Uncle Fred in the Springtime (5 page)

At the
sight of his nephew, his cheerfulness increased. He was very fond of Pongo, in
whose society many of his happiest and most instructive hours had been passed.
A day which they had spent together at the Dog Races some months before still
haunted the young man’s dreams.

‘Why,
hullo, my boy,’ he cried. ‘Delighted to see you. Park the scooter and come in.
What a morning! Warm, fragrant, balmy, yet with just that nip in the air that
puts a fellow on his toes. I saw one of those Western pictures at our local
cinema last night, in which a character described himself as being all spooked
up with zip and vinegar. That is precisely how I feel. The yeast of spring is
fermenting in my veins, and I am ready for anything. You’ve just missed the
boss.’

‘Was
that Aunt Jane I saw going off in the car?’

‘That
was the Big White Chief.’

The
information relieved Pongo. He respected and admired his aunt, but from boyhood
days she had always inspired him with a certain fear, and he was glad that he
had not got to meet her while he was passing through his present financial
crisis. Like so many aunts, she was gifted with a sort of second sight and one
glance at his face would almost certainly have told her that he was two hundred
in the red. From that to the confession that his difficulties were due to
unsuccessful speculations on the turf would have been the shortest of steps. He
did not like to think what would happen if she discovered his recent
activities.

‘She’s
motoring to Dover to catch the afternoon boat. She is off to the South of
France to nurse her mother, who is having one of her spells.’

‘Then
you’re all alone?’

‘Except
for your sister Valerie.’

‘Oh, my
gosh. Is she here?’

‘She
arrived last night, breathing flame through her nostrils. You’ve heard about
her broken engagement? Perhaps you have come here with the idea of comforting
her in her distress?’

‘Well,
not absolutely. In fact, between you and me, I’m not any too keen on meeting
her at the moment. I rather took Horace’s side in the recent brawl, and our
relations are distant.’

Lord
Ickenham nodded.

‘Yes,
now that you mention it, I recollect her saying something about your being some
offensive breed of insect. An emotional girl.’

‘Yes.’

‘But I
can’t understand her making such heavy weather over the thing. Everybody knows
a broken engagement doesn’t amount to anything. Your aunt, I remember, broke
ours six times in all before making me the happiest man in the world. Bless
her! The sweetest, truest wife man ever had. I hope her mother responds to
treatment and that she will be back with me soon. But not too soon. You know,
Pongo, it’s an odd thing that the detective Horace commissioned to chase
Valerie across the ice with bloodhounds should have been old Pott. Mustard
Pott, we used to call him. I’ve known him for years.’

‘Yes,
he was telling me. You started him as a sleuth.’

‘That’s
right. A versatile chap, Mustard. There aren’t many things he hasn’t done in
his time. He was on the stage once, I believe. Then he took to Silver Ring
bookeying. Then he ran a club. And I rather suspect him of being a defrocked
butler. Though what Nature really intended him to be, I have always felt, was a
confidence-trick man. Which, by the way, is a thing I’ve wanted to have a shot
at all my life, but never seemed able to get round to somehow.’

‘What
rot.’

‘It isn’t
rot. You shouldn’t mock at an old man’s daydreams. Every time I read one of
those bits in the paper about Another Victim Of The Confidence Trick, I yearn
to try it for myself, because I simply cannot bring myself to believe that
there are people in the world mugs enough to fall for it. Well, young Pongo,
how much?’

‘Eh?’

‘I can
see in your eye that you’ve come to make a touch. What’s the figure?’

Such
ready intelligence on the part of an uncle should have pleased a nephew, but
Pongo remained sombre. Now that the moment had come, his natural pessimism had
asserted itself again.

‘Well,
it’s rather a lot.’

‘A
flyer?’

‘A bit
more than that.’ ‘Ten?’

‘Two
hundred.’

‘Two —
what?
How in the world did you manage to get in the hole for a sum like that?’

‘I came
a bit of a mucker at Lincoln, being led astray by my advisers, and when I tried
to get it back at Hurst Park things came unstuck again, and the outcome and
upshot is that I owe a bookie named George Budd two hundred quid. Do you know
George Budd?’

‘Since
my time. When I was a prominent figure on the turf, George Budd was probably in
his cradle, sucking his pink toes.’

‘Well,
he isn’t sucking any pink toes now. He’s a tough egg. Bingo Little had a bit on
the slate with him last winter, and when he started trying to break it gently
to him that he might not be able pay up, this Budd said he did hope he would —’

‘So the
modern bookie feels like that, does he? The ones in my time always used to.’

‘—
because he said he knew it was silly to be superstitious but he had noticed
that every time anyone did him down for money some nasty accident happened to
them. He said it was like some sort of fate. And he summoned a great beefy
brute called Erb and dangled him before Bingo’s eyes. Erb called on me yesterday.’

‘What
did he say?’

‘He
didn’t say anything. He seemed to be one of those strong, silent men. He just
looked at me and nodded. So if you could possibly see your way, Uncle Fred, to
advancing —’

Lord
Ickenham shook his head regretfully.

‘Alas,
my boy, the ear which you are trying to bite, though not unresponsive, is
helpless to assist. There has been a shake-up in the Treasury department here.
Some little time ago, your aunt unfortunately decided to take over the family
finances and administer them herself, leaving me with just that bit of spending
money which a man requires for tobacco, self-respect, golf balls and what not.
My limit is a tenner.’

‘Oh, my
gosh! And Erb’s going to call again on Wednesday.’

There
was a wealth of sympathy and understanding in Lord Ickenham’s eye, as he patted
his nephew’s shoulder. He was gazing back across the years and seeing himself,
an ardent lad in the twenties, thoughtfully glueing a large black moustache
above his lips, his motive being to deceive and frustrate a bygone turf
commissioner doing business under the name of Jimmy Timms, the Safe Man.

‘I know
just how you must be feeling, my boy. We have all gone through it, from the
Archbishop of Canterbury, I imagine, downwards. Thirty-six years ago, almost to
this very day, I was climbing out of a window and shinning down a waterspout to
avoid a muscular individual named Syd, employed by a bookie who was my creditor
at the moment in very much the same executive capacity as this Erb of yours. I
got away all right, I remember, though what I have always thought must have
been an ormolu clock missed me by inches. There is only one thing to be done.
You must touch Horace Davenport.’

A
bitter smile wreathed Pongo’s lips.

‘Ha!’
he said briefly.

‘You
mean you have already tried? And failed? Too bad. Still, I wouldn’t despair. No
doubt you went the wrong way to work. I fancy that we shall find that when
tactfully approached by a man of my presence and dignity he will prove far more
plastic. Leave it to me. I will get into his ribs for you. There are no limits,
literally none, to what I can accomplish in the springtime.’

‘But
you can’t come to London.’

‘Can’t
come to London? I don’t understand you.’

‘Didn’t
Aunt Jane say she would skin you if you did?’

‘In her
whimsical way she did say something to that effect, true. But you appear to
have forgotten that she is on her way to the South of France.’

‘Yes—leaving
Valerie here to keep an eye on you.’

‘I see
what you mean. Yes, now that you mention it, there may possibly have been some
idea in her mind that Valerie would maintain an affectionate watch over my
movements during her absence. But be of good cheer. Valerie is not making a
long stay. She will be returning to London with you in your car.’

‘What?’

‘Yes.
She does not know it yet — in fact, I understood her to say that she was
proposing to remain some weeks — but I think you will find her at your side.’

‘What
do you mean? You can’t chuck her out.’

‘My
dear boy!’ said Lord Ickenham, shocked. ‘Of course not. But one has one’s
methods. Ah, there she is,’ he went on, as a girlish figure came round the
corner of the house. ‘Valerie, my dear, here’s Pongo.’

Valerie
Twistleton had paused to stare at a passing snail — coldly and forbiddingly, as
if it had been Horace Davenport. Looking up, she transferred this cold stare to
her brother.

‘So I
see,’ she said distantly. ‘What’s he doing here?’ ‘He has come to take you back
to London.’

‘I have
no intention whatsoever —’Nothing,’ proceeded Lord Ickenham, ‘could be more
delightful than to have you with me to cheer my loneliness, but Pongo feels
—
and I must say I agree with him — that you are making a great mistake in
running away like this.’

‘Doing
what?’

‘I’m
afraid that is the construction people will place on the fact of your leaving
London after what has happened. You know what people are. They sneer. They
jibe. They laugh behind the back. It will be different, of course, with your
real friends. They will merely feel a tender pity. They will look on you as the
wounded animal crawling to its lair, and will understand and sympathize. But I
repeat that in my opinion you are making a mistake. We Twistletons have always
rather prided ourselves on keeping the stiff upper lip in times of trouble, and
I confess that if I were in your place my impulse would be to show myself in my
usual haunts — gay, smiling, debonair…. Yes, Coggs?’

The
butler had appeared from the hall.

‘A
trunk call for you, m’lord.’

‘I will
come at once. Be thinking it over, my dear.’

For
some moments there had been proceeding from Valerie Twistleton a soft noise
like the escape of steam. It now ceased, and her teeth came together with a
sharp, unpleasant click.

‘Can
you wait ten minutes while I pack, Pongo?’ she said. ‘I will try not to keep
you longer.’

She
passed into the house, and Pongo lit a reverent cigarette. He did not approve
of his Uncle Fred, but he could not but admire his work.

Lord
Ickenham returned, looking about him.

‘Where’s
Valerie?’

‘Upstairs,
packing.’

‘Ah,
she decided to leave, then? I think she was wise. That was old Emsworth on the ‘phone.
I don’t think you’ve met him, have you? Lives at Blandings Castle in
Shropshire. I hardly know him myself, but he is the brother of a very old pal
of mine. He wants me to lunch with him at his club tomorrow. It will fit in
quite nicely. We’ll get this business of Horace over with in the morning. I’ll
meet you at the Drones at about twelve. And now come in and have a quick one.
Bless my soul, it’s wonderful to think that tomorrow I shall be in London. I
feel like a child about to be taken to the circus.’

Pongo’s
feelings, as he followed his uncle to the smoking-room, were more mixed. It was
stimulating, of course, to think that by his arts the other might succeed in
inducing Horace Davenport to join the Share-The-Wealth movement, but the
picture of him loose in London was one that tended definitely to knit the brow.
As always when Lord Ickenham proposed to share with him the bracing atmosphere
of the metropolis, he found himself regarding with apprehension the shape of
things to come.

A
thoughtful member of the Drones had once put the thing in a nutshell.

‘The
trouble with Pongo’s Uncle Fred,’ he had said, and the Drones is about the only
place nowadays where you hear sound, penetrating stuff like this, ‘is that,
though sixty if a day, he becomes on arriving in London as young as he feels —
which is, apparently, a youngish twenty-two. He has a nasty way of lugging
Pongo out into the open and there, right in the public eye, proceeding to step
high, wide and plentiful. I don’t know if you happen to know what the word “excesses”
means, but those are what Pongo’s Uncle Fred, when in London, invariably
commits.’

The
young man’s face, as he sipped his cocktail, was a little drawn and anxious.

4

His Uncle Fred’s theory
that. Horace Davenport, scientifically worked, would develop pay gold had
impressed Pongo Twistleton a good deal both when he heard it and during the
remainder of the day. Throughout the drive back to London it kept him in
optimistic mood. But when he woke on the following morning the idea struck him
as unsound and impractical.

It was
hopeless, he felt, to expect to mace any one given person for a sum like two
hundred pounds. The only possible solution of his financial worries was to open
a subscription list and let the general public in on the thing. He decided to
look in at the Drones immediately and test the sentiment of the investors. And
having arrived there, he was gratified to note that all the indications seemed
to point to a successful flotation.