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

he had no matches.

This needless infliction, coming upon him at the crisis of an adventurous night, infuriated Mr Pickering. He swore softly. He groped round the walls for an electric-light switch, but the shack had no electric-light switch. When there was need to illuminate it an oil lamp performed the duty. This occurred to Mr Pickering after he had been round the place three times, and he ceased to grope for a switch and began to seek for a match-box. He was still seeking it when he was frozen in his tracks by the sound of footsteps, muffled but by their nearness audible, just outside the door. He pulled out his pistol, which he had replaced in his pocket, backed against the wall, and stood there prepared to sell his life dearly.

The door opened.

One reads of desperate experiences ageing people in a single night. His present predicament aged Mr Pickering in a single minute. In the brief interval of time between the opening of the door and the moment when a voice outside began to speak he became a full thirty years older. His boyish ardour slipped from him, and he was once more the Dudley Pickering whom the world knew, the staid and respectable middle-aged man of affairs, who would have given a million dollars not to have got himself mixed up in this deplorable business.

And then the voice spoke.

'I'll light the lamp,' it said; and with an overpowering feeling of relief Mr Pickering recognized it as Lord Wetherby's. A moment later the temperamental peer's dapper figure became visible in silhouette against a background of pale light.

'Ah-hum!' said Mr Pickering.

The effect on Lord Wetherby was remarkable. To hear some one clear his throat at the back of a dark room, where there should rightfully be no throat to be cleared, would cause even your man of stolid habit a passing thrill. The thing got right in among Lord Wetherby's highly sensitive ganglions like an earthquake. He uttered a strangled cry, then dashed out and slammed the door behind him.

'There's someone in there!'

Lady Wetherby's tranquil voice made itself heard.

'Nonsense; who could be in there?'

'I heard him, I tell you. He growled at me!'

It seemed to Mr Pickering that the time had come to relieve the mental distress which he was causing his host. He raised his voice.

'It's all right!' he called.

'There!' said Lord Wetherby.

'Who's that?' asked Lady Wetherby, through the door.

'It's all right. It's me—Pickering.'

The door was opened a few inches by a cautious hand.

'Is that you, Pickering?'

'Yes. It's all right.'

'Don't keep saying it's all right,' said Lord Wetherby, irritably. 'It isn't all right. What do you mean by hiding in the dark and popping out and barking at a man? You made me bite my tongue. I've never had such a shock in my life.'

Mr Pickering left his lair and came out into the open. Lord Wetherby was looking aggrieved, Lady Wetherby peacefully inquisitive. For the first time Mr Pickering discovered that Claire was present. She was standing behind Lady Wetherby with a floating white something over her head, looking very beautiful.

'For the love of Mike!' said Lady Wetherby.

Mr Pickering became aware that he was still holding the revolver.

'Oh, ah!' he said, and pocketed the weapon.

'Barking at people!' muttered Lord Wetherby in a querulous undertone.

'What on earth are you doing, Dudley?' said Claire.

There was a note in her voice which both puzzled and pained Mr Pickering, a note that seemed to suggest that she found herself in imperfect sympathy with him. Her expression deepened the suggestion. It was a cold expression, unfriendly, as if it was not so keen a pleasure to Claire to look at him as it should be for a girl to look at the man whom she is engaged to marry. He had noticed the same note in her voice and the same hostile look in her eye earlier in the evening. He had found her alone, reading a letter which, as the stamp on the envelope showed, had come from England. She had seemed so upset that he had asked her if it contained bad news, and she had replied in the negative with so much irritation that he had desisted from inquiries. But his own idea was that she had had bad news from home. Mr Pickering still clung to his early impression that her little brother Percy was consumptive, and he thought the child must have taken a turn for the worse. It was odd that she should have looked and spoken like that then, and it was odd that she should look and speak like that now. He had been vaguely disturbed then and he was vaguely disturbed now. He had the feeling that all was not well.

'Yes,' said Lady Wetherby. 'What on earth are you doing, Dudley?'

'Popping out!' grumbled Lord Wetherby.

'We came here to see Algie's picture, which has got something wrong with its eyes apparently, and we find you hiding in the dark with a gun. What's the idea?'

'It's a long story,' said Mr Pickering.

'We have the night before us,' said Lady Wetherby.

'You remember The Man—the fellow I found looking in at the window, The Man who said he knew Claire?'

'You've got that man on the brain, Dudley. What's he been doing to you now?'

'I tracked him here.'

'Tracked him? Where from?'

'From that bee-farm place where he's living. He and that girl you spoke of went into these woods. I thought they were making for the house, but they went into the shack.'

'What did they do then?' asked Lady Wetherby.

'They came out again.'

'Why?'

'That's what I was trying to find out.'

Lord Wetherby uttered an exclamation.

'By Jove!' There was apprehension in his voice, but mingled with it a certain pleased surprise. 'Perhaps they were after my picture. I'll light the lamp. Good Lord, picture thieves—Romneys—missing Gainsboroughs—' His voice trailed off as he found the lamp and lit it. Relief and disappointment were nicely blended in his next words: 'No, it's still there.'

The soft light of the lamp filled the studio.

'Well, that's a comfort,' said Lady Wetherby, sauntering in. 'We couldn't afford to lose—Oh!'

Lord Wetherby spun round as her scream burst upon his already tortured nerve centres. Lady Wetherby was kneeling on the floor. Claire hurried in.

'What is it, Polly?'

Lady Wetherby rose to her feet, and pointed. Her face had lost its look of patient amusement. It was hard and set. She eyed Mr Pickering in a menacing way.

'Look!'

Claire followed her finger.

'Good gracious! It's Eustace!'

'Shot!'

She was looking intently at Mr Pickering. 'Well, Dudley,' she said, coldly, 'what about it?'

Mr Pickering found that they were all looking at him—Lady
Wetherby with glittering eyes, Claire with cool scorn, Lord
Wetherby with a horror which he seemed to have achieved with
something of an effort.

'Well!' said Claire.

'What about it, Dudley?' said Lady Wetherby.

'I must say, Pickering,' said Lord Wetherby, 'much as I disliked the animal, it's a bit thick!'

Mr Pickering recoiled from their accusing gaze.

'Good heavens! Do you think I did it?'

In the midst of his anguish there flashed across his mind the recollection of having seen just this sort of situation in a moving picture, and of having thought it far-fetched.

Lady Wetherby's good-tempered mouth, far from good-tempered now, curled in a devastating sneer. She was looking at him as Claire, in the old days when they had toured England together in road companies, had sometimes seen her look at recalcitrant landladies. The landladies, without exception, had wilted beneath that gaze, and Mr Pickering wilted now.

'But—but—but—' was all he could contrive to say.

'Why should we think you did it?' said Lady Wetherby, bitterly. 'You had a grudge against the poor brute for biting you. We find you hiding here with a pistol and a story about burglars which an infant couldn't swallow. I suppose you thought that, if you planted the poor creature's body here, it would be up to Algie to get rid of it, and that if he were found with it I should think that it was he who had killed the animal.'

The look of horror which Lord Wetherby had managed to assume became genuine at these words. The gratitude which he had been feeling towards Mr Pickering for having removed one of the chief trials of his existence vanished.

'Great Scot!' he cried. 'So that was the game, was it?'

Mr Pickering struggled for speech. This was a nightmare.

'But I didn't! I didn't! I didn't! I tell you I hadn't the remotest notion the creature was there.'

'Oh, come, Pickering!' said Lord Wetherby. 'Come, come, come!'

Mr Pickering found that his accusers were ebbing away. Lady Wetherby had gone. Claire had gone. Only Lord Wetherby remained, looking at him like a pained groom. He dashed from the place and followed his hostess, speaking incoherently of burglars, outhouses, and misunderstandings. He even mentioned Chingachgook. But Lady Wetherby would not listen. Nobody would listen.

He found Lord Wetherby at his side, evidently prepared to go deeper into the subject. Lord Wetherby was looking now like a groom whose favourite horse has kicked him in the stomach.

'Wouldn't have thought it of you, Pickering,' said Lord Wetherby.
Mr Pickering found no words. 'Wouldn't, honestly. Low trick!'

'But I tell you—'

'Devilish low trick!' repeated Lord Wetherby, with a shake of the head. 'Laws of hospitality—eaten our bread and salt, what!—all that sort of thing—kill valuable monkey—not done, you know—low, very low!'

And he followed his wife, now in full retreat, with scorn and repulsion written in her very walk.

'Mr Pickering!'

It was Claire. She stood there, holding something towards him, something that glittered in the moonlight. Her voice was hard, and the expression on her face suggested that in her estimation he was a particularly low-grade worm, one of the submerged tenth of the worm world.

'Eh?' said Mr Pickering, dazedly.

He looked at what she had in her hand, but it conveyed nothing to his overwrought mind.

'Take it!'

'Eh?'

Claire stamped.

'Very well,' she said.

She flung something on the ground before him—a small, sparkling object. Then she swept away, his eyes following her, and was lost in the darkness of the trees. Mechanically Mr Pickering stooped to pick up what she had let fall. He recognized it now. It was her engagement ring.

19

Bill leaned his back against the gate that separated the grounds of the bee-farm from the high road and mused pleasantly. He was alone. Elizabeth was walking up the drive on her way to the house to tell the news to Nutty. James, the cat, who had come down from the roof of the outhouse, was sharpening his claws on a neighbouring tree. After the whirl of excitement that had been his portion for the past few hours, the peace of it all appealed strongly to Bill. It suited the mood of quiet happiness which was upon him.

Quietly happy, that was how he felt now that it was all over. The white heat of emotion had subsided to a gentle glow of contentment conducive to thought. He thought tenderly of Elizabeth. She had turned to wave her hand before going into the house, and he was still smiling fatuously. Wonderful girl! Lucky chap he was! Rum, the way they had come together! Talk about Fate, what?

He stooped to tickle James, who had finished stropping his claws and was now enjoying a friction massage against his leg, and began to brood on the inscrutable way of Fate.

Rum thing, Fate! Most extraordinary!

Suppose he had never gone down to Marvis Bay that time. He had wavered between half a dozen places; it was pure chance that he had chosen Marvis Bay. If he hadn't he would never have met old Nutcombe. Probably old Nutcombe had wavered between half a dozen places too. If they hadn't both happened to choose Marvis Bay they would never have met. And if they hadn't been the only visitors there they might never have got to know each other. And if old Nutcombe hadn't happened to slice his approach shots he would never have put him under an obligation. Queer old buster, old Nutcombe, leaving a fellow he hardly knew from Adam a cool million quid just because he cured him of slicing.

It was at this point in his meditations that it suddenly occurred to Bill that he had not yet given a thought to what was immeasurably the most important of any of the things that ought to be occupying his mind just