He, Purkiss, then withdrew.
His departure gave Bingo the opportunity for some intensive thinking. And as you will readily appreciate, intensive thinking was just what the situation could do with a spot of.
It was on Mrs. Bingo’s reactions that he found himself brooding for the most part. There were many reasons why it cut him to the quick to be forced to relinquish his grasp on the tiller of Wee Tots. The salary, though small, had come under the head of manna from heaven, and the holding of the post had filled him with a spiritual pride such as he had not experienced since he won the Woolly-Mat-Tatting Prize at his first kindergarten. But what really got in amongst him was the thought of what Mrs. Bingo was going to say on hearing the news.
The Bingo ménage, as you are no doubt aware, is one that has been conducted from its inception on one hundred per cent Romeo and Juliet lines. She is devoted to him, and his ingrowing love for her is such that you would be justified in comparing them to a couple of turtle doves. Nevertheless, he was ill at ease. Any male turtle dove will tell you that, if conditions are right, the female turtle dove can spit on her hands and throw her weight about like Donald Duck. And it needed no diagram to show Bingo that conditions here were just right. Mrs. Bingo had taken a lot of trouble to get him this job, and when she found that through sheer fatheadedness he had chucked it away she would, something told him, have a lot of comment to make.
Little wonder, then, that the barometer of his soul pointed steadily to “Stormy”. Out of the night that covered him, black as the pit from pole to pole, one solitary bit of goose presented itself—the fact that the head of the family was away at the moment, visiting friends in the country. This at least enabled him to postpone the springing of the bad tidings.
But the thought that the hour of that springing must inevitably come kept him in pretty much of a doodah, and to distract his mind he plunged into the life of pleasure. And it was at a bottle-party a couple of nights later that he found himself going like a breeze with a female of considerable attractions, and with indescribable emotion learned that her name was Jobson, Bella Mae.
It altered the whole outlook, enabling him to get an entirely new angle on the situation.
Until this moment, he had been feeling that his only chance of wangling a happy ending would be to put up a good, carefully constructed, plausible story. He had planned, accordingly, on Mrs. Bingo’s return, to inform her quite frankly that he had been relieved of his portfolio for giving Purkiss’s girl-friend the raspberry, and then to go on to explain why he had taken this stand. He had felt, he would say, that he owed it to her not to allow himself to be closeted with strange women. Too often, he would tell her, female visitors pat editors on the knee or even straighten their ties, and his pure soul had shrunk from the thought of anything like that happening to a sober married man like himself. It might get by, or it might not get by. It was a straight, sporting venture.
But now he saw that he could do much better than this. He could obviate all necessity for such explanations by retaining his job.
When I said that he found himself going like a breeze with this chipmunk-fancier, I used the expression in its most exact sense. I don’t know if any of you have ever seen Bingo when he was going really well, but I can testify that at such times he does his stuff like a master. Irresistible charm about sums it up. Think of Ronald Colman, and you have the idea. Well, you will understand what I mean when I tell you that as early as the second cocktail B. M. Jobson was saying how lonely she felt in this big, strange city, and he was saying “There, there” and pointing out that this was a state of things that could readily be adjusted. They parted in a flurry of telephone numbers and good wishes, and he went home feeling that the thing was in the bag.
What he proposed to do, I need scarcely explain, was to keep after this tomato and bump up their ripening friendship to a point where she would be able to refuse him nothing. He would then tear off his whiskers and reveal himself as the editor of Wee Tots, whereupon she would let him have her frightful bilge on easy terms and he would go to Purkiss and say: “Well, Purkiss, and now how about it?” Upon which, of course, Purkiss would immediately fold him in a close embrace and issue a reprieve at the foot of the scaffold.
To this end, accordingly, he devoted all his energies. He took Bella Mae Jobson to the Zoo, the Tower of London, Madame Tussaud’s, five matinees, seven lunches and four dinners. He also gave her a bunch of white heather, several packets of cigarettes, eleven lots of roses and a signed photograph. And came a day when she said she really must buy back. She was sailing for America on the following Wednesday, she said, and on the Tuesday she was going to give a lovely luncheon-party at her hotel suite and he must be the guest of honour.
Bingo accepted effusively. The moment, he realized, had come. He had got the thing all worked out. He would stick on till the other guests had gone and then, while she was still mellowed with lunch, spring his big scene. He didn’t see how it could miss.
It was only when a telegram arrived from Mrs. Bingo on the Monday morning, announcing that she would be returning that evening, that he began to appreciate that there might be complications which he had not foreseen.
In normal circs., the return of the wife of his b. after a longish absence would have been enough to send Bingo singing about the house. But now he didn’t emit so much as a single bar, and it was with a drawn and thoughtful face that he met her at the station round about six-thirty.
“Well, well, well,” he said heartily, or as heartily as he could manage, embracing her on the platform. “This is fine! This is great! This is terrific! And what a surprise, what? I thought you were planning to put in rather longer in the provinces.”
Mrs. Bingo registered astonishment.
“What, miss our wedding anniversary?” she cried. She paused, and he became aware that she was eyeing him fairly narrowly. “You hadn’t forgotten that to-morrow was our wedding anniversary?”
Bingo, who had given a sharp, convulsive leap like a gaffed salmon, reassembled himself.
“Me?” he cried. “I should say not. I’ve been ticking off the days on the calendar.”
“So have I,” said Mrs. Bingo. “Oh, Bingo, darling, we’ll have lunch to-morrow at that little place near Charing Cross, where we had our wedding breakfast. And we’ll pretend we’ve just been married. Won’t it be fun!”
Bingo swallowed a couple of times. He was having trouble with his Adam’s apple.
“Stupendous,” he said.
“Only it won’t be quite the same, of course, because then you hadn’t an important job to hurry back to.”
“No,” said Bingo.
“How is everything at the office, by the way?”
“Oh, fine.”
“Is Mr. Purkiss still pleased with your work?”
“Fascinated,” said Bingo.
But he spoke absently, and it was with a heavy heart that he rose next morning and toyed listlessly with a fried egg and bacon. Nor was he any chirpier when he reached the editorial sanctum. He could see no daylight.
It would be possible, of course, to pop in on Bella Mae in the course of the afternoon, but he saw only too clearly that that would not be the same thing at all. The way he had had it planned out, he was to have been the life and soul of the gathering all through lunch, winning all hearts with his gay wit; and then, when the last guest had tottered away, holding his sides, and his hostess was thanking him brokenly for making her party such a success, he would have given her the works. It would be very different barging in on her at four o’clock and trying to swing the deal in cold blood.
And then, after he had been sitting for a goodish time with his head in his hands, exercising every cell in his brain to its utmost capacity, he received an inspiration and saw what Napoleon would have done. A moment later, he was on the telephone, with Mrs. Bingo’s silvery voice are-you-there-ing at the other end.
“Hullo, darling,” he said.
“Hullo, angel,” said Mrs. Bingo.
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“Hullo, precious,” said Bingo.
“Hullo, sweetie-pie,” said Mrs. Bingo.
“I say, moon of my delight,” said Bingo, “listen. A rather awkward thing has happened, and I should like your advice as to how to act for the best. There’s a most important litterateuse we are anxious to land for the old sheet, and the question has arisen of my taking her out to lunch to-day.”
“Oh, Bingo!”
“Now, my personal inclination is to tell her to go to blazes.”
“Oh, no, you mustn’t do that.”
“Yes, I think I will. ‘Nuts to you, litterateuse? I shall say.”
“No, Bingo, please! Of course you must take her to lunch.”
“But how about our binge?”
“We can have dinner instead.”
“Dinner?”
“Yes.”
Bingo allowed himself to be persuaded. “Now, that’s an idea,” he said. “There, I rather think, you’ve got something.”
“Dinner will be just as good.”
“Better. More suited to unbridled revelry.”
“You won’t have to hurry off after dinner.”
“That’s right.”
“We’ll go to a theatre and supper afterwards.”
“We will, indeed,” said Bingo, feeling how simple these things were, if only one used a bit of tact. “That, as I see it, is the exact programme.”
“And, as a matter of fact,” said Mrs. Bingo, “it’s really rather convenient, because now I shall be able to go to Miss Jobson’s luncheon-party, after all.”
Bingo swayed like a jelly in a high wind.
“Miss who’s luncheon-party?”
“Jobson. You wouldn’t know her. An American writer named Bella Mae Jobson. Mrs. Purkiss rang up a little while ago, saying she was going and could I come along, because Miss Jobson has long been an admirer of my work. Of course, I refused. But now it’s all right, and I shall be able to go. She sails to-morrow, so this is our last chance of meeting. Well, good-bye, my poppet, I mustn’t keep you from your work any longer.”
If Mrs. Bingo supposed that Bingo, having hung up the receiver, immediately returned to the task of assembling wholesome literature for the kiddies, she was gravely in error. For possibly a quarter of an hour after she had rung off, he sat motionless in his chair, using up time which Purkiss was paying him for in staring sightlessly before him and breathing in quick jerks. His whole aspect was that of a man who has unexpectedly been struck by lightning.
This, it seemed to him, was the end. He couldn’t possibly roll up to the Jobson lunch, if Mrs. Bingo was going to be there. You see, in order not to divert her mind from the main issue, he had avoided informing Bella Mae that he was married. Rightly or wrongly, he had felt that better results were to be obtained by keeping this news item under his hat. And if she lugged Mrs. Bingo up to him and said, “Oh, Mr. Little, I wonder if you know Miss Rosie M. Banks?” and he replied, “Oh, rather. She’s my wife,” only embarrassment could ensue.
No, there was only one thing to be done. He must abandon all idea of retaining his job and go back to the plan he had originally sketched out, of explaining to Mrs. Bingo why he had refused to see Bella Mae Jobson that day when she called at the office. This, he felt with the first stirring of optimism which so far had animated him, might go pretty well after the former had met the latter. For Bella Mae, as I have said, was a female of considerable personal attractions. She had a lissome form, surmounted by a map of elfin charm and platinum-blonde hair. Stranger things had happened than that Mrs. Bingo might approve his prudence in declining to be cooked up with all that sex-appeal.
Feeling somewhat better, he went out and dispatched a telegram to the Jobson, regretting his inability to be present at the festivities. And he was about to return to the office, when a sudden thought struck him amidships and he had to clutch at a passing lamp-post to keep himself from falling in his tracks.
He had remembered that signed photograph.
The whole question of signed photographs is one that bulks largely in married life. When husbands bestow them on external females, wives want to know why. And the present case was complicated by the fact that in doing the signing Bingo—with the best motives—had rather spread himself. Mere cordiality would have been bad enough, and he had gone a shade beyond the cordial. And the finished product was probably standing on the Jobson’s mantelpiece and would be the first thing that Mrs. Bingo would see on entering the other’s suite.
It was not an enterprise to which he in any sense of the phrase looked forward, but he saw that, if a major disaster was to be avoided and the solidity of the Bingo-Mrs. Bingo axis to be maintained, he would have to get hold of that photograph well in advance of the luncheon hour and remove it.
I don’t know if you have ever called at an hotel with a view to pinching a signed photograph from one of the suites. If not, I may tell you that technical difficulties present themselves at the very outset—notably the problem of how the hell to get in. Bingo, inquiring at the desk, learned that Miss Jobson was not at home, and was for a moment encouraged by the information. It was only after he had sneaked up the stairs and was standing outside the locked door that he realized that this was not an end but a beginning.
And then, just as he was feeling that he was a mere puppet in the grip of a remorseless fate and that it wasn’t any use going on struggling, he saw a maid coming along the corridor, and remembered that maids have keys.
It was a moment for exerting that charm of his to the uttermost. He switched it on and allowed it to play upon the maid like a searchlight.
“Oh, hullo, maid,” he said. “Good morning.”
“Good morning, sir,” said the maid.
“Gosh!” said Bingo. “You have a nice, kind, open, tenderhearted face. I wonder if you would do something for me. First, however,” he said, shoving across a ten-bob note, “take this.”
“Thank you, sir,” said the maid.
“The facts, briefly,” said Bingo, “are these. I am lunching to-day with Miss Jobson.”
“She’s out,” said the maid. “I saw her go along the passage with the little dog.”
“Exactly,” said Bingo. “And there you have put your finger on the nub. She’s out, and I want to get in. I hate waiting in hotel lobbies. You know how it is. Bores come up and tell you their troubles. Cadgers come up and try to touch you. I shall be happier in Miss Jobson’s suite. Could you possibly—here he ladled out another currency bill—“let me in?”
“Certainly, sir,” said the maid, and did so.
“Thanks,” said Bingo. “Heaven bless you, my dear old maid. Lovely day.”
“Beautiful,” said the maid.
He had scarcely crossed the threshold before he perceived that he had done the shrewd thing in sweetening her. He was a quid down, and he could ill spare quids, but it had been worth every penny of the money. There, as he had anticipated, was the photograph, plumb spang in the middle of the mantelpiece where it could not have failed to catch the eye of an incoming wife. To snatch it up and trouser it was with him the work of a moment, and he was just turning to the door to make the quick get away, when his attention was drawn to a row of bottles on the sideboard. There they stood, smiling up at him, and as he was feeling more than a little faint after his ordeal he decided to have one for the road before withdrawing.
So he sloshed some Italian vermouth into a glass, and sloshed some French vermouth on top of it, and was reaching for the gin, to start sloshing that, when his heart did three double somersaults and a swan-dive. There had come to his ears the rattle of a key in the door.
It is difficult to say what would really have been the right thing to do in the circumstances. Some chaps, I suppose, would just have stayed put and tried to pass it off with jovial breeziness. Others might have jumped out of the window. But he wasn’t feeling equal to jovial breeziness and the suite was on the fourth floor, so he took a middle course. He cleared the sofa in a single bound, and had sca
rcely gone to earth behind it when the door opened.
It was not Bella Mae Jobson who entered, but his old pal the maid. She was escorting another early popper-in. Through the gap at the bottom of his zareba he could see the concluding portion of a pair of trousers and a pair of boots. And when the lips above these trousers spoke, he found that this was no stranger but a familiar acquaintance. The voice was the voice of Purkiss.
“Thank you, my dear,” said Purkiss.
“Thank you, sir,” said the maid, leading Bingo to suppose that once more money had passed into her possession. He found himself brooding on the irony of the thing. Such a big day for the maid, I mean, and such a rotten one for him.
Purkiss coughed.
“I seem to be early.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then, perhaps, to fill in the time, I might be taking Miss Jobson’s dog for a run.”
“Miss Jobson’s out with the dog now, sir.”
“Oh?” said Purkiss.
There was a momentary silence, and then the maid said that that was funny, and Purkiss asked what was funny.
“There ought to be another gentleman here,” said the maid. “But I don’t see him. Oh yes,” she proceeded, as Bingo, who for some little while now had been inhaling fluff in rather large quantities, gave a hearty sneeze, “there he is, behind the sofa.”
And the next moment Bingo was aware of an eye peering down it him from the upper regions. Purkiss’s eye. “Mr. Little!” cried Purkiss.
Bingo rose, feeling that it was useless to dissemble further.
“Ah, Purkiss,” he said distantly, for they were not on good terms, and with what dignity he could muster, which was not much, he rose and made for the door.
“Hey!” cried Purkiss. “Just a minute.”
Bingo carried on doorwards.
“If you wish to speak to me, Purkiss,” he said, “you will find me in the bar.”
But it was not thither that he immediately proceeded. His need for a bracer was urgent, but even more than a bracer he wanted air. He had been under the sofa only about three minutes, but as nobody had swept there for nearly six years quite a lot of mixed substances had found their way into his lungs. He was, indeed, feeling more like a dustbin than a man. He passed through the lobby and stood outside the door of the hotel, drinking in great draughts of the life-giving, and after a while began to feel better.