Short Fiction, P. G. Wodehouse [books for 20 year olds .txt] 📗

that brooding look of his. That strange brooding look. I’ve noticed it every time I’ve been talking to him.”

Bobbie broke the silence, speaking in a low, grave voice.

“Didn’t you know about poor Mr. Potter?”

“Eh?”

“That he has suicidal mania?”

Clifford Gandle drew in his breath sharply.

“You can’t blame him,” said Bobbie. “How would you feel if you came home one day and found your wife and your two brothers and a cousin sitting round the dinner table stone-dead?”

“What?”

“Poisoned. Something in the curry.” She shivered. “This morning I found him in the garden gloating over a book called Ethics of Suicide.”

Clifford Gandle ran his fingers through his dripping hair.

“Something ought to be done!”

“What can you do? The thing isn’t supposed to be known. If you mention it to him, he will simply go away; and then mother will be furious, because she wants him to publish her books in America.”

“I shall keep the closest watch on the man.”

“Yes, that’s the thing to do,” agreed Bobbie.

She pushed the punt to the shore. Mr. Gandle, who had begun to feel chilly, leaped out and sped to the house to change his clothes. Bobbie, following at a more leisurely pace, found her mother standing in the passage outside her study. Lady Wickham’s manner was perturbed.

“Roberta!”

“Yes, mother?”

“What in the world has been happening? A few moments ago Mr. Potter ran past my door, dripping wet. And now Clifford Gandle has just gone by, also soaked to the skin. What have they been doing?”

“Fighting in the moat, mother.”

“Fighting in the moat? What do you mean?”

“Mr. Potter jumped in to try and get away from Mr. Gandle, and then Mr. Gandle went in after him and seized him round the neck, and they grappled together for quite a long time, struggling furiously. I think they must have had a quarrel.”

“What on earth would they quarrel about?”

“Well, you know what a violent man Clifford Gandle is.” This was an aspect of Mr. Gandle’s character which Lady Wickham had not perceived. She opened her penetrating eyes.

“Clifford Gandle violent?”

“I think he’s the sort of man who takes sudden dislikes to people.”

“Nonsense!”

“Well, it all seems very queer to me,” said Bobbie. She passed on her way upstairs; and, reaching the first landing, turned down the corridor till she came to the principal guestroom. She knocked delicately. There were movements inside, and presently the door opened, revealing Hamilton Potter in a flowered dressing-gown.

“Thank Heaven you’re safe!” said Bobbie.

The fervour of her tone touched Mr. Potter. His heart warmed to the child.

“If I hadn’t been there when Mr. Gandle was trying to drown you⁠—”

Mr. Potter started violently.

“Trying to drown me?” he gasped.

Bobbie’s eyebrows rose.

“Hasn’t anybody told you about Mr. Gandle⁠—warned you? Didn’t you know he was one of the mad Gandles?”

“The⁠—the⁠—?”

“Mad Gandles. You know what some of these very old English families are like. All the Gandles have been mad for generations back.”

“You don’t mean⁠—you can’t mean⁠—” Mr. Potter gulped. “You can’t mean that Mr. Gandle is homicidal?”

“Not normally. But he takes sudden dislikes to people.”

“I think he likes me,” said Mr. Potter, with a certain nervous satisfaction. “He has made a point of seeking me out and giving me his views on⁠—er⁠—various matters.”

“Did you ever yawn while he was doing it?”

Mr. Potter blenched.

“Would⁠—would he mind that very much?”

“Mind it! You lock your door at night, don’t you, Mr. Potter?”

“But this is terrible.”

“He sleeps in this corridor.”

“But why is the man at large?”

“He hasn’t done anything yet. You can’t shut a man up till he has done something.”

“Does Lady Wickham know of this?”

“For goodness’ sake don’t say a word to mother. It would only make her nervous. Everything will be quite all right, if you’re only careful. You had better try not to let him get you alone.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Potter. It was an idea that had occurred to him independently.

The last of the mad Gandles, meanwhile, having peeled off the dress-clothes moistened during the recent water-carnival, had draped his bony form in a suit of orange-coloured pyjamas, and was now devoting the full force of a legislator’s mind to the situation which had arisen.

He was a long, thin young man with a curved nose which even in his lighter moments gave him the appearance of disapproving things in general; and there had been nothing in the events of the last hour to cause any diminution of this look of disapproval. For we cannot in fairness but admit that, if ever a mad Gandle had good reason to be mad, Clifford Gandle had at this juncture. He had been interrupted at the crucial point of a proposal of marriage. He had been plunged into water and prodded with a punt-pole. He had sown the seeds of a cold in the head. And he rather fancied that he had swallowed a newt. These things do not conduce to sunniness in a man.

Nor did an inspection of the future do anything to remove his gloom. He had come to Skeldings for rest and recuperation after the labours of an exhausting Session, and now it seemed that, instead of passing his time pleasantly in the society of Roberta Wickham, he would be compelled to devote himself to acting as a guardian to a misguided publisher.

It was not as if he liked publishers, either. His relations with Prodder and Wiggs, who had sold forty-three copies of his book of political essays⁠—Watchman, What of the Night?⁠—had not been agreeable.

Nevertheless, this last of the Gandles was a conscientious man. He had no intention of shirking the call of duty. The question of whether it was worth while preventing a publisher committing suicide did not present itself to him.

That was why Bobbie’s note, when he read it, produced such immediate results.

Exactly when the missive had been delivered, Clifford Gandle could not say. Much thought had rendered him distrait, and the rustle of the paper as it was thrust under his door did not reach his consciousness. It was only when, after a considerable time, he rose with the intention of going to bed that he perceived lying on the floor an envelope.

He stooped and picked it up.