Bachelors Anonymous (18 page)

‘My
dear boy,’ he said. ‘You surely do not suppose that I am going to charge you a
fee or ask to be reimbursed for any expenses I may be put to on this case. I
would not dream of it. As the colloquial expression has it, this is on the
house. A small compensation for getting your affairs into, I must admit, a
certain disorder. No true Californian would think of sending in a bill for
services rendered to two young lovers in what practically amounts to Springtime.’

It was
a moment before emotion would allow Joe to speak, so moved was he by the
nobility of these sentiments. When he did speak, it was to pay a marked tribute
to California, which, he said, judging from its inhabitants, must be quite a
place. Unless, of course, Mr Trout was unique.

‘Tell
me,’ he said. ‘Are there any more at home like you?’

‘There
are a few,’ said Mr Trout, ‘and better boys you never knew.’

He winced
a little as he spoke. He was thinking of Fred Basset and Johnny Runcible and G.
J. Flannery, and wondering if his defection from Bachelors Anonymous would mean
the break-up of a friendship of twenty years.

Chapter Thirteen

Things were not going too
well with Jaklyn Warner. In addition to being married, to which he greatly
objected, he had a nasty hangover and he owed a bookmaker fifty pounds. This
was the debt he had had in mind when he told his future bride that he owed
twenty. He had lacked the nerve to reveal the full amount to her.

The
bookmaker, moreover, was not one of those kindly bookmakers with hearts of gold
who can sympathise with a fiscally embarrassed young man and allow his account
to remain unsettled indefinitely. Informed by Jaklyn that there might be a
long delay before payment could be made, he had drawn in his breath sharply and
looked grave.

‘Oh, I
do hope there won’t be, Sir J.,’ he said. ‘I know it’s silly to be superstitious,
but I can’t help remembering that every single client of mine that’s done me
down over money has had an accident happen to him. Time after time I’ve seen it
occur. Time after time after time. It’s like some kind of fate. Only the other
day there was a fellow with a ginger moustache called Witherspoon. Owed me
fifty for Plumpton and pleaded the Gaming Act. Less than a week later, would
you believe this, he was found unconscious in the street—must have got into
some unpleasantness of some kind—and had to have six stitches. No, seven. I was
forgetting the one over his left eye.’

This
conversation had taken place at the house of the creditor, and Jaklyn had left
his presence feeling like a nervous young member of Captain Kidd’s pirate crew
who has just been handed the black spot. Arriving at his Chelsea residence, he
found Mr Trout knocking on the door and beginning to get tired of achieving no
result.

‘Sir
Jaklyn Warner?’ said Mr Trout.

Normally
if a caller had asked this question Jaklyn would have replied in the negative,
for he believed in taking no chances, but Mr Trout’s aspect was so obviously
that of one connected with the Law that he decided to risk it. He had
prosperous relatives all over England, and one of them might quite easily have
handed in his dinner pail, leaving him a bit of the right stuff, and this
lawyer was here to tell him so.

‘Yes,’
he said. ‘Who are you?’

‘My
name is Trout. Of the legal firm of Trout, Wapshott and Edelstein of Hollywood,
California, in the United States of America.’

Jaklyn’s
hopes took a sharp rise. He remembered that his Uncle Eustace had left
hurriedly for America at the time when he had been wanted by the police to
assist them in their inquiries in the matter of a big long-firm swindle. He had
always been fond of his nephew, and what more likely than that he should have
fetched up in Hollywood, made a packet, perished of a surfeit of brandy
smashes, and left that packet to that nephew. It was with a beating heart that
Jaklyn put latch-key to door.

‘Come
in,’ he said. ‘Come right in.’

Following
him over the threshold, Mr Trout was encouraged to observe the evidences of
impecuniosity that met his eyes. A man with an abode as shabby as this, he
felt, would surely be what he had called amenable to a money offer, and though
he was prepared, if necessary, to spend cash lavishly on behalf of young
lovers in what was practically Springtime, he hoped it would not be necessary.
He had always been a man who liked to keep expenses down.

Taking
a seat, he wasted no time on preambles.

‘You
are affianced,’ he said, ‘to my client, Miss Sarah Fitch.’

Another
man in Jaklyn’s position would no doubt have explained that owing to his having
been the victim of what amounted to a shot-gun wedding, marriage to Sally was
no longer in the sphere of practical politics, but his native prudence
restrained him. The sixth sense which had stood him in good stead from boyhood
told him that this lawyer bloke’s visit was somehow connected with money and
that it would be rash to confide in him too freely.

‘I am,’
he said.

‘Her
father disapproves of the match.’

‘He
does, does he?’

‘And he
is prepared to pay you a reasonable sum if you will agree to consider it null
and void.’

If
Jaklyn felt that it was odd that Sally’s father, a humble country vicar, should
be in a position to scatter money about like this, he did not say so, feeling
perhaps that the Reverend Fitch had won the Irish Sweep or backed a series of
winners since he had last seen him. Nor did he protest, as some men would have
done, that he had never been so insulted in his life. His thoughts riveted
exclusively on the man with the ginger moustache and the seven stitches, he
said:

‘What
do you call a reasonable sum?’

‘Fifty
pounds.’

‘It’s a
deal.’

As Mr
Trout had told Joe, this was not the first time he had had talks of this
description with impecunious young men, but it was the first time an
impecunious young man had reached a decision with such lightning speed, and it
took his breath away. Fifty pounds had been what might be called his asking price,
and he had taken it for granted that his mention of it would be the cue for the
haggling to begin. Jaklyn’s instantaneous acceptance of the offer gave him the
feeling he had sometimes had when going downstairs in the dark and treading on
empty space where he had supposed the last step to be.

His
impulse on recovering his breath was to tell Jaklyn what a good man thought of
him, but he had a dinner date with the woman he loved, and though she had
warned him that she might be a little late in getting away from her hospital,
he did not dare to spend time rebuking young men so lost to shame that censure
would be wasted on them. He paid Jaklyn fifty pounds, and left in silence. And
he had not gone far before emotional breathing made itself heard and Joe emerged
from the shadows.

‘Well?’
said Joe. ‘Did it go off all right?’

The
anxiety in his voice amused Mr Trout. It seemed to him bizarre that his young
friend should be entertaining any uncertainty as to the success of a mission
entrusted to Ephraim Trout of Trout, Wapshott and Edelstein. He replied that it
had gone off with the greatest smoothness. He had, as expected, swayed Jaklyn
Warner like a reed, bending him to his will with eloquence which there was no
withstanding. Warner could see from the firmness of his manner that argument
would be futile and that no nonsense would be stood.

Joe
gave him a worshipping look.

‘Trout,
you’re a marvel!’

‘One
does one’s best, Pickering.’

‘It’s a
knack, I suppose, this ability of yours to look people in the eye and make them
wilt?’

‘I
would prefer to call it a gift.’

‘You’re
probably right. Anyway, thanks again. I wish there was something I could do for
you.’

‘There
is. You can give me a word of advice.’

‘What’s
your problem?’

‘I am
dining tonight with Mrs Bingham, and I would like you to brief me as to the
advisability of proposing marriage to her.’

Joe in
his uplifted mood was feeling that the world would be a better place if
everybody started proposing to everyone. He said it struck him as a splendid
idea.

‘You do
not think it would be too soon?’

‘How do
you mean?’

‘An
exhibition of masculine impetuosity might frighten her.’

‘I
doubt it.’

‘I have
not known her long.’

‘Incompetent,
immaterial and irrelevant. Women like a dashing man.’

‘Is
that so?’

‘Why,
it’s only a year or two since man used to snatch women up on their saddle bows
and ride off with them. And the women loved it. A pity you can’t do that.’

‘A
great pity.’

‘But
nowadays, of course, they expect you to propose. The great thing is not to do
it over the soup. Wait for the coffee. Where are you dining?’

‘At the
Dorchester.’

‘I’ll
drop you there.’

‘Very
good of you. Why not over the soup?’

‘Not
romantic.’

‘Of
course, of course, of course. I might have made a grave blunder. Thank you,
Pickering.’

‘Not at
all. Go to it, Trout, and heaven speed your wooing.’

It was
in the spirit of the Polish gentleman in the song who sang ‘Ding dong, ding
dong, ding dong I hurry along, for it is my wedding morning’ that Joe, having
deposited Mr Trout at his destination, took the cab on to Fountain Court. If
you wanted to be finnicky about it, it was not actually his wedding morning,
but this made no difference to his euphoria. Admitted by Sally to number 3A, he
folded her in a close embrace, waltzed her four times round the room and
informed her that this was the maddest merriest day of all the glad new year
because the dark menace of Sir Jaklyn Warner, Bart, had ceased to operate.

‘Everything
is fixed up,’ he said. ‘No wedding bells for you.’

‘I
know,’ said Sally. ‘He’s married already.’

Once
more Joe found himself gripped by that peculiar feeling of having been struck
on the bridge of the nose by a wet fish. He relaxed the folded embrace and
stared incredulously.

‘He’s
what?
Who told you that?’

‘Daphne.
She’s the one he married. She told me just after you and Mr Trout had left.’

‘Who’s
Daphne?’

‘Daphne
Dolby. She lives with me.’

‘Oh,
the personable popsy,’ said Joe, recalling Jerry Nichols’s remarks.

‘She is
personable,’ said Sally, ‘but that’s not why Jaklyn married her. I think I had
better explain.’

‘If you
don’t want me to have a dizzy spell.’

‘It’s
quite simple really.’

‘To a
brain like yours, perhaps, not to mine.’

‘Daphne
was engaged to Jaklyn.’

‘One of
those easy to please girls?’

‘She
was all set on becoming Lady Warner.’

‘Oh, I
see.’

‘So
when I told her I was engaged to him, it naturally made her think a bit. She
decided she had to move quickly, or she would lose him, because I was a much
better bet from Jaklyn’s point of view than she was. I had just been left
twenty-five thousand pounds.’

‘Yes.
Jerry Nichols told me about that.’

‘Great
added attraction, twenty-five thousand pounds. So she took him to the registry
office and made him marry her.’

‘Yes, I
get the picture now. She sounds like quite a girl.’

‘She
is.’

‘We
must have her to dinner some night when we are in our little home.’

‘And it
will be a very little home, I’m afraid.’

‘Meaning
what?’

‘That’s
all we shall be able to afford. Oh, Joe,’ said Sally, ‘I’ve made the most awful
fool of myself. I’m the world’s worst half-wit.’

Chapter Fourteen

Joe frowned.

‘You
are speaking of the woman I love,’ he said stiffly.

Sally
continued in the depths.

‘But
will you after you hear what I’ve done?’

‘Will I
what?’

‘Love
me.’

‘Certainly
I will. Love conquers all, as Trout would say. Oh, by the way! Trout.’

‘What
about him?’

‘We’ve
got to be very careful what we say to Trout. He must never know about Jaklyn
being married. He thinks his triumph over him was due entirely to his eloquence
and the force of his personality. It would give his self-esteem a nasty sock
on the jaw if he learned the awful truth.’