Luck of the Bodkins Read online

  There was a pause. Then, just as Monty was about to suggest that if Reggie could spare the bunk he would be glad to have it, his attention was diverted by the sight of an alien suitcase on the floor.

  'What's that?' he asked, surprised.

  Reggie sat up. His manner betrayed a certain diffidence.

  'Oh, that?' he said. 'I was wondering when you would notice it. That's mine’ ' 'Yours?'

  ‘Yes. Monty’ said Reggie, speaking with some urgency, 'do you recollect what we were saying in the train?’ 'About Gertrude?’

  ‘Not about Gertrude. About you and me. About what extraordinarily good pals we had always been, so that if there ever happened to be a moment when one of us could do the square thing by the other he wouldn't hesitate. You said, if you remember, that if you had a chance of doing me a good turn you would spring to the task?'

  'Of course.’

  ‘Like a panther, if I recall?’ ‘Absolutely’

  ‘Right’ said Reggie. 'Well, now Is your time. This is where you do your stuff. I've changed state-rooms with you’

  Monty stared. His intelligence was a little clouded from long meditation.

  'Changed state-rooms?'

  ‘Yes. I've had your things shifted down to mine.’ ‘What on earth for?'

  'It had to be done, old boy. The fact of the matter is, a rather awkward situation has arisen.'

  Reggie made himself comfortable amongst the pillows. Monty took off his shoes. The relief thus obtained put him in broad-minded mood. Twiddling his released toes, he told himself that Reggie would not have done this thing without some good reason. It remained only to elicit this reason.

  'How do you mean, an awkward situation has arisen?'

  'I will tell you. Before doing so, however, let us relax. Have you such a thing as a stinker?'

  'Here you are.'

  'And a match?'

  'Here you are.'

  'Thanks,' said Reggie. 'Well,' he proceeded, puffing, 'it is like this. You know Ambrose?' 'Your brother Ambrose?’ 'My brother Ambrose.'

  'Oh, yes, fairly well. We were up at Oxford together, and we see a certain amount of one another...'

  'Did you know he was on board this ship?’

  'Ambrose? But he's at the Admiralty.'

  'No. He's not. That's the whole point. I was trying to tell you in the train, but you wouldn't listen. At this hour, as you say, Ambrose ought to be at the Admiralty, initialling memoranda in triplicate or dancing hornpipes, or whatever it is they do there, but in actual fact he is roaming the deck of this oceangoing ship in a pin-stripe flannel suit and a yachting cap. He has chucked the Admiralty and is going to Hollywood to write motion-picture scenarios.'

  'You don't mean that?'

  'And, what is more - this is the part that will test your credulity to the utmost - on a five years' contract at fifteen hundred dollars a week.'

  'What!'

  'I thought you would be surprised. Yes, that is what a bloke called Ivor Llewellyn is paying him - fifteen hundred dollars a week. Have you ever read any of Ambrose's bilge?'

  ‘No.'

  ‘Well, it's absolute drip. Not a corpse or a mysterious Chinaman in it from beginning to end. And this fellow Llewellyn is paying him fifteen hundred dollars a week! I tell you, Monty, it's - what's that word of yours?' 'Inexplicable?'

  'That's the one. It's definitely inexplicable.’

  No man in Reggie Tennyson's condition, already shaken from saying 'initialling memoranda in triplicate', can utter the words 'definitely inexplicable' without Nature taking its toll. A sharp twinge of pain contorted his face, and he lay for a moment with his hands pressed to his temples, trying to pull himself together.

  'But what, you are about to ask,' he resumed, when the spasm had ceased, 'has the fact of Ambrose being on board got to do with my wanting to change state-rooms? I will tell you. I remember in the train, when you were talking about your engagement and why it had been kept dark, you used an extraordinarily neat phrase. You said - what was it? Ah, yes. You said that there were wheels within wheels. Wasn't that the expression?'

  'That's right,' said Monty, who thought it good himself. 'Yes. Wheels within wheels.'

  'Well, there are wheels within wheels here. As I said just now, a very awkward situation has arisen. Did I ever happen to mention to you a girl of the name of Lotus Blossom?’

  'The film star?'

  'The film star.’

  'I've seen her on the screen, of course, but I don't remember you ever mentioning her.'

  'Odd,' said Reggie. 'I suppose I must be one of these strong, silent chaps. Because we were once very close together. In fact, -I don't mind telling you that I asked her to marry me.'

  'Really?'

  ‘Yes. One night -when we were dining together at the Angry Cheese. I've never seen a girl laugh so much. It was shortly after that she put a piece of ice down my back. I mention these things,' explained Reggie, 'to show you that we were terrific pals. We went around everywhere together. This was when she was over in London a year ago, doing a picture for one of the English companies. Well, that's Reel One. You get the idea? Lottie and I were terrific pals.'

  ‘Yes, I get that’

  'Right. We now come to Reel Two. I was up on deck just now, and someone suddenly caught me a ghastly slosh on the back, bringing me to within a short step of the tomb, and when the mists and blackness and whirling sparks had cleared away I found myself gazing upon my brother Ambrose. We fell into conversation, and, of course, I congratulated him on this Hollywood thing and then, out of sheer goodness of heart, I offered to give him a letter of introduction to Lottie Blossom. I knew she knew everybody in Hollywood and could get him invited to all the parties and what not, so I said I would give him a letter of introduction to her. Pretty brotherly, what?'

  ‘Most.'

  'So I thought, especially considering he'd just nearly knocked my spine through my waistcoat. But it was a bloomer of the worst description, old boy, and I'll tell you why. Noticing on his map, as I said these words, a broad smile and fancying it was one of those sceptical, I-bet-if-you-ever-met-the-girl-at-all-it -was-simply-in-a-crowd -and-she's-f orgotten-your -very-name -by-now smiles - you know the sort of smiles chaps do smile when you tell them you know anybody celebrated - I rather extended myself on the subject of how thick Lottie and I had been. Looking back, I can see that I must have made the thing sound like something out of the home life of Antony and Cleopatra. "Dear old Lottie 1" I remember saying. "What a pall What a nib! You must meet dear old Lottie! She'll do anything for a brother of mine. How we two did use to whoop it up together, to be sure!" You know how one does.'

  ‘Quite.'

  ‘Old boy,' said Reggie solemnly, 'he's engaged to herl’ ‘What!'

  'Absolutely. When I said he must meet her, he said he had met her, at Biarritz a couple of months ago, when he went down thereon the occasion of the Admiralty blokes pushing him off for his annual vacation. And when I said: "Oh, how did you like her?" he replied that he liked her very much and that they were engaged to be married and what precisely had I meant by the expression "whoop it up". Dashed embarrassing, you'll admit'

  'Dashed.'

  'Nor did the embarrassment in any way diminish with the passage of time,' said Reggie. 'Things grew stickier and stickier. "She comes aboard at Cherbourg," he said. "That," I said, rattled, but holding up as well as I could, "will be jolly." "For whom?" he said. "For you," I said. "Yes," he said. "What did you mean by 'whoop it up'?" "Does she know about this Hollywood job of yours?" I said. "She does," he said. "I'll bet she's pleased," I said. "No doubt," he said. "You have not yet explained what you meant by the expression 'whoop it up'." "Oh, nothing," I said. "Just that we were pretty pally at one time." "Oh?" he said. "Ah!" And there the matter rested. You see the situation? You get the general trend? The blighter is in nasty mood. He suspects. He views with concern. And Lottie comes aboard at Cherbourg.'

  'We're at Cherbourg now.'

  'Exactly. I imagine she is alr
eady with us. And we now come, old boy, to the very nub of the thing. Do you know what?' 'What?'

  'I happened to take a look at the passenger list, and I'm blowed if I didn't find that her state-room was next door to mine! Well, you know what Ambrose is like. Already fairly near the boil and crammed to the gizzard with low suspicions, what was he going to say when he discovered that?'

  ‘Ah!'

  'That's it precisely - Ah! So there was only one thing to do. I had to change state-rooms with you. You follow? You grasp?' ‘Yes.'

  'And you don't mind?' 'Of course not.'

  ‘I knew it,' said Reggie with emotion. 'I knew I could rely on you. Staunch to the eyebrows. I don't know how Ambrose strikes you, Monty, but from childhood up I have always found him a hard egg. As a boy, he had a habit, when stirred, of suddenly lashing out with a foot and catching me on the seat of the trousers, and from the way he was looking when I removed myself just now I don't believe the years have softened and mellowed him a damn' bit. Your decent behaviour regarding this switch of state-rooms has probably saved me a very nasty flesh wound. And don't think I shall forget it, either. You can rely on me to strain every nerve in re that young chump Gertrude. Be sure that I shall watch over your interests. Do nothing in that direction till you hear from me.'

  'I was thinking of going to the library and writing her a letter.'

  Reggie weighed this.

  'Yes. I see no harm in that. Don't grovel, though.’ 'I wasn't going to grovel,' said Monty indignantly. 'If you want to know, I was going to be bally bitter and dashed terse.' ‘Such as-?'

  'Well, to begin with, I thought of starting off "Gertrude".

  Like that. Not "Dear Gertrude" or "Darling Gertrude". Just

  'Gertrude".’ 'Yes,' agreed Reggie. 'That'll make her think a bit.’ "Gertrude," I was planning to write, "Your behaviour is inexplicable."'

  'You couldn't do better,' said Reggie cordially. 'Go on up and smack into it now. I, personally, propose to take a short turn on deck. The last time I was there, till Ambrose bashed me between the shoulder-blades, the sea air seemed to be doing my headache good. That sensation of white-hot corkscrews through the eyeballs appeared to me to be easing up a trifle.'

  Chapter 5

  While Monty Bodkin was making his way to the library, stern in his determination to write Gertrude Butterwick a letter which would bring the blush of shame to the cheek and the tear of remorse to the eye and, generally speaking, show her what was what, Mr Ivor Llewellyn stood leaning over the rail of the promenade deck, watching the approach of the tender which bore his sister-in-law Mabel.

  None of the reporters who had listened at Waterloo Station to his views on the Screen Beautiful had suspected that they were interviewing a soul in torment, but such was the painful truth. Mr Llewellyn was not feeling merry and bright, and it would be giving a totally false impression to the public to say that he was. Even when dilating on the brightness of the Screen's future, he had been thinking how vastly it differed from his own.

  For nights now he had tossed restlessly on his pillow, wincing at the thought of what lay before him. Sometimes he would try to foster a hope that Grayce, thinking things over, might have a little sense and decide to abandon her lawless project. Then the reflection that if Grayce showed sense it would be for the first time, sent him into the depths once more. Smugglers have always been pictured as rather dashing, jovial men. Ivor Llewellyn proved himself the exception to the rule.

  The tender arrived. Its passengers disembarked. And Mr Llewellyn, detaching Mabel Spence from their ranks, drew her aside to a secluded portion of the deck. She eyed him in his agitation with that placid, amused pity which he so often caused her.

  'You do fuss so, Ikey.' 'Fuss!'

  'I suppose what's on your mind is that –‘

  'Sh!' hissed Mr Llewellyn, like a stage bandit

  Mabel Spence jerked an impatient chin.

  ‘0h, don't behave like a dying duck,' she said, for it was of this rather than of a bandit that her brother-in-law reminded her as he hissed and quivered. 'Everything's all right'

  'All right?' There was a strange, wild note of hope in the motion-picture magnate's voice. 'Haven't you brought it?'

  'Of course I've brought it'

  'Doesn't Grayce want me to -?'

  'Of course she does.'

  'Then what,' demanded Mr Llewellyn, with pardonable heat, ‘do you mean by saying it's all right?'

  'All I meant was that it's going to be perfectly simple and easy. I wouldn't worry.'

  'You wouldn't - no,' said Mr Llewellyn.

  He removed his hat, and passed a handkerchief across his forehead.

  'George-’

  'Yes, I know,' said Mr Llewellyn, ‘I know.’

  In the faint hope that there might be some merit in that George scheme which had hitherto escaped him, he ran over it again in his mind. It brought him no comfort whatsoever.

  'Listen,' he said. An urgent, tear-compelling note had now succeeded the note of hope in his voice. It was the same one he was wont to employ when trying to persuade the personnel of the studio to take a cut owing to the depression. 'Say, listen. Is Grayce so dead set on this thing?'

  'She seems so.’

  'You think she would be disappointed if I...' He broke off Walls have ears.'... If I didn't?' he concluded.

  Mabel reflected. She was rather exact in the matter of speech’ She liked the mot juste. 'Disappointed' in this case, did not seem to her to be it,

  'Disappointed?' she said musingly. 'Well, you know what Grayce is like. When she wants a thing done, she wants it done’ If you renig on this ... well, ask me, I think she'd get a divorce on the ground of inhuman mental cruelty.'

  Mr Llewellyn shuddered. That word 'divorce' had always been a spectre, haunting him. His attitude towards his young and lovely wife ever since their marriage had been consistently that of a man hanging by his finger-tips to the edge of a precipice. 'But listen ..

  'Where's the sense in telling me to listen? I'm not Grayce. If you want to get a line on how she feels, she gave me a letter to give you. ‘It's in my bag. Here it is. She wrote it just after I got back to Paris and told her about what you said. About how you weren't going to touch the proposition. She said, "Oh, he won't, won't he?" - you know that way of Grayce's when she draws back her upper lip so that the teeth show, and sort of sinks her voice to a whisper -'

  'Don't!' begged Mr Llewellyn. 'Yes, I know it.'

  'Well that's how she acted when she sat down to write this letter. She said she was going to put the whole scheme in simple language so that you couldn't possibly go wrong on that hat trick, and after that she would use up the rest of the ink-well explaining what would happen if you didn't come through. It's all down there. You'd best read it.'

  Mr Llewellyn took the bulky envelope from her and opened it. As he perused its contents by the light of the library window, his lower jaw drifted slowly from its moorings, so that by the time he had finished his second chin had become wedged into the one beneath it. It was plain that no calmer thoughts had intervened to cause his wife to soften the tenor of her remarks. She had written precisely as she had said she would write.

  'Yes,' he murmured at length.

  He tore the letter into small fragments and dropped them overboard. 'Yes,' he said again. "Myes.' 'I guess,' he said, 'I'll go and mull this over.’ 'Do. Give it a good think.' ‘I will,' said Mr Llewellyn.

  Pensively, he made his way to the library. It was empty except for a young man who sat with bowed head in one of the corners, his eyes fixed on a sheet of note-paper. Mr Llewellyn welcomed this solitude. Sitting down, he inserted a cigar in his mouth and gave himself up to thought.

  That way of Grayce's...

  She had drawn back her upper lip so that the teeth showed.

  Yes, yes, how often he had seen her do that, and how often, seeing her, had he felt that unpleasant sinking feeling which he was experiencing now.

  Could he ignore that look?

  G
osh!

  But the alternative? Once more, Gosh!

  The trouble was that, having other and more immediately urgent matters constantly occupying his mind, he knew so little of the pains and penalties attaching to this smuggling business ...

  At this moment, the purser came in and started to hurry across the room. Just the man Mr Llewellyn wanted. 'Hey,' he called. 'Got a minute?'

  Pursers at the beginning of a voyage never really have a minute, but the speaker was a passenger of more than ordinary importance, so this one stopped.

  'Something I can do for you, Mr Llewellyn?'

  'Just like a word with you, if you're not too busy.’

  'Certainly. Nothing wrong, I hope?'

  Mr Llewellyn nearly laughed mirthlessly at this. It was as if somebody had asked the same question of a man on the rack.

  'No, no. It's just that I'd like your advice about something. Seems to me you'd be the man to know. It's about smuggling stuff through the Customs. Not that I'm planning to do it myself, y'understand. No, sir! I'd be a swell chump to try that game, ha, ha!'

  'Ha, ha,' echoed the purser dutifully, for he had been specially notified by the London office to do all that lay in his power to make the other's voyage pleasant.

  'No, it simply struck me, mulling things over, that it ought to be one could get a good picture out of this smuggling racket, and I want to have the details right. Listen. What happens to a guy that's caught trying to ease stuff through the New York Customs?'

  The purser chuckled.

  'The answer to that, Mr Llewellyn, can be given in one wora. Plenty!' 'Plenty?’

  'Plenty,' said the purser, chuckling again. He had a Very rich, jovial chuckle, not unlike the sound of whisky glug-glugging into a glass. It was a sound which Mr Llewellyn, as a rule, liked, but it froze him now with a nameless dread.

  There was a pause.

  'Well, what?' said Mr Llewellyn at length, in a thin voice.