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

her once or twice during the past week that all was not well with her visitor, and that he had seemed downcast and out of spirits.

She hesitated.

“Is anything the matter, Mr. Chalmers?”

“No,” said Bill decidedly. He would have found a difficulty in making that answer with any ring of conviction earlier in the day, but now it was different. There was nothing whatever the matter with him now. He had never felt happier.

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely. I feel fine.”

“I thought⁠—I’ve been thinking for some days⁠—that you might be in trouble of some sort.”

Bill swiftly added another to that list of qualities which he had been framing on his homeward journey. That girl of his would, of course, be angelically sympathetic.

“It’s awfully good of you,” he said, “but honestly I feel like⁠—I feel great.”

The little troubled look passed from Elizabeth’s face. Her eyes twinkled.

“You’re really feeling happy?”

“Tremendously.”

“Then let me damp you. We’re in an awful fix!”

“What! In what way?”

“About the monkey.”

“Has he escaped?”

“That’s the trouble⁠—he hasn’t.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Come and sit down and I’ll tell you. It’s a shame to keep you standing after your walk.”

They made their way to the massive stone seat which Mr. Flack, the landlord, had bought at a sale and dumped in a moment of exuberance in the farm grounds.

“This is the most hideous thing on earth,” said Elizabeth casually, “but it will do to sit on. Now tell me, why did you go to Lady Wetherby’s this afternoon?”

It was all so remote, it seemed so long ago that he had wanted to find an excuse for meeting Claire again, that for a moment Bill hesitated in actual perplexity, and before he could speak Elizabeth had answered the question for him.

“I suppose you went out of kindness of heart to relieve the poor lady’s mind,” she said. “But you certainly did the wrong thing. You started something!”

“But I don’t understand. Of course I didn’t tell her the animal was here.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I said I had seen it, don’t you know.”

“That was enough.”

“I’m awfully sorry.”

“Oh, we shall pull through all right, but we must act at once. We must be swift and resolute. We must saddle our chargers and up and away, and all that sort of thing. Show a flash of speed,” she explained kindly, at the sight of Bill’s bewildered face.

“But what has happened?”

“The press is on our trail. I’ve been interviewing reporters all the afternoon.”

“Reporters!”

“Millions of them. The place is alive with them. Keen, hatchet-faced young men, and every one of them was the man who really unraveled some murder mystery or other, though the police got the credit for it. They told me so.”

“But, I say, how on earth⁠—”

“⁠—did they get here? I suppose Lady Wetherby invited them.”

“But why?”

“She wants the advertisement, of course. I know it doesn’t sound sensational⁠—a lost monkey; but when it’s a celebrity’s lost monkey it makes a difference. Suppose King George had lost a monkey, wouldn’t your London newspapers give it a good deal of space? Especially if it had thrown eggs at one of the ladies in waiting and bitten the Duke of Norfolk in the leg? That’s what our visitor has been doing apparently. At least he threw eggs at the scullery maid and bit a millionaire. It’s practically the same thing. At any rate, there it is. The newspaper men are here, and they seem to regard this farm as their center of operations. I had the greatest difficulty in inducing them to go home to their well-earned dinners. They wanted to camp out on the place. As it is, there may still be some of them round, hiding in the grass with notebooks, and telling each other in whispers that they were the men who really solved the murder mystery. What are we going to do about it?”

Bill had no suggestions.

“You realize our position? I wonder if we could be arrested for kidnapping? The monkey is far more human than most of the millionaire children who get kidnapped. It’s an awful fix. Did you know that Lady Wetherby is going to offer a reward for the animal?”

“No, really?”

“Five hundred dollars!”

“Surely not!”

“She is. I suppose she feels she can enter it to necessary expenses for publicity and still be ahead of the game, taking into account the advertising she’s going to get.”

“She said nothing about that when I saw her.”

“No, because it won’t be offered until tomorrow or the day after. One of the newspaper men told me that. The idea is, of course, to make the thing exciting just when it would otherwise be dying as a news item. Cumulative interest. It’s a good scheme, too, but it makes it very awkward for me. I don’t want to be in the position of keeping a monkey locked up with the idea of waiting until somebody starts a bull market in monkeys. I consider that that sort of thing would stain the spotless escutcheon of the Boyds. It would be a low trick for that old established family to play. Not but what poor dear Nutty would do it like a shot,” she concluded meditatively.

Bill was impressed.

“It does make it awkward, what?”

“It makes it more than awkward, what! Take another aspect of the situation. The night before last my precious Nutty, while ruining his constitution with the demon rum, thought he saw a monkey that wasn’t there and instantly resolved to lead a new and better life. He hates walking, but he has now begun to do his five miles a day. He loathes cold baths, but he now wallows in them. I don’t know his views on Indian clubs, but I should think that he has a strong prejudice against them, too, but now you can’t go near him without being brained. Are all these good things to stop as quickly as they began? If I know Nutty, he would drop them exactly one minute after he heard that it was a real monkey he saw that night. And how are we to prevent his hearing? By