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

I remember placing it in my pocket for that purpose. It is not there now, and I have been wearing this suit ever since I left London. See. These are all the contents of my⁠—”

His voice trailed off as he gazed at the envelope in his hand. There was a long silence. Ukridge’s jaw dropped slowly.

“Now, how the deuce did that happen?” he murmured.

I am bound to say that Looney Coote in this difficult moment displayed a nice magnanimity which I could never have shown. He merely nodded sympathetically.

“I’m always doing that sort of thing myself,” he said. “Never can remember to post letters. Well, now that that’s all explained, have a drink, old man, and let’s forget about it.”

The gleam in Ukridge’s eye showed that the invitation was a welcome one, but the battered relics of his conscience kept him from abandoning the subject under discussion as his host had urged.

“But upon my Sam, Looney, old horse,” he stammered, “I⁠—well, dash it, I don’t know what to say. I mean⁠—”

Looney Coote was fumbling in the sideboard for the materials for a friendly carouse.

“Don’t say another word, old man, not another word,” he pleaded. “It’s the sort of thing that might have happened to anyone. And, as a matter of fact, the whole affair has done me a bit of good. Dashed lucky it has turned out for me. You see, it came as a sort of omen. There was an absolute outsider running in the third race at Kempton Park the day after the car went called Stolen Goods, and somehow it seemed to me that the thing had been sent for a purpose. I crammed on thirty quid at twenty-five to one. The people round about laughed when they saw me back this poor, broken-down-looking moke, and, dash it, the animal simply romped home! I collected a parcel!”

We clamoured our congratulations on this happy ending. Ukridge was especially exuberant.

“Yes,” said Looney Coote, “I won seven hundred and fifty quid. Just like that! I put it on with that new fellow you were telling me about at the O.W. dinner, old man⁠—that chap Isaac O’Brien. It sent him absolutely broke and he’s had to go out of business. He’s only paid me six hundred quid so far, but says he has some sort of a sleeping partner or something who may be able to raise the balance.”

The Exit of Battling Billson

The Theatre Royal, Llunindnno, is in the middle of the principal thoroughfare of that repellent town, and immediately opposite its grubby main entrance there is a lamppost. Under this lamppost, as I approached, a man was standing. He was a large man, and his air was that of one who has recently passed through some trying experience. There was dust on his person, and he had lost his hat. At the sound of my footsteps he turned, and the rays of the lamp revealed the familiar features of my old friend Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge.

“Great Scot!” I ejaculated. “What are you doing here?”

There was no possibility of hallucination. It was the man himself in the flesh. And what Ukridge, a free agent, could be doing in Llunindnno was more than I could imagine. Situated, as its name implies, in Wales, it is a dark, dingy, dishevelled spot, inhabited by tough and sinister men with suspicious eyes and three-day beards; and to me, after a mere forty minutes’ sojourn in the place, it was incredible that anyone should be there except on compulsion.

Ukridge gaped at me incredulously.

“Corky, old horse!” he said, “this is, upon my Sam, without exception the most amazing event in the world’s history. The last bloke I expected to see.”

“Same here. Is anything the matter?” I asked, eyeing his bedraggled appearance.

“Matter? I should say something was the matter!” snorted Ukridge, astonishment giving way to righteous indignation. “They chucked me out!”

“Chucked you out? Who? Where from?”

“This infernal theatre, laddie. After taking my good money, dash it! At least, I got it on my face, but that has nothing to do with the principle of the thing. Corky, my boy, don’t you ever go about this world seeking for justice, because there’s no such thing under the broad vault of heaven. I had just gone out for a breather after the first act, and when I came back I found some fiend in human shape had pinched my seat. And just because I tried to lift the fellow out by the ears, a dozen hired assassins swooped down and shot me out. Me, I’ll trouble you! The injured party! Upon my Sam,” he said, heatedly, with a longing look at the closed door, “I’ve a dashed good mind to⁠—”

“I shouldn’t,” I said, soothingly. “After all, what does it matter? It’s just one of those things that are bound to happen from time to time. The man of affairs passes them off with a light laugh.”

“Yes, but⁠—”

“Come and have a drink.”

The suggestion made him waver. The light of battle died down in his eyes. He stood for a moment in thought.

“You wouldn’t bung a brick through the window?” he queried, doubtfully.

“No, no!”

“Perhaps you’re right.”

He linked his arm in mine and we crossed the road to where the lights of a public house shone like heartening beacons. The crisis was over.

“Corky,” said Ukridge, warily laying down his mug of beer on the counter a few moments later, lest emotion should cause him to spill any of its precious contents, “I can’t get over, I simply cannot get over the astounding fact of your being in this blighted town.”

I explained my position. My presence in Llunindnno was due to the fact that the paper which occasionally made use of my services as a special writer had sent me to compose a fuller and more scholarly report than its local correspondent seemed capable of concocting of the activities of one Evan Jones, the latest of those revivalists who periodically convulse the emotions of the Welsh mining population. His