Leave it to Psmith (24 page)

‘No, I haven’t. And I don’t want to. I’ve not got time to waste monkeying about with safes and maybe having the whole bunch pile on the back of my neck. I believe in getting things easy. Well, to-night this bimbo that calls himself McTodd is going to give a reading of his poems in the big drawing-room. You know where that is?’

‘I can find out.’

And you better had find out,’ said Miss Peavey vehemently. And before to-night at that. Well, there you are. Do you begin to get wise?’

Mr Cootes, his head protruding unhappily from the yew tree, would have given much to have been able to make the demanded claim to wisdom, for he knew of old the store his alert partner set upon quickness of intellect. He was compelled, however, to disturb the branches by shaking his head.

‘You always were pretty dumb,’ said Miss Peavey with scorn. ‘I’ll say that you’ve got good solid qualities, Ed – from the neck up. Why, I’m going to sit behind Lady Constance while that goof is shooting his fool head off, and I’m going to reach out and grab that necklace off of her. See?’

‘But, Liz’ – Mr Cootes diffidently summoned up courage to point out what appeared to him to be a flaw in the scheme – ‘if you start any strong-arm work in front of everybody like the way you say, won’t they . . . ?’

‘No, they won’t. And I’ll tell you why they won’t. They aren’t going to see me do it, because when I do it it’s going to be good and dark in that room. And it’s going to be dark because you’ll be somewheres out at the back of the house, wherever they keep the main electric-light works, turning the switch as hard as you can go. See? That’s your end of it, and pretty soft for you at that. All you have to do is to find out where the thing is and what you have to do to it to put out all the lights in the joint. I guess I can trust you not to bungle that?’

‘Liz,’ said Mr Cootes, and there was reverence in his voice, ‘you can do just that little thing. But what . . . ?’

‘All right, I know what you’re going to say. What happens after that, and how do I get away with the stuff? Well, the window’ll be open, and I’ll just get to it and fling the necklace out. See? There’ll be a big fuss going on in the room on account of the darkness and all that, and while everybody’s cutting up and what-the-helling, you’ll pick up your dogs and run round as quick as you can make it and pouch the thing. I guess it won’t be hard for you to locate it. The window’s just over the terrace, all smooth turf, and it isn’t real dark nights now, and you ought to have plenty of time to hunt around before they can get the lights going again. . . . Well, what do you think of it?’

There was a brief silence.

‘Liz,’ said Mr Cootes at length.

‘Is it or is it not,’ demanded Miss Peavey, ‘a ball of fire?’

‘Liz,’ said Mr Cootes, and his voice was husky with such awe as some young officer of Napoleon’s staff might have felt on hearing the details of the latest plan of campaign, ‘Liz, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. When it comes to the smooth stuff, old girl, you’re the oyster’s eye-tooth!’

And, reaching out an arm from the recesses of the yew, he took Miss Peavey’s hand in his and gave it a tender squeeze. A dreamy look came into the poetess’s fine eyes, and she giggled a little. Dumb-bell though he was, she loved this man.

§ 2

‘Mr Baxter!’

‘Yes, Miss Halliday?’

The Brains of Blandings looked abstractedly up from his desk. It was only some half-hour since luncheon had finished, but already he was in the library surrounded by large books like a sea-beast among rocks. Most of his time was spent in the library when the castle was full of guests, for his lofty mind was ill-attuned to the frivolous babblings of Society butterflies.

‘I wonder if you could spare me this afternoon?’ said Eve.

Baxter directed the glare of his spectacles upon her inquisi-torially.

‘The whole afternoon?’

‘If you don’t mind. You see, I had a letter by the second post from a great friend of mine, saying that she will be in Market Blandings this afternoon and asking me to meet her there. I must see her, Mr Baxter,
please.
You’ve no notion how important it is.’

Eve’s manner was excited, and her eyes as they met Baxter’s sparkled in a fashion that might have disturbed a man made of less stern stuff. If it had been the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, for instance, who had been gazing into their blue depths, that impulsive youth would have tied himself into knots and yapped like a dog. Baxter, the superman, felt no urge towards any such display. He reviewed her request calmly and judicially, and decided that it was a reasonable one.

‘Very well, Miss Halliday.’

‘Thank you ever so much. I’ll make up for it by working twice as hard to-morrow.’

Eve flitted to the door, pausing there to bestow a grateful smile upon him before going out; and Baxter returned to his reading. For a moment he was conscious of a feeling of regret that this quite attractive and uniformly respectful girl should be the partner in crime of a man of whom he disapproved even more than he disapproved of most malefactors. Then he crushed down the weak emotion and was himself again.

Eve trotted downstairs, humming happily to herself. She had expected a longer and more strenuous struggle before she obtained her order of release, and told herself that, despite a manner which seldom deviated from the forbidding, Baxter was really quite nice. In short, it seemed to her that nothing could possibly occur to mar the joyfulness of this admirable afternoon; and it was only when a voice hailed her as she was going through the hall a few minutes later that she realised that she was mistaken. The voice, which trembled throatily, was that of the Hon. Freddie; and her first look at him told Eve, an expert diagnostician, that he was going to propose to her again.

‘Well, Freddie?’ said Eve resignedly.

The Hon. Frederick Threepwood was a young man who was used to hearing people say ‘Well, Freddie?’ resignedly when he appeared. His father said it; his Aunt Constance said it; all his other aunts and uncles said it. Widely differing personalities in every other respect, they all said ‘Well, Freddie?’ resignedly directly they caught sight of him. Eve’s words, therefore, and the tone in which they were spoken, did not damp him as they might have damped another. His only feeling was one of solemn gladness at the thought that at last he had managed to get her alone for half a minute.

The fact that this was the first time he had been able to get her alone since her arrival at the castle had caused Freddie a good deal of sorrow. Bad luck was what he attributed it to, thereby giving the object of his affections less credit than was her due for a masterly policy of evasion. He sidled up, looking like a well-dressed sheep.

‘Going anywhere?’ he inquired.

‘Yes. I’m going to Market Blandings. Isn’t it a lovely afternoon? I suppose you are busy all the time now that the house is full? Good-bye,’ said Eve.

‘Eh?’ said Freddie, blinking.

‘Good-bye. I must be hurrying.’

‘Where did you say you were going?’

‘Market Blandings.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘No, I want to be alone. I’ve got to meet someone there.’

‘Come with you as far as the gates,’ said Freddie, the human limpet.

The afternoon sun seemed to Eve to be shining a little less brightly as they started down the drive. She was a kind-hearted girl, and it irked her to have to be continually acting as a black frost in Freddie’s garden of dreams. There appeared, however, to be but two ways out of the thing: either she must accept him or he must stop proposing. The first of these alternatives she resolutely declined to consider, and, as far as was ascertainable from his actions, Freddie declined just as resolutely to consider the second. The result was that solitary interviews between them were seldom wholly free from embarrassing developments.

They walked for a while in silence. Then:

‘You’re dashed hard on a fellow,’ said Freddie.

‘How’s your putting coming on?’ asked Eve.

‘Eh?’

‘Your putting. You told me you had so much trouble with it.’

She was not looking at him, for she had developed a habit of not looking at him on these occasions; but she assumed that the odd sound which greeted her remark was a hollow, mirthless laugh.

‘My putting!’

‘Well, you told me yourself it’s the most important part of golf.’

‘Golf! Do you think I have time to worry about golf these days?’

‘Oh, how splendid, Freddie! Are you really doing some work of some kind? It’s quite time, you know. Think how pleased your father will be.’

‘I say,’ said Freddie, ‘I do think you might marry a chap.’

‘I suppose I shall some day,’ said Eve, ‘if I meet the right one.’

‘No, no!’ said Freddie despairingly. She was not usually so dense as this. He had always looked on her as a dashed clever girl. ‘I mean
me
.’

Eve sighed. She had hoped to avert the inevitable.

‘Oh, Freddie!’ she exclaimed, exasperated. She was still sorry for him, but she could not help being irritated. It was such a splendid afternoon and she had been feeling so happy. And now he had spoiled everything. It always took her at least half an hour to get over the nervous strain of refusing his proposals.

‘I love you, dash it!’ said Freddie.

‘Well, do stop loving me,’ said Eve. ‘I’m an awful girl, really. I’d make you miserable.’

‘Happiest man in the world,’ corrected Freddie devoutly.

‘I’ve got a frightful temper.’

‘You’re an angel.’

Eve’s exasperation increased. She always had a curious fear that one of these days, if he went on proposing, she might say ‘Yes’ by mistake. She wished that there was some way known to science of stopping him once and for all. And in her desperation she thought of a line of argument which she had not yet employed.

‘It’s so absurd, Freddie,’ she said. ‘Really, it is. Apart from the fact that I don’t want to marry you, how can you marry anyone – anyone, I mean, who hasn’t plenty of money?’

‘Wouldn’t dream of marrying for money.’

‘No, of course not, but . . .’

‘Cupid,’ said Freddie woodenly, ‘pines and sickens in a gilded cage.’

Eve had not expected to be surprised by anything her companion might say, it being her experience that he possessed a vocabulary of about forty-three words and a sum-total of ideas that hardly ran into two figures; but this poetic remark took her back.

‘What!’

Freddie repeated the observation. When it had been flashed on the screen as a spoken sub-title in the six-reel wonder film, ‘Love or Mammon’ (Beatrice Comely and Brian Fraser), he had approved and made a note of it.

‘Oh!’ said Eve, and was silent. As Miss Peavey would have put it, it held her for a while. ‘What I meant,’ she went on after a moment, ‘was that you can’t possibly marry a girl without money unless you’ve some money of your own.’

‘I say, dash it!’ A strange note of jubilation had come into the wooer’s voice. ‘I say, is that really all that stands between us? Because . . .’

‘No, it isn’t!’

‘Because, look here, I’m going to have quite a good deal of money at any moment. It’s more or less of a secret, you know – in fact a pretty deadish secret – so keep it dark, but Uncle Joe is going to give me a couple of thousand quid. He promised me. Two thousand of the crispest. Absolutely!’

‘Uncle Joe?’

‘You
know. Old Keeble. He’s going to give me a couple of thousand quid, and then I’m going to buy a partnership in a bookie’s business and simply coin money. Stands to reason, I mean. You can’t help making your bally fortune. Look at all the mugs who are losing money all the time at the races. It’s the bookies that get the stuff. A pal of mine who was up at Oxford with me is in a bookie’s office, and they’re going to let me in if I . . .’

The momentous nature of his information had caused Eve to deviate now from her policy of keeping her eyes off Freddie when in emotional vein. And, if she had desired to check his lecture on finance, she could have chosen no better method than to look at him; for, meeting her gaze, Freddie immediately lost the thread of his discourse and stood yammering. A direct hit from Eve’s eyes always affected him in this way.

‘Mr Keeble is going to give you two thousand pounds!’

A wave of mortification swept over Eve. If there was one thing on which she prided herself, it was the belief that she was a loyal friend, a staunch pal; and now for the first time she found herself facing the unpleasant truth that she had been neglecting Phyllis Jackson’s interests in the most abominable way ever since she had come to Blandings. She had definitely promised Phyllis that she would tackle this stepfather of hers and shame him with burning words into yielding up the three thousand pounds which Phyllis needed so desperately for her Lincolnshire farm. And what had she done? Nothing.

Eve was honest to the core, even in her dealings with herself. A less conscientious girl might have argued that she had had no opportunity of a private interview with Mr Keeble. She scorned to soothe herself with this specious plea. If she had given her mind to it she could have brought about a dozen private interviews, and she knew it. No. She had allowed the pleasant persistence of Psmith to take up her time, and Phyllis and her troubles had been thrust into the background. She confessed, despising herself, that she had hardly given Phyllis a thought.

And all the while this Mr Keeble had been in a position to scatter largess, thousands of pounds of it, to undeserving people like Freddie. Why, a word from her about Phyllis would have . . .

‘Two thousand pounds?’ she repeated dizzily. ‘Mr Keeble!’

Absolutely!’ cried Freddie radiantly. The first shock of looking into her eyes had passed, and he was now revelling in that occupation.

‘What for?’

Freddie’s rapt gaze flickered. Love, he perceived, had nearly caused him to be indiscreet.