I
Sunshine, calling to all right-thinking men to come out and revel in
its heartening warmth, poured in at the windows of the great library
of Blandings Castle. But to Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, much as
he liked sunshine as a rule, it brought no cheer. His face drawn, his
pince-nez askew, his tie drooping away from its stud like a languorous
lily, he sat staring sightlessly before him. He looked like something
that had just been prepared for stuffing by a taxidermist.
A moralist, watching Lord Emsworth in his travail, would have reflected
smugly that it cuts both ways, this business of being a peer of
the realm with large private means and a good digestion. Unalloyed
prosperity, he would have pointed out in his offensive way, tends to
enervate: and in this world of ours, full of alarms and uncertainties,
where almost anything is apt to drop suddenly on top of your head
without warning at almost any moment, what one needs is to be tough and
alert.
When some outstanding disaster happens to the ordinary man, it finds
him prepared. Years of missing the eight-forty-five, taking the dog for
a run on rainy nights, endeavouring to abate smoky chimneys, and coming
down to breakfast and discovering that they have burned the bacon
again, have given his soul a protective hardness, so that by the time
his wife's relations arrive for a long visit he is ready for them.
Lord Emsworth had had none of this salutary training. Fate, hitherto,
had seemed to spend its time thinking up ways of pampering him. He
ate well, slept well, and had no money troubles. He grew the best
roses in Shropshire. He had won a first prize for pumpkins at that
county's agricultural show, a thing no Earl of Emsworth had ever done
before. And, just previous to the point at which this chronicle opens,
his younger son Frederick had married the daughter of an American
millionaire and had gone to live three thousand miles away from
Blandings Castle, with lots of good, deep water in between him and it.
He had come to look on himself as Fate's spoiled darling.
Can we wonder, then, that in the agony of this sudden treacherous blow
he felt stunned and looked eviscerated? Is it surprising that the
sunshine made no appeal to him? May we not consider him justified,
as he sat there, in swallowing a lump in his throat like an ostrich
gulping down a brass door knob?
The answer to these questions, in the order given, is No, No, and Yes.
The door of the library opened, revealing the natty person of his
brother Galahad. Lord Emsworth straightened his pince-nez and looked at
him apprehensively. Knowing how little reverence there was in the Hon.
Galahad's composition and how tepid was his interest in the honourable
struggles for supremacy of Fat Pigs, he feared that the other was about
to wound him in his bereavement with some jarring flippancy. Then his
gaze softened and he was conscious of a soothing feeling of relief.
There was no frivolity in his brother's face, only a gravity which
became him well. The Hon. Galahad sat down, hitched up the knees of his
trousers, cleared his throat, and spoke in a tone that could not have
been more sympathetic or in better taste.
"Bad business, this, Clarence."
"Appalling, my dear fellow."
"What are you going to do about it?"
Lord Emsworth shrugged his shoulders hopelessly. He generally did when
people asked him what he was going to do about things.
"I am at a loss," he confessed. "I do not know how to act. What young
Carmody tells me has completely upset all my plans."
"Carmody?"
"I sent him to the Argus Enquiry Agency in London to engage the
services of a detective. It is a firm that Sir Gregory Parsloe once
mentioned to me, in the days when we were on better terms. He said,
in rather a meaning way, I thought, that if ever I had any trouble
of any sort that needed expert and tactful handling, these were the
people to go to. I gathered that they had assisted him in some matter,
the details of which he did not confide to me, and had given complete
satisfaction."
"Parsloe!" said the Hon. Galahad, and sniffed.
"So I sent young Carmody to London to approach them about finding the
Empress. And now he tells me that his errand proved fruitless. They
were firm in their refusal to trace missing pigs."
"Just as well."
"What do you mean?"
"Save you a lot of unnecessary expense. There's no need for you to
waste money employing detectives."
"I thought that possibly the trained mind----"
"I can tell you who's got the Empress. I've known it all along."
"What!"
"Certainly."
"Galahad!"
"It's as plain as the nose on your face."
Lord Emsworth felt his nose.
"Is it?" he said doubtfully.
"I've just been talking to Constance----"
"Constance?" Lord Emsworth opened his mouth feebly. "She hasn't got my
pig?"
"I've just been talking to Constance," repeated the Hon. Galahad, "and
she called me some very unpleasant names."
"She does, sometimes. Even as a child, I remember----"
"Most unpleasant names. A senile mischief maker, among others, and a
meddling old penguin. And all because I told her that the man who had
stolen Empress of Blandings was young Gregory Parsloe."
"Parsloe!"
"Parsloe. Surely it's obvious? I should have thought it would have been
clear to the meanest intelligence."
From boyhood up, Lord Emsworth had possessed an intelligence about as
mean as an intelligence can be without actually being placed under
restraint. Nevertheless, he found his brother's theory incredible.
"Parsloe?"
"Don't keep saying 'Parsloe.'"
"But, my dear Galahad----!"
"It stands to reason."
"You don't really think so?"
"Of course I think so. Have you forgotten what I told you the other
day?"
"Yes," said Lord Emsworth. He always forgot what people told him the
other day.
"About young Parsloe," said the Hon. Galahad impatiently. "About his
nobbling my dog Towser."
Lord Emsworth started. It all came back to him. A hard expression crept
into the eyes behind the pince-nez, which emotion had just jerked
crooked again.
"To be sure. Towser. Your dog. I remember."
"He nobbled Towser, and he's nobbled the Empress. Dash it, Clarence,
use your intelligence. Who else except young Parsloe had any interest
in getting the Empress out of the way? And if he hadn't known there was
some dirty work being planned would that pig man of his, Brotherhood or
whatever his name is, have been going about offering three to one on
Pride of Matchingham? I told you at the time it was fishy."
The evidence was damning, and yet Lord Emsworth found himself once more
a prey to doubt. Of the blackness of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe's
soul he had, of course, long been aware. But could the man actually be
capable of the Crime of the Century? A fellow landowner? A justice of
the peace? A man who grew pumpkins? A baronet?
"But, Galahad--a man in Parsloe's position...?"
"What do you mean, a man in his position? Do you suppose a fellow
changes his nature just because a cousin of his dies and he comes into
a baronetcy? Haven't I told you a dozen times that I've known young
Parsloe all his life? Known him intimately. He was always as hot as
mustard and as wide as Leicester Square. Ask anybody who used to go
around town in those days. When they saw young Parsloe coming strong
men winced and hid their valuables. He hadn't a penny except what he
could get by telling the tale, and he always did himself like a prince.
When I knew him first he was living down on the river at Shepperton.
His old father, the Dean, had made an arrangement with the keeper of
the pub there to give him breakfast and bed and nothing else. 'If he
wants dinner, he must earn it,' the old boy said. And do you know how
he used to earn it? He trained that mongrel of his, Banjo, to go and do
tricks in front of parties that came to the place in steam launches.
And then he would stroll up and hope his dog was not annoying them and
stand talking till they went in to dinner and then go in with them and
pick up the wine list, and before they knew what was happening he would
be bursting with their champagne and cigars. That's the sort of fellow
young Parsloe was."
"But even so----"
"I remember him running up to me outside that pub one afternoon--the
Jolly Miller, it was called--his face shining with positive ecstasy.
'Come in, quick!' he said. 'There's a new barmaid, and she hasn't found
out yet I'm not allowed credit.'"
"But, Galahad----"
"And if young Parsloe thinks I've forgotten a certain incident that
occurred in the early summer of the year '95 he's very much mistaken.
He met me in the Haymarket and took me into the Two Goslings for a
drink--there's a hat shop now where it used to be--and after we'd had
it he pulls a sort of dashed little top affair out of his pocket, a
thing with numbers written round it. Said he'd found it in the street
and wondered who thought of these ingenious little toys and insisted on
our spinning it for half-crowns. 'You take the odd numbers, I'll take
the even,' says young Parsloe. And before I could fight my way out into
the fresh air I was ten pounds seven and sixpence in the hole. And I
discovered next morning that they make those beastly things so that if
you push the stem through and spin them the wrong way up you're bound
to get an even number. And when I asked him the following afternoon to
show me that top again he said he'd lost it. That's the sort of fellow
young Parsloe was. And you expect me to believe that inheriting a
baronetcy and settling down in the country has made him so dashed pure
and high-minded that he wouldn't stoop to nobbling a pig."
Lord Emsworth uncoiled himself. Cumulative evidence had done its work.
His eyes glittered, and he breathed stertorously.
"The scoundrel!"
"Tough nut, always was."
"What shall I do?"
"Do? Why, go to him right away and tax him."
"Tax him?"
"Yes. Look him squarely in the eye and tax him with his crime."
"I will! Immediately."
"I'll come with you."
"Look him squarely in the eye!"
"And tax him!"
"And tax him." Lord Emsworth had reached the hall and was peering
agitatedly to right and left. "Where the devil's my hat? I can't find
my hat. Somebody's always hiding my hat. I will not have my hats
hidden."
"You don't need a hat to tax a man with stealing a pig," said the Hon.
Galahad, who was well versed in the manners and rules of good society.
II
In his study at Matchingham Hall in the neighbouring village of Much
Matchingham, Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe sat gazing at the current
number of a weekly paper. We have seen that weekly paper before. On
that occasion it was in the plump hands of Beach. And, oddly enough,
what had attracted Sir Gregory's attention was the very item which had
interested the butler.
The Hon. Galahad Threepwood, brother of the Earl of Emsworth.
A little bird tells us that "Gally" is at Blandings Castle,
Shropshire, the ancestral seat of the family, busily engaged in
writing his Reminiscences. As every member of the Old Brigade will
testify, they ought to be as warm as the weather, if not warmer!
But whereas Beach, perusing this, had chuckled, Sir Gregory
Parsloe-Parsloe shivered, like one who on a country ramble suddenly
perceives a snake in his path.
Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe of Matchingham Hall, seventh baronet of
his line, was one of those men who start their lives well, skid for a
while, and then slide back onto the straight and narrow path and stay
there. That is to say, he had been up to the age of twenty a blameless
boy and from the age of thirty-one, when he had succeeded to the title,
a practically blameless bart. So much so that now, in his fifty-second
year, he was on the eve of being accepted by the local Unionist
Committee as their accredited candidate for the forthcoming by-election
in the Bridgeford and Shifley Parliamentary Division of Shropshire.
But there had been a decade in his life, that dangerous decade of the
twenties, when he had accumulated a past so substantial that a less
able man would have been compelled to spread it over a far longer
period. It was an epoch in his life to which he did not enjoy looking
back, and years of irreproachable barthood had enabled him, as far as
he personally was concerned, to bury the past. And now, it seemed, this
pestilential companion of his youth was about to dig it up again.
The years had turned Sir Gregory into a man of portly habit; and, as
portly men do in moments of stress, he puffed. But, puff he never so
shrewdly, he could not blow away that paragraph. It was still there,
looking up at him, when the door opened and the butler announced Lord
Emsworth and Mr. Galahad Threepwood.
Sir Gregory's first emotion on seeing the taxing party file into the
room was one of pardonable surprise. Aware of the hard feelings which
George Cyril Wellbeloved's transference of his allegiance had aroused
in the bosom of that gifted pig man's former employer, he had not
expected to receive a morning call from the Earl of Emsworth. As for
the Hon. Galahad, he had ceased to be on cordial terms with him as long
ago as the winter of the year nineteen hundred and six.
Then, following quickly on the heels of surprise, came indignation.
That the author of the Reminiscences should be writing scurrilous
stories about him with one hand and strolling calmly into his private
study with, so to speak, the other, occasioned him the keenest
resentment. He drew himself up and was in the very act of staring
haughtily when the Hon. Galahad broke the silence.
"Young Parsloe," said the Hon. Galahad, speaking in a sharp, unpleasant
voice, "your sins have found you out!"
It had been the baronet's intention to inquire to what he was indebted
for the pleasure of this visit, and to inquire it icily; but at this
remarkable speech the words halted on his lips.
"Eh?" he said blankly.
The Hon. Galahad was regarding him through his monocle rather as a cook
eyes a black beetle on discovering it in the kitchen sink. It was a
look which would have aroused pique in a slug, and once more the Squire
of Matchingham's bewilderment gave way to wrath.
"What the devil do you mean?" he demanded.
"See his face?" asked the Hon. Galahad in a rasping aside.
"I'm looking at it now," said Lord Emsworth.
"Guilt written upon it."
"Plainly," agreed Lord Emsworth.
The Hon. Galahad, who had folded his arms in a menacing manner,
unfolded them and struck the desk a smart blow.
"Be very careful, Parsloe! Think before you speak. And when you speak,
speak the truth. I may say, by way of a start, that we know all."
How low an estimate Sir Gregory Parsloe had formed of his visitors'
collective sanity was revealed by the fact that it was actually to Lord
Emsworth that he now turned as the more intelligent one of the pair.
"Emsworth! Explain! What the deuce are you doing here? And what the
devil is that old image talking about?"
Lord Emsworth had been watching his brother with growing admiration.
The latter's spirited opening of the case for the prosecution had won
his hearty approval.
"You know," he said curtly.
"I should say he dashed well does know," said the Hon. Galahad.
"Parsloe, produce that pig!"
Sir Gregory pushed his eyes back into their sockets a split second
before they would have bulged out of his head beyond recovery. He did
his best to think calm, soothing thoughts. He had just remembered that
he was a man who had to be careful about his blood pressure.
"Pig?"
"Pig."
"Did you say pig?"
"Pig."
"What pig?"
"He says, 'What pig?'"
"I heard him," said Lord Emsworth.
Sir Gregory Parsloe again had trouble with his eyes.
"I don't know what you are talking about."
The Hon. Galahad unfolded his arms again and smote the desk a blow that
unshipped the cover of the inkpot.
"Parsloe, you sheep-faced, shambling exile from hell," he cried,
"disgorge that pig immediately!"
"My Empress," added Lord Emsworth.
"Precisely. Empress of Blandings. The pig you stole last night."
Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe rose slowly from his chair. The Hon.
Galahad pointed an imperious finger at him, but he ignored the gesture.
His blood pressure was now hovering around the hundred-and-fifty mark.
"Do you mean to tell me that you seriously accuse----"
"Parsloe, sit down!"
Sir Gregory choked.
"I always knew, Emsworth, that you were as mad as a coot."
"As a what?" whispered his lordship.
"Coot," said the Hon. Galahad curtly. "Sort of duck." He turned to the
defendant again. "Vituperation will do you no good, young Parsloe. We
_know_ that you have stolen that pig."
"I haven't stolen any damned pig. What would I want to steal a pig for?"
The Hon. Galahad snorted.
"What did you want to nobble my dog Towser for in the back room of the
Black Footman in the spring of the year '97?" he said. "To queer the
favourite, that's why you did it. And that's what you're after now,
trying to queer the favourite again. Oh, we can see through you all
right, young Parsloe. We read you like a book."
Sir Gregory had stopped worrying about his blood pressure. No amount of
calm, soothing thoughts could do it any good now.
"You're crazy! Both of you. Stark staring mad."
"Parsloe, will you or will you not cough up that pig?"
"I have not got your pig."
"That is your last word, is it?"
"I haven't seen the creature."
"Why a coot?" asked Lord Emsworth, who had been brooding for some time
in silence.
"Very well," said the Hon. Galahad. "If that is the attitude you
propose to adopt there is no course before me but to take steps. And
I'll tell you the steps I'm going to take, young Parsloe. I see now
that I have been foolishly indulgent. I have allowed my kind heart to
get the better of me. Often and often, when I've been sitting at my
desk, I've remembered a good story that simply cried out to be put into
my Reminiscences, and every time I've said to myself, 'No,' I've said,
'that would wound young Parsloe. Good as it is, I can't use it. I must
respect young Parsloe's feelings.' Well, from now on there will be no
more forbearance. Unless you restore that pig I shall insert in my book
every dashed thing I can remember about you--starting with our first
meeting, when I came into Romano's and was introduced to you while you
were walking round the supper table with a soup tureen on your head and
stick of celery in your hand, saying that you were a sentry outside
Buckingham Palace. The world shall know you for what you are--the only
man who was ever thrown out of the Café de l'Europe for trying to raise
the price of a bottle of champagne by raffling his trousers at the main
bar. And, what's more, I'll tell the full story of the prawns."
A sharp cry escaped Sir Gregory. His face had turned a deep magenta.
In these affluent days of his middle age he always looked rather like a
Regency buck who has done himself well for years among the fleshpots.
He now resembled a Regency buck who, in addition to being on the verge
of apoplexy, has been stung in the leg by a hornet.
"I will," said the Hon. Galahad firmly. "The full, true, and complete
story of the prawns, omitting nothing."
"What was the story of the prawns, my dear fellow?" asked Lord
Emsworth, interested.
"Never mind. I know. And young Parsloe knows. And if Empress of
Blandings is not back in her sty this afternoon, you will find it in my
book."
"But I keep telling you," cried the suffering baronet, "that I know
nothing whatever about your pig."
"Ha!"
"I've not seen the animal since last year's agricultural show."
"Ho!"
"I didn't know it had disappeared till you told me."
The Hon. Galahad stared fixedly at him through the black-rimmed
monocle. Then, with a gesture of loathing, he turned to the door.
"Come, Clarence!" he said.
"Are we going?"
"Yes," said the Hon. Galahad with quiet dignity. "There is nothing
more that we can do here. Let us get away from this house before it is
struck by a thunderbolt."
III
The gentlemanly office boy who sat in the outer room of the Argus
Enquiry Agency read the card which the stout visitor had handed to him
and gazed at the stout visitor with respect and admiration. A polished
lad, he loved the aristocracy. He tapped on the door of the inner
office.
"A gentleman to see me?" asked Percy Pilbeam.
"A _baronet_ to see you, sir," corrected the office boy. "Sir Gregory
Parsloe-Parsloe, Matchingham Hall, Salop."
"Show him in immediately," said Pilbeam with enthusiasm.
He rose and pulled down the lapels of his coat. Things, he felt, were
looking up. He remembered Sir Gregory Parsloe. One of his first cases.
He had been able to recover for him some letters which had fallen into
the wrong hands. He wondered, as he heard the footsteps outside, if his
client had been indulging in correspondence again.
From the baronet's sandbagged expression as he entered such might well
have been the case. It is the fate of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe to
come into this chronicle puffing and looking purple. He puffed and
looked purple now.
"I have called to see you, Mr. Pilbeam," he said, after the preliminary
civilities had been exchanged and he had lowered his impressive bulk
into a chair, "because I am in a position of serious difficulty."
"I am sorry to hear that, Sir Gregory."
"And because I remember with what discretion and resource you once
acted on my behalf."
Pilbeam glanced at the door. It was closed. He was now convinced that
his visitor's little trouble was the same as on that previous occasion,
and he looked at the indefatigable man with frank astonishment. Didn't
these old bucks, he was asking himself, ever stop writing compromising
letters? You would have thought they would get writer's cramp.
"If there is any way in which I can assist you, Sir Gregory.... Perhaps
you will tell me the facts from the beginning?"
"The beginning?" Sir Gregory pondered. "Well, let me put it this way.
At one time, Mr. Pilbeam, I was younger than I am to-day."
"Quite."
"Poorer."
"No doubt."
"And less respectable. And during that period of my life I
unfortunately went about a good deal with a man named Threepwood."
"Galahad Threepwood?"
"You know him?" said Sir Gregory, surprised.
Pilbeam chuckled reminiscently.
"I know his name. I wrote an article about him once, when I was
editing a paper called _Society Spice_. Number One of the Thriftless
Aristocrats series. The snappiest thing I ever did in my life. They
tell me he called twice at the office with a horsewhip, wanting to see
me."
Sir Gregory exhibited concern.
"You have met him, then?"
"I have not. You are probably not familiar with the inner workings of
a paper like _Society Spice_, Sir Gregory, but I may tell you that it
is foreign to the editorial policy ever to meet visitors who call with
horsewhips."
"Would he have heard your name?"
"No. There was a very strict rule in the _Spice_ office that the names
of the editorial staff were not to be divulged."
"Ah!" said Sir Gregory, relieved.
His relief gave place to indignation. There was an inconsistency about
the Hon. Galahad's behaviour which revolted him.
"He cut up rough, did he, because you wrote things about him in your
paper? And yet he doesn't seem to mind writing things himself about
other people, damn him. That's quite another matter. A different thing
altogether. Oh, yes!"
"Does he write? I didn't know."
"He's writing his Reminiscences at this very moment. He's down at
Blandings Castle, finishing them now. And the book's going to be full
of stories about me. That's why I've come to see you. Dashed, infernal,
damaging stories, which'll ruin my reputation in the county. There's
one about some prawns----"
Words failed Sir Gregory. He sat puffing. Pilbeam nodded gravely. He
understood the position now. As to what his client expected him to do
about it, however, he remained hazy.
"But if these stories you speak of are libellous----"
"What has that got to do with it? They're true."
"The greater the truth, the greater the----"
"Oh, I know all about that," interrupted Sir Gregory impatiently.
"And a lot of help it's going to be to me. A jury could give me the
heaviest damages on record and it wouldn't do me a bit of good. What
about my reputation in the county? What about knowing that every
damned fool I met was laughing at me behind my back? What about the
Unionist Committee? I may tell you, Mr. Pilbeam, apart from any other
consideration, that I am on the point of being accepted by our local
Unionist Committee as their candidate at the next election. And if that
old pest's book is published they will drop me like a hot coal. Now do
you understand?"
Pilbeam picked up a pen, and with it scratched his chin thoughtfully.
He liked to take an optimistic view with regard to his clients'
affairs, but he could not conceal from himself that Sir Gregory
appeared to be out of luck.
"He is determined to publish this book?"
"It's the only object he's got in life, the miserable old fossil."
"And he is resolved to include the stories?"
"He called on me this morning expressly to tell me so. And I caught the
next train to London to put the matter in your hands."
Pilbeam scratched his left cheek bone.
"H'm!" he said. "Well, in the circumstances, I really don't see what is
to be done except----"
"--Get hold of the manuscript and destroy it, you were about to say?
Exactly. That's precisely what I've come to ask you to do for me."
Pilbeam opened his mouth, startled. He had not been about to say
anything of the kind. What he had been intending to remark was that,
the situation being as described, there appeared no course to pursue
but to fold the hands, set the teeth, and await the inevitable
disaster like a man and a Briton. He gazed blankly at this lawless
bart. Baronets are proverbially bad, but surely, felt Percy Pilbeam,
there was no excuse for them to be as bad as all that.
"Steal the manuscript?"
"Only possible way."
"But that's rather a tall order, isn't it, Sir Gregory?"
"Not," replied the baronet ingratiatingly, "for a clever young fellow
like you."
The flattery left Pilbeam cold. His distant, unenthusiastic manner
underwent no change. However clever a man is, he was thinking, he
cannot very well abstract the manuscript of a book of Reminiscences
from a house unless he is first able to enter that house.
"How could I get into the place?"
"I should have thought you would have found a dozen ways."
"Not even one," Pilbeam assured him.
"Look how you recovered those letters of mine."
"That was easy."
"You told them you had come to inspect the gas meter."
"I could scarcely go to Blandings Castle and say I had come to inspect
the gas meter and hope to be invited to make a long visit on the
strength of it. You do not appear to realize, Sir Gregory, that the
undertaking you suggest would not be a matter of a few minutes. I might
have to remain in the house for quite a considerable time."
Sir Gregory found his companion's attitude damping. He was a man who,
since his accession to the baronetcy and its accompanying wealth, had
grown accustomed to seeing people jump smartly to it when he issued
instructions. He became peevish.
"Why couldn't you go there as a butler or something?"
Percy Pilbeam's only reply to this was a tolerant smile. He raised the
pen and scratched his head with it.
"Scarcely feasible," he said. And again that rather pitying smile
flitted across his face.
The sight of it brought Sir Gregory to the boil. He felt an
irresistible desire to say something to wipe it away. It reminded him
of the smiles he had seen on the faces of bookmakers in his younger
days when he had suggested backing horses with them on credit and in a
spirit of mutual trust.
"Well, have it your own way," he snapped. "But it may interest you to
know that to get that manuscript into my possession I am willing to pay
a thousand pounds."
It did, as he had foreseen, interest Pilbeam extremely. So much so that
in his emotion he jerked the pen wildly, inflicting a nasty scalp wound.
"A thuth?" he stammered.
Sir Gregory, a prudent man in money matters, perceived that he had
allowed his sense of the dramatic to carry him away.
"Well, five hundred," he said, rather quickly. "And five hundred pounds
is a lot of money, Mr. Pilbeam."
The point was one which he had no need to stress. Percy Pilbeam had
grasped it without assistance, and his face grew wan with thought. The
day might come when the proprietor of the Argus Enquiry Agency would
remain unmoved by the prospect of adding five hundred pounds to his
bank balance, but it had not come yet.
"A check for five hundred the moment that old weasel's manuscript is in
my hands," said Sir Gregory insinuatingly.
Nature had so arranged it that in no circumstances could Percy
Pilbeam's face ever become really beautiful; but at this moment there
stole into it an expression which did do something to relieve, to a
certain extent, its normal unpleasantness. It was an expression of
rapture, of joy, of almost beatific happiness--the look, in short, of a
man who sees his way clear to laying his hands on five hundred pounds.
There is about the mention of any substantial sum of money something
that seems to exercise a quickening effect on the human intelligence. A
moment before Pilbeam's mind had been an inert mass. Now, abruptly, it
began to function like a dynamo.
Get into Blandings Castle? Why, of course he could get into Blandings
Castle. And not sneak in, either, with a trousers seat itching in
apprehension of the kick that should send him out again, but bowl
proudly up to the front door in his two-seater and hand his suitcase
to the butler and be welcomed as the honoured guest. Until now he
had forgotten, for he had deliberately set himself to forget, the
outrageous suggestion of that young idiot whose name escaped him that
he should come to Blandings and hunt about for lost pigs. It had
wounded his self-respect so deeply at the time that he had driven it
from his thoughts. When he had found himself thinking about Hugo he
had immediately pulled himself together and started thinking about
something else. Now it all came back to him. And Hugo's parting words,
he recalled, had been that if ever he changed his mind the commission
would still be open.
"I will take this case, Sir Gregory," he said.
"Woof?"
"You may rely on my being at Blandings Castle by to-morrow evening at
the latest. I have thought of a way of getting there."
He rose from his desk and paced the room with knitted brows. That agile
brain had begun to work under its own steam. He paused once to look
in a distrait manner out of the window, and when Sir Gregory cleared
his throat to speak, jerked an impatient shoulder at him. He could not
have baronets, even with hyphens in their names, interrupting him at a
moment like this.
"Sir Gregory," he said at length, "the great thing in matters like this
is to be prepared with a plan. I have a plan."
"Woof!" said Sir Gregory.
This time he meant that he had thought all along that his companion
would get one after pacing like that.
"When you arrive home I want you to invite Mr. Galahad Threepwood to
dinner to-morrow night."
The baronet shook like a jelly. Wrath and amazement fought within him.
Ask the man to dinner? After what had occurred?
"As many others of the Blandings Castle party as you think fit, of
course, but Mr. Threepwood without fail. Once he is out of the house my
path will be clear."
Wrath and amazement died away. The baronet had grasped the idea. The
beauty and simplicity of the stratagem stirred his admiration. But was
it not, he felt, a simpler matter to issue such an invitation than
to get it accepted? A vivid picture rose before his eyes of the Hon.
Galahad as he had last seen him.
Then there came to him the blessed, healing thought of Lady Constance
Keeble. He would send the invitation to her and--yes, dash it!--he
would tell her the full facts, put his cards on the table, and trust
to her sympathy and proper feeling to enlist her in the cause. He had
long been aware that her attitude towards the Reminiscences resembled
his own. He could rely on her to help him. He could also rely on
her somehow--by what strange feminine modes of coercion he, being a
bachelor, could only guess at--to deliver the Hon. Galahad Threepwood
at Matchingham Hall in time for dinner. Women, he knew, had this
strange power over their near relations.
"Splendid!" he said. "Excellent! Capital. Woof! I'll see it's done."
"Then you can leave the rest to me."
"You think, if I can get him out of the house, you will be able to
secure the manuscript?"
"Certainly."
Sir Gregory rose and extended a trembling hand.
"Mr. Pilbeam," he said, with deep feeling, "coming to see you was the
wisest thing I ever did in my life."
"Quite," said Percy Pilbeam.