Bachelors Anonymous (20 page)

‘No,
Pickering, over the oysters. I couldn’t wait for the coffee. Swallowing my
fifth oyster, I snatched her up on my saddle bow, ha ha, and carried her off.
We are going to have coffee after I have finished telephoning. I was hoping to
get Llewellyn.’

‘He’s
in hospital.’

‘So
Amelia told me. She was his nurse. But he is not in hospital. I phoned St
Swithin’s, but he had gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘Leaving
no trace. Some trouble about somebody wanting a sample of his blood. One
supposes that he is on his way to Enniston Gardens. Well, if he comes, I want
you to tell him about me and Amelia. Tell him tactfully, for it will be a
shock.’

‘Why?’

‘Because,
as she was leaving the hospital, he asked her to marry him.’

‘You
don’t say!’

‘On the
contrary I do say. And she told him she would think it over. Think it over!
Ha,’ said Mr Trout. ‘I didn’t give her much chance to think it over. I must
have electrified her.’

Joe
gave him an admiring look, its effect, of course, largely diminished by the
fact that they were talking on the telephone.

‘I told
you women liked a dashing man.’

‘How
right you were.’

‘You
and Errol Flynn, not much to choose between you.’

‘I
suppose not.’

‘Give
my respects to the future Mrs Trout.’

‘I
will.’

It now
needed only Mr Llewellyn to make the little circle of Joe’s intimates complete,
and shortly after Joe had said goodbye to Mr Trout the roster was filled. There
was the sound of a turning key, and Mr Llewellyn walked in, looking a little
ruffled, as if he had just escaped from a hospital against the wishes of its
staff. His hair was disordered, and he had omitted to put on a tie.

Even to
an unobservant eye it would have been apparent that he was not one of Joe’s
admirers. In the look he gave him as he entered there was something of the
open dislike which a resident of India exhibits when he comes to take his
morning bath and finds a cobra in the bath tub. Not even at the nurse who had
wanted to take a sample of his blood had he directed a more formidable glare.

‘Oh,
it’s you,’ he said.

Joe
conceded this.

‘What
are you doing here? I told you to get out.’

Joe
said he had been collecting his belongings.

‘As
instructed,’ he added. He spoke curtly, for since their talk on the telephone
he had not been well pleased with his former employer, deprecating his habit of
firing good men simply, apparently, to gratify a passing whim.

‘And do
you know why I told you to get out?’

‘I’ve
been trying to think.’

‘I’ll
tell you.’

Mr
Llewellyn had swelled like a bull-frog, and his glare had intensified in
animosity. A sense of grievance often has this effect.

‘Because
you officiously insisted on my going to that damned hospital, when you must
have known what would be the result if I did. This afternoon the inevitable
happened. I asked my nurse to marry me. She said she would think it over. One
can scarcely suppose that having thought it over she will not say Yes. No woman
I’ve ever asked to marry me has not said Yes. There is something irresistible
about me. Tomorrow, therefore, I shall be engaged, and from there to being
married is but a step. I’m not saying anything against Amelia Bingham, she’s a
very good sort, but I don’t want to be married, and thanks to you I shall be.
And you wonder why I’ve fired you. Why are you grinning like a half-witted
ape?’

He was
referring to the gentle smile which had appeared on Joe’s face as he heard the
name Amelia Bingham.

‘May I
say a word?’ said Joe.

‘No.’

‘It’s
just that—’

‘I
don’t want to hear it.’

‘It’s
simply—’

The
telephone rang.

‘Answer
that,’ said Mr Llewellyn. ‘If it’s for me, say I’m out.’

Joe,
though half inclined to say ‘Answer it your ruddy self’, did as directed, and
was surprised to hear the voice of that great lover Mr Trout. He had thought Mr
Trout would be otherwise occupied.

‘Pickering?
‘

‘Yes.’

‘Is
Llewellyn there?’

‘Just
come in.’

‘Have
you told him?’

‘Not
yet.’

‘Let me
speak to him. It will come as a shock to the poor fellow to hear that I have
won Amelia from him, but he only has himself to blame. The idea of letting her
think it over. You don’t win a woman that way. The way to win a woman—’

‘I
know. Saddle bow stuff.’

‘Exactly.’

Joe handed
the receiver to Mr Llewellyn.

‘Trout,’
he said.

Watching
Mr Llewellyn as he telephoned, Joe was not surprised to see his face light up
shortly after he had addressed Mr Trout as Benedict Arnold and asked him if he
had sold any good forts lately. His share of the conversation after that was
mostly gasps and gurgles, but it was soon evident that good relations had once
more been established between him and his old friend. When he replaced the
receiver, his face wore the expression which one notices on the faces of those
who have been saved from the scaffold at the eleventh hour, and his voice when
he spoke had so much of the carolling skylark in it that Percy Bysshe Shelley,
had he been present, would have been fully justified in saying ‘Hail to thee, blithe
spirit’.

‘Don’t
tell me miracles are no longer box office,’ he chanted. ‘How wrong I was in
supposing that my guardian angel was asleep at the switch. Do you know what?’

‘Yes.’

‘Amelia
Bingham is going to marry Trout.’

‘Yes.
That’s what I was trying to tell you. ‘

‘It’s
colossal!’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s
sensational.’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t
be so damned calm about it, Pickering. You don’t seem to realise what this
means to me. Would you care to have a rough scenario of my future plans? I
shall return immediately to California, where I shall become a member of
Bachelors Anonymous. Trout is giving me a letter to a friend of his named
Runcible, and he assures me the boys will welcome me with open arms. Gosh, I
feel like a million dollars!’

Joe
laughed one of those hollow, mirthless ones.

‘I dare
say you do,’ he said, ‘but I don’t.’

‘What’s
the matter with you?’

‘You
aren’t going to do my play as a picture.’

‘Who
says so?’

‘You
said so.’

‘Hell’s
bells,’ said Mr Llewellyn, astounded. ‘You surely don’t believe everything the
top man of a motion picture studio tells you? I remember now, I was feeling a
little sore with you at the time, and I expressed myself with the generous
strength which is so characteristic of me, but you don’t have to pay any
attention to that. Of course I’m going to do your play. We’ve only to settle
terms. How about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars?’

Joe
rose from six to eight inches into the air with a hoarse cry, and Mr Llewellyn
misread his emotion. He had so often heard stars cry hoarsely like that in
response to an offer. Coming from Joe, who was not a star, it piqued him.

‘Dammit,’
he said, ‘you can’t expect top prices for your first picture. Two hundred and
fifty thousand isn’t at all bad, ask anyone. Take it or leave it.’

‘I’ll
take it,’ said Joe.

‘Good.
Come and have some dinner.’

‘I was
giving my fiancée dinner.’

‘I’ll
come along,’ said Mr Llewellyn, who knew the pleasure his company was bound to
add to a meal.

It was
as at Joe’s suggestion he completed the writing and signing of a rough form of
contract that the doorbell rang, and his torso and both his chins shook in
sudden alarm.

‘Vera
Dalrymple!’ he gasped.

Joe did
not share his tremors. There had been a time when he had trembled with fear at
the lady in question’s frown, but with that contract in his pocket and the air
vibrant with wedding bells he felt more than equal to a dozen Vera Dalrymples.

‘Leave
her to me, I.L.,’ he said. ‘Go and hide in the bathroom or under your bed or
somewhere. I’ll attend to her.’

And
with a firm step he strode to the door.