Uncle Dynamite (7 page)

‘But
he’s scared of that sister of his, and I can’t persuade him. “Now, listen,
Harold,” I keep saying, but he just hums and haws and chews his moustache. Oh,
well,’ said Elsie philosophically, ‘I suppose it’ll all come out in the wash.
What’s that mess on the floor?’

‘It’s
what’s left of a sort of gadget I happened to drop.’

‘Does
he know about it?’

‘Oh,
yes. The topic came up.’

‘I
wonder he didn’t chew your head off.’

‘He did
look for a moment as if he were toying with some such idea. Rather a hard nut,
what?’

‘He’s
an overbearing dishpot,’ said Elsie Bean.

Pongo
wandered out into the hall. He had about as much as he required of the
collection of African curios for the time being, and he wanted to pace up and
down and ponder. He had already formed a reasonably accurate estimate of Sir
Aylmer Bostock’s character, but it was interesting to find it confirmed by the
woman who knew.

An
overbearing dishpot? The words had a disagreeable sound. His attitude towards
overbearing dishpots resembled that of his companion’s circle in Bottleton East
towards officers of the Law. He disliked and feared them. It began to look to
him as if union with Hermione Bostock, good though it might be in itself,
carried with it certain disadvantages which wanted thinking over.

‘And
Lady Bostock?’ he said. ‘She flitted only briefly through my life, but she
struck me as being slightly less of a man-eater.’

‘Yes,
she’s better than what he is,’ agreed Elsie Bean. ‘But the one I like is Mr
William.’

‘Who
would he be?’

‘Their
nephew. Mr Oakshott.’

‘Oh,
ah, yes. I was forgetting. I know him, or used to. Got a pink face, hasn’t he?’

‘Well,
I’d call it more of a tomato-ketchup colour. Owing to the heat of the sun in
them parts. He’s just come back from
Brazil
. He was telling me about
Brazil
this morning,’ said Elsie, who had lost no time in buttonholing the
returned wanderer and exchanging ideas with him. ‘The natives there shoot birds
with poisoned darts.’

‘Poisoned
darts?’

‘R.
Through blowpipes.’

Pongo
was courteous, but he could not let this pass. Though it was some time since he
had boned up on his
Brazil
,
memories of ‘The Boy Explorers Up the Amazon’ still lingered in his mind.

‘Not
poisoned darts.’

‘That’s
what Mr William told me.’

‘He was
pulling your leg. They keep those for their wives’ relations. Use your
intelligence, my dear old housemaid. When a Brazilian native shoots a bird, he
does it with a purpose. He intends to employ that bird subsequently in broiled
or fricassee form. Obviously, then, if he soaked it with a poisoned dart, he
would be defeating his own ends, because no sooner had he bitten into the liver
wing than he would kick the bucket in awful agonies. And Brazilian natives,
while they may be asses, are not silly asses. If you really want to know how
they shoot birds, I will tell you. They fashion a rude sling — thus,’ said
Pongo, taking out his handkerchief and unfolding it. ‘They then look about them
for a handy projectile, as it might be this paperweight, and stuff it into the
rude sling. This done, they whirl the contraption round their heads and…. Oh,
my God! Where did that one go?’

It had
not been his intention to give a practical demonstration. He had planned to
stop short of the actual discharge of the projectile, merely indicating its
effects verbally. But artistic enthusiasm had carried him too far. A rending
crash, and something white in the shadows at the end of the hall was lying in
fragments.

‘Coo!’
said Elsie Bean, awed. ‘You aren’t half breaking up the home, are you? You’ll
catch it when His Nibs gets back.’

For the
third time since he had entered this house of terror, Pongo’s brow grew warm
and damp. With that get-together of theirs over the broken what-not still green
in his memory, it seemed to him only too sickeningly certain that he would
catch it when His Nibs got back.

‘What
was it?’ he quavered, rightly speaking of the object in the past tense.

‘It’s a
sort of sawn-off statue like, that he had presented to him when he give up
being Governor of that dog’s island out in Africa that he used to be Governor
of. A bust, cook says it’s called. He thinks the world of it. The other morning
he happened to come along while I was giving it a bit of a dusting, and you
ought to have heard him go on, just because I kind of rocked it a little. “Be
careful, girl! Be careful, girl! Mind what you’re doing, my good girl!” Coo!’

Pongo’s
brow grew damper. A stylist would now have described it as beaded. And
simultaneously he found himself chilled to the bone. He was a human replica of
one of those peculiar puddings which lure the diner on into supposing that he
is biting into a hot
soufflé
and then suddenly turn right around and
become ice-cream in the middle.

Matters
were even worse, he perceived, than he had feared. This was not one of those
minor breakages which get passed off with a light apology on the one side and a
jolly laugh on the other. It was as if Sir Aylmer Bostock had had a favourite
child on whom he doted and he, Pongo, had socked that child on the occiput and laid
it out good and proper. And coming right on top of the what-not misadventure,
too! What would be the effect on his temperamental host of this second and
possibly even more wrath-provoking outrage?

‘Golly!’
he moaned, sagging at the knees. ‘This is a nice bit of box fruit. Advise me,
young Bean. What do I do for the best, do you think?’

It may
be that Bottleton East produces an exceptionally quick-witted type of girl, or
perhaps all women are like that. At any rate, Elsie Bean, with scarcely a pause
for thought, provided the solution hot off the griddle.

‘Well,
look,’ she said. ‘It’s kind of dark in that corner, so maybe he won’t miss his
old bust for a bit. He’s short-sighted, I know, and he won’t wear specs because
he thinks they’d make him look silly. Jane heard them talking about it at
dinner. If I was you, I’d hop into that car of yours and drive lickerty-split
to London and get another bust. And then you drive back and stick it up. Ten to
one he won’t notice nothing.’

For an
instant Pongo’s numbed brain was incapable of following her reasoning. Then the
mists cleared, and he saw that it was red-hot stuff. This girl had found the
way.

Drive
lickerty-split to London? No need to do that. He could procure the substitute a
dashed sight nearer than London. At Ickenham Hall, to be precise. His mind shot
back to last night’s dinner-table…. Uncle Fred jerking his thumb at an object
in the corner of the room and saying it was a bust which Sally had brought down
and left in his charge, and himself — how ironical it seemed now — giving the
thing a brief and uninterested glance. It wouldn’t be an uninterested glance he
would be giving it when he saw it again.

His
spirits soared. Ickenham Hall was only a dozen miles away, and he had an
owner-driver’s touching faith in the ability of his Buffy-Porson to do a dozen
miles, if pushed, in about three minutes and a quarter. He could be there and
back and have the understudy on its pedestal long before his host had finished
with the Vicar.

He
beamed upon Elsie Bean.

‘That’s
the set-up. I’ll go and get the car.’

‘I
would.’

‘You,
meanwhile, might be putting in a bit of earnest brush-and-pan work.’

‘Right
ho!’

‘Fine.
Great. Capital. Splendid,’ said Pongo, and raced for the stables.

Elsie
Bean, her errand of mercy concluded, was standing on the front steps when he
drove up. He was conscious, as he saw her, of a twinge of remorse, for it had
just come to him that he had churlishly omitted to chuck her so much as a word
of thanks for her splendid resourcefulness.

‘I
say,’ he said, ‘I forgot to mention it in the swirl and rush of recent events,
but I’m most frightfully obliged to you for the very sporting way you’ve
rallied round and saved me from the fate that is worse than death — viz,’
explained Pongo, ‘getting glared at by that goggle—eyed old Jack the Ripper
with the lip fungus.’

Elsie
Bean said she was only too pleased, to be sure, and he took her hand in his and
pressed it.

‘But
for you I should have been in the soup and going down for the third time. I owe
you more than words can tell.’

He was
still pressing her hand, and from that to kissing her in a grateful and
brotherly manner was but a short step. He took it, and Bill Oakshott, coming
round the corner after one of the long walks with which he was endeavouring
these days to allay the pangs of frustrated love, was able to observe the
courteous gesture from start to finish.

Pongo
sprang into the car with a lissom bound, waved his hand and drove off, and Bill
stared after him, stunned. Pongo belonged to the type of man which changes very
little in appearance with the passage of the years, and he recognized him
immediately. Still, to make sure ….

‘Wasn’t
that Mr Twistleton?’ he enquired of Elsie Bean.

‘Yes,
sir,’ said Elsie composedly. She had no inkling of the turmoil in his soul, and
would have been astounded to learn that anyone was taking exception to that
kiss. In Bottleton East everybody kisses everybody else as a matter of course,
like the early Christians. ‘He says you were wrong about the natives, Mr
William.’

‘The what?’

‘Those
natives in
Brazil
. They don’t
shoot birds with poisoned darts, only their wives’ relations. They use rude
slings.’

With an
effort that shook his powerful frame to its foundations Bill Oakshott contrived
to keep from saying something ruder about Brazilian natives than any sling
fashioned by them. There was no room in his thoughts for Brazilian natives. All
the available space was occupied by Pongo.

So
this, he was saying to himself, was the man to whom Hermione had entrusted her
happiness; a libertine who, once the Don Juan of his dancing class, now went
about kissing housemaids on doorsteps. How right, how unerringly right, old
Ickenham had been. Can the leopard change his spots, he had speculated. This
leopard didn’t even seem to want to.

Gosh! thought
Bill, aghast at the stark horror of the thing. A minor point presented itself.

‘Where’s
he off to?’ he asked, puzzled.

‘
London
, sir.’

‘
London
?’

‘Yes,
sir.’

‘But
he’s only just arrived.’ ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Did he
say why he was going to
London
?’

Elsie
Bean was a good accomplice, cautious, reliable, on the alert against verbal
slips. ‘No, sir. He just said “Coo! I think I’ll go to
London
,” and popped off.’

Bill
Oakshott drew a deep breath. It seemed to him that in the years since he had
seen: him last, his old friend, never very strong in the head, have become
absolutely
non compos.
Do balanced men drive to country houses and
immediately upon arrival say ‘Coo! I think I’ll go to
London
,’ and drive off again? They certainly do not.

His
heart, as he filled his pipe, was heavy. Sane libertines, he was thinking, are
bad enough, but loony libertines are the limit.

4

It was at a quarter to
eight that evening that Lord Ickenham, after a pleasant journey to London in
his car and a bath and change at his club, arrived in Budge Street, Chelsea, to
pick up Sally Painter and take her to dinner.

Budge
Street
,
Chelsea
, in the heart of
London
’s artistic quarter, is, like so many streets in the hearts of
artistic quarters, dark, dirty, dingy and depressing. Its residents would
appear to be great readers and very fond of fruit, for tattered newspapers can
always be found fluttering about its sidewalks and old banana skins, cores of
apples, plum stones and squashed strawberries lying in large quantities in its
gutters. Its cats are stringy, hard-boiled cats, who look as if they were
contemplating, or had just finished perpetrating, a series of murders of the
more brutal type.

It was
a bit of luck, accordingly, for this dishevelled thoroughfare to be toned up by
Lord Ickenham’s ornamental presence. With his well-cut clothes and
distinguished deportment he lent to the scene a suggestion of the enclosure at
Ascot
on Cup Day.

And he
had not been there long, strolling up and down, when
Budge
Street
had another slice of good fortune. Round the
corner from the King’s Road there came hurrying a small, alert girl in beige,
whose arrival intensified the
Ascot
note. Nobody, not even Pongo at the very height of that unfortunate
discussion about the tint of his liver, had ever attempted to deny that Sally
Painter was pretty: and even if she had not been, there was a jauntiness in her
carriage which would have gone far to create that illusion.