Full Moon (20 page)

It was as he stood there with a silent 'What to do?' on his lips that he suddenly saw that there was still hope. Running along the wall was a narrow ledge. Furthermore, Blandings Castle having been in existence a great number of years, ivy had grown upon its surface in some profusion. And a man anxious to remove himself from a balcony here to a water pipe over there can do a great deal with the assistance of a ledge and some ivy.

What held Bill motionless for a while, wrinkling his forehead and chewing the lower lip a little, was a growing doubt as to whether he wanted to be that man. There was a pleasantly solid look about that ivy; its strands were stout and gnarled and certainly had the appearance of being strong enough to support him; but you can never be quite sure about ivy. It puts up an impressive front and then, just when it is the time for all good ivy to come to the aid of the party, it lets you down. That was the thought which was causing Bill to hesitate. Like Freddie, he yearned for co-operation, and he wanted to be quite certain that he was going to get it.

There was no question that failure on the part of that ivy to give one-hundred-per-cent service would mean a quick, sticky finish for the man who had put his trust in it. He would go straight down and not stop till he had hit the lawn, and it did not escape Bill's notice that that lawn had a hard, unyielding look. He could see himself bouncing – once, twice, possibly thrice – and then lying lifeless, like the man in 'Excelsior'.

He was still weighing the pros and cons when there cut abruptly into his meditations the sound of a woman's voice, sharpened by the excitement of the chase.

'This door is locked. He must be in here. Break down this door, Charles.'

Worse things can happen to a man than lying lifeless on lawns. Bill scrambled over the balcony rail and set his foot on the ledge.

Simultaneously, Tipton Plimsoll hurried past the group in the corridor and shot into his bedroom like a homing rabbit.

Tipton lowered himself into a chair with a satisfied grunt, his air that of a man glad to be at journey's end. He was breathing a little jerkily, for he had come up the stairs at a smart pace. A spectator, had one been present, would have observed that beneath his coat there was some bulky object, spoiling the set of it. It was as if he had grown a large tumour on his left side.

At about the moment when Bill, having heard all he wanted to hear on the subject of Charleses, Thomases, and service revolvers, retreated to the balcony and started looking around for water pipes, Tipton had been leaving the Hon. Galahad's suite on the ground floor in the furtive manner of a stag which, while not yet actually at bay, is conscious of a certain embarrassment and a desire to avoid attention. He had been to fetch the flask which he had been mad enough to allow out of his possession, foolishly overlooking the fact that the time was bound to come when he would need it, and need it sorely.

It was the presence of this flask on his person which had caused him to whizz so nimbly past the group in the corridor. He had seen that the gathering consisted of Colonel Wedge, Lady Hermione Wedge, Beach, the butler, and a brace of footmen, and at any other time – for the affair undoubtedly presented certain features of interest – he would have paused to ask questions. But with that bulge under his coat he shrank from establishing communication with his fellows, who might ask questions in their turn. The fact that this assorted mob was gathered about the door next to his own and seemed to be gazing at it with great intentness filled him not with curiosity but with thankfulness. It meant that their backs were turned, thus enabling him to pass by unseen.

Safe in his refuge, he now produced the flask, looking at it with affection and an anticipatory gleam in his eye. His manner had ceased to betray anxiety and embarrassment. If he still resembled a stag, it was a stag at eve, about to drink its fill. His tongue stole out and passed lightly over his lips.

In the period which had passed since he last appeared on the Blandings scene a complete change had taken place in Tipton Plimsoll's mood. He had quite got over that momentary spasm of bad temper which had led him to snatch the necklace from Veronica's grasp and fling it scornfully to Prudence as a contribution towards the vicar's jumble sale. Five minutes in the rose garden with the girl he loved had made another man of him.

He was now filled to the brim with a benevolence so wide in its scope that it even embraced Freddie. He had got back to his old idea of Freddie as a man and a brother, and was glad he had given him that concession for his blasted dog biscuits. He saw that he had wronged Freddie. After all, it is surely straining a regard for the proprieties absurdly to object to a male cousin giving a female cousin a trifle of five-and-ten-cent store jewellery on her birthday.

But there were other and weightier reasons for his desire to celebrate than a mere conviction of the blamelessness of one whom he had once been reluctantly compelled to class among the rattlesnakes and black mambas. Apart from the intoxicating feeling of being betrothed to the only girl in the world, there was the realization that he had passed through the valley of the shadow and come up smiling on the other side. Even E. Jimpson Murgatroyd would now be compelled in common honesty to give him a clean bill of health.

For mark what had happened. In order to brace himself up to tell his love he had taken a snifter. And what had ensued?
He had seen a pig in a bedroom. Yes, but a real pig, a genuine pig, a pig that was equally visible to such unbiased eyes as those of Veronica and her mother. E. Jimpson Murgatroyd himself in his place would have seen precisely what he had seen. No amount of quibbling on his part could get around that.

And another thing which must have impressed E. J. Murgatroyd very deeply, had he been apprised of it, was that from start to finish there had not been a sign of the face. For the first time in his association with it, it had been subjected to the test and had failed to deliver.

To what conclusion, then, was one forced? One was forced to the conclusion that he had turned the corner. The pure air of Shropshire had done its work, and he was now cured and in a position to go ahead and drink to his happiness as it should be drunk to.

And he was proceeding to do so when he saw something out of the corner of his eye and, turning, realized that he had underestimated the face's tenacity and will to win. What had kept it away earlier this afternoon he could not say – some appointment elsewhere, perhaps; but in light-heartedly assuming that it had retired from business he had been sadly mistaken.

There it was, pressed against the windowpane, that same fixed, intent expression in its eyes. It seemed to be trying to say something to him.

The reason Bill's eyes were fixed and intent was that the sight of Tipton through the window had come to him like that of a sail on the horizon to a shipwrecked mariner. And what he was
trying to say to him was that he would be glad if Tipton would at his earliest convenience open the window and let him in.

There is this about climbing along ledges towards water pipes, that by the time you have reached your water pipe and have come to the point where you are going to slide down it the whole idea of sliding down water pipes is apt to have lost any charm which it may have possessed at the outset of your journey. Bill, facing the last leg of his trip, was feeling the same lack of faith in the trustworthiness of the water pipe as he had formerly felt in that of the ivy.

Arriving at the window, therefore, and seeing Tipton, he decided abruptly to alter his whole scheme of campaign. He had recognized the other immediately as the tall, thin chap who had showed himself so aloof on the occasion of their encounter in the rhododendrons, but he was hoping that in the special circumstances he might be induced to unbend a bit. In Tipton he saw one of those men who dislike talking to strangers and raise their eyebrows and pass on if accosted by them; but, after all, when it is a question of saving a human life, the aloofest of tall, thin chaps may reasonably be expected to stretch a point.

What he wanted Tipton to do was to let him in and allow him to remain in modest seclusion under the bed or somewhere until the fever of the chase had spent itself in the bosoms of Charles, whoever he was, of Thomas, whoever
he
was, of the unidentified person with the service revolver, and of Lady Hermione. He did not want to talk to Tipton or bore him in any way, and he was prepared to give him a guarantee that he would not dream of presuming on this enforced acquaintance. He was perfectly willing that Tipton, if he desired to do so, should cut him next time they met, provided that he would extend the hand of assistance now.

It was a difficult idea to put through a closed window, but by way of starting the negotiations he placed his lips to the pane and said:

'Hi!'

He could have made no more unfortunate move. Recalling as it did so strongly to Tipton the circumstances of their last meeting, the monosyllable set the seal on the latter's gloom and depression. Bill did not, of course, know it, but it was that 'Hi!' of his at their previous encounter which had affected the man behind the flask even more powerfully than the mere sight of his face. Broadly, what Tipton felt about phantom faces was that a man capable of taking the rough with the smooth could put up with them provided they kept silent. Wired for sound, they went too far.

He gave Bill one long, reproachful look such as St Sebastian might have given his persecutors, and left the room in a marked manner.

To Bill it was as if he had been one of a beleaguered garrison and the United States Marines, having arrived, had simply turned on their heels and gone off again. For some moments he continued standing where he was, his nose pressed against the pane; then reluctantly he grasped the water pipe and started to lower himself. He was oppressed by a bitter feeling that this was the last time he would put his faith in tall, thin chaps. 'Let me have men about me that are fat,' thought Bill, as he worked his way cautiously downwards.

The water pipe was magnificent. It could easily, if it had had the distorted sense of humour of some water pipes, have come apart from the wall and let him shoot down like a falling star, but it stood as firm as a rock. It did not even wobble. And Bill's heart, which had been in his mouth, gradually returned to its
base. Something resembling elation crept into his mood. He might have missed seeing Prudence, but he had outsmarted Lady Hermione Wedge, the man with the service revolver, the unseen Thomas, and the mysterious Charles. They had pitted their wits against his, and he must have made them feel uncommonly foolish.

This elation reached its peak as he felt the solid earth beneath his feet. But it did not maintain its new high for long. Almost immediately there was a sharp drop, and his heart, rocketing up once more, returned to his mouth. A rich smell of pig assailed his nostrils, and a thin, piping voice spoke behind him.

'Wah yah dah?' said the voice.

The speaker was a very small man in corduroy trousers, niffy to a degree and well stricken in years. He might have been either a smelly centenarian or an octogenarian who had been prematurely aged by trouble. A stranger to Bill, he would have been recognized immediately by Lady Hermione Wedge, to whom both his appearance and aroma were familiar. He was Lord Emsworth's pig man, Edwin Pott, and the reason he said 'Wah yah dah?' when he meant 'What are you doing?' was that he had no roof to his mouth. One does not blame him for this. As Gally had said to Lady Hermione, we can't all have roofs to our mouths. One simply mentions it.

The point is perhaps a moot one, but it is probably better, when you are caught sliding down water pipes outside other people's houses, if your captor is a man with a roof to his mouth and not one lacking this useful property. In the former case,
some sort of exchange of ideas is possible, in the latter not. When Edwin Pott said 'Wah yah dah?' Bill could not follow him.

He made, accordingly, no reply, and the other, seeming to feel that the burden of the conversation was up to him, said: 'Car yar, har?' To this question, too, Bill made no response. He would have been, in any event, disinclined for talk. What he wanted to do was to remove himself as speedily as possible, and with this end in view he began to move round his companion like a large steamer circling a small buoy.

His progress was arrested. When Edwin Pott had said, 'Car yar, har?' he had meant 'Cotched you, have I?' and he now proceeded to suit action to words by clutching at Bill's coat and seizing it in a senile grasp. Bill endeavoured to release himself, but the hand held firm.

It was a situation with which Bill frankly did not know how to cope. We have spoken of him as a young man whose name would have come high up on the list of anyone looking for a deputy to tackle a mad bull for him, and with a mad bull he would have known where he was. Nor would he have been at a loss if Edwin Pott had been some powerful thug. With such antagonists he could have expressed himself.

But this was different. Here he was confronted by a poor human wreck with one foot in the grave and the other sliding towards it, a frail wisp of a creature whose white hairs, such of them as still lingered on his egg-shaped head, claimed chivalry and respect. He could have recommended Edwin Pott a good lung tonic. He could not haul off and sock him on the jaw.

Once more he tried chivalrously and respectfully to loosen the clutching hand. It was in vain. 'Come one, come all, this rock shall fly from its firm base as soon as I,' Edwin Pott seemed to be saying. The situation had arrived at what is commonly
known as a deadlock. Bill wanted to get away but was unable to do so. Edwin Pott wanted to shout for assistance but could produce only a thin, shrill sound like the whistling of gas in a pipe. (His vocal cords had never been the same since the evening during the last General Election when he had strained them while addressing the crowd at the public bar of the Emsworth Arms in the Conservative interest.)

It was on this picture in still life that Colonel Wedge now intruded with his service revolver.