The idea occurred to him that his uncle might possibly have grown a little hard of hearing.
‘To the Land,’ he repeated, raising his voice. ‘More blokes going back to the Land. So I want a dollop of capital to start a farm.’
He braced himself for the supreme revelation.
‘I want to breed pigs,’ he said reverently.
Something was wrong. There was no blinking the fact any longer. So far from leaping in the air and showering gold, his uncle merely stared at him in an increasingly unpleasant manner. Lord Emsworth had removed his pince-nez and was wiping them; and Ronnie thought that his eye looked rather less agreeable in the nude than it had done through glass.
‘Pigs!’ he cried, fighting against a growing alarm.
‘Pigs?’
‘Pigs.’
‘You wish to breed pigs?’
‘That’s right,’ bellowed Ronnie. ‘Pigs!’ And from somewhere in his system he contrived to dig up and fasten on his face an ingratiating smile.
Lord Emsworth replaced his pince-nez.
‘And I suppose,’ he said throatily, quivering from his bald head to his roomy shoes, ‘that when you’ve got ‘em you’ll spend the whole day bouncing tennis-balls on their backs?’
Ronnie gulped. The shock had been severe. The ingratiating smile lingered on his lips, as if fastened there with pins, but his eyes were round and horrified.
‘Eh?’ he said feebly.
Lord Emsworth rose. So long as he insisted on wearing an old shooting jacket with holes in the elbows and letting his tie slip down and show the head of a brass stud, he could never hope to be completely satisfactory as a figure of outraged majesty; but he achieved as imposing an effect as his upholstery would permit. He drew himself up to his full height, which was considerable, and from this eminence glared balefully down on his nephew.
‘I saw you! I was on my way to the piggery and I saw you there bouncing your infernal tennis-balls on my pig’s back. Tennis-balls!’ Fire seemed to stream from the pince-nez.
‘Are you aware that Empress of Blandings is an excessively nervous, highly-strung animal, only too ready on the slightest provocation to refuse her meals? You might have undone the work of months with your idiotic tennis-ball.’
‘I’m sorry . . . .’
‘What’s the good of being sorry?’
‘I never thought . . . .’
‘You never do. That’s what’s the trouble with you. Pig-farm!’ said Lord Emsworth vehemently, his voice soaring into the upper register. ‘You couldn’t manage a pig-farm.
You aren’t fit to manage a pig-farm. You aren’t worthy to manage a pig-farm. If I had to select somebody out of the whole world to manage a pig-farm, I would choose you last.’
Ronnie Fish groped his way to the table and supported himself on it. He had a sensation of dizziness. On one point he was reasonably clear, viz. that his Uncle Clarence did not consider him ideally fitted to manage a pig-farm, but apart from that his mind was in a whirl. He felt as if he had stepped on something and it had gone off with a bang.
‘Here! What
is
all this?’
It was the Hon. Galahad who had spoken, and he had spoken peevishly. Working in the small library with the door ajar, he had found the babble of voices interfering with literary composition and, justifiably annoyed, had come to investigate.
‘Can’t you do your reciting some time when I’m not working, Clarence?’ he said.
‘What’s all the trouble about?’
Lord Emsworth was still full of his grievance.
‘He bounced tennis-balls on my pig!’
The Hon. Galahad was not impressed. He did not register horror.
‘Do you mean to tell me,’ he said sternly, ‘that all this fuss, ruining my morning’s work, was simply about that blasted pig of yours?’
‘I refuse to allow you to call the Empress a blasted pig! Good heavens!’ cried Lord Emsworth passionately. ‘Can none of my family appreciate the fact that she is the most remarkable animal in Great Britain? No pig in the whole annals of the Shropshire Agricultural Show has ever won the silver medal two years in succession. And that, if only people will leave her alone and refrain from incessantly pelting her with tennis-balls, is what the Empress is quite certain to do. It is an unheard of feat.’
The Hon. Galahad frowned. He shook his head reprovingly. It was all very well, he felt, a stable being optimistic about its nominee, but he was a man who could face facts. In a long and chequered life he had seen so many good things unstuck. Besides, he had his superstitions, and one of them was that counting your chickens in advance brought bad luck.
‘Don’t you be too cocksure, my boy,’ he said gravely. ‘I looked in at the Emsworth Arms the other day for a glass of beer, and there was a fellow in there offering three to one on an animal called Pride of Matchingham. Offering it freely. Tall, red-haired fellow with a squint. Slightly bottled.’
Lord Emsworth forgot Ronnie, forgot tennis-balls, forgot, in the shock of this announcement, everything except that deeper wrong which so long had been poisoning his peace.
‘Pride of Matchingham belongs to Sir Gregory Parsloe,’ he said, ‘and I have no doubt that the man offering such ridiculous odds was his pig-man, Wellbeloved. As you know, the fellow used to be in my employment, but Parsloe lured him away from me by the promise of higher wages.’ Lord Emsworth’s expression had now become positively ferocious. The thought of George Cyril Wellbeloved, that perjured pig-man, always made the iron enter into his soul. ‘It was a most abominable and unneighbourly thing to do.’
The Hon. Galahad whistled.
‘So that’s it, is it? Parsloe’s pig-man going about offering three to one – against the form-book, I take it?’
‘Most decidedly. Pride of Matchingham was awarded second prize last year, but it is a quite inferior animal to the Empress.’
‘Then you look after that pig of yours, Clarence.’ The Hon. Galahad spoke earnestly. ‘I see what this means. Parsloe’s up to his old games, and intends to queer the Empress somehow.’
‘Queer her?’
‘Nobble her. Or, if he can’t do that, steal her.’
You don’t mean that.’
‘I do mean it. The man’s as slippery as a greased eel. He would nobble his grandmother if it suited his book. Let me tell you I’ve known young Parsloe for thirty years and I solemnly state that if his grandmother was entered in a competition for fat pigs and his commitments made it desirable for him to get her out of the way, he would dope her bran-mash and acorns without a moment’s hesitation.’
‘God bless my soul!’ said Lord Emsworth, deeply impressed.
‘Let me tell you a little story about young Parsloe. One or two of us used to meet at the Black Footman in Gossiter Street in the old days – they’ve pulled it down now – and match our dogs against rats in the room behind the bar. Well, I put my Towser, an admirable beast, up against young Parsloe’s Banjo on one occasion for a hundred pounds a side. And when the night came and he was shown the rats, I’m dashed if he didn’t just give a long yawn and roll over and go to sleep. I whistled him . . . called him . . . Towser, Towser . . . No good . . . Fast asleep. And my firm belief has always been that young Parsloe took him aside just before the contest was to start and gave him about six pounds of steak and onions. Couldn’t prove anything, of course, but I sniffed the dog’s breath and it was like opening the kitchen door of a Soho chophouse on a summer night. That’s the sort of man young Parsloe is.’
‘Galahad!’
‘Fact. You’ll find the story in my book.’
Lord Emsworth was tottering to the door.
‘God bless my soul! I never realized . . . I must see Pirbright at once. I didn’t suspect . . .
It never occurred . . .’
The door closed behind him. The Hon. Galahad, preparing to return to his labours, was arrested by the voice of his nephew Ronald.
‘Uncle Gaily!’
The young man’s pink face had flamed to a bright crimson. His eyes gleamed strangely.
‘Well?’
You don’t really think Sir Gregory will try to steal the Empress?’
‘I certainly do. Known him for thirty years, I tell you.’
‘But how could he?’
‘Go to her sty at night, of course, and take her away.’
‘And hide her somewhere?’
Yes.’
‘But an animal that size. Rather like looking in at the Zoo and pocketing one of the elephants, what?’
‘Don’t talk like an idiot. She’s got a ring through her nose, hasn’t she?’
You mean, Sir Gregory could catch hold of the ring and she would breeze along quite calmly?’
‘Certainly. Puffy Benger and I stole old Wivenhoe’s pig the night of the Bachelors’ Ball at Hammer’s Easton in the year ‘95. We put it in Plug Basham’s bedroom. There was no difficulty about the thing whatsoever. A little child could have led it.’
He withdrew into the small library, and Ronnie slid limply into the chair which Lord Emsworth had risen from so majestically. He felt the need of sitting. The inspiration which had just come to him had had a stunning effect. The brilliance of it almost frightened him. That idea about starting a pig-farm had shown that this was one of his bright mornings, but he had never foreseen that he would be as bright as this.
‘Golly!’ said Ronnie.
Could he . . .?
Well, why not?
Suppose . . .?
No, the thing was impossible.
Was it? Why? Why was it impossible? Suppose he had a stab at it. Suppose, following his Uncle Galahad’s expert hints, he were to creep out to-night, abstract the Empress from her home, hide her somewhere for a day or two and then spectacularly restore her to her bereaved owner? What would be the result? Would Uncle Clarence sob on his neck, or would he not? Would he feel that no reward was too good for his benefactor or wouldn’t he? Most decidedly he would. Fish Preferred would soar immediately. That little matter of the advance of capital would solve itself. Money would stream automatically from the Emsworth coffers.
But could it be done? Ronnie forced himself to examine the scheme dispassionately, with a mind alert for snags.
He could detect none. A suitable hiding place occurred to him immediately – that disused gamekeeper’s cottage in the West Wood. Nobody ever went there. It would be as good as a Safe Deposit.
Risk of Detection? Why should there be any risk of detection? Who would think of connecting Ronald Fish with the affair?
Feeding the animal . . .?
Ronnie’s face clouded. Yes, here at last was the snag. This did present difficulties. He was vague as to what pigs ate, but he knew that they needed a lot of whatever it was. It would be no use restoring to Lord Emsworth a skeleton Empress. The cuisine must be maintained at its existing level, or the thing might just as well be left undone.
For the first time he began to doubt the quality of his recent inspiration. Scanning the desk with knitted brows, he took from the book-rest the volume entitled
Pigs, and How to
Make Them Pay.
A glance at page 61, and his misgivings were confirmed.
‘“Myes,’ said Ronnie, having skimmed through all the stuff about barley meal and maize meal and linseed meal and potatoes and separated milk or buttermilk. This, he now saw clearly, was no one man job. It called not only for a dashing principal but a zealous assistant.
And what assistant?
Hugo?
No. In many respects the ideal accomplice for an undertaking of this nature, Hugo Carmody had certain defects which automatically disqualified him. To enrol Hugo as his lieutenant would mean revealing to him the motives that lay at the back of the venture.
And if Hugo knew that he, Ronnie, was endeavouring to collect funds in order to get married, the thing would be all over Shropshire in a couple of days. Short of putting it on the front page of the
Daily Mail
or having it broadcast over the wireless, the surest way of obtaining publicity for anything you wanted kept dark was to confide it to Hugo Carmody. A splendid chap, but the real, genuine human colander. No, not Hugo.
Then who? . . .
Ah!
Ronnie Fish sprang from his chair, threw his head back and uttered a yodel of joy so loud and penetrating that the door of the small library flew open as if he had touched a spring.
A tousled literary man emerged.
‘Stop that damned noise! How the devil can I write with a row like that going on?’
‘Sorry, Uncle. I was just thinking of something.’
‘Well, think of something else. How do you spell “intoxicated”?’
‘One “x”.’
‘Thanks,’ said the Hon. Galahad, and vanished again.
V
In his pantry, in shirt-sleeved ease, Beach, the butler, sat taking the well-earned rest of a man whose silver is all done and who has no further duties to perform till lunch-time. A bullfinch sang gaily in a cage on the window-sill, but it did not disturb him, for he was absorbed in the Racing Intelligence page of the
Morning Post.
Suddenly he rose, palpitating. A sharp rap had sounded on the door, and he was a man who reacted nervously to sudden noises. There entered his employer’s nephew, Mr Ronald Fish.
‘Hullo, Beach.’
‘Sir?’
‘Busy?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Just thought I’d look in.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘For a chat.’
‘Very good, sir.’
Although the butler spoke with his usual smooth courtesy, he was far from feeling easy in his mind. He did not like Ronnie’s looks. It seemed to him that his young visitor was feverish. The limbs twitched, the eyes gleamed, the blood-pressure appeared heightened, and there was a super-normal pinkness in the epidermis of the cheek.
‘Long time since we had a real, cosy talk, Beach.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘When I was a kid, I used to be in and out of this pantry of yours all day long.’
‘Yes, sir.’
A mood of extreme sentimentality now appeared to grip the young man. He sighed like a centenarian recalling far off, happy things.
‘Those were the days, Beach.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘No problems then. No worries. And even if I had worries, I could always bring them to you, couldn’t I?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Remember the time I hid in here when my Uncle Gaily was after me with a whangee for putting tin-tacks on his chair?’