PSMITH RECEIVES GUESTS
§ 1
Blandings Castle was astir from roof to hall. Lights blazed, voices
shouted, bells rang. All over the huge building there prevailed a vast
activity like that of a barracks on the eve of the regiment’s departure
for abroad. Dinner was over, and the Expeditionary Force was making
its final preparations before starting off in many motor-cars for
the County Ball at Shifley. In the bedrooms on every floor, Reggies,
doubtful at the last moment about their white ties, were feverishly
arranging new ones; Berties brushed their already glistening hair; and
Claudes shouted to Archies along the passages insulting inquiries as to
whether they had been sneaking their handkerchiefs. Valets skimmed like
swallows up and down corridors, maids fluttered in and out of rooms in
aid of Beauty in distress. The noise penetrated into every nook and
corner of the house. It vexed the Efficient Baxter, going through his
papers in the library preparatory to leaving Blandings on the morrow
for ever. It disturbed Lord Emsworth, who stoutly declining to go
within ten miles of the County Ball, had retired to his room with a
book on Herbaceous Borders. It troubled the peace of Beach the butler,
refreshing himself after his activities around the dinner table with a
glass of sound port in the housekeeper’s room. The only person in the
place who paid no attention to it was Eve Halliday.
Eve was too furious to pay attention to anything but her deleterious
thoughts. As she walked on the terrace, to which she had fled in quest
of solitude, her teeth were set and her blue eyes glowed belligerently.
As Miss Peavey would have put it in one of her colloquial moods, she
was mad clear through. For Eve was a girl of spirit, and there is
nothing your girl of spirit so keenly resents as being made a fool of,
whether it be by Fate or by a fellow human creature. Eve was in the
uncomfortable position of having had this indignity put upon her by
both. But, while as far as Fate was concerned she merely smouldered
rebelliously, her animosity towards Psmith was vivid in the extreme.
A hot wave of humiliation made her writhe as she remembered the
infantile guilelessness with which she had accepted the preposterous
story he had told her in explanation of his presence at Blandings in
another man’s name. He had been playing with her all the time--fooling
her--and, most unforgivable crime of all, he had dared to pretend
that he was fond of her and--Eve’s face burned again--to make
her--almost--fond of him. How he must have laughed . . .
Well, she was not beaten yet. Her chin went up and she began to walk
quicker. He was clever, but she would be cleverer. The game was not
over . . .
“Hallo!”
A white waistcoat was gleaming at her side. Polished shoes shuffled on
the turf. Light hair, brushed and brilliantined to the last possible
pitch of perfection, shone in the light of the stars. The Hon. Freddie
Threepwood was in her midst.
“Well, Freddie?” said Eve resignedly.
“I say,” said Freddie in a voice in which self-pity fought with
commiseration for her. “Beastly shame you aren’t coming to the hop.”
“I don’t mind.”
“But I do, dash it! The thing won’t be anything without you. A bally
wash-out. And I’ve been trying out some new steps with the Victrola.”
“Well, there will be plenty of other girls there for you to step on.”
“I don’t _want_ other girls, dash them. I want you.”
“That’s very nice of you,” said Eve. The first truculence of her manner
had softened. She reminded herself, as she had so often been obliged
to remind herself before, that Freddie meant well. “But it can’t be
helped. I’m only an employée here, not a guest. I’m not invited.”
“I know,” said Freddie. “And that’s what makes it so dashed sickening.
It’s like that picture I saw once, ‘A Modern Cinderella.’ Only there
the girl nipped off to the dance--disguised, you know--and had a most
topping time. I wish life was a bit more like the movies.”
“Well, it was enough like the movies last night when . . . Oh!”
Eve stopped. Her heart gave a sudden jump. Somehow the presence of
Freddie was so inextricably associated in her mind with limp proposals
of marriage that she had completely forgotten that there was another
and a more dashing side to his nature, that side which Mr. Keeble had
revealed to her at their meeting in Market Blandings on the previous
afternoon. She looked at him with new eyes.
“Anything up?” said Freddie.
Eve took him excitedly by the sleeve and drew him farther away from
the house. Not that there was any need to do so, for the bustle within
continued unabated.
“Freddie,” she whispered, “listen! I met Mr. Keeble yesterday after I
had left you, and he told me all about how you and he had planned to
steal Lady Constance’s necklace.”
“Good Lord!” cried Freddie, and leaped like a stranded fish.
“And I’ve got an idea,” said Eve.
She had, and it was one which had only in this instant come to her.
Until now, though she had tilted her chin bravely and assured herself
that the game was not over and that she was not yet beaten, a small
discouraging voice had whispered to her all the while that this was
mere bravado. What, the voice had asked, are you going to do? And she
had not been able to answer it. But now, with Freddie as an ally, she
could act.
“Told you all about it?” Freddie was muttering pallidly. He had never
had a very high opinion of his Uncle Joseph’s mentality, but he had
supposed him capable of keeping a thing like that to himself. He was,
indeed, thinking of Mr. Keeble almost the identical thoughts which
Mr. Keeble in the first moments of his interview with Eve in Market
Blandings had thought of him. And these reflections brought much the
same qualms which they had brought to the elder conspirator. Once these
things got talked about, mused Freddie agitatedly, you never knew where
they would stop. Before his mental eye there swam a painful picture of
his Aunt Constance, informed of the plot, tackling him and demanding
the return of her necklace. “Told you all about it?” he bleated, and,
like Mr. Keeble, mopped his brow.
“It’s all right,” said Eve impatiently. “It’s quite all right. He asked
me to steal the necklace, too.”
“You?” said Freddie, gaping.
“Yes.”
“My Gosh!” cried Freddie, electrified. “Then was it you who got the
thing last night?”
“Yes it was. But . . .”
For a moment Freddie had to wrestle with something that was almost a
sordid envy. Then better feelings prevailed. He quivered with manly
generosity. He gave Eve’s hand a tender pat. It was too dark for her to
see it, but he was registering renunciation.
“Little girl,” he murmured, “there’s no one I’d rather got that
thousand quid than you. If I couldn’t have it myself, I mean to say.
Little girl . . .”
“Oh, be quiet!” cried Eve. “I wasn’t doing it for any thousand pounds.
I didn’t want Mr. Keeble to give me money . . .”
“You didn’t want him to give you money!” repeated Freddie wonderingly.
“I just wanted to help Phyllis. She’s my friend.”
“Pals, pardner, pals! Pals till hell freezes!” cried Freddie, deeply
moved.
“What _are_ you talking about?”
“Sorry. That was a sub-title from a thing called ‘Prairie Nell,’ you
know. Just happened to cross my mind. It was in the second reel where
the two fellows are . . .”
“Yes, yes; never mind.”
“Thought I’d mention it.”
“Tell me . . .”
“It seemed to fit in.”
“Do _stop_, Freddie!”
“Right-ho!”
“Tell me,” resumed Eve, “is Mr. McTodd going to the ball?”
“Eh? Why, yes, I suppose so.”
“Then, listen. You know that little cottage your father has let him
have?”
“Little cottage?”
“Yes. In the wood past the Yew Alley.”
“Little cottage? I never heard of any little cottage.”
“Well, he’s got one,” said Eve. “And as soon as everybody has gone to
the ball you and I are going to burgle it.”
“What!”
“Burgle it!”
“Burgle it?”
“Yes, _burgle_ it!”
Freddie gulped.
“Look here, old thing,” he said plaintively. “This is a bit beyond me.
It doesn’t seem to me to make sense.”
Eve forced herself to be patient. After all, she reflected, perhaps
she had been approaching the matter a little rapidly. The desire to
beat Freddie violently over the head passed, and she began to speak
slowly, and, as far as she could manage it, in words of one syllable.
“I can make it quite clear if you will listen and not say a word till
I’ve done. This man who calls himself McTodd is not Mr. McTodd at all.
He is a thief who got into the place by saying that he was McTodd. He
stole the jewels from me last night and hid them in his cottage.”
“But, I say!”
“Don’t interrupt. I know he has them there, so when he has gone to the
ball and the coast is clear you and I will go and search till we find
them.”
“But, I say!”
Eve crushed down her impatience once more.
“Well?”
“Do you really think this cove has got the necklace?”
“I know he has.”
“Well, then, it’s jolly well the best thing that could possibly have
happened, because I got him here to pinch it for Uncle Joseph.”
“What!”
“Absolutely. You see, I began to have a doubt or two as to whether I
was quite equal to the contract, so I roped in this bird by way of a
gang.”
“You got him here? You mean you sent for him and arranged that he
should pass himself off as Mr. McTodd?”
“Well, no, not exactly that. He was coming here as McTodd anyway, as
far as I can gather. But I’d talked it over with him, you know, before
that and asked him to pinch the necklace.”
“Then you know him quite well? He is a friend of yours?”
“I wouldn’t say that exactly. But he said he was a great pal of Phyllis
and her husband.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Absolutely!”
“When?”
“In the train.”
“I mean, was it before or after you had told him why you wanted the
necklace stolen?”
“Eh? Let me think. After.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me exactly what happened,” said Eve. “I can’t understand it at
all at present.”
Freddie marshalled his thoughts.
“Well, let’s see. Well, to start with, I told Uncle Joe I would pinch
the necklace and slip it to him, and he said if I did he’d give me a
thousand quid. As a matter of fact, he made it two thousand, and very
decent of him, I thought it. Is that straight?”
“Yes.”
“Then I sort of got cold feet. Began to wonder, don’t you know, if I
hadn’t bitten off rather more than I could chew.”
“Yes.”
“And then I saw this advertisement in the paper.”
“Advertisement? What advertisement?”
“There was an advertisement in the paper saying if anybody wanted
anything done simply apply to this chap. So I wrote him a letter
and went up and had a talk with him in the lobby of the Piccadilly
Palace. Only, unfortunately, I’d promised the guv’nor I’d catch the
twelve-fifty home, so I had to dash off in the middle. Must have
thought me rather an ass, it’s sometimes occurred to me since. I mean,
practically all I said was, ‘Will you pinch my aunt’s necklace?’
and then buzzed off to catch the train. Never thought I’d see the
man again, but when I got into the five o’clock train--I missed the
twelve-fifty--there he was, as large as life, and the guv’nor suddenly
trickled in from another compartment and introduced him to me as McTodd
the poet. Then the guv’nor legged it, and this chap told me he wasn’t
really McTodd, only pretending to be McTodd.”
“Didn’t that strike you as strange?”
“Yes, rather rummy.”
“Did you ask him why he was doing such an extraordinary thing?”
“Oh, yes. But he wouldn’t tell me. And then he asked me why I wanted
him to pinch Aunt Connie’s necklace, and it suddenly occurred to me
that everything was working rather smoothly--I mean, him being on his
way to the castle like that. Right on the spot, don’t you know. So I
told him all about Phyllis, and it was then that he said that he had
been a pal of hers and her husband’s for years. So we fixed it up that
he was to get the necklace and hand it over. I must say I was rather
drawn to the chappie. He said he didn’t want any money for swiping the
thing.”
Eve laughed bitterly.
“Why should he, when he was going to get twenty thousand pounds’ worth
of diamonds and keep them? Oh, Freddie, I should have thought that even
you would have seen through him. You go to this perfect stranger and
tell him that there is a valuable necklace waiting here to be stolen,
you find him on his way to steal it, and you trust him implicitly just
because he tells you he knows Phyllis--whom he had never heard of in
his life till you mentioned her. Freddie, really!”
The Hon. Freddie scratched his beautifully shaven chin.
“Well, when you put it like that,” he said, “I must own it does sound a
bit off. But he seemed such a dashed matey sort of bird. Cheery and all
that. I liked the feller.”
“What nonsense!”
“Well, but you liked him, too. I mean to say, you were about with him a
goodish lot.”
“I hate him!” said Eve angrily. “I wish I had never seen him. And if I
let him get away with that necklace and cheat poor little Phyllis out
of her money, I’ll--I’ll . . .”
She raised a grimly determined chin to the stars. Freddie watched her
admiringly.
“I say, you know, you are a wonderful girl,” he said.
“He _shan’t_ get away with it, if I have to pull the place down.”
“When you chuck your head up like that you remind me a bit of
What’s-her-name, the Famous Players star--you know, girl who was in
‘Wed To A Satyr.’ Only,” added Freddie hurriedly, “she isn’t half so
pretty. I say, I was rather looking forward to that County Ball, but
now this has happened I don’t mind missing it a bit. I mean, it seems
to draw us closer together somehow, if you follow me. I say, honestly,
all kidding aside, you think that love might some day awaken in . . .”
“We shall want a lamp, of course,” said Eve.
“Eh?”
“A lamp--to see with when we are in the cottage. Can you get one?”
Freddie reluctantly perceived that the moment for sentiment had not
arrived.
“A lamp? Oh, yes, of course. Rather.”
“Better get two,” said Eve. “And meet me here about half an hour after
everybody has gone to the ball.”
§ 2
The tiny sitting-room of Psmith’s haven of rest in the woods had never
reached a high standard of decorativeness even in its best days; but
as Eve paused from her labours and looked at it in the light of her
lamp about an hour after her conversation with Freddie on the terrace,
it presented a picture of desolation which would have startled the
plain-living game-keeper to whom it had once been a home. Even Freddie,
though normally an unobservant youth, seemed awed by the ruin he had
helped to create.
“Golly!” he observed. “I say, we’ve rather mucked the place up a bit!”
It was no over-statement. Eve had come to the cottage to search, and
she had searched thoroughly. The torn carpet lay in a untidy heap
against the wall. The table was overturned. Boards had been wrenched
from the floor, bricks from the chimney-place. The horsehair sofa was
in ribbons, and the one small cushion in the room lay limply in a
corner, its stuffing distributed north, south, east and west. There was
soot everywhere--on the walls, on the floor, on the fire-place, and
on Freddie. A brace of dead bats, the further result of the latter’s
groping in a chimney which had not been swept for seven months, reposed
in the fender. The sitting-room had never been luxurious; it was now
not even cosy.
Eve did not reply. She was struggling with what she was fair-minded
enough to see was an entirely unjust fever of irritation, with her
courteous and obliging assistant as its object. It was wrong, she
knew, to feel like this. That she should be furious at her failure to
find the jewels was excusable, but she had no possible right to be
furious with Freddie. It was not his fault that soot had poured from
the chimney in lieu of diamonds. If he had asked for a necklace and
been given a dead bat, he was surely more to be pitied than censured.
Yet Eve, eyeing his grimy face, would have given very much to have
been able to scream loudly and throw something at him. The fact was,
the Hon. Freddie belonged to that unfortunate type of humanity which
automatically gets blamed for everything in moments of stress.
“Well, the bally thing isn’t here,” said Freddie. He spoke thickly, as
a man will whose mouth is covered with soot.
“I know it isn’t,” said Eve. “But this isn’t the only room in the
house.”
“Think he might have hidden the stuff upstairs?”
“Or downstairs.”
Freddie shook his head, dislodging a portion of a third bat.
“Must be upstairs, if it’s anywhere. Mean to say, there isn’t any
downstairs.”
“There’s the cellar,” said Eve. “Take your lamp and go and have a look.”
For the first time in the proceedings a spirit of disaffection seemed
to manifest itself in the bosom of her assistant. Up till this moment
Freddie had taken his orders placidly and executed them with promptness
and civility. Even when the first shower of soot had driven him choking
from the fire-place, his manly spirit had not been crushed; he had
merely uttered a startled “Oh, I say!” and returned gallantly to the
attack. But now he obviously hesitated.
“Go on,” said Eve impatiently.
“Yes, but, I say, you know . . .”
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t think the chap would be likely to hide a necklace in the
cellar. I vote we give it a miss and try upstairs.”
“Don’t be silly, Freddie. He may have hidden it anywhere.”
“Well, to be absolutely honest, I’d much rather not go into any bally
cellar, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Why ever not?”
“Beetles. Always had a horror of beetles. Ever since I was a kid.”
Eve bit her lip. She was feeling, as Miss Peavey had so often felt
when associated in some delicate undertaking with Edward Cootes, that
exasperating sense of man’s inadequacy which comes to high-spirited
girls at moments such as these. To achieve the end for which she
had started out that night she would have waded waist-high through
a sea of beetles. But, divining with that sixth sense which tells
women when the male has been pushed just so far and can be pushed no
farther, that Freddie, wax though he might be in her hands in any other
circumstances, was on this one point adamant, she made no further
effort to bend him to her will.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll go down into the cellar. You go and look
upstairs.”
“No. I say, sure you don’t mind?”
Eve took up her lamp and left the craven.
* * * * *
For a girl of iron resolution and unswerving purpose, Eve’s inspection
of the cellar was decidedly cursory. A distinct feeling of relief came
over her as she stood at the top of the steps and saw by the light of
the lamp how small and bare it was. For, impervious as she might be
to the intimidation of beetles, her armour still contained a chink.
She was terribly afraid of rats. And even when the rays of the lamp
disclosed no scuttling horrors, she still lingered for a moment before
descending. You never knew with rats. They pretended not to be there
just to lure you on, and then came out and whizzed about your ankles.
However, the memory of her scorn for Freddie’s pusillanimity forced her
on, and she went down.
The word “cellar” is an elastic one. It can be applied equally to the
acres of bottle-fringed vaults which lie beneath a great pile like
Blandings Castle and to a hole in the ground like the one in which she
now found herself. This cellar was easily searched. She stamped on its
stone flags with an ear strained to detect any note of hollowness, but
none came. She moved the lamp so that it shone into every corner, but
there was not even a crack in which a diamond necklace could have been
concealed. Satisfied that the place contained nothing but a little
coal-dust and a smell of damp decay, Eve passed thankfully out.
The law of elimination was doing its remorseless work. It had ruled
out the cellar, the kitchen, and the living-room--that is to say, the
whole of the lower of the two floors which made up the cottage. There
now remained only the rooms upstairs. There were probably not more than
two, and Freddie must already have searched one of these. The quest
seemed to be nearing its end. As Eve made for the narrow staircase that
led to the second floor, the lamp shook in her hand and cast weird
shadows. Now that success was in sight, the strain was beginning to
affect her nerves.
It was to nerves that in the first instant of hearing it she attributed
what sounded like a soft cough in the sitting-room, a few feet from
where she stood. Then a chill feeling of dismay gripped her. It could
only, she thought, be Freddie, returned from his search; and if Freddie
had returned from his search already, what could it mean except that
those upstairs rooms, on which she had counted so confidently, had
proved as empty as the others? Freddie was not one of your restrained,
unemotional men. If he had found the necklace he would have been
downstairs in two bounds, shouting. His silence was ominous. She opened
the door and went quickly in.
“Freddie,” she began, and broke off with a gasp.
It was not Freddie who had coughed. It was Psmith. He was seated on
the remains of the horsehair sofa, toying with an automatic pistol and
gravely surveying through his monocle the ruins of a home.
§ 3
“Good evening,” said Psmith.
It was not for a philosopher like himself to display astonishment. He
was, however, undeniably feeling it. When, a few minutes before, he
had encountered Freddie in this same room, he had received a distinct
shock; but a rough theory which would account for Freddie’s presence in
his home-from-home he had been able to work out. He groped in vain for
one which would explain Eve.
Mere surprise, however, was never enough to prevent Psmith talking. He
began at once.
“It was nice of you,” he said, rising courteously, “to look in. Won’t
you sit down? On the sofa, perhaps? Or would you prefer a brick?”
Eve was not yet equal to speech. She had been so firmly convinced
that he was ten miles away at Shifley that his presence here in the
sitting-room of the cottage had something of the breath-taking quality
of a miracle. The explanation, if she could have known it, was simple.
Two excellent reasons had kept Psmith from gracing the County Ball
with his dignified support. In the first place, as Shifley was only
four miles from the village where he had spent most of his life,
he had regarded it as probable, if not certain, that he would have
encountered there old friends to whom it would have been both tedious
and embarrassing to explain why he had changed his name to McTodd.
And secondly, though he had not actually anticipated a nocturnal raid
on his little nook, he had thought it well to be on the premises that
evening in case Mr. Edward Cootes should have been getting ideas into
his head. As soon, therefore, as the castle had emptied itself and the
wheels of the last car had passed away down the drive, he had pocketed
Mr. Cootes’s revolver and proceeded to the cottage.
Eve recovered her self-possession. She was not a girl given to collapse
in moments of crisis. The first shock of amazement had passed; a
humiliating feeling of extreme foolishness, which came directly after,
had also passed; she was now grimly ready for battle.
“Where is Mr. Threepwood?” she asked.
“Upstairs. I have put him in storage for a while. Do not worry about
Comrade Threepwood. He has lots to think about. He is under the
impression that if he stirs out he will be instantly shot.”
“Oh? Well, I want to put this lamp down. Will you please pick up that
table?”
“By all means. But--I am a novice in these matters--ought I not first
to say ‘Hands up!’ or something?”
“Will you please pick up that table?”
“A friend of mine--one Cootes--you must meet him some time--generally
remarks ‘Hey!’ in a sharp, arresting voice on these occasions.
Personally I consider the expression too abrupt. Still, he has had
great experience . . .”
“Will you please pick up that table?”
“Most certainly. I take it, then, that you would prefer to dispense
with the usual formalities. In that case, I will park this revolver on
the mantelpiece while we chat. I have taken a curious dislike to the
thing. It makes me feel like Dangerous Dan McGrew.”
Eve put down the lamp, and there was silence for a moment. Psmith
looked about him thoughtfully. He picked up one of the dead bats and
covered it with his handkerchief.
“Somebody’s mother,” he murmured reverently.
Eve sat down on the sofa.
“Mr. . . .” She stopped. “I can’t call you Mr. McTodd. Will you please
tell me your name?”
“Ronald,” said Psmith. “Ronald Eustace.”
“I suppose you have a surname?” snapped Eve. “Or an alias?”
Psmith eyed her with a pained expression.
“I may be hyper-sensitive,” he said, “but that last remark sounded
to me like a dirty dig. You seem to imply that I am some sort of a
criminal.”
Eve laughed shortly.
“I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. There’s not much sense in
pretending now, is there? What is your name?”
“Psmith. The p is silent.”
“Well, Mr. Smith, I imagine you understand why I am here?”
“I took it for granted that you had come to fulfil your kindly promise
of doing the place up a bit. Will you be wounded if I say frankly that
I preferred it the way it was before? All this may be the last word in
ultra-modern interior decoration, but I suppose I am old-fashioned.
The whisper flies round Shropshire and adjoining counties, ‘Psmith
is hide-bound. He is not attuned to up-to-date methods.’ Honestly,
don’t you think you have rather unduly stressed the bizarre note? This
soot . . . these dead bats . . .”
“I have come to get that necklace.”
“Ah! The necklace!”
“I’m going to get it, too.”
Psmith shook his head gently.
“There,” he said, “if you will pardon me, I take issue with you. There
is nobody to whom I would rather give that necklace than you, but there
are special circumstances connected with it which render such an action
impossible. I fancy, Miss Halliday, that you have been misled by your
young friend upstairs. No; let me speak,” he said, raising a hand.
“You know what a treat it is to me. The way I envisage the matter is
thus. I still cannot understand as completely as I could wish how you
come to be mixed up in the affair, but it is plain that in some way or
other Comrade Threepwood has enlisted your services, and I regret to be
obliged to inform you that the motives animating him in this quest are
not pure. To put it crisply, he is engaged in what Comrade Cootes, to
whom I alluded just now, would call ‘funny business’.”
“I . . .”
“Pardon me,” said Psmith. “If you will be patient for a few minutes
more, I shall have finished and shall then be delighted to lend an
attentive ear to any remarks you may wish to make. As it occurs to
me--indeed, you hinted as much yourself just now--that my own position
in this little matter has an appearance which to the uninitiated might
seem tolerably rummy, I had better explain how I come to be guarding a
diamond necklace which does not belong to me. I rely on your womanly
discretion to let the thing go no further.”
“Will you please . . .”
“In one moment. The facts are as follows. Our mutual friend Mr. Keeble,
Miss Halliday, has a stepdaughter who is married to one Comrade Jackson
who, if he had no other claim to fame, would go ringing down through
history for this reason, that he and I were at school together and that
he is my best friend. We two have sported on the green--ooh, a lot of
times. Well, owing to one thing and another, the Jackson family is
rather badly up against it at the present . . .”
Eve jumped up angrily.
“I don’t believe a word of it,” she cried. “What is the use of trying
to fool me like this? You had never heard of Phyllis before Freddie
spoke about her in the train . . .”
“Believe me . . .”
“I won’t. Freddie got you down here to help him steal that necklace and
give it to Mr. Keeble so that he could help Phyllis, and now you’ve got
it and are trying to keep it for yourself.”
Psmith started slightly. His monocle fell from its place.
“Is _everybody_ in this little plot! Are you also one of Comrade
Keeble’s corps of assistants?”
“Mr. Keeble asked me to try to get the necklace for him.”
Psmith replaced his monocle thoughtfully.
“This,” he said, “opens up a new line of thought. Can it be that I
have been wronging Comrade Threepwood all this time? I must confess
that, when I found him here just now standing like Marius among the
ruins of Carthage (the allusion is a classical one, and the fruit of an
expensive education), I jumped--I may say, sprang--to the conclusion
that he was endeavouring to double-cross both myself and the boss by
getting hold of the necklace with a view to retaining it for his own
benefit. It never occurred to me that he might be crediting me with the
same sinful guile.”
Eve ran to him and clutched his arm.
“Mr. Smith, is this really true? Are you really a friend of Phyllis?”
“She looks on me as a grandfather. Are _you_ a friend of hers?”
“We were at school together.”
“This,” said Psmith cordially, “is one of the most gratifying moments
of my life. It makes us all seem like one great big family.”
“But I never heard Phyllis speak about you.”
“Strange!” said Psmith. “Strange. Surely she was not ashamed of her
humble friend?”
“Her what?”
“I must explain,” said Psmith, “that until recently I was earning a
difficult livelihood by slinging fish about in Billingsgate Market. It
is possible that some snobbish strain in Comrade Jackson’s bride, which
I confess I had not suspected, kept her from admitting that she was
accustomed to hob-nob with one in the fish business.”
“Good gracious!” cried Eve.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Smith . . . Fish business . . . Why, it was you who called at
Phyllis’s house while I was there. Just before I came down here. I
remember Phyllis saying how sorry she was that we had not met. She said
you were just my sort of . . . I mean, she said she wanted me to meet
you.”
“This,” said Psmith, “is becoming more and more gratifying every
moment. It seems to me that you and I were made for each other. I am
your best friend’s best friend and we both have a taste for stealing
other people’s jewellery. I cannot see how you can very well resist the
conclusion that we are twin-souls.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“We shall get into that series of ‘Husbands and Wives Who Work
Together.’”
“Where is the necklace?”
Psmith sighed.
“The business note. Always the business note. Can’t we keep all that
till later?”
“No. We can’t.”
“Ah, well!”
Psmith crossed the room, and took down from the wall the case of
stuffed birds.
“The one place,” said Eve, with mortification, “where we didn’t think
of looking!”
Psmith opened the case and removed the centre bird, a depressed-looking
fowl with glass eyes which stared with a haunting pathos. He felt in
its interior and pulled out something that glittered and sparkled in
the lamp-light.
“Oh!”
Eve ran her fingers almost lovingly through the jewels as they lay
before her on the little table.
“Aren’t they beautiful!”
“Distinctly. I think I may say that of all the jewels I have ever
stolen . . .”
“HEY!”
Eve let the necklace fall with a cry. Psmith spun round. In the doorway
stood Mr. Edward Cootes, pointing a pistol.
§ 4
“Hands up!” said Mr. Cootes with the uncouth curtness of one who has
not had the advantages of a refined home and a nice upbringing. He
advanced warily, preceded by the revolver. It was a dainty, miniature
weapon, such as might have been the property of some gentle lady. Mr.
Cootes had, in fact, borrowed it from Miss Peavey, who at this juncture
entered the room in a black and silver dinner-dress surmounted by a
Rose du Barri wrap, her spiritual face glowing softly in the subdued
light.
“Attaboy, Ed,” observed Miss Peavey crisply.
She swooped on the table and gathered up the necklace. Mr. Cootes,
though probably gratified by the tribute, made no acknowledgment of it,
but continued to direct an austere gaze at Eve and Psmith.
“No funny business,” he advised.
“I would be the last person,” said Psmith agreeably, “to advocate
anything of the sort. This,” he said to Eve, “is Comrade Cootes, of
whom you have heard so much.”
Eve was staring, bewildered, at the poetess, who, satisfied with the
manner in which the preliminaries had been conducted, had begun looking
about her with idle curiosity.
“Miss Peavey!” cried Eve. Of all the events of this eventful night the
appearance of Lady Constance’s emotional friend in the rôle of criminal
was the most disconcerting. “Miss _Peavey_!”
“Hallo?” responded that lady agreeably.
“I . . . I . . .”
“What, I think, Miss Halliday is trying to say,” cut in Psmith, “is
that she is finding it a little difficult to adjust her mind to the
present development. I, too, must confess myself somewhat at a loss. I
knew, of course, that Comrade Cootes had--shall I say an acquisitive
streak in him, but you I had always supposed to be one hundred per
cent. soul--and snowy white at that.”
“Yeah?” said Miss Peavey, but faintly interested.
“I imagined that you were a poetess.”
“So I am a poetess,” retorted Miss Peavey hotly. “Just you start in
joshing my poems and see how quick I’ll bean you with a brick. Well,
Ed, no sense in sticking around here. Let’s go.”
“We’ll have to tie these birds up,” said Mr. Cootes. “Otherwise we’ll
have them squealing before I can make a getaway.”
“Ed,” said Miss Peavey with the scorn which her colleague so often
excited in her, “try to remember sometimes that that thing balanced
on your collar is a head, not a hubbard squash. And be careful what
you’re doing with that gat! Waving it about like it was a bouquet or
something. How are they going to squeal? They can’t say a thing without
telling everyone they snitched the stuff first.”
“That’s right,” admitted Mr. Cootes.
“Well, then, don’t come butting in.”
The silence into which this rebuke plunged Mr. Cootes gave Psmith the
opportunity to resume speech. An opportunity of which he was glad,
for, while he had nothing of definitely vital import to say, he was
optimist enough to feel that his only hope of recovering the necklace
was to keep the conversation going on the chance of something turning
up. Affable though his manner was, he had never lost sight of the fact
that one leap would take him across the space of floor separating
him from Mr. Cootes. At present, that small but effective revolver
precluded anything in the nature of leaps, however short, but if in the
near future anything occurred to divert his adversary’s vigilance even
momentarily. . . . He pursued a policy of watchful waiting, and in the
meantime started to talk again.
“If, before you go,” he said, “you can spare us a moment of your
valuable time, I should be glad of a few words. And, first, may I say
that I cordially agree with your condemnation of Comrade Cootes’s
recent suggestion. The man is an ass.”
“Say!” cried Mr. Cootes, coming to life again, “that’ll be about all
from you. If there wasn’t ladies present, I’d bust you one.”
“Ed,” said Miss Peavey with quiet authority, “shut your trap!”
Mr. Cootes subsided once more. Psmith gazed at him through his monocle,
interested.
“Pardon me,” he said, “but--if it is not a rude question--are you two
married?”
“Eh?”
“You seemed to me to talk to him like a wife. Am I addressing Mrs.
Cootes?”
“You will be if you stick around a while.”
“A thousand congratulations to Comrade Cootes. Not quite so many to
you, possibly, but fully that number of good wishes.” He moved towards
the poetess with extended hand. “I am thinking of getting married
myself shortly.”
“Keep those hands up,” said Mr. Cootes.
“Surely,” said Psmith reproachfully, “these conventions need not be
observed among friends? You will find the only revolver I have ever
possessed over there on the mantelpiece. Go and look at it.”
“Yes, and have you jumping on my back the moment I took my eyes off
you!”
“There is a suspicious vein in your nature, Comrade Cootes,” sighed
Psmith, “which I do not like to see. Fight against it.” He turned to
Miss Peavey once more. “To resume a pleasanter topic, you will let me
know where to send the plated fish-slice, won’t you?”
“Huh?” said the lady.
“I was hoping,” proceeded Psmith, “if you do not think it a liberty
on the part of one who has known you but a short time, to be allowed
to send you a small wedding-present in due season. And one of these
days, perhaps, when I too am married, you and Comrade Cootes will come
and visit us in our little home. You will receive a hearty, unaffected
welcome. You must not be offended if, just before you say good-bye, we
count the spoons.”
One would scarcely have supposed Miss Peavey a sensitive woman, yet at
this remark an ominous frown clouded her white forehead. Her careless
amiability seemed to wane. She raked Psmith with a glittering eye.
“You’re talking a dam’ lot,” she observed coldly.
“An old failing of mine,” said Psmith apologetically, “and one
concerning which there have been numerous complaints. I see now
that I have been boring you, and I hope that you will allow me to
express. . . .”
He broke off abruptly, not because he had reached the end of his
remarks, but because at this moment there came from above their heads
a sudden sharp cracking sound, and almost simultaneously a shower of
plaster fell from the ceiling, followed by the startling appearance
of a long, shapely leg, which remained waggling in space. And from
somewhere out of sight there filtered down a sharp and agonised oath.
Time and neglect had done their work with the flooring of the room in
which Psmith had bestowed the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, and, creeping
cautiously about in the dark, he had had the misfortune to go through.
But, as so often happens in this life, the misfortune of one is the
good fortune of another. Badly as the accident had shaken Freddie, from
the point of view of Psmith it was almost ideal. The sudden appearance
of a human leg through the ceiling at a moment of nervous tension is
enough to unman the stoutest-hearted, and Edward Cootes made no attempt
to conceal his perturbation. Leaping a clear six inches from the floor,
he jerked up his head and quite unintentionally pulled the trigger of
his revolver. A bullet ripped through the plaster.
The leg disappeared. Not for an instant since he had been shut in that
upper room had Freddie Threepwood ceased to be mindful of Psmith’s
parting statement that he would be shot if he tried to escape, and Mr.
Cootes’ bullet seemed to him a dramatic fulfilment of that promise.
Wrenching his leg with painful energy out of the abyss, he proceeded
to execute a backward spring which took him to the far wall--at which
point, as it was impossible to get any farther away from the centre of
events, he was compelled to halt his retreat. Having rolled himself
up into as small a ball as he could manage, he sat where he was,
trying not to breathe. His momentary intention of explaining through
the hole that the entire thing had been a regrettable accident, he
prudently abandoned. Unintelligent though he had often proved himself
in other crises of his life, he had the sagacity now to realise that
the neighbourhood of the hole was unhealthy and should be avoided. So,
preserving a complete and unbroken silence, he crouched there in the
darkness, only asking to be left alone.
And it seemed, as the moments slipped by, that this modest wish was
to be gratified. Noises and the sound of voices came up to him from
the room below, but no more bullets. It would be paltering with the
truth to say that this put him completely at his ease, but still it was
something. Freddie’s pulse began to return to the normal.
Mr. Cootes’, on the other hand, was beating with a dangerous quickness.
Swift and objectionable things had been happening to Edward Cootes in
that lower room. His first impression was that the rift in the plaster
above him had been instantly followed by the collapse of the entire
ceiling, but this was a mistaken idea. All that had occurred was that
Psmith, finding Mr. Cootes’ eye and pistol functioning in another
direction, had sprung forward, snatched up a chair, hit the unfortunate
man over the head with it, relieved him of his pistol, leaped to the
mantelpiece, removed the revolver which lay there, and now, holding
both weapons in an attitude of menace, was regarding him censoriously
through a gleaming eyeglass.
“No funny business, Comrade Cootes,” said Psmith.
Mr. Cootes picked himself up painfully. His head was singing. He
looked at the revolvers, blinked, opened his mouth and shut it again.
He was oppressed with a sense of defeat. Nature had not built him for
a man of violence. Peaceful manipulation of a pack of cards in the
smoke-room of an Atlantic liner was a thing he understood and enjoyed:
rough-and-tumble encounters were alien to him and distasteful. As far
as Mr. Cootes was concerned, the war was over.
But Miss Peavey was a woman of spirit. Her hat was still in the ring.
She clutched the necklace in a grasp of steel, and her fine eyes glared
defiance.
“You think yourself smart, don’t you?” she said.
Psmith eyed her commiseratingly. Her valorous attitude appealed to him.
Nevertheless, business was business.
“I am afraid,” he said regretfully, “that I must trouble you to hand
over that necklace.”
“Try and get it,” said Miss Peavey.
Psmith looked hurt.
“I am a child in these matters,” he said, “but I had always gathered
that on these occasions the wishes of the man behind the gun were
automatically respected.”
“I’ll call your bluff,” said Miss Peavey firmly. “I’m going to walk
straight out of here with this collection of ice right now, and I’ll
bet you won’t have the nerve to start any shooting. Shoot a woman? Not
you!”
Psmith nodded gravely.
“Your knowledge of psychology is absolutely correct. Your trust in my
sense of chivalry rests on solid ground. But,” he proceeded, cheering
up, “I fancy that I see a way out of the difficulty. An idea has been
vouchsafed to me. I shall shoot--not you, but Comrade Cootes. This will
dispose of all unpleasantness. If you attempt to edge out through that
door I shall immediately proceed to plug Comrade Cootes in the leg. At
least, I shall try. I am a poor shot and may hit him in some more vital
spot, but at least he will have the consolation of knowing that I did
my best and meant well.”
“Hey!” cried Mr. Cootes. And never, in a life liberally embellished
with this favourite ejaculation of his, had he uttered it more
feelingly. He shot a feverish glance at Miss Peavey; and, reading in
her face indecision rather than that instant acquiescence which he had
hoped to see, cast off his customary attitude of respectful humility
and asserted himself. He was no cave-man, but this was one occasion
when he meant to have his own way. With an agonised bound he reached
Miss Peavey’s side, wrenched the necklace from her grasp and flung it
into the enemy’s camp. Eve stooped and picked it up.
“I thank you,” said Psmith with a brief bow in her direction.
Miss Peavey breathed heavily. Her strong hands clenched and unclenched.
Between her parted lips her teeth showed in a thin white line. Suddenly
she swallowed quickly, as if draining a glass of unpalatable medicine.
“Well,” she said in a low, even voice, “that seems to be about all.
Guess we’ll be going. Come along, Ed, pick up the Henries.”
“Coming, Liz,” replied Mr. Cootes humbly.
They passed together into the night.
§ 5
Silence followed their departure. Eve, weak with the reaction from
the complex emotions which she had undergone since her arrival at the
cottage, sat on the battered sofa, her chin resting in her hands. She
looked at Psmith, who, humming a light air, was delicately piling with
the toe of his shoe a funeral mound over the second of the dead bats.
“So that’s that!” she said.
Psmith looked up with a bright and friendly smile.
“You have a very happy gift of phrase,” he said. “That, as you sensibly
say, is that.”
Eve was silent for awhile. Psmith completed the obsequies and stepped
back with the air of a man who has done what he can for a fallen friend.
“Fancy Miss Peavey being a thief!” said Eve. She was somehow feeling
a disinclination to allow the conversation to die down, and yet she
had an idea that, unless it was permitted to die down, it might
become embarrassingly intimate. Subconsciously, she was endeavouring
to analyse her views on this long, calm person who had so recently
added himself to the list of those who claimed to look upon her with
affection.
“I confess it came as something of a shock to me also,” said Psmith.
“In fact, the revelation that there was this other, deeper side to her
nature materially altered the opinion I had formed of her. I found
myself warming to Miss Peavey. Something that was akin to respect began
to stir within me. Indeed, I almost wish that we had not been compelled
to deprive her of the jewels.”
“‘We’?” said Eve. “I’m afraid I didn’t do much.”
“Your attitude was exactly right,” Psmith assured her. “You afforded
just the moral support which a man needs in such a crisis.”
Silence fell once more. Eve returned to her thoughts. And then, with a
suddenness which surprised her, she found that she had made up her mind.
“So you’re going to be married?” she said.
Psmith polished his monocle thoughtfully.
“I think so,” he said. “I think so. What do _you_ think?”
Eve regarded him steadfastly. Then she gave a little laugh.
“Yes,” she said, “I think so, too.” She paused. “Shall I tell you
something?”
“You could tell me nothing more wonderful than that.”
“When I met Cynthia in Market Blandings, she told me what the trouble
was which made her husband leave her. What do you suppose it was?”
“From my brief acquaintance with Comrade McTodd, I would hazard the
guess that he tried to stab her with the bread-knife. He struck me as a
murderous-looking specimen.”
“They had some people to dinner, and there was chicken, and Cynthia
gave all the giblets to the guests, and her husband bounded out of his
seat with a wild cry, and, shouting ‘You _know_ I love those things
better than anything in the world!’ rushed from the house, never to
return!”
“Precisely how I would have wished him to rush, had I been Mrs. McTodd.”
“Cynthia told me that he had rushed from the house, never to return,
six times since they were married.”
“May I mention--in passing--” said Psmith, “that I do not like chicken
giblets?”
“Cynthia advised me,” proceeded Eve, “if ever I married, to marry
someone eccentric. She said it was such fun. Well, I don’t suppose I am
ever likely to meet anyone more eccentric than you, am I?”
“I think you would be unwise to wait on the chance.”
“The only thing is . . .,” said Eve reflectively. “‘Mrs. Smith’ . . .
It doesn’t _sound_ much, does it?”
Psmith beamed encouragingly.
“We must look into the future,” he said. “We must remember that I am
only at the beginning of what I am convinced is to be a singularly
illustrious career. ‘Lady Psmith’ is better . . . ‘Baroness Psmith’
better still . . . And--who knows?--‘The Duchess of Psmith’ . . .”
“Well, anyhow,” said Eve, “you were wonderful just now, simply
wonderful. The way you made one spring . . .”
“Your words,” said Psmith, “are music to my ears, but we must not
forget that the foundations of the success of the manœuvre were laid
by Comrade Threepwood. Had it not been for the timely incursion of his
leg . . .”
“Good gracious!” cried Eve. “Freddie! I had forgotten all about him!”
“The right spirit,” said Psmith. “Quite the right spirit.”
“We must go and let him out.”
“Just as you say. And then he can come with us on the stroll I was
about to propose that we should take through the woods. It is a lovely
night, and what could be jollier than to have Comrade Threepwood
prattling at our side? I will go and let him out at once.”
“No, don’t bother,” said Eve.