Uneasy Money, P. G. Wodehouse [icecream ebook reader .txt] 📗

that the victim, having passed through the various stages of imagined horrors, was genuinely relieved, when she actually came to the point, to find that all that had happened was that he had lost all his money. But now in perfect innocence, thinking only to pass along an interesting bit of information, she had crushed Bill as effectively as if she had used a club for that purpose.

'I'm tickled to death about it,' she went on, as it were over her hearer's prostrate body. It was I who brought them together, you know. I wrote telling Claire to come out here on the Atlantic, knowing that Dudley was sailing on that boat. I had an idea they would hit it off together. Dudley fell for her right away, and she must have fallen for him, for they had only known each other for a few weeks when they came and told me they were engaged. It happened last Sunday.'

'Last Sunday!'

It had seemed to Bill a moment before that he would never again be capable of speech, but this statement dragged the words out of him. Last Sunday! Why, it was last Sunday that Claire had broken off her engagement with him!

'Last Sunday at nine o'clock in the evening, with a full moon shining and soft music going on off-stage. Real third-act stuff.'

Bill felt positively dizzy. He groped back in his memory for facts. He had gone out for his walk after dinner. They had dined at eight. He had been walking some time. Why, in Heaven's name, this was the quickest thing in the amatory annals of civilization! His brain was too numbed to work out a perfectly accurate schedule, but it looked as if she must have got engaged to this Pickering person before she met him, Bill, in the road that night.

'It's a wonderful match for dear old Claire,' resumed Lady Wetherby, twisting the knife in the wound with a happy unconsciousness. 'Dudley's not only a corking good fellow, but he has thirty million dollars stuffed away in the stocking and a business that brings him in a perfectly awful mess of money every year. He's the Pickering of the Pickering automobiles, you know.'

Bill got up. He stood for a moment holding to the back of his chair before speaking. It was almost exactly thus that he had felt in the days when he had gone in for boxing and had stopped forceful swings with the more sensitive portions of his person.

'That—that's splendid!' he said. 'I—I think I'll be going.'

'I heard the car outside just now,' said Lady Wetherby. 'I think it's probably Claire and Dudley come back. Won't you wait and see her?'

Bill shook his head.

'Well, good-bye for the present, then. You must come round again. Any friend of Claire's—and it was bully of you to bother about looking in to tell of Eustace.'

Bill had reached the door. He was about to turn the handle when someone turned it on the other side.

'Why, here is Dudley,' said Lady Wetherby. 'Dudley, this is a friend of Claire's.'

Dudley Pickering was one of those men who take the ceremony of introduction with a measured solemnity. It was his practice to grasp the party of the second part firmly by the hand, hold it, look into his eyes in a reverent manner, and get off some little speech of appreciation, short but full of feeling. The opening part of this ceremony he performed now. He grasped Bill's hand firmly, held it, and looked into his eyes. And then, having performed his business, he fell down on his lines. Not a word proceeded from him. He dropped the hand and stared at Bill amazedly and—more than that—with fear.

Bill, too, uttered no word. It was not one of those chatty meetings.

But if they were short on words, both Bill and Mr Pickering were long on looks. Bill stared at Mr Pickering. Mr Pickering stared at Bill.

Bill was drinking in Mr Pickering. The stoutness of Mr Pickering—the orderliness of Mr Pickering—the dullness of Mr Pickering—all these things he perceived. And illumination broke upon him.

Mr Pickering was drinking in Bill. The largeness of Bill—the embarrassment of Bill—the obvious villainy of Bill—none of these things escaped his notice. And illumination broke upon him also.

For Dudley Pickering, in the first moment of their meeting, had recognized Bill as the man who had been lurking in the grounds and peering in at the window, the man at whom on the night when he had become engaged to Claire he had shouted 'Hi!'

'Where's Claire, Dudley?' asked Lady Wetherby.

Mr Pickering withdrew his gaze reluctantly from Bill.

'Gone upstairs.'

I'll go and tell her that you're here, Mr—You never told me your name.'

Bill came to life with an almost acrobatic abruptness. There were many things of which at that moment he felt absolutely incapable, and meeting Claire was one of them.

'No; I must be going,' he said, hurriedly. 'Good-bye.'

He came very near running out of the room. Lady Wetherby regarded the practically slammed door with wide eyes.

'Quick exit of Nut Comedian!' she said. 'Whatever was the matter with the man? He's scorched a trail in the carpet.'

Mr Pickering was trembling violently.

'Do you know who that was? He was the man!' said Mr Pickering.

'What man?'

'The man I caught looking in at the window that night!'

'What nonsense! You must be mistaken. He said he knew Claire quite well.'

'But when you suggested that he should meet her he ran.'

This aspect of the matter had not occurred to Lady Wetherby.

'So he did!'

'What did he tell you that showed he knew Claire?'

'Well, now that I come to think of it, he didn't tell me anything.
I did the talking. He just sat there.'

Mr Pickering quivered with combined fear and excitement and inductive reasoning.

'It was a trick!' he cried. 'Remember what Sherriff said that night when I told you about finding the man looking in at the window? He said that the fellow was spying round as a preliminary move. To-day he trumps up an obviously false excuse for getting into the house. Was he left alone in the rooms at all?'

'Yes. Wrench loosed him in here and then came up to tell me.'

'For several minutes, then, he was alone in the house. Why, he had time to do all he wanted to do!'

'Calm down!'

'I am perfectly calm. But—'

'You've been seeing too many crook plays, Dudley. A man isn't necessarily a burglar because he wears a decent suit of clothes.'

'Why was he lurking in the grounds that night?'

'You're just imagining that it was the same man.'

'I am absolutely positive it was the same man.'

'Well, we can easily settle one thing about him, at any rate. Here comes Claire. Claire, old girl,' she said, as the door opened, 'do you know a man named—Darn it! I never got his name, but he's—'

Claire stood in the doorway, looking from one to the other.

'What's the matter, Dudley?' she said.

'Dudley's gone clean up in the air,' explained Lady Wetherby, tolerantly. 'A friend of yours called to tell me he had seen Eustace—'

'So that was his excuse, was it?' said Dudley Pickering. 'Did he say where Eustace was?'

'No; he said he had seen him; that was all.'

'An obviously trumped-up story. He had heard of Eustace's escape and he knew that any story connected with him would be a passport into the house.'

Lady Wetherby turned to Claire.

'You haven't told us yet if you know the man. He was a big, tall, broad gazook,' said Lady Wetherby. 'Very English.'

'He faked the English,' said Dudley Pickering. 'That man was no more an Englishman than I am.'

'Be patient with him, Claire,' urged Lady Wetherby. 'He's been going to the movies too much, and thinks every man who has had his trousers pressed is a social gangster. This man was the most English thing I've ever seen—talked like this.'

She gave a passable reproduction of Bill's speech. Claire started.

'I don't know him!' she cried.

Her mind was in a whirl of agitation. Why had Bill come to the house? What had he said? Had he told Dudley anything?

'I don't recognize the description,' she said, quickly. 'I don't know anything about him.'

'There!' said Dudley Pickering, triumphantly.

'It's queer,' said Lady Wetherby. 'You're sure you don't know him,
Claire?'

'Absolutely sure.'

'He said he was living at a place near here, called Flack's.'

'I know the place,' said Dudley Pickering. 'A sinister, tumbledown sort of place. Just where a bunch of crooks would be living.'

'I thought it was a bee-farm,' said Lady Wetherby. 'One of the tradesmen told me about it. I saw a most corkingly pretty girl bicycling down to the village one morning, and they told me she was named Boyd and kept a bee-farm at Flack's.'

'A blind!' said Mr Pickering, stoutly. 'The girl's the man's accomplice. It's quite easy to see the way they work. The girl comes and settles in the place so that everybody knows her. That's to lull suspicion. Then the man comes down for a visit and goes about cleaning up the neighbouring houses. You can't get away from the fact that this summer there have been half a dozen burglaries down here, and nobody has found out who did them.'

Lady Wetherby looked at him indulgently.

'And now,' she said, 'having got us scared stiff, what are you going to do about it?'

'I am going,' he said, with determination, 'to take steps.'

He went out quickly, the keen, tense man of affairs.

'Bless him!' said Lady Wetherby. 'I'd no idea your Dudley had so much imagination, Claire. He's a perfect bomb-shell.'

Claire laughed shakily.

'It is odd, though,' said Lady Wetherby, meditatively, 'that this man should have said that he knew you, when you don't—'

Claire turned impulsively.

'Polly, I want to tell you something. Promise you won't tell Dudley. I wasn't telling the truth just now. I do know this man. I was engaged to him once.'

'What!'

'For goodness' sake don't tell Dudley!'

'But—'

'It's all over now; but I used to be engaged to him.'

'Not when I was in England?'

'No, after that.'

'Then he didn't know you are engaged to Dudley now?'

'N-no. I—I haven't seen him for a long time.'

Lady Wetherby looked remorseful.

'Poor man! I must have given him a jolt! But why didn't you tell me about him before?'

'Oh, I don't know.'

'Oh, well, I'm not inquisitive. There's no rubber in my composition. It's your affair.'

'You won't tell Dudley?'

'Of course not. But why not? You've nothing to be ashamed of.'

'No; but—'

'Well, I won't tell him, anyway. But I'm glad you told me about him. Dudley was so eloquent about burglars that he almost had me going. I wonder where he rushed off to?'

Dudley Pickering had rushed off to his bedroom, and was examining a revolver there. He examined it carefully, keenly. Preparedness was Dudley Pickering's slogan. He looked rather like a stout sheriff in a film drama.

16

In the interesting land of India, where snakes abound and scorpions are common objects of the wayside, a native who has had the misfortune to be bitten by one of the latter pursues an admirably common-sense plan. He does not stop to lament, nor does he hang about analysing his emotions. He runs and runs and runs, and keeps on running until he has worked the poison out of his system. Not until then does he attempt introspection.

Lord Dawlish, though ignorant of this fact, pursued almost identically the same policy. He did not run on leaving Lady Wetherby's house, but he took a very long and very rapid walk, than which in times of stress there are few things of greater medicinal value to the human mind. To increase the similarity, he was conscious of a curious sense of being poisoned. He felt stifled—in want of air.

Bill was a simple young man, and he had a simple code of ethics. Above all things he prized and admired and demanded from his friends the quality of straightness. It was his one demand. He had never actually had a criminal friend, but he was quite capable of intimacy with even a criminal, provided only that there was something spacious about his brand of crime and that it did not involve anything mean or underhand. It was the fact that Mr Breitstein whom Claire had wished him to insinuate