Service with a Smile (10 page)

‘If we
can came to some satisfactory business arrangement, I will abstract the pig
and see that it is delivered at your address.’

The
Duke blinked. Whatever he had been expecting, it was not this. He looked at the
Empress, estimating her tonnage, then at Lavender Briggs, in comparison so
fragile.

‘You?
Don’t be an ass. You couldn’t steal a pig.’

‘I
should, of course, engage the service of an assistant to do the rough work.’

‘Who?
Not me.’

‘I was
not thinking of Your Grace.’

‘Then
who?’

‘I
would prefer not to specify with any greatah exactitude.’

‘See
what you mean. No names, no pack-drill?’

‘Quate.’

A
thoughtful silence fell. Lavender Briggs stood looking like a spectacled
statue, while the Duke, who had lighted another cigar, puffed at it. And at
this moment Lord Emsworth appeared, walking across the meadow in that jerky way
of his which always reminded his friends and admirers of a mechanical toy which
had been insufficiently wound up.

‘Hell!’
said the Duke, ‘Here comes Emsworth.’

‘Quate,’
said Lavender Briggs. It was obvious to her that the conference must be
postponed to some more suitable time and place. Above all else, plotters
require privacy. ‘I suggest that Your Grace meet me later in my office.’

‘Where’s
that?’

‘Beach
will direct you.’

The
secretary’s office, to which the butler some quarter of an hour later escorted
the Duke, was at the far end of a corridor, a small room looking out on the
Dutch garden. Like herself, it was tidy and austere, with no fripperies. There
was a desk with a typewriter on it, a table with a tape-recording machine on
it, filing cabinets against the walls, a chair behind the desk, another chair
in front of it, both hard and business-like, and —the sole concession to the
beautiful — a bowl of flowers by the window. As the Duke entered, she was
sitting in the chair behind the desk, and he, after eyeing it suspiciously as
if doubtful of its ability to support the largest trouser-seat in the peerage,
took the other chair.

‘Been
thinking over what you were saying just now,’ he said. ‘About stealing that pig
for me. This assistant you were speaking of. Sure you can get him?’

‘I am.
Actually, I shall requiah two assistants,’

‘Eh?’

‘One to
push and one to pull. It is a very large pig.’

‘Oh,
yes, see what you mean. Yes, undoubtedly. As you say, very large pig. And you
can get this second chap?’

‘I can.’

‘Good.
Then that seems to be about it, what? Everything settled, I mean to say.’

‘Except
terms.’

‘Eh?’

‘If you
will recall, I spoke of a satisfactory business arrangement? I naturally
expect to be compensated for my services. I am anxious to obtain capital with
which to start a typewriting bureau.’

The
Duke, a prudent man who believed in watching the pennies, said, ‘A typewriting
bureau, eh? I know the sort of thing you mean. One of those places full of
machines and girls hammering away at them like a lot of dashed riveters. Well,
you don’t want much money for that,’ he said, and Lavender Briggs, correcting
this view, said she wanted as much as she could get.

‘I
would suggest five hundred pounds.’

The
Duke’s moustache leaped into life. His eyes bulged. He had the air of one who
is running the gamut of the emotions.

‘Five…
what?’

‘You
were thinking of some lesser fig-ah?’

‘I was
thinking of a tenner.’

‘Ten
pounds?’ Lavender Briggs smiled pityingly, as if some acquaintance of hers,
quoting Horace, had made a false quantity. ‘That would leave you with a nice
profit, would it not?’

‘Eh?’

‘You
told Lady Constance that you had a friend who was prepared to pay you two
thousand pounds for the animal.’

The
Duke chewed his moustache in silence for a moment, regretting that he had been
so explicit.

‘I was
pulling her leg,’ he said, doing his best.

‘Oh?’

‘Harmless
little joke.’

‘Indeed?
I took it au pied de la lettre.’

‘Au
what de what?’ said the Duke, who was as shaky on French as he was on English
literature.

‘I
accepted the statement at its face value.’

‘Silly
of you. Thought you would have seen that I was just kidding her along and
making a good story out of it.’

‘That
was not the impression your words made on me. When’ — she consulted her
notebook — ‘when I heard you say “I know someone who’ll give me two thousand
for the animal”, I was quate convinced that you meant precisely what you said.
Unfortunately at that moment Lord Emsworth appeared and I was obliged to move
from the door, so did not ascertain the name of the friend to whom you
referred. Otherwise, I would be dealing with him directly and you would not
appear in the transaction at all. As matters stand, you will be receiving
fifteen hundred pounds for doing nothing — from your point of view, I should
have supposed, a very satisfactory state of aff-ay-ars.’

She
became silent. She was thinking hard thoughts of Lord Emsworth and feeling how
like him it was to have intruded at such a vital moment. Had he postponed his
arrival for as little as half a minute, she would have learned the identity of
this lavish pig-lover and would have been able to dispense with the middle man.
A momentary picture rose before her eyes of herself, armed with a stout
umbrella, taking a full back swing and breaking it over her employer’s head.
Even though she recognized this as but an idle dream, it comforted her a
little.

The
Duke sat chewing his cigar. There was, he had to admit, much in what she said.
The thought of parting with five hundred pounds chilled him to his
parsimonious marrow, but after all, as she had indicated, the remaining fifteen
hundred was nice money and would come under the general heading of velvet.

‘All
right,’ he said, though it hurt him to utter the words, and Lavender Briggs’
mouth twitched slightly on the left side, which was her way of smiling.

‘I was
sure you would be reasonable. Shall we have a written agreement?’

‘No,’
said the Duke, remembering that one of the few sensible remarks his late
father had ever made was ‘Alaric, my boy, never put anything in writing’. ‘No,
certainly not. Written agreement, indeed! Never heard a pottier suggestion in
my life.’

‘Then I
must ask you for a cheque.’

As far
as it is possible for a seated man to do so, the Duke reeled.

‘What,
in advance?’

‘Quate.
Have you your cheque-book with you?’

‘No,’
said the Duke, brightening momentarily. For an instant it seemed to him that
this solved everything.

‘Then
you can give it me tonight,’ said Lavender Briggs. ‘And meanwhile repeat this
after me. I, Alaric, Duke of Dunstable, hereby make a solemn promise to you,
Lavender Briggs, that if you steal Lord Emsworth’s pig, Empress of Blandings,
and deliver it to my home in Wiltshire, I will pay you the sum of five hundred
pounds.’

‘Sounds
silly.’

‘Nevertheless,
I must insist on a formal agreement, even if only a verbal one.’

‘Oh,
all right.’

The
Duke repeated the words, though still considering them silly. The woman had to
be humoured.

‘Thank
you,’ said Lavender Briggs, and went off to scour the countryside for George
Cyril Wellbeloved.

2

George Cyril was having
his elevenses in the tool-shed by the kitchen garden when the rich smell of pig
which he always diffused enabled her eventually to locate him. As she entered,
closing the door behind her, he lowered the beer bottle from his lips in some
surprise. He had seen her around from time to time and knew who she was, but he
had not the pleasure of her acquaintance, and he was wondering to what he owed
the honour of this visit.

She
informed him, but not immediately, for there was what are called pourparlers to
be gone through first.

‘Wellbeloved,’
she said, starting to attend to these, ‘I have been making inquiries about you
in Market Blandings, and everyone to whom I have mentioned your name tells me
that you are thoroughly untrustworthy, a man without scruples of any sort, who
sticks at nothing and will do anything for money.’

‘Who —
me?’ said George Cyril, blinking. He had frequently had much the same sort of
thing said to him before, for he moved in outspoken circles, but somehow it
seemed worse and more wounding coming from those Kensingtonian lips. For a
moment he debated within himself the advisability of dotting the speaker one on
the boko, but decided against this. You never know what influential friends
these women had. He contented himself with waving his arms in a passionate
gesture which caused the aroma of pig to spread itself even more thickly about
the interior of the shed. ‘Who — me?’ he said again.

Lavender
Briggs had produced a scented handkerchief and was pressing it to her face.

‘Toothache?’
asked George Cyril, interested.

‘It is
a little chose in here,’ said Lavender Briggs primly, and returned to the pourparlers.
‘At the Emsworth Arms, for in-stance, I was informed that you would sell your
grandmother for twopence.’

George
Cyril said he did not have a grandmother, and seemed a good deal outraged by
the suggestion that, if that relative had not long since gone to reside with
the morning stars, he would have parted with her at such bargain-basement
rates. A good grandmother should fetch at least a couple of bob.

‘At the
Cow and Grasshopper they told me you were a —petty thief of the lowest description.’

‘Who —
me?’ said George Cyril uneasily. That, he told himself, must be those cigars.
He had not supposed that suspicion had fallen on himself regarding their
disappearance. Evidently the hand had not moved sufficiently quickly to deceive
the eye.

‘And
the butler at. Sir Gregory Parsloe’s, where I understand you were employed
before you returned to Lord Emsworth, said you were always pilfering his
cigarettes and whisky.’

‘Who —
me?’ said George Cyril for the fourth time, speaking now with an outraged note
in his voice. He had always thought of Binstead, Sir Gregory’s butler, as a pal
and, what is more, a staunch pal. And now this. Like the prophet Zachariah, he was
saying to himself, ‘I have been wounded in the house of my friends.’

‘Your
moral standards have thus been established as negligible. So I want you,’ said
Lavender Briggs, ‘to steal Lord Emsworth’s pig.’

Another
man, hearing these words, might have been stunned, and certainly a fifth ‘Who —
me?’ could have been expected, but in making this request of George Cyril Wellbeloved
the secretary was addressing one who in the not distant past actually had
stolen Lord Emsworth’s pig. It was a long and intricate story, reflecting great
discredit on all concerned, and there is no need to go into it now. One
mentions it merely to explain why George Cyril Wellbeloved did not draw himself
to his full height and thunder that nothing could make him betray his position
of trust, but merely scratched his chin with the beer bottle and looked
interested.

‘Pinch
the pig?’

‘Precisely.’

‘Why?’

‘Never
mind why?’

George
Cyril did mind why.

‘Now
use your intelligence, miss,’ he pleaded. ‘You can’t come telling a man to go
pinching pigs without giving him the griff about why he’s doing it and who for
and what not. Who’s after that pig this time?’

Lavender
Briggs decided to be frank. She was a fair-minded girl and saw that he had
reason on his side. Even the humblest hired assassin in the Middle Ages
probably wanted to know, before setting out to stick a poignard into someone,
whom he was acting for.

‘The
Duke of Dunstable,’ she said. ‘You would be requiahed to take the animal to his
house in Wiltshire.’

‘Wiltshire?’
George Cyril seemed incredulous. ‘Did you say Wiltshire?’

‘That
is where the Duke lives.’

‘And
how do we get to Wiltshire, me and the pig? Walk?’

Lavender
Briggs clicked her tongue impatiently.

‘I
assume that you have some disreputable friend who has a motor vehicle of some
kind and is as free from scruples as yourself. And if you are thinking that you
may be suspected, you need have no uneasiness. The operation will be carried
through early in the morning and nobody will suppose that you were not asleep
in bed at the time.’

George
Cyril nodded. This was talking sense.

‘Yes,
so far so good. But aren’t you overlooking what I might call a technical point?
I can’t pinch a pig that size all by myself.’