Uncle Dynamite (33 page)

Anyone,
therefore, who when a boy ever went running to his mother with a tale of wrongs
and injuries and instead of condolences received a kick in the pants will be
able to appreciate this officer’s chagrin as he passed the late scene under
mental review. Sir Aylmer’s attitude had hurt and disappointed him. If this was
how a constable’s legitimate complaints were received by those whose duty it
was to comfort and console, then Elsie, he felt, was right and the quicker he
left the Force, the better.

If you
had approached Harold Potter as he stood there in his bush, smoking his pipe
and spitting bitterly, and had said, ‘Well, Constable Potter, how are you
feeling?’ he would have replied that he was feeling fed up. And there is little
doubt that this black mood would have grown in intensity, had not something
happened which abruptly wrenched his thoughts from their contemplation of the
policeman’s unhappy lot.

Through
the branches before him he had a good view of the front of the house, and at
this moment there appeared on the balcony of one of the windows on the first
floor a female figure in a red jacket, wearing upon its head a red thingummy,
like as it might have been a scarf. It came to the balcony rail, looked left
and right, then went back into the room.

The
spectacle left Harold Potter gaping. A thrill ran through him from the base of
the helmet to the soles of his regulation boots. He started to say ‘Coo!’ but
the word froze on his moustache.

Harold
Potter was a man who could reason. A mystery woman in a red jacket had pushed
him into the duck pond. A mystery woman in a red jacket was in that room on the
first floor. It did not take him long to suspect that these two mystery women
might be one and the same.

But how
to make sure?

It
seemed to him that there lay before him the choice between two courses of
action. He could go and report to Sir Aylmer, or he could pop along to the
potting shed, where there was a light ladder, secure this light ladder, take it
to the side of the house, prop it up and climb to that first floor window and
peer in. A steady look at close range would establish the identity of the
red-jacketed figure.

He did
not hesitate long between these alternative plans. Rejecting almost immediately
the idea of going and reporting to Sir Aylmer, he knocked out his pipe and
started for the potting shed.

Sally, her tea and
buttered toast long since consumed, had begun to feel lonely. It was quite a
time now since Pongo had left her, and she yearned for his return. Seated on
the chaise-longue, she thought what a baa-lamb he was and longed for him to
come back so that she could go on stroking his head and telling him how much
she loved him.

An odd
thing, this love, and one about which it is futile to argue. If individual A
finds in individual B a glamour which escapes the notice of the general public,
the general public has simply got to accept the situation without protest, just
as it accepted without protest, though perhaps with a silent sigh of regret,
the fact of Mr Brotherhood, the curate, getting measles.

Seeing
Sally sitting on the chaise-longue with clasped hands and starry eyes, her
heart overflowing with love for Pongo, it would have been useless for a
discriminating third party to tap her on the shoulder and try to persuade her
that there was nothing in the prospect of a lifelong union with Reginald
Twistleton to get starry-eyed about. Fruitless to attempt to sketch for her a
picture of Reginald Twistleton as seen by the cooler-headed. She was in love,
and she liked it.

The
only cloud that darkened her sky was the fear lest a shrewd girl like Hermione
Bostock, having secured such a prize, might refuse to relinquish it, but she
need have had no anxiety. Hermione was relinquishing the prize at that very
moment. When, some twenty minutes after he had left it, Pongo re-entered the
room, there was a dazed look on his face as if he had recently been mixed up
with typhoons, waterspouts and other Acts of God, but in his eyes shone the
light which comes into the eyes of men who have found the blue bird.

Sally
was not able to detect this immediately, her vision being obscured by the
handkerchief with which he was mopping his forehead, and her first words were
reproachful.

‘Oh,
angel, what a time you’ve been.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I went
out on to the balcony just now to see if I could see you, but you weren’t in
sight. I know you had to brood, but need you have brooded so long?’

Pongo
lowered the handkerchief.

‘I
wasn’t brooding,’ he said. ‘I was chatting with Hermione.’ Sally gave a jump.

‘Then
you found her?’

‘She
found me.’

‘And
what happened?’

Pongo
moved to the mirror and inspected himself in it. He seemed to be looking for
grey hairs.

‘Well,
that I can hardly tell you,’ he said. ‘The whole thing’s a bit of a blur. Have
you ever been in a really bad motor smash? Or hit by an atom bomb? No? Then
it’s hard to explain. Still, the fact that emerges is that the engagement’s
off.’

‘Oh,
Pongo!’

‘Oh,
Sally!’

‘Oh,
Pongo darling! Then we can live happy ever after.’

Pongo
applied the handkerchief to his forehead once more.

‘Yes,’
he agreed, ‘after a brief interval for picking up the pieces and reassembling
the faculties. I don’t mind telling you the recent scene has left me a bit
weak.’

‘My
poor lamb. I wish I had some smelling salts.’

‘So do
I. I could use a bucketful.’

‘Was it
so awful?’

‘Quite
an ordeal.’

‘What
did you say to her?’

‘I
didn’t get a chance of saying anything to her, except, “Oh, there you are,”
right at the start. She bore the burden of the conversash.’

‘You
don’t mean it was she who broke off the engagement?’

‘And
how! You know, Uncle Fred ought to be in some sort of home.’

‘Why?’

‘It
appears that he met Hermione and spilled the beans with a lavish hand. He told
her so many things about me that I wonder she remembered them all. But she
did.’

‘Such
as —?’

‘Well,
getting pinched at the Dog Races and going down to the drawing-room last night
to get a spot and being caught this morning in Ma Bostock’s wardrobe. Things
like that.’

‘In the
wardrobe? What were you doing there?’

‘I had
gone to her room to get you a lipstick, and —‘

‘Oh,
Pongo! My hero! Did you really do that for me?’

‘Not
much I wouldn’t do for you. Look what you did for me. Pushing Porter into that
pond.’

‘I
think that’s what’s so splendid about us. Each helps each. It’s the foundation
of a happy married life. So Uncle Fred told her all that about you? Bless him.’

‘Would
you put it like that?’

‘Well,
he saved you from a girl you could never have been happy with.’

‘I
couldn’t be happy with any girl except you. Yes. I suppose he did. I hadn’t
looked at it in that way.’

‘He
never minds how much trouble he takes, if he feels that he’s spreading
sweetness and light.’

‘No.
There have been complaints about it on all sides, and I still maintain that he
ought to be in a padded cell with the board of Lunacy Commissioners sitting on
his head. However, I agree that he has smoothed our path. I mean to say, here
we are, what?’

‘Here
we are.’

‘All
our problems solved. Nothing to worry about any more. ‘‘Not a thing.’

‘Oh,
Sally!’

‘Oh,
Pongo!’

The
embrace into which they fell was a close one, close enough, had it taken place
in
Hollywood
, to have caused
Eric Johnston to shake his head dubiously and recommend cutting a few hundred
feet, but not so close as to deprive Pongo of a view of the window. And Sally,
nestling in his arms, was concerned to notice that he had suddenly stiffened,
as if he had been turned into a pillar of salt.

‘What’s
the matter?’ she asked.

Pongo
gave a short gulp. He seemed to find a difficulty in speaking.

‘Don’t
look now,’ he said, ‘but that blighter Potter has just stepped off a ladder on
to the balcony.’

It was at about the moment
when Constable Potter, having found the light ladder, was starting to lift it
and Pongo, in the bedroom on the first floor, had begun his emotional
description of the recent conference with Hermione that Major Plank turned his
car in at the gates of Ashenden Manor and proceeded up the drive at a high rate
of speed.

He had
been progressing at a high rate of speed ever since leaving the Bull’s Head. He
would probably have driven fairly fast in any event, for he was one of those
men who do, but what made him so particularly disinclined on the present
occasion to loiter and look at the scenery was the fact that the full
significance of Lord Ickenham’s words in the saloon bar had just come home to
him. He had remembered, that is to say, that the man whom he had known as Barmy
Twistleton had told him that he was now Lord Ickenham.

There
were circles in
London
where
the eccentricities of Lord Ickenham were a favourite topic of conversation, and
it was in these circles that Major Plank, when not among the alligators, was
accustomed to mix. His old schoolmate’s character and habits, therefore, were
fully known to him, and he was able to form a vivid picture of what would be the
effect on the reputation of anyone whom the other had decided to impersonate.

How
long this public menace had been established at Ashenden Manor he did not know,
but he felt very strongly that even a single day was too much and that anything
like forty-eight hours would have caused a stigma to rest upon the grand old
name of Brabazon-Plank which it would take a lifetime to remove.

There
is probably no one who moves more slippily than a Brazilian explorer on his way
to expose an impostor who has been causing stigmas to rest upon his name, and
not even Hermione could have made better speed up the drive than did this
fermenting Major. His was a large, flat, solid foot, admirably adapted for
treading on accelerators, and he pressed it down with a will.

Arriving
at the house, he was in far too great a hurry to ring the front door-bell and
wait till it was answered. Voices were proceeding from the open french window
to his right, presumably that of the drawing-room, and he went thither and
walked in. He found himself in the presence of his young subordinate, Bill
Oakshott, and a rugged man of an older vintage who was puffing at a white
moustache of the soup-strainer class. He had a feeling, looking at them, that
they were upset about something.

Nor was
he mistaken. Both Bill and his Uncle Aylmer had come to the tea table with
their bosoms full of the perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart. The memory
of his craven behaviour during that interview with Hermione had not ceased to
torture Bill, and Sir Aylmer was still in the grip of the baffled fury which
comes to men of imperious nature when their daughters tell them they must not
bring actions against publishers, a fury which his conversation with Constable
Potter had done nothing to alleviate. To say that William Oakshott and Sir
Aylmer Bostock were human powder magazines which it needed but a spark to
explode is not only clever, but true.

It is
possible, however, that the soothing influence of tea, muffins and cucumber
sandwiches might have succeeded in averting disaster, allowing the exchanges to
confine themselves to harmless commonplaces, had not Sir Aylmer, too pleased
to keep such splendid news to himself, chanced to mention that Hermione had
told him that, her romance having sprung an unforeseen leak, he would not have
to pass the evening of his life with Reginald Twistleton as his son-in-law. For
this led Bill to exclaim ‘Oh, gosh!’ in an enraptured voice and, pressed to
explain his elation, to say that the thought had crossed his mind that if
Hermione was back in circulation again, there might be a chance for a chap who
had loved her with a growing fervour for years and years and years: and this in
its turn led Sir Aylmer to attack him with tooth and claw. There was a smile on
his nephew’s face which he considered a silly smile, and he addressed himself
without delay to the task of wiping it off.

‘Gar!’
he said, speaking dangerously through a mouthful of muffin, and added that
there was no need for Bill to grin all over his beastly face like a damned
hyena, because whether free or engaged Hermione would not touch him with a
barge pole.

‘Why
should she?’ asked Sir Aylmer. ‘You? She looks on you as a —’ ‘I know,’ said
Bill, with a return of gloom. ‘A brother.’

‘Not
brother,’ corrected Sir Aylmer. ‘Sheep.’

A quiver
ran through Bill’s massive frame. His jaw fell and his eyes widened.

‘Sheep?’

‘Sheep.’

‘Sheep?’
said Bill.