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

him here? You mean you sent for him and arranged that he should pass himself off as Mr. McTodd?”

“Well, no, not exactly that. He was coming here as McTodd anyway, as far as I can gather. But I’d talked it over with him, you know, before that and asked him to pinch the necklace.”

“Then you know him quite well? He is a friend of yours?”

“I wouldn’t say that exactly. But he said he was a great pal of Phyllis and her husband.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Absolutely!”

“When?”

“In the train.”

“I mean, was it before or after you had told him why you wanted the necklace stolen?”

“Eh? Let me think. After.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me exactly what happened,” said Eve. “I can’t understand it at all at present.”

Freddie marshalled his thoughts.

“Well, let’s see. Well, to start with, I told Uncle Joe I would pinch the necklace and slip it to him, and he said if I did he’d give me a thousand quid. As a matter of fact, he made it two thousand, and very decent of him, I thought it. Is that straight?”

“Yes.”

“Then I sort of got cold feet. Began to wonder, don’t you know, if I hadn’t bitten off rather more than I could chew.”

“Yes.”

“And then I saw this advertisement in the paper.”

“Advertisement? What advertisement?”

“There was an advertisement in the paper saying if anybody wanted anything done simply apply to this chap. So I wrote him a letter and went up and had a talk with him in the lobby of the Piccadilly Palace. Only, unfortunately, I’d promised the guv’nor I’d catch the twelve-fifty home, so I had to dash off in the middle. Must have thought me rather an ass, it’s sometimes occurred to me since. I mean, practically all I said was, ‘Will you pinch my aunt’s necklace?’ and then buzzed off to catch the train. Never thought I’d see the man again, but when I got into the five o’clock train⁠—I missed the twelve-fifty⁠—there he was, as large as life, and the guv’nor suddenly trickled in from another compartment and introduced him to me as McTodd the poet. Then the guv’nor legged it, and this chap told me he wasn’t really McTodd, only pretending to be McTodd.”

“Didn’t that strike you as strange?”

“Yes, rather rummy.”

“Did you ask him why he was doing such an extraordinary thing?”

“Oh, yes. But he wouldn’t tell me. And then he asked me why I wanted him to pinch Aunt Connie’s necklace, and it suddenly occurred to me that everything was working rather smoothly⁠—I mean, him being on his way to the castle like that. Right on the spot, don’t you know. So I told him all about Phyllis, and it was then that he said that he had been a pal of hers and her husband’s for years. So we fixed it up that he was to get the necklace and hand it over. I must say I was rather drawn to the chappie. He said he didn’t want any money for swiping the thing.”

Eve laughed bitterly.

“Why should he, when he was going to get twenty thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds and keep them? Oh, Freddie, I should have thought that even you would have seen through him. You go to this perfect stranger and tell him that there is a valuable necklace waiting here to be stolen, you find him on his way to steal it, and you trust him implicitly just because he tells you he knows Phyllis⁠—whom he had never heard of in his life till you mentioned her. Freddie, really!”

The Hon. Freddie scratched his beautifully shaven chin.

“Well, when you put it like that,” he said, “I must own it does sound a bit off. But he seemed such a dashed matey sort of bird. Cheery and all that. I liked the feller.”

“What nonsense!”

“Well, but you liked him, too. I mean to say, you were about with him a goodish lot.”

“I hate him!” said Eve angrily. “I wish I had never seen him. And if I let him get away with that necklace and cheat poor little Phyllis out of her money, I’ll⁠—I’ll⁠ ⁠…”

She raised a grimly determined chin to the stars. Freddie watched her admiringly.

“I say, you know, you are a wonderful girl,” he said.

“He shan’t get away with it, if I have to pull the place down.”

“When you chuck your head up like that you remind me a bit of What’s-her-name, the Famous Players star⁠—you know, girl who was in Wed to a Satyr. Only,” added Freddie hurriedly, “she isn’t half so pretty. I say, I was rather looking forward to that County Ball, but now this has happened I don’t mind missing it a bit. I mean, it seems to draw us closer together somehow, if you follow me. I say, honestly, all kidding aside, you think that love might some day awaken in⁠ ⁠…”

“We shall want a lamp, of course,” said Eve.

“Eh?”

“A lamp⁠—to see with when we are in the cottage. Can you get one?”

Freddie reluctantly perceived that the moment for sentiment had not arrived.

“A lamp? Oh, yes, of course. Rather.”

“Better get two,” said Eve. “And meet me here about half an hour after everybody has gone to the ball.”

II

The tiny sitting-room of Psmith’s haven of rest in the woods had never reached a high standard of decorativeness even in its best days; but as Eve paused from her labours and looked at it in the light of her lamp about an hour after her conversation with Freddie on the terrace, it presented a picture of desolation which would have startled the plain-living gamekeeper to whom it had once been a home. Even Freddie, though normally an unobservant youth, seemed awed by the ruin he had helped to create.

“Golly!” he observed. “I say, we’ve rather mucked the place up a bit!”

It was no overstatement. Eve had come to the cottage to search, and she had searched thoroughly. The torn carpet lay in a untidy heap against the wall. The table was overturned. Boards had been wrenched from the