Bachelors Anonymous (16 page)

‘Yes, I
do feel I owe you an apology, though I must claim to have had some excuse for
acting as I did. You had spoken of the girl with the utmost enthusiasm, you
were taking her to dinner, you had had a manicure and a shampoo. Naturally it
seemed to a lifelong member of Bachelors Anonymous that there was no time to be
lost and that only Method B would serve. I was actuated by motives of the
purest altruism. I felt I had a mission to save you from yourself. I pictured
you thanking me later with tears in your eyes. How could I know that I was
going to meet Mrs Bingham and see the light? I can only say I’m sorry. But as a
matter of fact no harm has been done. All you have to do is go to the girl and
explain. You will probably have a good laugh together. Bless my soul,’ said Mr
Trout, looking at his watch. ‘Is that the time? I must rush.’ And he was gone.

But any
shortage of Trouts was compensated for an hour later by the arrival of Jerry
Nichols, who announced that his father had fallen asleep much more promptly than
usual, thus enabling him to be at Joe’s service with the minimum of delay.

‘What
seems to be the trouble?,’ he asked.

It did
not take Joe long to inform him. The basic facts were readily tabulated. He
loved a girl, and she would not speak to him. Jerry agreed that this was a
disagreeable state of affairs.

‘Who is
this girl?’

‘Sally
Fitch. You’ve met her. She came to see you that day I was in your office about
the Llewellyn job.’

‘Oh,
the heiress.’

‘The
what?’

‘We had
asked her to call because somebody had left her twenty-five thousand pounds.’

‘What!’

‘Didn’t
you know?’

‘Of
course I didn’t. Good Lord, Jerry, do you think she thinks I do know and am
after her for her money?’

‘Impossible.
Any girl with an ounce of sense could see that you aren’t that sort of chap. Rugged
honesty, that’s you. It sticks out all over you. No, it must be something
you’ve done. Have you done something?’

‘Yes,
but I can explain.’

‘Tell
me all.’

‘I
asked her to dinner and didn’t show up. Naturally this would have annoyed her,
but you’d think she would let me explain. But she won’t.’

‘Your
explanation being—?’

‘That
just as I was starting out for the restaurant somebody gave me a Mickey Finn.’

‘Somebody
what?’

‘Gave
me a Mickey Finn. You know what a Mickey Finn is.’

A
rather careworn look had come into Jerry’s face. It was plain that he was
having difficulty in becoming equal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation.

‘I
think you had better tell me the Pickering Story from the beginning, Joe. At
the moment a bit abstruse it strikes me as.’

Joe
told it to him from the beginning, and Jerry listened with growing
understanding.

‘You’re
quite right,’ he said at its conclusion. ‘You can certainly explain. I don’t
mind telling you that there have been times in my life when I’ve wished I had
as good an explanation as that. We must call on this Fitch first thing
tomorrow.’

‘But
she won’t see me.’

‘She’ll
see you all right. The lay-out is as follows. We go to her address, we ring the
bell, the door is opened and we slide in, and there we are. I say “we” because
I shall be at your side. You then tell her about the Mickey Finn. Good?’

‘Perfect.’

‘Not so
good,’ said Jerry. ‘Because on seeing you crossing the threshold she would
break into a spring and go and lock herself in the bathroom. Obviously you
mustn’t be there. I will go and see her and report to you if the All Clear has
been blown. I say “if”, for we must never lose sight of the fact that the
explanation of yours takes a lot of believing. It needs someone like myself to
put it over.’

Chapter Twelve

At times when one’s
affairs have become tangled, causing the brow to develop furrows and the soul
to ask itself ‘Where do we go from here?’, it is always a comfort to place
oneself in the hands of a recognised expert and allow him to carry on.
Householders feel a new hope when something has gone wrong with the pipes and
the plumber arrives, and the thought that Jerry, a man accustomed to coping
with popsies since he was a slip of a boy, had taken over the difficult
negotiations with Sally brought a new hope to Joe Pickering. It was in quite
cheerful mood that he rose from the breakfast table next morning to answer the
telephone. Before he had enlisted Jerry’s aid his ‘Hullo?’ would have been a
low faint ‘Hullo?’, almost a gurgle. Now it had quite a ring.

‘Hoy!’ said
the telephone. ‘Pickering?’

‘Oh,
hullo, Mr Llewellyn. Are you in the hospital?’

‘Sure
I’m in the hospital. St Swithin’s.’

‘Everything
all right?’

‘More
or less. Hell of a lot of noise going on all the time. There’s a contraption
outside my room which keeps bellowing “Doctor Binns, Doctor Binns” every two
minutes. What it wants Doctor Binns for I don’t know. Probably to tell him a
funny story. But that’s not what I called up about. It suddenly occurred to me
that the man Trout might come and ask you where I was. On no account tell him.
The first thing he would do would be to run bleating to the Dalrymple pot of
poison and spill the beans, and half an hour after that she would be round here
with grapes and kind inquiries.’

‘But he
doesn’t know where she lives.’

‘He
would find out. A man like Trout can find out anything. So don’t breathe a
word.’

‘My
lips are sealed.’

‘Your
hips are what?’

‘Not
hips, lips. I said they were sealed.’

‘Keep
them that way.’

A brief
pause in the conversation took place at this point. A confused roaring noise,
as of lions at feeding time, came over the wire. Then Mr Llewellyn spoke again.

‘Pickering.’

‘On the
spot.’

‘That
was a girl in short skirts and a white thungummy on the back of her head who
wanted a sample of my blood. I very soon told her where she got off. ,,I don’t
give samples of my blood to every Tom Dick and Harry who comes asking for them,
“I said.’

‘Only
to personal friends?’

‘Exactly.
She didn’t know which way to look. What were we talking about?’

‘Mr
Trout.’

‘Don’t
call him Mister Trout. The hellhound Trout or Trout the traitor, if you like,
but not a term of respect like Mister. Personally, it gives me a sinking
feeling even to think of him. Ever hear of Benedict Arnold?’

‘I’ve
read about him.’

‘Trout’s
name ought to have been that.’

‘Don’t
you mean his name ought to have been Trout?’

‘Do I?’

‘I
think so.’

‘Perhaps
you’re right. But why you want to keep babbling on about a human gumboil like
Trout I can’t imagine.’

‘Sorry.’

‘What?’

‘I said
I was sorry.’

‘Then
don’t do it again.’

‘I
won’t. How do you like it in hospital?’

‘Might
be worse. All right for a visit, but I wouldn’t live there if you gave me the
place.’

‘Nice
nurse?’

‘Ah,
there you have said a mouthful, Pickering. I have a Grade A nurse.’

‘Splendid.’

‘The
very word for her. Not one of your juvenile delinquents who bust in on you
wanting samples of your blood, but a sensible comfortable middle-aged woman in
her forties. We get on like a couple of sailors on shore leave. Well, go to
hell now, Pickering; I’m expecting the doctor. Remember about Benedict Arnold
Trout.’

‘I
won’t forget.’

‘Not a
word if he comes inquiring as to my whereabouts.’

An old
joke about them being at the wash flitted into Joe’s mind, but he let it go. He
was feeling better than he had been feeling, but not so much better as to allow
him to indulge in light persiflage of that nature.

The
upward trend in his spirits did not last. Despondency returned and grew, for
the afternoon, though bringing callers of various descriptions including an
optimist who hoped to sell richly bound and illustrated sets of Dumas on the
easy payment system, did not bring Jerry Nichols. The evening was well advanced
before he appeared.

‘Well,
you’ve taken your time,’ said Joe.

Jerry
dismissed the slur with a wave of the hand not unlike one of Mr Llewellyn’s
gestures when singing ‘Mister and Mrs Fitch’ in his bath.

‘I came
as soon as I could,’ he said. ‘I would have thought that you, being in the same
line of business yourself until recently, would have been familiar with the
iron discipline which prevails in a solicitor’s office. If Father had caught me
sneaking off before closing time, it would have made no difference that I was
his son, I would have been marched off into a hollow square of clerks and
office boys and had my buttons snipped off, or probably something even worse.
You remember what happened to Danny Deever in the morning.’

Joe had
to admit the justice of this. The head of Nichols, Erridge, Trubshaw and
Nichols might take a nap after dinner now and then, but in the daytime his
vigilance would have been that of the keenest-eyed type of lynx. He
apologised, and Jerry begged him not to mention it. He was accustomed to being
misjudged, he said. He would now, he added, proceed to make his report, a
statement which brought Joe up in his chair as if a sharp instrument had come
through its seat.

‘Did
you see her?’

‘No.’

‘Why
not?’

‘She
wasn’t there. A girl doesn’t stay indoors all day. She has things to do which
take her out from time to time. Let me tell you the whole story, omitting no
detail however slight. I got to Fountain Court and rang the bell. All straight
so far?’ he said rather unnecessarily, and Joe said he had found no difficulty
in following the narrative up to this point. Seeming pleased with his
intelligence, Jerry resumed.

‘The
door was opened by a rather personable popsy, who proved to be a girl who lives
with the Fitch. She informed me that the Fitch was at the hair stylist’s having
a permanent. “You had better look in later,” she said. “There’s a man called
Trout waiting to see her.” Well, I wasn’t going to have that, of course. “Later
be blowed,” I said. ,,I have to see .Miss Fitch on a matter of the utmost
urgency, the nature of which I am not empowered to divulge. I’m jolly well coming
in, and if Trout objects, I’ll scatter him to the four winds.” “Suit yourself,”
she said. “It’s a free country,” and she buzzed off, and I went on into the
living-room where, as foreshadowed, I found Trout.’

‘Trout,’
said Joe meditatively.

‘That
was the name.’

‘I
wonder what he wanted.’

‘He
told me that. His mission was the same as mine. He had come to tell Miss Fitch
that he was the bloke who had given you that Mickey Finn which had caused your
non-appearance at the dinner table.’

‘My
God!’

‘Precisely.
With your quick intelligence you have spotted that the coming clean of Trout is
the one thing that was needed to extricate you from the soup in which you are
wallowing. It gives verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
I go to her and say ,,Hullo there, Miss Fitch, I’ll bet you’ve been wondering
why Joe asked you to dinner and didn’t turn up. The matter is readily
explained. Somebody gave him a Mickey Finn”, and it carries little or no
conviction. But it’s very different when Trout, tapping his chest, says
“I
dun it.”
She swallows his story whole and asks for more.’

‘Of
course!’

‘It’s
what we lawyers call the best evidence. The other sort is incompetent,
irrelevant and immaterial and doesn’t get you anywhere. I decided, accordingly,
to come away and leave it to Trout to do the talking, though sorry not to see
Miss Fitch again, for she had impressed me very favourably that time she came
to my office. Nice girl.’

‘How
long does a permanent take?’

‘I
don’t know. I’ve never had one. But I see what’s in your mind. You’re wondering
if she’ll be back by now. Probably, I should think.’

‘Then
I’ll be moving along. And thanks for all you’ve done, Jerry.’

‘A
pleasure, old man, a pleasure. Not that I’ve done much. But, as I often say,
it’s the Boy Scout spirit that counts. Oh, one last word, Have you given any
thought to what happens when you and she meet?’

‘We
talk things over, I suppose.’

‘Talk
things over be blowed. Don’t waste time chatting. Get immediate action. Skip
the red tape. Grab her, fold her in a close embrace and hug her till her ribs
squeak. I have tried this policy on several occasions, and I have always found
it to give the best results.’