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Sir Gregory’s first emotion on seeing the taxing party file into the room was one of pardonable surprise. Aware of the hard feelings which George Cyril Wellbeloved’s transference of his allegiance had aroused in the bosom of that gifted pig-man’s former employer, he had not expected to receive a morning call from the Earl of Emsworth. As for the Hon. Galahad, he had ceased to be on cordial terms with him as long ago as the winter of the year nineteen hundred and six.

Then, following quickly on the heels of surprise, came indignation. That the author of the Reminiscences should be writing scurrilous stories about him with one hand and strolling calmly into his private study with, so to speak, the other occasioned him the keenest resentment. He drew himself up and was in the very act of staring haughtily, when the Hon. Galahad broke the silence.

‘Young Parsloe,’ said the Hon. Galahad, speaking in a sharp, unpleasant voice, ‘your sins have found you out!’

It had been the baronet’s intention to inquire to what he was indebted for the pleasure of this visit, and to inquire it icily; but at this remarkable speech the words halted on his lips.

‘Eh?’ he said blankly.

The Hon. Galahad was regarding him through his monocle rather as a cook eyes a black-beetle on discovering it in the kitchen sink. It was a look which would have aroused pique in a slug, and once more the Squire of Matchingham’s bewilderment gave way to wrath.

‘What the devil do you mean?’ he demanded.

‘See his face?’ asked the Hon. Galahad in a rasping aside.

‘I’m looking at it now,’ said Lord Emsworth.

‘Guilt written upon it.’

‘Plainly,’ agreed Lord Emsworth.

The Hon. Galahad, who had folded his arms in a menacing manner, unfolded them and struck the desk a smart blow.

‘Be very careful, Parsloe! Think before you speak. And, when you speak, speak the truth.

I may say, by way of a start, that we know all.’

How low an estimate Sir Gregory Parsloe had formed of his visitors’ collective sanity was revealed by the fact that it was actually to Lord Emsworth that he now turned as the more intelligent of the pair.

‘Emsworth! Explain! What the deuce are you doing here? And what the devil is that old image talking about?’

Lord Emsworth had been watching his brother with growing admiration. The latter’s spirited opening of the case for the prosecution had won his hearty approval.

‘You know,’ he said curtly.

‘I should say he dashed well does know,’ said the Hon. Galahad. ‘Parsloe, produce that pig!’

Sir Gregory pushed his eyes back into their sockets a split second before they would have bulged out of his head beyond recovery. He did his best to think calm, soothing thoughts.

He had just remembered that he was a man who had to be careful about his blood-pressure.

‘Pig?’

‘Pig.’

‘Did you say pig?’

Tig.’

‘What pig?’

‘He says “What pig?”’

‘I heard him,’ said Lord Emsworth.

Sir Gregory Parsloe again had trouble with his eyes.

‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’

The Hon. Galahad unfolded his arms again and smote the desk a blow that unshipped the cover of the ink-pot.

‘Parsloe, you sheep-faced, shambling exile from hell,’ he cried. ‘Disgorge that pig immediately!’

‘My Empress,’ added Lord Emsworth.

‘Precisely. Empress of Blandings. The pig you stole last night.’

Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe rose slowly from his chair. The Hon. Galahad pointed an imperious finger at him, but he ignored the gesture. His blood-pressure was now hovering around the hundred-and-fifty mark.

‘Do you mean to tell me that you seriously accuse . . .’

‘Parsloe, sit down!’

Sir Gregory choked.

‘I always knew, Emsworth, that you were as mad as a coot.’

‘As a what?’ whispered his lordship.

‘Coot,’ said the Hon. Galahad curtly. ‘Sort of duck.’ He turned to the defendant again.

‘Vituperation will do you no good, young Parsloe. We
know
that you have stolen that pig.’

‘I haven’t stolen any damned pig. What would I want to steal a pig for?’

The Hon. Galahad snorted.

‘What did you want to nobble my dog Towser for in the back room of the Black Footman in the spring of the year ‘97?’ he said. ‘To queer the favourite, that’s why you did it. And that’s what you’re after now, trying to queer the favourite again. Oh, we can see through you all right, young Parsloe. We read you like a book.’

Sir Gregory had stopped worrying about his blood-pressure. No amount of calm, soothing thoughts could do it any good now.

‘You’re crazy! Both of you. Stark, staring mad.’

‘Parsloe, will you or will you not cough up that pig?’

‘I have not got your pig.’

‘That is your last word, is it?’

‘I haven’t seen the creature.’

‘Why a coot?’ asked Lord Emsworth, who had been brooding for some time in silence.

‘Very well,’ said the Hon. Galahad. ‘If that is the attitude you propose to adopt, there is no course before me but to take steps. And I’ll tell you the steps I’m going to take, young Parsloe. I see now that I have been foolishly indulgent. I have allowed my kind heart to get the better of me. Often and often, when I’ve been sitting at my desk, I’ve remembered a good story that simply cried out to be put into my Reminiscences, and every time I’ve said to myself, “No,” I’ve said. “That would wound young Parsloe. Good as it is, I can’t use it. I must respect young Parsloe’s feelings.” Well, from now on there will be no more forbearance. Unless you restore that pig, I shall insert in my book every dashed thing I can remember about you – starting with our first meeting, when I came into Romano’s and was introduced to you while you were walking round the supper-table with a soup tureen on your head and stick of celery in your hand, saying that you were a sentry outside Buckingham Palace. The world shall know you for what you are – the only man who was ever thrown out of the Café de l’Europe for trying to raise the price of a bottle of champagne by raffling his trousers at the main bar. And, what’s more, I’ll tell the full story of the prawns.’

A sharp cry escaped Sir Gregory. His face had turned a deep magenta. In these affluent days of his middle age, he always looked rather like a Regency buck who has done himself well for years among the flesh-pots. He now resembled a Regency buck who, in addition to being on the verge of apoplexy, has been stung in the leg by a hornet.

‘I will,’ said the Hon. Galahad firmly. ‘The full, true and complete story of the prawns, omitting nothing.’

‘What was the story of the prawns, my dear fellow?’ asked Lord Emsworth, interested.

‘Never mind. I know. And young Parsloe knows. And if Empress of Blandings is not back in her sty this afternoon, you will find it in my book.’

‘But I keep telling you,’ cried the suffering baronet, ‘that I know nothing whatever about your pig.’

‘Ha!’

‘I’ve not seen the animal since last year’s Agricultural Show.’

‘Ho!’

‘I didn’t know it had disappeared till you told me.’

The Hon. Galahad stared fixedly at him through the black-rimmed monocle. Then, with a gesture of loathing, he turned to the door.

‘Come, Clarence!’he said.

Are we going?’

‘Yes,’ said the Hon. Galahad with quiet dignity. ‘There is nothing more that we can do here. Let us get away from this house before it is struck by a thunderbolt.’

Ill

The gentlemanly office-boy who sat in the outer room of the Argus Enquiry Agency read the card which the stout visitor had handed to him and gazed at the stout visitor with respect and admiration. A polished lad, he loved the aristocracy. He tapped on the door of the inner office.

A gentleman to see me?’ asked Percy Pilbeam.

A
baronet
to see you, sir,’ corrected the office-boy. ‘Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, Matchingham Hall, Salop.’

‘Show him in immediately,’ said Pilbeam with enthusiasm.

He rose and pulled down the lapels of his coat. Things, he felt, were looking up. He remembered Sir Gregory Parsloe. One of his first cases. He had been able to recover for him some letters which had fallen into the wrong hands. He wondered, as he heard the footsteps outside, if his client had been indulging in correspondence again.

From the baronet’s sandbagged expression, as he entered, such might well have been the case. It is the fate of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe to come into this chronicle puffing and looking purple. He puffed and looked purple now.

‘I have called to see you, Mr Pilbeam,’ he said, after the preliminary civilities had been exchanged and he had lowered his impressive bulk into a chair, ‘because I am in a position of serious difficulty.’

‘I am sorry to hear that, Sir Gregory.’

‘And because I remember with what discretion and resource you once acted on my behalf.’

Pilbeam glanced at the door. It was closed. He was now convinced that his visitor’s little trouble was the same as on the previous occasion, and he looked at the indefatigable man with frank astonishment.

Didn’t these old bucks, he was asking himself, ever stop writing compromising letters?

You would have thought they would have got writer’s cramp.

‘If there is any way in which I can assist you, Sir Gregory . . . Perhaps you will tell me the facts from the beginning?’

‘The beginning?’ Sir Gregory pondered. ‘Well, let me put it this way. At one time, Mr Pilbeam, I was younger than I am to-day.’

‘Quite.’

‘Poorer.’

‘No doubt.’

‘And less respectable. And during that period of my life I unfortunately went about a good deal with a man named Threepwood.’

‘Galahad Threepwood?’

‘You know him?’ said Sir Gregory, surprised.

Pilbeam chuckled reminiscently.

‘I know his name. I wrote an article about him once, when I was editing a paper called
Society Spice.
Number One of the Thriftless Aristocrats series. The snappiest thing I ever did in my life. They tell me he called twice at the office with a horsewhip, wanting to see me.’

Sir Gregory exhibited concern.

You have met him, then?’

‘I have not. You are probably not familiar with the inner workings of a paper like
Society
Spice,
Sir Gregory, but I may tell you that it is foreign to the editorial policy ever to meet visitors who call with horsewhips.’

‘Would he have heard your name?’

‘No. There was a very strict rule in the
Spice
office that the names of the editorial staff were not to be divulged.’

‘Ah!’ said Sir Gregory, relieved.

His relief gave place to indignation. There was an inconsistency about the Hon.

Galahad’s behaviour which revolted him.

‘He cut up rough, did he, because you wrote things about him in your paper? And yet he doesn’t seem to mind writing things himself about other people, damn him. That’s quite another matter. A different thing altogether. Oh yes!’

‘Does he write? I didn’t know.’

‘He’s writing his Reminiscences at this very moment. He’s down at Blandings Castle, finishing them now. And the book’s going to be full of stories about me. That’s why I’ve come to see you. Dashed, infernal, damaging stories, which’ll ruin my reputation in the county. There’s one about some prawns . . .’

Words failed Sir Gregory. He sat puffing. Pilbeam nodded gravely. He understood the position now. As to what his client expected him to do about it, however, he remained hazy.

‘But if these stories you speak of are libellous . . .’

‘What has that got to do with it? They’re true.’

‘The greater the truth, the greater the . . .’

‘Oh, I know all about that,’ interrupted Sir Gregory impatiently. And a lot of help it’s going to be to me. A jury could give me the heaviest damages on record and it wouldn’t do me a bit of good. What about my reputation in the county? What about knowing that every damned fool I met was laughing at me behind my back? What about the Unionist Committee? I may tell you, Mr Pilbeam, apart from any other consideration, that I am on the point of being accepted by our local Unionist Committee as their candidate at the next election. And if that old pest’s book is published, they will drop me like a hot coal. Now do you understand?’

Pilbeam picked up a pen, and with it scratched his chin thoughtfully. He liked to take an optimistic view with regard to his clients’ affairs, but he could not conceal from himself that Sir Gregory appeared to be out of luck.

‘He is determined to publish this book?’

‘It’s the only object he’s got in life, the miserable old fossil.’

‘And he is resolved to include the stories?’

‘He called on me this morning expressly to tell me so. And I caught the next train to London to put the matter in your hands.’

Pilbeam scratched his left cheekbone.

‘H’m!’ he said. ‘Well, in the circumstances, I really don’t see what is to be done except . . .’

‘. . . get hold of the manuscript and destroy it, you were about to say? Exactly. That’s precisely what I’ve come to ask you to do for me.’

Pilbeam opened his mouth, startled. He had not been about to say anything of the kind.

What he had been intending to remarkwas that, the situation being as described, there appeared no course to pursue but to fold the hands, set the teeth, and await the inevitable disaster like a man and a Briton. He gazed blankly at this lawless Bart. Baronets are proverbially bad, but surely, felt Percy Pilbeam, there was no excuse for them to be as bad as all that.

‘Steal the manuscript?’

‘Only possible way.’

‘But that’s rather a tall order, isn’t it, Sir Gregory?’

‘Not,’ replied the baronet ingratiatingly, ‘for a clever young fellow like you.’

The flattery left Pilbeam cold. His distant, unenthusiastic manner underwent no change.

However clever a man is, he was thinking, he cannot very well abstract the manuscript of a book of Reminiscences from a house unless he is first able to enter that house.

‘How could I get into the place?’

‘I should have thought you would have found a dozen ways.’