A Gentleman of Leisure, P. G. Wodehouse [speld decodable readers .TXT] 📗

The next moment the light-haired one was at his table, talking in a feverish whisper.

“I say,” he said, “it’s frightfully good of you, old chap; it’s frightfully awkward. I’ve come out with too little money. I hardly like to⁠—. You’ve never seen me before⁠—”

“Don’t rub in my misfortunes,” pleaded Jimmy. “It wasn’t my fault.”

He placed a £5 note on the table.

“Say when,” he said, producing another.

“I say, thanks fearfully,” the young man said. “I don’t know what I’d have done.” He grabbed at the note. “I’ll let you have it back tomorrow. Here’s my card. Is your address on your card? I can’t remember. Oh, by Jove, I’ve got it in my hand all the time.” The gurgling laugh came into action again, freshened and strengthened by its rest. “Savoy Mansions, eh? I’ll come round tomorrow. Thanks frightfully again, old chap. I don’t know what I should have done.”

“It’s been a treat,” said Jimmy deprecatingly.

The young man flitted back to his table, bearing the spoil. Jimmy looked at the card he had left. “Lord Dreever,” it read, and in the corner the name of a well-known club. The name Dreever was familiar to Jimmy. Everyone knew of Dreever Castle, partly because it was one of the oldest houses in England, but principally because for centuries it had been advertised by a particularly gruesome ghost story. Everyone had heard of the secret of Dreever, which was known only to the Earl and the family lawyer, and confided to the heir at midnight on his twenty-first birthday. Jimmy had come across the story in corners of the papers all over the States, from New York to Onehorseville, Iowa. He looked with interest at the light-haired young man⁠—the latest depository of the awful secret. It was popularly supposed that the heir, after hearing it, never smiled again: but it did not seem to have affected the present Lord Dreever to any great extent. His gurgling laugh was drowning the orchestra. Probably, Jimmy thought, when the family lawyer had told the light-haired young man the secret, the latter’s comment had been, “No, really? By Jove, I say, you know!”

Jimmy paid his bill and got up to go.

It was a perfect summer night⁠—too perfect for bed. Jimmy strolled on to the Embankment, and stood leaning over the balustrade, looking across the river at the vague, mysterious mass of buildings on the Surrey side.

He must have been standing there for some time, his thoughts far away, when a voice spoke at his elbow.

“I say. Excuse me, have you⁠—Halloa!”

It was his light-haired lordship of Dreever.

“I say, by Jove! Why, we’re always meeting!”

A tramp on the bench close by stirred uneasily in his sleep as the gurgling laughter ripped the air.

“Been looking at the water?” inquired Lord Dreever. “I have. I often do. Don’t you think it sort of makes a chap feel⁠—oh, you know. Sort of⁠—I don’t know how to put it.”

“Mushy?” said Jimmy.

“I was going to say poetical. Suppose there’s a girl⁠—”

He paused and looked down at the water. Jimmy was with him there. There was a girl.

“I saw my party off in a taxi,” continued Lord Dreever, “and came down here for a smoke. Only I hadn’t a match. Have you?”

Jimmy handed over his matchbox. Lord Dreever lit a cigar, and fixed his gaze once more on the river.

“Ripping it looks,” he said.

Jimmy nodded.

“Funny thing,” said Lord Dreever. “In the daytime the water here looks all muddy and beastly. Damn depressing, I call it. But at night⁠—” He paused. “I say,” he went on, after a moment, “did you see the girl I was with at the Savoy?”

“Yes,” said Jimmy.

“She’s a ripper,” said Lord Dreever devoutly.

On the Thames Embankment, in the small hours of a summer morning, there is no such thing as a stranger. The man you talk with is a friend, and if he will listen⁠—as, by the etiquette of the place, he must⁠—you may pour out your heart to him without restraint. It is expected of you.

“I’m fearfully in love with her,” said his lordship.

“She looked a charming girl,” said Jimmy.

They examined the water in silence. From somewhere out in the night came the sound of oars, where the police boat moved on its patrol.

“Does she make you want to go to Japan?” asked Jimmy suddenly.

“Eh?” said Lord Dreever, startled. “Japan?”

Jimmy adroitly abandoned the position of confidant and seized that of confider.

“I met a girl a year ago. Only really met her once, and even then⁠—oh, well. Anyway, it’s made me so restless that I haven’t been able to stay in one place for more than a month on end. I tried Morocco, and had to quit. I tried Spain, and that wasn’t any good either. The other day I heard a fellow say that Japan was a pretty interesting sort of country. I was wondering whether I wouldn’t give it a trial.”

Lord Dreever regarded this travelled man with interest.

“It beats me,” he said wonderingly. “What do you want to leg it about the world like that for? What’s the trouble? Why don’t you stay where the girl is?”

“I don’t know where she is.”

“Don’t know?”

“She disappeared.”

“Where did you see her last?” asked his lordship, as if Molly were a mislaid penknife.

“New York.”

“But how do you mean, disappeared? Don’t you know her address?”

“I don’t even know her name.”

“But dash it all, I say, I mean! Have you ever spoken to her?”

“Only once. It’s rather a complicated story. At any rate, she’s gone.”

Lord Dreever said that it was a rum business. Jimmy conceded the point.

“Seems to me,” said his lordship, “we’re both in the cart.”

“What’s your trouble?”

“Oh, well, it’s only that I want to marry one girl, and my uncle’s dead set on my marrying another.”

“Are you afraid of hurting your uncle’s feelings?”

“It’s not so much hurting his feelings. It’s⁠—oh, well, it’s too long to tell now. I think I’ll be getting home. I’m staying at our place in Eaton Square.”

“How are you going? If you’ll walk I’ll come some of