Young Men in Spats (15 page)

‘How did it come unstuck?'

‘Nobody knows.'

‘Yes, they do,' said a fresh young voice. It was a Crumpet who, unperceived, had left the throng about the human drinking-fountain and joined them in their solitude. ‘I do, for one. I had it straight from Stiffy's own lips, and it has proved to me that what a fellow needs in this world is luck. Without luck, Stiffy would never have made a large fortune in New York.'

‘He didn't,' said the first Egg.

‘He did.'

‘He couldn't have. How could Stiffy have been in New York? He once went to Le Touquet for Whitsun and was so seasick
that he swore he would never set foot on a boat again. And you can't get to New York, I happen to know, without taking a boat. So your story breaks down.'

‘My story jolly well does not break down,' said the Crumpet warmly, ‘because Stiffy beyond question did go to New York not a week after the painful episode in the yew alley.

‘It was love that nerved him to the ordeal. Geraldine got him on the phone at the club and told him that the only thing for him to do was to go to America and make his fortune, and Stiffy went. And after he had been there about a fortnight he made the acquaintance of a very decent sort of chap with eyes a bit close together and a rather rummy way of talking out of the south-west corner of his mouth, and this bird took him off to a place where a lot of similar blokes were playing a local game they have over there called craps.'

You conduct this pastime, apparently, with dice, though what you aim to do with them remained a mystery to Stiffy from start to finish. However, when one of the blokes was preparing to heave the dice and another bloke offered to bet anybody ten that he wouldn't make it, he felt the old Stiffham sporting blood stir in his veins. After all, he reasoned, ten dollars wasn't so much to lose, and a little flutter helped to pass the time and make the evening interesting. So he booked the bet – to discover a moment later that what the chap had really meant was ten thousand.

Stiffy freely confesses that this was a nasty moment. It was too late to back out now, and he watched the proceedings with a bulging eye, fully cognizant of the fact that all that stood between him and a very sticky finish was the luck of the Stiffhams.

It held, of course. Half a minute later, the chap was paying up like a gentleman, and with ten thousand dollars in his pocket Stiffy decided that this was a good thing and should be pushed along. And the upshot of the whole affair was that about an hour afterwards he found himself in the open spaces in possession of a sum amounting to around thirty thousand quid.

He was a good deal bucked, of course, and I don't blame him. There he was, you see, set up for life and in a position to return to old Wivelscombe riding on a camel laden with gold and precious stones and demand the hand of his daughter. Pretty soft it all looked to old Stiffy at this juncture.

Next day, he bunged the stuff into a bank, and at nightfall left his hotel and started out to celebrate.

Now, as I have no doubt you know, when Stiffy celebrates, he celebrates. Exactly how and where he did it on this occasion, I couldn't tell you. He is a bit vague about it himself. He seems to have collected a gang of sorts, for he can distinctly recall, he tells me, that from the very inception of the affair he did not lack for friends: and they apparently roamed hither and thither, getting matier all the time, and the next thing he remembers is waking up in the back premises of some sort of pub or hostelry with nothing on his person except a five-cent stamp, two balloons, three champagne corks, and a rattle.

This evidence of a well-spent evening pleased him a good deal. He popped the balloons, rattled the rattle for a while, and then, feeling that he had better collect a little loose cash for the day's expenses, toddled off to his bank to draw a cheque.

And conceive his emotion when, arriving there, he found that the bank had closed its doors. There they were, both of them, shut as tight as oysters. Too late, he remembered now having
read in the papers that this sort of thing was happening all the time in New York.

For some minutes he stood staring, while everything seemed to go black. Then he tottered back to his hotel and sank into a chair in the lobby, to think things over.

Bim, obviously, had gone his chance of ever marrying the daughter of the haughty Earl of Wivelscombe. That project could be washed right out. And for some time he remained mourning over this fact.

It was only quite a while later that there came into his mind a sudden thought, and for the first time since this hideous disaster had occurred he felt a little better.

With his last hope of wedding Geraldine gone, he told himself, there was nothing now to prevent him writing that strong letter to her father.

For weeks and weeks, you see, Stiffy had been yearning to write an absolute stinker to old Wivelscombe, telling him exactly what he thought of him. And naturally as long as there had been any chance of the other relenting and allowing the marriage to come off such a stinker did not fall within the sphere of practical politics. But now he had nothing to lose he could go ahead and give of his best. He felt in his pocket to see if the five-cent stamp was still there. Then he raced to the writing-table and seized pen and paper.

I don't know if you have ever had dealings with Stiffy in his capacity of a writer of stinkers. I have. I was with him once when he composed a four-page effort to Oofy Prosser in reply to Oofy's communication declining to lend him a tenner. It was real, ripe stuff, without a dull line, and I was proud to call the author my friend.

Well, on this occasion, he tells me, he absolutely surpassed
himself. It was as if he was inspired. Sheet after sheet he covered, each sheet filled with burning thoughts. He left no aspect of Lord Wivelscombe untouched. He stated in the most precise detail exactly what he felt about the old blighter's habits, manners, face, ties, trousers, morals, method of drinking soup, ditto of chewing moustache, and a hundred more such matters. To a single pimple on the other's nose, he tells me he devoted as much as six lines. Then, addressing the envelope, he attached the five-cent stamp and posted the letter personally in the box by the reception desk.

And, being by the reception desk and happening to note standing behind it the manager of the hotel, he thought that this was a good opportunity of putting him abreast of the position of affairs.

‘I say,' said Stiffy.

‘Sir?' said the manager.

‘Tell me, my dear old hotel manager,' said Stiffy, ‘you know that room of mine with bath?'

‘I know it well,' said the manager.

‘What do you get paid for it?'

‘Six dollars a day.'

Stiffy broke the bad news gently.

‘Not by me you don't,' he said. ‘Because I haven't a penny in the world.'

‘Eh?' said the manager, not looking any too chirpy.

‘No,' said Stiffy. ‘Not a penny. My bank's gone bust.'

‘Which bank is that?'

‘The Inter-State Superlative.'

The manager seemed surprised.

‘It's the first I've heard of it. We bank there ourselves.'

‘Meaning by “we” you and the wife and the tots?'

‘Meaning this hotel.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Stiffy, genuinely moved, for they had treated him with marked civility. ‘But there it is. I was down there just now and the institution had closed its doors.'

‘Didn't you expect it to on a Sunday?' asked the manager.

Stiffy' gaped.

‘On a what?'

‘On a Sunday.'

‘Is today Sunday?'

‘It is.'

‘Then what became of Saturday?' asked Stiffy, amazed.

‘We had it all right,' said the manager. ‘Quite a nice Saturday.'

And Stiffy realized that, what with this and what with that, he must have slept right through Saturday. And he also realized – and, as he did so, he paled visibly – that he had just written the supreme stinker of all time to old Wivelscombe and that it had been posted beyond recall.

Yes, that was the position. He, Stiffy, had written him, Wivelscombe, a letter which would make him, Wivelscombe, reject him, Stiffy, as a suitor for his daughter's hand even if he, Stiffy, had all the money in the world and proposed to hand it over to him, Wivelscombe, as a personal present. Pretty rotten for him, Stiffy, you will admit.

It was a crisis that called for rapid thinking, and that was just what he gave it. For some little time he obtained no results. Then something clicked in his brain.

‘Hotel manager,' he said.

‘Sir?' said the manager.

‘If you posted a letter to England, when would it get there?'

‘Much,' said the manager, ‘would depend on when you posted it.'

‘I dropped it in the box just now.'

The manager consulted a list of sailings.

‘It will go by the
Senator J. Freylinghusen Botts
on Tuesday.'

‘So shall I,' said Stiffy.

He had seen the way out. He had been secretary to old Wivelscombe long enough to know the procedure as regarded the arrival of letters at the family seat. The postman shot them into the box at the front door, and Gascoigne, the butler, hoiked them out and placed them on the breakfast table in the morning-room, to be opened by the addressee when he or she came down to shove his or her nose in the trough.

It would be a simple task to get to the house, lurk in the shrubbery outside the morning-room and, when Gascoigne had completed his duties, to nip in through the french windows and snitch the fatal papers. It was simply a matter of buzzing over to England by the same boat on which the letter travelled.

On the Tuesday, accordingly, those assembled to give the
Senator J. Freylinghusen Botts
a send-off might have observed a young man with a set, resolute face striding up the gang-plank, and I daresay some of them did.

I don't suppose you want to hear all about Stiffy's trip across. The salient point is that he did get across. He landed at Liverpool in due season and hit London towards the evenfall, at an hour when the last train for Upton Snodsbury, which is the station for Wivelscombe Court, had left. It seemed to him that his best plan was to hire a car and put up at Worcester for the night. This he did, leaving orders that he was to be called at six sharp in the morning.

Well, you know what it's like when you've got anything on your mind similar to what Stiffy had on his. You sleep fitfully. You rise with dawn. It wasn't six-thirty when he started out for the Court, and it couldn't have been much more than seven when he found himself standing on the old familiar lawn. And, as there wasn't a chance of the postman blowing in before eight-fifteen at the earliest, he thought he might as well take a stroll to keep the circulation brisk.

I have never been up as early as seven myself, but Stiffy tells me it is quite a pleasant hour to be abroad. You get Nature in its pristine freshness and all that sort of thing. The dew was still on the grass, the sun was shining nicely, and there were a goodish few birds tootling away in the shrubberies. All dashed pleasant, no doubt, for those who like these things. Stiffy did. The general effect of it all, he says, was to make him feel not a little romantic. I mean to say, the old spot, the scene of his great love, and so on and so forth. At any rate, he tells me that his bosom swelled, and I see no reason to disbelieve him.

And little by little, as the dew glistened and the sun shone and the birds tootled, there crept over him a feeling that in the existing circs. there was only one thing for a red-blooded young lover to do, viz. trickle round underneath Geraldine's window and bung gravel at it. This would result in her popping her head out, and then he would blow a silent kiss and she would blow a silent kiss and he would tell her in the language of the eyes that his heart was still hers and what not. A very jolly method of passing the time of waiting, felt Stiffy, and he collected a fistful of mud and pebbles and let it go with a will.

Now, slinging gravel at windows is a tricky business. If you're in form, fine. But if you haven't done it for a goodish time your aim is likely to suffer. This is what happened to Stiffy.

He had drawn a bead on his loved one's window, but instead of landing there the entire consignment went several feet to the left and sloshed up against the next one – the room in which Ferdinand James Delamere, sixth Earl of Wivelscombe, was sleeping.

At least, he wasn't sleeping, because it so happened that on the previous night he had taken the chair at the annual dinner of the Loyal Sons of Worcestershire and, despite doctor's orders, had done himself so well that he had woken early with that strange, jumpy feeling which always came to him the morning after this particular banquet. He was in the sort of overwrought state when a fly treading a little too heavily on the carpet is enough to make a man think he's one of the extras in
All Quiet On The Western Front
.

The effect, therefore, of about a quarter of a pound of mixed solids on the windowpane was to bring him leaping out of bed as if a skewer had suddenly come through the mattress. He reached the window in two jumps, and was just in time to see his late employee, Adolphus Stiffham, disappearing into the bushes. For Stiffy, observing that he had nearly cracked the wrong window, and remembering whose that window was, had not loitered.

Now, I want you to follow me very closely here, while I explain why old Wivelscombe took the view of the matter which he did. You see, the way he looked at it, his visitor could not possibly be Adolphus Stiffham in the flesh. He had studied human nature pretty closely and he knew that a man who has been kicked eleven feet, two inches does not willingly return to the spot where the incident occurred. He was aware, moreover, that Stiffy had gone to America. Furthermore, he was, as I say, in a highly nervous condition as the upshot or aftermath of the banquet of the Society of the Loyal Sons of Worcestershire.
The result was that a moment later he was charging into Geraldine's room with consternation and concern written on every feature.