Leave It to Psmith, P. G. Wodehouse [novels to read .txt] 📗

impatience at his watch. He was plainly waiting for someone, so Psmith tried the formula on him.

“There will be rain,” said Psmith, “in Northumberland tomorrow.”

The young man looked at him, not without interest, certainly, but without that gleam of intelligence in his eye which Psmith had hoped to see.

“What?” he replied.

“There will be rain in Northumberland tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Zadkiel,” said the young man. “Deuced gratifying, I’m sure. I suppose you couldn’t predict the winner of the Goodwood Cup as well?”

He then withdrew rapidly to intercept a young woman in a large hat who had just come through the swing doors. Psmith was forced to the conclusion that this was not his man. He was sorry on the whole, for he had seemed a pleasant fellow.

As Psmith had taken up a stationary position and the population of the lobby was for the most part in a state of flux, he was finding himself next to someone new all the time; and now he decided to accost the individual whom the reshuffle had just brought elbow to elbow with him. This was a jovial-looking soul with a flowered waistcoat, a white hat, and a mottled face. Just the man who might have written that letter.

The effect upon this person of Psmith’s meteorological remark was instantaneous. A light of the utmost friendliness shone in his beautifully-shaven face as he turned. He seized Psmith’s hand and gripped it with a delightful heartiness. He had the air of a man who has found a friend, and what is more, an old friend. He had a sort of journeys-end-in-lovers’-meeting look.

“My dear old chap!” he cried. “I’ve been waiting for you to speak for the last five minutes. Knew we’d met before somewhere, but couldn’t place you. Face familiar as the dickens, of course. Well, well, well! And how are they all?”

“Who?” said Psmith courteously.

“Why, the boys, my dear chap.”

“Oh, the boys?”

“The dear old boys,” said the other, specifying more exactly. He slapped Psmith on the shoulder. “What times those were, eh?”

“Which?” said Psmith.

“The times we all used to have together.”

“Oh, those?” said Psmith.

Something of discouragement seemed to creep over the other’s exuberance, as a cloud creeps over the summer sky. But he persevered.

“Fancy meeting you again like this!”

“It is a small world,” agreed Psmith.

“I’d ask you to come and have a drink,” said the jovial one, with the slight increase of tensity which comes to a man who approaches the core of a business deal, “but the fact is my ass of a man sent me out this morning without a penny. Forgot to give me my notecase. Damn’ careless! I’ll have to sack the fellow.”

“Annoying, certainly,” said Psmith.

“I wish I could have stood you a drink,” said the other wistfully.

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been,’ ” sighed Psmith.

“I’ll tell you what,” said the jovial one, inspired. “Lend me a fiver, my dear old boy. That’s the best way out of the difficulty. I can send it round to your hotel or wherever you are this evening when I get home.”

A sweet, sad smile played over Psmith’s face.

“Leave me, comrade!” he murmured.

“Eh?”

“Pass along, old friend, pass along.”

Resignation displaced joviality in the other’s countenance.

“Nothing doing?” he inquired.

“Nothing.”

“Well, there was no harm in trying,” argued the other.

“None whatever.”

“You see,” said the now far less jovial man confidentially, “you look such a perfect mug with that eyeglass that it tempts a chap.”

“I can quite understand how it must!”

“No offence.”

“Assuredly not.”

The white hat disappeared through the swing doors, and Psmith returned to his quest. He engaged the attention of a middle-aged man in a snuff-coloured suit who had just come within hail.

“There will be rain in Northumberland tomorrow,” he said.

The man peered at him inquiringly.

“Hey?” he said.

Psmith repeated his observation.

“Huh?” said the man.

Psmith was beginning to lose the unruffled calm which made him such an impressive figure to the public eye. He had not taken into consideration the possibility that the object of his search might be deaf. It undoubtedly added to the embarrassment of the pursuit. He was moving away, when a hand fell on his sleeve.

Psmith turned. The hand which still grasped his sleeve belonged to an elegantly dressed young man of somewhat nervous and feverish appearance. During his recent vigil Psmith had noticed this young man standing not far away, and had had half a mind to include him in the platoon of new friends he was making that morning.

“I say,” said this young man in a tense whisper, “did I hear you say that there would be rain in Northumberland tomorrow?”

“If,” said Psmith, “you were anywhere within the radius of a dozen yards while I was chatting with the recent deaf adder, I think it is possible that you did.”

“Good for the crops,” said the young man. “Come over here where we can talk quietly.”

II

“So you’re R. Psmith?” said the young man, when they had made their way to a remote corner of the lobby, apart from the throng.

“The same.”

“I say, dash it, you’re frightfully late, you know. I told you to be here at twelve sharp. It’s nearly twelve past.”

“You wrong me,” said Psmith. “I arrived here precisely at twelve. Since when, I have been standing like Patience on a monument.⁠ ⁠…”

“Like what?”

“Let it go,” said Psmith. “It is not important.”

“I asked you to wear a pink chrysanthemum. So I could recognise you, you know.”

“I am wearing a pink chrysanthemum. I should have imagined that that was a fact that the most casual could hardly have overlooked.”

“That thing?” The other gazed disparagingly at the floral decoration. “I thought it was some kind of cabbage. I meant one of those little what-d’you-may-call-its that people do wear in their buttonholes.”

“Carnation, possibly?”

“Carnation! That’s right.”

Psmith removed the chrysanthemum and dropped it behind his chair. He looked at his companion reproachfully.

“If you had studied botany at school, comrade,” he said, “much misery might have been averted. I cannot begin to tell you the spiritual agony I suffered, trailing