Luck of the Bodkins Read online

  The purser had become interested. He was a man who enjoyed instructing the ignorant. He forgot that he was busy.

  'Well,' he said, 'suppose this fellow in your picture was caught trying to run through something pretty important like a pearl necklace... I beg your pardon?'

  'Didn't speak,' mumbled Mr Llewellyn.

  ‘I thought you said something.'

  'No.'

  'Oh? Well, where was I? Oh, yes. This fellow of yours, we'll say, is trying to run a pearl necklace through New York Customs and gets caught. He then finds himself up against a rather stiff situation. Smugglers can be sent to jail, of course, or the authorities may just confiscate the goods and impose a fine of anything up to their full value. Personally, if I may offer a suggestion, I would say, for the purposes of your story, make them confiscate the goods, impose the full fine and send the man to jail as well.'

  Mr Llewellyn swallowed rather painfully.

  'I'd rather keep it true to life.'

  'Oh, that would be quite true to life,' the purser assured him encouragingly. 'It's frequently done. More often than not, I should say. Why I suggest it is that it would give you some prison scenes.'

  'I don't like prison scenes,' said Mr Llewellyn.

  'Highly effective,' argued the purser.

  'I don't care,' said Mr Llewellyn. 'I don't like them.’

  The purser seemed a little damped for the moment, but soon recovered his enthusiasm. He had always been much interested in the pictures, and he knew that a man in Mr Llewellyn's position would want to see all round a subject before deciding which angle was the best from which to approach it. Possibly, he felt, Mr Llewellyn, with that flair of his in matters of this kind, was not visualizing the thing as drama at all, but more as comedy. He put this to him.

  'It's the funny side of it that appeals to you, perhaps? And I expect you're right. We all like a good laugh, don't we? Well,' said the purser, chuckling that fruity chuckle of his at the visions rising before his mental eye, 'there would certainly be lots of comedy in the scene where they searched the fellow. Especially if he was fat. You get some good fat man - the fatter he is the funnier he'll be - and I'll guarantee that at the Southampton Super-Bijou, at least, they laugh so much you'll be able to hear them over in Portsmouth.'

  The ghoulish tastes of the patrons of the Super-Bijou Cinema at Southampton did not appear to be shared by Ivor Llewellyn. His face remained cold and stodgy. He said he did not see where that would be funny.

  ‘You don't?'

  'Nothing funny about it to me.’

  'What, not when they took that fat man's clothes off and gave him an emetic?' 'An emetic?' Mr Llewellyn stared violently. 'Why?' To see if he was hiding anything else.' 'Would they do that?' 'Oh, yes. Almost routine.'

  Mr Llewellyn gazed at him bleakly. He had disliked many continuity writers in his time, but none so much as he now disliked this purser. The unrestrained relish of the man in these revolting details seemed to him quite sickening.

  'I never knew that before.'

  ‘Oh, yes.'

  'It's monstrous! ‘ said Mr Llewellyn. ‘In a civilized country!'

  'Well, people ought not to go in for smuggling,’ said the purser virtuously. 'You would think they would have enough sense to know it was hopeless, wouldn't you?'

  ‘Is it hopeless?'

  'Oh, quite. They have the most extraordinarily efficient spy system.'

  Mr Llewellyn licked his lips.

  'I was going to ask you about that. How do these spies of theirs operate?'

  'Oh, they're everywhere. They loaf about London and Paris and all over the Continent...'

  'Places like Cannes?'

  'Cannes more than anywhere, I should say, except London and Paris. You see, so many Americans nowadays like to take this new Southern route home, on one of the Italian boats. More sunshine, and it's a novelty. I should think you would find a Customs spy at any of the big hotels at Cannes. I know there's one at the Gigantic and another at the Magnifique.

  'The Magnifique!'

  'That's the name of one of the hotels at Cannes,' explained the purser. 'I've no doubt each of the others has its man, too. It pays the United States Customs people to keep them there, because sooner or later they're sure to justify the expense. You see, people are so apt to talk injudiciously at foreign hotels, and they get overheard. They don't imagine there's anything wrong with the well-dressed young man who happened to brush against them in the bar while they were discussing how to get the stuff through, and when they meet the same fellow on board it never occurs to them that he's there for a reason. But he is, and they find it out when they land in New York."

  Mr Llewellyn cleared his throat.

  'Ever - ever seen him? The Magnifique fellow?'

  'Not myself. A friend of mine did. Tall, well-dressed, languid, good-looking young chap, my friend said he was, the last person you would ever suspect ... Good heavens!' said the purser, looking at his watch. 'Is that the time? I shall really have to run along. Well, I hope I have been able to be of some use to you, Mr Llewellyn. I would certainly have a Customs spy in this picture of yours, if I were you. Most picturesque profession, I have always thought. And now you will excuse me, won't you? I have a thousand things to attend to. Always the way till we clear Cherbourg.'

  Mr Llewellyn excused him gladly. He had derived no pleasure whatever from his conversation. He fell into a reverie, his teeth grinding at the unlighted cigar that lay between them. And

  this reverie might have lasted indefinitely, had not something occurred to interrupt it. A voice spoke behind him.

  ‘I say,' it said, 'excuse me, but do you happen to know how to spell "inexplicable"?'

  Mr Llewellyn's physique was such as to make it impossible for him, whatever the provocation, to turn like a flash, but he turned as much like a flash as was in the power of a man whose waistline had disappeared in the year 1912. And having done so he uttered a faint, mouselike squeak and sat goggling.

  It was the sinister stranger of the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes.

  At this moment, the door opened and Gertrude Butterwick walked in.

  Chapter 6

  Gertrude Butterwick had spent the early hours of the voyage closeted with Miss Passenger, the captain of the All England Ladies' Hockey Team, trying on hats. That was why Monty, for all his assiduity, had failed to find her. While he had been shimmering about the promenade deck, the boat deck, the drawing-room, the smoking-room, the library, the gymnasium and virtually everywhere else except the engine-rooms and the Captain's cabin, she was in Miss Passenger's state-room on Deck B, trying on, as we say, hats.

  Miss Passenger had done herself well in the matter of hats, for it was her intention on this first visit of hers to the United States of North America to give the natives a treat. She had blue hats, pink hats, beige hats, green hats, straw hats, string hats, and felt hats, and Gertrude had tried them on, all of them, one by one. She found that the process helped to dull the pain that gnawed at her heart.

  For, little as anybody would have suspected it who had seen her at Waterloo Station, there was a pain gnawing at her heart. Her pride made it impossible, after what had occurred, for her ever to consider the idea of marrying Monty, but that did not mean that she did not think of him with a wild, aching regret-Reggie Tennyson had been quite mistaken in supposing that she no longer found her former fiance glamorous. His fatal spell still operated.

  She was doing her best to shake it off, when the supply of hats gave out. Miss Passenger had stockings, too, but stockings are not quite the same thing. She excused herself, accordingly, and went on deck. And, happening to find herself outside the library, it occurred to her that she had better have a book. There might, she felt, be a wakeful night before her.

  The position of affairs by the time she entered was as follows.

  Mr Llewellyn and Monty had parted company. The motion-picture magnate remained hunched up in his chair, and Monty had returned to the corner from which h
e had come. A man in his state of mind is easily discouraged, and the complete failure of his attempt to get Mr Llewellyn to cooperate with him in the spelling of the word 'inexplicable’ had caused him to abandon his letter for the time being. When Gertrude came in, he was staring before him, chewing the pen.

  Gertrude did not see him. The library of the Atlantic is tastefully decorated with potted palms, and one of these interrupted her line of vision. She went to the shelves, found them locked, discovered that the attendant was not at his post, and crossed to the round table in the middle of the room and took up a magazine.

  This enabled Monty to catch sight of her, with the result that scarcely had she settled herself in a chair by the window and begun to read when there was a sound of emotional breathing above her head, and, looking up, she beheld a pale, set face. The shock made her hiccough. Her magazine fell to the floor. This was the first intimation she had received that he was not still in London. She had never for a moment supposed that his presence at Waterloo had meant that he was catching the boat train.

  'Ha!' said Monty.

  Two things prevented Gertrude Butterwick from rising to her feet and sweeping out of the room. One was that the chair in which she sat was so deep that to extricate herself from it she would have had to employ a sort of Swedish exercise quite out of keeping with the solemnity of the moment. The other was that Monty, having said 'Ha!', had begun to gaze at her sternly and accusingly, like King Arthur at Queen Guinevere, and the colossal crust of this held her spellbound. That this man should behave as he had done with one hand and come gazing sternly and accusingly at her with the other made her proud spirit boil.

  'At last!' said Monty.

  'Go away!' said Gertrude.

  'Not,' said Monty, with quiet dignity, 'till I have spoken.'

  'I don't want to talk to you.'

  Monty laughed like a squeaking slate pencil.

  ‘Don't you worry. I'll do all the bally talking that's required,’ he said - the very words, in all probability, with which King Arthur had opened his interview with Guinevere. Much brooding on his wrongs, taken in conjunction with the fact that his feet were still hurting him, had turned Monty Bodkin into something very different from the apologetic bleater who had stood on one leg in this girl's presence at Waterloo. He was cold and pop-eyed and ruthless.

  'Gertrude,' he said, 'your behaviour is inexplicable.'

  Gertrude gasped. Her eyes flashed amazement and indignation. All the woman in her rose to combat the monstrous charge.

  'It isn't!’

  'It is.'

  ‘It is not.'

  'It is. Quite inexplicable. Let me recapitulate the facts.' ‘It's nothing -'

  ‘Let me,' said Monty, waving a hand, 'recapitulate the facts’ 'It's nothing of the -’

  'Lord love a duck!’ cried Monty, with sharp rebuke. 'Will you or will you not let me recapitulate the facts? How the devil am I to recapitulate the facts if you keep interrupting all the time?'

  The stoutest-hearted girl is apt to quail when she finds herself confronted by the authentic cave-man. Gertrude Butter-wick did so now. Never, in all the months of their association, had Montague Bodkin spoken to her like that. She had not known that he could speak to her like that. And his words - and more than the words, the tone in which they were uttered -struck her as dumb as any Ivor Llewellyn asked to spell 'sciatica'. She felt as if she had been bitten in the leg by a rabbit.

  Monty was shooting his cuffs masterfully. In his eyes there was no lovelight to soften resentment Only that stern, accusing gleam.

  The facts,' he said, 'are these. We met. We clicked. I squashed a wasp for you at that picnic, and two weeks later you stated in set terms that you loved me. So far, so good. On that basis of understanding I buckled to and prepared to fulfil the loony conditions laid down by your chump of a father as a preliminary to our union. It was a tough assignment, but I faced it without a tremor. That chap in the Old Testament -Jacob, or some such name - had nothing on me. I was willing, even anxious, to sweat myself to the bone to win you, because I loved you and you said you loved me. "Before you marry my daughter," said your blighted father, "get a job and hold it down for a year." So I got a job. I became assistant editor of Tiny Tots, a journal for the Nursery and the Home.'

  He paused to take in breath, but so glittering was the eye with which he held her that she could not speak. The Games Mistress at school, who had taught her hockey, had had exactly that same hypnotic effect upon her.

  His lungs refilled, Monty resumed.

  'You know what followed. In writing the weekly letter of Uncle Woggly To His Chicks, I made an unfortunate bloomer, striking a note which met with the disapproval of Lord Tilbury, my boss, who fired me. And what happened then? Was I discouraged? Did I quail? No. Many chaps would have been discouraged to quailing point, but not me. The old Jacob spirit burned as strongly as ever. I spat on my hands and secured a secretarial appointment with Lord Emsworth at Blandings Castle.'

  As he allowed his memory to dwell upon the vicissitudes which that visit to Blandings Castle had forced him to undergo, a bitter laugh escaped Monty Bodkin - not like a slate pencil this time, but so hyena-like in its timbre that Ivor Llewellyn, cowering in his chair, leaped and hit himself in the eye with his cigar. There had been, to Mr Llewellyn's mind, something utterly inhuman about that laugh. It was the laugh of a man who, catching somebody with the goods, would have no ruth or pity.

  'After some days of incessant nerve strain, old Emsworth bunged me out. But did I give up? Did I throw in the towel? No! I did not throw in the towel. I ingratiated myself with that weird little blister Pilbeam and obtained a post at his Inquiry Agency. That post I still hold.'

  He had never mentioned to Gertrude that he had paid Percy Pilbeam a thousand pounds to enrol him among his assistants, and he did not mention it now. Girls are not interested in these technical details. They just like to get the broad idea.

  That post,' he repeated, 'I still hold, in spite of the laborious and uncongenial nature of its duties. I don't say Pilbeam keeps, me on the go all the time, but on at least two occasions I have been given assignments which would have caused a weaker man to hand in his portfolio. One was when I had to stand outside a restaurant for two and-a half hours in the rain. The other was when I was sent to a wedding reception in Wimbledon to guard the presents. Nobody who has not done it can have any conception what an ass a fellow feels, guarding wedding-presents. Still, I went through with it, I stuck it out. All this, I told myself, is bringing Gertrude nearer to me.'

  Once more that hideous laugh rang through the room. It had slightly less of the hyena about it now and rather more of the soul in torment, but it was just as unpleasant for a man with a sensitive conscience to listen to, and Mr Llewellyn again shied like a startled horse.

  'My left elbow it was bringing you nearer to me! I had hardly settled down at Cannes for a much needed holiday when bing, right in the eyeball, I get that telegram of yours, returning me to store! Yes,' said Monty, his voice quivering with self-pity, 'there I was, a mental and physical wreck after weeks and weeks of ceaseless toil, suddenly informed that my nomination had been scratched and that I had had all my trouble for nothing.'

  Gertrude Butterwick stirred. She seemed about to speak. He waved her down.

  'I can only suppose that while my back was turned some other man came along and stole you from me. Unless you have gone completely off your rocker, that, I presume, must be the explanation of your conduct. But let me tell you this. If you think you can play fast and loose with me, you are very much mistaken. Right off it. Nothing like it at all. I jolly well intend to have it out with this human snake who has wriggled his way into your affections, if necessary knocking his bally head off. I shall go to him, and I shall first warn him. Should this fail, I shall...'

  Gertrude found speech. She had shaken off the hypnotic spell which he had been casting on her. Her face was working and her eyes blazed indignantly, so that Mr Llewellyn, watching her, suffer
ed another moment of discomfort. She reminded him of Grayce, his wife, that time when he had suggested that her brother George might find some more suitable outlet for his talents than the post of Production Expert to the Superba-Llewellyn Corporation.

  'You hickaprit!'

  This was a new one to Monty.

  'Hickaprit?'

  'Hypocrite, I mean.'

  'Oh, you do, do you?'

  He stared at her, outraged.

  'What on earth are you talking about?’

  'You know what I'm talking about.'

  ‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

  'You do know what I'm talking about.'

  ‘I certainly do not know what you're talking about. And it's my firm belief,' said Monty, 'that you don't know yourself. What do you mean - hypocrite? Where do you get that hypocrite stuff? Why hypocrite?'

  Gertrude choked.

  'Pretending that you loved me!'

  ‘I do.'

  'You do not.'

  ‘I tell you I do. Gosh darn it, I ought to know whether I love you or not, oughtn't I?' Then who's Sue?' ·Who's Sue?' ‘Who's Sue?' ‘Who's Sue?’

  'Yes. Who's Sue? Who's Sue? Who's Sue?'

  Monty's manner softened. Something of tenderness came into it. Though she had treated him shamefully and had now begun to talk like a cuckoo clock, he loved this girl.

  'Listen, old bird,' he said, and there was a touch of appeal in his voice, 'we could go on like this all night. It's like trying to say "She sells sea-shells by the seashore." What exactly is it that you are gibbering about? Tell me, and we'll get the whole thing straightened out. You keep saying "Who's Sue? Who's Sue?" and I don't know any ...' His voice trailed away. An anxious look had come into his eyes. ‘You don't by any chance mean Sue Brown, do you?'

  ‘I don't know what her beastly name is. All I know is that you went off to Cannes pretending to love me, and a week later you had this girl's name tattooed on your chest with a heart round it, and it's no use trying to deny it, because you sent me a photograph of yourself in bathing costume and I had it enlarged and there it was.'