Bartholomew had taken his pound of flesh. And I suppose it’s all going to happen again now. I’m fed up with this police persecution. One might as well be in Russia. Don’t you loathe policemen, Bertie?’
I was not prepared to go quite so far as this in my attitude towards an, on the whole, excellent body of men.
‘Well, not en masse, if you understand the expression. I suppose they vary, like other sections of the community, some being full of quiet charm, others not so full. I’ve met some very decent policemen. With the one on duty outside the Drones I am distinctly chummy. In re this Oates of yours, I haven’t seen enough of him, of course, to form an opinion.’
‘Well, you can take it from me that he’s one of the worst. And a bitter retribution awaits him. Do you remember the time you gave me lunch at your flat? You were telling me about how you tried to pinch that policeman’s helmet in Leicester Square.’
‘That was when I first met your uncle. It was that that brought us together.’
‘Well, I didn’t think much of it at the time, but the other day it suddenly came back to me, and I said to myself: “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings!” For months I had been trying to think of a way of getting back at this man Oates, and you had showed it to me.’
I started. It seemed to me that her words could bear but one interpretation.
‘You aren’t going to pinch his helmet?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I think you’re wise.’
‘It’s man’s work. I can see that. So I’ve told Harold to do it. He has often said he would do anything in the world for me, bless him.’
Stiffy’s map, as a rule, tends to be rather grave and dreamy, giving the impression that she is thinking deep, beautiful thoughts. Quite misleading, of course. I don’t suppose she would recognize a deep, beautiful thought, if you handed it to her on a skewer with tartare sauce. Like Jeeves, she doesn’t often smile, but now her lips had parted – ecstatically, I think – I should have to check up with Jeeves – and her eyes were sparkling.
‘What a man!’ she said. ‘We’re engaged, you know.’
‘Oh, are you?’
‘Yes, but don’t tell a soul. It’s frightfully secret. Uncle Watkyn mustn’t know about it till he has been well sweetened.’
‘And who is this Harold?’
‘The curate down in the village.’ She turned to the dog Bartholomew. ‘Is lovely kind curate going to pinch bad, ugly policeman’s helmet for his muzzer, zen, and make her very, very happy?’ she said.
Or words to that general trend. I can’t do the dialect, of course.
I stared at the young pill, appalled at her moral code, if you could call it that. You know, the more I see of women, the more I think that there ought to be a law. Something has got to be done about this sex, or the whole fabric of Society will collapse, and then what silly asses we shall all look.
‘Curate?’ I said. ‘But, Stiffy, you can’t ask a curate to go about pinching policemen’s helmets.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, it’s most unusual. You’ll get the poor bird unfrocked.’
‘Unfrocked?’
‘It’s something they do to parsons when they catch them bending. And this will inevitably be the outcome of the frightful task you have apportioned to the sainted Harold.’
‘I don’t see that it’s a frightful task.’
‘You aren’t telling me that it’s the sort of thing that comes naturally to curates?’
‘Yes, I am. It ought to be right up Harold’s street. When he was at Magdalen, before he saw the light, he was the dickens of a chap. Always doing things like that.’
Her mention of Magdalen interested me. It had been my own college.
‘Magdalen man, is he? What year? Perhaps I know him.’
‘Of course you do. He often speaks of you, and was delighted when I told him you were coming here. Harold Pinker.’
I was astounded.
‘Harold Pinker? Old Stinker Pinker? Great Scott! One of my dearest pals. I’ve often wondered where he had got to. And all the while he had sneaked off and become a curate. It just shows you how true it is that one-half of the world doesn’t know how the other three-quarters lives. Stinker Pinker, by Jove! You really mean that old Stinker cures souls?’
‘Certainly. And jolly well, too. The nibs think very highly of him. Any moment now, he may get a vicarage, and then watch his smoke. He’ll be a Bishop some day.’
The excitement of discovering a long-lost buddy waned. I found myself returning to the practical issues. I became grave.
And I’ll tell you why I became grave. It was all very well for Stiffy to say that this thing would be right up old Stinker’s street. She didn’t know him as I did. I had watched Harold Pinker through the formative years of life, and I knew him for what he was – a large, lumbering, Newfoundland puppy of a chap – full of zeal, yes; doing his best, true; but never quite able to make the grade; a man, in short, who if there was a chance of bungling an enterprise and landing himself in the soup, would snatch at it. At the idea of him being turned on to perform the extraordinarily delicate task of swiping Constable Oates’s helmet, the blood froze. He hadn’t a chance of getting away with it.
I thought of Stinker, the youth. Built rather on the lines of Roderick Spode, he had played Rugby football not only for his University but also for England, and at the art of hurling an opponent into a mud puddle and jumping on his neck with cleated boots had had few, if any, superiors. If I had wanted someone to help me out with a mad bull, he would have been my first choice. If by some mischance I had found myself trapped in the underground den of the Secret Nine, there was nobody I would rather have seen coming down the chimney than the Rev. Harold Pinker.
But mere thews and sinews do not qualify a man to pinch policemen’s helmets. You need finesse.
‘He will, will he?’ I said. ‘A fat lot of bishing he’s going to do, if he’s caught sneaking helmets from members of his flock.’
‘He won’t be caught.’
‘Of course he’ll be caught. At the old Alma Mater he was always caught. He seemed to have no notion whatsoever of going about a thing in a subtle, tactful way. Chuck it, Stiffy. Abandon the whole project.’
‘No.’
‘Stiffy!’
‘No. The show must go on.’
I gave it up. I could see plainly that it would be mere waste of time to try to argue her out of her girlish daydreams. She had the same type of mind, I perceived, as Roberta Wickham, who once persuaded me to go by night to the bedroom of a fellow guest at a country house and puncture his hot-water bottle with a darning needle on the end of a stick.
‘Well, if it must be, I suppose,’ I said resignedly. ‘But at least impress upon him that it is esse
ntial, when pinching policemen’s helmets, to give a forward shove before applying the upwards lift. Otherwise, the subject’s chin catches in the strap. It was to overlooking this vital point that my own downfall in Leicester Square was due. The strap caught, the cop was enabled to turn and clutch, and before I knew what had happened I was in the dock, saying “Yes, your Honour” and “No, your Honour” to your Uncle Watkyn.’
I fell into a thoughtful silence, as I brooded on the dark future lying in wait for an old friend. I am not a weak man, but I was beginning to wonder if I had been right in squelching so curtly Jeeves’s efforts to get me off on a Round-The-World cruise. Whatever you may say against these excursions – the cramped conditions of shipboard, the possibility of getting mixed up with a crowd of bores, the nuisance of having to go and look at the Taj Mahal – at least there is this to be said in their favour, that you escape the mental agony of watching innocent curates dishing their careers and forfeiting all chance of rising to great heights in the Church by getting caught bonneting their parishioners.
I heaved a sigh, and resumed the conversation.
‘So you and Stinker are engaged, are you? Why didn’t you tell me when you lunched at the flat?’
‘It hadn’t happened then. Oh, Bertie, I’m so happy I could bite a grape. At least, I shall be, if we can get Uncle Watkyn thinking along “Bless you, my children” lines.’
‘Oh, yes, you were saying, weren’t you? About him being sweetened. How do you mean, sweetened?’
‘That’s what I want to have a talk with you about. You remember what I said in my telegram, about there being something I wanted you to do for me?’
I started. A well-defined uneasiness crept over me. I had forgotten all about that telegram of hers.
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