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

of confidence, “things have been occurring recently in the home which have resulted in what you might call the dawning of a new life as far as Aunt Julia and I are concerned. It is not too much to say that she now eats out of my hand and is less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels. I will tell you the story, for it will be of help to you in your journey through the world. It is a story which shows that, be the skies never so black, nothing can harm a man provided that he has a level business head. Tempests may lour⁠—”

“Get on with it. How did all this happen?”

Ukridge mused for awhile.

“I suppose the thing really started,” he said, “when I pawned her brooch⁠—”

“You pawned your aunt’s brooch?”

“Yes.”

“And that endeared you to her?”

“I will explain all that later. Meanwhile, let me begin at the beginning. Have you ever run across a man named Joe the Lawyer?”

“No.”

“Stout fellow with a face like a haggis.”

“I’ve never met him.”

“Endeavour not to do so, Corky. I hate to speak ill of my fellow-man, but Joe the Lawyer is not honest.”

“What does he do? Pawn people’s brooches?”

Ukridge adjusted the ginger-beer wire that held his pince-nez to his flapping ears, and looked wounded.

“This is scarcely the tone I like to hear in an old friend, Corky. When I reach that point in my story, you will see that my pawning of Aunt Julia’s brooch was a perfectly normal, straightforward matter of business. How else could I have bought half the dog?”

“Half what dog?”

“Didn’t I tell you about the dog?”

“No.”

“I must have done. It’s the nub of the whole affair.”

“Well, you didn’t.”

“I’m getting this story all wrong,” said Ukridge. “I’m confusing you. Let me begin right at the beginning.”

This bloke, Joe the Lawyer (said Ukridge), is a bookmaker with whom I have had transactions from time to time, but until the afternoon when this story starts we had never become in any way intimate. Occasionally I would win a couple of quid off him and he would send me a cheque, or he would win a couple of quid off me and I would go round to his office to ask him to wait till Wednesday week; but we had never mingled socially, as you might say, until this afternoon I’m speaking of, when I happened to look in at the Bedford Street Bodega and found him there, and he asked me to have a glass of the old tawny.

Well, laddie, you know as well as I do that there are moments when a glass of the old tawny makes all the difference; so I assented with a good deal of heartiness.

“Fine day,” I said.

“Yes,” said this bloke. “Do you want to make a large fortune?”

“Yes.”

“Then listen,” said this bloke. “You know the Waterloo Cup. Listen. I’ve taken over as a bad debt from a client the dog that’s going to win the Waterloo Cup. This dog has been kept dark, but you can take it from me it’s going to win the Waterloo Cup. And then what? Well, then it’s going to fetch something. It’s going to be valuable. It’s going to have a price. It’s going to be worth money. Listen. How would you like to buy a half-share in that dog?”

“Very much.”

“Then it’s yours.”

“But I haven’t any money.”

“You mean to say you can’t raise fifty quid?”

“I can’t raise five.”

“Gawblimey!” said the bloke.

And, looking at me in a despairing sort of way, like a father whose favourite son has hurt his finest feelings, he finished his old tawny and pushed out into Bedford Street. And I went home.

Well, as you may imagine, I brooded not a little on my way back to Wimbledon. The one thing nobody can say of me, Corky, is that I lack the spacious outlook that wins to wealth. I know a good thing when I see one. This was a good thing, and I recognized it as such. But how to acquire the necessary capital was the point. Always my stumbling-block, that has been. I wish I had a shilling for every time I’ve failed to become a millionaire through lack of the necessary capital.

What sources of revenue had I, I asked myself. George Tupper, if tactfully approached, is generally good for a fiver; and you, no doubt, had it been a matter of a few shillings or half a sovereign, would gladly have leaped into the breach. But fifty quid! A large sum, laddie. It wanted thinking over, and I devoted the whole force of my intelligence to the problem.

Oddly enough, the one source of supply that had never presented itself to me was my Aunt Julia. As you know, she has warped and peculiar ideas about money. For some reason or other she will never give me a cent. And yet it was my Aunt Julia who solved my problem. There is a destiny in these matters, Corky, a sort of fate.

When I got back to Wimbledon, I found her looking after her packing; for she was off next morning on one of those lecture tours she goes in for.

“Stanley,” she said to me, “I nearly forgot. I want you to look in at Murgatroyd’s, in Bond Street, tomorrow and get my diamond brooch. They are resetting it. Bring it back and put it in my bureau drawer. Here is the key. Lock the drawer and send the key to me by registered post.”

And so, you see, everything was most satisfactorily settled. Long before my aunt came back the Waterloo Cup would be run for, and I should have acquired vast affluence. All I had to do was to have a duplicate key made, so that I could put the brooch in the drawer when I had redeemed it. I could see no flaw in the scheme of things. I saw her off at Euston, sauntered round to Murgatroyd’s, collected the brooch, sauntered off to the pawnbroker’s, put the brooch up the