Leave it to Psmith (34 page)

‘I . . .’

‘Pardon me,’ said Psmith. ‘If you will be patient for a few minutes more, I shall have finished and shall then be delighted to lend an attentive ear to any remarks you may wish to make. As it occurs to me – indeed, you hinted as much yourself just now – that my own position in this little matter has an appearance which to the uninitiated might seem tolerably rummy, I had better explain how I come to be guarding a diamond necklace which does not belong to me. I rely on your womanly discretion to let the thing go no further.’

‘Will you please . . .’

‘In one moment. The facts are as follows. Our mutual friend Mr Keeble, Miss Halliday, has a stepdaughter who is married to one Comrade Jackson who, if he had no other claim to fame, would go ringing down through history for this reason, that he and I were at school together and that he is my best friend. We two have sported on the green – ooh, a lot of times. Well, owing to one thing and another, the Jackson family is rather badly up against it at the present . . .’

Eve jumped up angrily.

‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ she cried. ‘What is the use of trying to fool me like this? You had never heard of Phyllis before Freddie spoke about her in the train . . .’

‘Believe me . . .’

‘I won’t. Freddie got you down here to help him steal that necklace and give it to Mr Keeble so that he could help Phyllis, and now you’ve got it and are trying to keep it for yourself.’

Psmith started slightly. His monocle fell from its place.

‘Is
everybody
in this little plot! Are you also one of Comrade Keeble’s corps of assistants?’

‘Mr Keeble asked me to try to get the necklace for him.’

Psmith replaced his monocle thoughtfully.

‘This,’ he said, ‘opens up a new line of thought. Can it be that I have been wronging Comrade Threepwood all this time? I must confess that, when I found him here just now standing like Marius among the ruins of Carthage (the allusion is a classical one, and the fruit of an expensive education), I jumped – 1 may say, sprang – to the conclusion that he was endeavouring to double-cross both myself and the boss by getting hold of the necklace with a view to retaining it for his own benefit. It never occurred to me that he might be crediting me with the same sinful guile.’

Eve ran to him and clutched his arm.

‘Mr Smith, is this really true? Are you really a friend of Phyllis?’

‘She looks on me as a grandfather.
Are you
a friend of hers?’

‘We were at school together.’

‘This,’ said Psmith cordially, ‘is one of the most gratifying moments of my life. It makes us all seem like one great big family.’

‘But I never heard Phyllis speak about you.’

‘Strange!’ said Psmith. ‘Strange. Surely she was not ashamed of her humble friend?’

‘Her what?’

‘I must explain,’ said Psmith, ‘that until recently I was earning a difficult livelihood by slinging fish about in Billingsgate Market. It is possible that some snobbish strain in Comrade Jackson’s bride, which I confess I had not suspected, kept her from admitting that she was accustomed to hob-nob with one in the fish business.’

‘Good gracious!’ cried Eve.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Smith . . . Fish business . . . Why, it was you who called at Phyllis’s house while I was there. Just before I came down here. I remember Phyllis saying how sorry she was that we had not met. She said you were just my sort of . . . I mean, she said she wanted me to meet you.’

‘This,’ said Psmith, ‘is becoming more and more gratifying every moment. It seems to me that you and I were made for each other. I am your best friend’s best friend and we both have a taste for stealing other people’s jewellery. I cannot see how you can very well resist the conclusion that we are twin-souls.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘We shall get into that series of “Husbands and Wives Who Work Together”.’

‘Where is the necklace?’

Psmith sighed.

‘The business note. Always the business note. Can’t we keep all that till later?’

‘No. We can’t.’

‘Ah, well!’

Psmith crossed the room, and took down from the wall the case of stuffed birds.

‘The one place,’ said Eve, with mortification, ‘where we didn’t think of looking!’

Psmith opened the case and removed the centre bird, a depressed-looking fowl with glass eyes which stared with a haunting pathos. He felt in its interior and pulled out something that glittered and sparkled in the lamp-light.

‘Oh!’

Eve ran her fingers almost lovingly through the jewels as they lay before her on the little table.

‘Aren’t they beautiful!’

‘Distinctly. I think I may say that of all the jewels I have ever stolen . . .’

‘HEY!’

Eve let the necklace fall with a cry. Psmith spun round. In the doorway stood Mr Edward Cootes, pointing a pistol.

§ 4

‘Hands up!’ said Mr Cootes with the uncouth curtness of one who has not had the advantages of a refined home and a nice upbringing. He advanced warily, preceded by the revolver. It was a dainty, miniature weapon, such as might have been the property of some gentle lady. Mr Cootes had, in fact, borrowed it from Miss Peavey, who at this juncture entered the room in a black and silver dinner-dress surmounted by a Rose du Barri wrap, her spiritual face glowing softly in the subdued light.

‘Attaboy, Ed,’ observed Miss Peavey crisply.

She swooped on the table and gathered up the necklace. Mr Cootes, though probably gratified by the tribute, made no acknowledgement of it, but continued to direct an austere gaze at Eve and Psmith.

‘No funny business,’ he advised.

‘I would be the last person,’ said Psmith agreeably, ‘to advocate anything of the sort. This,’ he said to Eve, ‘is Comrade Cootes, of whom you have heard so much.’

Eve was staring, bewildered, at the poetess, who, satisfied with the manner in which the preliminaries had been conducted, had begun looking about her with idle curiosity.

‘Miss Peavey!’ cried Eve. Of all the events of this eventful night the appearance of Lady Constance’s emotional friend in the róle of criminal was the most disconcerting. ‘Miss
Peavey?

‘Hallo?’ responded that lady agreeably.

‘I . . . I . . .’

‘What, I think, Miss Halliday is trying to say’ cut in Psmith, ‘is that she is finding it a little difficult to adjust her mind to the present development. I, too, must confess myself somewhat at a loss. I knew, of course, that Comrade Cootes had – shall I say an acquisitive streak in him, but you I had always supposed to be one hundred per cent, soul – and snowy white at that.’

‘Yeah?’ said Miss Peavey, but faintly interested.

‘I imagined that you were a poetess.’

‘So I am a poetess,’ retorted Miss Peavey hotly. ‘Just you start in joshing my poems and see how quick I’ll bean you with a brick. Well, Ed, no sense in sticking around here. Let’s go.’

‘We’ll have to tie these birds up,’ said Mr Cootes. ‘Otherwise we’ll have them squealing before I can make a getaway.’

‘Ed,’ said Miss Peavey with the scorn which her colleague so often excited in her, ‘try to remember sometimes that that thing balanced on your collar is a head, not a hubbard squash. And be careful what you’re doing with that gat! Waving it about like it was a bouquet or something. How are they going to squeal? They can’t say a thing without telling everyone they snitched the stuff first.’

‘That’s right,’ admitted Mr Cootes.

‘Well, then, don’t come butting in.’

The silence into which this rebuke plunged Mr Cootes gave Psmith the opportunity to resume speech. An opportunity of which he was glad, for, while he had nothing of definitely vital import to say, he was optimist enough to feel that his only hope of recovering the necklace was to keep the conversation going on the chance of something turning up. Affable though his manner was, he had never lost sight of the fact that one leap would take him across the space of floor separating him from Mr Cootes. At present, that small but effective revolver precluded anything in the nature of leaps, however short, but if in the near future anything occurred to divert his adversary’s vigilance even momentarily. . . . He pursued a policy of watchful waiting, and in the meantime started to talk again.

‘If, before you go,’ he said, ‘you can spare us a moment of your valuable time, I should be glad of a few words. And, first, may I say that I cordially agree with your condemnation of Comrade Cootes’s recent suggestion. The man is an ass.’

‘Say!’ cried Mr Cootes, coming to life again, ‘that’ll be about all from you. If there wasn’t ladies present, I’d bust you one.’

‘Ed,’ said Miss Peavey with quiet authority, ‘shut your trap!’

Mr Cootes subsided once more. Psmith gazed at him through his monocle, interested.

‘Pardon me,’ he said, ‘but – if it is not a rude question – are you two married?’

‘Eh?’

‘You seemed to me to talk to him like a wife. Am I addressing Mrs Cootes?’

‘You will be if you stick around a while.’

A thousand congratulations to Comrade Cootes. Not quite so many to you, possibly, but fully that number of good wishes.’ He moved towards the poetess with extended hand. ‘I am thinking of getting married myself shortly.’

‘Keep those hands up,’ said Mr Cootes.

‘Surely,’ said Psmith reproachfully, ‘these conventions need not be observed among friends? You will find the only revolver I have ever possessed over there on the mantelpiece. Go and look at it.’

‘Yes, and have you jumping on my back the moment I took my eyes off you!’

‘There is a suspicious vein in your nature, Comrade Cootes,’ sighed Psmith, ‘which I do not like to see. Fight against it.’ He turned to Miss Peavey once more. ‘To resume a pleasanter topic, you will let me know where to send the plated fish-slice, won’t you?’

‘Huh?’ said the lady.

‘I was hoping,’ proceeded Psmith, ‘if you do not think it a liberty on the part of one who has known you but a short time, to be allowed to send you a small wedding-present in due season. And one of these days, perhaps, when I too am married, you and Comrade Cootes will come and visit us in our little home. You will receive a hearty, unaffected welcome. You must not be offended if, just before you say good-bye, we count the spoons.’

One would scarcely have supposed Miss Peavey a sensitive woman, yet at this remark an ominous frown clouded her white forehead. Her careless amiability seemed to wane. She raked Psmith with a glittering eye.

‘You’re talking a dam’ lot,’ she observed coldly.

‘An old failing of mine,’ said Psmith apologetically, ‘and one concerning which there have been numerous complaints. I see now that I have been boring you, and I hope that you will allow me to express . . .’

He broke off abruptly, not because he had reached the end of his remarks, but because at this moment there came from above their heads a sudden sharp cracking sound, and almost simultaneously a shower of plaster fell from the ceiling, followed by the startling appearance of a long, shapely leg, which remained waggling in space. And from somewhere out of sight there filtered down a sharp and agonised oath.

Time and neglect had done their work with the flooring of the room in which Psmith had bestowed the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, and, creeping cautiously about in the dark, he had had the misfortune to go through.

But, as so often happens in this life, the misfortune of one is the good fortune of another. Badly as the accident had shaken Freddie, from the point of view of Psmith it was almost ideal. The sudden appearance of a human leg through the ceiling at a moment of nervous tension is enough to unman the stoutest-hearted, and Edward Cootes made no attempt to conceal his perturbation. Leaping a clear six inches from the floor, he jerked up his head and quite unintentionally pulled the trigger of his revolver. A bullet ripped through the plaster.

The leg disappeared. Not for an instant since he had been shut in that upper room had Freddie Threepwood ceased to be mindful of Psmith’s parting statement that he would be shot if he tried to escape, and Mr Cootes’s bullet seemed to him a dramatic fulfilment of that promise. Wrenching his leg with painful energy out of the abyss, he proceeded to execute a backward spring which took him to the far wall – at which point, as it was impossible to get any farther away from the centre of events, he was compelled to halt his retreat. Having rolled himself up into as small a ball as he could manage, he sat where he was, trying not to breathe. His momentary intention of explaining through the hole that the entire thing had been a regrettable accident, he prudently abandoned. Unintelligent though he had often proved himself in other crises of his life, he had the sagacity now to realise that the neighbourhood of the hole was unhealthy and should be avoided. So, preserving a complete and unbroken silence, he crouched there in the darkness, only asking to be left alone.

And it seemed, as the moments slipped by, that this modest wish was to be gratified. Noises and the sound of voices came up to him from the room below, but no more bullets. It would be paltering with the truth to say that this put him completely at his ease, but still it was something. Freddie’s pulse began to return to the normal.

Mr Cootes’s, on the other hand, was beating with a dangerous quickness. Swift and objectionable things had been happening to Edward Cootes in that lower room. His first impression was that the rift in the plaster above him had been instantly followed by the collapse of the entire ceiling, but this was a mistaken idea. All that had occurred was that Psmith, finding Mr Cootes’s eye and pistol functioning in another direction, had sprung forward, snatched up a chair, hit the unfortunate man over the head with it, relieved him of his pistol, leaped to the mantelpiece, removed the revolver which lay there, and now, holding both weapons in an attitude of menace, was regarding him censoriously through a gleaming eyeglass.