Nothing Serious

CHAPTER
I

The Shadow Passes

A CRUSTY roll, whizzing
like a meteor out of the unknown, shot past the Crumpet and the elderly
relative whom he was entertaining to luncheon at the Drones Club and shattered
itself against the wall. Noting that his guest had risen some eighteen inches
into the air, the Crumpet begged him not to give the thing another thought.

“Just
someone being civil,” he explained. “Meant for me, of course. Where did it come
from?”

“I
think it must have been thrown by one of those two young men at the table over
there.”

The
Crumpet gazed in the direction indicated.

“It can’t
have been the tall one with the tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles,” he said. “That’s
Horace Pendlebury-Davenport, the club Darts champion. If he had aimed at me, he
would have hit me, for his skill is uncanny. It was Bingo Little. More cheese?”

“No,
thank you.”

“Then
shall we go and have our coffee in the smoking-room?”

“It
might be safer.”

“You
must make allowances for Bingo,” said the Crumpet as they took their seats,
observing that his companion’s expression was still austere. “Until a few days
ago a dark shadow brooded over his life, threatening the stability of the home.
This has now passed away, and he is consequently a bit above himself. The
shadow to which I allude was his baby’s Nannie.”

“Is
that young man a father?”

“Oh,
rather.”

“Good
heavens.”

“Bingo
married Rosie M. Banks, the celebrated female novelist, and came a day when he
had this baby. Well, Mrs Bingo did most of the heavy work, of course, but you
know what I mean. And naturally the baby, on being added to the strength, had
to have a Nannie. They fired her last week.”

“But
why should the dispensing with her services give rise to such an ebullition of
animal spirits?”

“Because
she had once been Bingo’s Nannie, too, That is the point to keep the mind fixed
on. Mrs Bingo, like so many female ink-slingers, is dripping with sentiment,
and this ingrowing sentiment of hers led her to feel how sweet it would be if
the same old geezer who had steered Bingo through the diaper and early sailor
suit phases could also direct the private life of the younger generation. So
when a photograph in a woman’s paper of Miss Rosie M. Banks, author of our new
serial (Mrs Richard Little), brought Sarah Byles round on the run to ascertain
whether this was the Richard Little she had groomed, it was not long before she
was persuaded to emerge from her retirement and once more set her hand to the
plough.”

“And
your friend disliked the arrangement?”

“You
bet he disliked the arrangement.”

The
news, broken to Bingo on his return from the office—he is ye ed. of a weekly
organ called
Wee Tots
(P. P. Purkiss, proprietor) devoted to the
interests of our better-class babes and sucklings—got (said the Crumpet) right
in amongst him. Sarah Byles had always lived in his memory as a stalwart figure
about eight feet high and the same across, with many of the less engaging
personal attributes of the bucko mate of an old-time hell-ship, and he feared
for the well-being of his son and heir. He felt that the latter would be giving
away too much weight.

“Golly,
queen of my soul,” he ejaculated, “that’s a bit tough on the issue, isn’t it?
When I served under Nannie Byles, she was a human fiend at the mention of whose
name strong children shook like aspens.”

“Oh,
no, sweetie-pie,” protested Mrs Bingo. “She’s an old dear. So kind and gentle.”

“Well,
I’ll take your word for it,” said Bingo dubiously. “Of course, age may have
softened her.”

But
before dressing for dinner he looked in on young Algernon Aubrey, shook him
sympathetically by the hand and gave him a bar of nut chocolate. He felt like a
kind-hearted manager of prize-fighters who is sending a novice up against the
champion.

Conceive
his relief, therefore, when he found that Mrs Bingo had not been astray in her
judgment of form. Arriving on the morrow, La Byles proved, as stated, to be an
old dear. In the interval since they had last met she had shrunk to about four
feet ten, the steely glitter which he had always associated with her eyes had
disappeared, and she had lost the rather unpleasant suggestion she had conveyed
in his formative years of being on the point of enforcing discipline with a
belaying pin. Her aspect was mild and her manner cooing, and when she flung her
arms about him and kissed him and asked him how his stomach was, he flung his
arms about her and kissed her and said his stomach was fine. The scene was one
of cordial good will.

The new
régime set in smoothly, conditions appearing to be hunky-dory. Mrs Bingo and
Nannie Byles hit it off together like a couple of members of a barber-shop
quartette. Bingo himself felt distantly benevolent towards the old dug-out. And
as Algernon Aubrey took to her and seemed at his ease in her society, it would
not be too much to say that for a day or two everything in the home was gas and
gaiters.

For a
day or two, I repeat. It was on the evening of the third day, as Bingo and Mrs
Bingo sat in the drawing-room after dinner all happy and peaceful, Bingo
reading a mystery thriller and Mrs Bingo playing solitaire in the offing, that
the former heard the latter emit a sudden giggle, and always being in the
market for a good laugh inquired the reason for her mirth.

“I was
only thinking,” said Mrs Bingo, now guffawing heartily, “of the story Nannie
told me when we were bathing Algy.”

“Of a
nature you are able to repeat?” asked Bingo, for he knew that red hot stuff is
sometimes pulled when the girls get together.

“It was
about you pinning the golliwog to your Uncle Wilberforce’s coat tails when he
was going to the reception at the French Embassy.”

Bingo
winced a little. He recalled the episode and in particular its sequel, which
had involved an association between himself, his uncle and the flat side of a
slipper. The old wound had ceased to trouble him physically, but there was
still a certain mental pain, and he was of the opinion that it would have been
in better taste for Nannie Byles to let the dead past bury its dead.

“Ha,
ha,” he said, though dully. “Fancy her remembering that.”

“Oh,
her memory’s wonderful,” said Mrs Bingo.

Bingo
returned to his mystery thriller, and Mrs Bingo put the black ten on the red
jack, and that, you would have said, was that. But Bingo, as he re-joined
Inspector Keene and resumed with him the search for the murderer of Sir Rollo
Murgatroyd, who had been bumped off in his library with a blunt instrument,
experienced a difficulty in concentrating on the clues.

Until
this moment the signing on the dotted line of his former bottlewasher had
occasioned in him, as we have seen, merely a concern for his wee tot. It had
not occurred to him that he himself was in peril. But now he found himself
filled with a growing uneasiness. He did not like the look of things. His had
been a rather notably checkered childhood, full of incidents which it had taken
him years to live down, and he trusted that it was not Nannie Byles’s intention
to form an I-Knew-Him-When club and read occasional papers.

He
feared the worst, and next day he was given proof that his apprehensions had
been well founded. He was starting to help himself to a second go of jam
omelette at the dinner-table, when his hand was stayed by a quick intake of the
breath on the part of Mrs Bingo.

“Oh,
Bingo, darling,” said Mrs Bingo, “ought you?”

“Eh?”
said Bingo, groping for the gist.

“Your
weak stomach,” explained Mrs Bingo.

Bingo
was amazed.

“How do
you mean, weak stomach? My stomach’s terrific. Ask anyone at the Drones. It’s
the talk of the place.”

“Well,
you know what happened at that Christmas party at the Wilkinsons when you were
six. Nannie says she will never forget it.”

Bingo
flushed darkly.

“Has
she been telling you about that?”

“Yes.
She says your stomach was always terribly weak, and you
would
overeat
yourself at children’s parties. She says you would stuff and stuff and stuff
and go out and be sick and then come back and stuff and stuff and stuff again.”

Bingo
drew himself up rather coldly. No man likes to be depicted as a sort of infant
Vitellius, particularly in the presence of a parlourmaid with flapping ears who
is obviously drinking it all in with a view to going off and giving the cook
something juicy to include in her memoirs.

“No
more jam omelette, thank you,” he said reservedly.

“Now,
that’s very sensible of you,” said Mrs Bingo. “And Nannie thinks it would be
ever so much safer if you gave up cigarettes and cocktails.”

Bingo
sank back in his chair feeling as if he had been slapped in the eye with a wet
sock.

A
couple of days later things took a turn for the worse. Returning from the
office and heading for the nursery for a crack with Algernon Aubrey, Bingo met Mrs
Bingo in the hail. It seemed to him that her manner during the initial
embracings and pip-pippings was a little strange.

“Bingo,”
she said, “do you know a girl named Valerie Twistleton?”

“Oh,
rather. Pongo Twistleton’s sister. Known her all my life. She’s engaged to
Horace Davenport.”

“Oh, is
she?” Mrs Bingo seemed relieved. “Then you don’t see much of her now?”

“Not
much. Why?”

“Nannie
was saying that you made yourself rather conspicuous with her at that Christmas
party at the Wilkinsons. She says you kept kissing her under the mistletoe. She
says you used to kiss all the little girls.”

Bingo
reeled. It was the last picture a husband would wish to be built up in his wife’s
mind’s eye. Besides, a chivalrous man always shrinks from bandying a woman’s
name, and he was wondering what would happen if this loose talk were to come to
die ears of Horace Davenport, the Drones Club’s leading Othello.

“She
must be thinking of someone else,” he said hoarsely. “I was noted as a child
for my aloofness and austerity. My manner towards the other sex was always
scrupulously correct. Do you know what the extraordinary ramblings of this
Byles suggest to me?” he went on. “They suggest that the old blister is senile
and quite unequal to the testing office of ministering to Algy. Boot her out is
my advice and sign on someone younger.”

“You
would prefer a young nurse?”

Bingo
is no fool.

“Not a
young
nurse. A sensible, middle-aged nurse. I mean to say, Nannie Byles will
never see a hundred and seven again.”

“She
was fifty last birthday, she tells me.”

“She
tells you. Ha!”

“Well,
anyway, I wouldn’t dream of letting her go. She is wonderful with Algy, and she
looks after your things like a mother.”

“Oh,
very well. Only don’t blame me when it’s too late.”

“When
what’s too late?”

“I don’t
know,” said Bingo. “Something.”

As he
went on to the nursery to pass the time of day with Algernon Aubrey, his heart
was leaden. No question now of his ignoring his peril. He could not have been
better informed regarding it if the facts had been broadcast on a nation-wide
hook-up. A few more of these revelations from this voice from the past and he
would sink to the level of a fifth-rate power. Somehow, by some means, he told
himself, if his prestige in the home was to be maintained, he must get rid of
this Nannie.

The
woman knew too much.

As a
matter of fact, though he would not have cared to have the thing known, his
prestige at the moment was quite rocky enough, without having any Nannies
nibbling at the foundations. A very serious crisis was impending in his
domestic affairs, threatening to make his name a hissing and a byword.