Uncle Dynamite (20 page)

‘Ah,
Pongo,’ he said, making purposefully for the decanter and seeming in no way
surprised to see his nephew. ‘Up and about? One generally finds you not far
from the whisky.’ He filled his glass, and sank gracefully into a chair. ‘I
always think,’ he said, having refreshed himself with a couple of swallows and
a sip, ‘that this is the best hour of the day. The soothing hush, the grateful
stimulant, the pleasant conversation on whatever topic may happen to come up.
Well, my boy, what’s new? You seem upset about something. Nothing wrong, I
hope?’

Pongo
uttered a curious hissing sound like the death-rattle of a soda-water syphon.
He found the question ironical.

‘I
don’t know what you call wrong. I’ve just been told that I’m extremely apt to
have my insides ripped out.’

‘Who
told you that?’

‘Bill
Oakshott.’

‘Was he
merely reading your future in the tea leaves, or do you mean that he proposed
to do the ripping?’

‘He
proposed to do the ripping with his bare hands.’

‘You
amaze me. Bill Oakshott? That quiet, lovable young man.’

‘Lovable
be blowed. He’s worse than a Faceless Fiend. He could walk straight into the
Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s, and no questions asked. He also said he
would pull my head off at the roots, and strangle me like a foul snake.’

‘Difficult
to do that, if he had pulled your head off. Assuming, as I think we are
entitled to assume, that the neck would come away with the head. But what had
you been doing to Bill Oakshott to stir his passions thus?’

‘He
didn’t like my being in here with Elsie Bean.’

‘I
don’t think I remember who Elsie Bean is. One meets so many people.’

‘The
housemaid.’

‘Ah,
yes. The one you kiss.’

Pongo
raised a tortured face heavenwards, as if he were calling for justice from
above.

‘I
don’t kiss her! At least, I may have done once — like a brother — in recognition
of a signal service which she had rendered me. The way you and Bill Oakshott
talk, you’d think this Bean and I spent twenty-four hours a day playing
postman’s knock.’

‘My
dear boy, don’t get heated. My attitude is wholly sympathetic. I recollect now
that Bill told me he had been a little disturbed by the spectacle of the embrace.
He has the interests of your fiancée at heart.’

‘He’s
in love with her.’

‘Really?’

‘He
told me so.’

‘Well,
well. Poor lad. It must have been a severe jolt for him when I mentioned in the
train that she was engaged to you. I feel a gentle pity for Bill Oakshott.’

‘I
don’t. I hope he chokes.’

‘The
astonishing thing to my mind is that a man like Mugsy can have a daughter who
seems to fascinate one and all. One would have expected Mugsy’s daughter to be
something on the lines of the Gorgon, with snakes instead of hair. Did you
happen to hear him just now?’

‘Golly,
yes. What was all that?’

‘Just
Mugsy in one of his tantrums.’

‘Did he
catch you going into the collection room?’

‘He was
there already. Sleeping among his African curios. All wrong, it seemed to me.
Either a man is an African curio, or he is not an African curio. If he is not,
he ought not to curl up with them at night.’ A cloud came into Lord Ickenham’s
handsome face, and his voice took on a disapproving note. ‘You know, Pongo,
there is a kind of low cunning about Mugsy which I do not like to see. Can you
conceive the state of mind of a man who would have his bed moved into the
collection room and sleep there with a string tied to his big toe and to the
handle of the door?’

‘He
didn’t?’

‘He
certainly did. It’s the deceit of the thing that hurts me. Naturally I assumed,
when we all wished each other good night and went our separate ways, that Mugsy
was off to his bedroom like any decent householder, so I toddled down to the
collection room at zero hour without a thought of unpleasantness in my mind. A
nice, easy, agreeable job, I was saying to myself. I sauntered to the door,
grasped the handle, turned it and gave it a sharp pull.’

‘Gosh!’

‘I
don’t know if you have ever, while walking along a dark street, happened to
step on an unseen cat? I once had the experience years ago in
Waverly Place
,
New
York
, and the picture seemed to rise before my eyes
just now, when that awful yowl rent the air.’

‘What
on earth did you say?’

‘Well,
Mugsy did most of the saying.’

‘I mean,
how did you explain?’

‘Oh,
that? That was simple enough. I told him I was walking in my sleep.’

‘Did he
believe it?’

‘I
really don’t know. The point seemed to me of no interest.’

‘Well,
this dishes us.’

‘Nonsense.
That is the pessimist in you speaking. All that has happened is that we have
sustained a slight check —‘

‘Slight!’

‘My
dear Pongo, there are a thousand ways of getting around a trifling obstacle
like this. Mugsy is sleeping in the collection room, is he? Very well, then we
simply sit down and think out a good method of eliminating him. A knock-out
drop in his bedtime whisky and soda would, of course, be the best method, but I
happen to have come here without my knock-out drops. Idiotic of me. It is
madness to come to country houses without one’s bottle of Mickey Finns. One
ought to pack them first thing after one’s clean collars. But I’m not worrying
about Mugsy. If I can’t outsmart an ex-Governor, what was the use of all my
early training in the
United States of America
? The only thing that bothers me a little is the thought of Sally,
bless her heart. She is out there in the garden, watching and waiting like
Mariana at the moated grange —Pongo uttered a stricken cry.

‘And so
is that blighted Potter out there in the garden, watching and waiting like
Mariana at the ruddy moated grange. I’d clean forgotten Elsie Bean told me so.
She came in here to get a drink for him.’

Lord
Ickenham stroked his chin.

‘H’m. I
did not know that. He’s out in the garden, eh? That may complicate matters a
little. I hope —‘

He
broke off. Shrilling through the quiet night, the front door-bell had begun to
ring, loudly and continuously, as if someone had placed a large, fat thumb on
the button and was keeping it there.

Lord
Ickenham looked at Pongo. Pongo looked at Lord Ickenham.

‘Potter!’
said Lord Ickenham.

‘The
rotter!’ said Pongo.

9

It is a characteristic of
England’s splendid police force at which many people have pointed with pride,
or would have pointed with pride if they had happened to think of it, that its
members, thanks to the rigid discipline which has moulded them since they were
slips of boys, are always able to bear with philosophic fortitude the hardships
and disappointments inseparable from their chosen walk in life. They can, in a
word, take it as well as dish it out.

if, for
example, they happen to be lurking in the garden of a country house in the
small hours, when even a summer night tends to be a bit chilly, and ask their
friends to bring them a drop of something to keep the cold out, and after a
longish wait it becomes evident that this drop is not going to materialize,
they do not wince nor cry aloud. ‘Duty, stern daughter of the voice of God,’
they say to themselves, and go on lurking.

It had
been so with Constable Potter. In their recent Romeo and Juliet scene Elsie
Bean had spoken hopefully of whisky in the drawing-room, but he quite realized
that obstacles might arise to prevent her connecting with it. And as the
minutes went by and she did not appear, he assumed that these obstacles had
arisen and with a couple of ‘Coo’s’ and a stifled oath dismissed the whole
subject of whisky from his mind.

In
surroundings such as those in which he was keeping his vigil a more spiritual
man might have felt the urge to try his hand at roughing out a little verse, so
much was there that was romantic and inspirational in the garden of Ashenden
Manor at this hour. Soft breezes sighed through the trees, bringing with them
the scent of stock and tobacco plant. Owls tu-whitted, other owls tu-whooed.
Add the silent grandeur of the fine old house and the shimmer of distant water
reflecting the twinkling stars above, and you had a set-up well calculated to
produce another policeman-poet.

But
Harold Potter had never been much of a man for poetry. Even when alone with
Elsie Bean in the moonlight he seldom got much further in that direction than a
description of the effect which regulation boots had on his corns. What he
thought of was beef sandwiches. And he was just sketching out in his mind the
beef sandwich supreme which he would eat on returning to his cottage, when in
the darkness before him he discerned a dim form. Like himself, it appeared to
be lurking.

He
pursed his lips disapprovingly. He had taken an instant dislike to this dim
form. It was not the fact that it was dim that offended him. In the
garden
of
Ashenden
Manor
at one in the morning a form had got to be dim.
It had no option. The point, as Constable Potter saw it, was that forms, dim or
otherwise, had no business to be in the
garden
of
Ashenden Manor
at one in the morning, and he stepped forward, his blood circulating briskly.
This might or might not be big stuff, but it had all the appearance of big
stuff. ‘Intrepid Officer Traps Nocturnal Marauder’ seemed to him about the
angle from which to look at the thing.

‘‘Ullo,’
he boomed. He should have said: ‘What’s all this?’ which is the formula laid
down for use on these occasions in ‘What Every Young Policeman Ought to Know,’ but,
as so often happens, excitement had made him blow up in his lines.’ ‘Ullo. What
are
you
doing here?’

The
next morning any doubt which he might have entertained as to the bigness of the
stuff was resolved. With a startled squeak the dim figure, which had leaped
some six inches into the air on being addressed, broke into hurried flight, and
with the deep bay, so like a bloodhound’s, of the policeman engaged in the
execution of his duty he immediately proceeded to bound after it. ‘Night Chase
in
Darkened
Garden
,’ he was feeling as he dropped into
his stride.

Into
races of a cross-country nature the element of luck always enters largely. One
notices this in the Grand National. Had the affair been taking place on a
cinder track, few punters would have cared to invest their money on the
constable, for he was built for endurance rather than speed and his quarry was
showing itself exceptionally nippy on its feet. But in this more difficult
going nimbleness was not everything. Some unseen obstacle tripped the dim form.
It stumbled, nearly fell. Constable Potter charged up, reached out, seized
something. There was a rending sound and he fell back, momentarily deprived of
his balance. When he recovered it, he was alone with the owls and the stars.
The dim form had disappeared, and he stood there with his hands full of what
seemed to be the major part of a woman’s dress.

It was
at this point that he felt justified, despite the advanced hour, in going to
the front door and ringing the bell. And it was not long afterwards that the
door opened and he strode masterfully into the hall.

He
found himself playing to a gratifyingly full house. He was, indeed, doing
absolute capacity. You cannot punch front door-bells in the small hours without
attracting attention, and Ashenden Manor had turned out
en masse
to
greet him. In addition to such members of his personal circle as Mrs Gooch, the
cook, Elsie Bean, his betrothed, Jane, the parlourmaid, and Percy, the boy who
cleaned the knives and boots, he noticed Sir Aylmer Bostock, looking like
Clemenceau on one of his bad mornings, Lady Bostock, looking like a horse, and
their nephew William, looking large and vermilion. There was also present, and
a shudder ran through him as he saw them, the scum of the
East Dulwich
underworld in the person of
the scoundrels George Robinson and Edwin Smith. The former was, as ever, debonair;
the latter seemed agitated.

Constable
Potter fondled his moustache. This was his hour, the high spot in his life when
he was going to be fawned on by one and all. Or he thought it was until, just
as he was about to speak, Sir Aylmer, who after the incursion of Lord Ickenham
had managed to get to sleep again and had woken up cross, exploded like a bomb.

‘POTTER!’

‘Sir?’
said the zealous officer, somewhat taken aback by his manner.

‘Was it
YOU making that infernal noise?’

‘Sir?’

‘Ringing
the damned bell at this hour! Waking everybody up! Ruining my night’s rest!
WHAT THE DEVIL DO YOU MEAN BY IT?’