Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (15 page)

The treatment proved effective. The pole, taking Clifford
Gandle shrewdly in the stomach, caused him to release his
grip on Mr Potter; and Mr Potter, suddenly discovering that
he was in shallow water again, did not hesitate. By the time
Clifford Gandle had scrambled into the punt he was on dry land,
squelching rapidly towards the house.

A silence followed his departure. Then Mr Gandle, expelling
the last pint of water from his mouth, gave judgment.

'The man must be mad!'

He found some more water which he had overlooked, and
replaced it.

'Stark, staring mad!' he repeated. 'He must have deliberately
flung himself in.'

Bobbie Wickham was gazing out into the night; and, had the
visibility been better, her companion might have observed in her
expression the raptness of inspiration.

'There is no other explanation. The punt was they-ah, by the
bank, and he was hee-yah, right out in the middle of the moat.
I've suspected for days that he was unbalanced. Once I found
him hiding in a cupboard. Crouching there with a wild gleam in
his eyes. And that brooding look of his. That strange brooding
look. I've noticed it every time I've been talking to him.'

Bobbie broke the silence, speaking in a low, grave voice.

'Didn't you know about poor Mr Potter?'

'Eh?'

'That he has suicidal mania?'

Clifford Gandle drew in his breath sharply.

'You can't blame him,' said Bobbie. 'How would you feel if
you came home one day and found your wife and your two
brothers and a cousin sitting round the dinner-table stone dead?'

'What!'

'Poisoned. Something in the curry.' She shivered. 'This
morning I found him in the garden gloating over a book called
"Ethics of Suicide."'

Clifford Gandle ran his fingers through his dripping hair.

'Something ought to be done!'

'What can you do? The thing isn't supposed to be known. If
you mention it to him, he will simply go away; and then mother
will be furious, because she wants him to publish her books in
America.'

'I shall keep the closest watch on the man.'

'Yes, that's the thing to do,' agreed Bobbie.

She pushed the punt to the shore. Mr Gandle, who had
begun to feel chilly, leaped out and sped to the house to change
his clothes. Bobbie, following at a more leisurely pace, found her
mother standing in the passage outside her study. Lady Wickham's
manner was perturbed.

'Roberta!'

'Yes, mother?'

'What in the world has been happening? A few moments ago
Mr Potter ran past my door, dripping wet. And now Clifford
Gandle has just gone by, also soaked to the skin. What have they
been doing?

'Fighting in the moat, mother.'

'Fighting in the moat? What do you mean?'

'Mr Potter jumped in to try and get away from Mr Gandle,
and then Mr Gandle went in after him and seized him
round the neck, and they grappled together for quite a long
time, struggling furiously. I think they must have had a
quarrel.'

'What on earth would they quarrel about?'

'Well, you know what a violent man Clifford Gandle is.'

This was an aspect of Mr Gandle's character which Lady
Wickham had not perceived. She opened her penetrating
eyes.

'Clifford Gandle violent?'

'I think he's the sort of man who takes sudden dislikes to
people.'

'Nonsense!'

'Well, it all seems very queer to me,' said Bobbie.

She passed on her way upstairs; and, reaching the first landing,
turned down the corridor till she came to the principal
guest-room. She knocked delicately. There were movements
inside, and presently the door opened, revealing Hamilton Potter
in a flowered dressing-gown.

'Thank Heaven you're safe!' said Bobbie.

The fervour of her tone touched Mr Potter. His heart
warmed to the child.

'If I hadn't been there when Mr Gandle was trying to drown
you—'

Mr Potter started violently.

'Trying to drown me?' he gasped.

Bobbie's eyebrows rose.

'Hasn't anybody told you about Mr Gandle – warned you?
Didn't you know he was one of the mad Gandles?'

'The – the—'

'Mad Gandles. You know what some of these very old
English families are like. All the Gandles have been mad for
generations back.'

'You don't mean – you can't mean—' Mr Potter gulped. 'You
can't mean that Mr Gandle is homicidal?'

'Not normally. But he takes sudden dislikes to people.'

'I think he likes me,' said Mr Potter, with a certain nervous
satisfaction. 'He has made a point of seeking me out and giving
me his views on – er – various matters.'

'Did you ever yawn while he was doing it?'

Mr Potter blenched.

'Would – would he mind that very much?'

'Mind it! You lock your door at night, don't you, Mr Potter?'

'But this is terrible.'

'He sleeps in this corridor.'

'But why is the man at large?'

'He hasn't done anything yet. You can't shut a man up till he
has done something.'

'Does Lady Wickham know of this?'

'For goodness' sake don't say a word to mother. It would only
make her nervous. Everything will be quite all right, if you're
only careful. You had better try not to let him get you alone.'

'Yes,' said Mr Potter.

The last of the mad Gandles, meanwhile, having peeled off
the dress-clothes moistened during the recent water-carnival,
had draped his bony form in a suit of orange-coloured pyjamas,
and was now devoting the full force of a legislator's mind to the
situation which had arisen.

He was a long, thin young man with a curved nose which
even in his lighter moments gave him the appearance of disapproving
things in general; and there had been nothing in the
events of the last hour to cause any diminution of this look of
disapproval. For we cannot in fairness but admit that, if ever a
mad Gandle had good reason to be mad, Clifford Gandle had at
this juncture. He had been interrupted at the crucial point of
proposal of marriage. He had been plunged into water and
prodded with a punt-pole. He had sown the seeds of a cold in
the head. And he rather fancied that he had swallowed a newt.
These things do not conduce to sunniness in a man.

Nor did an inspection of the future do anything to remove his
gloom. He had come to Skeldings for rest and recuperation after
the labours of an exhausting Session, and now it seemed that,
instead of passing his time pleasantly in the society of Roberta
Wickham, he would be compelled to devote himself to acting as
a guardian to a misguided publisher.

It was not as if he liked publishers, either. His relations with
Prodder and Wiggs, who had sold forty-three copies of his book
of political essays – 'Watchman, What of the Night?' – had not
been agreeable.

Nevertheless, this last of the Gandles was a conscientious
man. He had no intention of shirking the call of duty. The
question of whether it was worth while preventing a publisher
committing suicide did not present itself to him.

That was why Bobbie's note, when he read it, produced such
immediate results.

Exactly when the missive had been delivered, Clifford Gandle
could not say. Much thought had rendered him distrait, and
the rustle of the paper as it was thrust under his door did not
reach his consciousness. It was only when, after a considerable
time, he rose with the intention of going to bed that he perceived
lying on the floor an envelope.

He stooped and picked it up. He examined it with a thoughtful
stare. He opened it.

The letter was brief. It ran as follows: –

'
What about his razors?'

A thrill of dismay shot through him.

Razors!

He had forgotten them.

Clifford Gandle did not delay. Already it might be that he
was too late. He hurried down the passage and tapped at Mr
Potter's door.

'Who's there?'

Clifford Gandle was relieved. He was in time.

'Can I come in?'

'Who is that?'

'Gandle.'

'What do you want?'

'Can you – er – lend me a razah?'

'A what?'

A razah.'

There followed a complete silence from within. Mr Gandle
tapped again.

Are you they-ah?'

The silence was broken by an odd rumbling sound. Something
heavy knocked against the woodwork. But that the explanation
seemed so improbable, Mr Gandle would have said that
this peculiar publisher had pushed a chest of drawers against the
door.

'Mr Pottah!'

More silence.

Are you they-ah, Mr Pottah?'

Additional stillness. Mr Gandle, wearying of a profitless
vigil, gave the thing up and returned to his room.

The task that lay before him, he now realized, was to wait
awhile and then make his way along the balcony which joined
the windows of the two rooms; enter while the other slept, and
abstract his weapon or weapons.

He looked at his watch. The hour was close on midnight. He
decided to give Mr Potter till two o'clock.

Clifford Gandle sat down to wait.

Mr Potter's first action, after the retreating foot-steps had
told him that his visitor had gone, was to extract a couple of
nerve pills from the box by his bed and swallow them. This was a
rite which, by the orders of his medical adviser, he had performed
thrice a day since leaving America – once half an hour
before breakfast, once an hour before luncheon, and again on
retiring to rest.

In spite of the fact that he now consumed these pills, it
seemed to Mr Potter that he could scarcely be described as
retiring to rest. After the recent ghastly proof of Clifford Gandle's
insane malevolence, he could not bring himself to hope that
even the most fitful slumber would come to him this night. The
horror of the thought of that awful man padding softly to his
door and asking for razors chilled Hamilton Potter to the bone.

Nevertheless, he did his best. He switched off the light and,
closing his eyes, began to repeat in a soft undertone a formula
which he had often found efficacious.

'Day by day,' murmured Mr Potter, 'in every way, I am getting
better and better. Day by day, in every way, I am getting better
and better.'

It would have astonished Clifford Gandle, yawning in his
room down the corridor, if he could have heard such optimistic
sentiments proceeding from those lips.

'Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better.'

Mr Potter's mind performed an unfortunate side-slip. He lay
there tingling. Suppose he
was
getting better and better, what of
it? What was the use of getting better and better if at any moment
a mad Gandle might spring out with a razor and end it all?

He forced his thoughts away from these uncomfortable channels.
He clenched his teeth and whispered through them with a
touch of defiance.

'Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better. Day
by day, in every way—'

A pleasant drowsiness stole over Mr Potter.

'Day by day, in every way,' he murmured, 'I am getting better
and better. Day by day, in every way, I am betting getter and
getter. Bay by day, in every way, I am betting getter and wetter.
Way by day—'

Mr Potter slept.

Over the stables the clock chimed the hour of two, and Clifford
Gandle stepped out on to the balcony.

It has been well said by many thinkers that in human affairs
you can never be certain that some little trifling obstacle will not
undo the best-laid of schemes. It was the sunken road at Hougomont
that undid the French cavalry at Waterloo, and it was
something very similar that caused Clifford Gandle's plan of
action to go wrong now – a jug of water, to wit, which the maid
who had brought Mr Potter's hot-water can before dinner had
placed immediately beneath the window.

Clifford Gandle, insinuating himself with the extreme of
caution through the window and finding his foot resting on
something hard, assumed that he was touching the floor, and
permitted his full weight to rest upon that foot. Almost immediately
afterwards the world collapsed with a crash and a deluge
of water; and light, flooding the room, showed Mr Potter sitting
up in bed, blinking.

Mr Potter stared at Clifford Gandle. Clifford Gandle stared
at Mr Potter.

'Er – hullo!' said Clifford Gandle.

Mr Potter uttered a low, curious sound like a cat with a fishbone
in its throat.

'I – er –just looked in,' said Clifford Gandle.

Mr Potter made a noise like a second and slightly larger cat
with another fish-bone in its throat.

'I've come for the razah,' said Clifford Gandle. 'Ah,
there it is,' he said, and, moving towards the dressing-table,
secured it.

Mr Potter leaped from his bed. He looked about him for a
weapon. The only one in sight appeared to be the typescript of
'Ethics of Suicide,' and that, while it would have made an
admirable instrument for swatting flies, was far too flimsy for
the present crisis. All in all, it began to look to Mr Potter like a
sticky evening.

'Good night,' said Clifford Gandle.

Mr Potter was amazed to see that his visitor was withdrawing
towards the window. It seemed incredible. For a moment he
wondered whether Bobbie Wickham had not made some mistake
about this man. Nothing could be more temperate than his
behaviour at the moment.

And then, as he reached the window, Clifford Gandle smiled,
and all Mr Potter's fears leaped into being again.

The opinion of Clifford Gandle regarding this smile was that
it was one of those kindly, reassuring smiles – the sort of smile to
put the most nervous melancholiac at his ease. To Mr Potter it
seemed precisely the kind of maniac grin which he would have
expected from such a source.

'Good night,' said Clifford Gandle.

He smiled again, and was gone. And Mr Potter, having stood
rooted to the spot for some minutes, crossed the floor and closed
the window. He then bolted the window. He perceived a pair of
shutters, and shut them. He moved the washhand-stand till it
rested against the shutters. He placed two chairs and a small
bookcase against the washhand-stand. Then he went to bed,
leaving the light burning.