Leave It to Psmith, P. G. Wodehouse [novels to read .txt] 📗

it’s a dashed shame that she won’t unbuckle to help poor old Phyllis. A girl,” said Freddie, “I always liked. Bally shame! Why the dickens shouldn’t she marry that fellow Jackson? I mean, love’s love,” said Freddie, who felt strongly on this point.

Mr. Keeble was making curious gulping noises.

“Perhaps I ought to explain,” said Freddie, “that I was having a quiet after-breakfast smoke outside the window there and heard the whole thing. I mean, you and Aunt Constance going to the mat about poor old Phyllis and you trying to bite the guv’nor’s ear and so forth.”

Mr. Keeble bubbled for awhile.

“You⁠—you listened!” he managed to ejaculate at length.

“And dashed lucky for you,” said Freddie with a cordiality unimpaired by the frankly unfriendly stare under which a nicer-minded youth would have withered; “dashed lucky for you that I did. Because I’ve got a scheme.”

Mr. Keeble’s estimate of his young relative’s sagacity was not a high one, and it is doubtful whether, had the latter caught him in a less despondent mood, he would have wasted time in inquiring into the details of this scheme, the mention of which had been playing in and out of Freddie’s conversation like a will-o’-the-wisp. But such was his reduced state at the moment that a reluctant gleam of hope crept into his troubled eye.

“A scheme? Do you mean a scheme to help me out of⁠—out of my difficulty?”

“Absolutely! You want the best seats, we have ’em. I mean,” Freddie went on in interpretation of these peculiar words, “you want three thousand quid, and I can show you how to get it.”

“Then kindly do so,” said Mr. Keeble; and, having opened the door, peered cautiously out, and closed it again, he crossed the room and shut the window.

“Makes it a bit fuggy, but perhaps you’re right,” said Freddie, eyeing these manoeuvres. “Well, it’s like this, Uncle Joe. You remember what you were saying to Aunt Constance about some bird being apt to sneak up and pinch her necklace?”

“I do.”

“Well, why not?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, why don’t you?”

Mr. Keeble regarded his nephew with unconcealed astonishment. He had been prepared for imbecility, but this exceeded his expectations.

“Steal my wife’s necklace!”

“That’s it. Frightfully quick you are, getting on to an idea. Pinch Aunt Connie’s necklace. For, mark you,” continued Freddie, so far forgetting the respect due from a nephew as to tap his uncle sharply on the chest, “if a husband pinches anything from a wife, it isn’t stealing. That’s law. I found that out from a movie I saw in town.”

The Hon. Freddie was a great student of the movies. He could tell a super-film from a super-super-film at a glance, and what he did not know about erring wives and licentious clubmen could have been written in a subtitle.

“Are you insane?” growled Mr. Keeble.

“It wouldn’t be hard for you to get hold of it. And once you’d got it everybody would be happy. I mean, all you’d have to do would be to draw a cheque to pay for another one for Aunt Connie⁠—which would make her perfectly chirpy, as well as putting you one up, if you follow me. Then you would have the other necklace, the pinched one, to play about with. See what I mean? You could sell it privily and by stealth, ship Phyllis her three thousand, push across my thousand, and what was left over would be a nice little private account for you to tuck away somewhere where Aunt Connie wouldn’t know anything about it. And a dashed useful thing,” said Freddie, “to have up your sleeve in case of emergencies.”

“Are you⁠ ⁠… ?”

Mr. Keeble was on the point of repeating his previous remark when suddenly there came the realisation that, despite all preconceived opinions, the young man was anything but insane. The scheme, at which he had been prepared to scoff, was so brilliant, yet simple, that it seemed almost incredible that its sponsor could have worked it out for himself.

“Not my own,” said Freddie modestly, as if in answer to the thought. “Saw much the same thing in a movie once. Only there the fellow, if I remember, wanted to do down an insurance company, and it wasn’t a necklace that he pinched but bonds. Still, the principle’s the same. Well, how do we go, Uncle Joe? How about it? Is that worth a thousand quid or not?”

Even though he had seen in person to the closing of the door and the window, Mr. Keeble could not refrain from a conspirator-like glance about him. They had been speaking with lowered voices, but now words came from him in an almost inaudible whisper.

“Could it really be done? Is it feasible?”

“Feasible? Why, dash it, what the dickens is there to stop you? You could do it in a second. And the beauty of the whole thing is that, if you were copped, nobody could say a word, because husband pinching from wife isn’t stealing. Law.”

The statement that in the circumstances indicated nobody could say a word seemed to Mr. Keeble so at variance with the facts that he was compelled to challenge it.

“Your aunt would have a good deal to say,” he observed ruefully.

“Eh? Oh, yes, I see what you mean. Well, you would have to risk that. After all, the chances would be dead against her finding out.”

“But she might.”

“Oh, well, if you put it like that, I suppose she might.”

“Freddie, my boy,” said Mr. Keeble weakly, “I daren’t do it!”

The vision of his thousand pounds slipping from his grasp so wrought upon Freddie that he expressed himself in a manner far from fitting in one of his years towards an older man.

“Oh, I say, don’t be such a rabbit!”

Mr. Keeble shook his head.

“No,” he repeated, “I daren’t.”

It might have seemed that the negotiations had reached a deadlock, but Freddie, with a thousand pounds in sight, was in far too stimulated a condition to permit so tame an ending to such a promising plot. As he stood there, chafing at his uncle’s pusillanimity, an idea was vouchsafed to him.

“By Jove! I’ll tell you