Uncle Fred in the Springtime (17 page)

‘I don’t
know who you are —’

‘Call
me Uncle Fred.’

‘I will
not call you Uncle Fred!’ said Rupert Baxter violently.

He
restored his composure with a glance at Pongo. There, he felt, was Unmasked
Guilt looking as Unmasked Guilt should look.

‘Well,
there you are,’ he resumed, becoming calmer. ‘The risk you run, when you
impersonate another man, is that you are apt to come up against somebody to
whom his appearance is familiar.’

‘Trite,
but true. Do you like me with my moustache like that? Or like this?’

Rupert
Baxter’s impatient gesture seemed to say that he was Nemesis, not a judge in a
male beauty contest.

‘Perhaps
it would interest you now,’ he said, ‘to hear about the local train service.’

‘Is
there a milk train?’ asked Pongo, speaking for the first time.

‘I
expect so,’ said Baxter, giving him a cold look, ‘but probably you would prefer
to take the eight-twenty in the morning.’

Lord
Ickenham seemed puzzled.

‘You
speak as if you were under the impression that we were leaving.’

‘That
is my impression.’

‘You
are not going to respect our little secret, then?’

‘I
intend to expose you immediately.’

‘Even
if I assure you that we did not come here after the spoons, but rather to do
two loving hearts a bit of good?’

‘Your
motives do not interest me.’

Lord
Ickenham gave his moustache a thoughtful twirl.

‘I see.
You are a hard man, Baxter.’

‘I do
my duty.’

‘Not
always, surely? How about the toot in London?’

‘I don’t
understand you.’

‘So you
won’t talk? Still, you know you went to that Ball at the Albert Hall. Horace
Davenport saw you there.’

‘Horace!
‘.

‘Yes, I
admit that at the moment what Horace says is not evidence. But why is it not
evidence, Baxter? Simply because the Duke, after seeing him make what appeared
to be two bad shots at identifying people this evening, assumes that he must
also have been mistaken in thinking that he saw you at the Ball. He supposes
that his young relative is suffering from hallucinations. But if you denounce
me, my daughter and nephew will testify that they really are the persons he
supposed them to be, and it will become clear to the Duke that Horace is not
suffering from hallucinations and that when he says he saw you at the Ball he
did see you at the Ball. Then where will you be?’

He
paused, and in the background Pongo revived like a watered flower. During this
admirably lucid exposition of the state of affairs, there had come into his
eyes a look of worshipping admiration which was not always there when he gazed
at his uncle.

‘At-a-boy!’
he said reverently. ‘It’s a dead stymie.’

‘I
think so.’

Rupert
Baxter’s was one of those strong, square jaws which do not readily fall, but it
had undeniably wavered, as if its steely muscles were about to relax. And
though he hitched it up, there was dismay in the eyes behind the spectacles.

‘It
doesn’t follow at all!’

‘Baxter,
it must follow as the night the day.’

‘I
shall deny —’

‘What’s
the use? I have not known the Duke long, but I have known him long enough to be
able to recognize him as one of those sturdy, tenacious souls, the backbone of
England, who when they have once got an idea into their fat heads are not to be
induced to relinquish it by any denials. No, if you do not wish to imperil the
cordial relations existing between your employer and yourself, I would reflect,
Baxter.’

‘Definitely,’
said Pongo.

‘I
would consider.’

‘Like
billy-o.’

‘If you
do, you will perceive that we stand or fall together. You cannot unmask us
without unmasking yourself. But whereas we, unmasked, merely suffer the passing
embarrassment of being thrown out by strong-armed domestics, you lose that
splendid post of yours and have to go back to mixing with baronets. And how do
you know,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘that next time it would even be a baronet? It
might be some bounder of a knight.’

He
placed a kindly hand on the secretary’s arm, and led him to the door.

‘I
really think, my dear fellow,’ he said, ‘that we had better pursue a mutual
policy of Live and Let Live. Let our motto be that of the great Roi Pausole —
Ne
nuis pas á ton voisin.
It is the only way to get comfortably through life.’

He
closed the door. Pongo drew a deep breath.

‘Uncle
Fred,’ he said, ‘there have been times, I don’t mind admitting, when I have
viewed you with concern —’You mean that afternoon down at Valley Fields?’ ‘I
was thinking more of our day at the Dog Races.’ ‘Ah, yes. We did slip up a
little there.’ ‘But this time you have saved my life.’ ‘My dear boy, you
embarrass me. A mere nothing. It is always my aim to try to spread sweetness
and light.’

‘I
should describe that bird as baffled, wouldn’t you?’

‘Baffled
as few secretaries have ever been, I think. We can look upon him, I fancy, as a
spent force. And now, my boy, if you will excuse me, I must leave you. I
promised the Duke to drop in on him for a chat round about ten o’clock.’

12

In supposing that their
heart-to-heart talk would cause Rupert Baxter to abandon his intention of
making a public exposure of his machinations, Lord Ickenham had been correct.
In his assumption that he had rendered the man behind the steel-rimmed spectacles
a spent force, however, he had erred. Baxter’s hat was still in the ring. At
Blandings Castle he had a staunch ally in whom he could always confide, and it
was to her boudoir that he made his way within five minutes of leaving the
billiard-room.

‘Could
I speak to you for a moment, Lady Constance?’

‘Certainly,
Mr Baxter.’

‘Thank
you,’ said the secretary, and took a seat.

He had
found Lady Constance in a mood of serene contentment. In the drawing-room over
the coffee she had had an extended interview with that eminent
brain-specialist, Sir Roderick Glossop, and his views regarding the Duke, she
was pleased to find, were in complete accord with her own. He endorsed her
opinion that steps must be taken immediately, but assured her that only the
simplest form of treatment was required to render His Grace a man who, if you
put an egg into his hand, would not know what to do with it.

And she
had been running over in her mind a few of his most soothing pronouncements
and thinking what a delightful man he was, when in came Baxter. And within a
minute, for he was never a man to beat about the bush and break things gently,
he had wrecked her peace of mind as thoroughly as if it had been a sitting-room
and he her old friend with a whippy-shafted poker in his hand.

‘Mr
Baxter!’ she cried.

From
anyone else she would have received the extraordinary statement which he had
just made with raised eyebrows and a shrivelling stare. But her faith in this
man was the faith of a little child. The strength of his personality, though
she had a strong personality herself, had always dominated her completely.

‘Mr
BAX-ter!’

The
secretary had anticipated some such reaction on her part. This spasm of emotion
was what is known in the motion-picture world as ‘the quick take ‘um’, and in
the circumstances he supposed that it was inevitable. He waited in stern
silence for it to expend itself.

‘Are
you sure?’

A flash
of steel-rimmed spectacles told her that Rupert Baxter was not a man who made
statements without being sure.

‘He
admitted it to me personally.’

‘But he
is such a charming man.’

‘Naturally.
Charm is the chief stock-in-trade of persons of that type.’

Lady
Constance’s mind was beginning to adjust itself to the position of affairs.
After all, she reflected, this was not the first time that impostors had
insinuated themselves into Blandings Castle. Her nephew Ronald’s chorus-girl,
to name one instance, had arrived in the guise of an American heiress. And
there had been other cases. Indeed, she might have felt justified in moments of
depression in yielding to the gloomy view that her visiting list consisted
almost exclusively of impostors. There appeared to be something about
Blandings Castle that attracted impostors as cat-nip attracts cats.

‘You
say he admitted it?’

‘He had
no alternative.’

‘Then I
suppose he has left the house?’

Something
of embarrassment crept into Rupert Baxter’s manner. His spectacles seemed to
flicker.

‘Well,
no,’ he said.

‘No?’
cried Lady Constance, amazed. Impostors were tougher stuff than she had
supposed.

‘A
difficulty has arisen.

It is
never pleasant for a proud man to have to confess that scoundrels have got him
in cleft sticks, and in Rupert Baxter’s manner as he told his tale there was
nothing of relish. But painful though it was, he told it clearly.

‘To
make anything in the nature of an overt move is impossible. It would result in
my losing my post, and my post is all-important to me. It is my intention
ultimately to become the Duke’s man of affairs, in charge of all his interests.
I hope I can rely on you to do nothing that will jeopardize my career.’

‘Of
course,’ said Lady Constance. Not for an instant did she contemplate the idea
of hindering this man’s rise to the heights. Nevertheless, she chafed. ‘But is
there nothing to be done? Are we to allow this person to remain and loot the
house at his leisure?’

On this
point, Rupert Baxter felt that he was in a position to reassure her.

‘He is
not here with any motive of robbery. He has come in the hope of trapping Horace
Davenport into marriage with that girl.’

‘What!’

‘He
virtually said as much. When I told him that I knew him to be an impostor, he
said something flippant about not having come after the spoons but because he
was trying to do what he described as “a bit of good to two loving hearts”. His
meaning escaped me at the time, but I have now remembered something which had
been hovering on the edge of my mind ever since I saw these people at
Paddington. I had had one of those vague ideas one gets that I had seen this
girl before somewhere. It has now come back to me. She was at that Ball with
Horace Davenport. One sees the whole thing quite clearly. In London,
presumably, she was unable to make him commit himself definitely, so she has
followed him here in the hope of creating some situation which will compel him
to marry her.’

The
fiendish cunning of the scheme appalled Lady Constance. ‘But what can we do?’

‘I
myself, as I have explained, can do nothing. But surely a hint from you to the
Duke that his nephew is in danger of being lured into a disastrous marriage —’But
he does not know it is a disastrous marriage.’

‘You
mean that he is under the impression that the girl is the daughter of Sir
Roderick Glossop, the brain specialist? But even so. The Duke is a man acutely
alive to the existence of class distinctions, and I think that as a wife for
his nephew he would consider the daughter of a brain specialist hardly —’

‘Oh,
yes,’ said Lady Constance, brightening. ‘I see what you mean. Yes, Alaric is
and always has been a perfect snob.’

‘Quite,’
said Baxter, glad to find his point taken. ‘I feel sure that it will not be
difficult for you to influence him. Then I will leave the matter in your hands.’

The
initial emotion of Lady Constance, when she found herself alone, was relief,
and for a while nothing came to weaken this relief. Rupert Baxter, as always,
seemed in his efficient way to have put everything right and pointed out with
masterly clearness the solution of the problem. There was, she felt, as she had
so often felt, nobody like him.

But
gradually, now that this magnetic personality was no longer there to sway her
mind, there began to steal over her a growing uneasiness. Specious though the
theory was which he had put forward, that the current instalment of impostors
at Blandings Castle had no designs on the castle’s many valuable contents but
were bent simply on the task of getting Horace Davenport into a morning coat
and sponge-bag trousers and leading him up the aisle, she found herself less
and less able to credit it.

To Lady
Constance’s mind, impostors were not like that. Practical rather than romantic,
as she saw it, they preferred jewellery to wedding bells. They might not
actually disdain the ‘Voice That Breathed O’er Eden’, but in their scale of
values it ran a very poor second to diamond necklaces.

She
rose from her chair in agitation. She felt. that something must be done, and
done immediately. Even in her alarm, of course, she did not consider the idea
of finding Rupert Baxter and trying to argue him out of his opinions. One did
not argue with Rupert Baxter. What he said, he said, and you had to accept it.
Her desire was to buttonhole some soothingly solid person who would listen to
her and either allay her fears or suggest some way of staving off disaster. And
it so happened that Blandings Castle housed at that moment perhaps the most
solid person who had ever said ‘Yoicks’ to a foxhound.