The Intrusion of Jimmy, P. G. Wodehouse [top 20 books to read .TXT] 📗

Gloom wrapped his lordship about, during dinner, as with a garment. He owed twenty pounds. His assets amounted to seven shillings and four-pence. He thought, and thought again. Quite an intellectual pallor began to appear on his normally pink cheeks. Saunders, silently sympathetic—he hated Sir Thomas as an interloper, and entertained for his lordship, under whose father also he had served, a sort of paternal fondness—was ever at his elbow with the magic bottle; and to Spennie, emptying and re-emptying his glass almost mechanically, wine, the healer, brought an idea. To obtain twenty pounds from any one person of his acquaintance was impossible. To divide the twenty by four, and persuade a generous quartette to contribute five pounds apiece was more feasible.

Hope began to stir within him again.

Immediately after dinner, he began to flit about the castle like a family specter of active habits. The first person he met was Charteris.

"Hullo, Spennie," said Charteris, "I wanted to see you. It is currently reported that you are in love. At dinner, you looked as if you had influenza. What's your trouble? For goodness' sake, bear up till the show's over. Don't go swooning on the stage, or anything. Do you know your lines?"

"The fact is," said his lordship eagerly, "it's this way. I happen to want—Can you lend me a fiver?"

"All I have in the world at this moment," said Charteris, "is eleven shillings and a postage-stamp. If the stamp would be of any use to you as a start—? No? You know, it's from small beginnings like that that great fortunes are amassed. However—"

Two minutes later, Lord Dreever had resumed his hunt.

The path of the borrower is a thorny one, especially if, like Spennie, his reputation as a payer-back is not of the best.

Spennie, in his time, had extracted small loans from most of his male acquaintances, rarely repaying the same. He had a tendency to forget that he had borrowed half-a-crown here to pay a cab and ten shillings there to settle up for a dinner; and his memory was not much more retentive of larger sums. This made his friends somewhat wary. The consequence was that the great treasure-hunt was a failure from start to finish. He got friendly smiles. He got honeyed apologies. He got earnest assurances of good-will. But he got no money, except from Jimmy Pitt.

He had approached Jimmy in the early stages of the hunt; and Jimmy, being in the mood when he would have loaned anything to anybody, yielded the required five pounds without a murmur.

But what was five pounds? The garment of gloom and the intellectual pallor were once more prominent when his lordship repaired to his room to don the loud tweeds which, as Lord Herbert, he was to wear in the first act.

There is a good deal to be said against stealing, as a habit; but it cannot be denied that, in certain circumstances, it offers an admirable solution of a financial difficulty, and, if the penalties were not so exceedingly unpleasant, it is probable that it would become far more fashionable than it is.

His lordship's mind did not turn immediately to this outlet from his embarrassment. He had never stolen before, and it did not occur to him directly to do so now. There is a conservative strain in all of us. But, gradually, as it was borne in upon him that it was the only course possible, unless he were to grovel before Hargate on the morrow and ask for time to pay—an unthinkable alternative—he found himself contemplating the possibility of having to secure the money by unlawful means. By the time he had finished his theatrical toilet, he had definitely decided that this was the only thing to be done.

His plan was simple. He knew where the money was, in the dressing-table in Sir Thomas's room. He had heard Saunders instructed to put it there. What could be easier than to go and get it? Everything was in his favor. Sir Thomas would be downstairs, receiving his guests. The coast would be clear. Why, it was like finding the money.

Besides, he reflected, as he worked his way through the bottle of Mumm's which he had had the forethought to abstract from the supper-table as a nerve-steadier, it wasn't really stealing. Dash it all, the man had given him the money! It was his own! He had half a mind—he poured himself out another glass of the elixir—to give Sir Thomas a jolly good talking-to into the bargain. Yes, dash it all!

He shot his cuffs fiercely. The British Lion was roused.

A man's first crime is, as a rule, a shockingly amateurish affair. Now and then, it is true, we find beginners forging with the accuracy of old hands, or breaking into houses with the finish of experts. But these are isolated cases. The average tyro lacks generalship altogether. Spennie Dreever may be cited as a typical novice. It did not strike him that inquiries might be instituted by Sir Thomas, when he found the money gone, and that suspicion might conceivably fall upon himself. Courage may be born of champagne, but rarely prudence.

The theatricals began at half-past eight with a duologue. The audience had been hustled into their seats, happier than is usual in such circumstances, owing to the rumor