‘I’m being sensible all right. But somebody is gibbering and, naming no names, it’s you.
Don’t you realize that, just as you reach the front door, this Miss Schoonmaker will arrive in person, dishing the whole thing?’
‘No, she won’t.’
‘Why won’t she?’
‘Because Ronnie sent her a telegram, in Lady Constance’s name, saying that there’s scarlet fever or something at Blandings and she wasn’t to come.’
Hugo’s air of the superior critic fell from him like a garment. He sat up in his chair. So moved was he that he spilled his brandy-and-soda and did not give it so much as a look of regret. He let it soak into the carpet, unheeded.
‘Sue!’
‘Once I’m at Blandings, I shall be able to see Ronnie and make him be sensible.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And then you’ll be able to tell Millicent that there couldn’t have been much harm in my being out with you last night, because I’m engaged to Ronnie.’
‘That’s right, too.’
‘Can you see any flaws?’
‘Not a flaw.’
‘I suppose, as a matter of fact, you’ll give the whole thing away in the first five minutes by calling me Sue.’
Hugo waved an arm buoyantly.
‘Don’t give the possibility another thought,’ he said. ‘If I do, I’ll cover it up adroitly by saying I meant, “Schoo”. Short for Schoonmaker. And now go and send her another telegram. Keep on sending telegrams. Leave nothing to chance. Send a dozen and pitch it strong. Say that Blandings Castle is ravaged with disease. Not merely scarlet fever.
Scarlet fever
and
mumps. Not to mention housemaid’s knee, diabetes, measles, shingles, and the botts. We’re on to a big thing, my Susan. Let us push it along.’
7 A JOB FOR PERCY PILBEAM
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.’
TU 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 “Gaily” 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 awhile, and then slide back on to 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 Shirley 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 Threep-wood.