Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (17 page)

But she was obdurate.

'Either you marry me in the gorilla's cage, or you don't marry
me at all. Mr Pybus says it is certain to make the front page,
with photographs and possibly even a short editorial on the
right stuff being in the modern girl despite her surface irresponsibility.'

'You will feel differently to-night, dear, when we meet for
dinner.'

'We shall not meet for dinner. If you are interested, I may
inform you that Captain Fosdyke invited me to dine with him
and I intend to do so.'

'Rosalie!'

'There is a man who really is a man. When he meets a gorilla,
he laughs in its face.'

'Very rude.'

'A million gorillas couldn't frighten him. Good-bye, Mr
Mulliner. I must go and tell him that when I said this morning
that I had a previous engagement I was mistaken.'

She swept out, and Montrose went on with his steak-pudding
like one in a dream.

It is possible (said Mr Mulliner, taking a grave sip of his hot
Scotch and lemon and surveying the company with a thoughtful
eye) that what I have told you may have caused you to form a
dubious opinion of my distant cousin Montrose. If so, I am not
surprised. In the scene which I have just related, no one is better
aware than myself that he has not shown up well. Reviewing his
shallow arguments, we see through them, as Rosalie did: and, like
Rosalie, we realize that he had feet of clay- and cold ones, to boot.

But I would urge in extenuation of his attitude that Montrose
Mulliner, possibly through some constitutional defect such as an
insufficiency of hormones, had been from childhood timorous in
the extreme. And his work as an assistant director had served
very noticeably to increase this innate pusillanimity.

It is one of the drawbacks to being an assistant director that
virtually everything that happens to him is of a nature to create
an inferiority-complex – or, if one already exists, to deepen it. He
is habitually addressed as 'Hey, you' and alluded to in the third
person as 'that fathead.' If anything goes wrong on the set, he
gets the blame and is ticked off not only by the producer but also
by the director and all the principals involved. Finally, he has to
be obsequious to so many people that it is little wonder that he
comes in time to resemble one of the more shrinking and
respectful breeds of rabbit. Five years of assistant-directing
had so sapped Montrose's
moral
that nowadays he frequently
found himself starting up and apologizing in his sleep.

It is proof, then, of the great love which he had for Rosalie
Beamish that, encountering Captain Jack Fosdyke a few days
later, he should have assailed him with bitter reproaches. Only
love could have impelled him to act in a manner so foreign to his
temperament.

The fact was, he blamed the Captain for all that had occurred.
He considered that he had deliberately unsettled Rosalie and
influenced her mind with the set purpose of making her dissatisfied
with the man to whom she had plighted her troth.

'If it wasn't for you,' he concluded warmly, 'I feel sure I could
have reasoned her out of what is nothing but a passing girlish
whim. But you have infatuated her, and now where do I get off?'

The Captain twirled his moustache airily.

'Don't blame me, my boy. All my life I have been cursed
by this fatal attraction of mine for the sex. Poor little moths,
they will beat their wings against the bright light of my personality.
Remind me to tell you some time of an interesting episode
which occurred in the harem of the King of the 'Mbongos.
There is something about me which is – what shall I say? –
hypnotic. It is not my fault that this girl has compared us. It was
inevitable that she should compare us. And having compared us
what does she see? On the one hand, a man with a soul of chilled
steel who can look his gorilla in the eye and make it play ball. On
the other – I use the term in the kindliest possible sense – a
crawling worm. Well, good-bye, my boy, glad to have seen you
and had this little chat,' said Captain Fosdyke. 'I like you young
fellows to bring your troubles to me.'

For some moments after he had gone, Montrose remained
standing motionless, while all the repartees which he might have
made surged through his mind in a glittering procession. Then
his thoughts turned once more to the topic of gorillas.

It is possible that it was the innuendoes uttered by Captain
Fosdyke that now awoke in Montrose something which bore a
shadowy resemblance to fortitude. Certainly, until this conversation,
he had not intended to revisit the gorilla's cage, one sight
of its occupant having been ample for him. Now, stung by the
other's slurs, he decided to go and have another look at the brute.
It might be that further inspection would make it seem less
formidable. He had known this to happen before. The first
time he had seen Mr Schnellenhamer, for example, he had had
something not unlike a fit of what our grandparents used to call
the 'vapours.' Now, he could bear him with at least an assumption
of nonchalance.

He made his way to the cage, and was presently exchanging
glances with the creature through the bars.

Alas, any hope he may have had that familiarity would breed
contempt died as their eyes met. Those well-gnashed teeth, that
hideous shagginess (a little reminiscent of a stockbroker motoring
to Brighton in a fur coat) filled him with all the old familiar
qualms. He tottered back and, with some dim idea of pulling
himself together, took a banana from the bag which he had
bought at the commissary to see him through the long afternoon.
And, as he did so, there suddenly flashed upon him the
recollection of an old saw which he had heard in his infancy –
The Gorilla Never Forgets. In other words, Do the square thing
by gorillas, and they will do the square thing by you.

His heart leaped within him. He pushed the banana through the
bars with a cordial smile, and was rejoiced to find it readily accepted. In
rapid succession he passed over the others. A banana a day keeps the gorilla
away, he felt jubilantly. By standing treat to this animal regardless of cost,
he reasoned, he would so ingratiate himself with it as to render the process
of getting married in its cage both harmless and agreeable. And it was only
when his guest had finished the last of the fruit that he realised with a
sickening sense of despair that he had got his facts wrong and that his whole
argument, based on a false premise, fell to the ground and became null and
void.

It was the elephant who never forgot – not the gorilla. It all
came back to him now. He was practically sure that gorillas
had never been mentioned in connection with the subject of
mnemonics. Indeed, for all he knew, these creatures might be
famous for the shortness of their memory – with the result that
if later on he were to put on pin-striped trousers and a top-hat
and enter this animal's cage with Rosalie on his arm and the
studio band playing the Wedding March, all recollection of
those bananas would probably have passed completely from
its fat head, and it would totally fail to recognize its benefactor.

Moodily crumpling the bag, Montrose turned away. This, he felt,
was the end.

I have a tender heart (said Mr Mulliner), and I dislike to
dwell on the spectacle of a human being groaning under the iron
heel of Fate. Such morbid gloating, I consider, is better left to
the Russians. I will spare you, therefore, a detailed analysis of my
distant cousin Montrose's emotions as the long day wore on.
Suffice it to say that by a few minutes to five o'clock he had
become a mere toad beneath the harrow. He wandered aimlessly
to and fro about the lot in the growing dusk, and it seemed to
him that the falling shades of evening resembled the cloud that
had settled upon his life.

He was roused from these meditations by a collision with
some solid body and, coming to himself, discovered that he had
been trying to walk through his old friend, George Pybus of the
Press department. George was standing beside his car, apparently
on the point of leaving for the day.

It is one more proof of Montrose Mulliner's gentle nature
that he did not reproach George Pybus for the part he had taken
in darkening his outlook. All he did was to gape and say:

'Hullo! You off?'

George Pybus climbed into the car and started the engine.

'Yes,' he said, 'and I'll tell you why. You know that gorilla?'

With a shudder which he could not repress Montrose said he
knew the gorilla.

'Well, I'll tell you something,' said George Pybus.

'Its agent has been complaining that we've been throwing all
the publicity to Luella Benstead and Edmund Wigham. So the
boss sent out a hurry call for quick thinking. I told him that you
and Rosalie Beamish were planning to get married in its cage,
but I've seen Rosalie and she tells me you've backed out. Scarcely
the spirit I should have expected in you, Montrose.'

Montrose did his best to assume a dignity which he was far
from feeling.

'One has one's code,' he said. 'One dislikes to pander to the
morbidity of a sensation-avid ...'

'Well, it doesn't matter, anyway,' said George Pybus, 'because
I got another idea, and a better one. This one is a pippin. At five
sharp this evening, Standard Pacific time, that gorilla's going to
be let out of its cage and will menace hundreds. If that doesn't
land him on the front page ...'

Montrose was appalled.

'But you can't do that!' he gasped. 'Once let that awful brute
out of its cage and it may tear people to shreds.'

George Pybus reassured him.

'Nobody of any consequence. The stars have all been notified
and are off the lot. So are the directors. Also the executives, all
except Mr Schnellenhamer, who is cleaning up some work in his
office. He will be quite safe there, of course. Nobody ever got
into Mr Schnellenhamer's office without waiting four hours in
the ante-room. Well, I must be off,' said George Pybus. 'I've got
to dress and get out to Malibu for dinner.'

And, so speaking, he trod on the accelerator and was speedily
lost to view in the gathering darkness.

It was a few moments later that Montrose, standing rooted to
the spot, became aware of a sudden distant uproar: and, looking at his watch,
he found that it was precisely five o'clock.

The spot to which Montrose had been standing rooted was in
that distant part of the lot where the outdoor sets are kept
permanently erected, so that a director with – let us suppose –
a London street scene to shoot is able instantly to lay his hands
on a back-alley in Algiers, a mediaeval castle, or a Parisian
boulevard – none of which is any good to him but which make
him feel that the studio is trying to be helpful.

As far as Montrose's eye could reach, Spanish patios,
thatched cottages, tenement buildings, estaminets, Oriental
bazaars, Kaffir kraals and the residences of licentious New
York clubmen stood out against the evening sky: and the fact
that he selected as his haven of refuge one of the tenement
buildings was due to its being both tallest and nearest.

Like all outdoor sets, it consisted of a front just like the real
thing and a back composed of steps and platforms. Up these
steps he raced, and on the top-most of the platforms he halted
and sat down. He was still unable to think very coherently, but in
a dim sort of way he was rather proud of his agility and resource.
He felt that he had met a grave crisis well. He did not know
what the record was for climbing a flight of steps with a gorilla
loose in the neighbourhood, but he would have felt surprise if
informed that he had not lowered it.

The uproar which had had such a stimulating effect upon him
was now increasing in volume: and, oddly, it appeared to have
become stationary. He glanced down through the window of his
tenement building, and was astonished to observe below him a
dense crowd. And what perplexed him most about this crowd
was that it was standing still and looking up.

Scarcely, felt Montrose, intelligent behaviour on the part of a
crowd with a savage gorilla after it.

There was a good deal of shouting going on, but he found
himself unable to distinguish any words. A woman who stood in
the forefront of the throng appeared particularly animated. She
was waving an umbrella in a rather neurotic manner.

The whole thing, as I say, perplexed Montrose. What these
people thought they were doing, he was unable to say. He was
still speculating on the matter when a noise came to his ears.

It was the crying of a baby.

Now, with all these mother-love pictures so popular, the
presence of a baby on the lot was not in itself a thing to occasion
surprise. It is a very unambitious mother in Hollywood who, the
moment she finds herself and child doing well, does not dump
the little stranger into a perambulator and wheel it round to the
casting-office in the hope of cashing in. Ever since he had been
with the Perfecto-Zizzbaum, Montrose had seen a constant
stream of offspring riding up and trying to break into the
game. It was not, accordingly, the fact of a baby being among
those present that surprised him. What puzzled him about this
particular baby was that it seemed to be so close at hand. Unless
the acoustics were playing odd tricks, the infant, he was convinced,
was sharing this eyrie of his. And how a mere baby,
handicapped probably by swaddling-clothes and a bottle, could
have shinned up all those steps bewildered him to such an extent
that he moved along the planks to investigate.

And he had not gone three paces when he paused, aghast.
With its hairy back towards him, the gorilla was crouching over
something that lay on the ground. And another bellow told him
that this was the baby in person: and instantly Montrose saw
what must have occurred. His reading of magazine stories had
taught him that, once a gorilla gets loose, the first thing it does is
to snatch a baby from a perambulator and climb to the nearest
high place. It is pure routine.