Plum Pie (21 page)

I was aghast. Long before the half-way mark of this speech the awful truth had flashed upon me. It was not George whom I saw before me—through a flickering mist—but Alfred, and I blamed myself bitterly for having been so mad as to mention Mr. Schnellenhamer to him, for I might have known that he would be inflamed by the news that the motion-picture magnate was within his reach and that here was his chance of getting signed up for a lucrative engagement. And George due to appear at any moment! No wonder that I reeled and had to support myself on what I believe is called a bollard.

"For my first trick," said Alfred, "I shall require a pound of butter, two bananas and a bowl of goldfish: Excuse me. Won't keep you long."

He went below, presumably in quest of these necessaries, and as he did so George came up the gangway.

There was none of that breezy self-confidence in George which had so impressed me in Alfred. He was patently suffering from stage fright. His legs wobbled and I could see his adam's apple going up and down as if pulled by an invisible string. He looked like a nervous speaker at a public banquet who on rising to his feet to propose the toast of Our Guests realizes that he has completely forgotten the story of the two Irishmen Pat and Mike, with which he had been hoping to convulse his audience.

Nor did I blame him, for Sergeant Brichoux had taken a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and was breathing on them and polishing them on his sleeve, while Mr. Schnellenhamer subjected him to the stony glare which had so often caused employees of his on the Colossal-Exquisite lot to totter off to the commissary to restore themselves with frosted malted milk shakes. There was an ominous calm in the motion picture magnate's manner such as one finds in volcanoes just before they erupt and make householders in the neighbourhood wish they had settled elsewhere. He was plainly holding himself in with a powerful effort, having decided to toy with my unhappy nephew before unmasking him. For George's opening words had been "Good morning. I—er—that is to say—I—er—my name is Alfred Mulliner", and I could see that neither on the part of Mr. Schnellenhamer or of Sergeant Brichoux was there that willing suspension of disbelief which dramatic critics are always writing about.

"Good morning," said the former. "Nice weather."

"Yes, Mr. Schnellenhamer."

"Good for the crops."

"Yes, Mr. Schnellenhamer."

"Though bad for the umbrella trade."

"Yes, Mr. Schnellenhamer."

"Come along and join the party. Alfred Mulliner did you say the name was?"

"Yes, Mr. Schnellenhamer."

"You lie!" thundered Mr. Schnellenhamer, unmasking his batteries with horrifying abruptness. "You're no more Alfred Mulliner than I am, which isn't much. You're George Mulliner, and you're facing a murder rap or the next thing to it. Send for the police," he said to Sergeant Brichoux.

"I am the police," the sergeant reminded him, rather coldly it seemed to me.

"So you are. I was forgetting. Then arrest this man."

"I will do so immediately."

Sergeant Brichoux advanced on George handcuffs in hand, but before he could adjust them to his wrists an interruption occurred.

Intent though I had been on the scene taking place on the deck of the yacht, I had been able during these exchanges to observe out of the corner of my eye that a heavily bandaged man of middle age was approaching us along the quay, and he  now mounted the gangway and hailed Mr. Schnellenhamer with a feeble "Hi, Jake."

So profuse were his bandages that one would hardly have expected his own mother to have recognised him, but Mr. Schnellenhamer did.

"Sam Glutz!" he cried. "Well, I'll be darned. I thought you were in the hospital."

"They let me out."

"You look like Tutunkhamen's mummy, Sam."

"So would you if you'd been belted by a hoodlum like I was. Did you read about it in the papers?"

"Sure. You made the front page."

"Well, that's something. But I wouldn't care to go through an experience like that again. I thought it was the end. My whole past life flashed before me."

"You can't have liked that."

"I didn't."

"Well, you'll be glad to hear, Sam, that we've got the fellow who slugged you."

"You have? Where is he?"

"Right there. Standing by the gentleman with the handcuffs."

George's head had been bowed, but now he happened to raise it, and Mr. Glutz uttered a cry.

"You!"

"That's him. George Mulliner. Used to work for the Colossal-Exquisite, but of course I've fired him. Take him to the cooler, sergeant."

Every bandage on Mr. Glutz's body rippled like wheat beneath a west wind, and his next words showed that what had caused this was horror and indignation at the programme Mr. Schnellenhamer had outlined.

"Over my dead body!" he cried. "Why, that's the splendid young man who saved my life last night."

"What!"

"Sure. The hood was beating the tar out of me when he came galloping up and knocked him for a loop, and after a terrific struggle the hood called it a day and irised out. Proud and happy to meet you, Mr. Mulliner. I think I heard Jake say he'd fired you. Well, come and work for the Perfecto-Wonderful, and I shall be deeply offended if you don't skin me for a salary beyond the dreams of avarice. I'll pencil you in as vice-president with brevet rank as a cousin by marriage."

I stepped forward. George was still incapable of speech.

"One moment, Mr. Glutz," I said.

"Who are you?"

"George's agent. And there is just one clause in the contract which strikes me as requiring revision. Reflect, Mr. Glutz. Surely cousin by marriage is a poor reward for the man who saved your life?"

Mr. Glutz was visibly affected. Groping among the bandages, he wiped away a tear.

"You're right," he said. "We'll make it brother-in-law. And now let's go and get a bite of lunch. You, too," he said to me. and I said I would be delighted. We left the boat in single file—first Mr. Glutz, then myself, then George, who was still dazed. The last thing I saw was Alfred coming on deck with his pound of butter and his two bananas. I seemed to detect on his face a slight touch of chagrin, caused no doubt by his inability to locate the bowl of goldfish so necessary to his first trick.

Our Man in America

One of the great traditions in America has always been the priding of pencilled moustaches to the faces on posters in the subway, and some superb work has been done in that line over the years. They fine you two hundred and fifty dollars if they catch you doing it, but to the artist the satisfaction of attaching a walrus moustache to the upper lip of—say—Miss Elizabeth Taylor is well worth the risk. (Moustache drawers are a proud guild and look down on the fellows who simply write 'George loves Mabel' or 'Castro ought to have his head examined' on the walls. Hack work, they consider it.)

In an effort to keep their advertisements undecorated, the Transit Authority are now supplying at many of their stations posters measuring thirty by forty inches carrying twelve faces, together with this message to their patrons:

"Please! If you must draw moustaches, draw them on these." It is doubtful if the idea will catch on. A few small boys took advantage of the invitation, but the true moustache-drawers shook their heads.

One misses—how shall I put it?—one misses the tang," said one of them, when interviewed. "It's clever, but is it Art?" said another, and after having a malted milk at the refreshment counter they went off to see what could be done with the latest poster of Carol Channing in
Hello, Dolly
.

*

Let us turn for a moment to the subject of cows. You know what happens to cows in winter, they have to stick in a barn all the time with little or no cultural stimulus except what they can get from exchanging ideas with other cows, and it is very rare to find a cow with ideas to exchange. This state of things touched the tender heart of an extension service dairyman on the staff of the University of Maine, and it struck him it would ease the strain a good deal if movies were provided during the winter months. A group of farmers in North Gray, Maine, wired a barn for sound and set up a screen and the cows loved it. They mooed at the sight of fields and mooed even louder when bulls appeared on the screen. Some of the
avant garde
pictures fell a little flat, but the Westerns went big. The favourite star seems to be John Wayne, and the only regret these North Gray cows have is that they can't send him fan letters. Winter now passes in a flash.

*

An admirable suggestion has been made by Mr. Wilfred S. Rowe, a season ticket holder on one of the local railways whose trains make a leisurely progress towards New York each day and generally fetch up there sooner or later. Mr. Rowe's idea, simple as all great ideas are, is to establish a bookie at each station, prepared to accept commissions from the customers, who would queue up delightedly to wager on how late a given train would be. Heated arguments with other bettors would help pass the time, and the daily take at the betting window would soon put the road back on its financial feet. And the spectacle of a mob of eager travellers with brief cases in their hands running beside the train and shouting "Come on, Steve" to the engine driver could not fail to strike a lively note.

*

It was some months ago that a metal fabricating firm at Long Beach. California, noticed that one of its employees, a Mr. Kenneth Vosper, seemed to be putting on a bit of weight. Upon what meat does this our Vosper feed that lie is grown so great, they asked one another, and when he turned the scale at nineteen stone ten, they thought it was time to take steps. "Waddle off to some quiet rural retreat, Ken, and shed about five stone," they said, and when he refused, they fired him.

My personal sympathies are with Mr. Vosper. He feels as I do that there is far too much of this modern craze for dieting. He likes his potatoes with lots of butter on them and is partial to at least six of the more widely advertised brands of beer, and he sees no reason why a metal fabricator should be lean and slender and look as if he were about to go into a tap dance.

"Give me a bit of metal, and I'll fabricate it before you can say What ho," he said. "Could Fred Astaire do that?"

But no, they persisted in easing him off the pay roll, and the case is now up before the State Department of Employment.

*

Ask anyone in Memphis, Tennessee, and they will tell you that until you have spent a night at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd Ward of that city, you don't know what excitement is. Living dangerously is the phrase that springs to the lips when one muses on Lloyd W and helpmeet.

Take last Thursday, for instance. While watching a television show, Mr. Ward fell asleep and Mrs. Ward turned off the apparatus. Startled into wakefulness by the sudden silence, Mr. Ward cried "What's that?", seized a pistol, sprang to his feet, tripped over them and put three shots through a cupboard door.

Mrs. Ward knew what to do, this sort of thing having presumably happened before. She grabbed the pistol and threw it away. Mr. Ward went after it like a retriever and had just picked it up when he tripped over his feet again and the weapon once more exploded, this time breaking a vase containing roses and ruining a rather attractive picture of cows in a  meadow, the work of Mrs. Ward's mother, who went in for water colours.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Ward agree that it was an odd coincidence that the TV offering which started all the trouble was 'Have Gun, Will Travel', for Mr. Ward unquestionably had gun and on the arrival of a sergeant and a couple of patrolmen travelled to the local police station. One is glad to report that the Judge let him off with a caution, merely telling him to keep away from firearms and to try not to fall asleep except at his regular bedtime.

8. A Good Cigar is a Smoke

When Lancelot Bingley, the rising young artist, became engaged to Gladys Wetherby, the poetess, who in addition to her skill with the pen had the face and figure of the better type of pin-up girl and eyes of about the colour of the Mediterranean on a good day, he naturally felt that this was a good thing and one that should be pushed along. The sooner the wedding took place, in his opinion, the better it would be for all concerned. He broached the subject to her as they were tucking into the
poulet roli an cresson
one evening at the Crushed Pansy, the restaurant with a soul.

"What I would suggest," he said, "if you haven't anything special on next week, is that we toddle round to the registrar's and encourage him to do his stuff. They tell me these registrar fellows make a very quick job of it. The whole thing wouldn't take more than ten minutes or so, and there we would be with it off our minds, if you see what I mean."

To his consternation, instead of clapping her hands in girlish glee and telling him that he had struck the right note there, she shook her head.

"I'm afraid it's not so simple as that."

"What's your problem?"

"I was thinking of Uncle Francis."

"Whose Uncle Francis?"

"My Uncle Francis."

"I didn't know you had an Uncle Francis."

"He was my mother's brother. Colonel Pashley-Drake. You've probably heard of him."

"Not a word. Nobody tells me anything."

"He used to be a famous big game hunter."

Lancelot frowned. He was not fond of big game hunters. His own impulse, if he had met a wapiti or a gnu or whatever it might be, would have been to offer it a ham sandwich from his luncheon basket, and the idea of plugging it with a repeating rifle, as this Pashley-Drake presumably did, revolted him.

"I'm not sorry we never ran across each other, then. I wouldn't have liked him."

"Mother did. She looked up to him very much, and when she died she left him a chunk of money which he was to hand over to me when I married."