‘Did what?’
‘Jabbed him with my assegai. Mind you,’ said Horace, ‘I didn’t mean to. It wasn’t as if I had had any settled plans. I was just trying to hold him off. But I misjudged the distance, and the next thing I knew he was rubbing his stomach and coming for me with a nasty glint in his eyes. So I jabbed him again, and then things hotted up still further. And what really led to my getting arrested was that he managed to edge past the assegai and land me a juicy one on the jaw.’
Lord Ickenham found himself unable to reconcile cause and effect.
‘But surely no policeman, however flat-footed, would take a man into custody for being landed a juicy one on the jaw. You have probably got your facts twisted. I expect we shall find, when we look into it, that it was Ricky who was taken to Marlborough Street.’
‘No, you see what happened was this juicy one on the jaw made me a bit dizzy, and I didn’t quite know what I was doing. Everything was a sort of blur, and I just jabbed wildly in the general direction of what I thought was the seat of the trouble. And after a while I discovered that I was jabbing a female dressed as Marie Antoinette. It came as a great surprise to me. As a matter of fact, I had been rather puzzled for some moments. You see, I could feel the assegai going into some yielding substance, and I was surprised that Ricky was so squashy and had such a high voice. And then, as I say, I found it wasn’t Ricky, but this woman.’
‘Embarrassing.’
‘It was a bit. The man who was with the woman summoned the cops. And what made it still more awkward was that by that time Ricky was nowhere near. Almost at the start of the proceedings, it appeared, people had gripped him and bustled him off. So that when the policeman arrived and found me running amuck with an assegai apparently without provocation, it was rather difficult to convince him that I wasn’t tight. In fact, I didn’t convince him. The magistrate was a bit terse about it all this morning. I say, are you sure Ricky wasn’t hanging about outside?’
‘We saw no signs of him.’
‘Then I’ll get dressed and go round and see Polly.’
‘With what motive?’
‘Well, dash it, I want to tell her to go and explain to Ricky that my behaviour towards her throughout was scrupulously correct. At present, he’s got the idea that I’m a kind of …. Who was the chap who was such a devil with the other sex? … Donald something.’
‘Donald Duck?’
‘Don Juan. That’s the fellow I mean. Unless I can convince Ricky immediately that Pm not a Don Juan and was not up to any funny business with Polly, the worst will happen. You’ve no notion what he was like last night. Absolutely frothing at the mouth. I must go and see her at once.’
‘And if he comes in while you are there?’ Horace, half-way to the door, halted.
‘I never thought of that.’
‘No.’
‘You think it would be better to telephone her?’
‘I don’t think anything of the sort. You can’t conduct a delicate negotiation like this over the telephone. You need the language of the eye … those little appealing gestures of the hand … Obviously you must entrust the thing to an ambassador. And what better ambassador could you have than Pongo here?’
‘Pongo?’
‘A silver-tongued orator, if ever there was one. Oh, I know what you are thinking,’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘You feel that there may be a coolness on his side, due to the fact that you recently refused to lend him a bit of money. My dear boy, Pongo is too big and fine to be unwilling to help you out because of that. Besides, in return for his services you will of course naturally slip him the trifle he requires.’
‘But he said he wanted two hundred pounds.’
‘Two hundred and fifty. He doesn’t always speak distinctly.’
‘But that’s a frightful lot.’
‘To a man of your wealth as the price of your safety? You show a cheeseparing spirit which I do nor like to see. Fight against it.’
‘But, dash it, why does everybody come trying to touch me?’
‘Because you’ve got the stuff, my boy. It is the penalty you pay for having an ancestress who couldn’t say No to Charles the Second.’
Horace chewed a dubious lip.
‘I don’t see how I can manage —’Well, please yourself, of course. Tell me about this fellow Ricky, Pongo. A rather formidable chap, is he? Robust? Well developed? Muscular? His strength is as the strength often?’
‘Definitely, Uncle Fred.’
‘And in addition to that he appears to be both jealous and quick-tempered. An unpleasant combination. One of those men, I imagine, who if he inflicted some serious injury on anyone, would be the first to regret it after he had calmed down, but would calm down about ten minutes too late. I’ve met the type. There was a chap named Bricky Bostock in my young days who laid a fellow out for weeks over some misunderstanding about a girl, and it was pitiful to see his remorse when he realized what he had done. Used to hang about outside the hospital all the time the man was in danger, trembling like a leaf. But, as I said to him, “What’s the use of trembling like a leaf now? The time to have trembled like a leaf was when you had your hands on his throat and were starting to squeeze the juice out of him.”‘
‘It’ll be all right about that two-fifty, Pongo,’ said Horace.
‘Thanks, old man.’
‘When can you go and see Polly?’
‘The instant I’ve had a bit of lunch.’
‘I’ll give you her address. You will find her a most intelligent girl, quick to understand. But pitch it strong.’
‘Leave it to me.’
‘And impress upon her particularly that there is no time to waste. Full explanations should be made to Ricky by this evening at the latest. And now,’ said Horace, ‘I suppose I’d better go and dress.’
The door closed. Lord Ickenham glanced at his watch.
‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘I must be off. I have to go to the Senior Conservative Club to meet old Emsworth. So goodbye, my dear boy, for the present. I am delighted that everything has come out so smoothly. We shall probably meet at Port’s. I am going to slip round there after lunch and see Polly. Give her my love, and don’t let Mustard lure you into any card game. A dear, good chap, one of the best, but rather apt tons try to get people tons play something he calls Persian Monarchs. When he was running that club of his, I’ve known him to go through the place like a devouring flame, leaving ruin and desolation behind him on every side.’
6
The method of Lord Emsworth, when telling a story, being to repeat all the unimportant parts several times and to diverge from the main stream of narrative at intervals in order to supply lengthy character studies of the various persons involved in it, luncheon was almost over before he was able to place his guest in full possession of the facts relating to the Empress of Blandings. When eventually he had succeeded in doing so, he adjusted his pince-nez and looked hopefully across the table.
‘What dons you advise, my dear Ickenham?’
Lord Ickenham ate a thoughtful cheese straw.
‘Well, it is obvious that immediate steps must be taken through the proper channels, but the question that presents itself is “What steps?”‘
‘Exactly.’
‘We have here,’ said Lord Ickenham, illustrating by means of a knife, a radish and a piece of bread, ‘one pig, one sister, one Duke.’
‘Yes.’
‘The Duke wants the pig.’
‘Quite.’
‘The sister says he’s got to have it.’
‘Precisely.’
‘The pig, no doubt, would prefer to be dissociated from the affair altogether. Very well, then. To what conclusion do we come?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lord Emsworth.
‘We come to the conclusion that the whole situation pivots on the pig. Eliminate the pig, and we see daylight. “What, no pig?” says the Duke, and after a little natural disappointment turns his thoughts to other things — I don’t know what, but whatever
things Dukes do turn their thoughts to. There must be dozens. This leaves us with the simple problem — How is the existing state of what I might call “plus pig” to be converted into a state of “minus pig”? There can be only one answer, my dear Emsworth. The pig must be smuggled away to a place of safety and kept under cover till the Duke has blown over.’
Lord Emsworth, as always when confronted with a problem, had allowed his lower jaw to sag restfully.
‘How?’ he asked.
Lord Ickenham regarded him with approval.
‘I was expecting you to say that. I knew your razor-like brain would cur cleanly to the heart of the thing. Well, it ought not to be difficult. You creep out by night with an accomplice and — one shoving and one pulling — you load the animal into some vehicle and ship her off to my family seat, where she will be looked after like a favourite child till you are ready to receive her again. It is a long journey from Shropshire to Hampshire, of course, but she can stop off from time to time for a strengthening bran-mash or a quick acorn. The only point to be decided is who draws the job of accomplice. Who is there at Blandings that you can trust?’
‘Nobody,’ said Lord Emsworth promptly.
‘Ah? That seems to constitute an obstacle.’
‘I suppose you would not care to come down yourself?’
‘I should love it, and it is what I would have suggested. But unfortunately I am under strict orders from my wife to remain at Ickenham. My wife, I should mention, is a woman who believes in a strong centralized government.’
‘But you aren’t at Ickenham.’
‘No. The Boss being away, I am playing hookey at the moment. But I have often heard her mention her friend Lady Constance Keeble, and were I to come to Blandings Lady Constance would inevitably reveal the fact to her sooner or later. Some casual remark in a letter, perhaps, saying how delightful it had been to meet her old bit of trouble at last and how my visit had brightened up the place. You see what I mean?’
‘Oh, quite. Yes, quite, dash it.’
‘My prestige in the house is already low, and a substantiated charge of being AWOL would put a further crimp in it, from which it might never recover.’
‘I see.’
‘But I think,’ said Lord Ickenham, helping himself to the radish which had been doing duty as Lady Constance, ‘that I have got the solution. There is always a way. We must place the thing in the hands of Mustard Pott.’
‘Who is Mustard Pott?’
‘A very dear and valued friend of mine. I feel pretty sure that, if we stress the fact that there is a bit in it for him, he would be delighted to smuggle pigs. Mustard is. always ready and anxious to add to his bank balance. I was intending to call upon him after lunch, to renew our old acquaintance. Would you care to come along and sound him?’
‘It is a most admirable idea. Does he live far from here?’
‘No, quite close. Down in the Sloane Square neighbourhood.’
‘I ask because I have an appointment with Sir Roderick Glossop at three o’clock. Connie told me to ask him to lunch, but I was dashed if I was going to do that. Do you know Sir Roderick Glossop, the brain specialist?’
‘Only to the extent of having sat next to him at a public dinner not long ago.’
‘A talented man, I believe.’
‘So he told me. He spoke very highly of himself.’
‘Connie wants me to bring him to Blandings, to observe the Duke, and he made an appointment with me for three o’clock. But I am all anxiety to see this man Pott. Would there be time?’
‘Oh, certainly. And I think we have found the right way out of the impasse. If it had been a question of introducing Mustard into the home, I might have hesitated. But in this case he will put up at the local inn and confine himself entirely to outside work. You won’t even have to ask him to dinner. The only danger I can see is that he may get this pig of yours into a friendly game and take her last bit of potato peel off her. Still, that is a risk that must be faced.’
‘Of course.’
‘Nothing venture, nothing have, eh?’
‘Precisely.’
‘Then suppose we dispense with coffee and go round and see him. We shall probably find my nephew Pongo there. A nice boy. You will like him.’
Pongo Twistleton had arrived at Claude Pott’s residence at about the time when Lord Emsworth and his guest were leaving the Senior Conservative Club, and had almost immediately tried to borrow ten pounds from him. For even though Horace Davenport had guaranteed in the event of his soothing Ricky Gilpin to underwrite his gambling losses, he could not forget that he was still fiscally crippled, and he felt that he owed it to himself to omit no word or act which might lead to the acquisition of a bit of the needful.
In the sleuth hound of 6, Wilbraham Place, Sloane Square, however, he speedily discovered that he had come up against one of the Untouchables, a man to whom even Oofy Prosser, that outstanding non-parter, would have felt compelled to raise his hat. Beginning by quoting from Polonius’s speech to Laertes, which a surprising number of people whom you would not have suspected of familiarity with the writings of Shakespeare seem to know, Mr Pott had gone on to say that lending money always made him feel as if he were rubbing velvet the wrong way, and that in any case he would not lend it to Pongo, because he valued his friendship too highly. The surest method of creating a rift between two pals, explained Mr Pott, was for one pal to place the other pal under a financial obligation.
It was, in consequence, into an atmosphere of some slight strain that the Lords Emsworth and Ickenham entered a few moments later. And though the mutual courtesies of the latter and Claude Pott, getting together again after long separation, lightened the gloom temporarily, the clouds gathered once more when Mr Pott, having listened to Lord Emsworth’s proposal, regretfully declined to have anything to do with removing the Empress from her sty and wafting her away to Ickenham Hall.
‘I couldn’t do it, Lord E.’
‘Eh? Why not?’
‘It wouldn’t be in accordance with the dignity of the profession.’
Lord Ickenham resented this superior attitude.
‘Don’t stick on such beastly side, Mustard. You and your bally dignity! I never heard such swank.’
‘One has one’s self—respect.’
‘What’s self-respect got to do with it? There’s nothing infra dig about snitching pigs. If I were differently situated, I’d do it like a shot. And I’m one of the haughtiest men in Hampshire.’
‘Well, between you and me, Lord I.,’ said Claude Pott, discarding loftiness and coming clean, ‘there’s another reason. I was once bitten by a pig.’
‘Not really?’
‘Yes, sir. And ever since then I’ve had a horror of the animals.’
Lord Emsworth hastened to point out that the present was a special case.
‘You can’t be bitten by the Empress.’
‘Oh no? Who made that rule?’
‘She’s as gentle as a lamb.’
‘I was once bitten by a lamb.’
Lord Ickenham was surprised.
‘What an extraordinary past you seem to have had, Mustard. One whirl of excitement. One of these days you must look me up and tell me some of the things you haven’t been bitten by. Well, if you won’t take the job on, you won’t, of course. But I’m disappointed in you.’
Mr Pott sighed slightly, but it was plain that he did not intend to recede from his attitude of civil disobedience.
‘I suppose I shall now have to approach the matter from another angle. If you’re seeing Glossop at three, Emsworth, you’d better be starting.’
‘Eh? Oh, ah, yes. True.’
‘You leaving us, Lord E.?’ said Mr Pott. ‘Which way are you going?’
‘I have an appointment in Harley Street.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Mr Pott, who had marked down the dreamy peer as almost an ideal person with whom to play Persian Monarchs and wished to cement their acquaintanceship. ‘I’ve got to see a
man up in that direction. We could share a cab.’
He escorted Lord Emsworth lovingly to the door, and Lord Ickenham stood brooding.
‘A set-back,’ he said. ‘An unquestionable set-back. I had been relying on Mustard. Still, if a fellow’s been bitten by pigs I suppose his views on associating with them do get coloured. But how the devil does a man get bitten by a pig? I wouldn’t have thought they would ever meet on that footing. Ah, well, there it is. And now what about Polly? There seem to be no signs of her. Is she out?’
Pongo roused himself from a brown study.
‘She’s in her room, Pott told me. Dressing or something, I take it.’
Lord Ickenham went to the door.
‘Ahoy!’ he shouted. ‘Polly!’
There came in reply from somewhere in the distance a voice which even in his gloom Pongo was able to recognize as silvery.
‘Hullo?’
‘Come here. I want to see you.’
‘Who’s there?’
‘Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, fifth Earl of good old Ickenham. Have you forgotten your honorary uncle Fred?’
‘Oo!’ cried the silvery voice. There was a patter of feet in the passage, and a kimono-clad figure burst into the room.
‘Uncle Fur-RED! Well, it is nice seeing you again!’
‘Dashed mutual, I assure you, my dear. I say, you’ve grown.’
‘Well, it’s six years.’
‘So it is, by Jove.’
‘You’re just as handsome as ever.’
‘Handsomer, I should have said. And you’re prettier than ever. But what’s become of your legs?’
‘They’re still there.’
Uncle Fred in the Springtime Page 6