Luck of the Bodkins Read online

  There was a silence. The cave-man Bodkin had ceased to be, and in his place stood the Bodkin of Waterloo Station. Once more Monty was supporting himself on one leg, and that weak and anxious smile was back on his face.

  He was blaming himself. It was not as if this was the first time that that heart-encircled 'Sue' had led to trouble. Only a few weeks before, at Blandings Castle, there had been all that difficult explanation to Ronnie Fish on the very same subject, Ronnie had asked awkward questions, and now Gertrude was asking awkward questions. With a good deal of fervour Monty Bodkin was telling himself that if by some miracle he got through this sticky spot successfully, he would obtain washing soda or pumice-stone or vitriol or whatever you used for the eradication of tattoo marks and be done with that 'Sue' for ever, And that went for the heart round it, too.

  'Listen,' he said.

  ‘I don't want to listen.'

  'But you must listen, dash it. You're quite mistaken.’ 'Mistaken!'

  'I mean you're all wrong on a very important point. A vitally important point, I may say. You have fallen into the error of supposing that tattoo mark a recent growth. It's not. The matter is susceptible of a ready explanation. I had it done - like an ass - goodness knows why I ever thought of such a damn' silly thing - three years and more ago, before I had ever met you.’

  ‘Oh?'

  'Don't say "Oh?"' begged Monty gently. 'At least, say it if you like, of course, but not with that sort of nasty tinkle in the voice, as if you didn't believe a word I was telling you.'

  'I don't believe a word you're telling me.’

  'But it's true. Three years ago, when scarcely more than an unthinking boy, I was engaged to a girl named Sue Brown, and I suppose it seemed only civil to have her name tattooed on my chest with a heart round it. It hurt like the dickens and cost much more than you would expect I'd scarcely had it done, when the betrothal conked out on me. After being engaged about a fortnight, we talked it over, decided that the shot wasn't on the board, parted with mutual expressions of esteem, and she went her way and I went mine. The episode was over.’

  'Oh?'

  'When you say "Oh?" - if you mean what I think you mean - you're quite wrong. I never saw her again, never so much as set my eyes on her, till about a month ago, when we met by pure accident at Blandings Castle.. .’

  'Oh!'

  'You say "Oh!" this time as if you were under the impression that upon our meeting once more things hotted up between us. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Any fleeting affection I may have felt for Sue Brown had long since gone phut, and the same on her side. I don't say I didn't still think she was a dashed good sort, but the boyish infatuation was no more. Only Love's embers remained. Well, dash it, when I tell you that she was crazy about Ronnie Fish and is now happily married to Ronnie Fish - well, I mean to say! ‘

  ‘Oh!'

  There was nothing in the familiar word this time to arouse the critical spirit in Monty Bodkin. This was not a sceptical ‘Oh,' a sneering 'Oh,' one of those acid 'Oh's' which, emitted by the girl he loves, make a man feel as if he has stepped on a tintack. It had relief in it, and kindliness, and remorse. It spoke of misunderstandings cleared away, of grievances forgotten. In fact, it was scarcely an 'Oh’ at all, properly speaking. More like an 'Oo!'

  'Monty! Is that true?'

  'Of course it's true. A line to Mrs R. O. Fish at Blandings Castle, Shropshire, to be forwarded if away, will enable you to check up on the facts and will reveal them to be as I have stated.’

  The last traces of that frozen look, which is always so unpleasant in the eyes of those we love, had faded from Gertrude Butterwick's gaze. The thaw had set. in, and those twin lakes of hazel were moist with unshed tears of self-reproach.

  ‘Oh, Monty! What a fool I've been! ‘

  ‘No, no.’

  'I have. But you see what I was feeling, don't yoti?’ ‘Oh, rather.'

  'I thought you were the sort of man who goes about making love to every girl he meets. And I simply wasn't going to stand it. You can't blame me, can you, for simply not being going to stand it?’

  ‘Absolutely not. Very proper attitude.’

  ‘I mean, if the man you're engaged to is a mere butterfly, much better to end it all.'

  'Quite. A firm hand with the butterflies. The only way,’

  'Even if it hurts frightfully.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  "And father always said you were that sort of man.’

  ‘He did?' Monty gasped. 'The old son of a - sorry, forget

  what I was going to say.’ 'Of course, I told him you weren't, but, you know, you are

  so awfully good-looking, Monty darling, I feel sometimes that every girl in the world must be after you. I suppose it's silly of me.’

  'Dashed silly. Whatever gave you the idea that I was good-looking?' 'But you are.' ‘I'm not'

  'Of course you are.'

  'Oh, well, have it your own way,’ said Monty/conceding the point. 'Never noticed it myself, I must confess. But, dash it, even if I were the World's Sweetheart, do you imagine I'd so much as glance at any other girl but you?'

  'Wouldn't you?'

  ‘Of course I wouldn't. Greta Garbo - Jean Harlow - Mae West - bring 'em on I 111 show them something.' 'Monty I My precious angel pet! ‘ 'Gertrude! My outstanding old egg!.'

  "No, Monty, you mustn't. Not now. There's a fat man looking.'

  Monty turned, and found her statement correct. ‘Fat man' was right, and 'looking' was right. There were few men fatter than Mr Llewellyn, and few fat men had ever looked at anything more intently than he was now looking at them.

  'Blast him!' he said. 'That's Ivor Llewellyn, the motion-picture chap.'

  ‘I know. Jane Passenger sat next to him at lunch.’

  Monty frowned discontentedly. He was craving for self-expression. In this holy moment of reconciliation he yearned to embrace the girl he loved, and he could not possibly do it beneath the motion-picture magnate's saucer-eyed stare. The thing above all others that the holy moment called for was privacy and privacy in the presence of Ivor Llewellyn was out of the question. There was only one of Mr Llewellyn, but somehow he created the illusion of being a large and fashionable audience with opera-glasses.

  Suddenly Monty brightened. He had seen the way.

  'Wait!' he said, and hastened from the room.

  There!' he said, returning a few moments later.

  Gertrude Butterwick uttered a squeal of rapture. On the hockey field as ruthless and coldblooded a fighting machine as ever whacked an opponent over the shins without a pang, off it she was purely feminine, with all a woman's love for the rare and the beautiful. And she had seldom seen anything rarer or more beautiful than what Monty was holding out to her.

  It was one of those objects which, not so common on land, seem to break out in ships' barber-shops like a rash - a brown plush Mickey Mouse with pink coral eyes. Monty had selected it in preference to a yellow teddy bear, a maroon camel, and a green papier-mache bulldog whose head waggled when you shook it. Something seemed to tell him that that was what Gertrude would prefer.

  Nor was he mistaken. She clasped it to her bosom with little cries of ecstasy and mirth.

  'Oh, Monty! For me?'

  'Of course, ass. Who did you think it was for? I saw it in the barber-shop this afternoon and spotted it as a winner right away. The head screws off. You put chocolates and things in it’

  'Oh, Monty! It - Oh, hullo, Ambrose’

  The novelist had entered the room and was standing in the doorway, gazing about him as if looking for someone. He came over to where they sat.

  'Hullo, Gertrude,' he said. His manner seemed distrait. 'Ah, Bodkin, I didn't know you were on board. Have you seen Reggie anywhere?'

  ‘I haven't,' said Gertrude.

  'I saw him just now,' said Monty. 'I think he's on deck somewhere.' ‘Ah’ said Ambrose.

  'Look what Monty's given me, Ambrose’ The novelist accorded the mouse a cursory glance. 'Capital/ h
e said. 'Excellent. I'm looking for Reggie’ 'The head screws off’

  'Couldn't be better’ said Ambrose Tennyson absently. 'Excuse me -I must go and find Reggie.'

  Gertrude was crooning over the mouse. She had just discovered that by one of those "odd coincidences which make life piquant it was extraordinarily like Miss Passenger.

  'It might be" Jane’ she said. 'I've seen that expression on her face a hundred times when she was giving us a pep talk before a match. I'm going to take it straight down and show it to her’

  'Do’ said Monty. ‘I should think she would be frightfully pleased. I, in the meantime, will, I think, step up to the bar and have a quick one. The emotional strain through which I have recently passed has left me sorely in need of refreshment’

  With a loving arm about her shoulders, he escorted Gertrude to the door. Ambrose, about to follow, was halted by a noise like a buffalo taking its foot out of a swamp, and perceived that his employer, Mr Llewellyn, wished to have speech with him. He went over with an inquiring cock of the eyebrow.

  'Yes, Mr Llewellyn?'

  Ivor Llewellyn was feeling a little better. Into the blackness of his depression and anguish there had shone during the last few minutes a gleam of light. A faint, sickly, anaemic hope was coming to life within him. Surely, he told himself, a spy in the pay of the New York Customs would not be on intimate terms with that nice, wholesome-looking girl. If a spy had a female friend, would she not be something perfumed and slinky, with a foreign accent and probably a dagger in her stocking? And when Ambrose entered and proved to know the fellow too, the hope really began to throw its chest out a bit. Mr Llewellyn had been rather impressed by Ambrose and could not bring himself to believe that he would hob-nob with spies.

  'Say,' he said.

  ‘Yes?'

  'That young fellow that's just left. You seemed to know him.’

  Oh, yes. I've known him some years. His name is Bodkin. We were at Oxford together. Excuse me -'

  'You were?' said Mr Llewellyn, on the verge of beginning to wonder what he had been making so much fuss about.

  'I was a year or two senior to him

  'But he's a friend of yours?'

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  'I have an idea I ran into him at Cannes.' 'Oh, yes? Excuse me -'

  'And I was wondering,' said Mr Llewellyn, 'if you happened to know what he is.' 'What he is?’

  'What he does. What's his racket?' Ambrose Tennyson's face cleared.

  'Oh, I see what you mean. It's odd that you should have asked that, because it is certainly the last thing in the world anyone would take him for. But my cousin Gertrude assures me that it is true. He's a detective.'

  'A detective!’

  That's right. A detective. Excuse me, won't you? I've got to run along and find my brother Reggie.'

  Chapter 7

  For some minutes after his companion had left him Mr Llewellyn sat where he was, once more congealed. Then a drove of flappers invaded the library, accompanied by some of the ship's junior officers, and he heaved himself up and went out. He wished for solitude.

  Ambrose Tennyson's words had struck that growing hope of his with a bludgeon, so that it lay dead by the wayside. It did not even quiver.

  His emotions, as he dragged himself from the room and made his way below, were almost exactly similar to those which he had experienced one morning about a year ago when, his doctor having recommended mild exercise, he had thrown a medicine ball at a muscular friend on Malibu Beach, and the muscular friend, throwing it back before he was ready for it, had hit him in the solar plexus. On that occasion the world had rocked about him, and it was rocking now.

  He went down to his state-room, more as a wounded animal seeks its lair than with any definite intention of doing anything when he got there, and the first thing he saw when he entered it was his wife's sister Mabel. Her sleeves were rolled up, and she was bending over a chair in which sat a slender youth of leaden complexion. She appeared to be giving him an osteopathic treatment.

  When a man who has come to a state-room to be alone with his thoughts finds that his wife's sister, whom he has never liked, has converted it during his absence into a clinic, his feelings in the first shock of the discovery are apt to be too deep for words. Mr Llewellyn's were. He stood gaping, and Mabel Spence looked at him over her shoulder in the calm and, as he considered, off-hand way which always annoyed him so much. There was an English playwright with horn-rimmed spectacles under contract at the Superba-Llewellyn who looked at him rather like that, and the fact had done much to give Ivor Llewellyn that dislike for English playwrights which was so prominent a feature of his spiritual make-up.

  'Hello,' said Mabel. 'Come-on in.'

  Her patient hospitably backed up the invitation.

  'Yes, come on in,' he said. ‘I don't know who you are, sir, or what you're doing in a private state-room, but step right in.'

  'I shan't be long. I'm just curing Mr Tennyson's headache.' 'Mr Tennyson junior's headache.' 'Mr Tennyson junior's headache.'

  'Not to be confused,' proceeded the patient, 'with Mr Tennyson senior's headache, if he has one - which, I'm afraid, he hasn't. I don't know who you are, sir, or what you're doing in a private state-room, but I should like to tell you that this little girl-here - you don't mind me calling you "this little girl here"?'

  'Go right ahead.'

  This little girl here,' said Reggie, 'is an angel of mercy. You can search till you're blue in the face, but you'll never find a better description of her than that. It fits her like the paper on the wall. She met me on deck just now, gave me a keen glance, diagnosed my complaint in an instant, and brought me down here and started in on me. I shall have to look in the mirror later to make sure that my head is still attached to the parent body, but apart from an uneasy suspicion that I've come in half I'm feeling better.'

  'Mr Tennyson -'

  'Mr Tennyson junior.'

  'Mr Tennyson junior had a hangover.'

  'He had. And may you never have one like it, sir - I don't know who you are or what you're doing in a private stateroom ...'

  This is my brother-in-law, Ivor Llewellyn.'

  'Ah, the magic lantern chap,' said Reggie agreeably. "How are you, Llewellyn? Pleased to meet you. I have heard of you from my brother Ambrose. He speaks very highly of you, Llewellyn, very highly.'

  The motion-picture magnate was not mollified by the courteous tribute. He eyed the young man sourly. 'I want to talk to you, Mabel.' 'All right. Shoot.' 'In private.'

  'Oh? Well, I shall be through in a moment.' She wrought forcefully upon Reggie's neck for a while, eliciting from him a plaintive 'Ouch I' 'Baby!' she said reprovingly.

  'It's all very well for you to say "Baby!"' said Reggie. 'You'll look silly if I come apart in your hands.' 'There. That ought to do. What's the verdict?' Reggie allowed his head to revolve slowly for a moment. 'Say "Boo!"' 'Boo!' 'Louder.' 'Boo!'

  'Now closer to the ear.' 'Boo!'

  Reggie rose and drew a deep breath. There was an awed expression on his face.

  'A miracle! That's all it is. Just a bally miracle. I feel a new man.’

  'Good.'

  'And I should like to say that I consider it a privilege to meet a family like yours. I never in my puff encountered such a sweetness-and-light-scattering bunch. You, Miss -'

  'Spence is the name.'

  'You, Miss Spence, bring corpses to life. You, Llewellyn, place real money for the first time within the grasp of my brother Ambrose. This acquaintanceship must not be allowed to end here. I must see more of you, Miss Spence, and of you, Llewellyn. Golly,' said Reggie, 'if anybody had told me half an hour ago that I should be capable of looking forward to dinner tonight like a starving tapeworm, I wouldn't have believed him. Good-bye, Miss Spence, and you, Llewellyn, or rather au revoir, and thanks, thanks, Miss Spence, and you, Llewellyn. Thank you a thousand times. What's your first name?'

  ·Mabel.’

  ·Right,' said Reggie.

  The door c
losed. Mabel Spence smiled. Mr Llewellyn did cot.

  'Well,' said Mabel, 'that's today's good deed done. I don't know where that boy picked up his jag, but he had certainly gone after it with both hands. You wouldn't think, to see him now, that he's probably quite good-looking. I've always admired that slim, long-legged type.'

  Mr Llewellyn was in no mood to give his attention to lectures on the personal appearance of Reggie Tennyson, and he had begun to indicate this by dancing about the state-room in a rather emotional manner, like a wounded duck,

  'Say, listen! Will you listen I'

  ·Well go on. What?'

  Do you know who's on board this boat?'

  Well, I'm pretty clear about Tennyson senior and Tennyson junior, and I met Lotus Blossom on the tender, but outside of that -'

  'Let me tell you who's on board this boat. That Cannes guy. The fellow on that hotel terrace at Cannes. The one who wanted to know how to spell "sciatica"‘

  'Nonsense.'

  'Nonsense, eh?’

  ·You've got that bozo on the brain. You're imagining it.'

  'Is that so? Well, get this. I was sitting in the library after I left you and he popped up from nowhere and breathed down the back of my neck. This time he wanted to know how to spell "inexplicable".'

  ·He did?'

  That's what he did.’

  "Well, well, that boy's certainly attending to his education all right. He'll have quite a nice little vocabulary before he's through. Did you tell him?'

  Mr Llewellyn danced another step or two.

  'Of course I didn't tell him. How should I know how to spell "inexplicable"? And if I had of known, do you think I was in shape to tell anybody how to spell anything? I simply sat and stared at him and tried to catch up with my breath.'

  'But why shouldn't he be going across? Lots of other people are. I can't see that his being on board is so exceptionally significant. And try,' said Mabel Spence, in passing, 'spelling those two when you're at leisure.'