A Pelican at Blandings (10 page)

'We?'

'I shall of course come with you, to lend you moral support.'

'You will?'

'Of course.'

'You are very kind, Galahad.'

'I try to be, Clarence, I try to be. I don't think we ought to
leave it all to the Boy Scouts.'

It had not taken the Duke long to fall asleep again. He was one
of those fortunate men who have no need to count sheep but
drop off directly the head touches the pillow. Short though the
interval had been since Lord Emsworth's departure, loud
snores were proceeding from his bedroom as the two callers
entered the garden suite. They ceased abruptly when Gally
hammered on the door with the shoe which had made so small
an appeal to the recent cat, accompanying the gesture with a
cheery 'Bring out your dead'.

The Duke sat up. His first impression was that the house
was on fire, but he revised this view when Lord Emsworth put
his lips to the keyhole and bleated 'Could you spare a moment,
Alaric?' Although nothing could have been more politely
phrased than the query, it brought him out of bed with a single
leap, full of homicidal thoughts. That Emsworth, of whom he
had been confident that he had seen the last, should be playing
a return date was in his opinion more than a man could be
expected to endure. And when, flinging open the door, he saw
that Gally also was present, words—perhaps fortunately—
failed him. It was left to Gally to set the conversational ball
rolling.

'A very hearty good morning to you, Dunstable,' he said.
'You look astonishingly bright and happy. But I'm afraid those
bubbling high spirits of yours are going to sag a bit when you
hear what we have come to say. Clarence has an amazing story
to relate. Relate your amazing story, Clarence.'

'Er,' said Lord Emsworth.

'That's not all there is of it,' Gally assured the Duke.
'There's a lot more, and the dramatic interest mounts steadily
as it goes on.'

'Do you know what time it is?' the Duke demanded, finding
speech. 'It's two o'clock in the blasted morning,' and Gally said
he had supposed it was something like that. He would, he said,
be thinking of bed in another hour or so, for nothing was
better for the health than turning in early, ask any well-known
Harley Street physician.

'But first the amazing story, and as Clarence shows a
tendency to blow up in his lines, perhaps we shall get on
quicker if I do the relating. We bring grave news, Dunstable,
news which will make your knotted and combined locks to
part and each particular hair to stand on end like quills upon
the fretful porpentine. You know that picture of yours, the one
of the one-girl nudist colony.'

'Two o'clock! Past two! And you come here—'

'It was in the portrait gallery. Note my choice of tense. I use
the past deliberately. It was in the portrait gallery, but it isn't.
One might put it that Annie doesn't live there any more.'

'What the devil are you talking about?'

'It's quite true, Alaric,' said Lord Emsworth. 'I went to the
portrait gallery just now to get a book I had left there, and the
picture had disappeared. I was shocked and astounded.'

'To what conclusion, then,' said Gally, 'do we come? If
credit is to be given to the testimony of the witness Clarence,
somebody with a liking for reclining nudes must have pinched
it.'

'What!'

'Well, reason it out for yourself.'

For some moments bewilderment was the only emotion
visible on the Duke's face. Then abruptly it changed to
righteous wrath. He was not a man whom ideas often struck,
but one had just struck him with the force of a bullet, and in
the circumstances this was not surprising. It did not require a
Sherlock Holmes to solve the riddle. Doctor Watson could
have done it easily. Turning as purple as the stripe on his
pyjamas, he gulped twice, blew at his moustache, allowed his
eyes to protrude in the manner popularized by snails and in a
voice of thunder uttered a single word.

'Trout!'

Then, as if fearing that he had not made himself sufficiently
clear, he added:

'Trout, curse him! Trout, the larcenous hellhound! Trout,
the low-down sneak thief! I might have known it, dammit. I
ought to have guessed he would be up to something like this.
He doesn't want to pay for the thing like a gentleman, so he
steals it. But if he thinks he'll get away with it, he's very much
mistaken. I'll confront him. I'll tax him with his crime. I'll
make him return my picture if I have to stick lighted matches
between his toes.'

Seeing that Lord Emsworth was gaping like the goldfish to
which his sister Constance had so often compared him when
he failed to grasp the gist, Gally came to his assistance with a
brief footnote.

'Dunstable was hoping to sell the picture to Trout, but
apparently Trout prefers to get it for nothing, his view being
that a penny saved is a penny earned. I've known other men to
think along the same lines.'

The Duke continued to sketch out his plans.

'I shall go to him and say "Trout, you have three seconds to
produce that reclining nude," and if he raises the slightest
objection, I shall twist his head off at the roots and make him
swallow it,' he said, and Gally agreed that nothing could be
fairer than that. Trout, he said, could scarcely fail to applaud
such a reasonable attitude.

'I'll go to his room and put it up to him without an instant's
delay. Which is his room?'

'I don't know,' said Gally. 'Which is Trout's room,
Clarence?'

'I'm afraid I couldn't tell you, Galahad,' said Lord
Emsworth, surprised that anyone should suppose that he knew
anything. 'There are fifty-two bedrooms in the castle. Many of
them are of course unoccupied, as for instance the one where
Queen Elizabeth slept and a number of those known as state
rooms, but I imagine Mr. Trout would be in one of the others.

Connie is sure to have put him somewhere.'

'Then the thing to do,' said the Duke, who could reason
things out as well as the next man, 'is to go and ask Connie.'

It was unfortunate that during this conversation Lord
Emsworth should once again have been standing near the
table on which the Duke had replaced the two bowls (now
empty), the clock, the ash-tray, the calendar and the photograph
of James Schoonmaker and Lady Constance on their
wedding day, for as these appalling words penetrated to his
consciousness he made another of his convulsive leaps and
the table and its contents crashed to the floor in the old
familiar manner, causing the Duke to exclaim 'Good God,
Emsworth!' and Gally to warn 'his brother against getting
into a rut.

He was impervious to reproaches.

'But, Alaric!'

'Now what?'

'You can't wake Connie at this time of night!'

'Can't I!'

'I don't know what she will say.'

'Then let's go and find out,' said Gally in his helpful way.
'No need,' he added, for he was a humane man and had no
wish to see his brother's adrenal glands stimulated beyond
their capacity, 'for you to come, Clarence. Dunstable and I
can manage all right, and you ought to be in bed. Good
night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy
rest.'

To say that Lady Constance was glad to see her visitors when
they knocked at her door some minutes later would be an
over-statement. She was plainly stirred, and her gaze, resting
first on Gally, had in it something of a Medusa quality.
Only when she saw the Duke did the flame in her eye
diminish in intensity. There was no outrage of which she did
not think Galahad capable, but she could not believe that
Alaric would come disturbing her slumbers without some
good reason.

The Duke was the first to speak. A lesser man would have
been taken aback by the spectacle of this majestic woman with
a mud pack on her face, but he was not a lesser man.

'Hoy!' he said. 'Where's Trout's room, Connie?'

She answered question with question.

'What in the world are you doing, Alaric, wandering about
the house at this time of night?'

The Duke had a short way with this sort of thing. He had
not climbed two flights of stairs to take part in a quiz show.

'Never mind what I'm doing wandering about the house. If
you really want to know, I'm looking for the reptile Trout.'

'Why on earth do you want Mr. Trout? If you've something
to say to him, why can't it wait till you meet him at breakfast?'

'Because it can't, that's why it can't. He'll have made his
getaway long before breakfast. I only hope he hasn't made it
already.'

So unequal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation
was Lady Constance that she actually turned for support to her
brother Galahad.

'I don't understand. What does he mean, Galahad?'

Gally was helpful, as always.

'It's quite simple, Connie. He thinks Trout has stolen that
picture of his, and he wants to recover it. He feels the thing
must be cunningly hidden somewhere by Trout, and his plan,
as he outlined it to me, is to stick lighted matches between
Trout's toes with a view to persuading him to come clean
about its hiding place. Very sensible, it seemed to me. Just the
sort of thing to get results.'

Well meant though this explanation was, it left Lady
Constance still bewildered.

'But, Alaric, what makes you think Mr. Trout has stolen
your picture?'

'Who else could have stolen it?'

'I mean, why are you under the impression that anyone has
stolen it?'

'Pictures don't walk away, do they?'

'I don't understand you.'

'If one disappears, somebody must have taken it, and
Emsworth was in the portrait gallery just now and says my
reclining nude had gone.'

'Clarence!' The mention of her brother's name had had the
immediate result of restoring Lady Constance to her normal
composure. 'Have you really built up this case against Mr.
Trout on the strength of something Clarence told you? You
know what he is. You can't rely on anything he says. It's just
the same as when he was a child and used to insist that there
were Red Indians under his bed.'

The Duke rapped imperiously on the chest of drawers.

'Produce Trout!'

'I will not produce Trout. I am quite convinced that
Clarence has made some absurd mistake and that the picture is
still there. Let us go to the portrait gallery and see for ourselves.'

It was several minutes before she spoke again. When she
did, it was with the complacency of a woman who is entitled
to say 'I told you so'.

'You see,' she said, and the Duke had no reply to make. 'Just
as I supposed,' she went on. 'A typical instance of Clarence's
muddleheadedness. And now perhaps I may be allowed to go
back to bed and, if possible, get some sleep for the remainder
of the night.'

She withdrew with a hauteur which none of the portraits of
her ancestresses could have exceeded, though many of them
had rather specialized in hauteur, and Gally clicked his tongue
sympathetically.

'Connie's upset,' he said.

'So am I,' said the Duke.

'Extraordinary that Clarence should have made such a
mistake.'

The Duke's pent-up feelings exploded in one of the loudest
snorts he had ever achieved.

'Nothing extraordinary about it. Connie may say all she
likes about him being muddleheaded, but what he's suffering
from isn't muddleheadedness, he's potty to the core, and I
can't see the point of trying to pretend he isn't. Goes out in the
middle of the night to look at that pig of his because he's had
a dream about it. Sneaks into my room and starts upsetting
tables, and when asked what the hell he thinks he's up to
babbles about non-existent cats. And on top of that can't see a
ruddy picture when it's staring him in the face. He ought to be
certified.'

Gally stroked his chin thoughtfully. He removed his
eyeglass, and gave it a polish.

'I don't think I can go as far as that,' he said, 'but he certainly
ought to see a psychiatrist.'

'A what?'

'One of those fellows who ask you questions about your
childhood and gradually dig up the reason why you go about
shouting "Fire" in crowded theatres. They find it's because
somebody took away your all day sucker when you were six.'

'I know the chaps you mean. They dump you on a couch
and charge you some unholy fee per half hour. Only I thought
they were called head-shrinkers.'

'That, I believe, is the medical term.'

'I've heard fellows speak of someone called Glossop.'

'Sir Roderick Glossop? Yes, he is generally recognized as at
the top of the profession.'

'We'll get hold of him.'

'Unfortunately I read in the paper the other day that he had
gone to America.'

'That's too bad.'

'But,' Gally continued, 'by a really extraordinary coincidence
I was chatting only this afternoon with his junior partner, a
young man named Halliday. I ran into him at the Emsworth
Arms. He would be as good for our purpose as Glossop, for
they tell me that, though young, he is brilliantly gifted.'

'Think you can get him?'

'I'm sure he would be delighted to come. Connie is the
difficulty.'

'Why?'

'Can we get her to invite him to the castle? We want to keep
it from her, if possible, that Clarence is undergoing treatment.
You know what women are; they become nervous. Could you
pretend he's a friend of yours and persuade her to invite him?'

'Persuade her?' Again a snort like the sound of the Last
Trump rang through the portrait gallery. 'I don't have to
persuade Connie to invite people. I'll invite him.'

'Splendid,' said Gally. 'It only needs a telephone call. I'll get
in touch with him first thing tomorrow.'

Lady Constance's boudoir, on the second floor of the
castle, looked out on the front drive and the spacious
parkland beyond it, and so, two days after the events just
recorded, did Lady Constance. She was standing at the
window blowing puffs of flame through her shapely nostrils,
and every now and then a quiver shook her as if some unseen
hand had prodded her with a pin. She was thinking of Alaric,
Duke of Dunstable, and a stylist like Gustave Flaubert, with
his flair for the mot juste, would have described her as being
as mad as a wet hen.

Years ago, in her childhood, a series of governesses had been
at pains to implant in her the desirability of self-control.
'Ladies never betray emotion, Connie dear', they had warned
her, and she had taken the lesson to heart. But though today
she always preserved a patrician calm in public, she considered
herself entitled to a certain measure of relaxation when alone
in the privacy of her own apartment. And quite rightly, any
impartial judge would have said. If, looking out of the window,
she frowned and quivered, not even the most censorious of
governesses would have held her unjustified in frowning and
quivering. She was a proud woman, and this habit of Alaric's
of inviting every kind of Tom, Dick and Harry to Blandings
Castle without a word to her gashed her haughty spirit like a
knife. First Trout, and now this man Halliday, and who knew
how many more there would be. She had only one crumb of
comfort. Unwelcome though they were, these Trouts and
Hallidays might have been worse. They might have been
friends of her brother Galahad.

It was as she stood there with her adrenal glands working
overtime that the Market Blandings station cab ( Jno
Robinson, proprietor) drove up to the front door with its usual
pants and gaspings, and a young man alighted. This, she
presumed, was the Mr. Halliday whom Alaric had inflicted on
her, and she followed him into the house with a stare which
would have aroused the respectful envy of a basilisk. Not that
he had a repulsive or criminal aspect. As far as looks were
concerned, he might have been someone she had invited to the
castle herself. But it was not at her bidding that he had come,
and she was at her iciest when some minutes later he entered
the room accompanied by Gally, whom she supposed he had
met in the hall and who was bringing him to be introduced to
an unwilling hostess. A nervous young man, she noted. He
seemed ill at ease.

In this diagnosis she was correct. John was definitely ill at
ease. The exhilaration he had felt when informed by Gally that
the substitution of the pictures had gone without a hitch and
that owing to his, Gally's, superlative generalship he was to
come as a guest to the castle had given way to emotions such
as a cat might feel which finds itself in a strange alley and
muses dubiously on what the future may hold. Gally had
spoken of his hostess as a woman whose impulse it would be
to attach herself to the scruff of his neck and the seat of his
trousers, and start heaving, and looking at her he could well
believe her capable of this form of self-expression. The dullest
eye could not have failed to detect in her all the qualities which
go to make a good chucker-out, and it seemed to him that her
fingers were already twitching in anticipation of the task.
Recalling what Gally had told him about her being the wife of
an American named Schoonmaker, he could not but feel that
this Schoonmaker must be a rugged composite of Humphrey
Bogart and Edward G. Robinson, who talked out of the side
of his mouth and fed on raw meat. Not even when rebuked by
the Judge during the case of Onapoulos and Onapoulos versus
the Lincolnshire and Eastern Counties Glass Bottling
Company had his fortitude so dwindled to the level of that of
the common earthworm.

Gally, in sharp contradistinction, was at his perkiest.
Connie never had the quelling effect on him that she had on
others. When a man has seen a sister spanked with a hairbrush
by a disciplinarian Nanny, her spell weakens. Today, moreover,
he was loving everybody. If there is one thing more than
another which makes a man feel like a benevolent character
out of Dickens, it is the thought that he has been instrumental
in extracting a fellow human being from the soup which was
threatening to engulf him. And nobody could say that he had
not performed this kindly office for his godson. Owing to his
efforts John Preferred, which had been down in the cellar with
no takers, was now enjoying the most spectacular rise one
could wish.

Thinking thus, he bubbled over with cheeriness.

'Hullo there, Connie,' he carolled, more like a lark in
Springtime than a disgrace to a proud family. 'This is the Mr.
Halliday in anticipation of whose coming you have been
counting the minutes. I knew you would want to see him the
moment he arrived.'

'Oh?' said Lady Constance. There was no ring of pleasure in
her voice. 'How do you do?'

'Great friend of Dunstable's.'

'Oh?'

'And of mine. We have only just met, but already we are like
brothers. He calls me Gally, I call him John. Each would lend
the other a fiver without a murmur.'

'Oh?'

'It's a great bit of luck getting him here, as he's generally
engaged three deep at this time of year. So we must do all we
can to make his stay pleasant. What I'm hoping is that he will
hit it off with the Gilpin wench. Is she back yet?'

'No.'

'When do you expect her?'

'Some time today, I suppose.'

'Good. Girl called Linda Gilpin who's staying here,' Gally
explained to John. 'You'll like her. She went off yesterday in
her car to attend some sort of jamboree at her old school.
Sports Day or Founder's Day or something. I warned her it
would bore her stiff, but she would go. Well, I mustn't stand
here talking all the afternoon, I want to show John round the
place. So come along, Johnny. You're in luck. If you'd come on
Visitors Day, you'd have been soaked half a crown, but now
you'll be getting it all for nothing.'

As the door closed behind them, Lady Constance expelled
the breath which she had been holding back during these
exchanges. In a woman of less breeding it would have come
out as an oath, for conversing with Gally had had its usual
effect on her, making her feel as if her nerve centres had been
scrubbed with sandpaper. It increased her exasperation that
she could not in fairness hold him responsible for the intrusion
of this man Halliday, the blame resting entirely on Alaric. She
looked forward to having a word with Alaric, and a moment
later she was given the opportunity of doing so, for the door
opened and he came in.

To those familiar with her imperious temperament it will
no doubt seem surprising that she should have waited till
now to have a word with him, but this is readily explained.
The news of John's impending visit had brought on one of
those neuralgic attacks to which she was so subject, and she
had spent the previous day in bed. The neuralgia having
yielded to treatment, she proposed to take up the point at
issue and if necessary fight it out, like General Grant, if it
took all summer.

It has been stated that Lady Constance had a sisterly
affection for the Duke of Dunstable. Of this affection in the
gaze she now directed at him there was no trace. She looked
more like an aunt than a sister.

'Yes, Alaric?'

'Eh?'

'I said Yes, Alaric.'

'A pretty potty thing to say,' the Duke commented critically.
Connie's total lack of sense sometimes made him uneasy,
though it was about what you would naturally expect in one of
her sex. 'What do you mean, yes? I didn't ask you anything or
say it was a fine day or anything.'

Lady Constance, who had stiffened at his entry, stiffened
still further. As was his custom when he visited her boudoir,
the Duke was pottering about, fiddling with the objects on her
desk, picking up a letter, putting it down after giving its
contents a cursory glance and looking with offensive curiosity
at a photograph of James Schoonmaker on one of the tables.
And as always this habit of his made her feel that ants in large
numbers were parading up and down her spine. But true to the
teaching of the governesses who had told her that ladies never
betrayed emotion, she forced herself to be reasonably calm.

'I said "Yes, Alaric?" because I was anxious to know what
your motive was in coming here.'

'Eh?'

Lady Constance's sisterly affection touched a new low. The
ranks of the parading ants seemed to have become augmented
by new recruits.

'Is there anything I can do for you, Alaric?'

'Yes, I want a stamp. I'm writing to the
Times
about the
disgraceful mess the Government has got the country into. Lot
of incompetent poops, if you ask me. Do them good if
somebody came along and shot them all. Who's Jane?'

'I beg your pardon?'

'This letter is signed Jane. I was wondering who she was.'

'I wish you would not read my letters.'

'No pleasure to me to read them. They're always damned
dull. Why has Schoonmaker got that silly grin on his face?'

Several authorities have stated that the thing to do when
your self-control seems about to leave you is to draw a deep
breath. Lady Constance drew the deepest she could manage.

'I am sorry,' she said, 'that my husband's smile does not
meet with your approval, but it is, I believe, customary to smile
when you are having your photograph taken. If you wish, I will
get James on the transatlantic telephone and acquaint him
with your criticism, and no doubt he will arrange his features
next time more in accordance with your exacting tastes.'

'Eh?' said the Duke. He spoke absently. He had picked up
a letter signed Amy and was finding it better reading than the
others. 'What's Fred been doing?'

'I beg your pardon?'

'This woman says she's thinking of divorcing him. Must
have been some trouble in the home.'

Lady Constance drew another deep breath.

'Put down that letter, Alaric, and listen to me!'

There was nothing of the sensitive plant about the Duke of
Dunstable, but even he could recognize hostility if it was thrust
upon him with a heavy enough hand.

'You seem very ratty, Connie. What's biting you?'

'I am extremely annoyed, Alaric. I will not have you inviting
people here like this. It seems to be your object to turn
Blandings Castle into a residential hotel.'

'Trout, you mean?'

'And this Mr. Halliday.'

Conscious of the excellence of his motives, the Duke was
quite willing to explain.

'I had to invite Trout because I want to sell him that picture,
and I couldn't do it if he wasn't on the spot.' Even a woman,
he told himself, ought to be able to understand anything as
simple as that. 'And as for this chap Halliday, I hadn't meant
to tell you about him, but as the subject has come up, I may as
well.'

'Please do. As a hostess I am naturally interested. Is he, too,
one of your customers? Quite a novel idea, turning Blandings
Castle into a trading centre. What are you planning to sell
him?'

The rule by which Gally lived his life—'Whenever Connie
starts to throw her weight about, sit on her head immediately'
—was also the foundation stone of the Duke's domestic policy.
There was an authoritative note in his voice as he said:

'No need to get sarcastic, Connie.'

'I disagree with you. There is every need.'

'I'll tell you about Halliday. If I don't, you'll be coming the
grande dame over him, and he'll leave us flat. It isn't everybody
who can stand that manner of yours. I've often wondered how
it goes down with the Yanks. You have a way of curling your
upper lip and looking down your nose at people which gives a
lot of offence. I've had to speak of it before. Well, here's what
happened. After you left us that night—'

'What night?'

'The night Emsworth went off his head and told me my
picture had been stolen. By the way, did anybody ever take
away his all day sucker when he was six?'

'I haven't the remotest notion what you're talking about.'

'Never mind. We can leave all that to Halliday. Probably the
first question he'll ask him. I was saying that after you'd gone
off to bed Threepwood and I got talking, and we decided that
what Emsworth needs is psychiatric treatment, if you know
what that is.'

'Of course I know what it is.'

'Well, that's what we decided he's got to have. It's essential
to engage an expert head-shrinker to put a stopper on his
pottiness. I recommended this once before, you may remember,
when he said he was going to enter his pig for the Derby.'

'Clarence did not say he was going to enter his pig for the
Derby.'

'It may have been the Grand National.'

The ants on Lady Constance's spine had now been joined
by a good many of their sisters, cousins and uncles and were
marching to the tune of The Stars And Stripes Forever. Her
voice rose formidably.

'He did not say anything of the sort. I asked him, and he
told me so.'

The Duke remained unmoved.

'Naturally he would deny it. He makes a damaging
statement like that in an unguarded moment, realizes how it
will sound and tries to hush it up. But the fact remains. I was
there when he said it, and I remember telling him that it was
very doubtful if the Stewards would accept a pig. However,
that is a side issue into which we need not go at the moment.
The point is that Threepwood and I were solid on the
necessity for bringing in a head-shrinker, and our first choice
was Sir Roderick Glossop. He, however, was not available,
and we were baffled till Threepwood remembered that he
knew Glossop's junior partner, this chap Halliday, so we got
in touch with him. He was fortunately at liberty, and we
engaged his services. That's how Halliday comes to be at the
castle.'