Heavy Weather (17 page)

'I regret to say, sir, that I am not in a position to fall in with your wishes.'

And with a last stare, of about the same calibre as the last stare which he had directed at Percy Pilbeam, he moved in good order to the Housekeeper's Room, leaving Monty plunged in thought.

Too often, when a man of Monty Bodkin's mental powers is plunged in thought, nothing happens at all. The machinery just whirs for a while, and that is the end of it. But on the present occasion this was not so. Love is the great driving force, and now it was as if Gertrude Butterwick had her dainty foot on the accelerator of his brain, whacking it up to unprecedented m.p.h. The result was that after about two minutes of intense concentration, during which he felt several times as if the top of his head were coming off, an idea suddenly shot out of the welter like a cork from the Old Faithful geyser.

It was obvious that, with Beach turning so unaccountably spiky as he had done, he could accomplish nothing further by his own efforts. He must put the matter into the hands of a competent agent. And the chap to apply to was beyond a question this bird Pilbeam.

Pilbeam, he reasoned, was a private detective. The job to be done, therefore, would be right up his street: for stealing things must surely be one of the commonplaces of a private detective's daily life. From what he could remember of his reading, they were always being called upon to steal things - compromising letters, Admiralty Plans, Maharajah's rubies, and what not. No doubt the fellow would be only too glad of the commission.

He went in search of him, and found him lying back in an armchair in the smoking-room. He had the tips of his fingers together, Monty noted approvingly. Always a good sign.

‘I
say, Pilbeam,' he said, 'are you in the market at the moment for a bit of stealthy stuff?'

'Pardon?'

'If so, I've got a job for you.' 'A job?'

Like Monty, Pilbeam had been thinking tensely, and what with the strain on his brain and the warmth of the weather, was not feeling so bright as he usually did.

'You
are
a detective?' said Monty anxiously. 'You weren't just pulling my leg about that, were you ?'

'Certainly I am a detective. I think I have one of my cards here.'

Monty inspected the grubby piece of pasteboard, and all anxiety left him. Argus Inquiry Agency. You couldn't get round that. Secrecy and Discretion Guaranteed. Better still. A telegraphic code address, too - Pilgus, Piccy, London. Most convincing.

'Topping,' he said. 'Well, then, coming back to it, I can put business in your way.'

'You wish to make use of my professional services?'

'If you're open for a spot of work at this juncture, I do. Of course, if you're simply down here taking a well-earned rest. ..'

'Not at all. I shall be glad to render you any assistance that is in my power. Perhaps you will tell me the facts.'

Monty was a little doubtful about the procedure. He had never engaged a private detective before.

'Do you want to know my name?'

'Isn't your name Bodkin?' said Pilbeam surprised.

'Oh, yes. Rather. Definitely. Only in all the stories I've read the chap who comes to the detective always starts off with a long yarn about what his name is and where he lives and who left him his money, and so forth. Save a lot of time if we can cut all that.'

'All I require are the facts.'

Monty hesitated again.

' It sounds so dashed silly,' he said coyly.

'I beg your pardon?'

'Well, bizarre, if you prefer the expression. Nobody could say it wasn't. Bizarre is the word that absolutely springs to the lips. It's about that book of
Gally
Threepwood's.'

Pilbeam gave a little jump.

'Oh?'

'Yes. You knew he had written a book?' 'Quite.'

'Well . . .' Monty giggled '. . . I suppose you'll think I'm a silly ass, but I want to get hold of it.'

Pilbeam was silent for a moment. He had not known that he had a rival in the field, and was none too pleased to hear it.

'You do think I'm a silly ass?'

'Not at all,' said Pilbeam, recovering himself. 'No doubt you have your reasons?'

It had just occurred to him that, so far from being a disconcerting piece of news, what he had heard was really tidings of great joy. He supposed, mistakenly, that Monty, who no doubt had many friends in high places, had been asked by one of them to take advantage of his being at the Castle to destroy the book. England, he knew, was full of men besides Sir Gregory Parsloe who wanted those Reminiscences destroyed.

The situation now began to look very good to Percy Pilbeam. He had only to secure that manuscript and he would be in the delightful position of having two markets in which to sell it. Competition is the soul of Trade. The one thing a man of affairs wants, when he has come into possession of something valuable, is to have people bidding against one another for it.

'Oh, I have my reasons all right,' said Monty. 'But it's a long story. Do you mind if we just leave it at this, that there are wheels within wheels?'

'Just as you please.'

'The thing is, a certain bloke - whom I will not specify - has asked me to get hold of this manuscript - for reasons into which I need not go - and... well, there you are.'

'Quite,' said Pilbeam, satisfied that the position was exactly as he had supposed.

Monty proceeded with more confidence.

'Well, that's that, then. Now we get down to it. I've just found out that the chap who's got the thing is -'

'Beach,' said Pilbeam.

Monty was astounded.

'You knew that?'

'Certainly.'

'But how on earth - ?'

'Oh, well,' said Pilbeam carelessly, as one who has his methods.

Monty was now convinced that he had come to the right shop. This man was uncanny. 'Beach,' he had said. Just like that. Might have been a mind-reader.

'Yes, that's the strength of it,' he went on as soon as he had ceased marvelling. 'That's where the snag lies. Beach has got it and is hanging on to it like a limpet. He w
on't let me lay a finger on the
thing. So the problem, as I see it... You don't mind me outlining the problem as I see it ?...'

Pilbeam waved a courteous hand.

'Well, then, the problem, as I see it,' said Monty, 'is, how the hell is one to get it away from the blighter?' 'Quite.'

'That is, as you might say, the nub?' 'Quite.'

'Have you any ideas on the subject?' 'Oh, yes.' 'Such as - ?'

'Ah, well,' said Pilbeam, a little stiffly. Monty was all apologies.

'I see, I see,' he said. 'Naturally you don't want to blow the gaff prematurely. Shouldn't have asked. Sorry. But I can leave the matter in your hands with every confidence, as I believe the expression is?'

'Quite.'

'He might let you borrow the thing to read?'

'At any rate, I have no doubt that I shall find a way of getting it into my possession.'

Monty eyed him admiringly. Externally, Percy Pilbeam was not precisely his idea of a detective. Not quite enough of that cold, hawk-faced stuff, and a bit too much brilliantine on the hair. But as far as brain was concerned he was undoubtedly the goods.

'I bet you will,' he said. 'You can't run a business like yours without knowing a thing or two. I expect you've pinched things before.'

'I have occasionally been commissioned to recover papers, and so forth, of value,' said Pilbeam guardedly.

'Well, consider yourself jolly well commissioned now,' said Monty.

Chapter Nine

Safe in the Housekeeper's Room, Beach sat gazing out of the window at the lowering sky. His chest was still rising and falling like a troubled ocean.

Too hot, felt Beach, too hot. Things were becoming too hot altogether.

His whole mind was obsessed by an insistent urge to get rid of these papers, the guardianship of which had become so hazardous a matter. The chase was growing too strenuous for a man of regular habits who liked a quiet life.

Nearly everything in this world cuts both ways. A fall from a deck-chair, for instance, is - physically - a painful experience. Against its obvious drawbacks, however, must be set the fact that it does render the subject nimbler mentally. It shakes up the brain. To the circumstance of his having so recently come down with a bump on his spacious trousers-seat must be attributed the swiftness with which Beach now got an idea that seemed to him to solve everything.

He saw the way out. He would hand this manuscript over to Mr Ronald. There was its logical custodian. Mr Ronald was the person most interested in its safety. He was, moreover, a young man. And the more he mused on the whole unpleasant affair, the more firmly did Beach come to the conclusion that the foiling of the Parsloe Gang and the Tilbury Gang was young man's work.

It would be necessary, of course, to apply to the Hon. Galahad for permission to take the step. If you went behind his back and acted on your own initiative after he had given you instructions, Mr Galahad could be quite as bad as any gang. Years of association with London's toughest citizens had given him a breadth of vocabulary which was not lightly to be faced. Beach had no intention of drawing upon himself the lightnings of that Pelican-Club trained tongue. As soon as he felt sufficiently restored to move, he went in search of the Hon. Galahad and found him in the small library.

'Might I speak to you, Mr Galahad?' 'Say on, Beach.'

Clearly and well the butler told his talc. He recounted the scene at the Emsworth Arms, the subsequent invasion of his pantry by the man Bodkin, the proffered bribe. The Hon. Galahad listened with fire smouldering behind his monocle.

'The young toad!' he cried.' Monty Bodkin. A fellow I've practically nursed in my bosom. Why, I can remember, when he was a boy at Eton, taking him aside as he was going back to school one time and urging him to put his shirt on Whistling Rufus for the Cesarewitch.'

'Indeed, sir?'

'And he notified me subsequently that, thanks to my kindly advice, he had cleaned up to the extent of eleven shillings - in addition to a bag of bananas, two strawberry ice-creams, and a three-cornered Cape of Good Hope stamp at a hundred to sixteen from a schoolmate who was making a book. And this is how he repays me!' said the Hon. Galahad, looking like King Lear. ' Isn't there such a thing as gratitude in the world ?'

He expressed his disgust with a wide, passionate gesture. The butler, with his nice instinct for class distinctions, expressed his with one a little less wide and not quite so passionate. These callisthenics seemed to relieve them both, for when the conversation was resumed it was on a calmer note.

‘I
might have known,' said the Hon. Galahad, 'that a fellow like Stinker Pyke . . . what does he call himself now, Beach ?'

'Lord Tilbury, Mr Galahad.'

‘I
might have known that a fellow like Lord Tilbury wouldn't give up the struggle after one rebuff. You don't make a large fortune by knuckling under to rebuffs, Beach.'

'Very true, Mr Galahad.'

'I suppose old Stinker has been up against this sort of thing before. He knows the procedure. The first thing he would do, after I had turned him down, would be to set spies and agents to work. Well, I don't see what there is to be done except employ renewed vigilance, like Clarence with his pig.'

Beach coughed.

'I was thinking, Mr Galahad, that if I were to hand the documents over to Mr Ronald ...' ' You think that would be safer ?'

'Considerably safer, sir. Now that Mr Pilbeam is aware that they are in my possession, I am momentarily apprehensive lest her ladyship approach me with a direct request that I deliver them into her hands.'

'Beach! Are you afraid of my sister Constance ?' 'Yes, sir.'

The Hon. Galahad reflected.

'Well, I see what you mean. It would be difficult for you. You couldn't very well tell her to go and put her head in a bag.' 'No, sir.'

'All right, then. Give the thing to Mr Ronald.' 'Thank you very much, Mr Galahad.'

Infinitely relieved, Beach allowed his gaze, hitherto concentrated on his companion, to travel to the window. 'Storm looks like breaking at last, sir.' 'Yes.'

The Hon. Galahad also looked out of the window. It was plain that Nature in all her awful majesty was about to let herself go. On the opposite side of the valley there shot jaggedly across the sky a flash of lightning. Thunder growled, and raindrops began to splash against the pane.

'That fool's going to get wet,' he said.

Beach followed his pointing finger. Into the scene below a figure had come, walking rapidly. His interview with Percy Pilbeam had left Monty in that exhilarated frame of mind which demands strenuous exercise. Where Lord Tilbury, on a previous occasion, had walked because his heart was heavy, Monty walked because his heart was light. Pilbeam had filled him with the utmost confidence. He did not know how or when, but he felt that Pilbeam would find a way.

So now he strode briskly across the park, regardless of the fact that the weather was uncertain.

'Mr Bodkin, sir.'

'So it is, the young reptile. He'll get soaked.' 'Yes, sir.'

There was quiet satisfaction in the
butler's voice. It was even
possible, he was reflecting, that this young man might be struck by lightning. If so, it was all right with Beach. As far as he was concerned, Nature's awful majesty could go the limit. He only wished that Pilbeam, too, were being exposed to the fury of the elements. He viewed members of gangs in rather an Old Testament spirit, and believed in their getting treated rough.

Ronnie was in his bedroom. When the heart is aching, there are few better refuges than a country-house bedroom. A man may smoke and think there, undisturbed.

Beach, tracking him down a few minutes later, found him well disposed to the arrangement he had come to suggest. He made no difficulties about accepting custody of the manuscript. Indeed, it seemed to Beach that he was scarcely interested. Listless was the word that occurred to the butler, and he put it down to the weather. He took his departure with feelings resembling those of the man who got rid of the Bottle Imp; and Ronnie, having thrown the manuscript into a drawer, resumed his seat and began thinking of Sue once more.

Sue!. . .

It wasn't that he blamed her. If she loved Monty Bodkin - well, that was that. You couldn't blame a girl for preferring one fellow to another.

All that stuff his mother had been saying about her being the typical chorus-girl fluttering from affair to affair was, of course, just a lot of pernicious bilge. Sue wasn't like that. She was as straight as they make 'em. It was simply that she had been dazzled by this blasted lissom Monty and couldn't help herself.

You were always reading about that sort of thing in novels. Girl gets engaged to bloke, thinking at the moment that he is what the doctor ordered. Then runs into second bloke and discovers in a sort of flash that she has picked the wrong one. No doubt, on that trip of hers to London she had happened to meet Monty accidentally in Piccadilly or somewhere and the thing had come on her like a thunderbolt.

It was what he had been expecting all along, of course. He had told her so himself. It stood to reason, he meant, that a terrific girl like her - a girl who practically stood alone, as you might say - was bound sooner or later to come across someone capable of cutting out a bally pink-faced midget who, except for getting a featherweight Boxing blue at Cambridge, had never done a thing to justify his existence.

Yes, that was about what it all boiled down to, felt Ronnie. He rose and went to the window. For some time now, in a subconscious sort of way, he had been dimly aware that there was something rummy going on outside.

He found himself looking out upon a changed world. The storm was now at its height. Torrents of rain were coursing down the glass. Thunder was booming, lightning flashing. A hissing, howling, roaring, devastated world. A world that seemed to fit in neatly with his stormy emotions.

Sue!...

Yesterday on the roof. Finding that hat and realizing that she and Monty had been up there together all the afternoon. He flattered himself that she couldn't possibly have detected anything from his manner - no, he had worn the good old mask all right -but there had been a moment, before he got hold of himself, when he had understood how those chaps you read about in the papers who run amok and slay two get that way.

Yes, reason might tell him that it was perfectly natural for Sue to be in love with Monty Bodkin, but nothing was going to make him like it.

The storm seemed to be conking out a bit. The thunder had rolled away into the distance. The lightning flashes had lost much of their zip. Even the rain showed a disposition to cheese it. What had been a Niagara was now little more than a drizzle. And suddenly, watery and faint, there gleamed on the drenched stone of the terrace, a ray of sunshine.

It grew. Blue spread over the sky. Across the valley there was a rainbow. Ronnie opened the window and a wave of cool, sweet-smelling air poured into the room.

He leaned out, sniffing. And abruptly he became aware that the heavy depression of the last two days had left him. The thunderstorm had wrought its customary miracle. He felt like a man recovered from a fever. It was as if the whole world had suddenly been purged of gloom. A magic change had come over everything.

Birds were singing in the shrubberies below, and for twopence Ronnie could have sung himself.

Why, dash it, he felt, he had been making a fat-headed fuss about absolutely nothing. He saw it all now. What had given him that extraordinary notion that Sue was in love with Monty was simply the foul weather. Of course there was nothing between them really. That lunch could easily be explained. So could that afternoon together on the roof. Everything could easily be explained in this best of all possible worlds.

And scarcely had he reached this conclusion when he perceived on the drive below him a draggled figure. It was Monty Bodkin, home from his ramble. He leaned farther out of the window, overflowing with the milk of human kindness.

'Hullo,' he said.

Monty looked up.

'Hullo.'

'You're wet.'

'Yes.'

'By Jove, you
are
wet!' said Ronnie. It hurt him to think that this brave new world could contain a fellow human being in such a soluble condition. 'You'd better go and change.'

'Yes.'

'Into something dry.'

Monty nodded, scattering water like a public fountain. He brushed the tangle of hair out of his eyes, and squelched on his way.

It was perhaps two minutes later
that Ronnie, still aching with
compassion, remembered that on the shelf above his wash-stand he had a bottle of excellent embrocation.

When once a man has reacted from a mood of abysmal depression, there is no knowing how far he will go in the opposite direction. In a normal frame of mind, Ronnie would probably have dismissed the moistness of Monty from his thoughts as soon as the other had left him. But now, in the grip of this strange feeling of universal benevolence, he felt that those few words of sympathy had not been enough. He wanted to do something practical, something constructive that would help to ward off the nasty cold in the head which this man might so easily catch as the result of his total immersion. And, as we say, he remembered that bottle of embrocation.

It was Rigg's Golden Balm, in the large (or seven-and-sixpenny) size, and he knew, not only from the advertisements, which
were
very frank about it, but also from personal trial, that it communicated an immediate warm glow to the entire system, averting catarrh, chills, rheumatism, sciatica, stiffness of the joints, and lumbago, and in addition imparted a delightful sensation of
bien-etre,
toning up and renovating the muscular tissues. And if ever a fellow stood in need of warm glows and tonings up, it was Monty.

Seizing the bottle, he hurried off on his errand of mercy. He found Monty in his room, stripped to the waist, rubbing himself vigorously with a rough towel.

⁴
I say,' he said, 'I don't know if you know this stuff! You might like to try it. It communicates a warm glow.'

Monty, the towel draped about him like a shawl, examined the bottle with interest. He sloshed it tentatively. This consideration touched him.

'Dashed good of you.'

'Not a bit.'

'You're sure it's not for horses?' 'Horses?'

'Some of these embrocations are. You rub them well in, and then you take another look at the directions and you see "For horses only", or words to that effect, and then you suffer the tortures of the damned for about half an hour, feeling as if you had been having a dip in vitriol.'

'Oh, no. This stuff's all right. I use it myself.'

'Then have at it!' said Monty, relieved.

He poured some of the fluid into the palm of his hand and expanded his torso. And, as he did so, Ronnie Fish uttered a quick, sharp exclamation.

Monty looked up, surprised. His benefactor had turned a vivid vermilion and was staring at him in a marked manner.

' Eh ?' he said, puzzled.

Ronnie did not speak immediately. He appeared to be engaged in swallowing some hard, jagged substance.

'On your chest,' he said at length, in a strange, toneless voice. 'Eh?'

Eton and Cambridge came to Ronnie's aid. Outwardly calm, he swallowed again, picked a piece of fluff off his left sleeve, and cleared his throat.

'There's something on your chest.'

He paused.

'It looks like "Sue".'

He paused again.

'"Sue",' he said casually,' with a heart round it.'

The hard jagged substance seemed to have transferred itself to Monty's throat. There was a brief silence while he disposed of it.

He was blaming himself. Rummy, he reflected ruefully, how when you saw a thing day after day for a couple of years or so it ceased to make any impression on what he rather fancied was called the retina. This heart-encircled 'Sue', this pink and ultramarine tribute to a long-vanished love, which in a gush of romantic fervour he had caused to be graven on his skin in the early days of their engagement, might during the last eighteen months just as well not have been there for all the notice he had taken of it. He had practically forgotten that it was still in existence.

It was a moment for quick thinking.

'Not "Sue",' he said. "'S.U.E.' - Sarah Ursula Ebbsmith.'

'What!'

'Sarah Ursula Ebbsmith,' repeated Monty firmly. 'Girl I used to be engaged to. She died. Pneumonia. Very sad. Don't let's talk of it.'

There was a long pause. Ronnie moved to the door. His feelings were almost too deep for words, but he managed a couple. 'Well, bung-o!'

The door closed behind him.

Sue had watched the storm from the broad window-seat of the library.

Her feelings were mixed. As a spectacle she enjoyed it, for she was fond of thunderstorms. The only thing that spoiled it for her was the knowledge that Monty was out in it. She had seen him cross the terrace in an outward
bound direction just as it began to break. The poor lamb, she felt, must be getting soaked.

Her first act, accordingly, when the rain stopped and that sea of blue began to spread itself over the sky, was to go out on to the balcony and scan the horizon, like Sister Ann, for signs of him. She was thus enabled to witness his return and to hear the brief exchange of remarks between him and Ronnie.

'Hullo.' 'Hullo.' 'You're wet.' 'Yes.'

'By Jove, you
are
wet. You'd better go and change.' 'Yes.'

'Into something
dry.'

Considered as dialogue, not, perhaps, on the highest level. Reading it through, one sees that it lacks a certain something. But the noblest effort of a great dramatist could not have stirred Sue more. It seemed to her, as she listened, that a great weight had rolled off her heart.

It was the way Ronnie had spoken that impressed and thrilled. The kindly, considerate tone. The cheerful cordiality. For two days it had been as though some sullen changeling had taken his place; and now, if one could judge from the genial ring of his voice, the old Ronnie was back again.