Ukridge Stories, P. G. Wodehouse [books suggested by bill gates txt] 📗

adroitly. He threw back his head and bellowed as if he were giving evidence before a deaf magistrate.

“ ’E’s⁠—stolen⁠—a⁠—mo⁠—tor⁠—car! I’m a-r-resting⁠—’im⁠—for⁠—’avin’⁠—sto⁠—len⁠—a⁠—norter-mobile!” he vociferated in accents audible to all. And then, with the sudden swiftness of one practised in the art of spiriting felons away from the midst of their friends, he was gone, and Ukridge with him.

There followed a long moment of bewildered amazement. Nothing like this had ever happened before at political meetings at Redbridge, and the audience seemed doubtful how to act. The first person to whom intelligence returned was a grim-looking little man in the third row, who had forced himself into prominence during the chairman’s speech with some determined heckling. He bounded out of his chair and stood on it.

“Men of Redbridge!” he shouted.

“Siddown!” roared the audience automatically.

“Men of Redbridge,” repeated the little man, in a voice out of all proportion to his inches, “are you going to trust⁠—do you mean to support⁠—is it your intention to place your affairs in the hands of one who employs criminals⁠—”

“Siddown!” recommended many voices, but there were many others that shouted “ ’Ear, ’Ear!”

“⁠—who employs criminals to speak on his platform? Men of Redbridge, I⁠—”

Here someone grasped the little man’s collar and brought him to the floor. Somebody else hit the collar-grasper over the head with an umbrella. A third party broke the umbrella and smote its owner on the nose. And after that the action may be said to have become general. Everybody seemed to be fighting everybody else, and at the back of the hall a group of serious thinkers, in whom I seemed to recognise the denizens of Biscuit Row, had begun to dismember the chairs and throw them at random. It was when the first rush was made for the platform that the meeting definitely broke up. The chairman headed the stampede for my little door, moving well for a man of his years, and he was closely followed by the rest of the elect. I came somewhere midway in the procession, outstripped by the leaders, but well up in the field. The last I saw of the monster meeting in aid of Boko Lawlor’s candidature was Boko’s drawn and agonised face as he barked his shin on an overturned table in his efforts to reach the exit in three strides.

The next morning dawned bright and fair, and the sun, as we speeded back to London, smiled graciously in through the windows of our third-class compartment. But it awoke no answering smile on Ukridge’s face. He sat in his corner scowling ponderously out at the green countryside. He seemed in no way thankful that his prison-life was over, and he gave me no formal thanks for the swiftness and intelligence with which I had obtained his release.

A five-shilling telegram to Looney Coote had been the means of effecting this. Shortly after breakfast Ukridge had come to my hotel, a free man, with the information that Looney had wired the police of Redbridge directions to unbar the prison cell. But liberty he appeared to consider a small thing compared with his wrongs, and now he sat in the train, thinking, thinking, thinking.

I was not surprised when his first act on reaching Paddington was to climb into a cab and request the driver to convey him immediately to Looney Coote’s address.

Personally, though I was considerate enough not to say so, I was pro-Coote. If Ukridge wished to go about sneaking his friends’ cars without a word of explanation, it seemed to me that he did so at his own risk. I could not see how Looney Coote could be expected to know by some form of telepathy that his vanished Winchester-Murphy had fallen into the hands of an old schoolfellow. But Ukridge, to judge by his stony stare and tightened lips, not to mention the fact that his collar had jumped off its stud and he had made no attempt to adjust it, thought differently. He sat in the cab, brooding silently, and when we reached our destination and were shown into Looney’s luxurious sitting room, he gave one long, deep sigh, like that of a fighter who hears the gong go for round one.

Looney fluttered out of the adjoining room in pyjamas and a flowered dressing-gown. He was evidently a late riser.

“Oh, here you are!” he said, pleased. “I say, old man, I’m awfully glad it’s all right.”

“All right!” An overwrought snort escaped Ukridge. His bosom swelled beneath his mackintosh. “All right!”

“I’m frightfully sorry there was any trouble.”

Ukridge struggled for utterance.

“Do you know I spent the night on a beastly plank bed,” he said, huskily.

“No, really? I say!”

“Do you know that this morning I was washed by the authorities?”

“I say, no!”

“And you say it’s all right!”

He had plainly reached the point where he proposed to deliver a lengthy address of a nature calculated to cause alarm and despondency in Looney Coote, for he raised a clenched fist, shook it passionately, and swallowed once or twice. But before he could embark on what would certainly have been an oration worth listening to, his host anticipated him.

“I don’t see that it was my fault,” bleated Looney Coote, voicing my own sentiments.

“You don’t see that it was your fault!” stuttered Ukridge.

“Listen, old man,” I urged, pacifically. “I didn’t like to say so before, because you didn’t seem in the mood for it, but what else could the poor chap have done? You took his car without a word of explanation⁠—”

“What?”

“⁠—and naturally he thought it had been stolen and had word sent out to the police stations to look out for whoever had got it. As a matter of fact, it was I who advised him to.”

Ukridge was staring bleakly at Looney.

“Without a word of explanation!” he echoed. “What about my letter, the long and carefully-written letter I sent you explaining the whole thing?”

“Letter?”

“Yes!”

“I got no letter,” said Looney Coote.

Ukridge laughed malevolently.

“You’re going to pretend it went wrong in the post, eh? Thin, very thin. I am certain that letter was posted.