Uncle Dynamite (24 page)

‘No.’

‘A red
Indian of some celebrity in my younger days. I suppose nobody reads Fenimore
Cooper now.’

‘What
about him?’

‘I was
only going to say that that was what we crept like; softly and silently, as if
we were wearing moccasins. And while we were creeping, we heard voices.’

‘And
did I jump!’

‘I,
too. I soared up like a rocket. For one of the voices was Constable Potter’s.
The other was that of the housemaid, Elsie Bean. A rather pleasant feature of
life at Ashenden Manor is the way you can always find housemaids sauntering
about the grounds at half-past two in the morning. It was she who was doing
most of the speaking. She seemed to be reproaching the officer for his
professional activities. She was telling him that she had given her month’s
notice and that before her time expired he must make his decision about
resigning from the Force. She said she hadn’t any patience, and so alien did
she appear to his aims and ideals that I felt that we had found a sympathizer.
I was right. Presently, the constable left, his manner that of a man who has
had his ears pinned back, and with a slight snort she turned, presumably to
re-enter the house. It was at this point that we emerged and contacted her.’

‘With a
cheery “Hoy!”‘

‘With,
as you say, a cheery “Hoy!” Well, after that everything went with the most
delightful smoothness. I think she was a little surprised to see us — indeed,
she stated later that that ghastly sound proceeding from the darkness had
scared her out of a year’s growth — but she soon recovered her poise and showed
herself the soul of consideration. It was she who pointed out the water pipe
and after I had helped Sally to climb it gave me that preliminary leg-up which
a man needs at my time of life, if he is to negotiate water pipes successfully.
I don’t know when I have met a nicer girl, and I don’t wonder you —‘You don’t
wonder I what?’

‘Oh,
nothing. So here we are, thanks to her, and she has guaranteed that she will
give us all the aid and comfort at her disposal. She said she would look in
shortly and confer with us. I suppose she feels that there are one or two
details which need discussing.’

Sally
clasped her hands.

‘My
breakfast!’

‘That,
no doubt, was one of them.’

‘I’m
starving already.’

‘Poor
child. In a few minutes I will take you down to the larder and we will knock
together a bite of supper which will keep you going till the morning. I could
do with a couple of boiled eggs myself. These late hours give one an appetite.
Ah, here is Miss Bean. Come in, Miss Bean. I think you know everybody. A
cigarette?’

‘Thank
you, sir.’

‘Give
the lady a cigarette, Pongo. A chair, Miss Bean? and a footstool for your feet?
That’s right. And now, Miss Bean, tell us everything that is on your mind. I
hope you have come to indicate to us in what way we may make some slight return
for all your kindness tonight. Speaking for myself, if a flyer would be any
good to you — and when I say a flyer I mean, of course, a tenner —‘

Elsie
Bean tossed her head, setting the curling pins leaping like Sir Aylmer
Bostock’s moustache.

‘I
don’t want money,’ she said, not actually referring to it as dross, but giving
the impression that that was what she considered it. ‘Thanking you all the
same.’

‘Not at
all.’

‘What I
want,’ said Elsie Bean, once more imparting life to the curling pins, ‘is
Harold bopped on the nose.’

She
spoke with a strange intensity, her face hard and her blue eyes gleaming with a
relentless light. That interview with her loved one in the garden seemed to
have brought her to a decision. Here, you felt, was a housemaid who had been
pushed just so far and could be pushed no further. Nor is the fact surprising.
Tempers are quick in Bottleton East, and Constable Potter’s way of replying
‘Well, I dunno,’ to her most impassioned pleadings would have irritated a far
less emotional girl.

Lord
Ickenham inclined his head courteously.

‘Harold?’

‘Harold
Potter.’

‘Ah,
yes, our friend the constable. What did you say you wished done to his nose?’

‘I want
it bopped.’

‘Struck,
you mean? Socked? Given a biff?’

‘R.’

‘But
why? Not that I want to be inquisitive, of course.’

‘I was
telling Mr Twistleton. There’s only one way to make Harold be sensible and give
up being a copper, and that’s to dot him a good bop on the nose. Because he’s
nervous. He don’t like being bopped on the nose.’

‘Of
course, of course. I see just what you mean. Your psychology is unerring. If I
were a copper and somebody bopped me on the nose, I would hand in my resignation
like a flash. The matter shall be attended to. Pongo —‘

Pongo
started convulsively.

‘Now
listen, Uncle Fred. All that’s been arranged. This Bean and I have discussed it
and are in full agreement that the bird to take the job on is her brother Bert.
Bert, I may mention, is a chap who habitually sloshes slops on the napper with
blunt instruments, so this will be a picnic to him.’

‘But
Bert doesn’t come out till September.’

Lord
Ickenham was shocked.

‘Are
you suggesting, Pongo, that this poor girl shall wait till September for the
fulfilment of her hopes and dreams? It is obvious that time is of the essence
and that we must rush to her assistance immediately. I, unfortunately, am a
little too old to bop policemen on the nose, much as I should enjoy it, so the
task devolves upon you. See to it as soon as possible.’

‘But,
dash it —‘

‘And
don’t say “But, dash it.” You remind me of our mutual ancestor, Sir Gervase
Twistleton, who got a bad name in the days of the Crusades from curling up in
bed and murmuring “Some other time,” when they asked him to come and do his bit
at the battle of Joppa. I am convinced that this matter could not be placed in
better hands than yours, and I would suggest that you and Miss Bean have a talk
about ways and means while Sally and I go down to the larder and forage. It
might be best if we took the back stairs. Can you direct us to the back stairs,
Miss Bean? At the end of the passage? Thank you. I don’t suppose we shall have
any trouble in finding the larder. Is there a gas range in the kitchen for
egg-boiling purposes? Excellent. Every convenience. Then come along, Sally. I
think I can promise you a blow-out on lavish lines. I have already tested
Mugsy’s hospitality, and it is princely. I shouldn’t wonder if in addition to
eggs there might not be a ham and possibly even sausages.’

With a
bow of old-world courtesy to Elsie Bean, Lord Ickenham escorted Sally from the
room, speaking of sausages he had toasted at school on the ends of pens, and
Pongo, who had folded his arms in a rather noticeable manner, found on turning
to Miss Bean that her set face had relaxed.

‘He’s a
nice old gentleman,’ she said.

This
seemed to Pongo such a monstrously inaccurate description of one who in his
opinion was like a sort of human upas tree, casting its deadly blight on every
innocent bystander who came within its sphere of influence, that he uttered a
brassy ‘Ha!’

‘Pardon?’

‘I said
“Ha!” said Pongo, and would have gone on to speak further, had there not at
this moment occurred an interruption. Knuckles were rapping gently on the door,
and through the woodwork there made itself heard a voice.

‘Pongo.’

The
voice of Bill Oakshott.

In the literature and
drama which have come down to us through the ages there have been a number of
powerful descriptions of men reacting to unpleasant surprises. That of King
Claudius watching the unfolding of the play of
The Mouse Trap
is one of
these, and writers of a later date than Shakespeare have treated vividly of the
husband who discovers in an inner pocket the letter given to him by his wife to
slip in the mail box two weeks previously.

Of all
the protagonists in these moving scenes it is perhaps to Macbeth seeing the
ghost of Banquo that one may most aptly compare Pongo Twistleton as he heard
this voice in the night. He stiffened from the ankles up, his eyes rolling, his
hair stirring as if beneath a sudden breeze, his very collar seeming to wilt,
and from his ashen lips there came a soft, wordless cry. It was not exactly the
Potter-Bean ‘Coo!’ and not precisely the ‘Gar!’ of Sir Aylmer Bostock, but a
sort of blend or composite of the two. That intelligent Scottish nobleman,
Ross, whom very little escaped, said, as he looked at Macbeth, ‘His highness is
not well,’ and he would have said the same if he had been looking at Pongo.

Nor is
his emotion hard to understand. When a sensitive young man, animated by a
lively consideration for his personal well-being, has been told by a much
larger young man of admittedly homicidal tendencies that if he does not abandon
his practice of hobnobbing with housemaids in the drawing-room at one-thirty in
the morning he, the much larger young man, will scoop out his insides with his
bare hands, he shrinks from the prospect of being caught by the other
entertaining a housemaid in his bedroom at two forty-five. If Pongo said ‘Gar!’
or it may have been ‘Coo!’ and behaved as if an old friend whom he had recently
caused to be murdered had dropped in to dinner with dagger wounds all over him,
he cannot fairly be blamed. Those hands of Bill Oakshott’s seemed to rise
before his eyes like dreadful things seen in a nightmare.

But it
was only for an instant that he stood inactive. In times of crisis blood will
tell, and he had the good fortune to belong to a family whose members, having
gone through a lot of this sort of thing in their day, had acquired and
transmitted to their descendants a certain technique. A good many Twistletons,
notably in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, had been constrained
by circumstances to think quick on occasions just such as this and, having
thought quick, to hide women in cupboards. It was to the cupboard, therefore,
acting automatically in accordance with the family tradition, that Pongo now
directed Elsie Bean.

‘Slide
in there!’ he hissed. ‘And not a sound, not a yip, not a murmur. A human life
hangs on your silence.’

He
closed the cupboard door, straightened his tie and drawing a deep breath called
‘Come in.’ And it was while he was smoothing his hair and simultaneously commending
his soul to God that Bill Oakshott entered.

‘Oh,
hullo,’ he said.

‘Hullo,’
said Bill. ‘I’m glad you’re still up, Pongo. I — er — I wanted a word with
you.’

The
phrase is one that sometimes has an ominous ring, but it was not menacingly
that Bill Oakshott employed it. His voice was soft, even winning, and Pongo was
encouraged to see that though looking as large as ever, if not larger, he
seemed pacific. Ross, or somebody like that who noticed things, would have said
that Bill was embarrassed, and he would have been right.

It
often happens that after talking to a boyhood friend like an elder brother a
young man of normally kindly disposition, when he has had time to reflect,
finds himself wondering if his tone during the interview was not a little
brusque. It was so with Bill Oakshott. Musing in solitude and recalling the
scene in the drawing-room, it had seemed to him that some of his remarks had
taken too anatomical a trend. It was to apologize that he had come to Pongo’s
bedroom, and he proceeded now to do so.

It
would have suited Pongo better if he had put these apologies in writing and
submitted them to him in the form of a note, but he accepted them in a generous
spirit, though absently, for he was listening to a soft, rustling sound which
had begun to proceed from the cupboard. It made him feel as if spiders were
walking up and down his back. The celebrated Beau Twistleton, in the days of
the Regency, had once had a similar experience.

Bill
appeared to have heard it, too. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, pausing in his
remarks. ‘Eh?’

‘That
sort of scratching noise. In the cupboard.’ Pongo wiped a bead of perspiration
from his forehead. ‘Mice,’ he said.

‘Oh,
mice. Lots of them about.’

‘Yes,
quite a good year for mice,’ said Pongo. ‘Well, good night, Bill, old man.’

But
Bill was not yet ready to leave. Like so many large young men, he was sentimental,
and this disinclined him to rush these scenes of reconciliation. When he healed
rifts with boyhood friends, he liked to assure himself that they were going to
stay healed. He sat down on the bed, which creaked beneath his weight.

‘Well,
I’m glad everything’s all right, Pongo. You’re sure you’re not offended?’ ‘Not
at all, not a-tall.’

‘I
thought you might have got the impression that I thought you were a foul
snake.’ ‘No, no.’

‘I
ought never to have suggested such a thing.’

‘Not
keeping you up, am I, Bill?’

‘Not a
bit. It was just that when I found you and Elsie Bean in the drawing-room, I
thought for a moment —‘Quite.’