Heavy Weather (18 page)

She stood on the balcony, drinking in the fragrant air. It was astonishing what a change that healing storm had brought about. Shropshire, which yesterday had been so depressing a spectacle, was now an earthly Paradise. The lake glittered. The river shone. The spinneys were their friendly selves again. Rabbits were darting about in the park with all the old carefree abandon, and as far as the eye could reach there were contented cows.

She left the room, humming a little tune. Eventually, she would seek out Monty and make inquiries after his well-being, but her immediate desire was to find Ronnie.

The click of billiard-balls arrested her attention as she came to the foot of the stairs.
Gally
, probably, playing a solitary hundred up; but he might be able to tell her where Ronnie was. His voice during that conversation with Monty had seemed to come from one of the passage windows.

She opened the door, and Ronnie, sprawled over the table, looked up at her.

That tattoo-mark had settled things for Ronnie. It had swept away in an instant all the gay optimism brought by the passing of the storm. With a heart like lead, he had groped his way downstairs. The open door of the billiard-room had seemed to offer a means of diverting his thoughts temporarily, and he had gone in and begun to practise sombre cannons. For even if a man is leaden-hearted there is no harm in his brushing up his near-the-cushion game a bit. Indeed, it is an intelligent thing to do, for if the girl he loves loves another his life is obviously going to be pretty much of a blank for the next fifty years or so, and he will have to fall back for solace on his ambitions. One of Ronnie's ambitions was some day to make a flukeless break of thirty.

'Hullo,' he said politely, straightening himself and standing with cue at rest. Eton and Cambridge stood at his elbow, to help him through this ordeal.

No sense of impending disaster came to Sue. To her, this man was still the sort of modern Cheeryble Brother whom she had heard chatting so
Gally
out of the window.

'Oh, Ronnie,' she said, 'you can't stay indoors on an evening like this. It's simply lovely out.'

'Oh, yes?' said Eton.

' Perfectly wonderful.'

'Oh, yes?' said Cambridge.

Something seemed to stab at Sue's heart. Her eyes widened. A numbing thought had begun to frame itself. Could it be that that sunny geniality which she had so recently observed playing upon Monty Bodkin like a fountain was to be withheld from her?

But she persevered.

'Let's go for a drive in your car.'

'I don't think I will, thanks.'

'Then let's take a boat out on the lake.'

'Not for me, thanks.'

'Or the court might be dry enough for tennis by now.'

'I shouldn't think so.'

'Well, then, come for a walk.'

'Oh, for God's sake,' said Ronnie, 'let me alone!'

They stared at one another. Ronnie's eyes were hot and miserable. But they did not look hot and miserable to Sue. She read in them only the dislike, the sullen, trapped dislike of a man tied to a girl for whom he has ceased to feel any affection, so that merely to speak to her is an affliction to his nerves. She drew a deep breath, and walked to the window.

'Sorry,' said Ronnie gruffly. 'Shouldn't have said that.''I'm glad you did,' said Sue. 'It's better to come right out with these things.'

She traced little circles with her finger on the glass. A heavy silence filled the room. ' I think we might as well chuck it, don't you ?' she said. 'Just as you say,' said Ronnie. 'All right,' said Sue.

She moved to the door. He hurried forward and opened it for her. Polite to the last.

Up in his bedroom, meanwhile, anointing his chest with Riggs's Golden Balm, Monty Bodkin had suddenly become amazingly cheerful.

'Tiddly-iddly-om, pom
-pom,'
he chanted, as blithely as any thrush in the shrubbery below. A great idea had just come to him.

It was the embrocation that had done the trick. As he stood there enjoying the immediate warm glow and the delightful sensation of
bien-etre,
it was as if his brain, as well as his muscular tissues, had been toned up and renovated. This bottle of embrocation, it suddenly occurred to him, was more than a mere three or four fluid ounces of stuff that smelled like a miasmic swamp - it was a symbol. If Ronnie was taking the trouble to bring him bottles of embrocation, it must mean that all was well between them; that that odd coldness had ceased to be; that his dear old pal, in a word, was once more a dear old pal. And if a man is a dear old pal, it stands to reason that he will be delighted to do a fellow a good turn.

The good turn Monty wanted Ronnie to do for him now was to go to Beach and use his influence with that obdurate butler to persuade him to cough up that manuscript.

It was not that Monty had lost faith in Pilbeam. No doubt, if given time, Pilbeam, exercising his subtle craft, would be able to secure the thing all right. But why go to all that trouble when you could take a short cut and work the wheeze quite simply without any fuss ? Besides, there was the fellow's fee to be considered. These sleuths probably came pretty high, and a penny saved is a penny earned.

A room-to-room search brought him to where the Last of the Fishes was once more practisin
g cannons. He approached him
with all the happy confidence of a child entering the presence of a rich and indulgent uncle.

For Monty Bodkin was no mind-reader. He had detected no change in his friend's manner at the end of their recent interview. It had been awkward for a moment, no doubt, that business of the tattoo-mark, but he felt that his quick thinking had passed off a tricky situation pretty neatly, satisfactorily lulling all possible suspicions.

' I say, Ronnie, old lad,' he said,' I wonder if you could spare me a moment of your valuable time ?'

Ronnie laid the cue down carefully. For all that he had now resigned himself to the fact that Sue preferred this man to him, he was conscious of a well-defined desire to bat him over the head with the butt end. White-hot knives were gashing Ronnie Fish's soul, and he could not but feel a very vivid distaste for the man responsible for his raw misery.

'Well?' he said.

It seemed to Monty that his friend was a bit on the chilly side, not quite the effervescing chum of the dear old embrocation days, but he carried on with only a momentary twinge of concern.

'Tell me, old man, how do you stand with Beach?'

'With Beach? How do you mean?'

'Well, does he feel pretty feudal where you're concerned? Would he, in fine, be inclined to stretch a point to oblige the young master?'

Ronnie stared bleakly. He had been prepared to be civil to this man who had wrecked his life, but he was dashed if he was going to spend the evening listening to him talking drip.

'What is all this bilge?' he demanded sourly. 'Come to the point.'

'Oh, I'm coming to the point.' 'Well, be quick.'

'I will, I will. Here, then, is the gist or nub. Beach has got something I badly want, and he refuses to disgorge. And I thought that perhaps if you went to him and did the Young Squire a bit - exerting your influence, I mean to say, and rather throwing your weight about generally - he might prove more . . . what's the word ... begins with an A .. . amenable.'

Ronnie glowered wearily.

'I can't understand a damn thing you're talking about.' 'Well, in a nutshell, Beach has got that book of old Gally's and I can't get him to let me have it.' ' Why do you want it ?'

Monty decided, as he had done when talking with Lord Tilbury by the potting-shed, that manly frankness was the only policy.

'You know all about that book?' 'Yes.'

'That
Gally
won't let it be published, I mean ?' 'Yes.'

'And that he had signed a contract for it with the Mammoth Publishing Company?' 'No. I didn't know that.'

'Well, he did. And his backing out has rendered poor old Pop Tilbury, the boss of same, as sick as mud. Well, naturally, I mean to say, Old Tilbury had got serial rights and book rights and American rights and every other kind of rights including the Scandinavian, and you know what a packet there is in any literary effort, that really dishes the dirt about the blue-gored. I should say, taking it one way and another, he stands to lose in the neighbourhood of twenty thousand quid if
Gally
sticks to his resolve not to publish. And so, to cut a long story s., old man, this Tilbury is so anxious to get hold of the manuscript that he states specifically that if I can snitch it from him he will take me back into his employment - from which, as I dare say you know, I was recently booted out.'

'I thought you resigned.'

Monty smiled sadly.

'That may be the story going the round of the clubs,' he said,' but as a matter of actual fact I was booted out. There was a spot of technical trouble which wouldn't interest you and into which I will not go. Suffice it to say that we did not see eye to eye as regarded the conduct of the Uncle Woggly to his Chicks department, and my services were dispensed with. So now you get the run of the scenario. The thing is a straight issue. Let me grab this MS. and turn it in to the Big Chief, and I start working again at Tilbury House.'

'What do you want to do that for?' 'It's imperative. I must have a job.'

'I should have thought that you would have been happy enough here.'

'Ah, but I'm liable to get the sack here at any moment.' 'Too bad.'

'Quite bad enough,' agreed Monty. 'But it'll be all right if you can induce Beach to give up that manuscript, I shall then secure a long-term contract with old Tilbury and be in a posish to marry the girl I love.'

A strong convulsion shook Ronnie Fish. This, he considered, was pretty raw. A nice thing, taking a fellow's girl away from him and then coming to him to ask him to help him marry her. He had credited the other with more delicacy.

'You will, eh?' he said, after a pause to master his emotion.

' Positively. It's all fixed up.'

'Who is she?' asked Ronnie sardonically. 'Sarah Ursula Ebbsmith?'

'Eh? Oh, ah,' said Monty hastily. He had forgotten for the moment. 'No, not poor dear Sarah. Oh, no, no, no. She's dead. Tuberculosis. Very sad.'

'You told me it was pneumonia.'

'No, tuberculosis.'

'I see.'

'This is a new one. Girl named Gertrude Butterwick.'

Misunderstandings being always unfortunate, it was a pity, firstly, that Monty should have paused for a reverent second before uttering that sacred name and, secondly, that the girl of his dreams should have possessed a name which, one has to admit, sounded a little thin. In certain moods, a man whose mind is biased simply does not believe that there is such a name as Gertrude Butterwick. To Ronnie, noting that second's hesitation, it was just one this man had made up on the spur of the moment, even he not having the face to tell Sue's fiance, as he supposed him still to be, that he wanted his assistance in taking Sue from him.

'Gertrude Butterwick, eh?'

'That's right.'

'Fond of her?'

'My dear chap!'

'And I suppose she's crazy about you?' 'Oh, deeply enamoured.'Ronnie felt suddenly listless. What, he asked himself, did it matter, anyway ? What did anything matter now?

Every man is tempted at times by the great gesture. This temptation had just come overwhelmingly upon Ronnie Fish. From the other's words he had become confirmed in- his suspicion that somehow or other Monty since their last meeting must have lost all his money. Otherwise, why should jobs at Tilbury House be of such importance to him?

Unless he got that job at Tilbury House, he would not be able to marry Sue. And unless he, Ronnie Fish, helped him, he would not get it.

The Sidney Carton spirit descended upon Ronnie - with this difference, that where Sidney, if one remembers correctly, was rather pleased about the whole thing he himself felt bitter and defiant.

Monty had taken Sue from him. Sue had gone to Monty without a pang. All right, then. All jolly right. He would show them he didn't care. He would let them see the stuff Fishes were made of.

'Listen,' he said. 'There's no need to worry about Beach. He hasn't got that manuscript.'

'Oh, yes, he has. I saw him reading...'

' He gave it to mc,' said Ronnie. He picked up his cue and shaped at the spot ball. 'You'll find it in the chest of drawers in my room. Take the damned thing if you want it.'

Monty gasped. No Israelite caught in a sudden manna-shower in mid-desert could have felt a greater mixture of surprise and gratification.