Plum Pie (18 page)

One says 'appeared', but the word would not have satisfied Gustave Flaubert. He would have suggested some such alternative as 'loomed up' or 'came waddling along' as being more exact, for the author of Kootchy the Kitten and Peter the Pup was one of the fattest men that ever broke a try-your-weight machine. He looked as if he had been eating nothing but starchy foods since early boyhood, and it saddened Bingo to think of all this wonderful material going to waste. If only this man could have been his uncle, he felt wistfully. Oofy Prosser would have paid twenty pounds for a mere third of him.

"Mr. Little?" said this human hippopotamus. He grasped Bingo's hand and subjected him to a pop-eyed but reverent gaze. "Well, well, well!" he said. "This is certainly a great moment for me. Mrs. Little's books have been an inspiration to me for years. I read them incessantly and I am not ashamed to say with tears in my eyes. She seems to make the world a better, sweeter place. I am looking forward to having the privilege of meeting her. How is she? Well, I hope?"

"Oh, fine."

"That's good," said Kirk Rockaway, and then he uttered these astounding words:

"Let's get one thing straight, Mr. Little. The money of Rosie M. Banks's husband is no good in this hotel. Dismiss all thought of picking up the tab tonight. This dinner is on me."

"What!"

"Yes, sir. I wouldn't be able to look Mrs. Little in the face if I you pay for it."

The lobby of Barribault's Hotel is solidly constructed and the last thing in the world to break suddenly into the old fashioned buck-and-wing dance, but to Bingo it seemed that it was forgetting itself in this manner. There were two pillars in its centre, and he distinctly saw them do a kick upwards and another kick sideways. Ecstasy for a moment kept him dumb. Then he was able to murmur that this was awfully kind of Mr. Rockaway.

"Don't give it a thought," said Kirk Rockaway. "Let's go in, shall we?"

Over the smoked salmon what conversation took place was confined to Bingo's host. Bingo himself still felt incapable of speech. The realization that by this miracle at the eleventh hour he had been saved from the fate that is worse than death —viz. having to confess the awful truth to Mrs. Bingo and listen to her comments on his recent activities, seemed to have paralysed his vocal cords. He was still dazed and silent when the soup arrived.

The evening was warm and it had been quite a walk through the lobby and into the restaurant and across the restaurant to their table, and Kirk Rockaway, evidently unused to exercise, had felt the strain. By the time the soup came, beads of perspiration had begun to form on his forehead, and after about the fifth spoonful he reached in his breast pocket for a handkerchief. He pulled it out and with it came a cabinet size photograph which shot through the air and fell into Bingo's plate. And as Bingo fished it from the puree and started to dry it with his napkin, something familiar about it struck his attention. It portrayed a woman of ample dimensions looking over her shoulder in an arch sort of way, and with a good deal of surprise he recognized her as Mrs. J. G. Beenstock, the last person he would have expected to find in his soup.

"Well, well," he said. "So you know my aunt?"

"Your what?"

"My aunt."

Kirk Rockaway stared at him, astounded.

"Is that divine woman your aunt?"

"That's just what she is."

"You amaze me! "

"I'm amazed, too. What are you doing going about with her photograph next to your heart?"

Kirk Rockaway hesitated for a moment. He seemed to be blushing, though it was hard to say for certain, his face from the start having been tomatoesque. Finally he spoke.

"Shall I tell you something?" he said.

"Do."

"I've come all the way from Oakland, San Francisco, to marry her."

It was Bingo's turn to stare, astounded.

"You mean you and Aunt Myrtle are engaged?"

So great was his emotion that he could hardly frame the words. It seemed to him too good to be true, too like a beautiful dream, that this obese bimbo was about to become his uncle and so eligible for the Drones Club contest.

An embarrassed look had come into Kirk Rockaway's face. Again he hesitated before he spoke.

"No, we're not engaged."

"You aren't?"

"Not yet. It's like this. She came to San Francisco a year or so ago."

"Yes, I remember she went over to America. She's very fond of travelling."

"We met at a dinner party. It was a Thanksgiving dinner with turkey, sweet potatoes, mince pie—the customary Thanksgiving menu. She sat opposite me, and the way she sailed into the turkey—enjoying it,
understanding
it, not pecking at it as the other women were doing—hit me right here," said Kirk Rockaway, touching the left side of his bulging Waistcoat. "And when I watched her handle the mince pie, I knew my fate was sealed. But I haven't actually proposed yet."

"Why not?"

"I haven't the nerve."

"What!"

"No, sir, I haven't the nerve."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. I just haven't."

A blinding light flashed upon Bingo. Mr. Purkiss's words rang in his ears. 'He is a lifelong teetotaller', Mr. Purkiss had said, and the whole thing became clear to him.

"Have you tried having a drink?" he asked.

"I've drunk a good deal of barley water."

"Barley water!"

"But it seems to have no effect."

"I'm not surprised. Barley water! " Bingo's voice was vibrant with scorn. "What on earth's the good of barley water? How can you expect to be the masterful wooer on stuff like that? I should be a bachelor today if I hadn't had the prudence to fill myself to the brim with about a quart of mixed champagne and stout before asking Rosie to come registrar's-officing with me. That's what you want, champagne and stout. It'll make a new man of you."

Kirk Rockaway looked dubious.

"But that's alcohol, and I promised my late mother I would never drink alcohol."

"Well, I think if you could get in touch with her on the ouija board and explain the situation, making it clear that you needed the stuff for a good cause, she would skip the red tape and tell you to go to it. But that would take time. It might be hours before you got a connection. What you want is a noggin of it now, and then when you are nicely primed, we will go and drop in on my aunt. She has been away on a Mediterranean cruise, but she may be back by now. Waiter, bring us a bottle of Bollinger and all the stout you can carry."

It was some half hour later that Kirk Rockaway looked across the table with a new light in his eyes. They had become reddish in colour and bulged a good deal. His diction, when he spoke, was a little slurred.

"Old man," he said, "I like your face."

"Do you, old man?" said Bingo.

"Yes, old man, I do. And do you know why I like your face?"

"No, old man, I don't. Why do you like my face?"

"Because it is so different in every respect from Mortimer Frisby's."

"Who is Mortimer Frisby?"

"You may well ask. He conducts the Children's Page on the San Francisco Herald, and calls himself a critic. Do you know what he said about my last book, old man?"

"No, what did he say, old man?"

"I'll tell you what he said. His words are graven on my heart and I quote verbatim. 'We think,' he said, 'that Mr. Rockaway should not too lightly assume that all the children he writes for have water on the brain'. How about that?"

"Monstrous!"

"Monstrous is right."

"Abominable! "

"Abominable is correct."

"The man must be mad."

"Of course he is. But if he thinks he'll get off on a plea of insanity, he's very much mistaken. I propose to poke him in the snoot. We’ll have just one more bottle for the road, and then I'll go and attend to it."

"Where is he?"

"San Francisco."

"You can't go to San Francisco."

"Why not? I believe," said Kirk Rockaway a little stiffly, "that San Francisco is open for being gone to at about this time."

"But it's such a long way. Besides, you were going to propose to my aunt."

"Was I? Yes, by jove, you're right. It had slipped my mind."

"Do it now. If you're feeling up to it."

"I'm feeling great. I'm feeling strong, forceful, dominant. Do you know what I shall do to that woman?"

"Bend her to your will?"

"Precisely. I shall stand no nonsense from her. Women are apt to want long engagements and wedding services with full choral effects, but none of that for me. We shall be married ... where was it you said you were married?"

"At the registrar's."

"They give you quick service there?"

"Very quick. Over in a flash."

"Then that's the place that gets my custom. And if I hear a yip out of her to the contrary, I shall poke her in the snoot. Come on, pay the check and let's go."

Bingo's jaw fell.

"You mean pay the bill?"

"If that's what you like to call it."

"But I thought you were standing me this dinner."

"What ever gave you that silly idea?"

"You said you would because I was Rosie M. Banks's husband."

"Whose husband?"

"Rosie M. Banks's."

"Never heard of her," said Kirk Rockaway. "It's your treat, so come across. Or would you prefer that I gave you a poke in the snoot?"

And his physique was so robust and his manner so intimidating that it seemed to Bingo that he had no alternative. With a groan that came up from the soles of his feet he felt in his pocket for Mr. Purkiss's ten pounds and with trembling finger beckoned to the waiter.

Bingo's aunt's house was in the Kensington neighbourhood, and thither they repaired in a taxi cab. It. was a longish journey, but Kirk Rockaway enlivened it with college yells remembered from earlier days. As they alighted, he was in the middle of one and he finished it while ringing the door bell.

The door opened. Willoughby appeared. Kirk Rockaway. tapped him authoritatively on the chest and said:

"Take me to your leader! "

"Sir!"

"The Beenstock broad. I want a word with her."

"Mrs. Beenstock is not at home, and I would be greatly obliged, sir, if you would pop off."

"I will not pop off. I demand to see the woman I love instantly," thundered Kirk Rockaway, continuing to tap the butler like a woodpecker. "There is a plot to keep her from me, and I may mention that I happen to know the ringleaders. If you do not immediately"

He broke off, not because he had said his say but because he overbalanced and fell down the steps. Bingo, who had entered the hall, thought he saw him bounce twice, but he was in a state of great mental perturbation and may have been mistaken. Willoughby closed the front door, and Bingo wiped his forehead. His own forehead, not Willoughby's.

"Isn't my aunt at home?"

"No, sir. She returns tomorrow."

"Why didn't you tell the gentleman that?"

"The gentleman was pie-eyed, Mr. Richard. Hark at him now."

He was alluding to the fact that Kirk Rockaway was now banging on the door with the knocker, at the same time shout-mg in a stentorian voice that the woman he loved was being held incommunicado by a gang in the pay of Mortimer Frisby. Then abruptly the noise ceased and Bingo, peering through the little window at the side of the door, saw that the sweet singer of Oakland, San Francisco, was in conversation with a member of the police force. He was too far away to catch the gist of their talk, but it must have been acrimonious, for it had been in progress only a few moments when Kirk Rockaway, substituting action for words, hit the constable on the tip of the nose. The hand of the law then attached itself to his elbow and he was led away into the night.

The magistrate at Bow Street next morning took a serious view of the case. The tidal wave of lawlessness which was engulfing London, he said, must be checked and those who added fuel to its flames by punching policemen must be taught that they could not escape the penalty of their misdeeds.

"Fourteen days," he said, coming to the point, and Bingo, who had attended the proceedings, tottered from the court feeling that this was the end. No hope now of that well nourished man marrying his Aunt Myrtle in time to be entered for the Fat Uncles stakes. When the judging was done, he would still be in his prison cell—gnawed, Bingo hoped, for he was in bitter mood, by rats. The future looked dark to him. He recalled a poem in which there had occurred the line 'The night that covers me, black as the Pit from pole to pole', and he felt that if he had been asked to describe his general position at the moment, he could not have put the thing better himself. The words fitted his situation like the paper on the wall.

Only one ray of hope, and that a faint one, lightened his darkness. Willoughby had said that his aunt would be back from her Mediterranean cruise today, and he had sometimes found her responsive to the touch, if tactfully approached. It was a chance which Charles ('Charlie Always Pays') Pikelet would have estimated at perhaps 100 to 8, but it was a chance. He hastened to her house and pressed the front door bell.

"Good morning, Willoughby."

"Good morning, Mr. Richard."

"You and your Whistler's Mothers!"

"I would prefer not to dwell on that topic, sir."

"So would I. Is my aunt in?"

"No, sir. They have gone out to do some shopping."

"They?" said Bingo, surprised that the butler should have spoken of his employer, stout though she was, in the plural.

"Madam and Sir Hercules, Mr. Richard."

"Who on earth is Sir Hercules?"

"Madam's husband, sir. Sir Hercules Foliot-Foljambe."

"What!"

"Yes, sir. It appears that they were shipmates on the cruise from which Madam has just returned. I understand that the wedding took place in Naples."

"Well, I'll be blowed. You never know what's going' to happen next in these disturbed times, do you?"

"No, sir."

"Of all the bizarre occurrences! What sort of a chap is he?"

"Bald, about the colour of tomato ketchup, and stout."

Bingo started.

"Stout?"