A Man of Means, P. G. Wodehouse [best books under 200 pages .txt] 📗

Altho Geoffrey Windlebird described himself as a Napoleon of Finance, a Cinquevalli or Chung Ling Soo of Finance would have been a more accurate title. As a juggler with other people's money he was at the head of his class. And yet, when one came to examine it, his method was delightfully simple. Say, for instance, that the Home-grown Tobacco Trust, founded by Geoffrey in a moment of ennui, failed to yield those profits which the glowing prospectus had led the public to expect. Geoffrey would appease the excited shareholders by giving them Preference Shares (interest guaranteed) in the Sea-gold Extraction Company, hastily floated to meet the emergency. When the interest became due, it would, as likely as not, be paid out of the capital just subscribed for the King Solomon's Mines Exploitation Association, the little deficiency in the latter being replaced in its turn, when absolutely necessary and not a moment before, by the transfer of some portion of the capital just raised for yet another company. And so on, ad infinitum. There were moments when it seemed to Mr. Windlebird that he had solved the problem of Perpetual Promotion.

The only thing that can stop a triumphal progress like Mr. Windlebird's is when some coarse person refuses to play to the rules, and demands ready money instead of shares in the next venture. This had happened now, and it had flattened Mr. Windlebird like an avalanche.

He was a philosopher, but he could not help feeling a little galled that the demand which had destroyed him had been so trivial. He had handled millions—on paper, it was true, but still millions—and here he was knocked out of time by a paltry twenty thousand pounds.

“Are you absolutely sure that nothing can be done?” persisted Mrs. Windlebird. “Have you tried every one?”

“Every one, dear moon-of-my-delight—the probables, the possibles, the highly unlikelies, and the impossibles. Never an echo to the minstrel's wooing song. No, my dear, we have got to take to the boats this time. Unless, of course, some one possessed at one and the same time of twenty thousand pounds and a very confiding nature happens to drop from the clouds.”

As he spoke, an aeroplane came sailing over the tops of the trees beyond the tennis-lawn. Gracefully as a bird it settled on the smooth turf, not twenty yards from where he was seated.

Roland Bleke stepped stiffly out onto the tennis-lawn. His progress rather resembled that of a landsman getting out of an open boat in which he has spent a long and perilous night at sea. He was feeling more wretched than he had ever felt in his life. He had a severe cold. He had a splitting headache. His hands and feet were frozen. His eyes smarted. He was hungry. He was thirsty. He hated cheerful M. Feriaud, who had hopped out and was now busy tinkering the engine, a gay Provencal air upon his lips, as he had rarely hated any one, even Muriel Coppin's brother Frank.

So absorbed was he in his troubles that he was not aware of Mr. Windlebird's approach until that pleasant, portly man's shadow fell on the turf before him.

“Not had an accident, I hope, Mr. Bleke?”

Roland was too far gone in misery to speculate as to how this genial stranger came to know his name. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Windlebird, keen student of the illustrated press, had recognized Roland by his photograph in the Daily Mirror. In the course of the twenty yards' walk from house to tennis-lawn she had put her husband into possession of the more salient points in Roland's history. It was when Mr. Windlebird heard that Roland had forty thousand pounds in the bank that he sat up and took notice.

“Lead me to him,” he said simply.

Roland sneezed.

“Doe accident, thag you,” he replied miserably. “Somethig's gone wrong with the worgs, but it's nothing serious, worse luck.”

M. Feriaud, having by this time adjusted the defect in his engine, rose to his feet, and bowed.

“Excuse if we come down on your lawn. But not long do we trespass. See, mon ami,” he said radiantly to Roland, “all now O. K. We go on.”

“No,” said Roland decidedly.

“No? What you mean—no?”

A shade of alarm fell on M. Feriaud's weather-beaten features. The eminent bird-man did not wish to part from Roland. Toward Roland he felt like a brother, for Roland had notions about payment for little aeroplane rides which bordered upon the princely.

“But you say—take me to France with you——”

“I know. But it's all off. I'm not feeling well.”

“But it's all wrong.” M. Feriaud gesticulated to drive home his point. “You give me one hundred pounds to take you away from Lexingham. Good. It is here.” He slapped his breast pocket. “But the other two hundred pounds which also you promise me to pay me when I place you safe in France, where is that, my friend?”

“I will give you two hundred and fifty,” said Roland earnestly, “to leave me here, and go right away, and never let me see your beastly machine again.”

A smile of brotherly forgiveness lit up M. Feriaud's face. The generous Gallic nature asserted itself. He held out his arms affectionately to Roland.

“Ah, now you talk. Now you say something,” he cried in his impetuous way. “Embrace me. You are all right.”

Roland heaved a sigh of relief when, five minutes later, the aeroplane disappeared over the brow of the hill. Then he began to sneeze again.

“You're not well, you know,” said Mr. Windlebird.

“I've caught cold. We've been flying about all night—that French ass lost his bearings—and my suit is thin. Can you direct me to a hotel?”

“Hotel? Nonsense.” Mr. Windlebird spoke in the bluff, breezy voice which at many a stricken board-meeting had calmed frantic shareholders as if by magic. “You're coming right into my house and up to bed this instant.”

It was not till he was between the sheets with a hot-water bottle at his toes and a huge breakfast inside him that Roland learned the name of his good Samaritan. When he did, his first impulse was to struggle out of bed and make his escape. Geoffrey Windlebird's was a name which he had learned, in the course of his mercantile career, to hold in something approaching reverence as that of one of the mightiest business brains of the age.

To have to meet so eminent a man in the capacity of invalid, a nuisance about the house, was almost too much for Roland's shrinking nature. The kindness of the Windlebirds—and there seemed to be nothing that they were not ready to do for him—distressed him beyond measure. To have a really great man like Geoffrey Windlebird sprawling genially over his bed, chatting away as if he were an ordinary friend, was almost horrible. Such condescension was too much.

Gradually, as he became convalescent, Roland found this feeling replaced by something more comfortable. They were such a genuine, simple, kindly couple, these Windlebirds,