Galahad at Blandings (19 page)

It was
only when he reached the smoking-room which was his objective and saw Sam
sitting there, on his face the dazed look of one who has recently concluded a
long conversation on pigs with Lord Emsworth, that a sudden thought struck him.
His sister Hermione was a woman for whom as an antagonist he had a great
respect, and he knew that she was not one meekly to accept defeat. She might be
down, but she was never out. It was highly probable that Sam, all unused as he
was to the methods of jungle warfare prevailing in Blandings Castle and little
thinking that that was the first place his hostess would search, would have
put that letter somewhere in his bedroom. Precautions, he saw, must be taken
immediately, for he knew the search would not be long delayed.

‘Sam,’
he said, ‘what did you do with that letter I gave you?’

‘It’s
in my room.’

As I
thought. Just as I had suspected. Go and get it.’

‘Why?’

‘Never
mind why. I want it, and let us hope it’s still there. Ah,’ he said, when Sam
returned, ‘all is well. Prompt action has saved the day. Give it to me.

‘What
are you going to do with it?’

‘I am
going to enclose it in a stout manila envelope and tuck it away in a drawer of
Clarence’s desk. Even Hermione,’ said Gally with pardonable complacency, ‘won’t
think of looking there.’

III

In predicting that Lady
Hermione would shortly be instituting a search of Sam’s room Gally had not
erred. Even as he was speaking she had registered a resolve to explore its
every nook and cranny. Her first move after Gally had left her had been to
telephone her daughter Veronica and explain the facts relating to Tipton’s
financial status, and when Veronica had uttered a squeal similar in volume to
that of George Cyril Wellbeloved’s niece Marlene and stammered, ‘But, Mum-mee,
what about my letter?’ she had assured her that she must not feel uneasy about
that because Mother had everything under control and Tipton would never see it.
She then set out in quest of her nephew Wilfred Allsop, whom she proposed to
enrol as an assistant in her investigations. She found him in the hall, meditatively
tapping the barometer that hung there, and brusquely commanded him to stop
tapping and accompany her to her boudoir.

Except
for observing that according to the barometer, which had been very frank on the
point, there was going to be the dickens of a thunderstorm any minute now,
Wilfred had nothing to say as they went up the stairs. From childhood days the
society of his Aunt Hermione had always occasioned him the gravest discomfort,
making him speculate as to which of his sins of commission or omission she was
about to drag into the light of day and comment on in that forthright manner of
hers. Even though his conscience at the moment was reasonably clear, he could
not help a twinge of apprehension as they reached the boudoir and she curtly
bade him take a seat. He did not like her looks. It was plain to him that she
was on the boil. If ever he had seen a fermenting aunt, this fermenting aunt
was that fermenting aunt.

To his
relief he found that it was not he who had caused her blood pressure to rise.
When she spoke, she was, as aunts go, quite civil, not actually cooing to him
like a turtle dove accosting its loved one but with nothing in her manner
reminiscent of the bucko mate of an old-fashioned hell ship addressing an able—
bodied seaman whose activities had dissatisfied him.

‘Wilfred,’
she said, ‘I want your help.’

‘My
what?’
said Wilfred, amazed. He could imagine no situation to which this
masterful woman would not be equal without outside support. Unless, of course,
she was doing a crossword puzzle and had got stumped by a word of three letters
beginning with E and meaning large Australian bird, in which event his brain was
at her disposal.

‘You
must treat what I say as absolutely confidential.’

‘Oh
rather. Not a word to a soul. But what’s all this about?’

‘If you
will be good enough to listen, I will tell you. A serious situation has arisen.
Have you met this Augustus Whipple who came here yesterday?’

‘Seen
him at meals. Why?’

‘He is
not Augustus Whipple.’

‘The
story that’s going the rounds is that he is. Uncle Clarence keeps calling him
Mr Whipple.’

‘I dare
say, but he is an impostor.’

‘Good
Lord! Are you sure?’

‘Quite
sure.

‘Then
why don’t you boot him out?’

‘That
is what I am about to tell you. I am helpless. He has got a letter from
Veronica.’

‘She
knows him?’

‘Of
course she does not.

‘Then
why the correspondence?’

‘Oh,
Wilfred!’

‘It’s
all very well to say “Oh, Wilfred!” in that soupy tone of voice, but you’re
making my head go round. If Vee doesn’t know him, how do they come to be pen
pals? I don’t get it.’

‘The
letter was written to Tipton. ‘‘To Tippy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Let’s
get this straight. You say the letter was written to
Tippy?’

‘Yes,
yes, YES!’

With a
wide despairing gesture Wilfred knocked over a small table containing a vase of
roses and a photograph of Colonel Wedge in the uniform of the Shropshire Light
Infantry.

‘Well,
if you think that makes it all clear, you’re very much in error. I fail
absolutely to understand where Tippy comes into the thing. I simply can’t see—’

‘Wilfred!’

‘Hullo?’

‘Stop
talking!
How can I explain if you persist in interrupting me?’

‘Sorry.
Carry on. You have the floor. But I still say you’re making my head go round.’

‘It is
all quite simple.’

‘Says
you!’

‘What?’

‘I
didn’t speak.’

‘You
said something.’

‘Just a
hiccup.’

‘Oh?
Well, as I said, the whole thing is quite simple. Veronica happened to be
feeling depressed and nervous for some reason, and in this mood of depression
she felt that she was making a mistake in marrying Tipton. So she wrote him a
letter breaking off the engagement. She now of course bitterly regrets it, but
the letter was posted.’

‘When?’

‘Two
days ago.

‘Then
Tippy must have had it by now.

‘I keep
telling you this man has got it. He intercepted it and is—”

‘Holding
you up?’

‘Exactly.’

‘What
does he want? Money?’

‘No,
not money. But he will give the letter to Tipton if I do not allow him to stay
on at the castle.’

‘And
you don’t want him?’

‘Of
course I do not want him.’

‘Well,’
said Wilfred, breaking the bad news, ‘it looks to me from where I sit as if
you’d jolly well got him. He has you by the short hairs. You can’t afford to
let Tippy see that letter. Once let his eye rest on it and bim go your hopes
and dreams of a millionaire son-in—law.’

An
uneasy silence followed. It was broken by Wilfred saying that in his opinion
his cousin Veronica ought to lose no time in putting in an application for a
padded cell in some not too choosy lunatic asylum. The remark roused all the
mother in Lady Hermione.

‘What
do you mean?’ she demanded hotly.

‘Writing
a letter like that! She must have been cuckoo.’

‘I told
you she was depressed.’

‘Not
half as depressed as she’ll be when Tippy walks out on her. I repeat that she
ought to have her head examined.’

Lady
Hermione was finding her nephew’s manner, so different from his customary
obsequiousness, extremely trying, but this was no time for rebuking him. It
seemed to her that if these slurs on her daughter’s intelligence were to be
rebutted, it would be necessary to reveal the true facts. Reluctantly she did
so.

‘Veronica
is not to be blamed. I was under the impression, misled by your Uncle Clarence,
that Tipton had lost all his money. I naturally could not allow her to marry a
pauper. One has to be practical. So I advised her to break off the engagement.

‘Oh, I
see. Didn’t she object?’

‘She
seemed a little upset at first.’

‘I’m
not surprised. She’s nuts about Tippy.’

‘But
she is a sensible girl and saw how out of the question the marriage would be.’

‘It’ll
be out of the question all right if Tippy sees that letter.’

‘He
will not see it. I am going to search this man’s room and find it and destroy
it.’

Wilfred
goggled. Years of association with her had left him with no doubt as to his
Aunt Hermione being a pretty hardboiled egg, but he had never suspected her of
quite such twenty-minutes-in-the-saucepan-ness as this. He had always supposed
that her hardboiled eggery expressed itself in words not deeds. A gurgling
sound like the wind going out of the children’s toy known as the dying duck
showed how deeply he had been moved.

‘Search
his room?’

‘Yes,
and I want you with me.’

‘Who,
me? Why me?’

‘I
shall need you to stand outside the room and give me warning if you see anyone
coming. I think you had better sing.’

‘Sing?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sing?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sing
what?’

Lady
Hermione had often heard of secret societies where plotters plotted plots
together, but she wondered if any plotter in any secret society had ever had so
much difficulty as she was having in driving into the head of another plotter
what he, the first plotter, was trying to plot. It was with an effort that she
restrained herself from uttering words which would have relieved her but must
inevitably have alienated the only possible ally on whose services she could
call. She contented herself with a wide despairing gesture similar to her
nephew’s.

‘What
does it matter what you sing? I am not asking you to appear on the concert
platform. You will not be performing at Covent Garden. Sing anything.’

Wilfred
mentally ran through his repertoire and decided on that thing about having
another cup of coffee and another piece of pie which Tipton had taught him in
the course of their revels in New York. He liked both words and music, the
work, he had been given to understand, of the maestro Berlin, author and
composer
of Alexander’s Ragtime Band
and other morceaux.

‘Well,
all right,’ he said, though not with any great enthusiasm. And what will you
do then?’

‘I
shall make my escape.

‘Down
the water pipe?’

‘Through
the french window and out on to the lawn. The man has been given the Garden
Suite,’ said Lady Hermione bitterly. She would have resented an impostor being
housed even in a garret and the Garden Suite was the choicest locality that
Blandings Castle had to offer. It was where you put guests like the Duke of
Dunstable, for whom the best was none too good.

His
aunt’s statement that he was to play a prominent part in this cloak-and—dagger
enterprise had caused Wilfred Allsop to look like a nephew on whose head the
ceiling has unexpectedly fallen, and that is how he was looking as she
proceeded.

‘The
first thing to do is to get the man out of the way.’

‘What!’

‘Go and
tell him that your Uncle Clarence is waiting to see him at the Empress’s sty.’

A very
sound idea,’ said Wilfred, much relieved. Her use of the expression ‘get out of
the way’ had misled him for a moment. He had feared that she was going to
suggest that he waylay this synthetic Whipple and set about him with a meat
axe. He would not have put it past her. The lengths to which she appeared prepared
to go seemed to him infinite, and he had been feeling like Macbeth talking
things over with Lady Macbeth. It was with a heart lighter than he had supposed
it would ever be again that he rose and set off in quest of Sam.

Sam was
still in the smoking-room when Wilfred found him, and he received his message
without pleasure. In the short time in which he had known him he had conceived
a great liking for Lord Emsworth and would have been glad whenever the latter
wished to chat with him about the Brontë country or the Land of Dickens or
indeed about anything except pigs, but something told him that it would be upon
these attractive animals that his host would touch when they met. However, it
being impossible to ignore the summons, he started out for the sty, taking the
short cut through the kitchen garden which they had taken on the previous day,
and Constable Evans, standing at the window of Beach’s pantry with a glass of
port in his hand, had an excellent view of him as he passed. For an instant he
stood staring, then with a brief ‘Ho’ he laid down his glass and sallied out in
pursuit. No leopard on the trail could have flung itself into the chase with
greater abandon. It was his first chance in months of making a pinch that
amounted to anything and he was resolved to seize it.