From the moment when it left the door of Matchingham Hall and started
on its journey back to Blandings Castle, a silence as of the tomb
had reigned in the Antelope car which was bringing Lord Emsworth,
his sister, Lady Constance Keeble, and his brother, the Hon. Galahad
Threepwood, home from their interrupted dinner party. Not so much as a
syllable proceeded from one of them.
In the light of what Millicent, an eyewitness at the front, had told
Hugo over the telephone of the family battle which had been raging at
Sir Gregory Parsloe's table this will appear strange. If ever three
people with plenty to say to one another were assembled together in a
small space, these three, one would have thought, were those three.
Lady Constance alone might have been expected to provide enough
conversation to keep the historian busy for hours.
The explanation, like all explanations, is simple. It is supplied by
that one word Antelope.
Owing to the fact that some trifling internal ailment had removed from
the active list the Hispano-Suiza in which Blandings Castle usually
went out to dinner, Voules, the chauffeur, had had to fall back upon
this secondary and inferior car; and anybody who has ever owned an
Antelope is aware that there is no glass partition inside it, shutting
off the driver from the cash customers. He is right there in their
midst, ready and eager to hear everything that is said and to hand it
on in due course to the Servants' Hall.
In these circumstances, though the choice seemed one between speech
and spontaneous combustion, the little company kept their thoughts
to themselves. They suffered, but they did it. It would be difficult
to find a better illustration of all that is implied in the fine old
phrase _Noblesse oblige_. At Lady Constance we point with particular
pride. She was a woman, and silence weighed hardest on her.
There were times during the drive when even the sight of Voules's
large, red ears all pricked up to learn the reason for this sudden and
sensational return was scarcely sufficient to restrain Lady Constance
Keeble from telling her brother Clarence just what she thought of him.
From boyhood up he had not once come near to being her ideal man; but
never had he sunk so low in her estimation as at the moment when she
heard him giving his consent to the union of her niece Millicent with a
young man who, besides being penniless, had always afflicted her with a
nervous complaint for which she could find no name, but which is known
to scientists as the heeby-jeebies.
Nor had he reëstablished himself in any way by his outspoken remarks on
the subject of the Efficient Baxter. He had said things about Baxter
which no admirer of that energetic man could forgive. The adjectives
mad, crazy, insane, gibbering--and worse, potty--had played in and out
of his conversation like flashes of lightning. And from the look in
his eye she gathered that he was still saying them all over again to
himself.
Her surmise was correct. To Lord Emsworth the events of this day had
come as a stunning revelation. On the strength of that flower-pot
incident, two years ago, he had always looked on Baxter as mentally
unbalanced; but, being a fair-minded man, he had recognized the
possibility that a quiet, regular life and freedom from worries might,
in the interval which had elapsed since his late secretary's departure
from the castle, have effected a cure. Certainly the man had appeared
quite normal on the day of his arrival. And now into the space of a few
hours he had crammed enough variegated lunacy to equip all the March
Hares in England and leave some over for the Mad Hatters.
The ninth Earl of Emsworth was not a man who was easily disturbed.
His was a calm which, as a rule, only his younger son Frederick could
shatter. But it was not proof against the sort of thing that had been
going on to-day. No matter how placid you may be, if you find yourself
in close juxtaposition with a man who, when he is not hurling himself
out of windows, is stealing pigs and trying to make you believe they
were stolen by your butler, you begin to think a bit. Lord Emsworth
was thoroughly upset. As the car bowled up the drive he was saying to
himself that nothing could surprise him now.
And yet something did. As the car turned the corner by the
rhododendrons and wheeled into the broad strip of gravel that faced
the front door, he beheld a sight which brought the first sound he had
uttered since the journey began bursting from his lips.
"Good God!"
The words were spoken in a high, penetrating tenor, and they made
Lady Constance jump as if they had been pins running into her. This
unexpected breaking of the great silence was agony to her taut nerves.
"What _is_ the matter?"
"Matter? Look! Look at that fellow!"
Voules took it upon himself to explain. Never having met Lady Constance
socially, as it were, he ought perhaps not to have spoken. He
considered, however, that the importance of the occasion justified the
solecism.
"A man is climbing the waterspout, m'lady."
"What! Where? I don't see him."
"He has just got into the balcony outside one of the bedrooms," said
the Hon. Galahad.
Lord Emsworth went straight to the heart of the matter.
"It's that fellow Baxter!" he exclaimed.
The summer day, for all the artificial aid lent by daylight saving, was
now definitely over, and gathering night had spread its mantle of dusk
over the world. The visibility, therefore, was not good; and the figure
which had just vanished over the parapet of the balcony of the Garden
Room had been unrecognizable except to the eye of intuition. This,
however, was precisely the sort of eye that Lord Emsworth possessed.
He reasoned closely. There were, he knew, on the premises of Blandings
Castle other male adults besides Rupert Baxter; but none of these
would climb up waterspouts and disappear over balconies. To Baxter, on
the other hand, such a pursuit would seem the normal, ordinary way of
passing an evening. It would be his idea of wholesome relaxation. Soon,
no doubt, he would come out onto the balcony again and throw himself
to the ground. That was the sort of fellow Baxter was--a man of strange
pleasures.
And so, going, as we say, straight to the heart of the matter, Lord
Emsworth, jerking the pince-nez off his face in his emotion, exclaimed:
"It's that fellow Baxter!"
Not since a certain day in their mutual nursery many years ago had Lady
Constance gone to the length of actually hauling off and smiting her
elder brother on the head with the flat of an outraged hand; but she
came very near to doing it now. Perhaps it was the presence of Voules
that caused her to confine herself to words.
"Clarence, you're an idiot!"
Even Voules could not prevent her saying that. After all, she was
revealing no secrets. The chauffeur had been in service at the castle
quite long enough to have formed the same impression for himself.
Lord Emsworth did not argue the point. The car had drawn up now outside
the front door. The front door was open, as always of a summer evening,
and the ninth earl, accompanied by his brother Galahad, hurried up the
steps and entered the hall. And, as they did so, there came to their
ears the sound of running feet. The next moment, the flying figure of
Percy Pilbeam came into view, taking the stairs four at a time.
"God bless my soul!" said Lord Emsworth.
If Pilbeam heard the words or saw the speaker, he gave no sign of
having done so. He was plainly in a hurry. He shot through the hall
and, more like a startled gazelle than a private inquiry agent,
vanished down the steps. His shirt front was dark with dirt stains,
his collar had burst from its stud, and it seemed to Lord Emsworth, in
the brief moment during which he was able to focus him, that he had a
black eye. The next instant, there descended the stairs and flitted
past with equal speed the form of Ronnie Fish.
Lord Emsworth got an entirely wrong conception of the affair. He had no
means of knowing what had taken place in the Garden Room when Pilbeam,
inspired by alcohol and flushed with the thought that now was the time
to get into that apartment and possess himself of the manuscript of the
Hon. Galahad's Reminiscences, had climbed the waterspout to put the
plan into operation. He knew nothing of the detective's sharp dismay
at finding himself unexpectedly confronted with the menacing form of
Ronnie Fish. He was ignorant of the lively and promising mix-up which
had been concluded by Pilbeam's tempestuous dash for life. All he
saw was two men fleeing madly for the open spaces, and he placed the
obvious interpretation upon this phenomenon.
Baxter, he assumed, had run amok and had done it with such
uncompromising thoroughness that strong men ran panic-stricken before
him.
Mild enough the ninth earl was by nature, a lover of rural peace and
the quiet life, he had, like all Britain's aristocracy, the right
stuff in him. It so chanced that during the years when he had held his
commission in the Shropshire Yeomanry the motherland had not called
to him to save her. But, had that call been made, Clarence, ninth
Earl of Emsworth, would have answered it with as prompt a "Bless my
Soul! Of course. Certainly!" as any of his Crusader ancestors. And in
his sixtieth year the ancient fire still lingered. The Hon. Galahad,
who had returned to watch the procession through the front door with
a surprised monocle, turned back and found that he was alone. Lord
Emsworth had disappeared. He now beheld him coming back again. On his
amiable face was a look of determination. In his hand was a gun.
"Eh? What?" said the Hon. Galahad, blinking.
The head of the family did not reply. He was moving toward the stairs.
In just that same silent purposeful way had an Emsworth advanced on the
foe at Agincourt.
A sound as of disturbed hens made the Hon. Galahad turn again.
"Galahad! What is all this? What is happening?"
The Hon. Galahad placed his sister in possession of the facts as known
to himself.
"Clarence has just gone upstairs with a gun."
"With a gun!"
"Yes. Looked like mine, too. I hope he takes care of it." He perceived
that Lady Constance had also been seized with the urge to climb. She
was making excellent time up the broad staircase. So nimbly did she
move that she was on the second landing before he came up with her.
And, as they stood there, a voice made itself heard from a room down
the corridor.
"Baxter! Come out! Come out, Baxter, my dear fellow, immediately."
In the race for the room from which the words had appeared to proceed,
Lady Constance, getting off to a good start, beat her brother by a
matter of two lengths. She was thus the first to see a sight unusual
even at Blandings Castle, though strange things had happened there from
time to time.
Her young guest, Miss Schoonmaker, was standing by the window, looking
excited and alarmed. Her brother Clarence, pointing a gun expertly from
the hip, was staring fixedly at the bed. And from under the bed, a
little like a tortoise protruding from its shell, there was coming into
view the spectacled head of the Efficient Baxter.