Heavy Weather (32 page)

'Are you going, Julia?'

'There doesn't seem much for me to do round here. I feel that I am leaving the thing in competent hands. You speak for me. The voice is the voice of Constance, but you can take the sentiments, Clarence, as representing the views of a syndicate.'

Lord Emsworth watched her go without much sense of consolation. It is better, perhaps, to have one woman rather than two women making your life an inferno, but not so much better as to cause an elderly gentleman of quiet tastes to rejoice to any very marked extent.

'Now, listen, Clarence . . .'

Lord Emsworth stifled a moan, and tried - a task which the deaf adder of Scripture apparently found so easy - to hear nothing and give his mind to the things that really mattered.

He shifted restlessly on his settee. Surely soon there ought to be news from the Front. By this time, if Mr Disher was to be believed, the assault should have been made and, one hoped, rolled back by the devoted Pirbright.

Musing on Pirbright, Lord Emsworth became a little calmer. A capital fellow, he told himself, just the chap to handle the emergency which had arisen. Not much of a conversationalist, perhaps;

scarcely the companion one would choose for a long railway journey; a little on the 'Ur' and ' Yur' side; but then who wanted a lively and epigrammatic pig-man? The point about Pirbright was that, if silent, he had that quality which so proverbially goes with silence - strength. The door opened.

'Well, Beach?' said Lady Constance with queenly displeasure, for nobody likes to be interrupted in moments of oratory. 'What is it?'

Lord Emsworth sat up expectantly. 'Well, Beach, well?'

A close observer, which his lordship was not, would have seen that the butler had recently passed through some soul-searing experience. His was never a rosy face, but now it wore a pallor beyond the normal. His eyes were round and glassy, his breathing laboured. He looked like a butler who has just been brought into sharp contact with the facts of life.

'Everything is quite satisfactory, m'lord.'

'Pirbright caught the fellow?'

'Yes, m'lord.'

'Did he tell you what happened?'

‘I
was an eye-witness of the proceedings, m'lord.'

'Well? Well?'

'Oh, Clarence, must we really have all this now?'

'What? What? What? Of course we must have it now. God bless my soul! Yes, Beach?'

'The facts, m'lord, are as follows. In pursuance of your lordship's instructions, Pirbright had placed himself in concealment in the vicinity of the animal's sty, and from this post of vantage proceeded to keep a keen watch.'

'What were you doing there?'

The butler hesitated.

'I had come to lend assistance, m'lord, should it be required.' 'Splendid, Beach. Well?'

'My cooperation, however, was not found to be necessary. The man arrived ...'

'Parsloe?'

('Clarence!')

'No, m'lord. Not Sir Gregory.' 'Ah, an accomplice.' ('Oh, Clarence!')

'No doubt, m'lord. The man arrived and came to the rails of the sty, where he remained for a moment. ..' 'Nerving himself! Nerving himself to his frightful task.' 'He seemed to be manipulating an electric torch, m'lord.' 'And then - ?'

'Pirbright sprang out and overpowered him.' 'Excellent! And where is the fellow now?' 'Temporarily incarcerated in the coal-cellar, m'lord.' 'Bring him to me at once.'

'Clarence, do we want this man, whoever he is, in here?' 'Yes, we do want him in here.' Beach coughed.

'I should mention, m'lord, that he is considerably soiled. In order to overpower him, Pirbright was compelled to throw him face downwards and rest his weight upon him, and the ground in the neighbourhood of the sty had been somewhat softened by the heavy rain.'

'Never mind. I want to see him.'

'Very good, m'lord.'

The interval between the butler's retirement and reappearance was spent by Lady Constance in sniffing indignantly and by Lord Emsworth in congratulating himself that a sense of civic duty and a lively apprehension of what his sister would say if he resigned that office had kept him a Justice of the Peace. Representing, as he did, the majesty of the Law, he was in a position to deal summarily with this criminal. He would have to look it up in the book of instructions, of course, but he rather fancied he could give the chap fourteen days without moving from this settee.

The door had opened again.

'The miscreant, m'lord,' announced Beach.

With a final sniff, Lady Constance dissociated herself from the affair by withdrawing into a corner and opening a photograph album. There was a scuffling of feet, and the prisoner at the bar entered, trailing like clouds of glory Stokes, first footman, attached to his right arm, and Thomas, second footman, clinging like a limpet to his left.

'Good God!' cried Lord Emsworth, startled out of his judicial calm. 'What a horrible-looking brute!'

Lord Tilbury, though resenting the description keenly, would have been compelled, had he been able at the moment to look in a mirror, to recognize its essential justice. Beau Brummell himself could not have remained spruce after lying in four inches of mud with a six-foot pig-man on top of him. Pirbright was a man who believed that a thing well begun is half done, and his first act had been to thrust Lord Tilbury's face firmly below the surface and keep it there.

A sudden idea struck Lord Emsworth.

'Beach!'

'Did Pirbright say if this was the same fellow he shut up in the shed yesterday?' 'Yes, m'lord.' 'It is?'

'Yes, m'lord.'

'God bless my soul!' cried Lord Emsworth.

This pertinacity appalled him. It showed how dangerous the chap was. None of that business here of the burne
d child dreading the potting-she
d. No sooner was this fellow out of that mess than back he came for a second pop, as malignant as ever. The quicker he was put safely away behind the bars of Market Blandings' picturesque little prison, the better, felt Lord Emsworth.

He was interrupted in this meditation by a voice proceeding from behind the mud.

'Lord Emsworth, I wish to speak to you alone.'

'Well, you dashed well can't speak to me alone,' replied his lordship with decision. 'Think I'm going to allow myself to be left alone with a fellow like you? Beach!'

'M'lord?'

'Take that thingummajig,' said Lord Emsworth, indicating the young David prophesying before Saul, 'and if he so much as stirs hit him a good hard bang with it.'

'Very good, m'lord.'

'Now, then, what's your name?'

‘I
refuse to tell you my name unless you will let me speak to you alone.'

Lo
rd Emsworth's gaze hardened.

'You notice how he keeps wanting to get me alone, Beach.'

'Yes, m'lord.'

'Suspicious.'

'Yes, m'lord.'

'Stand by with that thing.'

'Very good, m'lord,' said the butler, taking a firmer grip on David's left leg.

'Hallo,' said a voice. 'What's all this? Ah, Connie, I thought I should find you here.'

Lord Emsworth, peering through his pince-nez, perceived that his brother Galahad had entered the room. With him was that little girl of Ronald's. At the sight of her Lord Emsworth found his righteous wrath tinged with a certain embarrassment.

'Don't come in here now, Galahad, there's a good fellow,' he begged. 'I'm busy.'

'Good God! What on earth's that?' cried the Hon. Galahad, his monocle leaping from his eye as he suddenly caught sight of the mass of alluvial deposits which was Lord Tilbury.

'It's a horrible chap Pirbright found sneaking into the Empress's sty,' explained Lord Emsworth. 'Parsloe's accomplice, whom you warned me about. I'm just going to give him fourteen days.'

This frank statement of policy decided Lord Tilbury. For the second time that day he thought on his feet. Passionately though he desired to preserve his incognito, he did not wish to do so at the expense of two weeks in jail.

'Threepwood,' he cried, 'tell this old fool who I am.'

The Hon. Galahad had recovered his monocle.

'But, my dear chap,' he protested, staring through it, 'I don't know who you are. You look like one of those Sons of Toil Buried by Tons of Soil I once saw in a headline. Are you somebody I've met?' He peered more closely and uttered an astonished cry. 'Stinker! Is it really you, my poor old Stinker, hidden away under all that real estate? I can explain all this, Clarence. I think first, perhaps, though, it would be as well to clear the court. Pop off, Beach, for a moment, if you don't mind.'

'Very good, Mr Galahad,' said Beach, with the disappointed air of a man who is being thrown out of a theatre just as the curtain is going up. He put down the young David and, collecting eyes

like a hostess at a dinner-party, led Thomas and Stokes from the room.

'Is it safe, Galahad?' said Lord Emsworth dubiously.

'Oh, Stinker - Pyke, I mean - Tilbury, that is to say, is quite harmless.'

'What did you say his name was?'

'Tilbury. Lord Tilbury.'

'Lord
Tilbury?' said Lord Emsworth, gaping.

'Yes. Apparently they've made old Stinker a peer.'

'Then what was he doing trying to kill my pig?' asked Lord Emsworth, perplexed, for he had a high opinion of the moral purity of the House of Lords.

'He wasn't trying to kill your blasted pig. You came after that manuscript of mine, eh, Stinker?'

'I did,' said Lord Tilbury stiffly. 'I consider that I have a legal right to it.'

'Yes, we went into all that before, I remember. But abandon all hope, Stinker. There isn't any manuscript. The pig's eaten it.' 'What!'

'Yes. So unless you care to publish the pig ...'

There was too much mud on Lord Tilbury's face to admit of any play of expression, but the sudden rigidity of his body told how shrewdly the blow had gone home.

'Oh!' he said at length.

'I'm afraid so,' said the Hon. Galahad sympathetically.

'If you will excuse me,' said Lord Tilbury, 'I will return to the Emsworth Arms.'

The Hon. Galahad took his soiled arm.

'My dear old chap! You can't possibly go to any pub looking like that. Beach will show you to the bathroom. Beach!'

'Sir?' said the butler, manifesting himself with the celerity of one who has never been far from the keyhole.

'Take Lord Tilbury to the bathroom, and then telephone to the Emsworth Arms to send up his things. He will be staying the night. Several nights. In fact, indefinitely. Yes, yes, Stinker, I insist. Dash it, man, we haven't seen one another for twenty-five years. I want a long yarn with you about the old days.'

For an instant it seemed as if the proud spirit of the Pykes was to flame in revolt. Lord Tilbury def
initely drew himself up. But
he was not the man he had been. Every man, moreover, has his price. That of the proprietor of the Mammoth Publishing Company at this moment was a hot bath with plenty of soap, a sprinkling of bath-salts, and well-warmed towels. 'Kind of you,' he said gruffly.

Like the mountain reluctantly deciding to come to Mahomet, he followed Beach from the room.

'And now, Connie,' said the Hon. Galahad, 'you can put that book down and come and join the party.'

Lady Constance moved with dignified step from her corner.

'I suppose,' said the Hon. Galahad, eyeing her unfraternally, 'you've been nagging and bullying poor old Clarence till he doesn't know where he is?'

'I have been giving Clarence my views.'

'You would. I suppose the poor devil's half off his head.'

'Clarence has been listening very patiently and attentively,' said Lady Constance. 'I think he understands what is the right thing for him to do in this matter - a matter which I must say I would prefer to discuss, if we are going to discuss it, in private.'

'You mean you don't want Sue here?'

'I should imagine that Miss Brown would find it less embarrassing not to be present.'

'Well, I do want her here,' said the Hon. Galahad. 'I brought her specially. To show her to you, Clarence.'