Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin

by P. G. Wodehouse

  'I wish you would not call your step-father Jumbo.'

  'Everybody else does. How is he getting on with that detective of yours?'

  'He seems quite contented.'

  'Doesn't suspect?'

  'No. Mr. Adair is a very competent valet.'

  'These shamuses have to be able to do anything. What sort of a man is he?'

  'Well, not much to look at.'

  'But intelligent?'

  'Oh, very.'

  ‘And courageous?'

  'I guess so. Don't detectives have to be?'

  'You'd better give him the gun.'

  'Won't he have one?'

  'Probably two. An extra one for Sundays. So I can leave you with an easy mind.'

  'Yes. But I wish you weren't going.'

  'I've got to.’

  'I don't see why. People you've never met.'

  'Not all of them.'

  On the words 'Not all of them' Mavis' voice had softened and a gentle glow had come into her eyes, which normally, if Mr. Llewellyn was to be believed, had something of the austerity of a rattlesnake's. She now, though Monty would have said that such a thing was impossible, became definitely coy. It would perhaps be too much to say that a girl of her strength of character giggled, but she certainly gave a short laugh and one of her feet traced an arabesque on the carpet.

  ‘I've met Jimmy Ponder. You remember him at Cannes?'

  'We saw so many people at Cannes.'

  'But you must remember Jimmy.'

  'Was he the one who wore glasses and made funny noises when he drank soup?'

  'No, he was not the one who wore glasses and made funny noises when he drank soup,' said Mavis with some asperity. 'He is very good looking, more like a Greek god than anything, and he's crawling with money. He's a partner in one of those big jewellery firms.'

  'Of course, yes. I remember now. Tiffany's, wasn't it?'

  'No, not Tiffany's, one of the others. I've had a letter from him saying he's going to be at this Shropshire place.'

  A mother can always read between the lines where her child is concerned. It seemed to Grayce that she saw all.

  'Darling, are you in love with him?'

  'No argument about that. I go all crosseyed when I see him and my heart hammers like a bongo drum. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to plunge into matrimony till I'm quite certain it's the right move. I've had too many friends who've married Greek gods and spent the rest of their leisure time kicking themselves. I want a second opinion. That's why I'm going to get these people to invite you there. You can vet him. Give me the green light, and ho for the altar rails.'

  'If he proposes, you should add, darling.'

  'Oh, I'll see to that,' said Mavis.

  Chapter Six

  And now for a peep into the home of Gertrude Butterwick.

  One of the first things a chronicler has to learn, if he is to be any real good at chronicling, is when to ease up and take a breather. Aristotle was all for sticking to pity and terror without a break, but he was wrong. It is a mistake to curdle the reader's blood all the time. Sequences of spine-chilling drama, with people telling other people to stick 'em up and prodding them in the stomach with pistols, should be punctuated with simple domestic scenes in which fathers are shown talking quietly to daughters and daughters equally quietly to fathers. Otherwise the mixture becomes too rich. It is with an agreeable sense of being on the right track that the present chronicler, leaving for a while the hectic world of Mellingham Hall, turns to n Croxted Road, West Dulwich, London S.E. 21 and records the conversation at that address between J. B. Butterwick of Butterwick, Price and Mandelbaum, import and export, and his daughter Gertrude.

  At the moment when we start allotting space to the sort of thing Chekhov would have liked, Gertrude was in the room she called her den, saying goodbye to a finely built young man in heather mixture tweeds. He was of rather gloomy aspect, seeming to derive little enjoyment from the photographs of school hockey groups that lined the walls.

  'So that's that.’ he said.

  'I'm afraid so, Wilfred.'

  'I see,' said the young man sombrely.

  He took his departure, and he had scarcely left when Mr. Butterwick appeared.

  'Good evening, Gertrude, my dear.’

  'Oh, hullo, Daddy. You're back early, aren't you.’

  'Yes, I was suffering from indigestion, so I knocked off work and came home to see what Alka-Seltzer would do. I found this letter for you on the hall table.'

  'Thank you, Daddy. It's from Monty.’

  'Oh?' Mr. Butterwick did his best to keep disapproval from creeping into the word, but not very successfully. He was aware that he had given permission for this correspondence, but that did not mean that he had to like it. 'By the way, who was the young man I met on the stairs?'

  'Wilfred Chisholm. He's a friend of mine. We were playing in a mixed hockey game this afternoon, and he saw me home. He's an international.'

  'A what?'

  'He plays hockey for England.'

  'Does he indeed? Well, I'll be going and finding that Alka-Seltzer.’

  The door closed. Gertrude opened the letter, smiling gently as she did so. But the smile lasted only for the shortest of whiles. It was succeeded by a frown. The smiling lips became set. One foot tapped ominously on the carpet. As the Screwdriver at the Drones had learned to his cost, female hockey players are easily stirred, and Monty's obiter dicta on the subject of her father, though in his opinion erring on the side of moderation, had stirred her like a swizzle-stick.

  Never one of those girls who wait weeks before answering a letter, she felt strongly that this one called for a reply by return of post. She rose and went to her desk, looking as she sometimes looked when a referee had penalised her for 'sticks'. Nobody seeing her face would have believed that it could ever have had a gentle smile on it. Her whole air was that of one about to compose what is technically known as a stinker. A moment later she was composing it.

  Gertrude's attitude towards Monty had always borne a close resemblance to that of the school teacher in Wales towards the young Ivor Llewellyn. Educational is the word for which one is groping. Like the school teacher, she wanted a husband revised and edited to meet her specifications. Even when accepting his proposal of marriage she had told herself that the Monty who was going to put on a morning coat and sponge-bag trousers and line up beside her at the altar rails would be a very different Monty from the one to whom she was plighting her troth.

  It was as if he had been a play which she had written and was trying out on the road. When a play is out on the road before coming to London or Broadway, the words the author hears most often are 'It needs fixing'. Sometimes it is the manager who says this, sometimes a local critic, and occasionally the waiter at the hotel as he brings in breakfast. In Gertrude's case it was the inner voice which guided all her actions. 'He needs fixing', it said, and she agreed with it. Habits had to be changed, faults ironed out. And among the faults she was determined to correct was his practice of alluding to her father as a twister and a crook and expressing a hope that he would choke. She was a loving daughter, and sentiments like these jarred on her.

  She was on her fourth sheet and going well, when Mr. Butterwick came in again, looking like a horse with a secret sorrow. His indigestion was still painful, and he had discovered that he had run out of Alka-Seltzer.

  'Oh, are you busy, dear? I ought not to have interrupted you.'

  'Come in, Daddy. I'm only answering Monty's letter.'

  'So you were right; that letter was from Montrose. Is he in enjoyment of good health?'

  'I imagine so. He seems quite cheerful. At present.’ added Gertrude with a significant gnash of the teeth.

  Where is he now?'

  'At a place called Mellingham Hall in a village called Mellingham in Sussex.’

  'Idling his time away, no doubt?'

  'Apparently not. He says he is working for Ivor Llewellyn, the motion picture man.'

  'Agai
n? After his disgraceful behaviour in the matter of the brown plush Mickey Mouse? It seems incredible.’

  'It is odd.’

  'Is Mr. Llewellyn transferring his business to England?'

  'No, he's over here on a vacation. He's writing a history of the studio and has engaged Monty as a secretary.’

  'Him.’ said Mr. Butterwick, wondering whether this form of employment, like Monty's previous career as a production adviser, might not be ruled out as contravening the articles of agreement. Reluctantly he was obliged to concede that, as there was no evidence that the young man had obtained the post by skulduggery and blackmail, this secretarial job would have to be considered a job within the meaning of the act, and looking at the shape or things to come he did not like them. Even a Montrose Bodkin might hold such a position for a year, and he shuddered to think of what would happen then.

  Changing a distasteful subject, he said:

  'Have you any Alka-Seltzer, Gertrude? My own supply has run out.'

  'There's a bottle in my bathroom. I'll go and get it.'

  'Thank you, my dear. It is just here that it seems to catch me.’ said Mr. Butterwick, rubbing the neighbourhood of his third waistcoat button.

  Left alone, he stood for some moments thinking how much he disapproved of Monty and how unjust it was that a reputable man like himself should be suffering these internal pangs while a young waster of the Montrose Bodkin type, with nothing to recommend him to-thinking men's esteem, flourished like a green bay tree. Then his eye fell on the letter from Montrose Bodkin which Gertrude had taken with her to the desk for purposes of reference.

  It cannot be insisted on too strongly that import and export merchants as a class do not read other people's letters. Few branches of commerce have a stricter code. Nevertheless, it must be stated that between Mr. Butterwick's catching sight of this one and his leaping at it like a seal going after a slice of fish only a few seconds elapsed. It was bound, he felt, to contain passages relating to himself, and the urge to see what they were was too strong for him. In that disgraceful moment he forgot that he was an import and export merchant, and when Gertrude returned with the Alka-Seltzer she found him standing there with the letter in his hand. He had just got to the part where Monty described him as fat-headed and hoped that his indigestion was not yielding to treatment.

  The great advantage to a father of having a daughter like Gertrude is that he never gets scenes and reproaches from her, no matter what his deviations from the done thing, she taking the view that whatever Daddy does must be right. If Ivor Llewellyn's step-daughter Mavis had caught Ivor Llewellyn perusing her private correspondence, the aftermath would have taken on something of the quality of one of those explosions in a London street which slay six. All Gertrude said was:

  'Oh, you're reading Monty's letter?'

  Mr. Butterwick had the decency to look like a minor criminal caught picking a pocket.

  'I was glancing at it,' he admitted.

  'You can't have liked it.' '

  ‘I did not.'

  'Nor did I. And I'm writing to tell him so.'

  ‘I hope you will not mince your words.'

  Gertrude assured him that mincing was the very last thing that would happen to her words. She spoke with such quiet force that Mr. Butterwick's heart leaped with sudden hope.

  'Are you breaking the engagement?'

  'Oh no, not that.'

  'Why not?' Mr. Butterwick demanded with heat. 'Why on earth do you want to marry a fellow like this Bodkin?'

  'I promised.'

  'Promises can be broken.’

  'Not mine.'

  'But you can't love him.’

  'I'm quite fond of him.'

  'And every day you must be meeting men who would give anything to marry you.’

  The compliment plainly pleased Gertrude. A gratified smile softened the sternness of her face.

  'Well, I wouldn't say that,' she said, 'but I did have two proposals this week.’

  'Two?'

  'One was Claude Witherspoon, which of course was too absurd for words. No girl would marry Claude except to win a substantial bet.’

  Privately Mr. Butterwick considered Claude Witherspoon a far more suitable match than the last of the Bodkins, but he prudently did not say so.

  'The other was from a policeman.’

  'A what?'

  'Not an ordinary policeman. Wilfred was at Eton and Oxford, where of course he got a hockey blue. He's the son of Sir Wilberforce Chisholm, the Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, and when he wanted to follow in his father's footsteps Sir Wilberforce insisted on him starting at the bottom and working his way up.'

  'Very sensible. If I had a son, I'd start him in the packing room. Only way to learn the business.’

  'Wilfred will be something big at Scotland Yard some day.'

  'Unquestionably.’ said Mr. Butterwick, who was a firm believer in nepotism. 'Wilfred? Wilfred? Was he the young man I met on the stairs?'

  'Yes.'

  'A splendid young man he looked. Charming manners, too. He apologised most gracefully for treading on my toe.’

  'Yes, Wilfred's a dear.'

  'And he has asked you to marry him?'

  'He was doing it just before you met him.’

  'Well, why don't you?'

  'How can I? I've promised to marry Monty.'

  Mr. Butterwick had no more to say. Against Gertrude's conscientiousness he knew that argument would be futile. Her late mother, he recalled, had been the same, always insisting that their position demanded that they entertain as dinner guests people whom, if left to himself, he would not have asked to dinner with a ten-foot pole. And what made it so ironical was that in matters where her ethical code was not involved his word was law to Gertrude. Nobody could have had a more dutiful daughter. It was simply that she suffered from elephantiasis of the conscience. In a mad moment she had become betrothed to Montrose Bodkin and conscience would see to it that she remained betrothed.

  Unless . . .

  Mr. Butterwick, who had returned to his study, sat up with a jerk. He had had an idea.

  There was one thing which would render that betrothal null and void. To wit, the failure of Montrose Bodkin to hold his post with Ivor Llewellyn for a year.

  He knew nothing of Mr. Llewellyn except that he was the head of a great industry, but a man cannot reach a position like that unless he is a man of intelligence. And a man of intelligence would surely be quick to appreciate sound reasoning. Suppose he were to ask Mr. Llewellyn to lunch and over the luncheon table point out to him the rashness of employing a man like Montrose Bodkin as a secretary. Would not this cause him to relieve Montrose Bodkin of his portfolio?

  It was certainly worth putting to the test. What, Mr. Butterwick asked himself, had he to lose?

  With import and export merchants to think is to act. Thirty seconds later he was at his writing table. A minute later he had assembled pen, writing paper and envelope.

  'Dear Mr. Llewellyn', he wrote.

  2

  Ivor Llewellyn, who had been singing what he could remember of 'Happy Days Are Here Again', broke off in the middle of a bar, to the relief of passing pedestrians and traffic.

  'You ever been in prison, Bodkin?' he asked.

  Monty said he had not. He was at the wheel of the Cadillac which Grayce had bought on arrival at Mellingham Hall, and he and Mr. Llewellyn were driving to London, where, he gathered, the latter had a business appointment.

  'I did a stretch once in my younger days,' said Mr. Llewellyn. 'Drunk and disorderly and resisting the police. Not a pleasant experience.'

  Monty said he imagined not.

  'But worth it for the wonderful thrill it gives you when they let you out. You feel like a caged skylark which suddenly finds that somebody has left the cage door open. That's how I feel now. You are probably thinking to yourself that I am kind of peppy this morning.'

  'I noticed that you were singing a good deal.'

  'And I'll tell you wh
y. I'm going to London to have lunch with a man, and what you must be wondering when I reveal that, is how I ever persuaded my wife to let me go. By using the little grey cells of my brain, Bodkin, that was how. I told her I had to see my lawyer. One of the advantages of being head of a motion picture studio is that you are always having to see your lawyer. Wives may look askance, but there's nothing they can do about it. You tell them that if you don't see your lawyer, a scandal will break which will rock the motion picture industry to its foundations and they're baffled.'

  'Then you are not seeing your lawyer?'

  'No, Bodkin, I am not. I had a letter from this man saying he wanted to confer with me on a matter of importance and would I meet him at his club, so I am meeting him at his club. I need scarcely tell you how I am looking forward to lunching with him there. I know these London clubs. Good solid fare. Soup as a starter, then game pie or roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and some succulent dessert to finish up with. And, of course, cheese. You say you've noticed I've been singing a good deal. Can you wonder? Now is the winter of my discontent made glorious summer by this J. B. Butterwick. Odd how these things come back to you. I've remembered that bit since the time I was telling you about when I was getting a thorough grounding in English Literature in order to marry that school marm. Careful, man! You nearly had us in the ditch.'

  And indeed Monty had given the wheel a dangerous twiddle, causing a meditative hen which had stepped into the road to take to itself the wings of the dove and disappear over the horizon. He was profoundly stirred. His was not a particularly quick mind, but even a slower thinker would have been able to recognize as sinister the fact that Gertrude's father had established communication with Mr. Llewellyn.

  There could be but one explanation of his desire to spend good money giving Ivor Llewellyn lunch. It was his intention to do all that human power could do to persuade him to make an immediate change of secretaries. How much better, he could hear him saying, if Mr. Llewellyn were to employ to assist him in his monumental work some keen young fellow with hornrimmed glasses and a thorough knowledge of typing and shorthand. Surely, my dear Mr. Llewellyn, he would say, after the disgraceful way he behaved in the matter of the brown plush Mickey Mouse, Montrose Bodkin is the last person in whom you can have confidence. If you take my advice, my dear Mr. Llewellyn, you will dismiss him without delay. Cast him into outer darkness, my dear Mr. Llewellyn, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth, and see that he stays there.