UKRIDGE ROUNDS A NASTY CORNER
The late Sir Rupert Lakenheath, K.C.M.G., C.B., M.V.O., was one of
those men at whom their countries point with pride. Until his
retirement on a pension in the year 1906, he had been Governor of
various insanitary outposts of the British Empire situated around
the equator, and as such had won respect and esteem from all. A
kindly editor of my acquaintance secured for me the job of assisting
the widow of this great administrator to prepare his memoirs for
publication; and on a certain summer afternoon I had just finished
arraying myself suitably for my first call on her at her residence
in Thurloe Square, South Kensington, when there was a knock at the
door, and Bowles, my landlord, entered, bearing gifts.
These consisted of a bottle with a staring label and a large
cardboard hat-box. I gazed at them blankly, for they held no
message for me.
Bowles, in his ambassadorial manner, condescended to explain.
“Mr. Ukridge,” he said, with the ring of paternal affection in his
voice which always crept into it when speaking of that menace to
civilisation, “called a moment ago, sir, and desired me to hand
you these.”
Having now approached the table on which he had placed the objects,
I was enabled to solve the mystery of the bottle. It was one of
those, fat, bulging bottles, and it bore across its diaphragm in
red letters the single word “PEPPO.” Beneath this, in black letters,
ran the legend, “It Bucks You Up.” I had not seen Ukridge for more
than two weeks, but at our last meeting, I remembered, he had
spoken of some foul patent medicine of which he had somehow secured
the agency. This, apparently, was it.
“But what’s in the hat-box?” I asked.
“I could not say, sir,” replied Bowles.
At this point the hat-box, which had hitherto not spoken, uttered
a crisp, sailorly oath, and followed it up by singing the opening
bars of “Annie Laurie.” It then relapsed into its former moody
silence.
A few doses of Peppo would, no doubt, have enabled me to endure
this remarkable happening with fortitude and phlegm. Not having
taken that specific, the thing had a devastating effect upon my
nervous centres. I bounded back and upset a chair, while Bowles,
his dignity laid aside, leaped silently towards the ceiling. It
was the first time I had ever seen him lay off the mask, and even
in that trying moment I could not help being gratified by the
spectacle. It gave me one of those thrills that come once in a
lifetime.
“For Gord’s sake!” ejaculated Bowles.
“Have a nut,” observed the hat-box, hospitably. “Have a nut.”
Bowles’s panic subsided.
“It’s a bird, sir. A parrot!”
“What the deuce does Ukridge mean,” I cried, becoming the outraged
householder, “by cluttering up my rooms with his beastly parrots?
I’d like that man to know——”
The mention of Ukridge’s name seemed to act on Bowles like a
soothing draught. He recovered his poise.
“I have no doubt, sir,” he said, a touch of coldness in his voice
that rebuked my outburst, “that Mr. Ukridge has good reasons for
depositing the bird in our custody. I fancy he must wish you to
take charge of it for him.”
“He may wish it——” I was beginning, when my eye fell on the clock.
If I did not want to alienate my employer by keeping her waiting,
I must be on my way immediately.
“Put that hat-box in the other room, Bowles,” I said. “And I
suppose you had better give the bird something to eat.”
“Very good, sir. You may leave the matter in my hands with complete
confidence.”
The drawing-room into which I was shown on arriving at Thurloe
Square was filled with many mementoes of the late Sir Rupert’s
gubernatorial career. In addition the room contained a small and
bewilderingly pretty girl in a blue dress, who smiled upon me
pleasantly.
“My aunt will be down in a moment,” she said, and for a few moments
we exchanged commonplaces. Then the door opened and Lady Lakenheath
appeared.
The widow of the Administrator was tall, angular, and thin, with
a sun-tanned face of a cast so determined as to make it seem a
tenable theory that in the years previous to 1906 she had done at
least her share of the administrating. Her whole appearance was
that of a woman designed by Nature to instil law and order into
the bosoms of boisterous cannibal kings. She surveyed me with an
appraising glance, and then, as if reconciled to the fact that,
poor specimen though I might be, I was probably as good as anything
else that could be got for the money, received me into the fold by
pressing the bell and ordering tea.
Tea had arrived, and I was trying to combine bright dialogue with
the difficult feat of balancing my cup on the smallest saucer I
had ever seen, when my hostess, happening to glance out of window
into the street below, uttered something midway between a sigh and
a click of the tongue.
“Oh, dear! That extraordinary man again!”
The girl in the blue dress, who had declined tea and was sewing in
a distant corner, bent a little closer over her work.
“Millie!” said the administratress, plaintively, as if desiring
sympathy in her trouble.
“Yes, Aunt Elizabeth?”
“That man is calling again!”
There was a short but perceptible pause. A delicate pink appeared
in the girl’s cheeks.
“Yes, Aunt Elizabeth?” she said.
“Mr. Ukridge,” announced the maid at the door.
It seemed to me that if this sort of thing was to continue, if
existence was to become a mere series of shocks and surprises,
Peppo would have to be installed as an essential factor in my life.
I stared speechlessly at Ukridge as he breezed in with the
unmistakable air of sunny confidence which a man shows on familiar
ground. Even if I had not had Lady Lakenheath’s words as evidence,
his manner would have been enough to tell me that he was a frequent
visitor in her drawing-room; and how he had come to be on calling
terms with a lady so pre-eminently respectable it was beyond me to
imagine. I awoke from my stupor to find that we were being
introduced, and that Ukridge, for some reason clear, no doubt, to
his own tortuous mind but inexplicable to me, was treating me as
a complete stranger. He nodded courteously but distantly, and I,
falling in with his unspoken wishes, nodded back. Plainly relieved,
he turned to Lady Lakenheath and plunged forthwith into the talk
of intimacy.
“I’ve got good news for you,” he said. “News about Leonard.”
The alteration in our hostess’s manner at these words was
remarkable. Her somewhat forbidding manner softened in an instant
to quite a tremulous fluttering. Gone was the hauteur which had
caused her but a moment back to allude to him as “that extraordinary
man.” She pressed tea upon him, and scones.
“Oh, Mr. Ukridge!” she cried.
“I don’t want to rouse false hopes and all that sort of thing,
laddie—I mean, Lady Lakenheath, but, upon my Sam, I really believe
I am on the track. I have been making the most assiduous enquiries.”
“How very kind of you!”
“No, no,” said Ukridge, modestly.
“I have been so worried,” said Lady Lakenheath, “that I have
scarcely been able to rest.”
“Too bad!”
“Last night I had a return of my wretched malaria.”
At these words, as if he had been given a cue, Ukridge reached
under his chair and produced from his hat, like some conjurer, a
bottle that was own brother to the one he had left in my rooms.
Even from where I sat I could read those magic words of cheer on
its flaunting label.
“Then I’ve got the very stuff for you,” he boomed. “This is what
you want. Glowing reports on all sides. Two doses, and cripples
fling away their crutches and join the Beauty Chorus.”
“I am scarcely a cripple, Mr. Ukridge,” said Lady Lakenheath, with
a return of her earlier bleakness.
“No, no! Good heavens, no! But you can’t go wrong by taking Peppo.”
“Peppo?” said Lady Lakenheath, doubtfully.
“It bucks you up.”
“You think it might do me good?” asked the sufferer, wavering.
There was a glitter in her eye that betrayed the hypochondriac,
the woman who will try anything once.
“Can’t fail.”
“Well, it is most kind and thoughtful of you to have brought it.
What with worrying over Leonard——”
“I know, I know,” murmured Ukridge, in a positively bedside manner.
“It seems so strange,” said Lady Lakenheath, “that, after I had
advertised in all the papers, someone did not find him.”
“Perhaps someone did find him!” said Ukridge, darkly.
“You think he must have been stolen?”
“I am convinced of it. A beautiful parrot like Leonard, able to
talk in six languages——”
“And sing,” murmured Lady Lakenheath.
“——_and_ sing,” added Ukridge, “is worth a lot of money. But don’t
you worry, old—er—don’t you worry. If the investigations which I
am conducting now are successful, you will have Leonard back safe
and sound to-morrow.”
“To-morrow?”
“Absolutely to-morrow. Now tell me all about your malaria.”
I felt that the time had come for me to leave. It was not merely
that the conversation had taken a purely medical turn and that I
was practically excluded from it; what was really driving me away
was the imperative necessity of getting out in the open somewhere
and thinking. My brain was whirling. The world seemed to have
become suddenly full of significant and disturbing parrots. I
seized my hat and rose. My hostess was able to take only an
absent-minded interest in my departure. The last thing I saw as
the door closed was Ukridge’s look of big-hearted tenderness as he
leaned forward so as not to miss a syllable of his companion’s
clinical revelations. He was not actually patting Lady Lakenheath’s
hand and telling her to be a brave little woman, but short of that
he appeared to be doing everything a man could do to show her that,
rugged though his exterior might be, his heart was in the right
place and aching for her troubles.
I walked back to my rooms. I walked slowly and pensively, bumping
into lamp-posts and pedestrians. It was a relief, when I finally
reached Ebury Street, to find Ukridge smoking on my sofa. I was
resolved that before he left he should explain what this was all
about, if I had to wrench the truth from him.
“Hallo, laddie!” he said. “Upon my Sam, Corky, old horse, did you
ever in your puff hear of anything so astounding as our meeting
like that? Hope you didn’t mind my pretending not to know you. The
fact is my position in that house——What the dickens were you doing
there, by the way?”
“I’m helping Lady Lakenheath prepare her husband’s memoirs.”
“Of course, yes. I remember hearing her say she was going to rope
in someone. But what a dashed extraordinary thing it should be you!
However, where was I? Oh, yes. My position in the house, Corky, is
so delicate that I simply didn’t dare risk entering into any
entangling alliances. What I mean to say is, if we had rushed into
each other’s arms, and you had been established in the old lady’s
eyes as a friend of mine, and then one of these days you had
happened to make a bloomer of some kind—as you well might,
laddie—and got heaved into the street on your left ear—well, you
see where I would be. I should be involved in your downfall. And
I solemnly assure you, laddie, that my whole existence is staked
on keeping in with that female. I _must_ get her consent!”
“Her what?”
“Her consent. To the marriage.”
“The marriage?”
Ukridge blew a cloud of smoke, and gazed through it sentimentally
at the ceiling.
“Isn’t she a perfect angel?” he breathed, softly.
“Do you mean Lady Lakenheath?” I asked, bewildered.
“Fool! No, Millie.”
“Millie? The girl in blue?”
Ukridge sighed dreamily.
“She was wearing that blue dress when I first met her, Corky. And
a hat with thingummies. It was on the Underground. I gave her my
seat, and, as I hung over her, suspended by a strap, I fell in love
absolutely in a flash. I give you my honest word, laddie, I fell
in love with her for all eternity between Sloane Square and South
Kensington stations. She got out at South Kensington. So did I. I
followed her to the house, rang the bell, got the maid to show me
in, and, once I was in, put up a yarn about being misdirected and
coming to the wrong address and all that sort of thing. I think
they thought I was looney or trying to sell life insurance or
something, but I didn’t mind that. A few days later I called, and
after that I hung about, keeping an eye on their movements, met
’em everywhere they went, and bowed and passed a word and generally
made my presence felt, and—well, to cut a long story short, old
horse, we’re engaged. I happened to find out that Millie was in
the habit of taking the dog for a run in Kensington Gardens every
morning at eleven, and after that things began to move. It took a
bit of doing, of course, getting up so early, but I was on the spot
every day and we talked and bunged sticks for the dog, and—well,
as I say, we’re engaged. She is the most amazing, wonderful girl,
laddie, that you ever encountered in your life.”
I had listened to this recital dumbly. The thing was too cataclysmal
for my mind. It overwhelmed me.
“But——” I began.
“But,” said Ukridge, “the news has yet to be broken to the old
lady, and I am striving with every nerve in my body, with every
fibre of my brain, old horse, to get in right with her. That is
why I brought her that Peppo. Not much, you may say, but every
little helps. Shows zeal. Nothing like zeal. But, of course, what
I’m really relying on is the parrot. That’s my ace of trumps.”
I passed a hand over my corrugated forehead.
“The parrot!” I said, feebly. “Explain about the parrot.” Ukridge
eyed me with honest astonishment.
“Do you mean to tell me you haven’t got on to that? A man of your
intelligence! Corky, you amaze me. Why, I pinched it, of course.
Or, rather, Millie and I pinched it together. Millie—a girl in a
million, laddie!—put the bird in a string-bag one night when her
aunt was dining out and lowered it to me out of the drawing-room
window. And I’ve been keeping it in the background till the moment
was ripe for the spectacular return. Wouldn’t have done to take it
back at once. Bad strategy. Wiser to hold it in reserve for a few
days and show zeal and work up the interest. Millie and I are
building on the old lady’s being so supremely bucked at having the
bird restored to her that there will be nothing she won’t be
willing to do for me.”
“But what do you want to dump the thing in my rooms for?” I
demanded, reminded of my grievance. “I never got such a shock as
when that damned hat-box began to back-chat at me.”
“I’m sorry, old man, but it had to be. I could never tell that the
old lady might not take it into her head to come round to my rooms
about something. I’d thrown out—mistakenly, I realise now—an
occasional suggestion about tea there some afternoon. So I had to
park the bird with you. I’ll take it away to-morrow.”
“You’ll take it away to-night!”
“Not to-night, old man,” pleaded Ukridge. “First thing to-morrow.
You won’t find it any trouble. Just throw it a word or two every
now and then and give it a bit of bread dipped in tea or something,
and you won’t have to worry about it at all. And I’ll be round by
noon at the latest to take it away. May Heaven reward you, laddie,
for the way you have stood by me this day!”
For a man like myself, who finds at least eight hours of sleep
essential if that schoolgirl complexion is to be preserved, it was
unfortunate that Leonard the parrot should have proved to be a bird
of high-strung temperament, easily upset. The experiences which he
had undergone since leaving home had, I was to discover, jarred
his nervous system. He was reasonably tranquil during the hours
preceding bedtime, and had started his beauty-sleep before I myself
turned in; but at two in the morning something in the nature of a
nightmare must have attacked him, for I was wrenched from slumber
by the sound of a hoarse soliloquy in what I took to be some native
dialect. This lasted without a break till two-fifteen, when he made
a noise like a steam-riveter for some moments; after which,
apparently soothed, he fell asleep again. I dropped off at about
three, and at three-thirty was awakened by the strains of a deep-sea
chanty. From then on our periods of sleep never seemed to coincide.
It was a wearing night, and before I went out after breakfast I
left imperative instructions with Bowles for Ukridge, on arrival,
to be informed that, if anything went wrong with his plans for
removing my guest that day, the mortality statistics among parrots
would take an up-curve. Returning to my rooms in the evening, I
was pleased to see that this manifesto had been taken to heart.
The hat-box was gone, and about six o’clock Ukridge appeared, so
beaming and effervescent that I understood what had happened before
he spoke. “Corky, my boy,” he said, vehemently, “this is the
maddest, merriest day of all the glad New Year, and you can quote
me as saying so!”
“Lady Lakenheath has given her consent?”
“Not merely given it, but bestowed it blithely, jubilantly.”
“It beats me,” I said.
“What beats you?” demanded Ukridge, sensitive to the jarring note.
“Well, I don’t want to cast any aspersions, but I should have
thought the first thing she would have done would be to make
searching enquiries about your financial position.”
“My financial position? What’s wrong with my financial position?
I’ve got considerably over fifty quid in the bank, and I’m on the
eve of making an enormous fortune out of this Peppo stuff.”
“And that satisfied Lady Lakenheath?” I said, incredulously.
Ukridge hesitated for a moment.
“Well, to be absolutely frank, laddie,” he admitted, “I have an
idea that she rather supposes that in the matter of financing the
venture my aunt will rally round and keep things going till I am
on my feet.”
“Your aunt! But your aunt has finally and definitely disowned you.”
“Yes. To be perfectly accurate, she has. But the old lady doesn’t
know that. In fact, I rather made a point of keeping it from her.
You see, I found it necessary, as things turned out, to play my
aunt as my ace of trumps.”
“You told me the parrot was your ace of trumps.”
“I know I did. But these things slip up at the last moment. She
seethed with gratitude about the bird, but when I seized the
opportunity to ask her for her blessing I was shocked to see that
she put her ears back and jibbed. Got that nasty steely look in
her eyes and began to talk about clandestine meetings and things
being kept from her. It was an occasion for the swiftest thinking,
laddie. I got an inspiration. I played up my aunt. It worked like
magic. It seems the old lady has long been an admirer of her
novels, and has always wanted to meet her. She went down and out
for the full count the moment I introduced my aunt into the
conversation, and I have had no trouble with her since.”
“Have you thought what is going to happen when they do meet? I
can’t see your aunt delivering a striking testimonial to your
merits.”
“That’s all right. The fact of the matter is, luck has stood by me
in the most amazing way all through. It happens that my aunt is
out of town. She’s down at her cottage in Sussex finishing a novel,
and on Saturday she sails for America on a lecturing tour.”
“How did you find that out?”
“Another bit of luck. I ran into her new secretary, a bloke named
Wassick, at the Savage smoker last Saturday. There’s no chance of
their meeting. When my aunt’s finishing a novel, she won’t read
letters or telegrams, so it’s no good the old lady trying to get
a communication through to her. It’s Wednesday now, she sails on
Saturday, she will be away six months—why, damme, by the time she
hears of the thing I shall be an old married man.”
It had been arranged between my employer and myself during the
preliminary negotiations that I should give up my afternoons to
the memoirs and that the most convenient plan would be for me to
present myself at Thurloe Square daily at three o’clock. I had just
settled myself on the following day in the ground-floor study when
the girl Millie came in, carrying papers.
“My aunt asked me to give you these,” she said. “They are Uncle
Rupert’s letters home for the year 1889.”
I looked at her with interest and something bordering on awe. This
was the girl who had actually committed herself to the appalling
task of going through life as Mrs. Stanley Featherstonehaugh
Ukridge—and, what is more, seemed to like the prospect. Of such
stuff are heroines made.
“Thank you,” I said, putting the papers on the desk. “By the way,
may I—I hope you will——What I mean is, Ukridge told me all about
it. I hope you will be very happy.”
Her face fit up. She really was the most delightful girl to look
at I had ever met. I could not blame Ukridge for falling in love
with her.
“Thank you very much,” she said. She sat in the huge arm-chair,
looking very small. “Stanley has been telling me what friends you
and he are. He is devoted to you.”
“Great chap!” I said, heartily. I would have said anything which
I thought would please her. She exercised a spell, this girl. “We
were at school together.”
“I know. He is always talking about it.” She looked at me with
round eyes exactly like a Persian kitten’s. “I suppose you will be
his best man?” She bubbled with happy laughter. “At one time I was
awfully afraid there wouldn’t be any need for a best man. Do you
think it was very wrong of us to steal Aunt Elizabeth’s parrot?”
“Wrong?” I said, stoutly. “Not a bit of it. What an idea!”
“She was terribly worried,” argued the girl.
“Best thing in the world,” I assured her. “Too much peace of mind
leads to premature old age.”
“All the same, I have never felt so wicked and ashamed of myself.
And I know Stanley felt just like that, too.”
“I bet he did!” I agreed, effusively. Such was the magic of this
Dresden china child that even her preposterous suggestion that
Ukridge possessed a conscience could not shake me.
“He’s so wonderful and chivalrous and considerate.”
“The very words I should have used myself!”
“Why, to show you what a beautiful nature he has, he’s gone out
now with my aunt to help her do her shopping.”
“You don’t say so!”
“Just to try to make it up to her, you see, for the anxiety we
caused her.”
“It’s noble! That’s what it is. Absolutely noble!”
“And if there’s one thing in the world he loathes it is carrying
parcels.”
“The man,” I exclaimed, with fanatical enthusiasm, “is a perfect
Sir Galahad!”
“Isn’t he? Why, only the other day——”
She was interrupted. Outside, the front door slammed. There came
a pounding of large feet in the passage. The door of the study flew
open, and Sir Galahad himself charged in, his arms full of parcels.
“Corky!” he began. Then, perceiving his future wife, who had risen
from the chair in alarm, he gazed at her with a wild pity in his
eyes, as one who has bad news to spring. “Millie, old girl,” he
said, feverishly, “we’re in the soup!”
The girl clutched the table.
“Oh, Stanley, darling!”
“There is just one hope. It occurred to me as I was——”
“You don’t mean that Aunt Elizabeth has changed her mind?”
“She hasn’t yet. But,” said Ukridge, grimly, “she’s pretty soon
going to, unless we move with the utmost despatch.”
“But what has happened?”
Ukridge shed the parcels. The action seemed to make him calmer.
“We had just come out of Harrod’s,” he said, “and I was about to
leg it home with these parcels, when she sprang it on me! Right
out of a blue sky!”
“What, Stanley, dear? Sprang what?”
“This ghastly thing. This frightful news that she proposes to
attend the dinner of the Pen and Ink Club on Friday night. I saw
her talking to a pug-nosed female we met in the fruit, vegetable,
birds, and pet dogs department, but I never guessed what they were
talking about. She was inviting the old lady to that infernal
dinner!”
“But, Stanley, why shouldn’t Aunt Elizabeth go to the Pen and Ink
Club dinner?”
“Because my aunt is coming up to town on Friday specially to speak
at that dinner, and your aunt is going to make a point of
introducing herself and having a long chat about me.”
We gazed at one another silently. There was no disguising the
gravity of the news. Like the coming together of two uncongenial
chemicals, this meeting of aunt with aunt must inevitably produce
an explosion. And in that explosion would perish the hopes and
dreams of two loving hearts.
“Oh, Stanley! What can we do?”
If the question had been directed at me, I should have been hard
put to it to answer; but Ukridge, that man of resource, though he
might be down, was never out.
“There is just one scheme. It occurred to me as I was sprinting
along the Brompton Road. Laddie,” he proceeded, laying a heavy hand
on my shoulder, “it involves your co-operation.”
“Oh, how splendid!” cried Millie.
It was not quite the comment I would have made myself. She proceeded
to explain.
“Mr. Corcoran is so clever. I’m sure, if it’s anything that can be
done, he will do it.”
This ruled me out as a potential resister. Ukridge I might have
been able to withstand, but so potently had this girl’s spell
worked upon me that in her hands I was as wax.
Ukridge sat down on the desk, and spoke with a tenseness befitting
the occasion.
“It’s rummy in this life, laddie,” he began in moralising vein,
“how the rottenest times a fellow goes through may often do him a
bit of good in the end. I don’t suppose I have ever enjoyed any
period of my existence less than those months I spent at my aunt’s
house in Wimbledon. But mark the sequel, old horse! It was while
going through that ghastly experience that I gained a knowledge of
her habits which is going to save us now. You remember Dora Mason?”
“Who is Dora Mason?” enquired Millie, quickly.
“A plain, elderly sort of female who used to be my aunt’s
secretary,” replied Ukridge, with equal promptness.
Personally, I remembered Miss Mason as a rather unusually pretty
and attractive girl, but I felt that it would be injudicious to
say so. I contented myself with making a mental note to the effect
that Ukridge, whatever his drawbacks as a husband, had at any rate
that ready tact which is so helpful in the home.
“Miss Mason,” he proceeded, speaking, I thought, in a manner a
shade more careful and measured, “used to talk to me about her job
from time to time. I was sorry for the poor old thing, you
understand, because hers was a grey life, and I made rather a point
of trying to cheer her up now and then.”
“How like you, dear!”
It was not I who spoke—it was Millie. She regarded her betrothed
with shining and admiring eyes, and I could see that she was
thinking that my description of him as a modern Galahad was
altogether too tame.
“And one of the things she told me,” continued Ukridge, “was that
my aunt, though she’s always speaking at these bally dinners, can’t
say a word unless she has her speech written for her and memorises
it. Miss Mason swore solemnly to me that she had written every word
my aunt had spoken in public in the last two years. You begin to
get on to the scheme, laddie? The long and the short of it is that
we must get hold of that speech she’s going to deliver at the Pen
and Ink Club binge. We must intercept it, old horse, before it can
reach her. We shall thus spike her guns. Collar that speech, Corky,
old man, before she can get her hooks on it, and you can take it
from me that she’ll find she has a headache on Friday night and
can’t appear.”
There stole over me that sickening conviction that comes to those
in peril that I was for it.
“But it may be too late,” I faltered, with a last feeble effort at
self-preservation. “She may have the speech already.”
“Not a chance. I know what she’s like when she’s finishing one of
these beastly books. No distractions of any sort are permitted.
Wassick, the secretary bloke, will have had instructions to send
the thing to her by registered post to arrive Friday morning, so
that she can study it in the train. Now, listen carefully, laddie,
for I have thought this thing out to the last detail. My aunt is
at her cottage at Market Deeping, in Sussex. I don’t know how the
trains go, but there’s sure to be one that’ll get me to Market
Deeping to-night. Directly I arrive I shall send a wire to
Wassick—signed ‘Ukridge,’” said the schemer. “I have a perfect
right to sign telegrams ‘Ukridge,’” he added, virtuously, “in which
I tell him to hand the speech over to a gentleman who will call
for it, as arrangements have been made for him to take it down to
the cottage. All you have to do is to call at my aunt’s house, see
Wassick—a splendid fellow, and just the sort of chump who won’t
suspect a thing—get the manuscript, and biff off. Once round the
corner, you dump it in the nearest garbage-box, and all is well.”
“Isn’t he wonderful, Mr. Corcoran?” cried Millie.
“I can rely on you, Corky? You will not let me down over your end
of the business?”
“You _will_ do this for us, Mr. Corcoran, won’t you?” pleaded
Millie.
I gave one look at her. Her Persian kitten eyes beamed into
mine—gaily, trustfully, confidently. I gulped.
“All right,” I said, huskily.
A leaden premonition of impending doom weighed me down next morning
as I got into the cab which was to take me to Heath House, Wimbledon
Common. I tried to correct this shuddering panic, by telling myself
that it was simply due to my recollection of what I had suffered
at my previous visit to the place, but it refused to leave me. A
black devil of apprehension sat on my shoulder all the way, and as
I rang the front-door bell it seemed to me that this imp emitted
a chuckle more sinister than any that had gone before. And suddenly
as I waited there I understood.
No wonder the imp had chuckled! Like a flash I perceived where the
fatal flaw in this enterprise lay. It was just like Ukridge, poor
impetuous, woollen-headed ass, not to have spotted it; but that I
myself should have overlooked it was bitter indeed. The simple fact
which had escaped our joint attention was this—that, as I had
visited the house before, the butler would recognise me. I might
succeed in purloining the speech, but it would be reported to the
Woman Up Top that the mysterious visitor who had called for the
manuscript was none other than the loathly Mr. Corcoran of hideous
memory—and what would happen then? Prosecution? Jail? Social ruin?
I was on the very point of retreating down the steps when the door
was flung open, and there swept over me the most exquisite relief
I have ever known.
It was a new butler who stood before me.
“Well?”
He did not actually speak the word, but he had a pair of those
expressive, beetling eyebrows, and they said it for him. A most
forbidding man, fully as grim and austere as his predecessor.
“I wish to see Mr. Wassick,” I said, firmly.
The butler’s manner betrayed no cordiality, but he evidently saw
that I was not to be trifled with. He led the way down that familiar
hall, and presently I was in the drawing-room, being inspected once
more by the six Pekingese, who, as on that other occasion, left
their baskets, smelt me, registered disappointment, and made for
their baskets again.
“What name shall I say, sir?”
I was not to be had like that.
“Mr. Wassick is expecting me,” I replied, coldly.
“Very good, sir.”
I strolled buoyantly about the room, inspecting this object and
that. I hummed lightly. I spoke kindly to the Pekes.
“Hallo, you Pekes!” I said.
I sauntered over to the mantelpiece, over which was a mirror. I
was gazing at myself and thinking that it was not such a bad sort
of face—not handsome, perhaps, but with a sort of something about
it—when of a sudden the mirror reflected something else.
That something was the figure of that popular novelist and
well-known after-dinner speaker, Miss Julia Ukridge. “Good-morning,”
she said.
It is curious how often the gods who make sport of us poor humans
defeat their own ends by overdoing the thing. Any contretemps less
awful than this, however slightly less awful, would undoubtedly
have left me as limp as a sheet of carbon paper, rattled and
stammering, in prime condition to be made sport of. But as it was
I found myself strangely cool. I had a subconscious feeling that
there would be a reaction later, and that the next time I looked
in a mirror I should find my hair strangely whitened, but for the
moment I was unnaturally composed, and my brain buzzed like a
circular-saw in an ice-box.
“How do you do?” I heard myself say. My voice seemed to come from
a long distance, but it was steady and even pleasing in timbre.
“You wished to see me, Mr. Corcoran?”
“Yes.”
“Then why,” enquired Miss Ukridge, softly, “did you ask for my
secretary?”
There was that same acid sub-tinkle in her voice which had been
there at our previous battle in the same ring. But that odd
alertness stood by me well.
“I understood that you were out of town,” I said.
“Who told you that?”
“They were saying so at the Savage Club the other night.” This
seemed to hold her.
“Why did you wish to see me?” she asked, baffled by my ready
intelligence.
“I hoped to get a few facts concerning your proposed lecture tour
in America.”
“How did you know that I was about to lecture in America?” I raised
my eyebrows. This was childish.
“They were saying so at the Savage Club,” I replied. Baffled again.
“I had an idea, Mr. Corcoran,” she said, with a nasty gleam in her
blue eyes, “that you might be the person alluded to in my nephew
Stanley’s telegram.”
“Telegram?”
“Yes. I altered my plans and returned to London last night instead
of waiting till this evening, and I had scarcely arrived when a
telegram came, signed Ukridge, from the village where I had been
staying. It instructed my secretary to hand over to a gentleman
who would call this morning the draft of the speech which I am to
deliver at the dinner of the Pen and Ink Club. I assume the thing
to have been some obscure practical joke on the part of my nephew,
Stanley. And I also assumed, Mr. Corcoran, that you must be the
gentleman alluded to.”
I could parry this sort of stuff all day.
“What an odd idea!” I said.
“You think it odd? Then why did you tell my butler that my secretary
was expecting you?”
It was the worst one yet, but I blocked it.
“The man must have misunderstood me. He seemed,” I added, loftily,
“an unintelligent sort of fellow.”
Our eyes met in silent conflict for a brief instant, but all was
well. Julia Ukridge was a civilised woman, and this handicapped
her in the contest. For people may say what they like about the
artificialities of modern civilisation and hold its hypocrisies up
to scorn, but there is no denying that it has one outstanding
merit. Whatever its defects, civilisation prevents a gently-bred
lady of high standing in the literary world from calling a man a
liar and punching him on the nose, however convinced she may be
that he deserves it. Miss Ukridge’s hands twitched, her lips
tightened, and her eyes gleamed bluely—but she restrained herself.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“What do you wish to know about my lecture tour?” she said.
It was the white flag.
Ukridge and I had arranged to dine together at the Regent Grill
Room that night and celebrate the happy ending of his troubles. I
was first at the tryst, and my heart bled for my poor friend as I
noted the care-free way in which he ambled up the aisle to our
table. I broke the bad news as gently as I could, and the man
sagged like a filleted fish. It was not a cheery meal. I extended
myself as host, plying him with rich foods and spirited young
wines, but he would not be comforted. The only remark he contributed
to the conversation, outside of scattered monosyllables, occurred
as the waiter retired with the cigar-box.
“What’s the time, Corky, old man?”
I looked at my watch.
“Just on half-past nine.”
“About now,” said Ukridge, dully, “my aunt is starting to give the
old lady an earful!”
Lady Lakenheath was never, even at the best of times, what I should
call a sparkling woman, but it seemed to me, as I sat with her at
tea on the following afternoon, that her manner was more sombre
than usual. She had all the earmarks of a woman who has had
disturbing news. She looked, in fact, exactly like a woman who has
been told by the aunt of the man who is endeavouring to marry into
her respectable family the true character of that individual.
It was not easy in the circumstances to keep the ball rolling on
the subject of the ’Mgomo-’Mgomos, but I was struggling bravely,
when the last thing happened which I should have predicted.
“Mr. Ukridge,” announced the maid.
That Ukridge should be here at all was astounding; but that he
should bustle in, as he did, with that same air of being the
household pet which had marked his demeanour at our first meeting
in this drawing-room, soared into the very empyrean of the
inexplicable. So acutely was I affected by the spectacle of this
man, whom I had left on the previous night a broken hulk, behaving
with the ebullience of an honoured member of the family, that I
did what I had been on the verge of doing every time I had partaken
of Lady Lakenheath’s hospitality—upset my tea.
“I wonder,” said Ukridge, plunging into speech with the same old
breezy abruptness, “if this stuff would be any good, Aunt
Elizabeth.”
I had got my cup balanced again as he started speaking, but at the
sound of this affectionate address over it went again. Only a
juggler of long experience could have manipulated Lady Lakenheath’s
miniature cups and saucers successfuly under the stress of emotions
such as I was experiencing.
“What is it, Stanley?” asked Lady Lakenheath, with a flicker of
interest.
They were bending their heads over a bottle which Ukridge had
pulled out of his pocket.
“It’s some new stuff, Aunt Elizabeth. Just put on the market. Said
to be excellent for parrots. Might be worth trying.”
“It is exceedingly thoughtful of you, Stanley, to have brought it,”
said Lady Lakenheath, warmly. “And I shall certainly try the effect
of a dose if Leonard has another seizure. Fortunately, he seems
almost himself again this afternoon.”
“Splendid!”
“My parrot,” said Lady Lakenheath, including me in the conversation,
“had a most peculiar attack last night. I cannot account for it.
His health has always been so particularly good. I was dressing
for dinner at the time, and so was not present at the outset of
the seizure, but my niece, who was an eye-witness of what occurred,
tells me he behaved in a most unusual way. Quite suddenly, it
appears, he started to sing very excitedly; then, after awhile, he
stopped in the middle of a bar and appeared to be suffering. My
niece, who is a most warm-hearted girl, was naturally exceedingly
alarmed. She ran to fetch me, and when I came down poor Leonard
was leaning against the side of his cage in an attitude of complete
exhaustion, and all he would say was, ‘Have a nut!’ He repeated
this several times in a low voice, and then closed his eyes and
tumbled off his perch. I was up half the night with him, but now
he seems mercifully to have turned the corner. This afternoon he
is almost his old bright self again, and has been talking in
Swahili, always a sign that he is feeling cheerful.”
I murmured my condolences and congratulations.
“It was particularly unfortunate,” observed Ukridge, sympathetically,
“that the thing should have happened last night, because it
prevented Aunt Elizabeth going to the Pen and Ink Club dinner.”
“What!” Fortunately I had set down my cup by this time.
“Yes,” said Lady Lakenheath, regretfully. “And I had been so
looking forward to meeting Stanley’s aunt there. Miss Julia Ukridge,
the novelist. I have been an admirer of hers for many years. But,
with Leonard in this terrible state, naturally I could not stir
from the house. His claims were paramount. I shall have to wait
till Miss Ukridge returns from America.”
“Next April,” murmured Ukridge, softly.
“I think, if you will excuse me now, Mr. Corcoran, I will just run
up and see how Leonard is.”
The door closed.
“Laddie,” said Ukridge, solemnly, “doesn’t this just show——”
I gazed at him accusingly.
“Did you poison that parrot?”
“Me? Poison the parrot? Of course I didn’t poison the parrot. The
whole thing was due to an act of mistaken kindness carried out in
a spirit of the purest altruism. And, as I was saying, doesn’t it
just show that no little act of kindness, however trivial, is ever
wasted in the great scheme of things? One might have supposed that
when I brought the old lady that bottle of Peppo the thing would
have begun and ended there with a few conventional words of thanks.
But mark, laddie, how all things work together for good. Millie,
who, between ourselves, is absolutely a girl in a million, happened
to think the bird was looking a bit off colour last night, and with
a kindly anxiety to do him a bit of good, gave him a slice of bread
soaked in Peppo. Thought it might brace him up. Now, what they put
in that stuff, old man, I don’t know, but the fact remains that
the bird almost instantly became perfectly pie-eyed. You have heard
the old lady’s account of the affair, but, believe me, she doesn’t
know one half of it. Millie informs me that Leonard’s behaviour
had to be seen to be believed. When the old lady came down he was
practically in a drunken stupor, and all to-day he has been
suffering from a shocking head. If he’s really sitting up and
taking notice again, it simply means that he has worked off one of
the finest hangovers of the age. Let this be a lesson to you,
laddie, never to let a day go by without its act of kindness.
What’s the time, old horse?”
“Getting on for five.”
Ukridge seemed to muse for a moment, and a happy smile irradiated
his face.
“About now,” he said, complacently, “my aunt is out in the Channel
somewhere. And I see by the morning paper that there is a nasty
gale blowing up from the southeast!”
THE END