‘Oh, hullo,’ he mumbled.
‘Good evening, good evening, good evening,’ said Mr Trout. He might have been one of a comedy duo billed as The Sunshine Boys, good dressers on and off. ‘How lovely the world looks in the gloaming. London becomes a veritable fairyland. One is reminded of the words of the poet, which I have forgotten at the moment, but they are very beautiful. Is Llewellyn in?’
‘No, he went out.’
‘All for the best. I’m glad. Because I want to talk to you privately, Pickering. In the cab this afternoon I let fall some observations on the subject of love and marriage which I now regret.’
‘Oh, did you?’
‘I did, though apparently you were not listening. I expressed myself very strongly as disapproving of them. My views have since become radically altered. I am now wholeheartedly in their favour. It is love that makes the world go round, I am now convinced. I remember a song, popular many years ago, entitled “Love me and the world is mine”. That’s the spirit, Pickering, that’s the spirit. An admirable sentiment.’
Joe was looking at him with a wild surmise. Had his diction not been so clear and his lower limbs so firm, he would, like Mr Llewellyn, have entertained doubts of his sobriety. As it was, he merely gaped, hoping that footnotes would be supplied later.
‘Well, that’s fine,’ he said.
‘“Fine” is the word, Pickering.’
‘But you were saying that you had something private to talk to me about.’
‘And I have, I have indeed. But in order to make my story intelligible to you I shall have to give an account of my life up to this afternoon. A brief account,’ he added, seeing Joe wince. ‘Just an outline.’
‘Omitting childhood, boyhood and college days?’
‘Precisely. The periods you mention are not of the essence. We move directly to my mature manhood.’
‘That’s good.’
‘When I became a member of Bachelors Anonymous.
‘Alcoholics Anonymous?.’
‘Bachelors Anonymous. A little group of men whose aim in life it is to avoid getting married. We strain every nerve to preserve our celibacy, and if we hear of a fellow-member weakening, we plead with him to be strong. We even have a song which we sing on these occasions. “Of all the ills with which we’re cursed the married state is far the worst”, it begins. I could sing it to you, if you wish.’
‘Some other time, do you think?’
‘Any time that suits you. It’s a catchy little thing.’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘Lyric by Johnny Runcible, music by G. J. Flannery.’
Joe stirred uneasily. Mr Trout had not given any formal promise not to sing, and there was no knowing when he might not do it. He shrank from having to listen on an empty stomach. To divert his companion’s attention and prevent this becoming a musical evening he put a question.
‘Has all this anything to do with me? It’s all absorbingly interesting, but where do I come in?’
‘I am about to tell you. But first I must reveal that I am no longer a member of Bachelors Anonymous. I cabled my resignation on my way here. I am afraid the boys will be terribly upset, but I had no option. As I told you, my views have undergone a radical change. It happened down at Valley Fields this afternoon. It was there that love found me, Pickering. I met a woman who taught me the meaning of passion.
Joe’s bewilderment increased. He could think of but one female resident of Valley Fields.
‘Not the woman with the X-ray eyes who talked about fleshly lusts and told me the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand?’
‘I was too far off to hear what she told you, and in addition the cabman was telling me how wet weather always brings on his lumbago. But no, she was not the one. The divine creature to whom I allude is a Mrs Amelia Bingham who lives next door.’
Joe pursed his lips. He was shocked.
‘Mrs? Trout,’ he said severely, ‘are you breaking up a home?’
‘No, no, no, no, no.’
‘Are you a modern Casanova?’
‘Certainly not. Mrs Bingham is a widow. Her late husband fell overboard on a day excursion to Boulogne.’
There was a momentary silence while their thoughts dwelled on Mr Bingham, deceased.
‘She bakes the most wonderful scones,’ said Mr Trout.
‘Oh?’ said Joe.
‘And her strawberry jam has to be tasted to be believed.’
‘Oh?’
‘You will notice that I have a bandage on my hand. Her dog bit me and she bound me up.’
‘Oh?’
‘With extraordinary skill. She is a hospital nurse.’
Joe rose once more to a point of order.
‘All this may be so, but I don’t see where I get into the act.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘What has all this got to do with me?’
‘I am coming to that. I have merely been laying the foundation for my apology. What we call in the Law connecting up. If I had never met Mrs Bingham and ceased to be a member of Bachelors Anonymous, I should not have felt compelled to apologise to you.’
‘What’s all this about apologising? Apologising for what?’
‘For putting that Mickey Finn in your highball yesterday.’
In one of her early novels Rosie M. Banks has a passage in which she described the reactions of Claude Delamere, the hero, on becoming aware that the girl to whom he was betrothed had not, as he had supposed, been deceiving him. (It was her brother from Australia he had seen her kissing.) He felt, she says, as if a blinding light had flashed upon him. It was much the same with Joe Pickering as he heard these words. But whereas Claude had been filled with a joy that threatened to unman him, he was as sore as a sunburned neck and as mad as a hornet. So intense was his righteous wrath that he could not speak, merely standing there making a noise like the death rattle of an expiring soda syphon, and Mr Trout proceeded.
‘Yes, I do feel I owe you an apology, though I must claim to have had some excuse for acting as I did. You had spoken of the girl with the utmost enthusiasm, you were taking her to dinner, you had had a manicure and a shampoo. Naturally it seemed to a lifelong member of Bachelors Anonymous that there was no time to be lost and that only Method B would serve. I was actuated by motives of the purest altruism. I felt I had a mission to save you from yourself. I pictured you thanking me later with tears in your eyes. How could I know that I was going to meet Mrs Bingham and see the light? I can only say I’m sorry. But as a matter of fact no harm has been done. All you have to do is go to the girl and explain. You will probably have a good laugh together. Bless my soul,’ said Mr Trout, looking at his watch. ‘Is that the time? I must rush.’ And he was gone.
But any shortage of Trouts was compensated for an hour later by the arrival of Jerry Nichols, who announced that his father had fallen asleep much more promptly than usual, thus enabling him to be at Joe’s service with the minimum of delay.
‘What seems to be the trouble?,’ he asked.
It did not take Joe long to inform him. The basic facts were readily tabulated. He loved a girl, and she would not speak to him. Jerry agreed that this was a disagreeable state of affairs.
‘Who is this girl?’
‘Sally Fitch. You’ve met her. She came to see you that day I was in your office about the Llewellyn job.’
‘Oh, the heiress.’
‘The what?’
‘We had asked her to call because somebody had left her twenty-five thousand pounds.’
‘What!’
‘Didn’t you know?’
‘Of course I didn’t. Good Lord, Jerry, do you think she thinks I do know and am after her for her money?’
‘Impossible. Any girl with an ounce of sense could see that you aren’t that sort of chap. Rugged honesty, that’s you. It sticks out all over you. No, it must be something you’ve done. Have you done something?’
‘Yes, but I can explain.’
‘Tell me all.’
??
?I asked her to dinner and didn’t show up. Naturally this would have annoyed her, but you’d think she would let me explain. But she won’t.’
‘Your explanation being—?’
‘That just as I was starting out for the restaurant somebody gave me a Mickey Finn.’
‘Somebody what?’
‘Gave me a Mickey Finn. You know what a Mickey Finn is.’
A rather careworn look had come into Jerry’s face. It was plain that he was having difficulty in becoming equal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation.
‘I think you had better tell me the Pickering Story from the beginning, Joe. At the moment a bit abstruse it strikes me as.’
Joe told it to him from the beginning, and Jerry listened with growing understanding.
‘You’re quite right,’ he said at its conclusion. ‘You can certainly explain. I don’t mind telling you that there have been times in my life when I’ve wished I had as good an explanation as that. We must call on this Fitch first thing tomorrow.’
‘But she won’t see me.’
‘She’ll see you all right. The lay-out is as follows. We go to her address, we ring the bell, the door is opened and we slide in, and there we are. I say “we” because I shall be at your side. You then tell her about the Mickey Finn. Good?’
‘Perfect.’
‘Not so good,’ said Jerry. ‘Because on seeing you crossing the threshold she would break into a spring and go and lock herself in the bathroom. Obviously you mustn’t be there. I will go and see her and report to you if the All Clear has been blown. I say “if”, for we must never lose sight of the fact that the explanation of yours takes a lot of believing. It needs someone like myself to put it over.’
Chapter Twelve
At times when one’s affairs have become tangled, causing the brow to develop furrows and the soul to ask itself ‘Where do we go from here?’, it is always a comfort to place oneself in the hands of a recognised expert and allow him to carry on. Householders feel a new hope when something has gone wrong with the pipes and the plumber arrives, and the thought that Jerry, a man accustomed to coping with popsies since he was a slip of a boy, had taken over the difficult negotiations with Sally brought a new hope to Joe Pickering. It was in quite cheerful mood that he rose from the breakfast table next morning to answer the telephone. Before he had enlisted Jerry’s aid his ‘Hullo?’ would have been a low faint ‘Hullo?’, almost a gurgle. Now it had quite a ring.
‘Hoy!’ said the telephone. ‘Pickering?’
‘Oh, hullo, Mr Llewellyn. Are you in the hospital?’
‘Sure I’m in the hospital. St Swithin’s.’
‘Everything all right?’
‘More or less. Hell of a lot of noise going on all the time. There’s a contraption outside my room which keeps bellowing “Doctor Binns, Doctor Binns” every two minutes. What it wants Doctor Binns for I don’t know. Probably to tell him a funny story. But that’s not what I called up about. It suddenly occurred to me that the man Trout might come and ask you where I was. On no account tell him. The first thing he would do would be to run bleating to the Dalrymple pot of poison and spill the beans, and half an hour after that she would be round here with grapes and kind inquiries.’
‘But he doesn’t know where she lives.’
‘He would find out. A man like Trout can find out anything. So don’t breathe a word.’
‘My lips are sealed.’
‘Your hips are what?’
‘Not hips, lips. I said they were sealed.’
‘Keep them that way.’
A brief pause in the conversation took place at this point. A confused roaring noise, as of lions at feeding time, came over the wire. Then Mr Llewellyn spoke again.
‘Pickering.’
‘On the spot.’
‘That was a girl in short skirts and a white thungummy on the back of her head who wanted a sample of my blood. I very soon told her where she got off. ,,I don’t give samples of my blood to every Tom Dick and Harry who comes asking for them, “I said.’
‘Only to personal friends?’
‘Exactly. She didn’t know which way to look. What were we talking about?’
‘Mr Trout.’
‘Don’t call him Mister Trout. The hellhound Trout or Trout the traitor, if you like, but not a term of respect like Mister. Personally, it gives me a sinking feeling even to think of him. Ever hear of Benedict Arnold?’
‘I’ve read about him.’
‘Trout’s name ought to have been that.’
‘Don’t you mean his name ought to have been Trout?’
‘Do I?’
‘I think so.’
‘Perhaps you’re right. But why you want to keep babbling on about a human gumboil like Trout I can’t imagine.’
‘Sorry.’
‘What?’
‘I said I was sorry.’
‘Then don’t do it again.’
‘I won’t. How do you like it in hospital?’
‘Might be worse. All right for a visit, but I wouldn’t live there if you gave me the place.’
‘Nice nurse?’
‘Ah, there you have said a mouthful, Pickering. I have a Grade A nurse.’
‘Splendid.’
‘The very word for her. Not one of your juvenile delinquents who bust in on you wanting samples of your blood, but a sensible comfortable middle-aged woman in her forties. We get on like a couple of sailors on shore leave. Well, go to hell now, Pickering; I’m expecting the doctor. Remember about Benedict Arnold Trout.’
‘I won’t forget.’
‘Not a word if he comes inquiring as to my whereabouts.’
An old joke about them being at the wash flitted into Joe’s mind, but he let it go. He was feeling better than he had been feeling, but not so much better as to allow him to indulge in light persiflage of that nature.
The upward trend in his spirits did not last. Despondency returned and grew, for the afternoon, though bringing callers of various descriptions including an optimist who hoped to sell richly bound and illustrated sets of Dumas on the easy payment system, did not bring Jerry Nichols. The evening was well advanced before he appeared.
‘Well, you’ve taken your time,’ said Joe.
Jerry dismissed the slur with a wave of the hand not unlike one of Mr Llewellyn’s gestures when singing ‘Mister and Mrs Fitch’ in his bath.
‘I came as soon as I could,’ he said. ‘I would have thought that you, being in the same line of business yourself until recently, would have been familiar with the iron discipline which prevails in a solicitor’s office. If Father had caught me sneaking off before closing time, it would have made no difference that I was his son, I would have been marched off into a hollow square of clerks and office boys and had my buttons snipped off, or probably something even worse. You remember what happened to Danny Deever in the morning.’
Joe had to admit the justice of this. The head of Nichols, Erridge, Trubshaw and Nichols might take a nap after dinner now and then, but in the daytime his vigilance would have been that of the keenest-eyed type of lynx. He apologised, and Jerry begged him not to mention it. He was accustomed to being misjudged, he said. He would now, he added, proceed to make his report, a statement which brought Joe up in his chair as if a sharp instrument had come through its seat.
‘Did you see her?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘She wasn’t there. A girl doesn’t stay indoors all day. She has things to do which take her out from time to time. Let me tell you the whole story, omitting no detail however slight. I got to Fountain Court and rang the bell. All straight so far?’ he said rather unnecessarily, and Joe said he had found no difficulty in following the narrative up to this point. Seeming pleased with his intelligence, Jerry resumed.
‘The door was opened by a rather personable popsy, who proved to be a girl who lives with the Fitch. She informed me that the Fitch was at the hair stylist’s having a permanent. “You ha
d better look in later,” she said. “There’s a man called Trout waiting to see her.” Well, I wasn’t going to have that, of course. “Later be blowed,” I said. ,,I have to see .Miss Fitch on a matter of the utmost urgency, the nature of which I am not empowered to divulge. I’m jolly well coming in, and if Trout objects, I’ll scatter him to the four winds.” “Suit yourself,” she said. “It’s a free country,” and she buzzed off, and I went on into the living-room where, as foreshadowed, I found Trout.’
‘Trout,’ said Joe meditatively.
‘That was the name.’
‘I wonder what he wanted.’
‘He told me that. His mission was the same as mine. He had come to tell Miss Fitch that he was the bloke who had given you that Mickey Finn which had caused your non-appearance at the dinner table.’
‘My God!’
‘Precisely. With your quick intelligence you have spotted that the coming clean of Trout is the one thing that was needed to extricate you from the soup in which you are wallowing. It gives verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. I go to her and say ,,Hullo there, Miss Fitch, I’ll bet you’ve been wondering why Joe asked you to dinner and didn’t turn up. The matter is readily explained. Somebody gave him a Mickey Finn”, and it carries little or no conviction. But it’s very different when Trout, tapping his chest, says “I dun it.” She swallows his story whole and asks for more.’
‘Of course!’
‘It’s what we lawyers call the best evidence. The other sort is incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial and doesn’t get you anywhere. I decided, accordingly, to come away and leave it to Trout to do the talking, though sorry not to see Miss Fitch again, for she had impressed me very favourably that time she came to my office. Nice girl.’