Luck of the Bodkins (20 page)

'Admirable,' said Reggie. 'Most judicious. The best move you could have made. I see now why her manner to me has been a bit cold of late.
’

‘
Has it?'

'Very cold. In fact, the only time it has really approached warmth since the first day out was just now in that state-room. There was a sort of hummock in the bed,' said Reggie, living over a scene which was plainly green in his memory, 'and I said to myself: "This is where I give Monty a laughable surprise," and I spat on my hand and hauled off and let it go. As I say, most embarrassing. Well, what you have told me makes the procedure absurdly simple. I can put you straight with her in a second. I will go to her at once and tell her that it was I who wrote that writing on the wall.'

The tray on Monty's lap heaved and rattled. For the first time he began to regard the dancing of the sunbeams on the ceiling as something other than an offensive piece of gatecrashing. He could meet the smiling eye of the Mickey Mouse without wincing.

‘
Reggie! Would you do that?'

'Of course. The only plan.'

'But will she believe you?
’

'Of course she'll believe me. It all fits in perfectly. You seem to have made me out such a bally hound that she will be ready to believe anything to my detriment and discredit
’

'I'm sorry about that.'

'Don't apologize. Very strategic'

'But where would you have got lipstick?
’

'Lipstick can be borrowed.'

Monty's last doubts as to the feasibility of the scheme were removed. He gazed upon Reggie emotionally. He saw how wrong he had been in hastily taking him for a pest and an excrescence when he had entered the room. A sort of modern Sydney Carton was what Reggie seemed to him now.

He could not, however, repress a certain qualm as he considered this thing that his friend was about to do for him.

'I'm afraid she'll be pretty peeved with you.'

'Peeved? Gertrude? My first cousin? A girl I've seen spanked by a nurse with a hair-brush? You don't suppose I care what old pie-faced Gertrude thinks of me, do you? Good heavens, no. One laughs lightly and snaps the fingers. Don't you worry about me.'

Powerful emotions were wrestling with one another in

Monty's bosom. In addition to relief there was the agony of hearing the girl he loved described as 'old pie-faced Gertrude', sheer wonder at the realization that there could exist a man who did not value her good opinion, and a burning resentment against a nurse capable of perpetrating the hideous outrage specified. But relief was the most powerful. 'Thanks,' he said.

It was with difficulty that he could utter even that simple word.

'Well,' said Reggie, 'that seems to clean you up nicely as far as the writing on the wall is concerned. As regards your playing kiss-in-the-ring with Lottie Blossom in your state-room -
’

'We weren't playing kiss-in-the-ring!'

'Well, postman's knock, or whatever it was.'

‘I
told you we were simply talking about Ambrose.'

'It sounds a little thin to me,' said Reggie critically. 'Still, if that's your story, you are no doubt wise to stick to it All I'm saying is that with regard to Lottie you must use your own efforts to put things right. But I can certainly square you over the writing, and I will do so without delay. I'll see Gertrude immediately, and after that I'm going to throw out a drag-net for Mabel Spence. In which connection, would you say - suede shoes, white flannel bags, the tie and a Trinity Hall blazer, or suede shoes, white flannel bags, the tie and neat blue jacket?'

Monty reflected.

'Neat blue jacket, if you ask me.'

'Right,' said Reggie.

Mabel Spence, meanwhile, all unaware of the treat in store for her, was in Ivor Llewellyn's state-room, hearing from that agitated man's lips the story of the breakdown of yesterday's negotiations. Mr Llewellyn was still in bed, and the salmon-pink of his pyjama jacket seemed to take on a deeper hue in contrast to the apprehensive pallor of the face above it.

'The guy said he had other views!'

The motion-picture magnate's voice shook as he spoke these sinister words, and Mabel Spence also seemed to find them ominous. She gave a little whistle and with a thoughtful tightness about her Hps took a cigarette from the box beside the bed, a simple action which somehow had the effect of stirring Mr Llewellyn to extreme irritability.

'I wish you wouldn't use my cigarettes. Haven't you got any of your own?'

'All right, old Southern Hospitality. I'll pu
t it back... Other views, eh?' ‘That's what he said.' ‘
I don't like that.' 'You and me both.'

'It looks to me as if he wasn't going to play ball. Tell me exactly what happened.
’

Mr Llewellyn hitched himself up against the pillows.

'I sent young Tennyson to him with a blank contract. See what I mean? Money wasn't to be any object, see? All
I
wanted to know was would he come and act for the S.-L., because if so he could fill in the figures just as it suited him. And back comes Tennyson and says the guy thanks me, but he has other views.'

Mabel Spence shook her head.

‘
I don't like it.'

The remark seemed to infuriate her brother-in-law as much as her helping herself to his cigarettes had done.

'Where's the sense in standing there saying you don't like it? Of course you don't like it.
‘
don't like it. You don't see me dancing about and clapping my hands, do you? I'm not singing, am I? I'm not calling for three rousing cheers, am I?'

Mabel continued to ponder. She was completely puzzled. If she had been Monty Bodkin, she would have said that the thing was inexplicable. What she did say was that it beat her.

'Sure. And it beat me,' said Mr Llewellyn, 'till Tennyson went on and told me something else. Do you know what he told me? He said this guy Bodkin is next door to a millionaire. See what that means? It means he just does this spying work for the kick he gets out of it. Like a ghoul or something. The money end don't mean nothing to him. All he wants is to watch people suffer. How can you fix a man like that?'

He brooded for a moment. He seemed to be feeling that it was just his luck that the only Customs spy he had ever fallen foul of should be one who combined large private means with
a
fiendish disposition.

'Well, this lets me out. I know when I'm licked. I'm going to declare that necklace of Grayce's and pay the duty.'

‘
I wouldn't.'

'I don't give a darn what you would do. I'm going to.
’
'Oh, well, suit yourself.' 'You're right. I'll suit myself.
’

‘
I was only thinking,
’
said Mabel pensively, 'of the wireless
I
had from Grayce last night.'

Something of Mr Llewellyn's sturdy resolution left him. His face, which emotion had made almost a match for the pyjama jacket, lost some of its colour. As Monty Bodkin had done on another occasion, he moistened his lips with the tip of the tongue.

‘
Wireless? From Grayce?'

‘
Yes.'

'Let's see it.'

'It's in my state-room.
’

'What did she say?'

'I can't remember the exact words. Something about "tell you that if you didn't come through she knew what she was going to do about it".'

'She knew,' murmured Mr Llewellyn, like a man in a trance, 'what she was going to do about it.'

Mabel Spence eyed him with a certain commiseration.

'Honestly, Ikey,' she said, 'I'd go ahead with the thing.
I
wouldn't take chances with Grayce. You know what she's like. Impulsive. And don't forget she's actually in Paris, so all she's got to do if she wants a Paris divorce is to put on her hat and call a taxi.'

Mr Llewellyn was not forgetting this.

'And even if this fellow Bodkin won't sit in, why worry? Suppose he does know you're planning to put something over. Suppose he does tip off his pals on shore to keep their eyes skinned when you show up at the Customs sheds. What of it? There won't be anything doing till they start to examine your baggage, and by that time George will be a mile away with the stuff.'

Mr Llewellyn refused to be comforted. It was probably the fact that his wife's brother George was to be a principal in the affair that prejudiced him against what he had come to label in his mind the Hat Sequence, but prejudiced he undoubtedly was. Instead of the happy smile, Mabel's optimism produced only the bitter sneer.

‘
You think a smart guy like that won't get to thinking things when he sees George and me knocking each other's hats off and changing them like a couple of fellows in vaudeville? The second he sees it he'll know that there's funny business going on.'

'He won't see it. He won't be there.
’

‘
Won't be there? He'll be tagging along a yard behind me from the minute we get ashore.'

‘
No, he won't. We'll hold him on board till you've got off and met George.'

'Yes? And how are you going to do that?'

'Easy. Reggie Tennyson can get him out of the way somehow. They're friends. Reggie can take him off somewhere to talk about something. You leave it to me. I'll fix it.'

Mr Llewellyn, as we have seen, could never be really fond of his sister-in-law, but he had to admit that there was something about her personality that inspired confidence. His breathing became easier.

‘I
won't tell Reggie why he's got to do it, of course. I'll just say I want him to.'

'And that'll be enough?
’

'Sure.'

'Say, you two seem to be getting along pretty well together."

'Yes. I like Reggie. And I'm sorry for him. Poor boy, his family are sending him to work in an office in Montreal, and he's all broken up about it. He says, if he's got to work at all, he'd prefer it to be somewhere out in the great open spaces where men are men and, more particularly, women are women - like Hollywood.
’

Mr Llewellyn's eyes narrowed warily. A suspicious expression came into them. He smelt a rat. He saw it floating in the air.

‘
Oh?' he said. 'He does, does he?
’

"Yes. And I was wondering,
’
said Mabel, 'if you couldn't find him something to do at Llewellyn City, Ikey?'

All
that was visible of Ivor Llewellyn above the bedclothes shook as with a palsy, and a ripple among the blankets showed that the invisible part of him was shaking, too. Often as he had been through discussions of this kind, he was never able to remain quite calm when they came up. When an opportunity of doing something at Llewellyn City for a relative or a friend of a relative or a relative by marriage or a friend of
a
relative by marriage was offered to him, it always made him feel as if his interior organs were being stirred up with a pole. On these occasions it was his practice to bark like a sea-lion asking for fish, and he did so now.

'Ha!
’
he cried. 'I was wondering when that was coming.
I
was just waiting for that.
’

'Reggie could be very useful to you.
’

'How? There's already a fellow sweeps out my office.
^,

'You often use English sequences in your pictures. He could keep you straight on them. Couldn't you, Reggie?' said Mabel, addressing the vision in shining flannel trousers and neat blue jacket which had just sauntered in without, as Mr Llewellyn sourly noted, bothering to knock. People who wished to enter Ivor Llewellyn's presence on the S.-L. lot at Llewellyn City had to wait anything from one to two hours in an ante-room, and this was not the first time the motion-picture magnate had found himself irked by the less formal conditions prevailing on shipboard.

'What ho!' said Reggie cheerily. 'What ho, what ho, and again what ho. Good morning, Mabel, and you, Llewellyn. You're both looking extraordinarily well and attractive. I like those pink pyjamas, Llewellyn. Every man his own sunset. I've been scouring the ship for you, young M. Spence, and they told me you were in here. How do you react to the idea of
a
spot of shuffleboard?'