Galahad at Blandings (2 page)

‘Sure.
The wife does her marketing there.’

‘Well,
tell her when you get home that you were host tonight to the guy who owns the
controlling interest in them. My Uncle Chet founded Tipton’s Stores. He checked
out not long ago and I inherited his block of shares, practically all there
are. I’m rolling.’

‘Then
why don’t you pay your ten bucks and get out of here?’

‘What
ten bucks?’

‘For
bail. I’d do it if it was me.’

A
bitter laugh escaped Tipton, the sort of laugh a toad beneath the harrow might
have uttered if some passer-by had asked it why it did not move from beneath
the harrow, where conditions must be far from comfortable.

‘I dare
say you would,’ he said, ‘and so would I if I had the dough. But I’ve no funds
of any description. Oh, I don’t mean I’ve been wiped out in this Stock Exchange
crash they’ve been having — I may be a chump, but I’m not chump enough to play
the market — but I don’t have a nickel on me at the moment. At some point in
this evening’s proceedings some child of unmarried parents got away with my
entire wad, leaving me without a cent. I own a controlling interest in the
country’s largest supermarket, with branches in every town in the United
States. I own a ranch out west. I own an apartment house on Park Avenue. I even
own a music publishing business in London.

But I
can’t get out of this darned dungeon because I haven’t ten dollars in my kick.
Can you beat that for irony?’

The
policeman said he was unable to, but seemed to see no cause for despair.

‘You
got friends, ain’t you?’

‘Lashings
of them.’

‘Well,
why don’t you phone one of them and get him to help you out?’

Tipton
was surprised.

‘Do
they let you phone from here?’

‘You’re
allowed one call.’

‘Is
that the law?’

‘That’s
the law.’

‘Then
… Oh, finished your little nap, Willie?’

Wilfred
Allsop had risen, blinked his eyes several times, groaned, shuddered from head
to foot and was now joining the party. He seemed in slightly better shape than
on the occasion of his previous resurrection. His resemblance to a corpse that
had been in the water several days was still pronounced, but it had become a
cheerier corpse, one that had begun to look on the bright side.

‘Oh,
Tippy,’ he said, ‘I thought you would be interested to know that I’m not going
to die. I’m feeling a little better.’

‘That’s
the spirit.’

‘Not
much better, but a little. So never mind about the cigarette case. Who’s that
you’re talking to? I can’t see him very distinctly, but isn’t he a policeman?’

‘That’s
right.’

‘Do you
think he could tell us how to get out of here?’

‘The
very point I was discussing with him when you came to the surface. He says the
hellhounds of the system will release us if we slip them ten bucks apiece.’

Wilfred’s
mind was still clouded, but he was capable of formulating an idea.

‘Let’s
slip them ten bucks apiece,’ he suggested.

‘How?
You haven’t any dough, have you?’

‘None.’

‘Nor
have I. Somebody swiped my roll. But this gentleman, Mr —?’

‘Garroway.’’

‘Mr
Garroway here says I can phone a friend for some.’

Again
Wilfred Allsop had a constructive proposal to put forward.

‘Go and
phone a friend for some.’

Tipton
shook his head, and uttered a sharp howl. There are times when shaking the head
creates the illusion that one has met Jael the wife of Heber, incurred her
displeasure and started her going into her celebrated routine.

‘It
isn’t as simple as all that. There’s a catch. One’s only allowed one call.’

‘I
don’t get your point.’

‘Then
you must be still stewed. You get it, don’t you, Mr Garroway?’

‘Sure.
Your buddy mightn’t be there. Then you’ll have used up your call and got
nowheres.’

‘Exactly.’
It’s the middle of August and all the guys I know are out of town. They’ll be
coming back after Labour Day, but it won’t be Labour Day for another three
weeks, and we don’t want to have to wait till then. Gosh, I wish you wouldn’t
do that,’ said Tipton, wincing.

He was
alluding to a sudden sharp barking sound which had proceeded from his fellow
prisoner’s lips. It had affected his head unpleasantly, creating the passing
impression that someone had touched off a stick or two of dynamite inside it.

‘Sorry,’
said Wilfred. ‘I was thinking of Uncle Clarence.’

The
statement did nothing to mollify Tipton. He said with a good deal of bitterness
that that did credit to a nephew’s heart. It was nice of him, he said, to think
of his Uncle Clarence.

‘He’s
in New York. He’s at the Plaza. He came over here for my Aunt Constance’s
wedding. She was marrying a Yank called Schoonmaker.’

Tipton
saw that he had judged his friend too hastily.’ What he had taken for an idle
changing of the subject had been in reality most pertinent to the issue.

‘That’s
right,’ he exclaimed. ‘I read about it in the papers. This begins to look good.
You’re sure he’s at the Plaza?’

‘Certain.
Aunt Hermione told me to go and look him up there.’

‘But
can I wake him at this time of night?’

‘If you
explain that it’s an emergency. You’ll have to make it quite clear that your
need is urgent. You know what a muddleheaded old ass he is.’

This
was perfectly true. Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, that vague and dreamy
peer, was not one of England’s keenest brains. The life he led made for
slowness of the thinking processes. Except when he was attending sisters’
weddings in America, he spent his time pottering about the gardens and
messuages of Blandings Castle, his rural seat, his thoughts, such as they were,
concentrated on his prize sow, Empress of Blandings. When indoors you could
generally find him in his study engrossed in a book of porcine interest, most
frequently that monumental work
On The Care Of The Pig
by Augustus Whipple
(Popgood and Grooly.’ thirty-five shillings), of which he never wearied.

Tipton’s
first enthusiasm had begun to wane. Like Hamlet, he had become irresolute. He
chewed his lower lip dubiously.’

‘It’s
taking a big chance. Suppose he’s out on a toot somewhere?’

‘Is it
likely that a staid old bird like Uncle Clarence would go on toots?’

‘You
never know.’

‘If it
was my Uncle Galahad, I wouldn’t say, but surely not Uncle Clarence.’

‘It’s a
possibility that has to be taken into consideration. The most respectable of
Limeys get it up their noses and start stepping out when they come to New York.
It’s the air here. Very heady.’ What would you do in a case like this, Mr
Garroway?’

The
policeman fingered a chin modelled on the ram of a battleship. There was a
rasping sound as he scratched it.

‘Lemme
get it straight. You want to make sure the guy’s in?’

‘The
whole enterprise depends on that.’

‘Well,
how about me calling him first? If he answers, it’ll mean he’s there and I’ll
hang up. Then you give him a buzz.’

Tipton
eyed him reverently.’ A Daniel come to judgment, he was feeling. If this was
the normal level of intelligence in New York’s police force, it was not to be
wondered at that they were known as The Finest.

‘God
bless you, Garroway,’ he said emotionally, ‘you’ve solved the whole problem.
Tell Mrs Garroway next time she shops at Tipton’s Stores to mention my name and
say I said she was to have anything she wants on the house, from certified
butter to prime rib of beef and chicken noodle soup.’

‘Very
kind of you, sir. She’ll be tickled pink. The Plaza I think you said, and your
buddy’s name is Clarence?’

‘Emsworth.’

‘My
mistake.’

Ask for
the Earl of Emsworth. He’s a lord.’

‘Oh,
one of those? Right.’

III

The officer hurried off,
and Tipton gazed after him, awed.

‘What
malarkey people talk about the New York police being brutal,’ he said. ‘Brutal,
my left eyeball. I never met a sweeter guy, did you?’

‘Never.’

‘You
can hear the milk of human kindness sloshing about inside him.’

‘Distinctly.”

‘It
wouldn’t surprise me to find he’d started life as a Boy Scout.’

‘Nor
me.’

‘It
shows how silly it is to go by people’s looks. It’s not his fault that he’s no
oil painting.’

‘Of
course not.’

‘And
what is beauty, after all?’

‘Exactly.’
Skin deep, I often say.”

‘So do I,
frequently.”

‘It’s
the heart that counts.

‘Every
time. And his is as big as the Yankee Stadium. Ah, Garroway.’ What’s the
score?’

‘He’s
there.

‘Three
— no, make it four — rousing cheers. How did he seem?’

‘Sleepy.’

‘I mean
in what sort of mood? Amiable? Docile? Friendly? A likely prospect for the
touch, did you feel?’

‘Sure.’

‘Then
stand out of my way and let me get at that telephone,’ said Tipton.

As he
went, his head was still aching, but his heart was light. He was about to
embark on a course of action which would fill the bosoms of several of his
fellow creatures, notably Colonel and Lady Hermione Wedge, with alarm and
despondency.’ but he did not know this. He was not clairvoyant.

CHAPTER 2

I

The Blandings Castle of
which mention was made in the previous chapter of this chronicle stands on a
knoll of rising ground at the southern end of the Vale of Blandings in the
county of Shropshire. It came into existence towards the middle of the
fifteenth century at a time when the landed gentry of England, who never knew
when a besieging army might not be coming along, particularly if they lived
close to the Welsh border, believed in building their little nests solid. Huge
and grey and majestic, adorned with turrets and battlements in great
pro-fusion, it unquestionably takes the eye. Even Tipton Plimsoll, though not
as a rule given to poetic rhapsodies, had become lyrical on first beholding it,
making a noise with his tongue like the popping of a cork and saying ‘Some
joint!’ The illustrated weeklies often print articles about it accompanied by
photographs showing the park, the gardens, the yew alley and its other
attractions. In these its proprietor, Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth,
sometimes appears, looking like an absentminded member of the Jukes family, for
he has always been a careless dresser and when in front of a camera is inclined
to let his mouth hang open in rather a noticeable way.’

On a
fine morning a few days after the hand of the law had fallen on Tipton and his
fiancée’s cousin Wilfred Allsop the beauty of the noble building was enhanced
by the presence outside it of Sebastian Beach, the castle butler. He was
standing beside a luggage-laden car which was drawn up at the front door,
waiting to give an official send-off to Lord Emsworth’s younger brother
Galahad, who, with his niece Veronica Wedge, was about to drive to London to
pick up the ninth Earl on his return from America.

As is
so often the case with butlers, there was a good deal of Beach. Julius Caesar,
who liked to have men about him that were fat, would have taken to him at once.
He was a man who had made two chins grow where only one had been before, and
his waistcoat swelled like the sail of a racing yacht. You would never have
thought, to look at him, that forty years ago he had come in first in a choir
boys’ bicycle race, open to those whose voices had not broken by the first
Sunday in Epiphany.’ and that only two days before the start of this story he
had won the Market Blandings Darts Tournament, outshooting such seasoned
experts as Jno. Robinson, who ran the station taxi cab, and Percy Bulstrode,
the local chemist.

He had
been standing there for some minutes, when a brisk, dapper little gentleman in
the early fifties appeared in the doorway and came down the steps. This was
the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, a man disapproved of by his numerous sisters but
considered in the Servants’ Hall to shed lustre on Blandings Castle.

Gally
Threepwood was the only genuinely distinguished member of the family of which
Lord Emsworth was the head. Lord Emsworth himself had once won a first prize
for pumpkins at the Shropshire Agricultural Show and his pig, Empress of
Blandings, had three times been awarded the silver medal for fatness at that
annual festival, but you could not say that he had really risen to eminence in
the public life of England. Gally, on the other hand, had made a name for
himself. The passage of the years had put him more or less in retirement now,
but in his youth he had been one of the lights of London, one of the great
figures at whom the world of the stage, the racecourse and the rowdier
restaurants had pointed with pride. There were men in London — bookmakers,
skittle sharps, jellied eel sellers at race meetings and the like — who would
have been puzzled to know whom you were referring to if you had spoken of
Einstein, but they were all familiar with Gally.’