A Pelican at Blandings: Page 8

  'You off somewhere?'

  'Yes.'

  'You went off yesterday.'

  'Yes.'

  'Where you going this time?'

  'Shropshire.'

  'What, again?'

  'Yes.'

  'What takes you there?'

  'I have to see a man.'

  'In Shropshire?'

  'Yes.'

  'Whereabouts in Shropshire?'

  'A place called Market Blandings.'

  'Never heard of it.'

  'Well, it's there.'

  'Was that where you went yesterday?'

  'Yes.'

  'It'd have saved a lot of trouble if you'd stayed the night there. I suppose that didn't occur to you.'

  'I had to be in court this morning.'

  'Balsam used to go to court a lot when he was with us. There was a copper with a cast in one eye who kept pinching him for street betting. What's that thing in brown paper?'

  'A picture.'

  'You taking it to this man you're seeing?'

  'Yes.'

  'Cheaper to send it parcel post.'

  'Yes.'

  'Then why don't you?'

  'Oh, aitch!' said John, and Ma Balsam realized that the bad influence of Mister Who-is-it had made even more progress than she had supposed.

  The meeting with Gally got off to a bad start. When the last of the Pelicans arrived at the tryst on the following morning, he was in no welcoming mood. John's telephone call had come when he was out taking a stroll in the grounds, and its purport had been relayed to him by Beach. All he knew, accordingly, was that his godson, contrary to the most definite instructions, had returned to the Emsworth Arms, and he was naturally annoyed. No leader of men likes to hear that his orders have been ignored by a subordinate. His greeting of John was brusque.

  'I thought I told you to go back to London and leave everything to me,' he said.

  His manner was stern, but John remained unmoved.

  'This isn't that.'

  'What do you mean, this isn't that?'

  'It has nothing to do with Linda.'

  'Nothing to do with her?'

  'No.'

  'Then what's it all about? If,' said Gally, 'you've dragged me all the way to Market Blandings on a sweltering summer morning for some trifle . . . What are you giggling about?'

  John corrected his choice of verbs.

  'I was not giggling. I was laughing hollowly. Your use of the word "trifle" amused me. It's anything but a trifle that brings me here. I'm sorry you've had a warm walk—'

  'Warm? I feel like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the burning fiery furnace.'

  '—but I had to see you. The most ghastly thing has happened, and we need your help.'

  'We?'

  'Joe Bender and I.'

  'Who's Joe Bender?'

  'I told you that night I came to your place. Don't you remember? He runs the Bender gallery.'

  'Ah yes. You put some money into it, you said.'

  'I put practically all the money I had into it. And now I'm going to lose it, unless you come to the rescue.'

  Gally stared, amazed that anyone should think him possessed of cash. Not that he did not appreciate the compliment.

  'My good Johnny, what on earth can I do? Heaven knows I'd like to help you out of a tight place, but all I've got is a younger son's pittance, and I'm not allowed to dip into the capital. I could manage twenty quid, if that's any use. And even that would mean getting an overdraft at my bank.'

  John expressed gratitude for the offer, but said that Gally was under a misapprehension.

  'I don't want money.'

  'Then why did you say so?'

  'I didn't say so.'

  'It sounded like it to me.'

  'I'm sorry. No, what I want you to do is switch a couple of pictures.'

  'To . . . what?'

  'Yes, I know it sounds odd, but it's really quite simple.'

  'Then perhaps you would explain.'

  'I will.'

  Gally, as has been mentioned, was always a better raconteur than a listener, but he gave on this occasion no cause for complaint in the latter role. Nobody could have been more silently attentive. He sat drinking in every word of John's story, never interrupting and not even saying at its conclusion that it reminded him of something that had happened to a friend of his in the Pelican Club. All he said was that he would be charmed to perform the absurdly simple task required of him. To take the forgery to John and return to the castle with the genuine painting and deposit it in the portrait gallery would, he assured him, be the ideal way of filling in the time. Time, he said, always hung a little heavy on one's hands in the country, and one was grateful for something to occupy one.

  'You've brought the genuine goods with you?' he said, all executive bustle and efficiency. 'Capital, capital, as Clarence would say. Where is it?'

  'Up in my room.'

  'I can't take it now, of course.'

  'Why not?'

  'My dear boy, use your intelligence. What would I say if I met Connie and she asked me what I thought I was doing, sneaking about with a whacking great picture under my arm? I should be at a loss. I wouldn't know which way to look. No, stealth is essential.'

  'Yes, you're right.'

  'It's a thing that must be done at dead of night, the deader the better. We must arrange a rendezvous. Where can we meet? Not in the ruined chapel, because there isn't a ruined chapel, and other spots I could name wouldn't convey a thing to you, you being a stranger in these parts. I think I'll walk round in a circle for a bit and muse, if you have no objection.'

  Permission granted, he walked in a circle for a bit and must have mused to good purpose, for on completing his eleventh lap he announced that he had it.

  'The sty!'

  'The what?'

  'The bijou residence of my brother Clarence's prize pig, Empress of Blandings. The ideal locale, for however dark the night the old girl's distinctive aroma will lead you to it unerringly. It's near the kitchen garden. Go there and sniff, then follow your nose. There was a song popular before you were born, the refrain of which began with the words "It ain't all lavender". It might have been written expressly with the Empress in mind. Her best friends won't tell her, but she suffers from B.O. How is your sense of smell? Keen? Then you can't miss. And we must make it tonight, for time is of the essence. Dunstable bought that picture with the intention of selling it to an American chap called Trout. Trout got here yesterday. As soon as they've concluded their deal he will presumably leave and bang will go our chance of making the switch. So meet me at the Empress's sty at midnight, and I will carry on from there.'

  A belated spasm of remorse stirred John. For the first time it occurred to him that however lightly Gally might speak of his assignment as absurdly simple, he was asking a good deal of the most accommodating godfather.

  'I hate landing you with a job like this, Gally.'

  'My dear boy, I shall enjoy it.'

  'Midnight's not too late for you?'

  'The shank of the evening.'

  'Suppose you're caught?'

  'I won't be caught. I'm never caught. They call me The Shadow.'

  'Well, I can't tell you how grateful I am. You've taken a load off my mind.'

  'Though there must still be plenty on it.'

  'There is.' John choked for a moment as if afflicted by a sudden catarrh. 'Have you . . . Have you . . . Have you by any chance had a word with her?'

  'Not yet. I'm biding my time. These things can't be hurried. In dealing with a disgruntled popsy the wise man waits till she has simmered down a bit.'

  'How—er—how is she?'

  'Physically in the pink. Spiritually not so bobbish. She will need careful treatment. You must be patient, telling yourself that her current inclination to dip you in boiling oil will eventually pass. Time the great healer, and all that sort of thing. And as regards tonight you have memorized the drill? Good. Then I will be leaving you. We shall meet at twelve pip emma. Lurk co
ncealed till you hear the hoot of the white owl, and then come running. I think I can manage a white owl all right, but if not I'll do you a brown one.'

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The clock over the stables was chiming the quarter, with only another quarter to go before twelve p.m., when Gally came out of the portrait gallery carrying the fictitious reclining nude. He was wearing rubber-soled shoes and stepped softly as befitted a man engaged on a perilous mission. Cautiously, for the oak stairs were slippery, he made his way to the hall and the front door that lay beyond it, and shooting back the bolts which Beach had made fast before taking the tray of beverages into the drawing-room at nine-thirty passed through it into the night. He was conscious, as he went, of a momentary pang for the years which the locust had eaten. Just so, he remembered, when his heart was young and every member of the female sex looked like a million dollars to him, had he crept out in the darkness to exchange ideas with a girl named Maud, now a grandmother.

  Arriving at his destination, he had no need to imitate the hoot of the white owl, for before he could display his virtuosity in that direction John stepped from the shadows.

  'I thought you were never coming,' said John peevishly. He was unused to this sort of thing, and his nerves were on edge. He had reached the sty at eleven-fifteen, and it seemed to him that he had been there, inhaling the Empress's bouquet, since childhood.

  With his usual suavity Gally pointed out that he was not late but, if reliance could be placed on the clock over the stables, some ten minutes ahead of time, and John apologized. He said it was the darkness that got him down, and Gally agreed that darkness had its trying side.

  'But you can't do these things by daylight. I remember saying that to Bill Bowman, a friend of mine in the old Pelican days. He was in love with a popsy and her parents were holding her incommunicado in the family residence somewhere in Kent. Bill wanted to get a letter to her, telling her to sneak out and run away with him, and his idea was to hide in the grounds till a gardener came along and tip him to give it to her. I told him he was making a great mistake.'

  'Do you think we ought to stand here talking?' said John, but Gally proceeded with his tale. It was never easy, indeed it was almost impossible, to stop him when in spate.

  '"Do it by night," I urged him. "You know which her room is. Climb up the water pipe to her window, having previously thrown gravel at it—the window, of course, not the water pipe, and get her views face to face. Only so can you hope to bring home the bacon. "Well, he made some fanciful objection, said climbing water pipes wouldn't do his trousers any good or something frivolous like that, and persisted in his plan. Next morning he went and hid. A gardener came along. He tipped him and gave him the letter. And the gardener, who turned out of course to be the girl's father, immediately got after him with the pitchfork he was carrying. Moreover, he stuck to the tip like glue. Bill has often told me that what really rankled with him was the thought that he had paid a pound just to be chased through a thickset hedge with a gardening fork. He was always a chap who liked to get value for money. So now you see what I meant when I said it's better to do these things at night. By the way, talking of letters, has it ever occurred to you to write one to your popsy?'

  John's manner took on a touch of stiffness.

  'Must you call her my popsy?'

  His tone hurt Gally. He was not conscious of having used a derogatory term.

  'Must call her something.'

  'You might try Miss Gilpin.'

  'Sounds a bit formal. Anyway, you know who I mean. Why not drop her a line?'

  John shook his head. A wasted gesture, of course, for a man cloaked in darkness towards another man also cloaked in darkness.

  'It wouldn't do any good. I must see her.'

  'Yes, on second thoughts you're right. In my younger days I always found that when I wanted to melt the heart of a bookie and persuade him to wait another week for his money, it was essential to confer with him in person, so as to be able to massage his upper arm and pick bits of fluff off him, and no doubt the same principle applies when one is trying to get a girl thinking along the right lines. At any moment you may want to reach out and grab her and shower kisses on her upturned face, and this cannot be done by mail.'

  John quivered. Those vivid words had conjured up a picture which moved him deeply.

  'I suppose it really is impossible to get me into the castle?'

  The wistful note in his voice, so like that which used to come into his own in the old days when he was having business talks with turf accountants, stirred Gally's sympathetic heart. He would have given much to be able to offer some word of cheer, but he could not encourage false hopes.

  'As a friend of mine absolutely impossible. It wouldn't be worth your while to bother to pass the front door. "Throw this man out", Connie would say to the knaves and scullions on the pay roll, and "I want to see him bounce twice", she would add. The only way you could remain on the premises for more than ten minutes would be if you put on false whiskers and said you had come to inspect the drains. Which reminds me. A fellow at the Pelican did that once, and—'

  But the case history of the fellow at the Pelican who, no doubt from the best motives, had bearded himself like the pard and shown an interest in drainage systems was not to be gone into with the thoroughness customary with Gally when in reminiscent mood. It has been stressed more than once in the course of this chronicle that he was a difficult man to stop, but one of the things that could stop him was the sight at a moment like this of a torch wobbling through the darkness in his direction. He broke off on the word 'and' as if some anecdote-disliking auditor had gripped him by the throat.

  John, too, had seen the torch, and a single look at it was enough to galvanize him into immediate activity. He was gone with the wind, and Gally lost no time in following his astute example. Hilarious though he knew the story of the whiskered fellow at the Pelican to be, he felt no inclination to linger and tell it to the torch-bearer. Better, he decided, to withdraw while the withdrawing was good. He and John had long since exchanged reclining nudes, so there was really nothing to keep him.

  Returning by a circuitous route to the house, he was careful to shoot the bolts of the front door, for he had no wish to wound Beach's feelings by leading him to suppose, when he went his rounds in the morning, that he had omitted so important a part of his duties; and, this done, he climbed the stairs to his room.

  It was in the same corridor as the portrait gallery, but he did not go there immediately. Hanging the picture was a thing that could be done any time in the next six hours, and the humid night had made him hot and sticky. His first move, obviously, was to take a bath. He gathered up his great sponge and trotted off along the corridor.

  2

  It was Lord Emsworth who had so abruptly applied the closure to the story of the fellow at the Pelican. As a rule, he was in bed and asleep at this hour, but tonight perturbation of soul had drawn him from between the sheets as if something spiked had come through the mattress. He was consumed with worry about the Empress.

  Although, as he had told Vanessa, since the sinister affair of the rejected potato Mr. Banks, the veterinary surgeon, had several times assured him that the noble animal was in midseason form and concern on his part quite unnecessary, he was still as uneasy as ever. Admitted that Mr. Banks was a recognized expert whose skill in his profession had won golden opinions from all sorts of men, he might for once have been mistaken. Alternatively, he might have discerned symptoms of some wasting sickness, and not wanting to cause him anxiety had Kept It From Him.

  These speculations made him wakeful, and when at length he did doze off, conditions were in no way improved. Sleep, so widely publicized as knitting up the ravelled sleeve of care, merely brought a nightmare of the most disturbing kind. He dreamed that he had gone to the sty, eagerly anticipating the usual feast for the eyes, and there before him had stood a lean, streamlined Empress, her ribs clearly defined and her whole aspect that of a pig which had been in
hard training for weeks, the sort of pig that climbs Matterhorns and wins the annual Stock Exchange walk from London to Brighton.

  The shock woke him, but he did not follow his normal practice of blinking once or twice and falling asleep again. He rose, put on dressing gown and slippers and took a torch from the drawer where it nestled among his socks and handkerchiefs. He had to go and reassure himself that the horror he had beheld had been but a dream.

  In a less preoccupied mood he might on arriving at the front door have been surprised to find it unbolted, but in his anxious state the phenomenon made no impression on him, and he went on his way unheeding.

  It was more as a sort of concession to the lateness of the hour than because he needed its light to guide him that he switched on the torch. When he did so, he instantly became the centre of attraction to a rowdy mob of those gnats, moths and beetles which collect in gangs and stay up late in the rural districts. They appeared to have been waiting for a congenial comrade to come along and give a fillip to their nocturnal revels, and nothing could have been more hearty than the welcome they gave him. He was swallowing his sixth gnat as he reached the sty and paused, filling his lungs with its familiar scent.

  The night was very still. From somewhere in the distance came faintly the sound of a belated car as it rounded a corner on the Shrewsbury road, while nearer at hand he could hear a sotto voce something which might have been the hoot of the white or possibly the brown owl. But from the sty not so much as a grunt, and for a moment this deepened his uneasiness. Then reason told him that at such an hour grunts were hardly to be expected. To Galahad, whose formative years had been passed at the Pelican Club, this might be early evening, but it was far too late for a well-adjusted pig like the Empress to be up and about and grunting. She would of course be getting her eight hours in her covered shed.

  An imperious urge swept over him to take one look at her, and he made no attempt to resist it. To mount the rail was with him, as the phrase goes, the work of an instant; to slip, overbalance, catch his foot on the rail and fall face downward in the mud the work of another instant. Feeling damp but not discouraged, he rose and came without further misadventure to journey's end, where a fascinating sight rewarded his perseverance. Stretched on her bed of straw and breathing gently through the nose, the Empress was enjoying her usual health-giving slumber, and a glance was enough to tell him how wide of the mark his dream had been. For three years in succession she had been awarded the silver medal in the Fat Pigs class at the annual Shropshire Agricultural Show, and it was plain that had she been entered for the contest again at this moment, the cry 'The winner and still champion' would have been on every judge's lips. Julius Caesar, who liked to have men—and presumably pigs—about him that were fat, would have welcomed her without hesitation to his personal entourage.