A Gentleman of Leisure, P. G. Wodehouse [speld decodable readers .TXT] 📗

with dignified resignation.

Sir Thomas led the way into his study.

“Be so good as to close the door,” he said.

His lordship was so good.

Sir Thomas backed to the mantelpiece and stood there in the attitude which for generations has been sacred to the elderly Briton⁠—feet well apart, hands clasped beneath his coat tails. His stare raked Lord Dreever like a searchlight.

“Now, sir!” he said.

His lordship wilted before his gaze.

“The fact is, uncle⁠—”

“Never mind the facts. I know them! What I require is an explanation.”

He spread his feet farther apart. The years had rolled back, and he was plain Thomas Blunt again, of Blunt’s Stores, dealing with an erring employee.

“You know what I mean,” he went on. “I am not referring to the breaking off of the engagement. What I insist upon learning is your reason for failing to inform me earlier of the contents of that letter.”

His lordship said that somehow, don’t you know, there didn’t seem to be a chance, you know. He had several times been on the point⁠—but⁠—well, somehow⁠—Well, that’s how it was.

“No chance?” cried Sir Thomas. “Indeed! Why did you require that money I gave you?”

“Oh⁠—er⁠—I wanted it for something.”

“Very possibly. For what?”

“I⁠—the fact is, I owed it to a fellow.”

“Ha! How did you come to owe it?”

His lordship shuffled.

“You have been gambling,” boomed Sir Thomas. “Am I right?”

“No, no! I say, no, no. It wasn’t gambling⁠—it was a game of skill. We were playing piquet.”

“Kindly refrain from quibbling. You lost this money at cards, then, as I supposed. Just so.”

He widened the space between his feet. He intensified his glare. He might have been posing to an illustrator of The Pilgrim’s Progress for a picture of “Apollyon straddling right across the way.”

“So,” he said, “you deliberately concealed from me the contents of that letter, in order that you might extract money from me under false pretences? Don’t speak!” (his lordship had gurgled). “You did! Your behaviour was that of a⁠—of a⁠—”

There was a very fair selection of evildoers in all branches of business from which to choose. He gave the preference to the racetrack.

“Of a common welsher,” he concluded. “But I won’t put up with it. No; not for an instant. I insist upon you returning that money to me here and now. If you have not got it with you, go and fetch it.”

His lordship’s face betrayed the deepest consternation. He had been prepared for much, but not for this. That he would have to undergo what, in his schooldays, he would have called a “jaw” was inevitable, and he had been ready to go through with it. It might hurt his feelings, possibly, but it would leave his purse intact. A ghastly development of this kind he had not foreseen.

“But, I say, uncle!” he bleated.

Sir Thomas silenced him with a grand gesture.

Ruefully his lordship produced his little all. Sir Thomas took it with a snort and went to the door.

Saunders was still brooding statuesquely over the gong.

“Sound it!” said Sir Thomas.

Saunders obeyed him with the air of an unleashed hound.

“And now,” said Sir Thomas, “go to my dressing room and place these notes in the small drawer of the table.”

The butler’s calm, expressionless, yet withal observant eye took in at a glance the signs of trouble. Neither the inflated air of Sir Thomas nor the punctured-balloon bearing of Lord Dreever escaped him.

“Something hup,” he said to his immortal soul as he moved upstairs. “Been a fair old, rare old row, seems to me.”

He reserved his more polished periods for use in public. In conversation with his immortal soul he was wont to unbend somewhat.

XXIV The Treasure-Seeker

Gloom wrapped his lordship about during dinner as with a garment. He owed twenty pounds; his assets amounted to seven shillings and fourpence. He thought, and thought again. Quite an intellectual pallor began to appear on his normally pink cheeks. Saunders silently sympathetic⁠—he hated Sir Thomas as an interloper, and entertained for his lordship, under whose father also he had served, a sort of paternal fondness⁠—was ever at his elbow with the magic bottle; and to Spennie, emptying and re-emptying his glass almost mechanically, wine, the healer, brought an idea. To obtain twenty pounds from any one person of his acquaintance was impossible; to divide the twenty by four and persuade a generous quartet to contribute five pounds apiece was more feasible.

Hope began to stir within him again.

Immediately after dinner he began to flit about the castle like a family spectre of active habits. The first person he met was Charteris.

“Halloa, Spennie!” said Charteris. “I wanted to see you. It is currently reported that you are in love. At dinner you looked as if you had influenza. What’s your trouble? For goodness’ sake bear up until the show’s over. Don’t go swooning on the stage, or anything. Do you know your lines?”

“The fact is,” said his lordship eagerly, “it’s this way. I happen to want⁠—Can you lend me a fiver?”

“All I have in the world at this moment,” said Charteris, “is eleven shillings and a postage stamp. If the stamp would be of any use to you as a start⁠—No? You know, it’s from small beginnings like that great fortunes are amassed. However⁠—”

Two minutes later Lord Dreever had resumed his hunt.

The path of the borrower is a thorny one, especially if, as in the case of Spennie, his reputation as a payer-back is not of the best.

Spennie, in his time, had extracted small loans from most of his male acquaintances, rarely repaying the same. He had a tendency to forget that he had borrowed half a crown here to pay a cab fare and ten shillings there to settle up for a dinner; and his memory was not much more retentive of larger sums. This made his friends somewhat wary. The consequence was that the great treasure hunt was a failure from start to finish. He got friendly smiles, he got honeyed apologies, he got earnest assurances of goodwill; but he got