Uncle Fred in the Springtime (19 page)

Lady
Constance’s fine eyes widened.

‘You
don’t mean —?’

‘Yes, I
do. That’s just what I do mean. Absolutely. When I met him at the station, the
first thing I said to myself was ‘What ho, the bird!’ Then I said to myself: ‘What
ho, no, not the bird.’ Because you had told me he was a big bug in the medical
world. But now you tell me he isn’t a big bug in the medical world —’

Lady
Constance brought her hand sharply down on the arm of her chair.

‘This
settles it! Mr Baxter was wrong.’

‘Eh?’

‘Mr
Baxter thinks that the reason these people have come here is that they are
trying to trap Horace Davenport into marrying the girl. I don’t believe it.
They are after my diamond necklace. George, we must act immediately!’

‘How?’
asked Lord Bosham, and for the second time since their conference had begun
Lady Constance was struck by the resemblance of his thought-processes to those
of a brother whom she had often wanted to hit over the head with a blunt
instrument.

‘There
is only one thing to do. We must —’But half a jiffy. Aren’t you missing the
nub? If you know these bounders are wrong ‘uns, why don’t we just whistle up
the local police force?’

‘We can’t.
Do you suppose I did not think of that? It would mean that Mr Baxter would lose
his position with Alaric.’

‘Eh?
Why? What? Which? Wherefore? Why would Baxter lose his posish?’

It
irked Lady Constance to be obliged to waste valuable time in order to explain
the position of affairs, but she did it.

‘Oh,
ah?’ said Lord Bosham, enlightened. ‘Yes, I see. But couldn’t he get another
job?’

‘Of
course he could. But he was emphatic about wishing to continue in Alaric’s employment,
so what you suggest is out of the question. We must —’I’ll tell you one thing.
I don’t intend to be far away from my gun these next few days.

This is
official.’

Lady
Constance stamped her foot. It was not an easy thing for a sitting woman to do
impressively, but she did it in a way that effectually silenced a nephew who in
his boyhood had frequently been spanked by her with the back of a hairbrush.
Lord Bosham, who had intended to speak further of his gun, of which he was very
fond, desisted.

‘Will
you please not keep interrupting me, George! I say there is only one thing to
do. We must send for a detective to watch these people.’

‘Why,
of course!’ Like his younger brother, Frederick Threepwood, now over in the
United States of America selling the dog biscuits manufactured by the father of
his charming wife, Lord Bosham was a great reader of thrillers, and anything
about detectives touched a ready chord in him. ‘That’s the stuff! And you know
just the man, don’t you?’

‘I?’

‘Wasn’t
there a detective here last summer?’

Lady
Constance shuddered. The visit of the person to whom he alluded had not passed
from her memory. Sometimes she thought it never would. Occasionally in the late
afternoon, when the vitality is low and one tends to fall a prey to strange,
morbid fancies, she had the illusion that she was still seeing that waxed
moustache of his.

‘Pilbeam!’
she cried. ‘I would rather be murdered in my bed than have that man Pilbeam in
the house again. Don’t you know any detectives?’

‘Me?
No. Why should I know any…. By Jove, yes, I do, though,’ said Lord Bosham,
inspired. ‘By Jingo, now I come to think of it, of course I do. That man of
Horace’s.’

‘What
man of Horace’s?’

Lord
Bosham dissembled. Belatedly, he had realized that he was on the verge of
betraying confidences. Horace, he recalled, when unburdening his soul during
their drive from London, had sworn him to the strictest secrecy on the subject
of his activities as an employer of private investigators.

‘Well,
when I say he was a man of Horace’s, of course I’m sort of speaking loosely. He
was a fellow Horace told me about that a friend of his engaged to—to—er—do
something or other.’

‘And
did he do it?’ ‘Oh, yes, he did it.’ ‘He is competent, then?’ ‘Oh, most
competent.’

‘What
is his name?’ ‘Pott. Claude Pott.’

‘Do you
know his address?’

‘I
expect it would be in the book.’

‘Then
go and speak to him now. Tell him to come down here immediately.’ ‘Right ho,’
said Lord Bosham.

13

The Duke’s decision, on
receiving Lord Emsworth’s ultimatum regarding the Empress of Blandings, to
mobilize his nephew Ricky and plunge immediately into power politics was one
which would have occasioned no surprise to anybody acquainted with the militant
traditions of his proud family. It was this man’s father who had twice cut down
the barbed wire fence separating the garden of his villa in the South of France
from the local golf links. His grandfather, lunching at his club, had once
rubbed the nose of a member of the committee in an unsatisfactory omelette. The
Dukes of Dunstable had always been men of a high and haughty spirit, swift to
resent affronts and institute reprisals — the last persons in the world, in
short, from whom you could hope to withhold pigs with impunity.

His
shoulder, thanks to the prompt treatment it had received, had soon ceased to
pain him. Waking next morning, he found himself troubled physically by nothing
worse than an uncomfortable stiffness. But there was no corresponding
improvement in his spiritual condition. Far into the night he had lain brooding
on Lord Emsworth’s chicanery, and a new day brought no relief. The bitterness
still persisted, and with it the grim determination to fight for his rights.

At
hunch-time a telegram came from his nephew saying that he was catching the five
o’clock train, and at ten o’clock on the following morning, after another
wakeful night, he summoned his secretary, Rupert Baxter, and bade him
commandeer a car from the castle garage and drive him to the Emsworth Arms. He
arrived there at half-past ten precisely, and a red-haired, thick-set, freckled
young man came bounding across the lounge to greet him.

Between
Horace Davenport and his cousin Alaric Gilpin there was nothing in the nature
of a family resemblance. Each had inherited his physique from his father, and
the father of Ricky Gilpin had been an outsize gentleman with a chest like an
all-in-wrestler’s. This chest he had handed down to his son, together with
enough muscle to have fitted out two sons. Looking at Ricky, you might be a
little surprised that he wrote poetry, but you had no difficulty in
understanding how he was able to clean up costermongers in Covent Garden.

But
though externally as intimidating as ever and continuing to give the impression
of being a young man with whom no prudent person would walk down a dark alley,
Ricky Gilpin on this April morning was feeling a sort of universal benevolence
towards all created things. A child could have played with him, and the cat
attached to the Emsworth Arms had actually done so. Outwardly tough, inwardly
he was a Cheeryble Brother.

There
is nothing that so braces a young man in love as a statement on the part of the
girl of his dreams, after events have occurred which have made him think her
ardour has begun to cool, that he is the only man for her, and that though she
may have attended dances in the company of Zulu warriors the latter are to be
looked on as the mere playthings of an idle hour. Polly Pott’s assurance after
that scene at the Bohemian Ball that Horace Davenport was a purely negligible
factor in her life had affected Ricky profoundly. And on top of that had come
his uncle’s telegram.

That
telegram, he considered, could mean only one thing. He was about to be afforded
the opportunity of placing him under an obligation — of putting him in a
position, in short, where he could scarcely fail to do the decent thing in
return. The Duke’s attitude in the matter of sympathy and support for that
onion soup project would, he felt, be very different after he had been helped
out of whatever difficulty it was that had caused him to start dispatching SO S’s.

It was
a buoyant and optimistic Ricky Gilpin who had caught the five o’clock train to
Market Blandings on the previous afternoon, and it was a gay and effervescent
Ricky Gilpin who now bounded forward with a hamlike hand outstretched. Only
then did he observe that his relative’s right arm was in a sling.

‘Good
Lord, Uncle Alaric,’ he cried, in a voice vibrant with dismay and concern, ‘have
you hurt yourself? I’m so sorry. What a shame! How absolutely rotten! How did
it happen?’

The
Duke snorted.

‘I put
my shoulder out, throwing an egg at my secretary.’

Many
young men, on receipt of this information, would have said the wrong thing.
Ricky’s manner, however, was perfect. He placed the blame in the right quarter.

‘What
the dickens was he doing, making you throw eggs at him?’ he demanded
indignantly. ‘The man must be an ass. You ought to sack him.’

‘I’m
going to, directly we’ve had our talk. It was only this morning that I found
out he was the feller. Ever since I came here,’ explained the Duke, ‘there’s
been a mystery man whistling the “Bonny Bonny Banks of Loch Lomond” day in and
day out on the lawn outside my room. Got on my nerves. Beastly song.’

‘Foul.’

‘I wasn’t
going to stand it.’

‘Quite
right.’

‘I laid
in eggs.’

‘Very
sensible.’

‘To
throw at him.’

‘Of
course.’

‘Last
night, there he was again with his ‘You take the high road’ and all the rest of
it, and I loosed off. And this morning Connie comes to me and says I ought to
be ashamed of myself for behaving like that to poor Mr Baxter.’

‘What
an absolutely imbecile thing to say! Who is this fathead?’

‘Emsworth’s
sister. Lord Emsworth. Blandings Castle. I’m staying there. She’s potty, of
course.’

‘Must
be. Any balanced woman would have seen in a second that you had right on your
side. It seems to me, Uncle Alaric,’ said Ricky, with warmth, ‘that you have
been subjected to a campaign of deliberate and systematic persecution, and I’m
not surprised that you decided to send for me. What do you want me to do? Throw
some more eggs at this man Baxter? Say the word, and I start today.’

If his
arm had not been in a sling, the Duke would have patted his nephew on the back.
He was conscious of a keen remorse for having so misjudged him all these years.
Ricky Gilpin might have his faults — one looked askance at that habit of his of
writing poetry — but his heart was sound.

‘No,’
he said. ‘After tonight there won’t be any Baxter to throw eggs at. I sacked
him a couple of days ago, and with foolish kind-heartedness took him back, but
this time it’s final. What I’ve come to talk to you about is this pig.’

‘What
pig would that be?’

‘Emsworth’s.
And there’s another high-handed outrage!’ Ricky was not quite able to follow
the trend of his uncle’s remarks. ‘They’ve been setting the pig on you?’ he
asked, groping. ‘Emsworth promised to give it to me.’

‘Oh, I
see.’

‘Nothing
down in writing, of course, but a gentleman’s agreement, thoroughly understood
on both sides. And now he says he won’t.’

‘What!’
Ricky had not thought that human nature could sink so low. ‘You mean he intends
to go back on his sacred word? The man must be a louse of the first water.’

The
Duke was now quite certain that he had been all wrong about his splendid young
man.

‘That’s
how it strikes you, eh?’

‘It is
how it would strike any right-thinking person. After all, one has a certain
code.’

‘Exactly.’

‘And
one expects other people to live up to it.’

‘Quite.’

‘So I
suppose you want me to pinch this pig for you?’ said Ricky.

The
Duke gasped. His admiration for his nephew had now reached boiling point. He
had been expecting to have to spend long minutes in tedious explanation. It was
not often, he felt, that you found in the youth of today such lightning
intelligence combined with so fine a moral outlook.

‘Precisely,’
he said. ‘When you’re dealing with men like Emsworth, you can’t be too nice in
your methods.’

‘I
should say not. Anything goes. Well, how do I set about it? I shall require
some pointers, you know.’

‘Of
course, of course, of course. You shall have them. I have been giving this
matter a great deal of thought. I lay awake most of last night —’

‘What a
shame!’

‘— and
before I went to sleep I had my plan of campaign mapped out to the last detail.
I examined it this morning, and it seems to me flawless. Have you a pencil and
a piece of paper?’

‘Here
you are. I’ll tear off the top page. It has a few rough notes for a ballade on
it.’

‘Thanks.
Now then,’ said the Duke, puffing at his moustache under the strain of artistic
composition, ‘I’ll draw a map for you. Here’s the castle. Here’s my room. It’s
got a lawn outside it. Lawn,’ he announced, having drawn something that looked
like a clumsily fried egg.