'Bishops will be bishops.'
'I went up to London yesterday to see him and tell him how upset I was, but he wasn't there.'
'Somewhere else, perhaps?' Lord Ickenham suggested.
Oily had been listening to these exchanges with growing bewilderment. From the first he had thought this Inspector an odd Inspector, but only now was it borne in on him how very odd he was.
'Say, who is this guy?' he demanded.
'Hasn't my brother introduced you?' said Phoebe. 'He is my half-sister's husband, Lord Ickenham. You haven't seen my pig, have you, Frederick?'
'Phoebe,' said Sir Raymond, 'get out!'
'What, dear?'
'Get out!'
'But I was going to look for my pig.'
'Never mind your pig. Get OUT!' bellowed Sir Raymond in the voice that had so often brought plaster down from the ceiling of the Old Bailey and caused nervous court officials to swallow their chewing gum.
Phoebe withdrew, sobbing softly and looking like a white rabbit that has had bad news from home, and Oily confronted Lord Ickenham. His face was stern, but there was a song in his heart, as there always is in the hearts of men who see defeat turn into victory.
'So!' he said.
'So what?' said Lord Ickenham.
'I'm afraid you're in a lot of trouble.'
'I am? Why is that?'
'For impersonating an officer. Impersonating an officer is a very serious offence.'
'But, my dear fellow, when did I ever impersonate an officer? Wouldn't dream of doing such a thing.'
'The butler announced you as Inspector Jervis.'
'What the butler said is not evidence. Am I to be blamed because a butler tries to be funny? That was just a little private joke we have together.'
'You said you were from the Yard.'
'I referred to the yard outside the kitchen door. I was smoking a cigarette there.'
'You made me turn out my pockets.'
'Made you? I asked you to, and you very civilly did.'
'Give me that letter.'
'But it is addressed to Sir Raymond Bastable. It belongs to him.'
'Yes,' boomed Sir Raymond, intervening in the debate, 'it belongs to me, and when you talk of serious offences, you foul excrescence, let me remind you that interfering with the mails is one of them. Give me that letter, Frederick.'
Lord Ickenham, who had been edging to the door, paused with his fingers on the handle.
'No, Beefy,' he said. 'Not yet. You must earn this letter.'
'What!'
'I can speak freely before Mr Carlisle, for I could see from the way he winced that your manner toward your sister Phoebe just now distressed him deeply. I, too, have long been wounded by your manner toward your sister Phoebe, Beefy, considering it to resemble far too closely that of one of the less attractive fauna in the Book of Revelations. Correct this attitude. Turn on that brotherly charm. Coo to her like a cushat dove. Take her up to London for dinner and a theatre from time to time, and when addressing her bear in mind that the voice with the smile wins and that you are not an Oriental potentate dissatisfied with the efficiency of an Ethiopian slave. If I learn from Albert Peasemarch, who will be watching you closely, that there has been a marked and substantial improvement, you shall have this letter. Meanwhile, I am going to keep it and hold it over you like the sword of... who was the chap? ... no, it's gone. Forget my own name next,' said Lord Ickenham, annoyed, and went out, shutting the door behind him.
A moment later, it opened again, and his head appeared.
'Damocles,' he said. 'Sword of Damocles.'
The door closed.
CHAPTER 11
On a sunny morning precisely two weeks after Lord Ickenham had adjusted the sword of Damocles over the head of Sir Raymond Bastable, completely spoiling the latter's day and causing him to entertain toward the sweetness-and-light specialist thoughts of a kind that no one ought to have entertained toward a brother-in-law, even a half one, the door of Brixton prison in the suburbs of London was opened by a uniformed gentleman with a large key, and a young man in a form-fitting navy blue suit emerged. Cosmo Wisdom, his debt to Society paid, was in circulation once more. He was thinner and paler than when last seen, and the first act of the beauty-loving authorities had been to remove his moustache. This, however, was not so great a boon to pedestrians and traffic as it might seem, for he was resolved, now that he was in a position to do so, to grow it again.
The Law of Great Britain is a smoothly functioning automatic machine, providing prison sentences to suit all tastes. You put your crime in the slot, and out comes the appropriate penalty – seven years, as it might be, for embezzling trust funds, six months for carving up a business competitor with a razor, and for being drunk and disorderly and while in that condition assaulting the police fourteen days without the option of a fine. Cosmo had drawn the last of these.
When Oily Carlisle in a moment of unwonted generosity had lent Cosmo twenty pounds, the latter, it may be remembered, receiving these pennies from heaven, had expressed his intention of celebrating. He had done so only too heartily The thought of the good red gold which would soon be gushing like a geyser from the coffers of his Uncle Raymond had given wings to his feet as he started on his way along the primrose path. There was a sound of revelry by night and, one thing leading to another, in what seemed almost no time at all he was kicking Police Constable Styles of the C division, whose manner when he was trying to steal his helmet had offended him, rather severely in the stomach. Whistles blew, colleagues of the injured officer rallied to the spot, and presently stern-faced men were leading Cosmo off to the local hoosegow with gyves upon his wrists.
It was not a case, in the opinion of the magistrate at Bosher Street police court next morning, which could be met by the mere imposition of a fine. Only the jug, the whole jug and nothing but the jug would show the pie faced young son of a what-not where he got off, he said, though he phrased it a little differently, and he seemed chagrined at not being able to dish out more than those fourteen days. The impression he gave was that if he had been a free agent with no book of the rules to hamper him, Cosmo would have been lucky to escape what is known to the Chinese as the Death Of A Thousand Cuts. You could see that he was thinking that they manage these things better in China, and EC. Styles, whose stomach was still paining him, thought the same.
The first act of your ex-convict on coming out into the great world after graduating from the Alma Mater is to buy a packet of cigarettes, his second to purchase a morning paper, his third to go and get the substantial lunch of which he has been dreaming ever since he clocked in. During the past two weeks Cosmo, rubbing along on the wholesome but rather meagre prison fare, had given a good deal of thought to the square meal he would have on getting out, and after considering the claims of Barribault's, Mario's, Claridge's, and the Savoy, had decided to give his custom to Simpson's in the Strand, being well aware that at no establishment in London are the meals squarer. As he hastened thither, with the picture rising before him of those white-coated carvers wheeling around their massive joints, his mouth watered and a fanatic gleam came into his eyes, as if he had been a python which has just heard the dinner bell. It was one of those warm summer days when most people find their thoughts turning to cold salmon and cucumber salad, but what he wanted was roast beef, smoking hot, with Yorkshire pudding and floury potatoes on the side, followed by something along the lines of roly-poly pudding and Stilton cheese.
The paper he had bought was the Daily Gazette, and he glanced at it in the intervals of shovelling nourishing food into himself like a stevedore loading a grain ship. Cocktail Time, he noted with a touch of disapproval, had been dislodged from the front page by a big feature story about a twelve-year-old schoolboy who had shaved all his hair off in order to look like Yul Brynner, but it came into its own on page four with a large black headline which read:
FRANK, FORTHRIGHT, FEARLESS
BEGINNING FRIDAY
and beneath this
the announcement that Cocktail Time was about to appear in the Daily Gazette as a serial. 'The sensational novel by Richard Blunt,' said the announcement, adding that this was the pseudonym of Cosmo Wisdom, a prominent young man about town who is, of course, the nephew of the well-known Queen's Counsel, Sir Raymond Bastable.
The roast beef, roly-poly pudding and Stilton cheese had done much to bring Cosmo into a cheerful frame of mind, and the manner in which this manifesto was worded completed the good work. For obviously, if in the eyes of the Daily Gazette he was still the author of Cocktail Time, it could only mean that his Uncle Raymond, reading that letter, had prudently decided to play for safety and pay the price of secrecy and silence. No doubt, Cosmo felt, there was a communication to that effect waiting at his rooms in Budge Street, Chelsea, and his only regret was that the pangs of hunger had made it impossible for him to go there and read it before making up leeway at Simpson's.
So far, so good. But after he had been gloating happily for some little time over the picture of Uncle Raymond at his desk, pen in hand and writing golden figures in his cheque book, the sunshine was suddenly blotted from his life. It had just occurred to him to speculate on the possible activities of his friend Gordon Carlisle during his enforced absence, and this train of thought was a chilling one. Suppose his friend Gordon Carlisle – shown by his every action to be a man who thought on his feet and did it now – had taken that letter in person to Uncle Raymond, disclosed its contents, got cash down for it and was already on his way back to America, his pockets full of Uncle Raymond's gold. It was fortunate for Cosmo that he had already consumed his roly-poly pudding, for, had he not, it would have turned to ashes in his mouth.
But in envisaging Gordon Carlisle leaning on the rail of an ocean liner, watching porpoises and totting up his ill-gotten gains, he had allowed imagination to mislead him. Oily was not on his way to America. He was at this moment in the process of rising from a table on the opposite side of Chez Simpson, where he had been lunching with his wife Gertie. And though, like Cosmo, he had lunched well, his heart was heavy. There, said those who saw him to each other, went a luncher who had failed to find the blue bird.
Cosmo's inexplicable disappearance had tried Gordon Carlisle sorely. It was holding up everything. Scarcely five minutes after leaving Hammer Lodge his astute brain had grasped what must be done to stabilize the situation, but the scheme he had in mind could not be put into operation without the assistance of Cosmo, and Cosmo had vanished. Every day for the past two weeks Oily had called at Budge Street, hoping for news, and every day he had been sent empty away by a landlady who made no secret of the fact that she was sick of the sight of him. He was in much the same position as a General who, with his strategic plans all polished and ready to be carried out, finds that his army has gone off somewhere, leaving no address.
It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that when, as he made for the door, he heard a voice utter his name and, turning, found himself gazing into the face of the man he had sought so long, his heart leaped up as if he had beheld a rainbow in the sky. Rather more so, in fact, for, unlike the poet Wordsworth, he had never cared much for rainbows.
'Carlisle!' cried Cosmo exuberantly. He was blaming himself for having wronged this man in thought, and remorse lent to his voice something of the warmth which a shepherd exhibits when he sees a lost sheep reporting for duty. 'Sit down, my dear old chap, sit down!'
His dear old chap sat down, but he did so in a reserved and distant manner that showed how deeply he was stirred. Wrath had taken the place of joy in Oily's bosom. Thinking of the strain to which he had been subjected in the last fourteen days, he could not readily forgive. The eye which he fixed on Cosmo was the eye of a man who intends to demand an explanation.
'Mrs Carlisle,' he said curtly, indicating his companion. 'This is the Wisdom guy, sweetie.'
'It is, is it?' said Gertie. Her teeth made a little clicking sound, and as she looked at Cosmo, she, too, seemed to bring a chill into the summer day.
The austerity of their demeanour passed unnoticed by Cosmo. His cordiality and effervescence continued undiminished.
'So here you are!' he said. 'Well?'
Oily had to remember that he was a gentleman before he could trust himself to speak. Words which he had learned in early boyhood were jostling each other in his mind. He turned to his wife.
'He says "Well?"'
'I heard him,' said Gertie grimly.
' "Well?" He sits there and says "Well?" Can you beat it?'
'He's got his nerve,' Gertie agreed. 'He's certainly there with the crust, all right. Listen, you. Where the heck have you been all this time?'
It was an embarrassing question. One likes to have one's little secrets.
'Oh – er – away,' said Cosmo evasively.
The words had the worst effect on his companions. Already cold and austere, they became colder and austerer, and so marked was their displeasure that he was at last forced to realize that he was not among friends. There was a bottle on the table, and a quick shiver ran down his spine as he observed Mrs Carlisle's hand stray absently in its direction. Knowing what a magnetic attraction bottles had for this woman, when cross, he decided that the moment had come to be frank, forthright and fearless.
'As a matter of fact, I've been in prison.'
'What!'
'Yes. I went on a toot and kicked a policeman, and they gave me fourteen days without the option. I got out this morning.'
A magical change came over the Carlisles, Mr and Mrs. An instant before stern and hostile, they looked at him now with the sympathetic eyes of a Mr and Mrs who understood all. The claims of prison are paramount.
'Oh, so that was it!' said Oily. 'I see. I couldn't think what had become of you, but if you were in the cooler...'
'How are they over here?' asked Gertie.
'Eh?'
'The coolers.'
'Oh, the coolers. Not too good.'
'Much the same as back home, I guess. Prison's all right for a visit, I always say, but I wouldn't live there if you gave me the place. Well, too bad they pulled you in, but you're here now, so let's not waste any more time. Give him the over-all picture, Oily.'
'Right away, sweetie. Things have gone and got a mite gummed up, Wisdom. You know a guy called Ickenham?'
'Lord Ickenham? Yes. He married my uncle's half-sister. What about him?'
Oily did not believe in breaking things gently.
'He's got that letter.'
Cosmo, as Police Constable Styles had done two weeks previously, made an odd, gurgling sound like water going down a waste pipe.
'My letter?'
'Yay'
'Old Ickenham has?'
'Yup.'
'But I don't understand.'
'You will.'
Gordon Carlisle's narrative of the happenings at Hammer Lodge was a lengthy one, and long before it had finished Cosmo's jaw had dropped to its fullest extent. He had got the over-all picture, and his spirits were as low as his jaw.
'But what do we do?' he said hoarsely, seeing no ray of light among the clouds.
'Oh, now that I've contacted you, everything's nice and smooth.'
'Nice?'
'Yay'
'Smooth?'
Tup.'
'I don't see it,' said Cosmo.
Oily gave a gentlemanly little chuckle.
'Pretty clear, I'd have said. Fairly simple, seems to me. You just write your uncle another letter, saying you've been thinking it over some more and still feel the same way about letting everybody know that it was him and not you that wrote the book, and you're going to spill the beans in the next couple of days or so. Won't that make him play ball? Of course it will.'
The hearty lunch with which his rather bewildered gastric juices were doing their best to cope had dulled Cosmo's wits a good deal, but they remained bright enough to enable him to grasp the beauty of the scheme.
'Why, of course! It doesn't matter that Ickenham has got the letter, does i
t?'
'Not a bit.'
'This second one of mine will do the trick.'
'Sure.'
'I'll go home and write it now.'
'No hurry. I see you've got the Gazette there. You've read about the serial?'
'Yes. I suppose Saxby sold it to them. I had a letter from a literary agent called Saxby, asking if he could handle the book, and I thought it was a good idea. I told him he could.'
'Well, the first thing you do is go see him and get the money.'
'And the second,' said Gertie, 'is slip Oily his cut. Seventy smackers, if you remember. You owed him fifty, and he loaned you another twenty. Making seventy in all.'
'That's right. It all comes back to me.'
'And now,' said Gertie, speaking with a certain metallic note in her voice, 'it's coming back to Oily. He'll call around at your place in an hour or so and collect it.'
CHAPTER 12
Old Mr Howard Saxby was seated at his desk in his room at the Edgar Saxby literary agency when Cosmo arrived there. He was knitting a sock. He knitted a good deal, he would tell you if you asked him, to keep himself from smoking, adding that he also smoked a good deal to keep himself from knitting. He was a long, thin old gentleman in his middle seventies with a faraway unseeing look in his eye, not unlike that which a dead halibut on a fishmonger's slab gives the pedestrian as he passes. It was a look which caused many of those who met him to feel like disembodied spirits, so manifest was it that they were making absolutely no impression on his retina. Cosmo, full though he was of roast beef, roly-poly pudding and Stilton cheese, had the momentary illusion as he encountered that blank, vague gaze that he was something diaphanous that had been hurriedly put together with ectoplasm.
'Mr Wisdom,' said the girl who had led him into the presence.
'Ah,' said Howard Saxby, and there was a pause of perhaps three minutes, during which his needles clicked busily. 'Wisdom, did she say?'
'Yes. I wrote Cocktail Time.'
'You couldn't have done better,' said Mr Saxby cordially. 'How's your wife, Mr Wisdom?'