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

thing, just as they send their sons to Eton and Winchester. My golly! this idea’s beginning to develop. I’ll tell you what⁠—how would it be to issue special collars to all dogs which have graduated from my college? Something distinctive which everybody would recognise. See what I mean? Sort of badge of honour. Fellow with a dog entitled to wear the Ukridge collar would be in a position to look down on the bloke whose dog hadn’t got one. Gradually it would get so that anybody in a decent social position would be ashamed to be seen out with a non-Ukridge dog. The thing would become a landslide. Dogs would pour in from all corners of the country. More work than I could handle. Have to start branches. The scheme’s colossal. Millions in it, my boy! Millions!” He paused with his fingers on the handle of the front door. “Of course,” he went on, “just at present it’s no good blinking the fact that I’m hampered and handicapped by lack of funds and can only approach the thing on a small scale. What it amounts to, laddie, is that somehow or other I’ve got to get capital.”

It seemed the moment to spring the glad news.

“I promised him I wouldn’t mention it,” I said, “for fear it might lead to disappointment, but as a matter of fact George Tupper is trying to raise some capital for you. I left him last night starting out to get it.”

“George Tupper!”⁠—Ukridge’s eyes dimmed with a not unmanly emotion⁠—“George Tupper! By Gad, that fellow is the salt of the earth. Good, loyal fellow! A true friend. A man you can rely on. Upon my Sam, if there were more fellows about like old Tuppy, there wouldn’t be all this modern pessimism and unrest. Did he seem to have any idea where he could raise a bit of capital for me?”

“Yes. He went round to tell your aunt about your coming down here to train those Pekes, and⁠—What’s the matter?”

A fearful change had come over Ukridge’s jubilant front. His eyes bulged, his jaw sagged. With the addition of a few feet of grey whiskers he would have looked exactly like the recent Mr. Nickerson.

“My aunt?” he mumbled, swaying on the door-handle.

“Yes. What’s the matter? He thought, if he told her all about it, she might relent and rally round.”

The sigh of a gallant fighter at the end of his strength forced its way up from Ukridge’s mackintosh-covered bosom.

“Of all the dashed, infernal, officious, meddling, muddling, fatheaded, interfering asses,” he said, wanly, “George Tupper is the worst.”

“What do you mean?”

“The man oughtn’t to be at large. He’s a public menace.”

“But⁠—”

“Those dogs belong to my aunt. I pinched them when she chucked me out!”

Inside the cottage the Pekingese were still yapping industriously.

“Upon my Sam,” said Ukridge, “it’s a little hard.”

I think he would have said more, but at this point a voice spoke with a sudden and awful abruptness from the interior of the cottage. It was a woman’s voice, a quiet, steely voice, a voice, it seemed to me, that suggested cold eyes, a beaky nose, and hair like gunmetal.

“Stanley!”

That was all it said, but it was enough. Ukridge’s eye met mine in a wild surmise. He seemed to shrink into his mackintosh like a snail surprised while eating lettuce.

“Stanley!”

“Yes, Aunt Julia?” quavered Ukridge.

“Come here. I wish to speak to you.”

“Yes, Aunt Julia.”

I sidled out into the road. Inside the cottage the yapping of the Pekingese had become quite hysterical. I found myself trotting, and then⁠—though it was a warm day⁠—running quite rapidly. I could have stayed if I had wanted to, but somehow I did not want to. Something seemed to tell me that on this holy domestic scene I should be an intruder.

What it was that gave me that impression I do not know⁠—probably vision or the big, broad, flexible outlook.

Ukridge’s Accident Syndicate

“Half a minute, laddie,” said Ukridge. And, gripping my arm, he brought me to a halt on the outskirts of the little crowd which had collected about the church door.

It was a crowd such as may be seen any morning during the London mating-season outside any of the churches which nestle in the quiet squares between Hyde Park and the King’s Road, Chelsea.

It consisted of five women of cooklike aspect, four nursemaids, half a dozen men of the non-producing class who had torn themselves away for the moment from their normal task of propping up the wall of the Bunch of Grapes public house on the corner, a costermonger with a barrow of vegetables, diverse small boys, eleven dogs, and two or three purposeful-looking young fellows with cameras slung over their shoulders. It was plain that a wedding was in progress⁠—and, arguing from the presence of the cameramen and the line of smart motorcars along the kerb, a fairly fashionable wedding. What was not plain⁠—to me⁠—was why Ukridge, sternest of bachelors, had desired to add himself to the spectators.

“What,” I enquired, “is the thought behind this? Why are we interrupting our walk to attend the obsequies of some perfect stranger?”

Ukridge did not reply for a moment. He seemed plunged in thought. Then he uttered a hollow, mirthless laugh⁠—a dreadful sound like the last gargle of a dying moose.

“Perfect stranger, my number eleven foot!” he responded, in his coarse way. “Do you know who it is who’s getting hitched up in there?”

“Who?”

“Teddy Weeks.”

“Teddy Weeks? Teddy Weeks? Good Lord!” I exclaimed. “Not really?”

And five years rolled away.

It was at Barolini’s Italian restaurant in Beak Street that Ukridge evolved his great scheme. Barolini’s was a favourite resort of our little group of earnest strugglers in the days when the philanthropic restaurateurs of Soho used to supply four courses and coffee for a shilling and sixpence; and there were present that night, besides Ukridge and myself, the following men-about-town: Teddy Weeks, the actor, fresh from a six-weeks’ tour with the Number Three “Only a Shop-Girl” Company; Victor Beamish, the artist, the man who