Service with a Smile (18 page)

‘It
wasn’t breach of promise!’

‘What
was it, then?’

‘If you
want to know, she said she knew where she could lay her hands on a couple of
willing helpers who would pinch Emsworth’s pig for me, so I engaged her
services, and she demanded five hundred pounds for the job, cash down in advance,
and I gave her a cheque for that sum.’

‘Well,
really!’

‘What
do you mean, Well, really? She wouldn’t settle for less.’

‘Then
so far it would seem that she is the one who has put something over, as you
express it.’

‘That’s
what she thought, but she was mistaken. Immediately after coming to that
arrangement I spoke of with Emsworth I got in touch with my bank and stopped
the cheque. I telephoned the blighters and told them I’d scoop out their
insides with my bare hands if they coughed up so much as a penny of it. I’d
like to see her face when it comes back marked “Refer to drawer”.’

It seemed
to Lord Tilbury that from somewhere near at hand, as it might have been from
behind those bushes near which he was sitting, there had come a sudden gasping
sound as if uttered by some soul in agony, but he paid little attention to it.
He was following a train of thought.

‘So you
have not had to pay anything for the pig?’

‘Not a
bean.’

‘Then
you ought to let me have it cheaper.’

‘You
think so, do you? Well, let me tell you, Stinker,’ said the Duke, who had been
deeply offended by his companion’s remark about old fools, ‘that my price for
that pig has gone up. It’s three thousand now.’

‘What!’

‘That’s
what it is. Three thousand pounds.’

A
sudden hush seemed to have fallen on the garden of the Emsworth Arms. It was as
though it and everything in it had been stunned into silence. Birds stopped
chirping. Butterflies froze in mid-flutter. Wasps wading in strawberry jam
paused motionless, as if they were having their photographs taken. And the
general paralysis extended to Lord Tilbury. It was an appreciable time before
he spoke. When he did, it was in the hoarse voice of a man unable to believe
that he has heard correctly.

‘You’re
joking!’

‘Like
blazes I’m joking.’

‘You
expect me to pay three thousand pounds for a pig?’

‘If you
want the ruddy pig.’

‘What
about our gentlemen’s agreement?’

‘Gentlemen’s
agreements be blowed. If you care to meet my terms,’ the porker’s yours. If you
don’t, I’ll sell it back to Emsworth. No doubt he’ll be glad to have it, even
if the price is stiff. I’ll leave you to think it over, Stinker. No skin off my
nose,’ said the Duke, ‘whichever way you decide.’

Chapter
Nine

1

A man who has built up a
vast business, starting from nothing, must of necessity be a man capable of
making swift decisions, and until this moment Lord Tilbury had never had any
difficulty in doing so. His masterful handling of the hundred and one problems
that arise daily in a concern like the Mammoth Publishing Company was a byword
in Fleet Street.

But as
he sat contemplating the dilemma on the horns of which the Duke’s parting words
had impaled him, he was finding it impossible to determine what course to
pursue. The yearning to enrol the Empress under his banner was very powerful,
but so also was his ingrained dislike for parting with large sums of money. There
was, and always had been, something about signing his name to substantial
cheques that gave him a sort of faint feeling.

He was
still weighing this against that and balancing the pros and cons, when a shadow
fell on the sunlit turf before him and he became aware that his reverie had
been intruded on. Something female was standing beside the rustic table, and
after blinking once or twice he recognized his former secretary, Lavender
Briggs. She was regarding him austerely through her harlequin glasses.

If
Lavender Briggs’ gaze was austere, it had every reason for being so. No girl
enjoys hearing herself described as tall and ungainly with large feet and hair
like seaweed, especially if the description is followed up by the revelation
that the five hundred golden pounds on which she had been counting to start
her off as a proprietress of a typewriting bureau have gone with the wind,
never to return. If she had not had a business proposition to place before him,
she would not have lowered herself by exchanging words with this man. She would
much have preferred to hit him on the head with the tankard from which the Duke
had been refreshing himself. But a business girl cannot choose her associates.
She has to take them as they come.

‘Good
afternoon, Lord Tilbury,’ she said coldly. ‘If you could spay-ah me a moment of
your time.’

To any
other caller without an appointment the owner of the Mammoth Publishing Company
would have been brusque, but Lord Tilbury could not forget that this was the
girl who had come within an ace of taking five hundred pounds off the Duke of
Dunstable, and feeling as he did about the Duke he found his surprise at seeing
her mingled with an unwilling respect. It would be too much to say that he was
glad to see her, for he had hoped to continue wrestling undisturbed with the
problem which was exercising his mind, but if she wanted a moment of his time,
she could certainly have it. He even went so far as to ask her to take a seat,
which she did. And having done so she came, like a good business woman,
straight to the point.

‘I
heard what the Duke of Dunstable was saying to you,’ she said. ‘This mattah of
Lord Emsworth’s pig. His demand for three thousand pounds was preposterous. Quate
absurd. Do not dream of yielding to his terms.’

Lord
Tilbury found himself warming to this girl. He still felt that the words in
which he had described her hair, feet and general appearance had been well
chosen, but we cannot all be Miss Americas and he was prepared to condone her
physical defects in consideration of this womanly sympathy. Beauty, after all,
is but skin deep. The main thing a man should ask of the other sex is that
their hearts be in the right place, as hers was. ‘Preposterous’ … ‘Quate
absurd’ … The very expressions he would have chosen himself.

On the
other hand, it seemed to him that she was overlooking something.

‘But I
want that pig.’

‘You
shall have it.’

Enlightenment
dawned on Lord Tilbury.

‘Why,
of course! You mean you’ll — er —’

‘Purloin
it for you? Quate. My arrangements are all made and can be put into effect
immediately.’

Lord
Tilbury could recognize efficiency when he saw it. Here, he perceived, was a
girl who thought on her feet and did it now. A genial glow suffused him. Almost
as sweet as the thought of obtaining possession of the Empress was the
know-ledge that, to employ the latter’s phrase, he would be putting one over on
the Duke.

‘Provided,’
Lavender Briggs went on, ‘that we agree on terms. I should requiah five hundred
pounds.’

‘Later,
you mean?’

‘Now, I
mean. I know you always carry your cheque-book with you.’

Lord
Tilbury gulped. Then the momentary sensation of nausea passed. Nothing could
make him enjoy writing a cheque for five hundred pounds, but there are times
when a man has to set his teeth and face the facts of life.

‘Very
well,’ he said, a little huskily.

‘Thank
you,’ said Lavender Briggs, a few moments later, placing the slip of paper in
her bag. ‘And now I ought to be getting back to the castle. Lady Constance may be
wanting me for something. I will go and telephone for the station cab.’

The
telephone by means of which residents of the Emsworth Arms put themselves in
touch with the station cab (Jno. Robinson, propr.) was in the bar. Proceeding
thither, Lavender Briggs was about to go in, when she nearly collided with Lord
Ickenham, coming out.

2

Lord Ickenham had come to
the bar of the Emsworth Arms because the warmth of the day had made him want to
renew his acquaintance with G. Ovens’ homebrew, of which he had many pleasant
memories. It would have been possible— indeed, it would have been more seemly —
for him to have taken tea on the terrace with Lady Constance, but he was a
kindly man and something told him that after their recent get-together his hostess
would prefer to be spared anything in the nature of peaceful co-existence with
him. Moments come in a woman’s life, he knew, when her prime need is a complete
absence of Ickenhams.

He was
glad to see Lavender Briggs. He was a man who made friends easily, and in the
course of this visit to the castle, something approaching a friendship had
sprung up between himself and her. And though he disapproved of her recent
activities, he could understand and sympathize with the motives which had
actuated them. He was a broad-minded man, and it was his opinion that a girl who
needs five hundred pounds to set herself up in business for herself is entitled
to stretch a point or two and to forget, if only temporarily, the lessons which
she learned at her mother’s knee. Thinking these charitable thoughts and
knowing the reception that awaited her at Blandings Castle, he was happy to
have this opportunity of warning her against completing her journey there.

‘Well,
well,’ he said. ‘So you’re back?’

‘Yayess.
I caught the twelve-thirty train.’

‘I
wonder how it compares with the two-fifteen.’

‘I beg
your pardon?’

‘Just a
random thought. It was simply that I have heard the two-fifteen rather highly
spoken of lately. Did you have a nice time in London?’

‘Quate
enjoyable, thank you.’

‘I hope
I didn’t stop you going into that bar for a quick one?’

‘I was
merely intending to telephone for the station cab to take me to the castle.’

‘I see.
Well, I wouldn’t. Are you familiar with the poem “Excelsior”?’

‘I read
it as a child,’ said Lavender Briggs with a little shiver of distaste. She did
not admire Longfellow.

‘Then
you will recall what the old man said to the fellow with the banner with the
strange device. “Try not the pass,” he said. “Dark lowers the tempest overhead.”
That is what an old — or rather, elderly but wonderfully well-preserved — man
is saying to you now. Avoid station cabs. Lay off them. Leave them alone. You
are better without them.’

‘I don’t
know what you mean!’

‘There
are many things you do not know, Miss Briggs,’ said Lord Ickenham gravely, ‘including
the fact that you have got a large smut on your nose.’

‘Oh,
have I?’ said Lavender Briggs, opening her bag in a flutter and reaching
hurriedly for her mirror. She plied the cleansing tissue. ‘Is that better?’

‘Practically
perfect. I wish I could say as much for your general position.’

‘I don’t
understand.’

‘You
will. You’re in the soup, Miss Briggs. The gaff has been blown, and the jig is
up. The pitiless light of day has been thrown on your pig-purloining plans.
Bill Bailey has told all.’

‘What!’

‘Yes,
he has squealed to the F.B.I. Where you made your mistake was in
underestimating his integrity. These curates have scruples. The Reverend
Cuthbert Bailey’s are the talk of Bottleton East. Your proposition revolted
him, and only the fact that you didn’t offer him any kept him from spurning
your gold. He went straight to Lord Emsworth and came clean. That is why I
suggest that you do not telephone for station cabs in that light-hearted way. Jno.
Robinson would take you to your destination for a reasonably modest sum, no
doubt, but what would you find there on arrival? A Lord Emsworth with all his
passions roused and flame coming out of both nostrils. For don’t deceive
yourself into thinking that he will be waiting on the front doorstep with a “Welcome
to Blandings Castle” on his lips. In his current role of sabre-toothed tiger he
would probably bite several pieces out of your leg. I have seldom seen a man
who had got it so thoroughly up his nose.’

Lavender
Briggs’ jaw had fallen. So, slipping from between her nerveless fingers, had
her bag. It fell to earth, and from it there spilled a powder compact, a
handkerchief, a comb, a lip. stick, a match box, an eyebrow pencil, a wallet
with a few pound notes in it, a small purse containing some shillings, a bottle
of digestive pills, a paperback copy of a book by Alfred Camus and the Tilbury
cheque. A little breeze which had sprung up sent the last-named fluttering
across the road with Lord Ickenham in agile pursuit. He recovered it, glanced
at it, and brought it back to her, his eyebrows raised.

‘Your
tariff for stealing pigs comes high,’ he said. ‘Who’s Tilbury? Anything to do
with Tilbury House?’

There
was good stuff in Lavender Briggs. Where a lesser woman would have broken down
and wept, she merely hitched up her fallen jaw and tightened her lips.