'You don't think I'm going to squeal to Connie?'
'Aren't you?'
'Of course I'm not.'
'But I'm an impostor.'
'And why shouldn't you be? Practically everyone else who comes here is. Man and boy I have seen more impostors at Blandings Castle than you could shake a stick at in a month of Sundays. It would have surprised me greatly if you hadn't been an impostor. You've gone to endless trouble to get here. Do you think I'm going to dash the cup from your lips? Secrecy and silence, my wench, secrecy and silence.'
Vanessa was visibly moved.
'I call that pretty good of you.'
'Not at all.'
'I don't know what to say.'
'Say nothing. And I'll impress it upon Beach that he must do the same. His lips must be sealed. I'll go and seal them now,' said Gally.
He had scarcely trotted off, all zeal and willingness to oblige, when Wilbur Trout appeared on the roof.
Wilbur was looking pale and anxious. He had just come from the portrait gallery, where he had been scrutinizing the reclining nude with a good deal less enthusiasm than he usually accorded it.
At the time when she had outlined it, Wilbur, it may be remembered, had expressed wholehearted approval of Vanessa's scheme for the picture's removal, but with the passing of the hours doubts had set in. Except in the matter of marrying blondes he was not an adventurous man, and contemplation of the shape of things to come, as sketched out by Vanessa, had had the worst effect on his nervous system.
When, therefore, her opening words as he joined her on the roof were 'Willie, we'll have to get that picture tonight', it was with panic rather than joy that his heart leaped up. His emotions were not unlike those which he had experienced in mid-air as he dived into the Plaza fountain—regret that he had undertaken something which had seemed a good idea at the time, and the disturbing realization that it was too late to go back now.
Having gulped twice, he said:
'Why the hurry?'
'Essential, I'm afraid. If Lady Constance finds out—'
'Finds out what?'
'Something about me.'
'What about you?'
'Something Gally Threepwood has discovered. If she hears of it, I shall be thrown out of the place on my ear not more than sixty seconds later. He says he won't breathe a word, but you can't be sure. It's such a good story that he may not be able to resist telling it. No, we can't take a chance. Chesney will have got to London by now. I'll phone him this afternoon and tell him to be waiting under the window at two in the morning. You can go to sleep till then. I'll knock on your door and wake you. What's the matter? You don't seem pleased.'
'Oh, I am.'
'You ought to be. Think of having that picture for your very own. You ought to be strewing roses from your hat. Though Genevieve would say "woses", wouldn't she?'
'She always did.'
'No wonder you miss her,' said Vanessa.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The alarm clock beside Vanessa's bed tinkled softly, announcing that the hour was two in the morning, and she sat up and brushed the last vestiges of sleep from her attractive eyes. She had retired early in order to approach the tasks of the night with a clear mind, and it was with a clear mind that she now examined the programme in detail and found it satisfactory. She had the torch and the stout cord which is so essential when pictures of stout nudes in stout frames have to be lowered from second storey windows, and in addition to these she had remembered to equip herself with a large flask in case her colleague's morale should require building up. It was a possibility that unquestionably had to be budgetted for. At their last meeting she had noticed that he seemed to be suffering from an attack of nerves, but nothing, she felt, that a good flask could not cure.
Strange, she was thinking, that a big strong man who had once won fame on the football field should be so timorous in a situation which she, a poor weak woman, was regarding merely as a pleasant and stimulating deviation from the dull round of everyday life, but timorous apparently he was. Where she looked forward with bright anticipation to what lay before them, he, unless her senses deceived her, was what Lady Macbeth would have called infirm of purpose. A flask, accordingly, would seem to be indispensable.
As she slipped a becoming peignoir over her pyjamas, she mused on Wilbur and was surprised at the warmth and tenderness with which she found herself thinking of him.
At the time of their brief engagement he had aroused in her only a mild liking, but in these last days at Blandings Castle liking had become something more.
No question that for her he was an easy man to get along with—pleasant, amiable and speaking her own language. Not too many brains, either, which was an added attraction, for she mistrusted clever men. Too bad, she thought, that he was such an answer to the gold-digger's prayer. What he needed was someone to look after him, to protect him, to check that disastrous tendency of his to make a fool of himself at the slightest opportunity, and unfortunately there was no chance that she would be able to take on the assignment, for once in possession of the picture he would be off with it to New York, and the next thing she would hear would be that he had married another repulsive female and more work for the divorce lawyers. It saddened her.
However, brooding on the matrimonial future of Wilbur Trout was not business. Briskly she collected cord, torch and flask and started to grope her way along the dark corridor.
Wilbur's room was the one in which, according to legend, an Emsworth of the fifteenth century had dismembered his wife with a battle axe, as husbands in those days were so apt to do when the strain of married life became too much for them. The unfortunate woman must have experienced a good deal of apprehension when she heard him at the door, but not much more than did Wilbur when Vanessa's knock sounded in the silent night. Not even Lord Emsworth at the top of his table-upsetting form could have produced a deeper impression. After lying awake for several hours he had at last fallen into a doze, and the knock had coincided with the point in his nightmare when a bomb had exploded under his feet.
What was causing Wilbur's lack of enthusiasms for tonight's operation was principally the fact that it was at Blandings Castle that it was to be carried out. He feared interruption by the castle's chatelaine. What the Duke had described as Lady Constance's habit of coming the grande dame over people had daunted him from their first meeting, when she had been in a mood much the same as that in which she had greeted John. In his wide experience he had never encountered anything like her before, and what was chilling him as he answered Vanessa's knock was the thought that she might join them just as they were getting down to the work of the night. His imagination pictured her striding into the portrait gallery with a 'What the hell goes on here?', or whatever it is that British aristocrats said when they found their guests looting the premises at two in the morning. Contemplating his chances of getting through till daybreak without a nervous breakdown, he thought very little of them.
It was consequently with profound relief that he saw the flask, and not for the first time since their reunion he was conscious of a surge of admiration for this super-efficient girl who thought of everything.
'Gimme,' he said, for at times like this he was a man of few words, and she gave it to him. What seemed a torchlight procession wandering through his interior had the effect of banishing temporarily the terror beneath which he had cringed, and it was with quite a gay insouciance that he said:
'You look like a million dollars in that bath robe.'
It was a stately compliment, and Vanessa accepted it gratefully.
'It happens to be a peignoir, Willie, but thanks for the kind words.'
'Genevieve has one rather like that.'
Vanessa's lips tightened, but she controlled herself. There was nothing in her voice to show that he had touched on a distasteful subject.
'Has she now? That's very interesting. Tell me more about Genevieve.'
The request seemed to find Wilbur at a loss. He fingered his
chin dubiously.
'There isn't much to tell.'
'Search the memory.'
'She was a great looker.'
'I'll bet.'
'Blonde.'
'I was betting on that, too.'
'She hadn't much to say.'
'One of those strong, silent girls.'
'Except when she got mad at me.'
'That made her chatty?'
'Generally. Though sometimes she would just throw things at me.'
'What sort of things?'
'Oh, anything that came to hand.'
'Woses, perhaps?'
'And she used to lock me out a good deal. I remember one time we got arguing about something at a night club, and she beat it back to the apartment, and when I got there she had smashed every stick of the furniture with a poker, all the pictures and everything. "Hi, honey", she said. "I've been cleaning house." Then she chased me out with the poker.'
'And then she got a divorce?'
'Soon after that.'
'On what grounds?'
'Inhuman cruelty.'
'Poor soul, how she must have suffered.'
'But of course the real reason was that she had got this crush on this trumpeter.'
'Oh yes, I was forgetting the trumpeter. Not in a name band, I think you told me.'
'No, that's what puzzled me. I always thought she was kind of choosy about who she mixed with.'
'Very much the lady?'
'Oh, quite.'
'Well, it ought to be some consolation to you to think that she's chasing him with a poker now. Finished that flask?'
'There's still a little left.'
'Save it for a celebration later. Come on,' said Vanessa. 'Let's go.'
It had been her intention to confine the illumination of the proceedings to the torch, but it's thin gleam made the portrait gallery seem so sinister and ghostly that in deference to Wilbur's tremors she switched on the light. She could hardly have done anything more encouraging to those tremors. The sudden brilliance threatened to undo all the stiffening of the backbone he had derived from the flask's liquid fire. It revealed rows of Emsworth ancestors staring out of their frames with a silent rebuke which had the worst effect on his nervous system. He had not been present when the Duke in an inspired flight had compared them to the occupants of the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's, but had he been he would have endorsed the critique with the utmost fervour. The Earls, in his opinion, were bad enough, but their Countesses eclipsed them. To his fevered eye they all looked like Lady Constance's twin sisters.
'Gimme that flask again,' he muttered.
Vanessa performed the humane act as requested, but she did it absently like one whose thoughts were elsewhere. Though not oppressed as was Wilbur by the Earls and Countesses, she had lost the gay exuberance with which she had started out on this expedition. A feeling that something was wrong was beginning to creep over her.
Two o'clock sharp, she had told Howard Chesney on the telephone that afternoon, and he had said 'Okay, two o'clock sharp. Right', but though it was now long past the hour a glance from the window showed that he was not at his post. In the world outside there were rabbits, weasels, moths, bats and even the white owl of which Gally had spoken to John, but no Howard Chesney. Beach would have felt that this was just what the grounds of Blandings Castle needed to bring them to perfection. Vanessa was unable to share such a sentiment. She had no deep affection for Howard Chesney, but his presence was essential to her plan of campaign, and his absence bred the suspicion that all was not well.
Gradually the suspicion grew, and at last the clock over the stables crushed any faint hope that might have lingered by chiming the half hour. With the dull weight of failure on her which all good organizers dislike so much, she turned to break the news to Wilbur.
She was a good loser. She saw eye to eye with the philosopher, whoever he was, who first deplored the futility of crying over spilt milk. This, she told herself, was just one of those things, and nothing to be done about it. Where Howard Chesney was concerned, she had no hard feelings. She knew that only some misadventure on a major scale could have prevented him coming to collect a thousand dollars. All she felt was sympathy for Wilbur's disappointment.
'I'm afraid, Willie,' she began, but got no further, for she saw that for the time being explanations and commiserations would be wasted. Sunk in a chair, his long legs stretched out and his head on one side, Wilbur Trout was catching up with his sleep.
She stood watching him, and was surprised at the wave of maternal tenderness that surged over her. His best friends would not have claimed that Wilbur, asleep in a chair with his head lolling to one side, was a feast for the eye, but for her the spectacle had an appeal that grew stronger with every minute that passed. She felt that she could have stayed drinking it in for ever.
This, however, in the circumstances was scarcely advisable. No invasion of their privacy had occurred as yet, but there was no saying how long this happy state of things would last. Reluctantly she became her practical self again. Attaching herself to his ginger hair, she gave it a pull.
'Bedtime, Willie.'
He came slowly to life with a grunt and a gurgle.
'Eh?'
'Time for bye-bye.'
'What?'
'Oh, wake up. The party's over.'
Wilbur sat up, blinking.
'Was I asleep?'
'Fast asleep.'
'Odd thing, that. It isn't as if I wasn't used to late nights.' His eye fell on the reclining nude. He registered surprise. 'Hullo! It's still there. What's the time?'
'It must be nearly three.'
'And Chesney hasn't got here yet? Something must have happened to him.'
Wilbur's surmise was right. Headed in his car for Shropshire and his thousand dollars, Howard Chesney had won through only as far as Worcestershire. He was lying with a broken leg in the cottage hospital of the village of Wibley-in-the-Vale in that county, a salutary object lesson to the inhabitants of the hamlet not to go to sleep at the wheel of a car when on the wrong side of the road with a truck laden with mineral water bottles coming the other way.
'Yes, something must have happened to him,' Vanessa agreed, 'and we can't do anything without him, so, as I said before, the party's over. I'm sorry.'
Wilbur did not speak. He had gone to the picture and was staring at it, deep in thought. Slowly he became aware that he had been spoken to, and he turned.
'What was that?'
'Nothing.'
'You said something.'
'Only that I was sorry.'
'Why?'
'Well, aren't you?'
'You mean about this?'
'I know how much you wanted it.'
'Listen,' said Wilbur. 'Let me tell you something. I don't want the damned thing.'
'What!'
'And it beats me how I ever got the idea that I did. I wouldn't have it as a gift. It makes me sick to look at it. You know what I do want?'
'What?'
'You.'
'Me?'
'Yes, you. I realize now what a sap I was letting you go and wasting my time marrying a bunch of blondes who didn't amount to a row of beans. I ought to have known they were a lot of false alarms and that you were the only one for me. I could kick myself. It just shows what a fool a guy can make of himself when he tries. I ought to have my head examined. Well, how about it?'
Vanessa was conscious of a thrill of happiness which had the effect of making even the Earls and Countesses appear beautiful. Their painted eyes seemed to gaze benevolently from their frames as if this romance pleased them. Even the third Earl, who could have walked into any gathering of Chicago gangsters and been welcomed by all present as one of the mob, had taken on the aspect of a kindly uncle. She drew a long breath.
'Willie! Is this a proposal of marriage?'
'Sure it's a proposal of marriage. What did you think it was?'
'Well, one never knows. Of course I'll marry you, Willie.'
'That's the way to talk,' said Wilbur.
He crossed to where she stood and folded her in his arms with the practised dexterity of a man who had been folding girls in his arms since he was a slip of a boy, and would have been content to let this state of things continue indefinitely, but she released herself and stepped back.
'Yes, I'll marry you, Willie, but I think it's only fair that you should know what you're letting yourself in for.'
'What do you mean?'
'Just this, that if I marry, it'll be for keeps. When I take you for my wedded husband, you'll stay taken. You're going to have me around for an awful long time, Willie.'
'Suits me.'
'You're sure?'
'Sure I'm sure.'
'Then I see no objection to you folding me in your arms again. It felt kind of good the first time. And now,' said Vanessa, 'we might be going off and seeing if we can get some sleep. And tomorrow we'll say goodbye to Blandings Castle and drive to London and hunt up a registrar. You don't get married by Justices of the Peace over here, you go to a registry office.'
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The following morning found Gally in his hammock as usual, but without his eyeglass. He had removed it and closed his eyes in order to assist thought, for he had much intensive thinking to do. Once more the cat from the stables, who knew a kindred soul when she met one, jumped on his stomach and purred invitingly, but this time he was too preoccupied to tickle it behind the ear. He was friendly, but aloof.
The Pelican Club trains its sons well, teaching them, no matter what their troubles and anxieties, always to preserve outwardly the poker-faced nonchalance of a red Indian at the stake. Nobody seeing him as he lay there could have guessed at the pangs he was suffering as he mused on the tangled matrimonial affairs of a loved godson. To Vanessa, coming to the hammock's side, he seemed his customary unruffled self.
'Hullo there,' she said. 'You look very comfortable. Don't get up. The etiquette books say that a gentleman should always rise in the presence of a lady, but that doesn't apply when the gentleman is reclining in a hammock with a cat on top of him. I've only come to say goodbye.'