'Oh, hullo, Uncle Fred. I've just got back.'
'So I see. And you appear on your travels to have picked up some luggage. Whose suitcase is that?'
'It belongs to a bloke I shared the cab with. I dropped him at the Lodge. He wanted to see Bastable. Saxby he said his name was.'
'Saxby? Was he a fellow in the early forties with a jutting chin and a head like the dome of St Paul's, or a flattened-out septuagenarian who looked as if he had at one time been run over by a steam-roller? The latter? Then it must be Saxby senior, the father of the jutting chinner, I've met him at the Demosthenes Club. How did you get on with him?'
'Oh, all right. Odd sort of chap. Why did he ask me if I played the trombone?'
'One has to say something to keep the conversation going. Do you?'
'No.'
'Well, don't let yourself get an inferiority complex about it. Many of our most eminent public men don't play the trombone. Lord Beaverbrook, for one. Yes, that was old Saxby all right. I recognize his peculiar conversational methods. Every time I meet him, he asks me if I have seen Flannery lately. Who on earth Flannery is I have never been able to ascertain. When I reply that I have not, he says "Ah? And how was he?" The day old Saxby makes anything remotely resembling sense, they will set the church bells ringing and proclaim a national holiday. I wonder why he was going to see Beefy. Just a social call, I suppose. The question that intrigues one is why is he here at all. Is he staying with you?'
'Yes.'
'Good. Every little bit added to what you've got makes just a little bit more.'
'He may be staying some time. He's a bird-watcher, he tells me.'
'Indeed? I never saw that side of him. Our encounters have always taken place at the Demosthenes, where the birds are few and far between. I believe the committee is very strict about admitting them. Do you watch birds, Johnny?'
'No.'
'Nor I. If I meet one whose looks I like, I give it a nod and a wave of the hand, but I would never dream of prowling about and goggling at our feathered friends in the privacy of their homes. What a curse he must be to them. I can imagine nothing more unpleasant for a chaffinch or a reed-warbler than to get settled down for the evening with a good book and a pipe and then, just as it is saying to itself "This is the life," to look up and see old Saxby peering at it. When you reflect that strong men wilt when they meet that vague, fishy eye of his, you can imagine what its effect must be on a sensitive bird. But pigeon-holing old Saxby for the moment, what happened when you met Bunny? How was she? Gay? Sparkling?'
'Oh, yes.'
'Splendid. I was afraid that, with your relations a bit strained, she might have given you the Farthest North treatment or, as it is sometimes called, the ice-box formula. Cold. Aloof. The long silence and the face turned away to show only the profile. You relieve my mind considerably.'
'I wish someone would relieve mine.'
'Why, what's wrong? You say she was gay and sparkling.'
'Yes, but it wasn't me she was gay and sparkling with.'
Lord Ickenham frowned. His godson seemed to have dropped again into that habit of his of speaking in riddles, and it annoyed him.
'Don't be cryptic, my boy. Start at the beginning, and let your yea be yea and your nay be nay. You gave her lunch?'
'Yes, and she brought along a blighter called Norbury-Smith.'
Lord Ickenham was shocked and astounded.
'To a lovers' tryst? To what should have been a sacred reunion of two fond hearts after long parting? You amaze me. Did she offer any explanation of what she must have known was a social gaffe?'
'She said he had told her he was at school with me, and she was sure I would like to meet him again.'
'Good God! Smiling brightly as she spoke?'
'Yes, she was smiling quite a lot. Norbury-Smith!' said Johnny bitterly. 'A fellow I thought I'd seen the last of ten years ago. He's a stockbroker now, richer than blazes, and looks like a movie star.'
'Good heavens! Did their relations seem to you cordial?'
'She was all over him. They were prattling away like a couple of honeymooners.'
'Leaving you out of it?'
'I might as well have been painted on the back drop.'
Lord Ickenham drew a sharp breath. His face was grave.
'I don't like this, Johnny'
'I didn't like it myself
'It's the Oh-well-if-you-don't-want-me-there-are-plenty-who-do formula, which too often means that the female of the species, having given the matter considered thought, has decided that she is about ready to call it a day. Do you know what I think, Johnny?'
'What?'
'You'd better marry that girl quick.'
'And bring her here with Nannie Bruce floating about the place like poison gas? We don't have to go into all that again, do we? I wouldn't play such a low trick on her.' Johnny paused, and eyed his companion sourly. 'What', he asked, 'are you grinning about?'
Lord Ickenham patted his arm in a godfatherly manner.
'If,' he said, 'you allude to the gentle smile which you see on my face – I doubt if somebody like Flaubert, with his passion for the right word, would call it a grin – I will tell you why I smile gently. I have high hopes that the dark menance of Nannie Bruce will shortly be removed.'
Johnny found himself unable to share this optimistic outlook.
'How can it be removed? I can't raise five hundred pounds.'
'You may not have to. You see that bicycle propped up near the back door,' said Lord Ickenham, pointing. 'Police Constable McMurdo's Arab steed. He's in the kitchen now, getting down to brass tacks with her.'
'It won't do any good.'
'I disagree with you. I anticipate solid results. I must mention that since I got here I have been seeing quite a bit of Officer McMurdo, and he has confided in me as in a sympathetic elder brother. He unloaded a police constable's unspotted heart on me, and I was shocked to learn on what mistaken lines he had been trying to overcome Nannie Bruce's sales-resistance. He had been arguing with her, Johnny, pleading with her, putting his trust in the honeyed word and the voice of reason. As if words, however honeyed, could melt the obstinacy of a woman whose mother, I am convinced, must have been frightened by a deaf adder. Action, Cyril, I told him – his name is Cyril – is what you need, and I urged him with all the vehemence at my disposal to cut the cackle and try the Ickenham System.'
'What's that?'
'It's a little thing I knocked together in my bachelor days. I won't go into the details now, but it has a good many points in common with all-in wrestling and osteopathy. I generally recommend it to diffident wooers, and it always works like magic. Up against it, the proudest beauty – not that that's a very good description of Nannie Bruce – collapses like a dying duck and recognizes the mastery of the dominant male.'
Johnny stared.
'You mean you told McMurdo to... scrag her?'
'You put it crudely, but yes, something on those lines. And, as I say, I anticipate the best results. At this very moment Nannie Bruce is probably looking up into Officer McMurdo's eyes and meekly murmuring "Yes, Cyril, dear," "Just as you say, Cyril, dear," "How right you are, Cyril, darling," as he imperiously sketches out his plans for hastening on the wedding ceremony. You might go and listen at the kitchen door and see how things are coming along.'
'I might, yes, but what I'm going to do is have a swim in the lake. I'm sweating at every pore.'
'Keep it clean, my boy. No need to stress the purely physical. Well, if you run into McMurdo, tell him I am anxious to receive his report and can be found in the hammock on the back lawn. Is that the evening paper you have there? I might just glance through it.'
'Before going to sleep?'
'The Ickenhams do not sleep. Anything of interest in it?'
'Only that movie thing.'
'To what movie thing do you allude?'
About this chap Wisdom's book.'
'Cocktail Time?'
'Yes. Have you read it?'
'Every word. I thought it was extremely good.'
'It is. It's the sort of thing I should like to write, and I could do it on my head, only the trouble is that, once you start turning out thrillers, they won't take anything else from you. Odd, a fellow like Wisdom being able to do anything as good as that. He doesn't give one the impression of being very bright, do you think?'
'I agree with you. The book seemed to me the product of a much maturer mind. But you were saying something about a movie thing, whatever that is.'
'Oh, yes. Apparently all the studios in Hollywood are bidding frantically for the picture rights. According to the chap who does the movie stuff in that paper, the least Wisdom will get is a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Oh, well, some people have all the luck,' said Johnny, and went off to take his swim.
The hammock to which Lord Ickenham had alluded was suspended between two trees in a shady nook some distance from the house, and it was in pensive mood that a few minutes later he lowered himself into it. His godson's words had opened up a new line of thought and, as so often happened to Johnny's Inspector Jervis, he saw all. The mystery of why there was this sudden muster of vultures at Hammer Hall had been solved. The motives of these vultures in seeking to secure the letter which was sewn into the lining of the coat he was wearing were crystal clear.
Obviously, with a hundred and fifty thousand dollars coming to the author of Cocktail Time, Cosmo Wisdom was not going to look favourably on the idea of writing a second letter to his Uncle Raymond, disclaiming the authorship of the book, and equally obviously he would strain every nerve to secure and destroy the letter he had already written. And the Carlisle duo would naturally strain every nerve to secure it first and start Sir Raymond and nephew bidding against each other for it. No wonder there was that coolness he had noticed between the vulture of the first part and the vultures of the second. With a hundred and fifty thousand dollars at stake, a coolness would have arisen between Damon and Pythias.
It was a mistake on Lord Ickenham's part at this point to close his eyes in order to brood more tensely on the problems this new development had raised, for if you close your eyes in a hammock on a warm summer evening, you are apt to doze off. He had told Johnny that the Ickenhams did not sleep, but there were occasions when they did, and this was one of them. A pleasant drowsiness stole over him. His eyes closed and his breathing took on a gentle whistling note.
It was the abrupt intrusion of a finger between his third and fourth ribs and the sound of a voice that said 'Hey!' that some little while later awakened him. Opening his eyes, he found that Gordon Carlisle was standing on one side of the hammock, his wife Gertie on the other, and he could not fail to notice that in the latter's shapely hand was one of those small but serviceable rubber instruments known as coshes.
She was swinging it negligently, as some dandy of the Regency period might have swung his clouded cane.
CHAPTER 16
Although there was nothing in the unruffled calm of his manner to show it, Lord Ickenham, as he sat up and prepared to make the party go, was not at his brightest and happiest. He had that self-reproachful feeling of having been remiss which comes to Generals who wake up one morning to discover that they have carelessly allowed themselves to be outflanked. With conditions as they were at Hammer Hall, he should, he told himself, have known better than to loll in hammocks out of sight and earshot of friends and allies. The prudent man, aware that there are vultures in every nook and cranny of the country house he is visiting, watches his step. Failing to watch his, he had placed himself in the sort of position his godson Johnny's Inspector Jervis was always getting into. It was rarely in a Jonathan Pearce novel of suspense that Inspector Jervis did not sooner or later find himself seated on a keg of gunpowder with a lighted fuse attached to it or grappling in a cellar with one of those disagreeable individuals who are generally referred to as Things.
However, though recognizing that this was one of the times that try men's souls, he did his best to ease the strain.
'Well, well, well,' he said heartily, 'so there you are! I must have dropped off for a moment, I think. One is reminded of the experience of the late Abou ben Adhem, who, as you may recall, awoke one night from a deep dream of peace to find an angel at his bedside, writing in a book of gold. Must have given him a nasty start, I have always thought.'
The interest of Oily and his bride in Abou ben Adhem appeared to be slight. Neither showed any disposition to discuss this unusual episode in his life. Mrs Carlisle, in particular, indicated unmistakably that her thoughts were strictly on business.
'Shall I bust him one?' she said.
'Not yet,' said Oily.
'Quite right,' said Lord Ickenham cordially. 'There is, in my opinion, far too much violence in the world today. I deprecate it. Do you read Mickey Spillane?'
This attempt, too, to give the conversation a literary turn proved abortive.
'Gimme,' said Oily. His manner was curt.
'I beg your pardon?'
'You heard. Remember making me turn out my pockets?'
'I don't like the word "making". There was no compulsion.'
'Oh, no? Well, there is now. Let's inspect what you've got in your pockets, Inspector Jervis.'
'Why, of course, my dear fellow, of course,' said Lord Ickenham with a cheerful willingness to oblige which should have lessened the prevailing tension, if not removed it altogether, and in quick succession produced a handkerchief, a cigarette case, a lighter, the notebook in which he jotted down great thoughts when they occurred to him, and a small button which had come off his shirt. Oily regarded the collection with a jaundiced eye, and looked at his wife reproachfully.
'He hasn't got it on him.'
Gertie, with her woman's intuition, was not so easily baffled.
'You poor simp, do you think he'd carry it around in his pocket? It's sewn into his coat or sum'pn.'
This being actually the case, Lord Ickenham was conscious of a passing regret that Gordon Carlisle had not selected a less intelligent mate. Had he led to the altar something more in the nature of a dumb blonde, the situation would have been greatly eased. But he continued to do his best.
'What is it you are looking for?' he asked genially. 'Perhaps I can help you.'
'You know what I'm looking for,' said Oily. 'That letter.'
'Letter? Letter?' Lord Ickenham's face cleared. 'Oh, the letter? My dear fellow, why didn't you say so before? You don't suppose I would keep an important document like that on me? It is, of course, lodged at my banker's.'
'Oh, yeah?' said Oily.
'Oh, yeah?' said his wife, and it was abundantly evident that neither had that simple faith which we are assured is so much better than Norman blood. 'Oily!'
'Yes, sweetie?'
'Why not let me bust him one?'
It had become borne in on Lord Ickenham more and more that the situation in which his negligence had placed him was one of considerable embarrassment, and he was not finding it easy to think what to do next. Had he been able to rise to his feet, a knowledge of ju-jitsu, acquired in his younger days and, though a little rusty, still efficient, might have served him in good stead, but his chances of being allowed to exhibit this skill were, he realized, slight. Even under the most favourable conditions, a hammock is a difficult thing to get out of with any rapidity, and the conditions here were definitely unfavourable. It was impossible to ignore that cosh. So far, Gordon Carlisle had discouraged his one-tracked-minded wife's wistful yearning to bust him one with it, but were he to give the slightest indication of wishing to leave his little nest, he was convinced that the embargo would be lifted.
Like the youth who slew the Jabberwock, he paused awhile in thought. His problem, he could see, resembled that of his godson Johnny Pearce, in being undoubtedly one that presented certain features of interest, and he was conscious of feeling a little depressed. But it was not long before he was his old debonair self again, his apprehensions removed and the sun smiling through once more. Lo
oking past his two companions, he had seen something that brought the roses back to his cheek and made him feel that, even though he be in a hammock, you cannot keep a good man down.
'I'll tell you—' he began.
Oily, his manner even curter than before, expressed a wish to be handed Lord Ickenham's coat.
'I'll tell you where you of the criminal classes, if you do not mind me so describing you, make your mistake, and a very serious mistake it is, too. You weave your plots and schemes, you spend good money on coshes, you tip-toe with them to people's bedsides, but there is something you omit. You don't allow for the United States Marines.'
'Gimme that coat.'
'Never mind my coat for the moment,' said Lord Ickenham. 'I want to tell you about the United States Marines. I don't know if you are familiar with the procedure where these fine fellows are concerned. To put it in a word, they arrive. The thing generally works out somewhat after this fashion. A bunch of bad men are beleaguering a bunch of good men in a stockade or an embassy or wherever it may be and seem to be getting along splendidly, and then suddenly the bottom drops out of everything and all is darkness, disillusionment and despair. Looking over their shoulders, they see the United States Marines arriving, and I don't suppose there is anything that makes bad men, when beleaguering someone, sicker. The joy goes out of their lives, the sun disappears behind the clouds, and with a muffled "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!" they slink away to their underground dens, feeling like thirty cents. The reason I bring this up,' said Lord Ickenham, hurrying his remarks to a conclusion, for he could see that his audience was becoming restive, 'is that, if you glance behind you, you will notice that the United States Marines are arriving now.'