Service With a Smile Page 7

  Lord Emsworth would not have believed such a thing possible, but the spectacle of this supreme pig was plunging the Duke in gloom. It was not with admiration that he gazed upon her, but with a growing fury. There, he was saying to himself, golloped a Berkshire sow which, if conveyed to his Wiltshire home, would mean a cool two thousand pounds added to his bank balance, and no hope of conveying her. The thought was like a dagger in his heart.

  His cigar having reached the point where, if persevered with, it would burn his moustache, he threw it away, straightened himself with a peevish grunt and was about to leave the noble animal to her proteids and carbohydrates, when a voice said ‘Pahdon me’, and turning he perceived the pie-faced female whom he had so recently put in her place.

  ‘Get out of here!’ he said in his polished way, ‘I’m busy.’

  Where a lesser woman would have quailed and beaten an apologetic retreat, Lavender Briggs stood firm, her dignified calm unruffled. No man, however bald his head or white his moustache, could intimidate a girl who had served under the banner of Lord Tilbury of the Mammoth Publishing Company.

  ‘I would like a word with Your Grace,’ she said in the quiet, level voice which only an upbringing in Kensington followed by years of secretarial college can produce. ‘It is with refahrence,’ she went on, ignoring the purple flush which had crept over her companion’s face, ‘to this pig of Lord Emsworth’s. I chanced to overhear what you were saying to Lady Constance just now.’

  A cascade of hair dashed itself against the Duke’s Wellingtonian nose.

  ‘Eavesdropping, eh? Listening at keyholes, what?’

  ‘Quate,’ said Lavender Briggs, unmoved by the acidity of his tone. In her time she had bean spoken acidly to by experts. ‘You were urging Lady Constance to pay somebody to purloin the animal. To which her reply’ — she consulted a shorthand note in her notebook — ‘was “My dear Alaric! “, indicating that she was not prepare-ahed to consid-ah the idea-h. Had you made the suggestion to me, you would not have received such a dusty answer.’

  ‘Such a what?’

  A contemptuous light flickered for an instant behind the harlequin glasses. Lavender Briggs moved in circles where literary allusions were grabbed off the bat, and the other’s failure to get his hands to this one aroused her scorn. She did not actually call the Duke an ill-read old bohunkus, but this criticism was implicit in the way she looked at him.

  ‘A quotation. “Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul when hot for certainties in this our life.” George Meredith, “Modem Love,” stanza forty-eight.’

  The Duke’s head had begun to swim a little, but with the sensation of slight giddiness had come an unwilling respect for this goggled girl. Superficially all that stanza forty-eight stuff might seem merely another indication of the pottiness which was so marked a feature of the other sex, but there was something in her manner that suggested that she had more to say and that eventually something would emerge that made sense. This feeling solidified as she proceeded.

  ‘If we can came to some satisfactory business arrangement, I will abstract the pig and see that it is delivered at your address.’

  The Duke blinked. Whatever he had been expecting, it was not this. He looked at the Empress, estimating her tonnage, then at Lavender Briggs, in comparison so fragile.

  ‘You? Don’t be an ass. You couldn’t steal a pig.’

  ‘I should, of course, engage the service of an assistant to do the rough work.’

  ‘Who? Not me.’

  ‘I was not thinking of Your Grace.’

  ‘Then who?’

  ‘I would prefer not to specify with any greatah exactitude.’

  ‘See what you mean. No names, no pack-drill?’

  ‘Quate.’

  A thoughtful silence fell. Lavender Briggs stood looking like a spectacled statue, while the Duke, who had lighted another cigar, puffed at it. And at this moment Lord Emsworth appeared, walking across the meadow in that jerky way of his which always reminded his friends and admirers of a mechanical toy which had been insufficiently wound up.

  ‘Hell!’ said the Duke, ‘Here comes Emsworth.’

  ‘Quate,’ said Lavender Briggs. It was obvious to her that the conference must be postponed to some more suitable time and place. Above all else, plotters require privacy. ‘I suggest that Your Grace meet me later in my office.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Beach will direct you.’

  The secretary’s office, to which the butler some quarter of an hour later escorted the Duke, was at the far end of a corridor, a small room looking out on the Dutch garden. Like herself, it was tidy and austere, with no fripperies. There was a desk with a typewriter on it, a table with a tape-recording machine on it, filing cabinets against the walls, a chair behind the desk, another chair in front of it, both hard and business-like, and —the sole concession to the beautiful — a bowl of flowers by the window. As the Duke entered, she was sitting in the chair behind the desk, and he, after eyeing it suspiciously as if doubtful of its ability to support the largest trouser-seat in the peerage, took the other chair.

  ‘Been thinking over what you were saying just now,’ he said. ‘About stealing that pig for me. This assistant you were speaking of. Sure you can get him?’

  ‘I am. Actually, I shall requiah two assistants,’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘One to push and one to pull. It is a very large pig.’

  ‘Oh, yes, see what you mean. Yes, undoubtedly. As you say, very large pig. And you can get this second chap?’

  ‘I can.’

  ‘Good. Then that seems to be about it, what? Everything settled, I mean to say.’

  ‘Except terms.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘If you will recall, I spoke of a satisfactory business arrangement? I naturally expect to be compensated for my services. I am anxious to obtain capital with which to start a typewriting bureau.’

  The Duke, a prudent man who believed in watching the pennies, said, ‘A typewriting bureau, eh? I know the sort of thing you mean. One of those places full of machines and girls hammering away at them like a lot of dashed riveters. Well, you don’t want much money for that,’ he said, and Lavender Briggs, correcting this view, said she wanted as much as she could get.

  ‘I would suggest five hundred pounds.’

  The Duke’s moustache leaped into life. His eyes bulged. He had the air of one who is running the gamut of the emotions.

  ‘Five… what?’

  ‘You were thinking of some lesser fig-ah?’

  ‘I was thinking of a tenner.’

  ‘Ten pounds?’ Lavender Briggs smiled pityingly, as if some acquaintance of hers, quoting Horace, had made a false quantity. ‘That would leave you with a nice profit, would it not?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You told Lady Constance that you had a friend who was prepared to pay you two thousand pounds for the animal.’

  The Duke chewed his moustache in silence for a moment, regretting that he had been so explicit.

  ‘I was pulling her leg,’ he said, doing his best.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Harmless little joke.’

  ‘Indeed? I took it au pied de la lettre.’

  ‘Au what de what?’ said the Duke, who was as shaky on French as he was on English literature.

  ‘I accepted the statement at its face value.’

  ‘Silly of you. Thought you would have seen that I was just kidding her along and making a good story out of it.’

  ‘That was not the impression your words made on me. When’ — she consulted her notebook — ‘when I heard you say “I know someone who’ll give me two thousand for the animal”, I was quate convinced that you meant precisely what you said. Unfortunately at that moment Lord Emsworth appeared and I was obliged to move from the door, so did not ascertain the name of the friend to whom you referred. Otherwise, I would be dealing with him directly and you would not appear in the transaction at all. As matters stand, you will be recei
ving fifteen hundred pounds for doing nothing — from your point of view, I should have supposed, a very satisfactory state of aff-ay-ars.’

  She became silent. She was thinking hard thoughts of Lord Emsworth and feeling how like him it was to have intruded at such a vital moment. Had he postponed his arrival for as little as half a minute, she would have learned the identity of this lavish pig-lover and would have been able to dispense with the middle man. A momentary picture rose before her eyes of herself, armed with a stout umbrella, taking a full back swing and breaking it over her employer’s head. Even though she recognized this as but an idle dream, it comforted her a little.

  The Duke sat chewing his cigar. There was, he had to admit, much in what she said. The thought of parting with five hundred pounds chilled him to his parsimonious marrow, but after all, as she had indicated, the remaining fifteen hundred was nice money and would come under the general heading of velvet.

  ‘All right,’ he said, though it hurt him to utter the words, and Lavender Briggs’ mouth twitched slightly on the left side, which was her way of smiling.

  ‘I was sure you would be reasonable. Shall we have a written agreement?’

  ‘No,’ said the Duke, remembering that one of the few sensible remarks his late father had ever made was ‘Alaric, my boy, never put anything in writing’. ‘No, certainly not. Written agreement, indeed! Never heard a pottier suggestion in my life.’

  ‘Then I must ask you for a cheque.’

  As far as it is possible for a seated man to do so, the Duke reeled.

  ‘What, in advance?’

  ‘Quate. Have you your cheque-book with you?’

  ‘No,’ said the Duke, brightening momentarily. For an instant it seemed to him that this solved everything.

  ‘Then you can give it me tonight,’ said Lavender Briggs. ‘And meanwhile repeat this after me. I, Alaric, Duke of Dunstable, hereby make a solemn promise to you, Lavender Briggs, that if you steal Lord Emsworth’s pig, Empress of Blandings, and deliver it to my home in Wiltshire, I will pay you the sum of five hundred pounds.’

  ‘Sounds silly.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I must insist on a formal agreement, even if only a verbal one.’

  ‘Oh, all right.’

  The Duke repeated the words, though still considering them silly. The woman had to be humoured.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Lavender Briggs, and went off to scour the countryside for George Cyril Wellbeloved.

  2

  George Cyril was having his elevenses in the tool-shed by the kitchen garden when the rich smell of pig which he always diffused enabled her eventually to locate him. As she entered, closing the door behind her, he lowered the beer bottle from his lips in some surprise. He had seen her around from time to time and knew who she was, but he had not the pleasure of her acquaintance, and he was wondering to what he owed the honour of this visit.

  She informed him, but not immediately, for there was what are called pourparlers to be gone through first.

  ‘Wellbeloved,’ she said, starting to attend to these, ‘I have been making inquiries about you in Market Blandings, and everyone to whom I have mentioned your name tells me that you are thoroughly untrustworthy, a man without scruples of any sort, who sticks at nothing and will do anything for money.’

  ‘Who — me?’ said George Cyril, blinking. He had frequently had much the same sort of thing said to him before, for he moved in outspoken circles, but somehow it seemed worse and more wounding coming from those Kensingtonian lips. For a moment he debated within himself the advisability of dotting the speaker one on the boko, but decided against this. You never know what influential friends these women had. He contented himself with waving his arms in a passionate gesture which caused the aroma of pig to spread itself even more thickly about the interior of the shed. ‘Who — me?’ he said again.

  Lavender Briggs had produced a scented handkerchief and was pressing it to her face.

  ‘Toothache?’ asked George Cyril, interested.

  ‘It is a little chose in here,’ said Lavender Briggs primly, and returned to the pourparlers. ‘At the Emsworth Arms, for in-stance, I was informed that you would sell your grandmother for twopence.’

  George Cyril said he did not have a grandmother, and seemed a good deal outraged by the suggestion that, if that relative had not long since gone to reside with the morning stars, he would have parted with her at such bargain-basement rates. A good grandmother should fetch at least a couple of bob.

  ‘At the Cow and Grasshopper they told me you were a —petty thief of the lowest description.’

  ‘Who — me?’ said George Cyril uneasily. That, he told himself, must be those cigars. He had not supposed that suspicion had fallen on himself regarding their disappearance. Evidently the hand had not moved sufficiently quickly to deceive the eye.

  ‘And the butler at. Sir Gregory Parsloe’s, where I understand you were employed before you returned to Lord Emsworth, said you were always pilfering his cigarettes and whisky.’

  ‘Who — me?’ said George Cyril for the fourth time, speaking now with an outraged note in his voice. He had always thought of Binstead, Sir Gregory’s butler, as a pal and, what is more, a staunch pal. And now this. Like the prophet Zachariah, he was saying to himself, ‘I have been wounded in the house of my friends.’

  ‘Your moral standards have thus been established as negligible. So I want you,’ said Lavender Briggs, ‘to steal Lord Emsworth’s pig.’

  Another man, hearing these words, might have been stunned, and certainly a fifth ‘Who — me?’ could have been expected, but in making this request of George Cyril Wellbeloved the secretary was addressing one who in the not distant past actually had stolen Lord Emsworth’s pig. It was a long and intricate story, reflecting great discredit on all concerned, and there is no need to go into it now. One mentions it merely to explain why George Cyril Wellbeloved did not draw himself to his full height and thunder that nothing could make him betray his position of trust, but merely scratched his chin with the beer bottle and looked interested.

  ‘Pinch the pig?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Never mind why?’

  George Cyril did mind why.

  ‘Now use your intelligence, miss,’ he pleaded. ‘You can’t come telling a man to go pinching pigs without giving him the griff about why he’s doing it and who for and what not. Who’s after that pig this time?’

  Lavender Briggs decided to be frank. She was a fair-minded girl and saw that he had reason on his side. Even the humblest hired assassin in the Middle Ages probably wanted to know, before setting out to stick a poignard into someone, whom he was acting for.

  ‘The Duke of Dunstable,’ she said. ‘You would be requiahed to take the animal to his house in Wiltshire.’

  ‘Wiltshire?’ George Cyril seemed incredulous. ‘Did you say Wiltshire?’

  ‘That is where the Duke lives.’

  ‘And how do we get to Wiltshire, me and the pig? Walk?’

  Lavender Briggs clicked her tongue impatiently.

  ‘I assume that you have some disreputable friend who has a motor vehicle of some kind and is as free from scruples as yourself. And if you are thinking that you may be suspected, you need have no uneasiness. The operation will be carried through early in the morning and nobody will suppose that you were not asleep in bed at the time.’

  George Cyril nodded. This was talking sense.

  ‘Yes, so far so good. But aren’t you overlooking what I might call a technical point? I can’t pinch a pig that size all by myself.’

  ‘You will have a colleague, working with you.’

  ‘I will?’

  ‘Quate.’

  ‘Who pays him?’

  ‘He will not requiah payment.’

  ‘Must be barmy. All right, then, we’ve got that straight. We now come to the financial aspect of the thing. To speak expleasantly, what is there in it for me?’

  ‘Five pounds.’
/>
  ‘Five?’

  ‘Let us say ten.’

  ‘Let us ruddy well say fifty.’

  ‘That is a lot of money.’

  ‘I like a lot of money.’

  It was a moment for swift decisions. Lavender Briggs shared the Duke’s views on watching the pennies, but she was a realist sad knew that if you do not speculate, you cannot accumulate.

  ‘Very well. No doubt I can persuade the Duke to meet you on the point. He is a rich man.’

  ‘R!’ said George Cyril Wellbeloved, so far forgetting himself as to spit out of the side of his mouth. ‘And how did he get his riches? By grinding the face of the poor and taking the bread out of the mouths of the widow and the orphan. But the red dawn will come,’ he said, warming up to his subject. ‘One of these days you’ll see blood flowing in streams down Park Lane and the corpses of the oppressors hanging from lampposts. And His Nibs of Dunstable’ll be one of them. And who’ll be there, pulling on the rope? Me, and happy to do it.’

  Lavender Briggs made no comment on this. She was not interested in her companion’s plans for the future, though in principle she approved of suspending Dukes from lamp-posts. All she was thinking at the moment was that she had concluded a most satisfactory business deal, and hike a good business girl she was feeling quietly elated. She stood to make four hundred and fifty pounds instead of five hundred, but then she had always foreseen that there would be overheads.

  The conference having been concluded and terms arranged, George Cyril Wellbeloved felt justified in raising the beer bottle to his lips, and the spectacle reminded her that there was something else that must be added.

  ‘There is just one thing,’ she said. ‘No more fuddling yourself with alcoholic liquor. This is a very delicate operation which you will be undertaking, and we cannot risk failure. I want you bright and alert. So no more drinking.’

  ‘Except beer, of course.’

  ‘No beer.’

  If George Cyril had not been sitting on an upturned wheelbarrow, he would have reeled.

  ‘No beer?’

  ‘No beer.’