Uncle Fred in the Springtime (18 page)

In the
hope that he would also prove soothing, she hurried from the room in quest of
her nephew, Lord Bosham.

Rupert Baxter, meanwhile,
feeling in need of fresh air after the mental strain to which he had been
subjected, had left the house and was strolling under the stars. His wandering
feet had taken him to that velvet lawn which lay outside the Garden Suite.
There, pacing up and down, brow knitted and hands clasped behind back, he gave
himself up to thought.

His
admission to Lady Constance that there was nothing which he himself could do in
this situation which called so imperiously for decisive action had irked Rupert
Baxter and wounded his self-esteem. That remark of Pongo’s, moreover, about a
dead stymie still rankled in his bosom like a poisoned dart. He was not
accustomed to being laid dead stymies by the dregs of the underworld. Was
there, he asked himself, no method by which he could express his personality,
no means whereby he could make his presence felt? He concentrated on the
problem exercising his brain vigorously.

It
often happens that great brains, when vigorously exercised, find a musical
accompaniment of assistance to their activities. Or, putting it another way,
thinkers, while thinking, frequently whistle. Rupert Baxter did, selecting for
his purpose a melody which had always been a favourite of his — the ‘Bonny
Bonny Banks of Loch Lomond’.

If he
had been less preoccupied, he would have observed that at about the fourth bar
a. certain liveliness had begun to manifest itself behind the french window
which he was passing. It opened softly, and a white-moustached head peered
furtively out. But he was preoccupied, and consequently did not observe it. He
reached the end of the lawn, ground a heel into the immemorial turf and turned.
Starting his measured walk anew, he once more approached the window.

He was
now singing. He had a pleasant tenor voice.

‘You
take the high road

And
I’ll take the low road,

And
I’ll be in Scotland a-FORE ye.

For
I and my true love

Will
never meet again —’

The
starlight gleamed on a white-moustached figure.

‘On
the bonny bonny BANKS of Loch LO —’

Something
whizzed through the night air … crashed on Rupert Baxter’s cheek … spread
itself in sticky ruin ….

And
simultaneously there came from the Garden Suite the sudden, sharp cry of a
strong man in pain.

It was perhaps half an
hour after he had left it that Lord Ickenham returned to the billiard-room. He
found Pongo still there, but no longer alone. He had been joined by Lord
Bosham, who had suggested a hundred up, and Lord Ickenham found the game
nearing its conclusion, with Pongo, exhilarated by recent happenings,
performing prodigies with cue. He took a seat, and with a decent respect for
the amenities waited in silence until the struggle was over.

Lord
Bosham resumed his coat.

‘Jolly
well played, sir,’ he said handsomely, a gallant loser. ‘Jolly good game. Very
jolly, the whole thing.’ He paused, and looked at Lord Ickenham enquiringly.
The latter had clicked his tongue and was shaking his head with an air of
rebuke. ‘Eh?’ he said.

‘It was
simply that the irony of the thing struck me,’ explained Lord Ickenham. ‘Tragedy
has been stalking through this house: doctors have been telephoned for, sick
rooms made ready, cool compresses prepared; and here are you two young men
carelessly playing billiards. Fiddling while Rome burns is about what it
amounts to.’

‘Eh?’
said Lord Bosham again, this time adding a ‘What?’ to lend the word greater
weight. He found him cryptic.

‘Somebody
ill?’ asked Pongo. ‘Not Baxter?’ he went on, a note of hope in his voice.

‘I
would not say that Baxter was actually ill,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘though no
doubt much bruised in spirit. He got an egg on the left cheek-bone. But soap
and water will by now have put this right. Far more serious is the case of the
Duke. It was he who threw the egg, and overestimating the limberness of what is
known in America, I believe, as the old soup-bone, he put his shoulder out. I
left him drinking barley-water with his arm in a sling.’

‘I say!’
said Lord Bosham. ‘How dashed unpleasant for him.’

‘Yes,
he didn’t seem too elated about it.’

‘Still,’
argued Pongo, pointing out the bright side, ‘he got Baxter all right?’

‘Oh, he
got him squarely. I must confess that my respect for the Duke has become
considerably enhanced by tonight’s exhibition of marksmanship. Say what you
will, there is something fine about our old aristocracy. I’ll bet Trotsky
couldn’t hit a moving secretary with an egg on a dark night.’

A point
occurred to Lord Bosham. His was rather a slow mind, but he had a way of
getting down to essentials.

‘Why
did old Dunstable bung an egg at Baxter?’

‘I
thought you might want to know that. Events moved towards the big moment with the
inevitability of Greek tragedy. There appears to be a member of the gardening
staff of Blandings Castle who has a partiality for the “Bonny Bonny Banks of
Loch Lomond”, and he whistles and sings it outside the Duke’s window, with the
result that the latter has for some time been lying in wait for him with a
basket of eggs. Tonight, for some reason which I am unable to explain, Baxter
put himself on as an understudy. The Duke and I were in the Garden Suite,
chatting of this and that, when he suddenly came on the air and the Duke,
diving into a cupboard like a performing seal, emerged with laden hands and
started to say it with eggs. I should have explained that he has a rooted
distaste for that particular song. I gather that his sensitive ear is offended
by that rather daring rhyme — ‘Loch Lomond’ and ‘afore ye’. Still, if I had
given the matter more thought, I would have warned him. You can’t throw eggs at
his age without —’

The
opening of the door caused him to suspend his remarks. Lady Constance came in.
Her sigh of relief as she saw Lord Bosham died away as she perceived the low
company he was keeping.

‘Oh!’
she said, surveying his foul associates with unconcealed dislike, and Pongo, on
whom the first full force of her gaze had been turned, shook like a jelly and
fell backwards against the billiard-table.

Lord
Ickenham, as usual, remained suave and debonair.

‘Ah,
Lady Constance. I have just been telling the boys about the Duke’s unfortunate
accident.’

‘Yes,’
said Lord Bosham. ‘It’s true, is it, that the old bird has bust a flipper?’

‘He has
wrenched his shoulder most painfully,’ assented Lady Constance, with a happier
choice of phrase. ‘Have you finished your game, Bosham? Then I would like to
speak to you.’

She led
her nephew out, and Lord Ickenham looked after her thoughtfully.

‘Odd,’
he said. ‘Surely her manner was frigid? Did you notice a frigidity in her
manner, Pongo?’

‘I don’t
know about her manner. Her eye was piping hot,’ said Pongo, who was still
quivering.

‘Warm
eye, cold manner…. This must mean something. Can Baxter have been blowing the
gaff, after all? But no, he wouldn’t dare. I suppose it was just a hostess’s
natural reaction to having her guests wrench themselves asunder and involve her
in a lot of fuss with doctors. Let us dismiss her from our thoughts, for we
have plenty of other, things to talk about. To begin with, that pig-snitching
scheme is off.’

‘Eh?’

‘You
remember I outlined it to you? It was to have started with you driving Emsworth’s
pig to Ickenham and ended with him gratefully pressing purses of gold into’
your hand, but I’m afraid it is not to be. The Duke’s stranglehold on Emsworth,
you will. recall, was the fact that if the latter did not obey his lightest
word he would wreck the home with a poker. This accident, of course, has
rendered him incapable of any serious poker-work for some time to come, and
Emsworth, seizing his advantage like a master-strategist, has notified him that
he cannot have the pig. So he no longer wishes it snitched.’

Pongo
had listened to this exposition with mixed feelings. On the whole, relief prevailed.
A purse of gold would undoubtedly have come in uncommonly handy, but better, he
felt, to give it a miss than to pass a night of terror in a car with a pig.
Like so many sensitive young men, he shrank from making himself conspicuous,
and only a person wilfully blind to the realities of life could deny that you
made yourself dashed conspicuous, driving pigs across England in cars.

‘Well,’
he said, having considered, ‘I could have used a purse of gold, but I don’t
know that I’m sorry.’

‘You
may be.’

‘What
do you mean?’

‘Another
complication has arisen, which is going to make it a little difficult for us to
linger here and look about at our leisure for ways of collecting cash.’

‘Oh, my
gosh, what’s wrong now?’

‘I
would not say that there was anything
wrong.
This is just an additional
obstacle, and one welcomes obstacles. They put one on one’s mettle and bring
out the best in one.’

Pongo
danced a step or two.

‘Can’t
you tell me what has happened?

‘I will
tell you in a word. You know Polly’s minstrel boy. The poet with a punch.’

‘What
about him?’

‘He
will shortly be with us.’

‘What?’

‘Yes,
he’s joining the troupe. When we were alone together, after the tumult and the
shouting had died and the captains and kings — I allude to Emsworth, Connie and
the doctor — had departed, the Duke confided in me that he was going to show
Emsworth what was what. That pig, he said, had been definitely promised to him,
and if Emsworth thought he could double-cross him, he was dashed well mistaken.
He intends to steal the pig, and has sent for Ricky Gilpin to come and do it.
In my presence, he dictated a long telegram to the young man, commanding his
instant presence.’

‘But if
Ricky comes here and meets Miss Pott, we shall be dished. You can’t fool a
hard-headed bird like that the way we did Horace.’

‘No.
That is why I called it an obstacle. Still, he will not actually be in residence
at the castle. The Duke’s instructions to him were to take a room at the
Emsworth Arms. He may not meet Polly.’

‘A fat
chance!’

‘Pretty
obese, I admit. Still, we must hope for the best. Pull yourself together, my
dear Pongo. Square the shoulders and chuck out the chest. Sing like the birdies
sing — Tweet, tweet-tweet, tweet-tweet.’

‘If you’re
interested in my plans, I’m going to bed.’

‘Yes,
do, and get a nice rest.’

‘Rest!’

‘You
think you may have some difficulty in dropping off? Count sheep.’

‘Sheep!
I shall count Baxters and Lady Constances and loony uncles. Ha!’ said Pongo,
withdrawing.

Lord
Ickenham took up a cue and gave the white ball a pensive tap. He was a little
perplexed. The reference to Baxter and Lady Constance he could understand. It was
the allusion to loony uncles that puzzled him.

Lady Constance Keeble was
a gifted
raconteuse.
She had the knack of telling a story in a way that
left her audience, even when it consisted of a nephew who had to have the
He-and-She jokes in the comic papers explained to him, with a clear grasp of
what she was talking about. After a shaky start, Lord Bosham followed her like
a bloodhound. Long before she had finished speaking, he had gathered that what
Blandings Castle was overrun with was impostors, not mice.

His
first words indicated this.

‘What
ho!’ he said. ‘Impostors!’

‘Impostors!’
said Lady Constance, driving it home.

‘What
ho, what ho!’ said Lord Bosham, giving additional proof that he was alive to
the gravity of the situation.

A
silence followed. Furrows across his forehead and a tense look on his pink face
showed that Lord Bosham was thinking.

‘Then,
by Jove,’ he said, ‘this bird is the bird, after all! I thought for a while,’
he explained, ‘that he couldn’t be the bird, but now you’ve told me this it’s
quite clear he must be the bird. The bird in the flesh, by Jingo! Well, I’m
dashed!’

Lady
Constance was very seldom in the mood for this sort of thing, and tonight after
the nervous strain to which she had been subjected she was less in the mood for
it than ever.

‘What
are
you talking about, George?’

‘This
bird,’ said Lord Bosham, seeing that he had not made himself clear. ‘It turns
out he was the bird, after all.’

‘Oh,
George!’ Lady Constance paused for an instant. It was a hard thing that she was
going to say, but she felt she must say it. ‘Really, there are times when you
are exactly like your father!’

‘The
confidence-trick bird,’ said Lord Bosham, annoyed at her slowness of comprehension.
‘Dash it, you can’t have forgotten me telling you about the suave bimbo who got
away with my wallet in Park Lane.’