Plum Pie (28 page)

"Right."

"But if he was wearing pants, what then? How about his braces?"

"You mean suspenders?"

"All right, suspenders if you like. If he was wearing suspenders and stooped like that, he'd bust them, wouldn't he? No, sir, he would not bust them, not if they were Phipps's, because Phipps's will stand the strongest strain. See what I'm driving at, Juddy? Buy that picture, get a staff artist to put the guy in pants and a polo shirt, fix him up with a pair of Phipps's Tried and Proven, and you've got a full colour page in all the magazines which'll send your sales soaring into the empyraean. I know you don't take an active part in the business, but it won't do you any harm to get known in the firm as an ideas man. The rank and file work with more enthusiasm if they feel that the fellow up top isn't just sitting on his fanny clipping coupons, but is right on the job and setting company policy. So how about it?"

Considering that the Wilks Brothers of Manchester and Beatle Beatle and Beatle of Liverpool had been wax in Freddie's hands, it would have been remarkable if Judson Phipps had been able to resist him. He made no attempt to do so.

"How much would the fellow want? What's his name, by the way?"

"Cardinal. Joe Cardinal. I think two hundred pounds would be about the right price."

"Two hundred pounds! "

"A mere nothing to you."

"I dare say. But two hundred pounds! "

Freddie saw that the crux of the negotiation had been reached and that the time had come to step up the pressure.

"Listen, Juddy, I'll tell you the whole story, and I'm sure it will overcome any objection, you may have to parting, because you're a man of sentiment. You must be, to have had two breach of promise cases. Joe Cardinal has fallen in love with a girl and before he'd had time to start pressing his suit he finds she's sailing on the Atlantic on Thursday. A nice bit of news for him to get out of a blue sky, you'll admit."

Judson conceded that the discovery could not have been pleasant.

"So naturally he wants to drop everything and go with her."

"In the hope of bringing home the bacon?"

"Exactly. You're very quick, Juddy."

"I always have been."

"So I've heard. Well, the snag is he's not got the money to pay for his passage. He works in some minor capacity in a bank. So his whole future happiness depends on you. Come on, Juddy, be a sport and strew a little happiness as you go by. You probably have your chequebook on you. Out with it, and start writing. You'll never regret it."

With the unfailing accuracy of the trained dog biscuit salesman Freddie had struck the right note. It would be difficult to say whether Judson's eyes filled with tears, for they were always a little watery, but the dullest observer could see that he was melted.

"You'd better make the cheque out to me," said Freddie. "I am empowered to act as Joe's agent. If you'll excuse me, I'll go and phone him the good news, and I have no doubt he will strew roses from his hat and call down blessings on the head of his benefactor."

The
S.S. Atlantic
was under way, moving in a slow and thoughtful manner down the Solent. Friends and relatives had gone ashore, baskets of fruit had been deposited in staterooms, yachting caps donned by those who liked yachting caps. The Captain was on the bridge, pretty sure that he knew the way to New York but, just to be on the safe side, murmuring to himself 'Turn right at Cherbourg and then straight on'. The ship's doctor was already playing shuffleboard with the more comely of the female passengers. Mr. Pinkney was getting up an appetite for the eleven o'clock soup. His daughter Arlene was keeping fit by walking round and round the promenade deck. And on the boat deck Freddie Threepwood was standing talking to his friend Joe Cardinal.

The start of the voyage found Freddie in the best of spirits, as voyages always did when the liner's nose was pointed, westward. These periodical visits of his to the land of his birth were all very well, and he enjoyed them, but his heart was in his home at Great Neck with Aggie popping the toast out of the toaster and the 8.15 train waiting to take him to Long Island City. Spreading the light in England had its attractions, but he always longed to be back in the pulsating centre of the dog biscuit world, standing to shoulder to shoulder with Bream Rockmeteller and the rest of them like the boys of the Old Brigade.

His thoughts for the moment, however, were not on Dog Joy.

"Tell me of this girl of yours, Joe." he was saving. "Would I know her? What's her name?"

"Dinah Biddle. She's my uncle's secretary."

"Then I do know her. At least, we've met. She came to Bunting's office when I was there. I liked her looks."

"Me, too."

"Nice girl. I'm not surprised you're dashing after her like this. Good luck to you, say I, though I doubt if Pinkney will take the same kindly view. If I remember rightly, you told me it was he who put you in your bank job?"

"Yes, curse him."

"And he doesn't know you're playing hooky?"

"No."

"It will dawn on him when he sees you pacing the deck,"

"Yes, I thought of that."

"And bim will go any chance you may have had of inducing him to scatter purses of gold. H'm," said Freddie. "You had better leave this to me, Joe. It calls for constructive thinking. Go and lie low in your stateroom till I've had time to formulate a policy."

"I don't see what policy you can formulate."

"Nor as of even date do I."

But it is rarely that an executive of Donaldson's Dog Joy is baffled for long. It was only a minute or two before Freddie saw the way—which, as it turned out, was a good thing, for it was only a minute or three before a voice spoke and he found that he had been joined by a stout man—one of the stoutest, indeed, whom he had ever encountered.

"Pardon me," said this obese character.

Mr. Pinkney, as has been said, was looking forward to his eleven o'clock soup and thoughts of it had been occupying his mind to the exclusion of all else. But when he had suddenly seen his nephew Joseph where no nephew Joseph should have been, soup was temporarily forgotten. A man of his build could never move from spot to spot at any high rate of speed, but he had made for Freddie at as high a rate of speed as was possible.

"Pardon me," he said. "Would you mind telling me who that young man was that you were talking to."

"His name's Cardinal, Joe Cardinal."

"I thought as much!"

"You know him?"

"I'm his uncle, and perhaps you can tell me---"

"You're not Mr. Pinkney?"

"I am."

"Of Pinkney's Stores?"

"I am. And perhaps you can tell me---"

It has already been hinted that Arnold Pinkney was not a feast for the eye and would have had to taper off quite a good deal before entering for a beauty contest with any confidence of success. Nevertheless, Freddie was gazing on him as he might have gazed on some noble work of Nature like the Grand Canyon of Arizona.

'This is a great pleasure, Mr. Pinknev. I heard you were on board and was hoping that we should meet."

"Thank you. But perhaps you can tell me what in the world my nephew is doing on this boat."

"I thought you might be surprised to find him here. The explanation is very simple. The men up top at the bank think so highly of his abilities that they are transferring him to the main office in New York."

To say that Mr. Pinkney was surprised would not be to overstate it, for he found it difficult to understand how anyone could think highly of the abilities of his nephew Joseph, but he accepted this curious state of things without disbelief.

"Oh?" he said. "I see. I was wondering. Thank you, Mr.---"

"Threepwood. Of Dog Joy."

"Of what?"

"Donaldson's Dog Joy."

"What is Donaldson's Dog Joy?"

Freddie was only too happy to inform him, though amazed that he needed to be informed.

"Donaldson's Dog Joy," he said, a hand stealing to his hat as if he were about to bare his head, "is God's gift to the kennel, whether it be in the gilded palace of the rich or the humble hovel of the poor. Dogs raised on Donaldson's Dog Joy become fine, strong, upstanding dogs who look the world in the eye with their chins up and both feet on the ground. Get your dog thinking the Donaldson way! Let Donaldson make your spaniel a super-spaniel. Place your wirehaired terrier's paws on the broad Donaldson highway and watch him scamper away to health, happiness, the clear eye, the cold nose and the ever-wagging tail. Donaldson's Dog Joy---"

"It's a sort of dog biscuit," said Mr. Pinkney, groping.

"Sort of dog biscuit?" said Freddie, wounded to the quick. "It's the dog biscuit supreme."

"The only dog biscuit we carry at my Stores is Peterson's Pup Food. Good morning, Mr. Threepwood," said Mr. Pinkney, and he removed himself abruptly, for some sixth sense had told him that the eleven o'clock soup was now being served.

Freddie stared after him, aghast. He felt like a clergyman who has found schism in his flock. It was an axiom at Donaldson's Dog Joy that its leading rival Peterson's Pup Food was a product lacking in many of the essential vitamins and that dogs who indulged in it were heading straight for rheumatism, sciatica, anaemia and stomach trouble. He began to see that his task of leading Arnold Pinkney into the true faith was going to be more difficult than he had supposed.

But though a Dog Joy executive may be down, he is never out, and by the time the tender at Cherbourg had deposited its cargo of passengers on board the Atlantic Freddie had found the solution of the problem of how to cope with Mr. Pinkney's sales resistance.

Your prudent go-getter always likes, on the principle of trying it on the dog, to get an outside opinion from some independent source, and seeing Judson Phipps hastening towards him Freddie decided that here was the captive audience he required. As he put it to himself, he would run up the flag and see if Judson saluted.

"Ah, Juddy," he said. "Welcome aboard. You'll be interested to hear that I've met Pinkney and stunned, no doubt, to learn that he had never heard of Donaldson's Dog Joy and carries 0nly Peterson's Pun Food in his store. But I have the matter well in hand. I propose to give him Treatment A."

"Listen," said Judson, and a less self-centred man than Freddie would have noticed that his manner was agitated and the eyes behind his horn-rimmed spectacles bulging. His air was that of one who has had disconcerting news.

"Treatment A involves ocular demonstration. Our demonstrator stands out in plain view of the consumer public and when the audience is of sufficient size takes a Donaldson's biscuit and chews it. And not only does he chew it, he enjoys it. He rolls it round his tongue and mixes it with his saliva, thus showing that Donaldson's Dog Joy is so superbly wholesome as actually to be fit for human consumption. I have a sample biscuit in my stateroom. I shall draw Pinkney aside and eat it before his eyes, and I shall be greatly surprised if he doesn't immediately---"

"Listen.” said Judson. "Freddie. I'm in a spot."

It irked Freddie to have to stop talking about Dog Joy while so much of his music was still within him, but he was essentially kindly and always at the service of a friend in distress.

"What's your problem?" he asked.

Now that he had succeeded in obtaining Freddie's attention, Judson became a little calmer, though, still presenting the appearance of a man who has rashly looked for a leak in a gas pipe with a lighted candle.

"Well, I must begin by telling you that Pinkney has a daughter."

"Proceed."

"I saw a good deal of her in London."

"And?"

"I've just found out she's on board. It knocked me sideways. I'm trembling like a---"

"Leaf"

"Aspen. I'm all of a twitter."

Donaldson's Dog Joy has very few employees on its pay roll who are not as quick as lightning.

"Say no more," said Freddie. "I grasp the situation. You love this girl and you want me to take her aside and give you a buildup—tell her what a splendid fellow you are and so forth, so that when you come to do your stuff you will find her all eagerness to co-operate. That's the idea, isn't it?"

"No, it isn't. I particularly want to avoid her."

"I didn't know you ever avoided girls. Don't you like her?"

"She fascinates me."

"Then why do you want to avoid her?"

“Because if I go on seeing her, especially aboard an ocean liner. I know I shall ask her to marry me. I don't want to, but I won't be able to help myself. It's like a bird and a snake. Have you ever seen a snake hypnotising a bird? The bird would prefer to let the whole thing drop, but the snake exercises a spell on it and it has to carry on against its better judgment. It’s like that with me. The last thing I want to do is ask Arlene Pinkney to marry me, but I know I shall do it if we're going to be together for five days on an ocean liner. I should explain that she looks like something out of a beauty chorus."

"Ah!" said Freddie, enlightened. "Yes, I follow you now. You mean that in spite of the fact that she gives you a pain in the gizzard you can't help being intrigued by her outer crust."

"Exactly. I realize perfectly well that I'd be crazy to propose to her, but when I see that profile of hers I feel the only thing worth doing in this world is to grab her and start shouting for clergymen and bridesmaids to come running."

"Have you tried not looking at her sideways?"

"It wouldn't do any good. The effect full face is just the same."

Freddie pondered.

"It's a tricky situation," he agreed. "Oddly enough, I had a similar experience myself once before I met Aggie. There was a girl who attracted me like billy-o and at the same time repelled me like a ton of bricks. If it hadn't been for Pongo Twistleton, goodness knows what might have happened. By the greatest good luck he, too, had fallen under her spell, and he clustered round her to such an extent that there was no getting her alone. It was the most impressive case of adhesiveness since Mary had a little lamb."

Into Judson's haggard face there had come the light that shows that hope has dawned.