Young Men in Spats (16 page)

‘Why, Father,' said Geraldine, sitting up in bed, ‘what's the matter? You look as if you had seen a ghost.'

‘I have seen a ghost.'

‘The White Lady of Wivelscombe?'

‘No, the Pink Secretary of Wivelscombe. I give you my word, Geraldine, that not two minutes ago I heard a sort of uncanny tapping on my window and I looked out and there was the wraith of that young fathead, Adolphus Stiffham.'

‘What do you mean, that young fathead, Adolphus Stiffham?' demanded Geraldine with a womanly warmth which became her well. ‘Where do you get that young fathead stuff? You are speaking of the man I love.'

‘Well, you had better dashed well stop loving him,' rejoined her father with equal heat, ‘because he has passed beyond the veil.'

‘Are you sure it was his ghost?'

‘Of course it was his ghost. Do you think I don't know a ghost when I see one? I've been psychic all my life. All my family have been psychic. My mother was a Ballindalloch of Portknockie and used to see her friends in winding-sheets. It got her disliked in the county. Besides, you told me Stiffham was in America. Obviously what has happened is that somewhere out in those great open spaces the unhappy half-wit has handed in his dinner-pail.'

Geraldine faced him with burning eyes.

‘And whose fault was it that he went to America? Yours.'

‘Eh? What do you mean, dash it? I never asked him to go to America.'

‘He went there as the direct result of your hard-heartedness and inhumanity. And now, I suppose, he has been shot by gangsters, like everybody else in America. Was there a bullet-wound in his forehead?'

‘I couldn't tell you. He got away too quick. Just smiled a hideous sort of smile and seemed to melt into the bushes. Phew!' said Lord Wivelscombe. ‘I'm going down to get a bite of breakfast. I need coffee. Strong, hot coffee with a kick in it. Put on a dressing-gown and come along.'

‘I shall do nothing of the kind,' said Geraldine coldly. ‘Breakfast, forsooth! It would choke me. I shall remain up here and try to get Adolphus on the ouija-board.'

Stiffy, meanwhile, after removing some twigs from his hair and brushing a few of the local beetles off his face, had come cautiously out of the bushes and made his way snakily to the french windows of the morning-room. A glance at his watch had told him that at any moment now the postman would be arriving. And, sure enough, he had not been there more than about two minutes when the door of the morning-room opened and the butler came in and placed a bundle of correspondence beside Lord Wivelscombe's plate. He then withdrew, and Stiffy, abandoning the role of snake, gave a spirited impersonation of a pouncing leopard. He was in through the windows in a matter of one and three-fifth seconds. It took him perhaps another second to locate and pouch the letter. And he was just about to buzz off, which would have taken him possibly another second and a quarter, when he heard a footstep outside.

There was no time for the smooth getaway. Already the door was beginning to open. With considerable presence of mind
Stiffy revised his whole plan of campaign at a moment's notice and shot silently under the table.

And there for a while the matter rested.

As far as Stiffy could gather from the look of the legs moving about in his vicinity, it was the butler who had returned, presumably with coffee and foodstuffs. He could just see the lower section of a pair of striped trousers, as worn by butlers.

Then the door opened once more, this time to admit a pair of pyjamaed legs terminating in bedroom slippers, and reason told him that this must be old Wivelscombe. When the pyjamas passed from his view to appear again under the table within a couple of inches of his nose, their owner having sunk heavily into a chair, he knew that he had been right, and he is not ashamed to confess that he was conscious of a certain qualm. Seeing at such close range the foot which had once landed so forcefully on his trouser seat was, he tells me, an unnerving experience.

A bit of dialogue now unshipped itself in the upper regions. The butler started it.

‘Good morning, m'lord. Shall I assist your lordship to a little eggs and bacon?'

The table shook as the aged peer shuddered strongly.

‘Don't try to be funny, Gascoigne. There is a time to speak of eggs and a time not to speak of eggs. At the moment, I would prefer to try to forget that there are such things in the world. What you can bring me – and dashed quick, too – is a very hot, very strong cup of coffee, liberally laced with old brandy, and a very dry slice of toast.'

The butler coughed in rather an unpleasant and censorious manner.

‘Did your lordship exceed last night?'

‘Certainly not.'

‘Did your lordship imbibe champagne?'

‘The merest spot.'

‘A bottle?'

‘It may have been a bottle.'

‘Two bottles?'

‘Yes. Possibly two bottles.'

The butler coughed again.

‘I shall inform Doctor Spelvin.'

‘Don't be a cad, Gascoigne.'

‘He has expressly forbidden your lordship champagne.'

‘Tchah!'

‘I need scarcely remind your lordship that champagne brings your lordship out in spots.'

Old Wivelscombe barked querulously.

‘I wish to goodness you wouldn't stand there babbling about champagne. It is a word that I do not wish to have mentioned in my presence.'

‘Very good, m'lord,' said the butler stiffly. ‘Your coffee, m'lord. The dry toast is at your lordship's elbow.'

There was a pause. From the sloshing sound which broke out above him at this point, Stiffy deduced that old Wivelscombe was drinking the coffee. The theory was borne out by the fact that when he spoke again it was in a stronger voice.

‘It's no good your looking like that, Gascoigne. After all, what's an occasional binge? It's a poor heart that never rejoices.'

‘At your lordship's age, all binges are highly injudicious.'

‘What do you mean, my age? A man is as old as he feels.'

‘Very good, m'lord.'

‘Where you go wrong, Gascoigne – where you make your bloomer is in assuming that I have a hangover this morning.
Nothing could be further from the truth. I feel like a two-year-old. Look at my hand. Steady as a rock.'

Apparently, at this point, old Wivelscombe ventured on a physical demonstration. A napkin came fluttering down on the floor.

‘Very wobbly, m'lord.'

‘Nothing of the kind,' said old Wivelscombe testily. ‘I dropped that napkin on purpose, just to show you how easily I could pick it up. See, Gascoigne. I will now pick up the napkin.'

But he didn't. He stooped down and his fingers touched the thing, but as they did so he suddenly found himself looking into Stiffy's bulging eyes. There was an embarrassing pause for a moment: then his face shot up out of sight and Stiffy heard him gulp.

‘Gascoigne!'

‘M'lord?'

‘Gascoigne, there's a ghost under the table.'

‘Very good, m'lord.'

‘What do you mean, “Very good, m'lord”? Don't stand there saying, “Very good, m'lord.” Do something about it, man, do something about it.'

‘I beg your lordship's pardon, but I cannot comprehend just what it is that your lordship desires me to do.'

‘Why, shoo it out.'

‘Really, m'lord!'

Old Wivelscombe's voice grew tense.

‘Gascoigne, do you hear me telling you that the room is overrun with ghosts?'

‘Yes, m'lord.'

‘Don't you believe me?'

‘No, m'lord.'

‘Well, look for yourself. I tell you it's there. The dashed thing's been following me about all the morning. Lift the cloth, Gascoigne, and take a dekko.'

‘Very good, m'lord, if your lordship insists. But I do not anticipate that I shall be able to observe the spectre to which your lordship alludes.'

He did, of course. The first thing that met his eye was young Stiffy. But by this time Stiffy, who, chump though he is, can act on occasion with a good deal of rugged sense, was holding the forefinger of his left hand to his lips and stretching out the other hand with a fiver in it.

The butler scooped the fiver and straightened himself.

‘Well, Gascoigne?'

‘The light under the table is a little uncertain, m'lord. I will take another look.'

He bent down once more, and Stiffy repeated the business with fiver.

‘No, m'lord. There is nothing there.'

‘No spectres, Gascoigne?'

‘No spectres, m'lord.'

Old Wivelscombe groaned in a hollow sort of way, and there was the sound of a chair being pushed back.

‘I shall go for a brisk walk, Gascoigne.'

‘Very good, m'lord.'

‘You're sure you saw nothing?'

‘Quite sure, m'lord.'

‘Not the late Adolphus Stiffham?'

‘No, m'lord.'

The door closed behind old Wivelscombe, and Stiffy crawled out.

‘Good morning, Gascoigne.'

‘Good morning, sir.'

‘I expect I gave you a start, Gascoigne?'

‘I must confess to a momentary sensation of surprise, sir. I had supposed that you were in the United States of Northern America.'

‘It's a long story,' said Stiffy, ‘but the nub of it is that I must see Lady Geraldine immediately. Is she in her room?'

‘I cannot speak from first-hand observation, sir, but I am inclined to fancy that her ladyship has not yet descended. Would you desire me to announce you, sir?'

‘No, thanks. I'll find my way up.'

So up Stiffy buzzed, and presently he was sitting on Geraldine's bed, gazing into her eyes and holding her little hand in his. The exact words of their conversation Stiffy did not reveal to me, but no doubt he opened with a brief explanation of his presence and then they spoke of those things which young lovers do speak about when they get together for a chat after long separation. At any rate, he tells me that they were more or less absorbed when the door handle rattled. He had just time to make a leap for a convenient cupboard as old Wivelscombe came in. There was a moment when the eyes of the two men met. And then Stiffy was in the cupboard among Geraldine's summer frocks.

Old Wivelscombe was gulping a bit.

‘Geraldine,' he said, ‘you see before you a haunted man.'

‘Do I, Father?'

‘You certainly do. When I went down to breakfast, guess what? There beneath the table was the phantasm of that fat- . . . of that excellent young fellow, Adolphus Stiffham, whom I always liked though he may have drawn wrong conclusions from my surface manner,' said old Wivelscombe, raising his
voice slightly. ‘He was staring at me with just that same idiot . . . with precisely that same frank, winning expression on his face that I remember so well.'

‘What did you do?'

‘I requested Gascoigne to check up my facts. So Gascoigne took a look. But the apparition was invisible to him.'

‘Was it?'

‘It was. I gather that it is also invisible to you. For I assure you, on the word of a Worcestershire Wivelscombe, that as I entered this room I distinctly observed the spectre nip into that cupboard over there.'

‘Nonsense.'

‘It isn't nonsense.'

‘That cupboard there?'

‘That very cupboard.'

‘I'll go and look.'

‘Take care it doesn't bite you,' said Lord Wivelscombe anxiously.

The cupboard door opened, and Geraldine peeped in.

‘No,' she said. ‘There's nothing there.'

Old Wivelscombe unleashed another of those hollow groans of his.

‘Of course you wouldn't see it. It's meant for me. A nice thing this is going to be, trying to run an estate with a beastly great ghost popping in and out all the time. Concentration will become impossible.'

Geraldine laid a soothing hand on his quivering shoulder.

‘I don't think it is going to be as bad as that, Father. I think I see what has happened. In my opinion, this thing has been sent to you as a warning.'

‘A warning?'

‘Yes. I have read of such cases. It sometimes happens that the apparition of an entity . . . let us call him A. or B. . . .'

‘Whichever you prefer.'

‘The apparition of an entity, A. or B., will occasionally appear not after but before the entity has crossed the great divide. The object of this is to impress on the mind of the individual observing the phenomenon . . . shall we call him C. . . .?'

‘By all means.'

‘. . . to impress on the mind of the individual, C., that, unless steps are taken promptly through the proper channels, the entity will pass over. It is, as it were, a cautionary projection of a distant personality.'

Lord Wivelscombe raised his head from his hands.

‘You mean, then, that you think that that blasted . . . that that delightful lad, Adolphus Stiffham, on whom I have always looked more as a son than anything, is still alive?'

‘For the moment, yes.'

‘Tell me,' said Lord Wivelscombe, ‘how do we keep him that way?'

Geraldine reflected.

‘I think the best plan is for me to cable him today to return at once, as you are now prepared to give your full consent to our marriage.'

Lord Wivelscombe sat for a moment in thought.

‘You consider that the best plan?'

‘I do.'

‘What's the next best?'

‘There is no other.'

‘You mean that, unless I want to be haunted for the rest of my life, I've got to have that – er – him for a son-in-law?'

‘I do.'

Lord Wivelscombe looked once more at the cupboard. Then he spoke with what a close observer might have thought a slightly exaggerated heartiness.

‘Charmed!' he said. ‘Delighted. Capital. Splendid. Only too pleased.'

And that (concluded the Crumpet) is the inner history of the Stiffham-Spettisbury wedding which we have just seen solemnized at St George's, Hanover Square. And you can understand now what I meant when I said that what a man needs in this world is not virtue, character, steadiness, and nobility of mind – or I should have done better myself– but luck. It was his faith in the Luck of the Stiffhams that led young Pongo Twistleton-Twistleton to take the short end from Oofy Prosser against all the ruling of the form-book, and I honour him for it and am delighted that he has cleaned up.