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‘Yes, sir.’

‘It was a close call, but you saved me. You were staunch and true. A man in a million.

I’ve always thought that if there were more people like you in the world, it would be a better place.’

‘I do my best to give you satisfaction, sir.’

And how you succeed! I shall never forget your kindness in those dear old days, Beach.’

‘Extremely good of you to say so, sir.’

‘Later, as the years went by, I did my best to repay you, by sharing with you such snips as came my way. Remember the time I gave you Blackbird for the Manchester November Handicap?’

Yes, sir.’

You collected a packet.’

‘It did prove a remarkably sound investment, sir.’

Yes. And so it went on. I look back through the years, and I seem to see you and me standing side by side, each helping each, each doing the square thing by the other. You certainly always did the square thing by me.’

‘I trust I shall always continue to do so, sir.’

‘I know you will, Beach. It isn’t in you to do otherwise. And that,’ said Ronnie, beaming on him lovingly, ‘is why I feel so sure that, when I have stolen my uncle’s pig, you will be there helping to feed it till I give it back.’

The butler’s was not a face that registered nimbly. It took some time for a look of utter astonishment to cover its full acreage. Such a look had spread to perhaps two-thirds of its surface when Ronnie went on.

‘You see, Beach, strictly between ourselves, I have made up my mind to sneak the Empress away and keep her hidden in that gamekeeper’s cottage in the West Wood and then, when Uncle Clarence is sending out SOS’s and offering large rewards, I shall find it there and return it, thus winning his undying gratitude and putting him in the right frame of mind to yield up a bit of my money that I want to dig out of him. You get the idea?’

The butler blinked. He was plainly endeavouring to conquer a suspicion that his mind was darkening. Ronnie nodded kindly at him as he fought for speech.

‘It’s the scheme of a lifetime, you were going to say? You’re quite right. It is. But it’s one of those schemes that call for a sympathetic fellow-worker. You see, pigs like the Empress, Beach, require large quantities of food at frequent intervals. I can’t possibly handle the entire commissariat department myself. That’s where you’re going to help me, like the splendid fellow you are and always have been.’

The butler had now begun to gargle slightly. He cast a look of agonized entreaty at the bullfinch, but the bird had no comfort to offer. It continued to chirp reflectively to itself, like a man trying to remember a tune in his bath.

‘An enormous quantity of food they need,’ proceeded Ronnie. You’d be surprised. Here it is in this book I took from my uncle’s desk. At least six pounds of meal a day, not to mention milk or buttermilk and bran made sloppy with swill.’

Speech at last returned to the butler. It took the form at first of a faint sound like the cry of a frightened infant. Then words came.

‘But, Mr Ronald . . .!’

Ronnie stared at him incredulously. He seemed to be wrestling with an unbelievable suspicion.

‘Don’t tell me you’re thinking of throwing me down, Beach? You? My friend since I was so high?’ He laughed. He could see now how ridiculous the idea was. ‘Of course you aren’t! You couldn’t. Apart from wanting to do me a good turn, you’ve gathered by this time with that quick intelligence of yours, that there’s money in the thing. Ten quid down, Beach, the moment you give the nod. And nobody knows better than yourself that ten quid, invested on Baby Bones for the Medbury Selling Plate at the current odds, means considerably more than a hundred in your sock on settling-day.’

‘But, sir . . . It’s impossible . . . I couldn’t dream . . . If ever it was found out . . . Really, I don’t think you ought to ask me, Mr Ronald . . .’

‘Beach!’

Yes, but, really, sir . . .’

Ronnie fixed him with a compelling eye.

‘Think well, Beach. Who gave you Creole Queen for the Lincolnshire?’

‘But, Mr Ronald . . .’

‘Who gave you Mazzawattee for the Jubilee Stakes, Beach? What a beauty!’

A tense silence fell upon the pantry. Even the bullfinch was hushed.

‘And it may interest you to know,’ said Ronnie, ‘that just before I left London I heard of something really hot for the Goodwood Cup.’

A low gasp escaped Beach. All butlers are sportsmen, and Beach had been a butler for eighteen years. Mere gratitude for past favours might not have been enough in itself to turn the scale, but this was different. On the subject of form for the Goodwood Cup he had been quite unable to reach a satisfying decision. It had baffled him. For days he had been groping in the darkness.

‘Jujube, sir?’he whispered.

‘Not Jujube.’

‘Ginger George?’

‘Not Ginger George. It’s no use your trying to guess, for you’ll never do it. Only two touts and the stable-cat know this one. But you shall know it, Beach, the minute I give that pig back and claim my reward. And that pig needs to be fed. Beach, how about it?’

For a long minute the butler stared before him, silent. Then, as if he felt that some simple, symbolic act of the sort was what this moment demanded, he went to the bullfinch’s cage and put a green-baize cloth over it.

‘Tell me just what it is you wish me to do, Mr Ronald,’ he said.

VI

The dawn of another day crept upon Blandings Castle. Hour by hour the light grew stronger till, piercing the curtains of Ronnie’s bedroom, it woke him from a disturbed slumber. He turned sleepily on the pillow. He was dimly conscious of having had the most extraordinary dream, all about stealing pigs. In this dream . . .

He sat up with a jerk. Like cold water dashed in his face had come the realization that it had been no dream.

‘Gosh!’ said Ronnie, blinking.

Few things have such a tonic effect on a young man accustomed to be a little heavy on waking in the morning as the discovery that he has stolen a prize pig overnight. Usually, at this hour, Ronnie was more or less of an inanimate mass till kindly hands brought him his early cup of tea: but to-day he thrilled all down his pyjama-clad form with a novel alertness. Not since he had left school had he ‘sprung out of bed’, but he did so now. Bed, generally so attractive to him, had lost its fascination. He wanted to be up and about.

He had bathed, shaved, and was slipping into his trousers when his toilet was interrupted by the arrival of his old friend Hugo Carmody. On Hugo’s face there was an expression which it was impossible to misread. It indicated as plainly as a label that he had come bearing news, and Ronnie, guessing the nature of this news, braced himself to be suitably startled.

‘Ronnie!’

‘Well?’

‘Heard what’s happened?’

‘What?’

‘You know that pig of your uncle’s?’

‘What about it?’

‘It’s gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘Gone!’ said Hugo, rolling the word round his tongue. ‘I met the old boy half a minute ago, and he told me. It seems he went down to the pig-bin for a before-breakfast look at the animal, and it wasn’t there.’

‘Wasn’t there?’

‘Wasn’t there.’

‘How do you mean, wasn’t there?’

‘Well, it wasn’t. Wasn’t there at all. It had gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘Gone! Its room was empty and its bed had not been slept in.’

‘Well, I’m dashed!’ said Ronnie.

He was feeling pleased with himself. He felt he had played his part well. Just the right incredulous amazement, changing just soon enough into stunned belief.

‘You don’t seem very surprised,’ said Hugo.

Ronnie was stung. The charge was monstrous.

‘Yes, I do,’ he cried. ‘I seem frightfully surprised. I
am
surprised. Why shouldn’t I be surprised?’

‘All right. Just as you say. Spring about a bit more, though, another time when I bring you these sensational items. Well, I’ll tell you one thing,’ said Hugo with satisfaction.

‘Out of evil cometh good. It’s an ill wind that has no turning. For me this startling occurrence has been a life-saver. I’ve got thirty-six hours leave out of it. The old boy is sending me up to London to get a detective.’

‘A what?’

A detective.’

A detective!’

Ronnie was conscious of a marked spasm of uneasiness. He had not bargained for detectives.

‘From a place called the Argus Enquiry Agency.’

Ronnie’s uneasiness increased. This thing was not going to be so simple after all. He had never actually met a detective, but he had read a lot about them. They nosed about and found clues. For all he knew, he might have left a hundred clues.

‘Naturally I shall have to stay the night in town. And, much as I like this place,’ said Hugo, ‘there’s no denying that a night in town won’t hurt. I’ve got fidgety feet, and a spot of dancing will do me all the good in the world. Bring back the roses to my cheeks.’

‘Whose idea was it, getting down this blighted detective?’ demanded Ronnie. He knew he was not being nonchalant, but he was disturbed.

‘Mine.’

‘Yours, eh?’

‘All mine. I suggested it.’

‘You did, did you?’ said Ronnie.

He directed at his companion a swift glance of a kind that no one should have directed at an old friend.

‘Oh?’ he said morosely. ‘Well, buzz off. I want to dress.’

VII

A morning spent in solitary wrestling with a guilty conscience had left Ronnie Fish thoroughly unstrung. By the time the clock over the stable struck the hour of one, his mental condition had begun to resemble that of the late Eugene Aram. He paced the lower terrace with bent head, starting occasionally at the sudden chirp of a bird, and longed for Sue. Five minutes of Sue, he felt, would make him a new man.

It was perfectly foul, mused Ronnie, this being separated from the girl he loved. There was something about Sue . . . he couldn’t describe it, but something that always seemed to act on a fellow’s whole system like a powerful pick-me-up. She was the human equivalent of those pink drinks you went and got – or, rather, which you used to go and get before a good woman’s love had made you give up all that sort of thing – at that chemist’s at the top of the Haymarket after a wild night on the moors. It must have been with a girl like Sue in mind, he felt, that the poet had written those lines ‘When something something something brow, a ministering angel thou!’

At this point in his meditations, a voice from immediately behind him spoke his name.

‘I say, Ronnie.’

It was only his cousin Millicent. He became calmer. For an instant, so deep always is a criminal’s need for a confidant, he had a sort of idea of sharing his hideous secret with this girl, between whom and himself there had long existed a pleasant friendship. Then he abandoned the notion. His secret was not one that could be lightly shared. Momentary relief of mind was not worth purchasing at the cost of endless anxiety.

‘Ronnie, have you seen Mr Carmody anywhere?’

‘Hugo? He went up to London on the ten-thirty.’

‘Went up to London? What for?’

‘He’s gone to a place called the Argus Enquiry Agency to get a detective.’

‘What, to investigate this business of the Empress?’

‘Yes.’

Millicent laughed. The idea tickled her.

‘I’d like to be there to see old man Argus’s face when he finds that all he’s wanted for is to track down missing pigs. I should think he would beat Hugo over the head with a blood-stain.’

Her laughter trailed away. There had come into her face the look of one suddenly visited by a displeasing thought.

‘Ronnie!’

‘Hullo?’

‘Do you know what?’

‘What?’

‘This looks fishy to me.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, I don’t know how it strikes you, but this Argus Enquiry Agency is presumably on the phone. Why didn’t Uncle Clarence just ring them up and ask them to send down a man?’

‘Probably didn’t think of it.’

‘Whose idea was it, anyway, getting down a man?’

‘Hugo’s.’

‘He suggested that he should run up to town?’

Yes.’

‘I thought as much,’ said Millicent darkly.

‘What do you mean?’

Millicent’s eyes narrowed. She kicked moodily at a passing worm.

‘I don’t like it,’ she said. ‘It’s fishy. Too much zeal. It looks very much to me as if our Mr Carmody had a special reason for wanting to get up to London for the night. And I think I know what the reason was. Did you ever hear of a girl named Sue Brown?’

The start which Ronnie gave eclipsed in magnitude all the other starts he had given that morning. And they had been many and severe.

‘It isn’t true?’

‘What isn’t true?’

‘That there’s anything whatever between Hugo and Sue Brown.’

‘Oh? Well, I had it from an authoritative source.’

It was not the worm’s lucky morning. It had now reached Ronnie, and he kicked at it, too.

The worm had the illusion that it had begun to rain shoes.

‘I’ve got to go in and make a phone call,’ said Millicent, abruptly.

Ronnie scarcely noticed her departure. He had supposed himself to have been doing some pretty tense thinking all the morning, but, compared with its activity now, his brain hitherto had been stagnant.

It couldn’t be true, he told himself. Sue had said definitely that it wasn’t, and she couldn’t have been lying to him. Girls like Sue didn’t lie. And yet . . .

The sound of the luncheon gong floated over the garden.

Well, one thing was certain. It was simply impossible to remain here at Blandings Castle, getting his mind poisoned with doubts and speculations which for the life of him he could not keep out of it. If he took the two-seater and drove off in it the moment this infernal meal was over, he could be in London before eight. He could call at Sue’s flat; receive her assurance once more that Hugo Carmody, tall and lissom though he might be, expert on the saxophone though he admittedly was, meant nothing to her; take her out to dinner and, while dining, ease his mind of that which weighed upon it. Then, fortified with comfort and advice, he could pop into the car and be back at the castle by lunch-time on the following day.