Luck of the Bodkins Read online

  ‘I do.'

  'I didn't know you did.'

  'Well, I do. If it interests you, we used to be engaged.’

  ‘Engaged?'

  ‘Yes.'

  'Engaged? I never heard about it.'

  ‘Father would not allow it to be announced.'

  'Why not?'

  ‘He didn't wish it’

  ‘Why not?'

  ‘Oh, Reggie!’

  Reggie was gradually assembling his facts.

  ‘Well, well! So you and Monty used to be engaged, eh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you aren't engaged any longer?’ ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?' 'Never mind.’

  'Don't you like old Monty?' 'No.’

  ‘Why not?’ 'Oh, Reggie!' 'Everybody else likes him.’ 'Indeed?'

  'Certainly. He's a most sterling bloke.’ 'I don't agree with you.' 'Why not?'

  'Oh, Reggie, for goodness' sake!’

  It seemed to Reginald Tennyson that the time had come to speak the word in season. His heart was bleeding for Monty Bodkin. Any ass could have spotted from his demeanour during the recent scene that the poor blighter was all churned up by what had occurred, and all this funny business, felt Reggie, had gone far enough. A pretty state of things, he meant to say, if girls were to be allowed to go about the place getting it up their noses and coming over all haughty towards excellent coves like Monty.

  'It's no use saying "Oh, Reggie, for goodness’ sake!"' he rejoined sternly. 'You can say "Oh, Reggie, for goodness' sake!" till you burst your corsets, but you won't get away from the fact that you are a foolish young pipsqueak and are making the floater of a lifetime. You girls are all alike. You go swanking round, giving the bird to honest men and thinking nobody's good enough for you, and in the end you get left flat on your -in the end you get left. One of these days you will wake up in the cold grey dawn kicking yourself because you were such a chump as to let Monty get away from you. What's the matter with Monty? Good-looking, amiable, kind to animals, wealthy to bursting point - you couldn't have a better bet. And, in the friendliest spirit, may I inquire who the dickens you think you are? Greta Garbo, or somebody? Don't you be a goat, young Gertrude. You take my advice and run after him and give him a nice big kiss and tell him you're sorry that you were such a mug and that it's all on again.'

  An all-England centre-forward can be very terrible when roused, and the levin flash in Gertrude Butterwick's handsome eyes seemed to suggest that Reginald Tennyson was about to be snubbed with a ferocity which in his enfeebled state could not but have the worst effects. That hard stare was back on her face. She looked at him as if he were a referee who had just penalized her for sticks in the game of the season.

  Fortunately, before she could give utterance to her thoughts bells began to ring and whistles to blow, and the panic fear of being left behind by a departing train sank the hockey player in the woman. With a shrill and purely feminine squeak, Gertrude bounded off.

  Reggie's pace, as became an invalid, was slower. So much slower that the train had already begun to move when he reached it, and he had only just time to leap in. When he had at length succeeded in reassembling his jolted faculties, he discovered that he was alone in a compartment with the one man he most desired to see - Monty Bodkin, to wit. The poor old buster was sitting hunched up in the opposite corner, looking licked to a custard.

  Reggie could have wished for nothing better. In all London there was no young man more heartily devoted than he to pushing his nose into other people's business, and this opportunity of getting first-hand information about the other's shattered romance delighted him. His head was giving him considerable pain, and he had been hoping to employ the journey in catching up with his sleep a bit, but curiosity came before sleep.

  'Ha!' he exclaimed. 'Monty, by Jove! Well met, i' faith!’

  Chapter 3

  'Good Lord!' said Monty. 'What are you doing here, Reggie?’

  Reggie Tennyson waved the question aside. In ordinary circumstances it was a keen pleasure to him to talk about himself, but he had no desire to do so now.

  'I'm off to Canada,' he said. 'Never mind about that for the nonce. A full explanation will be supplied later. Monty, old boy, what's all this about you and my cousin Gertrude?'

  Monty Bodkin's first reaction to the spectacle of Reggie Tennyson invading his privacy like a sack of coals, after the initial astonishment of seeing him there at all, had been a regret that he had not had the presence of mind to nip the whole thing in the bud by pushing him in the face and sending him out again. He had earmarked the next hour and a half for silent communion with his tortured soul, and did not relish the prospect of having to talk to even an old friend.

  But at these words a powerful revulsion of feeling swept over him. His whole attention during the episode on the platform having been concentrated upon the girl he loved, he had not recognized the vague figure standing beyond her. Reason now told him that this must have been Reggie, and what he had just said suggested that Gertrude had been confiding in him. Reginald Tennyson had turned, in short, from an unwelcome intruder to a man who could give him inside information straight from the horse's mouth. He was too far in the depths to beam, but his drawn face relaxed and he offered his companion a gasper.

  'Did she,' he asked eagerly, 'tell you about it?’ ‘Rather.'

  ‘What did she say?'

  'She said you had been engaged and it had been broken off.’ 'Yes, but did she tell you why?’

  ‘No. Why was it?' 'I don't know.' 'You don't know?’ ‘I haven't a notion.'

  'But, dash it, if you had a row, you must know what it was about.' 'We didn't have a row.' 'You must have had.'

  'We didn't, I tell you. The whole thing is inexplicable,’

  'Is what?’

  ‘Rummy.’

  'Oh, rummy? Yes.'

  'Shall I place the facts before you?'

  ‘Do.'

  'I will. You will find them,' said Monty, 'inexplicable.’ There was silence for a moment. Monty seemed to be wrestling with his soul. He clenched his fists, and his ears wiggled.

  'The odd thing is,' said Reggie, 'that I didn't know you had ever met Gertrude.'

  ‘I had,' said Monty. 'Otherwise, how could we have got engaged?'

  'Something,' Reggie was forced to admit, 'in that. But why was it all kept so dark? Why is this the first I have heard of any bally engagement? Why wasn't the thing shoved in the Morning Post and generally blazoned over the metropolis like any other engagement?'

  'That was because there were wheels within wheels.'

  'How do you mean?'

  ‘I will come to that. Let me begin at the beginning.’

  'Skipping early childhood, of course?' said Reggie, a little anxiously. In his present delicate state of health, something a bit on the condensed side was what he was hoping for.

  A dreamy look came into Monty Bodkin's eyes - dreamy and at the same time anguished. He was living once more in the dear, dead past, and a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

  'The first time ‘I met Gertrude,' he began, 'was at a picnic on the river, down Streatley way. We found ourselves sitting next to one another and from the very inception of our acquaintance we were, in the best and deepest sense of the words, like ham and eggs. I squashed a wasp for her, and from that moment never looked back. I sent her flowers a bit and called a bit and we lunched a bit and went out dancing a bit, and about two weeks later we became engaged. At least, sort of.' ‘Sort of?'

  This is what ‘I meant when ‘I said there were wheels within wheels. It was her father who wouldn't let it be an ordinary straightforward engagement. Do you know her blasted father, by any chance - J. G. Butterwick, of Butterwick, Price & Mandelbaum, Export and Import Merchants? But of course you do,' said Monty, with a weary smile at the absurdity of the question. 'He's your uncle.'

  Reggie nodded.

  'He is my uncle. No good trying to hush that up at this time of day. But when you say k
now him - well, we don't mingle much. He doesn't approve of me.'

  'He didn't approve of me, either,'

  'And do you know what he's gone and done now, the old wart-hog? You asked me what I was doing on this train, and I told you I was on my way to Canada. You will scarcely credit this, but he has talked the family into shipping me off to Montreal to a foul office job. But don't let me get started talking about my own troubles,' said Reggie, realizing that he was interrupting a narrative of poignant interest. 'I want to hear all about you and Gertrude. You were saying that my bloodstained uncle John did not approve of you.'

  'Exactly. He didn't actually call me a waster-’

  'He did me. Frequently.'

  'But his manner was sticky. He said that before giving his consent to the match he would like to know how I earned my living. I told him I didn't earn my living because a recent aunt had left me three hundred thousand quid in gilt-edged securities.'

  'You had him there.'

  'I thought so, too. But no. He simply looked puff-faced and said that he would never allow his daughter to marry a man who had no earning capacity.'

  'I know those words. An earning capacity was what he was always beefing about me not having. He used to say: "Look at your brother Ambrose with his steady position at the Admiralty, and devoting his leisure time to writing novels which, while I have not read them myself ..." I say, talking of Am’ brose, the most amazing thing has happened.'

  'Shall I go on?' said Monty, a little coldly.

  'Oh, rather,' said Reggie. 'Yes, do. Only I must tell you about Ambrose later. You'll be astounded.'

  Monty was looking out at the flying landscape with a frown on his agreeable face. Thinking of J. G. Butterwick always made him frown. In his heart, he had always hoped that the other's sciatica would not yield to treatment.

  'Where,' he asked, coming out of his dark thoughts, 'had I got to?’

  'The earning capacity gag.’

  'Ah, yes. He said he would never allow Gertrude to marry a man without an earning capacity, so all bets were off unless I proved myself, as he called it, by getting a job and holding it down for a year.'

  'Barmy. I've often thought so. But surely Gertrude didn't stand for rot like that?'

  'She did. Naturally my first step was to urge her to pack a suitcase and slide round the corner with me to the registrar's or Gretna Green or somewhere. But would she? No. Not a trace of the modern spirit did she exhibit. Said she loved me devotedly, but flatly refused to marry me until the aged parent had hoisted the All Right flag.'

  'You don't mean that !'

  ‘I do.'

  'I didn't know there were girls like that nowadays.’ ‘Nor did I.'

  'Sounds like something out of a three-volume novel.’ 'Quite.'

  Reggie pondered.

  'It's an unpleasant thing to say about anyone,' he said, 'but the fact of the matter is, Gertrude's the soul of honour. I be’ lieve it comes from playing hockey. What did you do?'

  ‘I got a job.'

  ‘You?' ‘Yes.’

  ‘You couldn't have done.’

  ‘I did. I worked it through my Uncle Gregory, who knew Lord Tilbury, who runs the Mammoth Publishing Company. He wangled me the assistant editorship of Tiny Tots, a journal for the Nursery and the Home. I got fired.'

  ‘Of course. And then -?'

  ‘Uncle Gregory got Lord Emsworth to take me on as his secretary at Blandings Castle. I got fired.' 'Naturally. And then -?'

  'Well, then I took matters into my own hands. I ran into a fellow named Pilbeam, who owns a Private Inquiry Agency, and finding that he employed skilled assistants got him to make me one.'

  Reggie stared..

  'Private Inquiry Agency? Do you mean one of those detective things?' ‘That's right.'

  ‘You aren't telling me you're a ruddy sleuth?’ That's right.'

  'What, Maharajah's rubies and measuring bloodstains and all that sort of thing?'

  'Well, as a matter of fact,' said Monty, becoming more specific, 'they don't give me a great deal to do. I'm simply down on the books as a skilled assistant. You see, what happened was that I told Pilbeam I would give him a thousand quid if he would take me on, and we did business on those lines.'

  'But my uncle John doesn't know that?'

  'No.'

  ·All he knows is that you have got a job and are holding it down?’ 'Yes.'

  Reggie was mystified.

  'Well, if you ask me, it seems to me that that sounds extraordinarily like the happy ending. Whether a chap is, or is not, a mug to cough up a thousand pounds simply in order to marry my cousin Gertrude is a point into which we need not go. The price appears stiffish to me, but no doubt you look at it from another angle. What went wrong?'

  Monty's twisted face betrayed the tortured soul.

  ‘I don't know! That's what has got in amongst me so fright’ fully. I simply haven't a notion. I went off to Cannes for a bit of a holiday, feeling that everything was splendid and that I was sitting pretty. Nobody could have been matier than Gertrude when I left. She was all over me. And then one morning a telegram comes from her, breaking the engagement and giving no reasons.'

  'No reasons?'

  'Not one. Nothing. Simply the raspberry. It was inexplicable! I was stunned.' 'Naturally.'

  'I came back at once by aeroplane, and called at her house’ She wouldn't see me. I rang her up on the telephone, and drew nothing but a butler with adenoids. So, knowing that she was going to America with this hockey push, I thought the only thing to do was to go, too, and have it out with her on the voyage. There's evidently been some footling misunderstanding.'

  'Could she have heard something about you?' 'There's nothing to hear.'

  'You didn't by any chance, while at Cannes, whoop it up with those mysterious foreign adventuresses who haunt those parts? And somebody might have told her about it, I mean?'

  'There weren't any foreign adventuresses. At least, I didn't see any. My life at Cannes was as blameless as dammit. I just bathed and played tennis most of the time.'

  Reggie reflected. The thing did, as Monty had said, seem to have a touch of the inexplicable.

  'Do you know what I think?' he said at length.

  ‘What?'

  'It looks to me as if she had just got fed up with you.' ‘Eh?'

  'Thought it all over, I mean, and decided that you aren't the type. Girls do, you know. They take just that one look too many at the photograph on the dressing-table and the scales fall from their eyes.'

  'Oh, my gosh!'

  ‘In which case, of course, pretty drastic measures are called for. The subject has to be given a good sharp jolt.' 'How do you mean, a jolt?'

  ‘Oh, there are various ways. However, don't you worry. I’ll handle this business for you. It's pretty obvious that that is what must have happened. She's gone off you. You've lost your glamour. But there's no need for you to get worked up about it Everything will come right.'

  'Do you really think so?'

  'Definitely. I understand Gertrude. I've known her since she was so high. I'll tackle her. As a matter of fact, I was starting to just before the train went, and I think I had got her going. Once we're on board, I will go to her and give her the works.'

  'It's awfully good of you.'

  'Not at all. There isn't much,' said Reggie, regarding his friend with sincere, if bleary-eyed, affection, 'that I wouldn't do for an did pal like you, Monty.'

  'Thanks, thanks.'

  'And I don't imagine that you would hold back if you had a chance of doing me a good turn.' ‘I should say not.’ ‘You would spring to the task.’ 'Like a panther.'

  'Exactly. Well leave everything to me. Ill have that glamour of yours functioning again before you know where you are. And now,' said Reggie, 'if you don't mind, I think I'll just close my eyes for a while. I was in bed this morning at five-fifty and it's left me a little drowsy. A spot of sleep may do my headache good.'

  'Have you got a headache?'

  'My dea
r chap,' said Reggie, 'last night the Drones gave me a farewell party with Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright in the chair. Need I say more?'

  Chapter 4

  On a fine summer day, with the sun shining and the wavelets sparkling and a clean, cool breeze blowing out of the west, there are few things pleasanter than to travel from Southampton to Cherbourg in an ocean liner. Always provided, that is to say, that you have not got somebody like Monty Bodkin on board.

  If Monty Bodkin had resembled a spectre at Waterloo Station, still more did he resemble one during the few hours which it took the R.M.S. Atlantic to pull out of Southampton Water and cross the Channel. During those hours he shimmered unceasingly, causing annoyance to all.

  Patrons of the smoking-room choked over their beer as he shimmered in through the doorway, gazed about him with haggard eyes, shimmered out again and then - sometimes only a few minutes later - shimmered back and stood gazing once more. Old ladies, knitting in the drawing-room, sensed his silent approach and dropped stitches. Girls in deck-chairs started as his shadow fell upon their books and, looking up, recoiled from the stare of his snail-like eyes. There seemed to be no getting away from him.

  For Monty was looking for Gertrude Butterwick, and it was his intention to explore every avenue. Only when the vessel lay motionless outside Cherbourg harbour did he abate the nuisance. By that time, his shoes had begun to hurt him, and he went to his state-room to lie down on the bunk. This, he felt, would enable him not only to take the weight off his feet but to do some constructive thinking. And if ever a situation called for constructive thinking, this did.

  His feelings on opening the door and finding the bunk occupied by Reggie Tennyson were mixed. There was regret, for his feet were now exceedingly painful and he wanted that bunk himself; joy, because he presumed that the other would not be there unless he had come bearing news.

  This, however, proved an erroneous theory. Reggie had no news. His eager 'Well?' produced merely the information that his friend had not so much as set eyes on Gertrude since arriving on board.

  'I've looked everywhere for her’ said Reggie, anxious to remove any idea that he had been loafing on his errand of mercy, 'but she seems to have gone to earth in some secret dug-out.'