'Sir?' cooed Bowles.
'Bring me six bones and a corkscrew.'
'Very good, sir.'
Bowles retired, and I bounded upstairs and flung open the door of my sitting-room.
'Great Scott!' I said, blankly.
The place was a sea of Pekingese dogs. Later investigation reduced their numbers to six, but in that first moment there seemed to be hundreds. Goggling eyes met mine wherever I looked. The room was a forest of waving tails. With his back against the mantelpiece, smoking placidly, stood Ukridge.
'Hallo, laddie!' he said, with a genial wave of the hand, as if to make me free of the place. 'You're just in time. I've got to dash off and catch a train in a quarter of an hour. Stop it, you mutts!' he bellowed, and the six Pekingese, who had been barking steadily since my arrival, stopped in mid-yap, and were still. Ukridge's personality seemed to exercise a magnetism over the animal kingdom, from ex-butlers to Pekes, which bordered on the uncanny. 'I'm off to Sheep's Cray, in Kent. Taken a cottage there.'
'Are you going to live there?'
'Yes.'
'But what about your aunt?'
'Oh, I've left her. Life is stern and life is earnest, and if I mean to make a fortune I've got to bustle about and not stay cooped up in a place like Wimbledon.'
'Something in that.'
'Besides which, she told me the very sight of me made her sick and she never wanted to see me again.'
I might have guessed, directly I saw him, that some upheaval had taken place. The sumptuous raiment which had made him such a treat to the eye at our last meeting was gone, and he was back in his pre-Wimbledon costume, which was, as the advertisements say, distinctly individual. Over grey flannel trousers, a golf coat, and a brown sweater he wore like a royal robe a bright yellow mackintosh. His collar had broken free from its stud and showed a couple of inches of bare neck. His hair was disordered, and his masterful nose was topped by a pair of steel-rimmed pince-nez cunningly attached to his flapping ears with ginger-beer wire. His whole appearance spelled revolt.
Bowles manifested himself with a plateful of bones.
'That's right. Chuck 'em down on the floor.'
'Very good, sir.'
'I like that fellow,' said Ukridge, as the door closed. 'We had a dashed interesting talk before you came in. Did you know he had a cousin on the music-halls?'
'He hasn't confided in me much.'
'He's promised me an introduction to him later on. May be useful to be in touch with a man who knows the ropes. You see, laddie, I've hit on the most amazing scheme.' He swept his arm round dramatically, overturning a plaster cast of the Infant Samuel at Prayer. 'All right, all right, you can mend it with glue or something, and anyway, you're probably better without it. Yessir, I've hit on a great scheme. The idea of a thousand years.'
'What's that?'
'I'm going to train dogs.'
'Train dogs?'
'For the music-hall stage. Dog acts, you know. Performing dogs. Pots of money in it. I start in a modest way with these six. When I've taught 'em a few tricks, I sell them to a fellow in the profession for a large sum and buy twelve more. I train those, sell 'em for a large sum, and with the money buy twenty-four more. I train those –'
'Here, wait a minute.' My head was beginning to swim. I had a vision of England paved with Pekingese dogs, all doing tricks. 'How do you know you'll be able to sell them?'
'Of course I shall. The demand's enormous. Supply can't cope with it. At a conservative estimate I should think I ought to scoop in four or five thousand pounds the first year. That, of course, is before the business really starts to expand.'
'I see.'
'When I get going properly, with a dozen assistants under me and an organized establishment, I shall begin to touch the big money. What I'm aiming at is a sort of Dog's College out in the country somewhere. Big place with a lot of ground. Regular classes and a set curriculum. Large staff, each member of it with so many dogs under his care, me looking on and superintending. Why, once the thing starts moving it'll run itself, and all I shall have to do will be to sit back and endorse the cheques. It isn't as if I would have to confine my operations to England. The demand for performing dogs is universal throughout the civilized world. America wants performing dogs. Australia wants performing dogs. Africa could do with a few, I've no doubt. My aim, laddie, is gradually to get a monopoly of the trade. I want everybody who needs a performing dog of any description to come automatically to me. And I'll tell you what, laddie. If you like to put up a bit of capital, I'll let you in on the ground floor.'
'No, thanks.'
'All right. Have it your own way. Only don't forget that there was a fellow who put nine hundred dollars into the Ford Car business when it was starting and he collected a cool forty million. I say, is that clock right? Great Scott! I'll be missing my train. Help me mobilize these dashed animals.'
Five minutes later, accompanied by the six Pekingese and bearing about him a pound of my tobacco, three pairs of my socks, and the remains of a bottle of whisky, Ukridge departed in a taxi-cab for Charing Cross Station to begin his life-work.
Perhaps six weeks passed, six quiet Ukridgeless weeks, and then one morning I received an agitated telegram. Indeed, it was not so much a telegram as a cry of anguish. In every word of it there breathed the tortured spirit of a great man who has battled in vain against overwhelming odds. It was the sort of telegram which Job might have sent off after a lengthy session with Bildad the Shuhite:
Come here immediately, laddie. Life and death matter, old horse. Desperate situation. Don't fail me.
It stirred me like a bugle: I caught the next train.
The White Cottage, Sheep's Cray – destined, presumably, to become in future years an historic spot and a Mecca for dog-loving pilgrims – was a small and battered building standing near the main road to London at some distance from the village. I found it without difficulty, for Ukridge seemed to have achieved a certain celebrity in the neighbourhood; but to effect an entry was a harder task. I rapped for a full minute without result, then shouted; and I was about to conclude that Ukridge was not at home when the door suddenly opened. As I was just giving a final bang at the moment, I entered the house in a manner reminiscent of one of the Ballet Russe practising a new and difficult step.
'Sorry, old horse,' said Ukridge. 'Wouldn't have kept you waiting if I'd known who it was. Thought you were Gooch, the grocer – goods supplied to the value of six pounds three and a penny.'
'I see.'
'He keeps hounding me for his beastly money,' said Ukridge, bitterly, as he led the way into the sitting-room. 'It's a little hard. Upon my Sam it's a little hard. I come down here to inaugurate a vast business and do the natives a bit of good by establishing a growing industry in their midst, and the first thing you know they turn round and bite the hand that was going to feed them. I've been hampered and rattled by these blood-suckers ever since I got here. A little trust, a little sympathy, a little of the good old give-and-take spirit – that was all I asked. And what happened? They wanted a bit on account! Kept bothering me for a bit on account, I'll trouble you, just when I needed all my thoughts and all my energy and every ounce of concentration at my command for my extraordinarily difficult and delicate work. I couldn't give them a bit on account. Later on, if they had only exercised reasonable patience, I would no doubt have been in a position to settle their infernal bills fifty times over. But the time was not ripe. I reasoned with the men. I said, "Here am I, a busy man, trying hard to educate six Pekingese dogs for the music-hall stage, and you come distracting my attention and impairing my efficiency by babbling about a bit on account. It isn't the pull-together spirit," I said. "It isn't the spirit that wins to wealth. These narrow petty-cash ideas can never make for success." But no, they couldn't see it. They started calling here at all hours and waylaying me in the public highways till life became an absolute curse. And now what do you think has happened?'
'What?'
'The dogs.'
br />
'Got distemper?'
'No. Worse. My landlord's pinched them as security for his infernal rent! Sneaked the stock. Tied up the assets. Crippled the business at the very outset. Have you ever in your life heard of anything so dastardly? I know I agreed to pay the damned rent weekly and I'm about six weeks behind, but, my gosh! surely a man with a huge enterprise on his hands isn't supposed to have to worry about these trifles when he's occupied with the most delicate – Well, I put all that to old Nickerson, but a fat lot of good it did. So then I wired to you.'
'Ah!' I said, and there was a brief and pregnant pause.
'I thought,' said Ukridge, meditatively, 'that you might be able to suggest somebody I could touch.'
He spoke in a detached and almost casual way, but his eye was gleaming at me significantly, and I avoided it with a sense of guilt. My finances at the moment were in their customary unsettled condition – rather more so, in fact, than usual, owing to unsatisfactory speculations at Kempton Park on the previous Saturday; and it seemed to me that, if ever there was a time for passing the buck, this was it. I mused tensely. It was an occasion for quick thinking.
'George Tupper!' I cried, on the crest of a brain-wave.
'George Tupper?' echoed Ukridge, radiantly, his gloom melting like a fog before the sun. 'The very man, by Gad! It's a most amazing thing, but I never thought of him. George Tupper, of course! Big-hearted George, the old school-chum. He'll do it like a shot and won't miss the money. These Foreign Office blokes have always got a spare tenner or two tucked away in the old sock. They pinch it out of the public funds. Rush back to town, laddie, with all speed, get hold of Tuppy, lush him up, and bite his ear for twenty quid. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.'
I had been convinced that George Tupper would not fail us, nor did he. He parted without a murmur – even with enthusiasm. The consignment was one that might have been made to order for him. As a boy, George used to write sentimental poetry for the school magazine, and now he is the sort of man who is always starting subscription lists and getting up memorials and presentations. He listened to my story with the serious official air which these Foreign Office fellows put on when they are deciding whether to declare war on Switzerland or send a firm note to San Marino, and was reaching for his cheque-book before I had been speaking two minutes. Ukridge's sad case seemed to move him deeply.
'Too bad,' said George. 'So he is training dogs, is he? Well, it seems very unfair that, if he has at last settled down to real work, he should be hampered by financial difficulties at the outset. We ought to do something practical for him. After all, a loan of twenty pounds cannot relieve the situation permanently.'
'I think you're a bit optimistic if you're looking on it as a loan.'
'What Ukridge needs is capital.'
'He thinks that, too. So does Gooch, the grocer.'
'Capital,' repeated George Tupper, firmly, as if he were reasoning with the plenipotentiary of some Great Power. 'Every venture requires capital at first.' He frowned thoughtfully. 'Where can we obtain capital for Ukridge?'
'Rob a bank.'
George Tupper's face cleared.
'I have it!' he said. 'I will go straight over to Wimbledon tonight and approach his aunt.'
'Aren't you forgetting that Ukridge is about as popular with her as a cold welsh rabbit?'
'There may be a temporary estrangement, but if I tell her the facts and impress upon her that Ukridge is really making a genuine effort to earn a living –'
'Well, try it if you like. But she will probably set the parrot on to you.'
'It will have to be done diplomatically, of course. It might be as well if you did not tell Ukridge what I propose to do. I do not wish to arouse hopes which may not be fulfilled.'
Also available in Arrow
Ukridge
P.G. Wodehouse
Money makes the world go round for Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge – and when there isn't enough of it, the world just has to spin a bit faster.
Ever on the lookout for a quick buck, a solid gold fortune, or at least a plausible little scrounge, the irrepressible Ukridge gives con men a bad name. Looking like an animated blob of mustard in his bright yellow raincoat, he invests time, passion and energy (but seldom actual cash) in a series of increasingly bizarre money-making schemes. Finance for a dog college? It's yours. Shares in an accident syndicate? Easily arranged. Promoting a kind-hearted heavyweight boxer? A snip.
Poor Corky Corcoran, Ukridge's old school chum and confidant, trails through these pages in the ebullient wake of Wodehouse's most disreputable but endearing hero and hopes to escape with his shirt at least.
Also available in Arrow
The Inimitable Jeeves
P.G. Wodehouse
A Jeeves and Wooster collection
A classic collection of stories featuring some of the funniest episodes in the life of Bertie Wooster, gentleman, and Jeeves, his gentleman's gentleman – in which Bertie's terrifying Aunt Agatha stalks the pages, seeking whom she may devour, while Bertie's friend Bingo Little falls in love with seven different girls in succession (he marries the last, the bestselling romantic novelist Rosie M. Banks). And Bertie, with Jeeves's help, just evades the clutches of the terrifying Honoria Glossop ... At its heart is one of Wodehouse's most delicious stories, 'The Great Sermon Handicap'.
Also available in Arrow
Blandings Castle
P.G. Wodehouse
A Blandings collection
The ivied walls of Blandings Castle have seldom glowed as sunnily as in these wonderful stories – but there are snakes in the rolling parkland ready to nip Clarence, the absent-minded Ninth Earl of Emsworth, when he least expects it.
For a start the Empress of Blandings, in the running for her first prize in the Fat Pigs Class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show, is off her food – and can only be coaxed back to the trough by a call in her own language. Then there is the feud with Head Gardener McAllister, aided by Clarence's sister, the terrifying Lady Constance, and the horrible prospect of the summer fête – twin problems solved by the arrival of a delightfully rebellious little girl from London. But first of all there is the vexed matter of the custody of the pumpkin.
Skipping an ocean and a continent, Wodehouse also treats us to some unputdownable stories of excess from the monstrous Golden Age of Hollywood.
Also available in Arrow
Joy in the Morning
P.G. Wodehouse
A Jeeves and Wooster novel
Trapped in rural Steeple Bumpleigh, a man less stalwart than Bertie Wooster would probably give way at the knees.
For among those present were Florence Craye, to whom Bertie had once been engaged and her new fiancé 'Stilton' Cheesewright, who sees Bertie as a snake in the grass. And that biggest blot on the landscape, Edwin the Boy Scout, who is busy doing acts of kindness out of sheer malevolence.
All Bertie's forebodings are fully justified. For in his efforts to oil the wheels of commerce, promote the course of true love and avoid the consequences of a vendetta, he becomes the prey of all and sundry. In fact only Jeeves can save him...
Also available in Arrow
Uncle Fred in the Springtime
P.G. Wodehouse
A Blandings novel
Uncle Fred is one of the hottest earls that ever donned a coronet. Or as he crisply said, 'There are no limits, literally none, to what I can achieve in the springtime.'
Even so, his gifts are stretched to the limit when he is urged by Lord Emsworth to save his prize pig, the Empress of Blandings, from the enforced slimming cure of the haughty Duke of Dunstable. Pongo Twistleton knows his debonair but wild uncle shouldn't really be allowed at large – especially when disguised as a brain surgeon. He fears the worst. And his fears are amply justified.
Also available in Arrow
Right Ho, Jeeves
P.G. Wodehouse
A Jeeves and Wooster novel
Gussie Fink-Nottle's kno
wledge of the common newt is unparalleled. Drop him in a pond of newts and his behaviour will be exemplary, but introduce him to a girl and watch him turn pink, yammer, and suddenly stampede for the great open spaces. Even with Madeline Bassett, who feels that the stars are God's daisy chain, his tongue is tied in reef-knots. And his chum Tuppy Glossop isn't getting on much better with Madeline's delectable friend Angela.
With so many broken hearts lying about him, Bertie Wooster can't sit idly by. The happiness of a pal – two pals, in fact – is at stake. But somehow Bertie's best-laid plans land everyone in the soup, and so it's just as well that Jeeves is ever at hand to apply his bulging brains to the problems of young love.
Also available in Arrow
The Clicking of Cuthbert
P.G. Wodehouse
A Golf collection
The Oldest Member knows everything that has ever happened on the golf course – and a great deal more besides.
Take the story of Cuthbert, for instance. He's helplessly in love with Adeline, but what use are his holes in one when she's in thrall to Culture and prefers rising young writers to winners of the French Open? But enter a Great Russian Novelist with a strange passion, and Cuthbert's prospects are transformed. Then look at what happens to young Mitchell Holmes, who misses short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows. His career seems on the skids – but can golf redeem it?