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

He broke off abruptly, for his words had suddenly been proved fundamentally untrue. There was very vital cause for alarm. The door of the bedroom had opened, and the muff-like dog, shrilling hate, was scuttling in its peculiar legless manner straight for his ankles.

Peril brings out unsuspected qualities in every man. Lord Emsworth was not a professional acrobat, but the leap he gave in this crisis would have justified his being mistaken for one. He floated through the air like a homing bird. From where he had been standing the bed was a considerable distance away, but he reached it with inches to spare, and stood there, quivering. Below him, the woolly dog raged like the ocean at the base of a cliff.

It was at this point that his lordship became aware of a young woman standing in the doorway through which he had just passed.

About this young woman there were many points which would have found little favour in the eyes of a critic of feminine charm. She was too short, too square, and too solid. She had a much too determined chin. And her hair was of an unpleasing gingery hue. But the thing Lord Emsworth liked least about her was the pistol she was pointing at his head.

A plaintive voice filtered through the bathroom door.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s a man,” said the girl behind the gun.

“I know it’s a man. He spoke to me. Who is he?”

“I don’t know. A nasty-looking fellow. I saw him hanging about the passage outside your door, and I got my gun and came along. Come on out.”

“I can’t. I’m all wet.”

It is not easy for a man who is standing on a bed with his hands up to achieve dignity, but Lord Emsworth did the best he could.

“My dear madam!”

“What are you doing here?”

“I found the door ajar⁠—”

“And walked in to see if there were any jewel-cases ajar, too. I think,” added the young woman, raising her voice so as to make herself audible to the unseen bather, “it’s Dopey Smith.”

“Who?”

“Dopey Smith. The fellow the cops said tried for your jewels in New York. He must have followed you over here.”

“I am not Dopey Smith, madam,” cried his lordship. “I am the Earl of Emsworth.”

“You are?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Yes, you are!”

“I came to see my daughter-in-law.”

“Well, here she is.”

The bathroom door opened, and there emerged a charming figure draped in a kimono. Even in that tense moment Lord Emsworth was conscious of a bewildered astonishment that such a girl could ever have stooped to mate with his son Frederick.

“Who did you say he was?” she asked, recommending herself still more strongly to his lordship’s esteem by scooping up the woolly dog and holding it securely in her arms.

“He says he’s the Earl of Emsworth.”

“I am the Earl of Emsworth.”

The girl in the kimono looked keenly at him as he descended from the bed.

“You know, Jane,” she said, a note of uncertainty in her voice, “it might be. He looks very like Freddie.”

The appalling slur on his personal appearance held Lord Emsworth dumb. Like other men, he had had black moments when his looks had not altogether satisfied him, but he had never supposed that he had a face like Freddie’s.

The girl with the pistol uttered a stupefying whoop.

“Jiminy Christmas!” she cried. “Don’t you see?”

“See what?”

“Why, it is Freddie. Disguised. Trying to get at you this way. It’s just the sort of movie stunt he would think clever. Take them off, Ralph Vandeleur⁠—I know you!”

She reached out a clutching hand, seized his lordship’s beard in a vice-like grip, and tugged with all the force of a modern girl, trained from infancy at hockey, tennis, and Swedish exercises.

It had not occurred to Lord Emsworth a moment before that anything could possibly tend to make his situation more uncomfortable than it already was. He saw now that he had been mistaken in this view. Agony beyond his liveliest dreams flamed through his shrinking frame.

The girl regarded him with a somewhat baffled look.

“H’m!” she said, disappointedly. “It seems to be real. Unless,” she continued, on a more optimistic note, “he’s fixed it on with specially strong fish-glue or something. I’d better try again.”

“No, don’t,” said his lordship’s daughter-in-law. “It isn’t Freddie. I would have recognized him at once.”

“Then he’s a crook after all. Kindly step into that cupboard, George, while I phone for the constabulary.”

Lord Emsworth danced a few steps.

“I will not step into cupboards. I insist on being heard. I don’t know who this woman is⁠—”

“My name’s Jane Yorke, if you’re curious.”

“Ah! The woman who poisons my son’s wife’s mind against him! I know all about you.” He turned to the girl in the kimono. “Yesterday my son Frederick implored me by telegram to come to London. I saw him at my club. Stop that dog barking!”

“Why shouldn’t he bark?” said Miss Yorke. “He’s in his own home.”

“He told me,” proceeded Lord Emsworth, raising his voice, “that there had been a little misunderstanding between you⁠—”

“Little misunderstanding is good,” said Miss Yorke.

“He dined with that woman for a purpose.”

“And directly I saw them,” said Miss Yorke, “I knew what the purpose was.”

The Hon. Mrs. Threepwood looked at her friend, wavering.

“I believe it’s true,” she said, “and he really is Lord Emsworth. He seems to know all that happened. How could he know if Freddie hadn’t told him?”

“If this fellow is a crook from the other side, of course he would know. The thing was in Broadway Whispers and Town Gossip, wasn’t it?”

“All the same⁠—”

The telephone-bell rang sharply.

“I assure you⁠—” began Lord Emsworth.

“Right!” said the unpleasant Miss Yorke, at the receiver. “Send him right up.” She regarded his lordship with a brightly triumphant eye. “You’re out of luck, my friend,” she said. “Lord Emsworth has just arrived, and he’s on his way up now.”

There are certain situations in which the human brain may be excused for reeling. Lord Emsworth’s did not so much reel as perform a kind of shimmy, as if it were in danger of coming