Luck of the Bodkins Page 7

  'You can't, can't you?'

  ·I can't, no.'

  "Well, try this one on your cottage piano,' said Mr Llewellyn urgently. 'Ambrose Tennyson came along and seemed to know the fellow, so I asked him what his racket was, and Tennyson said he was a detective.'

  'A detective?'

  'A detective. D - e - ... Detective,' said Mr Llewellyn, This did impress Mabel. She bit her lip thoughtfully. 'Is that so?' 'I'm telling you.'

  'You're sure it was the same man?'

  'Of course I'm sure it was the same man.'

  'Odd.'

  'What's odd about it? I told you that morning at Cannes that he was one of these Customs spies, and if you don't believe me perhaps you'll believe the purser. The purser ought to know what he's talking about, oughtn't he? And the purser tells me that you can't throw a brick at any of those Cannes hotels without hitting one. He says they hang around, listening in on conversations, and sooner or later some dumb woman says something about smuggling something, and then they get busy. This guy's come aboard to keep an eye on me. That's what they do. The purser was telling me. Once they hit the trail, they never let go. So now what?' said Mr Llewellyn, collapsing on the bed and sitting there breathing stertorously.

  Mabel Spence had never been a great admirer of her brother-in-law, but she was not without feminine pity. There were plenty of things she could have said, and would have liked to say, about Mr Llewellyn's blood pressure and his need for a rigid system of diet, but she left them unspoken. She pondered for a moment, turning a woman's practical eye on the problem. It was not long before her shrewd brain enabled her to point out the bright side.

  'Don't worry,' she said.

  The condition of Mr Llewellyn's nerves being what it was, she might have worded her remark more happily. The motion-picture magnate, already mauve, turned a royal purple.

  'Don't worry? That's good.'

  There's nothing to worry about.'

  'Nothing to worry about? That's a honey.’

  "Well, there isn't. I thought at first that you were making a lot out of nothing, but if this man is a detective you're probably right about him having come on board because of what he heard us saying that day. Still, why get apoplexy? The whole thing's quite simple. He's probably like everybody else -ready to be fixed if you make the price right.'

  Mr Llewellyn, who had been about to speak - taking the words 'quite simple' as his cue - gave a start. He seemed to swallow something, and a marked improvement became notice-’ able in his complexion. It faded back to mauve again.

  That's true.'

  'Sure.'

  ‘Yes. I guess that's about right, at that. He probably is.’

  Her words had made him feel as if, after wandering through a morass, he had suddenly touched solid ground. When it came to fixing people, he knew where he stood.

  Then the Soul's Awakening look which always comes into the eyes of motion-picture magnates when the question of fixing people arises slowly died away.

  'But how's it to be done? I can't just walk up to him and ask for the tariff.'

  'You don't have to.' There was scorn for the slower masculine intelligence in Mabel's voice. 'Did you take a good square look at him?'

  'Did I take a good square look at him!' echoed Mr Llewellyn. 'For what seemed about an hour I did nothing else but. If he'd of had pimples I could have counted each individual one.'

  'Pimples are just what he hasn't got. That's the whole point He's a darned good-looking fellow.' 'I didn't admire him.'

  'Well, he is. Rather like Bob Montgomery. And I'll bet he knows it. I'll bet he's been wanting to break into pictures ever since he started shaving. I'll bet if you took him on one side and offered him a job at Llewellyn City, he'd jump at it. And then-’

  Then he couldn't dish the dirt to those Customs sharks!’ 'Of course he couldn't. He wouldn't want to. Why, anyone in your position, with jobs in the pictures to give away, can fix anybody. This guy will drop the moment you start talking’ "M’ yes,' said Mr Llewellyn.

  The brightness had suddenly gone out of his voice. A pen’ sive look was on his face. He was musing.

  Unless absolutely compelled to do so, Ivor Llewellyn had no desire to add to the number of blood-sucking parasites already battening on his firm's pay-roll. Every Saturday morning he was paying out good money to his wife's brother George, his wife's Uncle Wilmot, his wife's cousin Egbert and his wife's cousin Egbert's sister Genevieve - who, much as he doubted her ability to read at all, was in the Reading Department of the Superba-Llewellyn at a cool three hundred and fifty dollars a week. If needs must, of course, he could add to these a Monty Bodkin at whatever fantastic salary that cold-hearted human bloodhound might see fit to demand, but he was wondering if needs really did must.

  Then he saw that it was the only way. The old, sound principle of stopping the mouth of the man who knew was one which it was impossible to better. It had served him many a time before, and it must serve him again.

  'I'll do it," he said. 'Ambrose Tennyson is a friend of his’ I'll have him put through the deal. That'll be better than if I approach him direct. More dignified. I think you're rights He'll drop.'

  'Sure he will. Why wouldn't he? I don't suppose they pay these fellows much. A nice fat salary at Llewellyn City will look like the earth to him. I told you there was nothing to worry about.'

  "You certainly did.'

  'And wasn't I right?’

  'You certainly were,' said Mr Llewellyn.

  He gazed with positive benevolence at his sister-in-law, wondering how he could ever have got the idea that he did not like her. For an instant he even went so far as to consider the notion of kissing her.

  Thinking better of this he reached for his case, produced a cigar and began to chew it.

  Chapter 8

  Monty Bodkin, having had his quick one, had not lingered on in the smoking-room, full though it was of pleasant fellows with whom in his mood of exalted happiness he would have found it agreeable to forgather. He had gone below to inspect the state-room, formerly the property of Reginald Tennyson, which was to be his home for the next five days. He was thus privileged to obtain his first view of Albert Eustace Pease-march, the bedroom steward assigned to that section of the C deck. This zealous man was not actually visible when he entered, being manifest only as a sound of heavy breathing from the bathroom, but a moment later he emerged and Monty was enabled to see him steadily and see him whole.

  His immediate reaction on doing so was a feeling that, as far as his chances of getting a feast for the eye were concerned, he had come a little late. He should have caught Albert Pease-march a decade or so earlier, before the years had taken their toll. The steward was now a man in the middle forties, and time had robbed him of practically all his hair, giving him in niggardly exchange a pink pimple on the side of the nose. It had also removed from his figure that streamline effect. Nobody who had recently come from the presence of Ivor Llewellyn would have called him fat, but he was certainly overweight for a man of his height. He had a round, moonlike face, in which were set, like currants in a suet dumpling, two small brown eyes. And these eyes caused Monty, as he met them, to experience a slight diminution of the effervescing cheerfulness which he had brought with him into the room.

  It was not that he minded Albert Peasemarch's eyes being small. Some of his best friends had small eyes. What damped him was the fact that in their expression he seemed to detect a certain disapproval, as if the other did not like his looks. And the thought of anyone not liking his looks, at a moment when he had just become reconciled to Gertrude Butterwick, cut Monty like a knife.

  He resolved to address himself to the task of removing this disapproval, of making Albert Peasemarch all smiles, of showing Albert Peasemarch, in fine, that if by some unfortunate chance he, Monty, had happened to fall short in any way of his, Albert's, standard of physical beauty, the inner, essential Bodkin was well up to sample.

  'Not strictly handsome in the classical style,' Albert would
go back and tell his mates, though goodness knew he had no claim to set himself up as a critic, 'but a very pleasant young gentleman. Nothing stand-offish about him. No haughtiness. A most entertaining conversationalist' - or however bedroom stewards put it when they wanted to say 'entertaining conversationalist'.

  With this end in view, he let loose a gay and ringing 'Good evening.'

  'Good evening, sir,' said Albert Peasemarch coldly.

  Monty's impression that the man disapproved of him deepened. The fellow's manner was unquestionably austere. It was his first ocean voyage, so he had no means of estimating from past experience what was the average mean or norm of geniality in stewards, but surely, he felt, he was entitled to expect more chumminess.

  He took a line through butlers. If he had arrived on a visit at a country house and had found the butler as unresponsive as this, he would have had serious misgivings that the man must have overheard his host saying derogatory things about him at the dinner-table. He could not help feeling that in some way, for some reason, Albert Peasemarch was prejudiced against him.

  Still, he had determined upon being an entertaining conversationalist, and an entertaining conversationalist he would be.

  'Good evening,' he said again. 'You, I take it, reading from right to left, would be the steward of this state-room, what?'

  'Of this and the adjoining ones, sir.’

  'Bustling about, I perceive. Earning the weekly envelope with honest toil.' 'I have been arranging your effects, sir.' ‘Good.'

  'I have just laid out your razors, razor-strop, toothbrushes, toothpaste, mouth-wash, sponge, sponge-bag, and shaving-brush in the bathroom, sir.'

  'Stout fellow. I mean,' said Monty, feeling that in the circumstances the phrase had a certain tactlessness and laid itself open to misconstruction, 'thanks.'

  ‘Not at all, sir.'

  There was a pause. The sunlight had not yet come into the steward's eyes. In fact, in the matter of sunniness, he seemed to have gone back a bit, if anything. However, Monty persevered.

  'Lots of people on board.’

  ‘Yes, sir.'

  'And a lot more have come on here, I suppose?' 'Yes, sir.'

  'Going to have a nice voyage, I shouldn't wonder.' 'Yes, sir.’

  'If it keeps calm, of course.' 'Yes, sir.' 'Fine boat.’ 'Yes, sir.’

  'Pretty different from the old days, what? I mean, a ship like this would have made Columbus open his eyes a trifle.'

  'Yes, sir,' said Albert Peasemarch, still with that same odd reserve.

  Monty gave it up. He had shot his bolt. It was too dashed absurd, he considered, to stand here trying to suck up to a bally steward who declined to expand and be matey, when he might be out in God's air, taking Gertrude for a spin round the deck. Besides, he felt, for the Bodkins, though amiability itself if you met them half-way, had their pride, what the hell! If this chap didn't appreciate him, he meant to say, there were plenty who did. A little stiffly, he turned to the door, to be checked as his fingers touched the handle by a grave cough.

  'Excuse me, sir,’ 'Eh?'

  'You shouldn't have done it, sir, you shouldn't, really.'

  Monty was amazed to note that this Peasemarch was now regarding him with quiet reproach. The spectacle stunned him. To aloofness he had become inured, but why was Pease-march reproachful?

  'Eh?' he said again. There are some situations in which ‘Eh?' is the only possible remark.

  'I don't understand how you could have brought yourself to do such a thing, sir.'

  'Such a thing as what?'

  The steward made a rather dignified gesture, spoiling it at the last moment by scratching his left ear. ‘I fear you may think it a liberty, me talking like this –‘

  ‘No, no.'

  ‘Yes, sir,' insisted Albert Peasemarch, once more scratching his ear, which appeared to be irritating him. 'And technically it is a liberty. Until the ship docks in New York harbour our relations are those of master and man. In my dealings with any of the blokes in my sheds - any of the gentlemen who occupy the state-rooms under my charge, I always say to myself that for the duration of the voyage I am a vassal and he is - temporarily - my feudal overlord.'

  'Golly!' said Monty, impressed. 'That's rather well put.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.'

  ‘Dashed well put, if you don't mind my saying so.’

  'I had a good schooling, sir.'

  ‘You weren't at Eton, by any chance?'

  ‘No, sir.'

  "Well, anyway, it was dashed well put. But I'm interrupting you.'

  'Not at all, sir. I was merely saying that, our positions being those of feudal overlord and vassal, I shouldn't by rights be speaking to you like this. By rights I ought to just go to Jimmy the One -'

  ‘To-?'

  The chief steward, sir. The proper thing by rights would be to just go to the chief steward and report the matter and leave him to deal with it. But I don't want to cause unpleasantness and get a young gentleman like you into trouble -’ ‘Eh?’

  ‘- because I know very well that it was due to high spirits and nothing more. So I do hope you will not take offence, sir, where none is meant, when I say that you ought not to do that sort of thing. I am old enough to be your father ...'

  Monty had been feeling that the essential thing to do was to institute a probing system of inquiry with a view to inducing this mystic steward to come out into the open and explain what on earth he was talking about. But this statement sidetracked him.

  'Old enough to be my father?' he said, surprised. "How old are you?' ‘Forty-six, sir.'

  Well, dash it, then you couldn't be. I'm twenty-eight.' ‘You look younger, sir.'

  'It isn't a question of what I look. It's what I am. I'm twenty-eight. You'd have had to have married at - seventeen,' said Monty, relaxing the strained frown on his face and ceasing to twiddle his fingers.

  'Men have got married at seventeen, sir.’

  'Name one.'

  'Ginger Perkins - redheaded feller in the stevedoring business down Fratton way,' said Albert Peasemarch rather surprisingly. 'So, you see, I was right when I said I could have been your father.'

  'But you aren't.'

  ‘No, sir’

  We aren't related at all, so far as I know.' ‘No, sir.'

  ‘Well, carry on,’ said Monty, 'but I may as well tell you frankly that you're making my head swim. You were saying something about something I ought not to have done.'

  ‘Yes, sir. And I say it again. You ought not to have done it.'

  ·Done what?'

  'Young blood may be young blood -’ 'I don't see what else it could be.'

  'But that doesn't excuse it, to my mind. Youth!' said Albert Peasemarch. 'It's the old, old story. See jew-ness saway.' 'What are you babbling about?'

  'I am not babbling, sir. I am alluding to the bathroom.'

  The bathroom?'

  What's in the bathroom, sir.'

  ‘You mean my sponge-bag?'

  'No, sir. I do not mean your sponge-bag. I mean what's on the wall.' 'My strop?'

  'You know very well what I'm referring to, sir. All that writing in red paint. A lot of trouble and extra work that's going to cause, cleaning of it off, but I reckon you didn't think of that. Heedless, that's what youth is. Heedless. Never looks to the morrow.'

  Monty was staring, bewildered. But for the fact that his articulation was so beautifully clear and his words so finely chosen - that 'see jew-ness saway' gag - good stuff there - he would have said that this steward who stood before him was a steward who had had one over the eight.

  'Red paint?' he said, at a loss.

  He walked across to the bathroom and looked in. The next moment he had staggered back with a choking cry.

  It was even as Albert Peasemarch had said. The writing was on the wall.

  Chapter 9

  Owing to the bold and dashing hand in which this writing had been inscribed, a person seeing it for the first time, as Monty was doing, had a momentary illusio
n that there was more of it than was really the case. The wall seemed not so much a wall with writing on it as a mass of writing with a wall somewhere in the background. In actual fact, the complete opus, if one may so call it, consisted of two phrases, one over the mirror, the other to the left of it.

  The first ran:

  'Hi, baby!'

  The second:

  ‘Hello, there, sweetie!'

  A calligraphy expert would probably have deduced that the author was of a warm-hearted, impulsive nature.

  In the other historic case of writing on the wall, that which occurred during the celebrated Feast of Belshazzar, and, as Belshazzar said at the time, spoiled a good party, it will be remembered that what caused all the unpleasantness and upset the Babylonian monarch so much was the legend 'Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.' It is odd to reflect that if somebody had written that on the wall of Monty's bathroom, he would not have turned a hair; while, conversely, knowing what those Babylonian monarchs were like, one can picture Belshazzar reading the present script and rather enjoying it. So strangely do tastes differ.

  Monty was frankly appalled. About the words 'Hello, there, sweetie!' there is nothing intrinsically alarming, and the same may be said of 'Hi, baby!'. Yet, gazing at them now, he felt very much as Mr Llewellyn had felt on the occasion when his muscular friend had hit him fn the solar plexus with the medicine ball. The bathroom swam about him, and for an instant he seemed to see two Albert Peasemarches, both shimmying.

  Then his eyes returned to normal, and he fixed them on the steward with a wild surmise.

  ‘Who's done this?'

  'Come, come, sir.'

  'You silly ass,' cried Monty, 'you don't think I did it, do you? What the dickens would I want to go doing a thing like that for? It's a girl's writing.'

  It was this discovery that had caused so powerful an upheaval in Montague Bodkin, and who shall say that he had not reason to be perturbed? No engaged young man with his betrothed travelling on the same boat is pleased at finding his state-room richly decorated with loving messages in a girlish hand, but the engaged young man who likes it least is the one who has just squared himself in the matter of a female name tattooed on his chest with a heart round it. With a sickening sense of being in the toils, Monty perceived that there was a heart round the words 'Hi, baby!'