Uncle Fred in the Springtime (7 page)

‘Oh?’

‘A
cert.’

‘Ah?’

‘An
absolute dashed cast-iron cert. ‘Oofy Prosser sneered visibly.

‘I’m
not betting. What’s the use of winning a couple of quid? Why, last Sunday at
the big table at Le Touquet —’

Pongo
sped towards Claude Pott, scattering Eggs, Beans and Crumpets from his path.

‘Mr
Port!’

‘Sir?’

‘Any
limit?’

‘No,
sir.’

‘I’ve a
friend here who wants to put on something big.’

‘Ready
money only, Mr T., may I remind you? It’s the law.’

‘Nonsense.
This is Mr Prosser. You can take his cheque. You must have heard of Mr Prosser.’

‘Oh, Mr
Prosser? Yes, that’s different. I don’t mind breaking the law to oblige Mr
Prosser.’

Pongo,
bounding back to the bar, found there an Oofy no longer aloof and supercilious.

‘Do you
really know something, Pongo?’

‘You
bet I know something. Will you cut me in for fifty?’

‘All
right.’

‘Then
put your shirt on Boy Scout,’ hissed Pongo. ‘I have first-hand stable information
that the bloke in the telephone booth is Horace Davenport, and I happen to know
that he went to a fancy-dress dance last night as a Boy Scout and hasn’t been
home to change yet.’

‘What!
Is that right?’

‘Absolutely
official.’

‘Then
it’s money for jam!’

‘Money
for pickles,’ asserted Pongo enthusiastically. ‘Follow me and fear nothing. And
don’t forget I’m in for the sum I mentioned.’

With a
kindling eye he watched his financial backer force his way into the local
Tattersall’s, and it was at this tense moment that a page-boy came up and
informed him that Lord Ickenham was waiting for him in the hall. He went
floating out to meet him, his feet scarcely touching the carpet.

Lord
Ickenham watched his approach with interest.

‘Aha!’
he said.

‘Aha!’
said Pongo, but absently, as one who has no time for formal greetings. ‘Listen,
Uncle Fred, slip me every bally cent you’ve got on you. I may just be able to
get it down before the book closes. Your pal, Claude Pott, came here with
Horace Davenport —’

‘I wonder
what Horace was doing, bringing Mustard to the Drones. Capital chap, of course,
but quite the wrong person to let loose in a gathering of impressionable young
men.’

Pongo’s
manner betrayed impatience.

‘We
haven’t time to go into the ethics of the thing. Suffice it that Horace did
bring him, and he shut Horace up in the telephone booth and started a book on
what sort of clothes he had on. How much can you raise?’

‘To
wager against Mustard Port?’ Lord Ickenham smiled gently. ‘Nothing, my dear
boy, nothing. One of the hard lessons Life will teach you, as you grow to know
him better, is that you can’t make money out of Mustard. Hundreds have tried
it, and hundreds have failed.’

Pongo
shrugged his shoulders. He had done his best.

‘Well,
you’re missing the chance of a lifetime. I happen to know that Horace went to a
dance last night as a Boy Scout, and I have it from Port’s own lips that he
hasn’t been home to change. Oofy Prosser is carrying me for fifty.’

It was
evident from his expression that Lord Ickenham was genuinely shocked. ‘Horace
Davenport went to a dance as a Boy Scout? What a ghastly sight he must have
looked. I can’t believe this. I must verify it. Bates,’ said Lord Ickenham,
walking over to the hall porter’s desk, ‘were you here when Mr Davenport came
in?’

‘Yes, m’lord.’

‘How
did he look?’

‘Terrible,
m’lord.’

It
seemed to Pongo that his uncle had wandered from the point.

‘I
concede,’ he said, ‘that a chap of Horace’s height and skinniness ought to have
been shrewder than to flaunt himself at a public dance in the costume of a Boy
Scout. Involving as it does, knickerbockers and bare knees —’

‘But he
didn’t, sir.’

‘What!’

The
hall porter was polite, but firm.

‘Mr
Davenport didn’t go to no dance as no Boy ruddy Scout, if you’ll pardon me
contradicting you, sir. More like some sort of negroid character, it seemed to
me. His face was all blacked up, and he had a spear with him. Gave me a nasty
turn when he come through.’

Pongo
clutched the desk. The hall porter’s seventeen stone seemed to be swaying before
his eyes.

‘Blacked
up?’

A
movement along the passage attracted their attention. Claude Pott, accompanied
by a small committee, was proceeding to the telephone booth. He removed the
wedge from beneath the door, and as he opened it there emerged a figure.

Nature
hath framed strange fellows in her time, but few stranger than the one that now
whizzed past the little group at the desk and, bursting through the door of the
club, whizzed down the steps and into a passing cab.

The
face of this individual, as the hall porter had foreshadowed, was a rich black
in colour. Its long body was draped in tights of the same sombre hue,
surmounted by a leopard’s skin. Towering above its head was a head-dress of
ostrich feathers, and in its right hand it grasped an assegai. It was wearing
tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles. Pongo, sliding back against the desk, found
his arm gripped by a kindly hand.

‘Shift
ho, my boy, I think, eh?’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘There would appear to be nothing
to keep you here, and a meeting with Oofy Prosser at this moment might be
fraught with pain and embarrassment. Let us follow Horace — he seemed to be
homing —and hold an enquiry into this in-and-out running of his. Tell me, how
much did you say Oofy Prosser was carrying you for? Fifty pounds?’

Pongo
nodded bleakly.

‘Then
let us assemble the facts. Your assets are nil. You owe George Budd two
hundred. You now owe Oofy fifty. If you don’t pay Oofy, he will presumably
report you to the committee and have you thrown into the street, where you will
doubtless find Erb waiting for you with a knuckleduster. Well,’ said Lord
Ickenham, impressed, ‘nobody can say you don’t lead a full life. To a yokel
like myself all this is very stimulating. One has the sense of being right at
the pulsing heart of things.’

They
came to Bloxham Mansions, and were informed by Webster that Mr Davenport was in
his bath.

5

The Horace who entered the
library some ten minutes later in pajamas and a dressing-gown was a far more
prepossessing spectacle than the ghastly figure which had popped our of the
Drones Club telephone booth, but he was still patently a man who had suffered.
His face, scrubbed with butter and rinsed with soap and water, shone rosily,
but it was a haggard face, and the eyes were dark with anguish.

Into
these eyes, as he beheld the senior of his two visitors, there crept a look of
alarm. Horace Davenport was not unfamiliar with stories in which the male
relatives of injured girls called on young men with horsewhips.

Lord
Ickenham’s manner, however, was reassuring. Though considering him weak in the
head, he had always liked Horace, and he was touched by the forlornness of his
aspect.

‘How
are you, my dear fellow? I looked in earlier in the day, but you were out.’

‘Yes,
Webster told me.’

‘And
when I saw you at the Drones just now, you seemed pressed for time and nor in
the mood for conversation. I wanted to have a talk with you about this
unfortunate rift between yourself and Valerie. She has given me a fairly
comprehensive eye-witness’s report of the facts.’

Horace
seemed to swallow something jagged.

‘Oh,
has she?’

‘Yes. I
was chatting with her last night, and your name happened to come up.’

‘Oh,
did it?’

‘Yes.
In fact, she rather dwelt on you. Valerie — we must face it — is piqued.’

‘Yes.’

‘But
don’t let that worry you,’ said Lord Ickenham cheerily. ‘She’ll come round. I’m
convinced of it. When you reach my age, you will know that it is an excellent
sign when a girl speaks of a man as a goggle-eyed nitwit and says that her
dearest wish is to dip him in boiling oil and watch him wriggle.’

‘Did
she say that?’

‘Yes,
she was most definite about it — showing, I feel, that love still lingers. My
advice is — give her a day or two to cool off, and then start sending her
flowers. She will tear them to shreds. Send some more. She will rend them to
ribbons. Shoot in a further supply. And very soon, if you persevere, you will
find that the little daily dose is having its effect. I anticipate a complete
reconciliation somewhere about the first week in May.’

‘I see,’
said Horace moodily. ‘Well, that’s fine.’ Lord Ickenham felt a trifle ruffled.

‘You
don’t seem pleased.’

‘Oh, I
am. Oh yes, rather.’

‘Then
why do you continue to look like a dead fish on a slab?’

‘Well, the
fact is, there’s something else worrying me a bit at the moment.’

Pongo
broke a silence which had lasted for some twenty minutes. Since entering the
apartment he had been sitting with folded arms, as if hewn from the living
rock.

‘Oh, is
there?’ he cried. ‘And there’s something that’s jolly well worrying me at the moment.
Did you or did you not, you blighted Pendlebury-Davenport, definitely and
specifically state to me that you were going to that Ball as a Boy Scout? Come
on now. Did you or didn’t you?’

‘Yes, I
did. I remember. But I changed my mind.’

‘Changed
your mind! Coo!’ said Pongo, speaking through tightly clenched teeth and
borrowing from the powerful vocabulary of Claude Port to give emphasis to his
words. ‘He changed his mind! He changed his bally mind! Ha! Coo! Cor!’

‘Why,
what’s up?’

‘Oh,
nothing. You have merely utterly and completely ruined me, that’s all.’

‘Yes,
my dear Horace,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘I’m afraid you have let Pongo down rather
badly. When Pongo joins the Foreign Legion, the responsibility will be yours.
You give him your solemn assurance that you are going to the Ball in one
costume and actually attend it in another. Not very British.’

‘But
why does it matter?’

‘There
was some betting in the club smoking-room on what you were wearing, and Pongo,
unhappy lad, plunging in the light of what he thought was inside knowledge on
Boy Scout, took the knock.’

‘Oh, I
say! I’m frightfully sorry.’

‘Too
late to be sorry now.’

‘The
thing was, you see, that Polly thought it would be fun if I went as a Zulu
warrior.’

‘Evidently
a girl of exotic and rather unwholesome tastes. The word “morbid” is one that
springs to the lips. Who is this Polly?’

‘Port’s
daughter. She went to the Ball with me.’

Lord
Ickenham uttered an exclamation.

‘Not
little Polly Port? Good heavens, how time flies. Fancy Polly being old enough
to go to dances. I knew her when she was a kid. She used to come and spend her
holidays at Ickenham. A very jolly child she was, too, beloved by all. Quite
grown up now, eh? Well, well, we’re none of us getting younger. I was a boy in
the early fifties when I saw her last. So you took Polly to the Ball, did you?’

‘Yes.
You see, the original idea was that Valerie was to have gone. But when she gave
me the bird, I told her I would take Polly instead.’

‘Your
view being, of course, that that would learn her? A fine, defiant gesture. Did
Port go along?’

‘No, he
wasn’t there.’

‘Then
what was he doing at the Drones with you?’

‘Well,
you see, he had come to Marlborough Street to pay my fine, and we sort of
drifted on there afterwards. I suppose I had some idea of buying him a drink or
something.’

A faint
stir of interest ruffled the stone of Pongo’s face.

‘What
do you mean, your fine? Were you pinched last night?’

‘Yes.
There was a bit of unpleasantness at the Ball, and they scooped me in. It was
Ricky’s fault.’

‘Who,’
asked Lord Ickenham, ‘is Ricky?’

‘My
cousin. Alaric Gilpin.’

‘Poet.
Beefy chap with red hair. It was he who introduced this girl Polly to Horace,’
interpolated Pongo, supplying additional footnotes. ‘She was giving him dancing
lessons.’

‘And
how did he come to mix you up in unpleasantness?’

‘Well,
it was like this. Ricky, though I didn’t know it, is engaged to Polly. And
another thing I didn’t know was that he hadn’t much liked the idea of her
giving me dancing lessons and, when she told him I was taking her to the Ball,
expressly forbade her to go. So when he found us together there…. I say, he
wasn’t hanging about outside when you arrived, was he?’