‘No, Liz,’ said Mr Cootes sadly. ‘I’ve had to give that up.’
And he exhibited the hiatus where an important section of his finger had been and told his painful tale. His companion’s sympathy was balm to his wounded soul.
‘The risks of the profession, of course,’ said Mr Cootes moodily, removing the exhibit in order to place his arm about her slender waist. ‘Still, it’s done me in. I tried once or twice, but I couldn’t seem to make the cards behave no more, so I quit. Ah, Liz,’ said Mr Cootes with feeling, ‘you can take it from me that I’ve had no luck since you left me. Regular hoodoo there’s been on me. If I’d walked under a ladder on a Friday to smash a mirror over the dome of a black cat I couldn’t have had it tougher.’
‘You poor boy!’
Mr Cootes nodded sombrely.
‘Tough,’ he agreed, ‘but there it is. Only this afternoon my jinx gummed the game for me and threw a spanner into the prettiest little scenario you ever thought of. . . . But let’s not talk about my troubles. What are you doing now, Liz?’
‘Me? Oh, I’m living near here.’
Mr Cootes started.
‘Not married?’ he exclaimed in alarm.
‘No!’ cried Miss Peavey with vehemence, and shot a tender glance up at his face. And I guess you know why, Ed.’
‘You don’t mean . . . you hadn’t forgotten me?’
As if I could ever forget you, Eddie! There’s only one tintype on
my
mantelpiece.’
‘But it struck me . . . it sort of occurred to me as a passing thought that, when we saw each other last, you were a mite peeved with your Eddie . . .’
It was the first allusion either of them had made to the past unpleasantness, and it caused a faint blush to dye Miss Peavey’s soft cheek.
‘Oh, shucks!’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten all about that next day. I was good and mad at the time, I’ll allow, but if only you’d called me up next morning, Ed . . .’
There was a silence, as they mused on what might have been.
‘What are you doing, living here?’ asked Mr Cootes after a pregnant pause. ‘Have you retired?’
‘No,
sir.
I’m sitting in at a game with real worthwhile stakes. But, darn it,’ said Miss Peavey regretfully, ‘I’m wondering if it isn’t too big for me to put through alone. Oh, Eddie, if only there was some way you and me could work it together like in the old days.’
‘What is it?’
‘Diamonds, Eddie. A necklace. I’ve only had one look at it so far, but that was enough. Some of the best ice I’ve saw in years, Ed. Worth every cent of a hundred thousand berries.’
The coincidence drew from Mr Cootes a sharp exclamation.
‘A necklace!’
‘Listen, Ed, while I slip you the low-down. And, say, if you knew the relief it was to me talking good United States again! Like taking off a pair of tight shoes. I’m doing the high-toned stuff for the moment. Soulful.
You
remember, like I used to pull once or twice in the old days. Just after you and me had that little spat of ours I thought I’d take another trip in the old
Atlantic
– force of habit or something, I guess. Anyway, I sailed, and we weren’t two days out from New York when I made the biggest kind of a hit with the dame this necklace belongs to. Seemed to take a shine to me right away . . .’
‘I don’t blame her!’ murmured Mr Cootes devotedly.
‘Now don’t you interrupt,’ said Miss Peavey, administering a gratified slap. ‘Where was I? Oh yes. This here now Lady Constance Keeble I’m telling you about . . .’
‘What!’
‘What’s the matter now?’
‘Lady Constance Keeble?’
‘That’s the name. She’s Lord Emsworth’s sister, who lives at a big place up the road. Blandings Castle it’s called. She didn’t seem like she was able to let me out of her sight, and I’ve been with her off and on ever since we landed. I’m visiting at the castle now.’
A deep sigh, like the groan of some great spirit in travail, forced itself from between Mr Cootes’s lips.
‘Well, wouldn’t that jar you!’ he demanded of circumambient space. ‘Of all the lucky ones! getting into the place like that, with the band playing and a red carpet laid down for you to walk on! Gee, if you fell down a well, Liz, you’d come up with the bucket. You’re a human horseshoe, that’s what you are. Say, listen. Lemme-tell-ya-sumf’n. Do you know what
I’ve
been doing this afternoon? Only trying to edge into the dam’ place myself and getting the air two minutes after I was past the front door.’
‘What!
You,
Ed?’
‘Sure. You’re not the only one that’s heard of that collection of ice.’
‘Oh, Ed!’ Bitter disappointment rang in Miss Peavey’s voice. ‘If only you could have worked it! Me and you partners again! It hurts to think of it. What was the stuff you pulled to get you in?’
Mr Cootes so far forgot himself in his agony of spirit as to expectorate disgustedly at a passing frog. And even in this trivial enterprise failure dogged him. He missed the frog, which withdrew into the grass with a cold look of disapproval.
‘Me?’ said Mr Cootes. ‘I thought I’d got it smooth. I’d chummed up with a fellow who had been invited down to the place and had thought it over and decided not to go, so I said to myself what’s the matter with going there instead of him. A gink called McTodd this was, a poet, and none of the folks had ever set eyes on him, except the old man, who’s too short-sighted to see anyone, so . . .’
Miss Peavey interrupted.
‘You don’t mean to tell me, Ed Cootes, that you thought you could get into the castle by pretending to be Ralston McTodd?’
‘Sure I did. Why not? It didn’t seem like there was anything to it. A cinch, that’s what it looked like. And the first guy I meet in the joint is a mutt who knows this McTodd well. We had a couple of words, and I beat it. I know when I’m not wanted.’
‘But, Ed! Ed! What do you mean? Ralston McTodd is at the castle now, this very moment.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Sure. Been there coupla days and more. Long, thin bird with an eyeglass.’
Mr Cootes’s mind was in a whirl. He could make nothing of this matter.
‘Nothing like it! McTodd’s not so darned tall or so thin, if it comes to that. And he didn’t wear no eyeglass all the time I was with him. This . . .’ He broke offsharply. ‘My gosh! I wonder!’ he cried. ‘Liz! How many men are there in the joint right now?’
‘Only four besides Lord Emsworth. There’s a big party coming down for the County Ball, but that’s all there is at present. There’s Lord Emsworth’s son, Freddie . . .’
‘What does he look like?’
‘Sort of a dude with blond hair slicked back. Then there’s Mr Keeble. He’s short with a red face.’
And?’
And Baxter. He’s Lord Emsworth’s secretary. Wears spectacles.’
‘And that’s the lot?’
‘That’s all there is, not counting this here McTodd and the help.’
Mr Cootes brought his hand down with a resounding report on his leg. The mildly pleasant look which had been a feature of his appearance during his interview with Psmith had vanished now, its place taken by one of an extremely sinister malevolence.
‘And I let him shoo me out as if I was a stray pup!’ he muttered through clenched teeth. ‘Of all the bunk games!’
‘What
are
you talking about, Ed?’
And I thanked him!
Thanked
hïm!’ moaned Edward Cootes, writhing at the memory. ‘I thanked him for letting me go!’
‘Eddie Cootes, whatever are you . . . ?’
‘Listen, Liz.’ Mr Cootes mastered his emotion with a strong effort. ‘I blew into that joint and met this fellow with the eyeglass, and he told me he knew McTodd well and that I wasn’t him. And, from what you tell me, this must be the very guy that’s passing himself off as McTodd! Don’t you see? This baby must have started working on the same lines I did. Got to know McTodd, found he wasn’t coming to the castle, and came down instead of him, same as me. Only he got there first, damn him! Wouldn’t that give you a pain in the neck!’
Amazement held Miss Peavey dumb for an instant. Then she spoke.
‘The big stiff!’ said Miss Peavey.
Mr Cootes, regardless of a lady’s presence, went even further in his censure.
‘I had a feeling from the first that there was something not on the level about that guy!’ said Miss Peavey. ‘Gee! He must be after that necklace too.’
‘Sure he’s after the necklace,’ said Mr Cootes impatiently. ‘What did you think he’d come down for? A change of air?’
‘But, Ed! Say! Are you going to let him get away with it?’
Am
I
going to let him get away with it!’ said Mr Cootes, annoyed by the foolish question. ‘Wake me up in the night and ask me!’
‘But what are you going to do?’
‘Do!’ said Mr Cootes. ‘Do! I’ll tell you what I’m going to . . .’ He paused, and the stern resolve that shone in his face seemed to flicker. ‘Say, what the hell
am
I going to do?’ he went on somewhat weakly.
‘You won’t get anything by putting the folks wise that he’s a fake. That would be the finish of him, but it wouldn’t get
you
anywhere.’
‘No,’ said Mr Cootes.
‘Wait a minute while I think,’ said Miss Peavey.
There was a pause. Miss Peavey sat with knit brows.
‘How would it be . . . ?’ ventured Mr Cootes.
‘Cheese it!’ said Miss Peavey.
Mr Cootes cheesed it. The minutes ticked on.
‘I’ve got it,’ said Miss Peavey. ‘This guy’s ace-high with Lady Constance. You’ve got to get him alone right away and tell him he’s got to get you invited to the place as a friend of his.’
‘I knew you’d think of something, Liz,’ said Mr Cootes, almost humbly. ‘You always were a wonder like that. How am I to get him alone?’
‘I can fix that. I’ll ask him to come for a stroll with me. He’s not what you’d call crazy about me, but he can’t very well duck if I keep after him. We’ll go down the drive. You’ll be in the bushes – I’ll show you the place. Then I’ll send him to fetch me a wrap or something, and while I walk on he’ll come back past where you’re hiding, and you jump out at him.’
‘Liz,’ said Mr Cootes, lost in admiration, ‘when it comes to doping out a scheme, you’re the snake’s eyebrows!’
‘But what are you going to do if he just turns you down?’
Mr Cootes uttered a bleak laugh, and from the recesses of his costume produced a neat little revolver.
‘He
won’t turn me down!’ he said.
§ 5
‘Fancy!’ said Miss Peavey. ‘If I had not had a headache and come back early, we should never have had this little chat!’
She gazed up at Psmith in her gentle, wistful way as they started together down the broad gravel drive. A timid, soulful little thing she looked.
‘No,’ said Psmith.
It was not a gushing reply, but he was not feeling at his sunniest. The idea that Miss Peavey might return from Bridge-ford in advance of the main body had not occurred to him. As he would have said himself, he had confused the Unlikely with the Impossible. And the result had been that she had caught him beyond hope of retreat as he sat in his garden-chair and thought of Eve Halliday, who on their return from the lake had been seized with a fresh spasm of conscience and had gone back to the library to put in another hour’s work before dinner. To decline Miss Peavey’s invitation to accompany her down the drive in order to see if there were any signs of those who had been doing honour to the late Hartley Reddish, M.P., had been out of the question. But Psmith, though he went, went without pleasure. Every moment he spent in her society tended to confirm him more and more in the opinion that Miss Peavey was the curse of the species.
‘And I have been so longing,’ continued his companion, ‘to have a nice, long talk. All these days I have felt that I haven’t been able to get as
near
you as I should wish.’
‘Well, of course, with the others always about . . .’
‘I meant in a spiritual sense, of course.’
‘I see.’
‘I wanted so much to discuss your wonderful poetry with you. You haven’t so much as
mentioned
your work since you came here.
Have
you!’
Ah, but, you see, I am trying to keep my mind off it.’
‘Really? Why?’
‘My medical adviser warned me that I had been concentrating a trifle too much. He offered me the choice, in fact, between a complete rest and the loony-bin.’
‘The
what,
Mr McTodd?’
‘The lunatic asylum, he meant. These medical men express themselves oddly.’
‘But surely, then, you ought not to
dream
of trying to compose if it is as bad as that? And you told Lord Emsworth that you wished to stay at home this afternoon to write a poem.’
Her glance showed nothing but tender solicitude, but inwardly Miss Peavey was telling herself that
that
would hold him for a while.
‘True,’ said Psmith, ‘true. But you know what Art is. An inexorable mistress. The inspiration came, and I felt that I must take the risk. But it has left me weak, weak.’
‘You BIG STIFF!’ said Miss Peavey. But not aloud.
They walked on a few steps.
‘In fact,’ said Psmith, with another inspiration, ‘I’m not sure I ought not to be going back and resting now.’
Miss Peavey eyed a clump of bushes some dozen yards farther down the drive. They were quivering slightly, as though they sheltered some alien body; and Miss Peavey, whose temper was apt to be impatient, registered a resolve to tell Edward Cootes that, if he couldn’t hide behind a bush without dancing about like a cat on hot bricks, he had better give up his profession and take to selling jellied eels. In which, it may be mentioned, she wronged her old friend. He had been as still as a statue until a moment before, when a large and excitable beetle had fallen down the space between his collar and his neck, an experience which might well have tried the subtlest woodsman.
‘Oh, please don’t go in yet,’ said Miss Peavey. ‘It is such a lovely evening. Hark to the music of the breeze in the tree-tops. So soothing. Like a faraway harp. I wonder if it is whispering secrets to the birds.’