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

“Oh, by the way,” I said. “It nearly slipped my mind. The⁠—er⁠—the man in charge of all this business told me he particularly wanted to see you directly you came back.”

“What do you mean by the man in charge of all this business?”

“The fellow who got up the bazaar, you know.”

“Do you mean Mr. Sims, the president of the Temperance League?”

“That’s right. He told me he wanted to see you.”

“How could he possibly know that I should be coming back?”

“Oh, in case you did, I mean.” I had what Ukridge would have called an inspiration from above. “I think he wants you to say a few words.”

I doubt if anything else would have shifted her. There came into her eyes, softening their steely glitter for a moment, that strange light which is seen only in the eyes of confirmed public speakers who are asked to say a few words.

“Well, I will go and see him.”

She turned away, and I bounded back to the study. The advent of the mistress of the house had materially altered my plans for the afternoon. What I proposed to do now was to inform Ukridge of her arrival, advise him to eject the curate with all possible speed, give him my blessing, and then slide quietly and unostentatiously away, without any further formalities of farewell. I am not unduly sensitive, but there had been that in Miss Ukridge’s manner at our recent meeting which told me that I was not her ideal guest.

I entered the study. The curate was gone, and Ukridge, breathing heavily, was fast asleep in an armchair.

The disappearance of the curate puzzled me for a moment. He was rather an insignificant little man, but not so insignificant that I would not have noticed him if he had passed me while I was standing at the front door. And then I saw that the french windows were open.

It seemed to me that there was nothing to keep me. The strong distaste for this house which I had never lost since my first entry into it had been growing, and now the great open spaces called to me with an imperious voice. I turned softly, and found my hostess standing in the doorway.

“Oh, ah!” I said; and once more was afflicted by that curious sensation of having swelled in a very loathsome manner about the hands and feet. I have observed my hands from time to time during my life and have never been struck by anything particularly hideous about them: but whenever I encounter Miss Julia Ukridge they invariably take on the appearance and proportions of uncooked hams.

“Did you tell me, Mr. Corcoran,” said the woman in that quiet, purring voice which must lose her so many friends, not only in Wimbledon but in the larger world outside, “that you saw Mr. Sims and he said that he wished to speak to me?”

“That’s right.”

“Curious,” said Miss Ukridge. “I find that Mr. Sims is confined to his bed with a chill and has not been here today.”

I could sympathize with Mr. Sims’s chills. I felt as if I had caught one myself. I would⁠—possibly⁠—have made some reply, but at this moment an enormous snore proceeded from the armchair behind me, and such was my overwrought condition that I leaped like a young ram.

“Stanley!” cried Miss Ukridge, sighting the chair.

Another snore rumbled through the air, competing with the music of the merry-go-round. Miss Ukridge advanced and shook her nephew’s arm.

“I think,” I said, being in the frame of mind when one does say silly things of that sort, “I think he’s asleep.”

“Asleep!” said Miss Ukridge briefly. Her eye fell on the half empty glass on the table, and she shuddered austerely.

The interpretation which she obviously placed on the matter seemed incredible to me. On the stage and in motion-pictures one frequently sees victims of drink keel over in a state of complete unconsciousness after a single glass, but Ukridge was surely of sterner stuff.

“I can’t understand it,” I said.

“Indeed!” said Miss Ukridge.

“Why, I have only been out of the room half a minute, and when I left him he was talking to a curate.”

“A curate?”

“Absolutely a curate. It’s hardly likely, is it, that when he was talking to a curate he would⁠—”

My speech for the defence was cut short by a sudden, sharp noise which, proceeding from immediately behind me, caused me once more to quiver convulsively.

“Well, sir?” said Miss Ukridge.

She was looking past me; and, turning, I perceived that a stranger had joined us. He was standing in the french windows, and the noise which had startled me had apparently been caused by him rapping on the glass with the knob of a stick.

“Miss Ukridge?” said the newcomer.

He was one of those hard-faced, keen-eyed men. There clung about him, as he advanced into the room, a subtle air of authority. That he was a man of character and resolution was proved by the fact that he met Miss Ukridge’s eye without a tremor.

“I am Miss Ukridge. Might I inquire⁠—?”

The visitor looked harder-faced and more keen-eyed than ever.

“My name is Dawson. From the Yard.”

“What yard?” asked the lady of the house, who, it seemed, did not read detective stories.

“Scotland Yard.”

“Oh!”

“I have come to warn you, Miss Ukridge,” said Mr. Dawson, looking at me as if I were a bloodstain, “to be on your guard. One of the greatest rascals in the profession is hanging about your grounds.”

“Then why don’t you arrest him?” demanded Miss Ukridge. The visitor smiled faintly.

“Because I want to get him good,” he said.

“Get him good? Do you mean reform him?”

“I do not mean reform him,” said Mr. Dawson, grimly. “I mean that I want to catch him trying on something worth pulling him in for. There’s no sense in taking a man like Stuttering Sam for being a suspected person.”

“Stuttering Sam!” I cried, and Mr. Dawson eyed me keenly once more, this time almost as intently as if I had been the blunt instrument with which the murder was committed.

“Eh?” he said.

“Oh, nothing. Only it’s curious⁠—”

“What’s curious?”

“Oh, no,