Heavy Weather (11 page)

Sue did not reply. She had walked to the battlements and was looking down. Something in the aspect of her back seemed to tell Monty Bodkin that she was either crying or about to cry, and he did not know what to do for the best. The face of Gertrude Butterwick, floating between him and the sky, forbade the obvious move. A man with a Gertrude Butterwick on his books cannot lightly put his arms round other waists and murmur 'There, there!' into other ears.

He coughed and said, 'Er - well...'

Sue did not turn. He coug
hed again. Then, with a' Well - I
- er -ah...' he sidled to the stairs. The clang of the closing door came to Sue's ears as she dabbed at her eyes with the tiny fragment of lace which she called a handkerchief. She was relieved that he had gone. There are moments when a girl must be alone to wrestle single-handed with her own particular devils.

This she did, bravely and thoroughly. There was in her small body the spirit of an Amazon. She fought the devils and routed the devils, till presently a final sniff told that the battle had been won. Shropshire, which had been a thing of mist, became firmer in its outlines. She put away the handkerchief and stood blinking defiantly.

She was happier now. The determination to finish everything, if she saw Ronnie wanted it finished had not weakened. It still lay rooted at the back of her mind. But hope had dawned again. She was telling herself that she understood Ronnie's odd behaviour. He was worried, poor darling, as who would not be with a woman of Lady Julia Fish's powerful personality going on at him all the time. And when a man is worried, he naturally becomes preoccupied.

The sound of a car drawing up on the other side of the house broke in upon her meditations. She hurried across the roof, her heart quickening.

She turned away, disappointed. It was not Ronnie, back from Shrewsbury. It was only a short, stout man who had driven up in the station taxi. A short, stout, stumpy man of no importance whatever.

So thought Sue in her ignorance. The stout man, had he known that he was being thus casually dismissed as negligible, would have been not only offended, but amazed.

For this visitor to Blandings Castle, for all that he arrived without pomp, driven to his destination by charioteer Robinson in that humble conveyance, the Market Blandings station taxi, was none other than George Alexander Pyke, first Viscount Tilbury, founder and proprietor of the Mammoth Publishing Company of Tilbury House, Tilbury Street, London.

There are men of the bulldog breed who do not readily admit defeat. Crushed to earth, they rise again. To this doughty band belonged George Alexander, Viscount Tilbury. He had built up a very large fortune chiefly by the simple method of never knowing when he was beaten, and the fact that he was now ringing the doorbell of Blandings Castle proved that the ancient spirit still lingered. He had come to tackle the Hon. Galahad Threepwood in person about those Reminiscences of his, and he meant to stand no nonsense.

Many men in his position, informed that the Hon. Galahad had decided to withhold his book from publication, would have felt that there was nothing to be done about it. They would have accepted the situation as one beyond their power to change, and would have contented themselves with grieving over their monetary loss and thinking hard thoughts of the man responsible. Lord Tilbury was made of sterner stuff. He grieved - we have seen him grieving - and he thought hard thoughts: but it never occurred to him for an instant not to do something about it.

A busy man, he could not get away from his office immediately. Pressure of work had delayed the starting of the expedition-until today. But at eleven-fifteen that morning he had taken train for Market Blandings and, after establishing himself at the Emsworth Arms in that sleepy little town, had directed Robinson, of the station taxi, to take him on to the Castle.

His mood was one of stern self-confidence. The idea that he might fail in his mission did not strike him as even a remote possibility. He had only a dim recollection of the Hon. Galahad, for he had not met him for twenty-five years, and even in the old days had never been really an intimate of his, but he retained a sort of general impression of an amiable, easygoing man. Not at all the type of man to hold out against a forceful, straight from the shoulder talk such as he proposed to subject him to as soon as this
door-bell was answered. Lord Tilbury had great faith in the magic of speech. Beach answered the bell.

'Is Mr Threepwood in? Mr Galahad Threepwood?' 'Yes, sir. What name shall I say?' 'Lord Tilbury.'

'Very good, m'lord. If you will step this way. I fancy Mr Galahad is in the small library.'

The small library, however, proved empty. It contained evidence of the life literary in the shape of a paper-piled desk and a good deal of ink on the carpet and elsewhere, but it had no human occupant.

'Possibly Mr Galahad is on the lawn. He walks there sometimes,' said the butler indulgently, as one tolerant of the foibles of genius. 'If your lordship will take a seat. . .'

He withdrew, and began to descend the stairs with measured tread, but Lord Tilbury did not take a seat. He was staring, transfixed, at something that lay upon the desk. He drew closer - furtively, with a sidelong eye on the door.

Yes, his surmise had been correct. It was the manuscript of the Reminiscences that lay before him. Evidently its author had only just risen from the task of polishing it, for the ink was still wet on a paragraph where, searching like some Flaubert for the
mot juste,
he had run his pen through the word 'intoxicated' and substituted it for the more colourful' pickled to the gills'.

Lord Tilbury's eyes, always prominent, bulged a trifle farther from their sockets. His breathing quickened.

Every man who by his own unaided efforts has succeeded in wresting a great fortune from a resistant world has something of the buccaneer in him, a touch of the practical, Do-It-Now pirate of the Spanish Main. In Lord Tilbury, as a younger man, there had been quite a good deal. And while prosperity and the diminishing necessity of giving trade rivals the elbow had tended to atrophy this quality, it had not died altogether. Standing there within arm's length of the manuscript, with the coast clear and a taxi waiting at the front door, he was seriously contemplating the quick snatch and the masterful dash for the open.

And it was perhaps fortunate, for sudden activity of the kind might have proved injurious to a man of his full habit, that 92 before he could quite screw his courage to the sticking point his ear caught the sound of approaching footsteps. He drew back like a cat from a cream-jug, and when the Hon. Galahad arrived was looking out of the window, humming a careless barcarolle.

The Hon. Galahad paused in the doorway and stuck his black-rimmed monocle in his eye. Behind the glass the eye was bright and questioning. His forehead wrinkled with mental strain as he surveyed his visitor.

'Don't tell me,' he begged. 'Let me think. I pride myself on my memory. You're fatter and you've aged a lot, but you're someone I used to know quite well at one time. In some odd way I seem to associate you with a side of beef . .. Shorty Smith? ... Stumpy Whiting? . . . No, I've got it, by gad! Stinker Pyke!' He beamed with honest satisfaction. 'Not bad, that, considering that it must be fully twenty-five years since I saw you last. Pyke. That's who you are. And we used to call you Stinker. Well, well, how are you, Stinker?'

Lord Tilbury's face had taken on an austere pinkness. He disliked the reference to his increased bulk, and advancing years, and it is never pleasant for an elderly man of substance to be addressed by a name which even in his youth was offensive to him. He said as much.

'Well, all right. Pyke, then,' said the Hon. Galahad agreeably. 'How are you, Pyke? Good Lord, this certainly puts the clock back. The last time I saw you must have been that night at Romano's when Plug Basham started throwing bread and got a little over-excited, and one thing led to another and in about two minutes there you were on the floor, laid out cold by a dashed great side of beef and all the undertakers present making bids for the body. I can see your face now,' said the Hon. Galahad, chuckling. 'Most amusing.'

He grew more serious. His smile vanished. He shook his head sadly.

'Poor old Plug!' he sighed. 'A fellow who never knew where to stop. His only fault, poor chap.'

Lord Tilbury had not come a hundred and fourteen miles to talk about the late Major Wilfred Basham, a man who, even before the episode alluded to, had ne
ver been a favourite of his. He
endeavoured to intimate this, but the Hon. Galahad when in reminiscent mood was not an easy man to divert.

'I took the whole thing up with him at the Pelican next day. I tried to reason with him. Throwing sides of beef about in restaurants wasn't done, I said. Not British. Bread, yes, I said. Sides of beef, no. I pointed out that all the trouble was caused by his fatal practice of always ordering a quart where other men began with pints. He saw it, too. "I know, I know," he said. "I'm a darned fool. In fact, between you and me,
Gally
, I suppose I'm one of those fellows my father always
warned me against. But the Bash
ams have always ordered quarts. It's an old Basham family custom." Then the only way was, I said, to swear off altogether. He said he couldn't. A little something with his meals was an absolute necessity to him. So there I had to leave it. And then one day I met him again at a wedding reception at one of the hotels.'

'I. . .' said Lord Tilbury.

'A wedding reception,' proceeded the Hon. Galahad. 'And, by a curious coincidence, there was another wedding reception going on at the same hotel, and, oddly enough, their bride was some sort of connexion of our bride. So pretty soon these two wedding parties began to mix and mingle, everybody happy and having a good time, and suddenly I felt something pluck at my elbow and there was old Plug, looking as white as a sheet. "Yes Plug?" I said, surprised. The poor, dear fellow uttered a hollow groan. "
Gally
, old man," he said, "lead me away old chap. The end has come. The stuff has begun to get me. I have had only the merest sip of champagne, and yet I assure you I can distinctly see two brides".'

'I. . .' said Lord Tilbury.

'A shock to the poor fellow, as you can readily imagine. I could have set his mind at rest, of course, but I saw that this was providential. Just the sort of jolt he had been needing. I drew him into a corner and talked to him like a Dutch uncle. And this time he gave me his solemn word that from that day onward he would never touch another drop. "Can you do it, Plug?" I said. "Have you the strength, the will-power?" "Yes,
Gally
," he replied bravely, "I can. Why, dash it," he said, "I've got to. I can't go through the rest of my life seeing two of everything. Imagine! Two bookies you owe money to... Two process-ser
vers... Two Stinker Pykes..."

Yes, old man, in that grim moment he thought of you . . . And he went off with a set, resolute look about his jaw which it did me good to see.'

'I...' said Lord Tilbury.

'And about two weeks later I came on him in the Strand, and he was bubbling over with quiet happiness. "It's all right,
Gally
." he said, "it's all right, old lad. I've done it. I've won the battle." "Amazing, Plug," I said. "Brave chap! Splendid fellow! Was it a terrific strain?" His eyes lit up. "It was at first," he said. "In fact, it was so tough that I didn't think I should be able to stick it out. And then I discovered a teetotal drink that is not only palatable but positively appetising. Absinthe, they call it, and now I've got that I don't care if I never touch wine, spirits, or any other intoxicants again".'

'I am not interested,' said Lord Tilbury, 'in your friend Basham.' The Hon. Galahad was remorseful.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'Shouldn't have rattled on. An old failing of mine, I'm afraid. Probably you've come on some most important errand, and here have I been yarning away, wasting your time. Quite right to pull me up. Take a seat, and tell me why you've suddenly bobbed up like this after all these years, Stinker.'

'Don't call me Stinker!'

'Of course. I'm sorry. Forgot. Well, carry on, Pyke.'

'And don't call me Pyke. My name is Tilbury.'

The Hon. Galahad started. His monocle fell from his eye, and he screwed it in again thoughtfully. There was a concerned and disapproving look on his face. He shook his head gravely.

'Going about under a false name? Bad. I don't like that.'

'Cor!'

'It never pays. Honestly, it doesn't. Sooner or later you're bound to be found out, and then you get it all the hotter from the judge. I remember saying that to Stiffy Vokes in the year ninety-nine, when he was sneaking about London calling himself Orlando Maltravers in the empty hope of baffling the bookies after a bad City and Suburban. And he, unlike you, had had the elementary sense to put on a false beard. Stinker, old chap,' said the Hon. Galahad kindly, 'is it worth while? Can this do anything but postpone the inevitable end? Why not go back and face the music like a man? Or, if the thing's too bad for that, at least look in at some good theatrical costumier's and buy some blond whiskers. What is it they are after you for ?'

Lord Tilbury was beginning to wonder if even a volume of Reminiscences which would rock England was worth the price he was paying.