‘And I want to have a word with her.’
‘ “Two minds with but a single thought”. What she wants to talk to you about is this accident of mine. You remember that story I was to tell her? About the car driving on? Well the understanding was, if you recollect, that I was only to tell it if I couldn’t think of something better. Fortunately, I thought of something much better. It came to me in a flash as I lay in bed looking at the ceiling. You see, that driving-on story was thin. People don’t knock fellows down and break their legs and go driving on. The thing wouldn’t have held water for a minute. So I told her you did it.’
‘What!’
‘I said it was you who did it in your car. Much more likely. Makes the whole thing neat and well-rounded. I knew you would approve. At all costs we have got to keep it from her that I was outed by Gwladys. I made it as easy for you as I could, saying that you were a bit pickled at the time and so not to be blamed for what you did. Some fellows wouldn’t have thought of that. Still,’ said Lucius Pim with a sigh, ‘I’m afraid she’s not any too pleased with you.’
‘She isn’t, isn’t she?’
‘No, she is not. And I strongly recommend you, if you want anything like a pleasant interview to-morrow, to sweeten her a bit overnight.’
‘How do you mean, sweeten her?’
‘I’d suggest you sent her some flowers. It would be a graceful gesture. Roses are her favourites. Shoot her in a few roses – Number Three, Hill Street is the address – and it may make all the difference. I think it my duty to inform you, old man, that my sister Beatrice is rather a tough egg, when roused. My brother-in-law is due back from New York at any moment, and the danger, as I see it, is that Beatrice, unless sweetened, will get at him and make him bring actions against you for torts and malfeasances and what not and get thumping damages. He isn’t over-fond of me and, left to himself, would rather approve than otherwise of people who broke my legs: but he’s crazy about Beatrice and will do anything she asks him to. So my advice is, Gather ye rose-buds, while ye may and bung them in to Number Three, Hill Street. Otherwise, the case of Slingsby v. Wooster will be on the calendar before you can say “What-ho”.’
I gave the fellow a look. Lost on him, of course.
‘It’s a pity you didn’t think of all that before,’ I said. And it wasn’t so much the actual words, if you know what I mean, as the way I said it.
‘I thought of it all right,’ said Lucius Pim. ‘But, as we were both agreed that at all costs—’
‘Oh, all right,’ I said. ‘All right, all right.’
‘You aren’t annoyed?’ said Lucius Pim, looking at me with a touch of surprise.
‘Oh, no!’
‘Splendid,’ said Lucius Pim, relieved. ‘I knew you would feel that I had done the only possible thing. It would have been awful if Beatrice had found out about Gwladys. I daresay you have noticed, Wooster, that when women find themselves in a position to take a running kick at one of their own sex they are twice as rough on her as they would be on a man. Now, you, being of the male persuasion, will find everything made nice and smooth for you. A quart of assorted roses, a few smiles, a tactful word or two, and she’ll have melted before you know where you are. Play your cards properly, and you and Beatrice will be laughing merrily and having a game of Round and Round the Mulberry Bush together in about five minutes. Better not let Slingsby’s Soups catch you at it, however. He’s very jealous where Beatrice is concerned. And now you’ll forgive me, old chap, if I send you away. The doctor says I ought not to talk too much for a day or two. Besides, it’s time for bye-bye.’
The more I thought it over, the better that idea of sending those roses looked. Lucius Pim was not a man I was fond of – in fact, if I had had to choose between him and a cockroach as a companion for a walking-tour, the cockroach would have had it by a short head – but there was no doubt that he had outlined the right policy. His advice was good, and I decided to follow it. Rising next morning at ten-fifteen, I swallowed a strengthening breakfast and legged it off to that flower-shop in Piccadilly. I couldn’t leave the thing to Jeeves. It was essentially a mission that demanded the personal touch. I laid out a couple of quid on a sizeable bouquet, sent it with my card to Hill Street, and then looked in at the Drones for a brief refresher. It is a thing I don’t often do in the morning, but this threatened to be rather a special morning.
It was about noon when I got back to the flat. I went into the sitting-room and tried to adjust the mind to the coming interview. It had to be faced, of course, but it wasn’t any good my telling myself that it was going to be one of those jolly scenes the memory of which cheer you up as you sit toasting your toes at the fire in your old age. I stood or fell by the roses. If they sweetened the Slingsby, all would be well. If they failed to sweeten her, Bertram was undoubtedly for it.
The clock ticked on, but she did not come. A late riser, I took it, and was slightly encouraged by the reflection. My experience of women has been that the earlier they leave the hay the more vicious specimens they are apt to be. My Aunt Agatha, for instance, is always up with the lark, and look at her.
Still, you couldn’t be sure that this rule always worked, and after a while the suspense began to get in amongst me a bit. To divert the mind, I fetched the old putter out of its bag and began to practise putts into a glass. After all, even if the Slingsby turned out to be all that I had pictured her in my gloomier moments, I should have improved my close-to-the-hole work on the green and be that much up, at any rate.
It was while I was shaping for a rather tricky shot that the front-door bell went.
I picked up the glass and shoved the putter behind the settee. It struck me that if the woman found me engaged on what you might call a frivolous pursuit she might take it to indicate lack of remorse and proper feeling. I straightened the collar, pulled down the waistcoat, and managed to fasten on the face a sort of sad half-smile which was welcoming without being actually jovial. It looked all right in the mirror, and I held it as the door opened.
‘Mr Slingsby,’ announced Jeeves.
And, having spoken these words, he closed the door and left us alone together.
For quite a time there wasn’t anything in the way of chit-chat. The shock of expecting Mrs Slingsby and finding myself confronted by something entirely different – in fact, not the same thing at all – seemed to have affected the vocal cords. And the visitor didn’t appear to be disposed to make light conversation himself. He stood there looking strong and silent. I suppose you have to be like that if you want to manufacture anything in the nature of a really convincing soup.
Slingsby’s Superb Soups was a Roman Emperor-looking sort of bird, with keen, penetrating eyes and one of those jutting chins. The eyes seemed to be fixed on me in a dashed unpleasant stare and, unless I was mistaken, he was grinding his teeth a trifle. For some reason he appeared to have taken a strong dislike to me at sight, and I’m bound to say this rather puzzled me. I don’t pretend to have one of those Fascinating Personalities which you get from studying the booklets advertised in the back pages of the magazines, but I couldn’t recall another case in the whole of my career where a single glimpse of the old map had been enough to make anyone look as if he wanted to foam at the mouth. Usually, when people meet me for the first time, they don’t seem to know I’m there.
However, I exerted myself to play the host.
‘Mr Slingsby?’
‘That is my name.’
‘Just got back from America?’
‘I landed this morning.’
‘Sooner than you were expected, what?’
‘So I imagine.’
‘Very glad to see you.’
‘You will not be long.’
I took time off to do a bit of gulping. I saw now what had happened. This bloke had been home, seen his wife, heard the story of the accident, and had hastened round to the flat to slip it across me. Evidently those roses had not sweetened the female of the species. The only thing to do now seemed to
be to take a stab at sweetening the male.
‘Have a drink?’ I said.
‘No!’
‘A cigarette?’
‘No!’
‘A chair?’
‘No!’
I went into the silence once more. These non-drinking, nonsmoking non-sitters are hard birds to handle.
‘Don’t grin at me, sir!’
I shot a glance at myself in the mirror, and saw what he meant. The sad half-smile had slopped over a bit. I adjusted it, and there was another pause.
‘Now, sir,’ said the Superb Souper. ‘To business. I think I need scarcely tell you why I am here.’
‘No. Of course. Absolutely. It’s about that little matter—’
He gave a snort which nearly upset a vase on the mantelpiece.
‘Little matter? So you consider it a little matter, do you?’
‘Well—’
‘Let me tell you, sir, that when I find that during my absence from the country a man has been annoying my wife with his importunities I regard it as anything but a little matter. And I shall endeavour,’ said the Souper, the eyes gleaming a trifle brighter as he rubbed his hands together in a hideous, menacing way, ‘to make you see the thing in the same light.’
I couldn’t make head or tail of this. I simply couldn’t follow him. The lemon began to swim.
‘Eh?’ I said. ‘Your wife?’
‘You heard me.’
‘There must be some mistake.’
‘There is. You made it.’
‘But I don’t know your wife.’
‘Ha!’
‘I’ve never even met her.’
‘Tchah!’
‘Honestly, I haven’t.’
‘Bah!’
He drank me in for a moment.
‘Do you deny you sent her flowers?’
I felt the heart turn a double somersault. I began to catch his drift.
‘Flowers!’ he proceeded. ‘Roses, sir. Great, fat, beastly roses. Enough of them to sink a ship. Your card was attached to them by a small pin—’
His voice died away in a sort of gurgle, and I saw that he was staring at something behind me. I spun round, and there, in the doorway – I hadn’t seen it open, because during the last spasm of dialogue I had been backing cautiously towards it – there in the doorway stood a female. One glance was enough to tell me who she was. No woman could look so like Lucius Pim who hadn’t the misfortune to be related to him. It was Sister Beatrice, the tough egg. I saw all. She had left home before the flowers had arrived: she had sneaked, unsweetened, into the flat, while I was fortifying the system at the Drones: and here she was.
‘Er—’ I said.
‘Alexander!’ said the female.
‘Goo!’ said the Souper. Or it may have been ‘Coo’.
Whatever it was, it was in the nature of a battle-cry or slogan of war. The Souper’s worst suspicions had obviously been confirmed. His eyes shone with a strange light. His chin pushed itself out another couple of inches. He clenched and unclenched his fingers once or twice, as if to make sure that they were working properly and could be relied on to do a good, clean job of strangling. Then, once more observing ‘Coo!’ (or ‘Goo!’), he sprang forward, trod on the golf-ball I had been practising putting with, and took one of the finest tosses I have ever witnessed. The purler of a lifetime. For a moment the air seemed to be full of arms and legs, and then, with a thud that nearly dislocated the flat, he made a forced landing against the wall.
And, feeling I had had about all I wanted, I oiled from the room and was in the act of grabbing my hat from the rack in the hall, when Jeeves appeared.
‘I fancied I heard a noise, sir,’ said Jeeves.
‘Quite possibly,’ I said. ‘It was Mr Slingsby.’
‘Sir?’
‘Mr Slingsby practising Russian dances,’ I explained. ‘I rather think he has fractured an assortment of limbs. Better go in and see.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘If he is the wreck I imagine, put him in my room and send for the doctor. The flat is filling up nicely with the various units of the Pim family and its connections, eh, Jeeves?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I think the supply is about exhausted, but should any aunts or uncles by marriage come along and break their limbs, bed them out on the Chesterfield.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘I, personally, Jeeves,’ I said, opening the front door and pausing on the threshold, ‘am off to Paris. I will wire you the address. Notify me in due course when the place is free from Pims and completely purged of Slingsbys, and I will return. Oh, and Jeeves.’
‘Sir?’
‘Spare no effort to mollify these birds. They think – at least, Slingsby (female) thinks, and what she thinks to-day he will think to-morrow – that it was I who ran over Mr Pim in my car. Endeavour during my absence to sweeten them.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘And now perhaps you had better be going in and viewing the body. I shall proceed to the Drones, where I shall lunch, subsequently catching the two o’clock train at Charing Cross. Meet me there with an assortment of luggage.’
It was a matter of three weeks or so before Jeeves sent me the ‘All clear’ signal. I spent the time pottering pretty perturbedly about Paris and environs. It is a city I am fairly fond of, but I was glad to be able to return to the old home. I hopped on to a passing aeroplane and a couple of hours later was bowling through Croydon on my way to the centre of things. It was somewhere down in the Sloane Square neighbourhood that I first caught sight of the posters.
A traffic block had occurred, and I was glancing idly this way and that, when suddenly my eye was caught by something that looked familiar. And then I saw what it was.
Pasted on a blank wall and measuring about a hundred feet each way was an enormous poster, mostly red and blue. At the top of it were the words:
SLINGSBY’S SUPERB SOUPS
and at the bottom:
SUCCULENT AND STRENGTHENING
And, in between, me. Yes, dash it, Bertram Wooster in person. A reproduction of the Pendlebury portrait, perfect in every detail.
It was the sort of thing to make a fellow’s eyes flicker, and mine flickered. You might say a mist seemed to roll before them. Then it lifted, and I was able to get a good long look before the traffic moved on.
Of all the absolutely foul sights I have ever seen, this took the biscuit with ridiculous ease. The thing was a bally libel on the Wooster face, and yet it was as unmistakable as if it had had my name under it. I saw now what Jeeves had meant when he said that the portrait had given me a hungry look. In the poster this look had become one of bestial greed. There I sat absolutely slavering through a monocle about six inches in circumference at a plateful of soup, looking as if I hadn’t had a meal for weeks. The whole thing seemed to take one straight away into a different and a dreadful world.
I woke from a species of trance or coma to find myself at the door of the block of flats. To buzz upstairs and charge into the home was with me the work of a moment.
Jeeves came shimmering down the hall, the respectful beam of welcome on his face.
‘I am glad to see you back, sir.’
‘Never mind about that,’ I yipped. ‘What about—?’
‘The posters, sir? I was wondering if you might have observed them.’
‘I observed them!’
‘Striking, sir?’
‘Very striking. Now, perhaps you’ll kindly explain—’
‘You instructed me, if you recollect, sir, to spare no effort to mollify Mr Slingsby.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘It proved a somewhat difficult task, sir. For some time Mr Slingsby, on the advice and owing to the persuasion of Mrs Slingsby, appeared to be resolved to institute an action in law against you – a procedure which I knew you would find most distasteful.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And then, the first day he was able to leave his bed, he observed t
he portrait, and it seemed to me judicious to point out to him its possibilities as an advertising medium. He readily fell in with the suggestion and, on my assurance that, should he abandon the projected action in law, you would willingly permit the use of the portrait, he entered into negotiations with Miss Pendlebury for the purchase of the copyright.’
‘Oh? Well, I hope she’s got something out of it, at any rate?’
‘Yes, sir. Mr Pim, acting as Miss Pendlebury’s agent, drove, I understand, an extremely satisfactory bargain.’
‘He acted as her agent, eh?’
‘Yes, sir. In his capacity as fiancé to the young lady, sir.’
‘Fiancé!’
‘Yes, sir.’
It shows how the sight of that poster had got into my ribs when I state that, instead of being laid out cold by this announcement, I merely said ‘Ha!’ or ‘Ho!’ or it may have been ‘H’m’. After the poster, nothing seemed to matter.
‘After that poster, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘nothing seems to matter.’
‘No, sir?’
‘No, Jeeves. A woman has tossed my heart lightly away, but what of it?’
‘Exactly, sir.’
‘The voice of Love seemed to call to me, but it was a wrong number. Is that going to crush me?’
‘No, sir.’
‘No, Jeeves. It is not. But what does matter is this ghastly business of my face being spread from end to end of the Metropolis with the eyes fixed on a plate of Slingsby’s Superb Soup. I must leave London. The lads at the Drones will kid me without ceasing.’
‘Yes, sir. And Mrs Spenser Gregson—’
I paled visibly. I hadn’t thought of Aunt Agatha and what she might have to say about letting down the family prestige.
‘You don’t mean to say she has been ringing up?’
‘Several times daily, sir.’
‘Jeeves, flight is the only resource.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Back to Paris, what?’