Mr Mulliner Speaking (30 page)

The morning of February the fifteenth came murkily to London in a mantle of fog. It found Ambrose Wiffin breakfasting in bed. On the tray before him was a letter. The handwriting was the handwriting that once he had loved, but now it left him cold. His heart was dead, he regarded the opposite sex as a wash-out, and letters from Bobbie Wickham could stir no chord.

He had already perused this letter, but now he took it up once more and, his lips curved in a bitter smile, ran his eyes over it again, noting some of its high spots.

'. . . very disappointed in you . . . cannot understand how you could
have behaved in such an extraordinary way . . .'

Ha!

'. . . did think I could have trusted you to look after . . . And then
you go and leave the poor little fellows alone in the middle of
London . . .'

Oh, ha, ha!

'. . .Wilfred arrived home in charge of a policeman, and mother
is furious. I don't think I have ever seen her so pre-War . . .'

Ambrose Wiffin threw the letter down and picked up the telephone.

'Hullo.'

'Hullo.'

'Algy?'

'Yes. Who's that?'

'Ambrose Wiffin.'

'Oh? What ho!'

'What ho!'

'What ho!'

'What ho!'

'I say,' said Algy Crufts. 'What became of you yesterday afternoon? I kept trying to get you on the 'phone and you were out.'

'Sorry,' said Ambrose Wiffin. 'I was taking a couple of kids to the movies.'

'What on earth for?'

'Oh, well, one likes to get the chance of giving a little pleasure to people, don't you know. One ought not always to be thinking of oneself. One ought to try to bring a little sunshine into the lives of others.'

'I suppose,' said Algy sceptically, 'that as a matter of fact, young Bobbie Wickham was with you, too, and you held her bally hand all the time.'

'Nothing of the kind,' replied Ambrose Wiffin with dignity. 'Miss Wickham was not among those present. What were you trying to get me on the 'phone about yesterday?'

'To ask you not to be a chump and stay hanging around London in this beastly weather. Ambrose, old bird, you simply must come to-morrow.'

'Algy, old cork, I was just going to ring you up to say I would.'

'You were?'

'Absolutely.'

'Great work! Sound egg! Right ho, then, I'll meet you under the clock at Charing Cross at half-past nine.'

'Right ho. I'll be there.'

'Right ho. Under the clock.'

'Right ho. The good old clock.'

'Right ho,' said Algy Crufts.

'Right ho,' said Ambrose Wiffin.

P.G. Wodehouse

IN ARROW BOOKS

If you have enjoyed Mr Mulliner, you'll love Uncle Fred

FROM

The train of events leading up to the publication of the novel Cocktail Time, a volume which, priced at twelve shillings and sixpence, was destined to create considerably more than twelve and a half bobsworth of alarm and despondency in one quarter and another, was set in motion in the smoking-room of the Drones Club in the early afternoon of a Friday in July. An Egg and a Bean were digesting their lunch there over a pot of coffee, when they were joined by Pongo Twistleton and a tall, slim, Guards-officer-looking man some thirty years his senior, who walked with a jaunty step and bore his cigar as if it had been a banner with the strange device Excelsior.

'Yo ho,' said the Egg.

'Yo ho,' said the Bean.

'Yo ho,' said Pongo. 'You know my uncle, Lord Ickenham, don't you?'

'Oh, rather,' said the Egg. 'Yo ho, Lord Ickenham.'

'Yo ho,' said the Bean.

'Yo ho,' said Lord Ickenham. 'In fact, I will go further. Yo frightfully ho,' and it was plain to both Bean and Egg that they were in the presence of one who was sitting on top of the world and who, had he been wearing a hat, would have worn it on the side of his head. He looked, they thought, about as bumps-a-daisy as billy-o.

And, indeed, Lord Ickenham was feeling as bumps-a-daisy as he looked. It was a lovely day, all blue skies and ridges of high pressure extending over the greater part of the United Kingdom south of the Shetland Isles: he had just learned that his godson, Johnny Pearce, had at last succeeded in letting that house of his, Hammer Lodge, which had been lying empty for years, and on the strength of this had become engaged to a perfectly charming girl, always pleasant news for an affectionate godfather: and his wife had allowed him to come up to London for the Eton and Harrow match. For the greater part of the year Lady Ickenham kept him firmly down in the country with a watchful eye on him, a policy wholeheartedly applauded by all who knew him, particularly Pongo.

He seated himself, dodged a lump of sugar which a friendly hand had thrown from a neighbouring table, and beamed on his young friends like a Cheshire cat. It was his considered view that joy reigned supreme. If at this moment the poet Browning had come along and suggested to him that the lark was on the wing, the snail on the thorn, God in His heaven and all right with the world, he would have assented with a cheery 'You put it in a nutshell, my dear fellow! How right you are!'

'God bless my soul,' he said, 'it really is extraordinary how Wt I'm feeling today. Bright eyes, rosy cheeks, and the sap rising strongly in my veins, as I believe the expression is. It's the London air. It always has that effect on me.'

Pongo started violently, not because another lump of sugar had struck him on the side of the head, for in the smoking-room of the Drones one takes these in one's stride, but because he found the words sinister and ominous. From earliest boyhood the loopiness of this uncle had been an open book to him and, grown to man's estate, he had become more than ever convinced that in failing to add him to their membership list such institutions as Colney Hatch and Hanwell were passing up a good thing, and he quailed when he heard him speak of the London air causing the sap to rise strongly in his veins. It seemed to suggest that his relative was planning to express and fulfil himself again, and when Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, fifth Earl of Ickenham, began to express and fulfil himself, strong men – Pongo was one of them – quivered like tuning forks.

'The trouble with Pongo's Uncle Fred,' a thoughtful Crumpet had once observed in this same smoking-room, 'and what, when he is around, makes Pongo blench to the core and call for a couple of quick ones, is that, though well stricken in years, he becomes, on arriving in London, as young as he feels and proceeds to step high, wide and plentiful. It is as though, cooped up in the country all the year round with no way of working it off, he generates, if that's the word I want, a store of loopiness which expends itself with terrific violence on his rare visits to the centre of things. I don't know if you happen to know what the word ''excesses'' means, but those are what, the moment he sniffs the bracing air of the metropolis, Pongo's Uncle Fred invariably commits. Get Pongo to tell you some time about the day they had together at the dog races.'

Little wonder, then, that as he spoke, the young Twistleton was conscious of a nameless fear. He had been so hoping that it would have been possible to get through today's lunch without the old son of a bachelor perpetrating some major outrage on the public weal. Was this hope to prove an idle one?

It being the opening day of the Eton and Harrow match, the conversation naturally turned to that topic, and the Bean and the Egg, who had received what education they possessed at the Thames-side seminary, were scornful of the opposition's chances. Harrow, they predicted, were in for a sticky week-end and would slink home on the morrow with their ears pinned back.

'Talking of Harrow, by the way,' said the Bean, 'that kid of Barmy Phipps's is with us once more. I saw him in there with Barmy, stoking up on ginger pop and what appeared to be cold steak-and-kidney pie with two veg.'

'You mean Barmy's cousin Egbert from Harrow?'

'That's right. The one who shoots Brazil nuts.'

Lord Ickenham was intrigued. He always welcomed these opportunities to broaden his mind and bring himself abreast of modern thought. The great advantage of lunching at the Drones, he often said, was that you met such interesting people.

'Shoots Brazil nuts, does he? You stir me strangely. In my time I have shot many things – grouse, pheasants, partridges, tigers, gnus and once, when a boy, an aunt by marriage in the seat of her sensible tweed dress with an airgun – but I have never shot a Brazil nut. The fact that, if I understand you aright, this stripling makes a practice of this form of marksmanship shows once again that it takes all sorts to do the world's work. Not sitting Brazil nuts, I trust?'

It was apparent to the Egg that the old gentleman had missed the gist.

'He shoots things with Brazil nuts,' he explained.

'Puts them in his catapult and whangs off at people's hats,' said the Bean, clarifying the thing still further. 'Very seldom misses, either. Practically every nut a hat. We think a lot of him here.'

'Why?'

'Well, it's a great gift.'

'Nonsense,' said Lord Ickenham. 'Kindergarten stuff. The sort of thing one learns at one's mother's knee. It is many years since I owned a catapult and was generally referred to in the sporting world as England's answer to Annie Oakley, but if I had one now I would guarantee to go through the hats of London like a dose of salts. Would this child of whom you speak have the murder weapon on his person, do you suppose?'

'Bound to have,' said the Egg.

'Never travels without it,' said the Bean.

'Then present my compliments to him and ask if I might borrow it for a moment. And bring me a Brazil nut.'

A quick shudder shook Pongo from his upper slopes to the extremities of his clocked socks. The fears he had entertained about the shape of things to come had been realized. Even now, if his words meant what they seemed to mean, his uncle was preparing to be off again on one of those effervescent jaunts of his which had done so much to rock civilization and bleach the hair of his nearest and dearest.

He shuddered, accordingly, and in addition to shuddering uttered a sharp quack of anguish such as might have proceeded from some duck which, sauntering in a reverie beside the duck pond, has inadvertently stubbed its toe on a broken soda-water bottle.

'You spoke, Junior?' said Lord Ickenham courteously.

'No, really, Uncle Fred! I mean, dash it, Uncle Fred! I mean really, Uncle Fred, dash it all!'

'I am not sure that I quite follow you, my boy.'

'Are you going to take a pop at someone's hat?'

'It would, I think, be rash not to. One doesn't often get hold of a catapult. And a point we must not overlook is that, toppers being obligatory at the Eton and Harrow match, the spinneys and coverts today will be full of them, and it is of course the top hat rather than the bowler, the gent's Homburg and the fore-and-aft deerstalker as worn by Sherlock Holmes which is one's primary objective. I expect to secure some fine heads. Ah,' said Lord Ickenham, as the Bean returned, 'so this is the instrument. I would have preferred one with a whippier shaft, but we must not grumble. Yes,' he said, moving to the window, 'I think I shall be able to make do. It is not the catapult, it is the man behind it that matters.'