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

the apron to save himself, and came to the ground swathed in it, giving the effect of an apron mysteriously endowed with life. The triumphant odd-job man, pressing his advantage like a good general, gathered up the ends, converted it into a rude bag, and one more was added to the long list of the victories of the human over the brute intelligence.

Everybody had a suggestion now. The cook advocated drowning. The parlor maid favored the idea of hitting the prisoner with a broom handle. Wrench, eyeing the struggling apron disapprovingly, mentioned that Mr. Pickering had bought a revolver that morning.

“Put him in the coal cellar,” said Lady Wetherby.

Wrench was more farseeing.

“If I might offer the warning, m’lady,” said Wrench, “not the cellar. It is full of coal. It would be placing temptation in the animal’s way.”

The odd-job man endorsed this.

“He’d pitch a great game with coal, ma’am,” he said, almost wistfully.

“Put him in the garage then,” said Lady Wetherby.

The odd-job man departed, bearing his heaving bag at arm’s length. The cook and the parlor maid addressed themselves to comforting and healing the scullery maid. Wrench went off to polish silver, Lady Wetherby to resume her letters. The cat was the last of the party to return to the normal. She came down from the chimney an hour later, covered with soot, demanding restoratives.

Lady Wetherby finished her letters. She cut them short, for Eustace’s insurgence had interfered with her flow of ideas. She went into the drawing room, where she found Roscoe Sheriff strumming on the piano.

“Eustace has been raising Cain,” she said.

The press agent looked up hopefully. He had been wearing a rather preoccupied air.

“How’s that?” he asked.

“Throwing eggs and plates in the kitchen.”

The gleam of interest which had come into Roscoe Sherriff’s face died out.

“You couldn’t get more than a fill-in at the bottom of a column on that,” he said regretfully. “I’m a little disappointed in that monk. I hoped he would pan out bigger. Well, I guess we’ve just got to give him time. I have a hunch that he’ll set the house on fire or do something with a punch like that one of these days. You mustn’t get discouraged. Why, that puma I made Valerie Devenish keep looked like a perfect flivver for four whole months. A child could have played with it. Miss Devenish called me up on the phone, I remember, and handed me the worst kind of beef. Said she was darned if she was going to spend the rest of her life maintaining an animal that might as well be stuffed for all the pep it showed, and that she was going right out to buy a white mouse instead. Fortunately I talked her round.

“A few weeks later she came round and thanked me with tears in her eyes. The puma had suddenly struck real midseason form. It clawed the elevator boy, bit a postman, chased the coon on the switchboard half a dozen blocks along Central Park West, held up the traffic for miles and was finally shot by a policeman. Why, for the next few days there was nothing in the papers at all but Miss Devenish and her puma. There was a war on at the time, in Mexico or somewhere, and we had it backed off the front page so far that it was over before it could get back. So, you see, there’s always hope. I’ve been nursing the papers with bits about Eustace, so as to be ready for the grandstand play when it comes⁠—and all we can do is to wait. It’s something if he’s been throwing eggs. It shows he’s waking up.”

The door opened and Lord Wetherby entered. He looked fatigued. He sank into a chair and sighed.

“I cannot get it,” he said. “It eludes me.”

He lapsed into a somber silence.

“I’ll be the goat,” said Lady Wetherby cautiously. “What can’t you get?”

“The expression⁠—the expression I want to get into, the child’s eyes in my picture, ‘Innocence.’ ”

“But you have got it.”

Lord Wetherby shook his head.

“Well, you had when I saw the picture,” persisted Lady Wetherby. “This child you’re painting has just joined the Black Hand. He has been rushed in young over the heads of the waiting list because his father had a pull. Naturally the kid wants to do something to justify his election, and he wants to do it quick. You have caught him at the moment when he sees an old gentleman coming down the street and realizes that he has only got to sneak up and stick his little knife⁠—”

“My dear Polly. I welcome criticism, but this is mere⁠—”

Lady Wetherby stroked his coat sleeve fondly.

“Never mind. Algie. I was only joshing you, precious. I thought the picture was coming along fine when you showed it to me. I’ll come and take another look at it.”

Lord Wetherby shook his head.

“I should have a model. An artist cannot mirror Nature properly without a model. I wish you would invite that child down here.”

“No, Algie, there are limits, I wouldn’t have him within a mile of the place.”

“Yet you keep Eustace.”

“Well, you made me engage Wrench. It’s fifty-fifty. I wish you wouldn’t keep picking on Eustace, Algie dear. He does no harm. Mr. Sherriff and I were just saying how peaceable he is. He wouldn’t hurt⁠—”

Claire came in.

“Polly,” she said, “did you put that monkey of yours in the garage? He’s just bitten Dudley in the leg.”

Lord Wetherby uttered an exclamation.

“Now perhaps⁠—”

“We went in just now to have a look at the car,” continued Claire. “Dudley wanted to show me the commutator on the exhaust box or the wind screen or something, and he was just bending over when Eustace jumped out from nowhere and pinned him. I’m afraid he has taken it to heart rather.”

Roscoe Sherriff pondered.

“Is this worth half a column?” He shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not. The public doesn’t know Pickering. If it had been Charlie Chaplin or William J. Bryan or someone on those lines, we could