Uneasy Money, P. G. Wodehouse [little bear else holmelund minarik txt] 📗

He should not have come out on the dancing floor. In another moment he was admitting that himself. For just as he was lowering his tray and bending over the table in the pursuance of his professional duties, along came Bill at his customary high rate of speed, propelling his partner before him, and for the first time since he left home Heinrich was conscious of a regret that he had done so. There are worse things than military service.

It was the table that saved Bill. He clutched at it and it supported him. He was thus enabled to keep the Good Sport from falling, and to assist Heinrich to rise from the morass of glasses, knives, and pats of butter in which he was wallowing. Then, the dance having been abandoned by mutual consent, he helped his now somewhat hysterical partner back to their table.

Remorse came upon Bill, He was sorry that he had danced; sorry that he had upset Heinrich; sorry that he had subjected the Good Sport’s nervous system to such a strain; sorry that so much glass had been broken and so many pats of butter bruised beyond repair. But of one thing, even in that moment of bleak regrets, he was distinctly glad, and that was that all these things had taken place three thousand miles away from Claire Fenwick. He had not been appearing at his best, and he was glad that Claire had not seen him.

As he sat and smoked the remains of his cigar, while renewing his apologies and explanations to his partner and soothing the ruffled Nutty with well-chosen condolences, he wondered idly what Claire was doing at that moment. Claire at that moment, having been an astonished eyewitness of the whole performance, was resuming her seat at a table at the other end of the room.

There were two reasons why Lord Dawlish was unaware of Claire Fenwick’s presence at Riegelheimer’s Restaurant. Riegelheimer’s is situated in a basement below a ten-story building, and in order to prevent this edifice from falling into his patrons’ soup the proprietor had been obliged to shore up his ceiling with massive pillars. One of these obtruded itself between the table which Nutty had secured for his supper party and the table at which Claire was sitting with her friend, Lady Wetherby, and her steamer acquaintance, Mr. Dudley Pickering. That was why Bill had not seen Claire from where he sat; and the reason that he had not seen her when he left his seat and began to dance was that he was not one of your dancers who glance airily about them. When Bill danced he danced.

He would have been stunned with amazement if he had known that Claire was at Riegelheimer’s that night. And yet it would have been remarkable, seeing that she was the guest of Lady Wetherby, if she had not been there. When you have traveled three thousand miles to enjoy the hospitality of a friend who does near-Greek dances at a popular restaurant, the least you can do is to go to the restaurant and watch her step. Claire had arrived with Polly Wetherby and Mr. Dudley Pickering at about the time when Nutty, his gloom melting rapidly, was instructing the waiter to open the second bottle.

Of Claire’s movements between the time when she secured her ticket at the White Star offices at Southampton and the moment when she entered Riegelheimer’s Restaurant, it is not necessary to give a detailed record. She had had the usual experiences of the ocean voyager. She had fed, read and gone to bed. The only notable event in her trip had been her intimacy with Mr. Dudley Pickering.

Dudley Pickering was a middle-aged Middle Westerner, who by thrift and industry had amassed a considerable fortune out of automobiles. He could accommodate you with an automobile suited to every stage of your growing prosperity. When you were young and struggling you bought his Little Pick at four hundred dollars. Becoming older and more opulent you put down eleven hundred for his Pickering Gem. And it might be that in time, having passed through the intermediate stages and being in a position to blow the expense, you found yourself the possessor of a Pickering Giant, the best car on the market. Everybody spoke well of Dudley Pickering. The papers spoke well of him, Bradstreet spoke well of him, and he spoke well of himself. On board the liner he had poured the saga of his life into Claire’s attentive ears, and though by the end of the voyage she had forgotten that he had started life with half a dollar, she still remembered that he was ending it with twenty or thirty millions, and there was a gentle sweetness in her manner which encouraged Mr. Pickering mightily, for he had fallen in love with Claire on sight.

It would seem that a schoolgirl in these advanced days would know what to do when she found that a man with thirty million dollars was in love with her; yet there were factors in the situation which gave Claire pause. Lord Dawlish, of course, was one of them. She had not mentioned Lord Dawlish to Mr. Pickering, and⁠—doubtless lest the sight of it might pain him⁠—she had abstained from wearing her engagement ring during the voyage. But she had not completely lost sight of the fact that she was engaged to Bill. Another thing that caused her to hesitate was the fact that Dudley Pickering, however wealthy, was a most colossal bore. As far as Claire could ascertain on their short acquaintance, he had but one subject of conversation⁠—automobiles.

To Claire an automobile was a shiny thing with padded seats, in which you rode if you were lucky enough to know somebody who owned one. She had no wish to go more deeply into the matter. Dudley Pickering’s attitude toward automobiles, on the other hand, more nearly resembled that of a surgeon toward the human body. To