‘I am,’ he said.
‘Her father disapproves of the match.’
‘He does, does he?’
‘And he is prepared to pay you a reasonable sum if you will agree to consider it null and void.’
If Jaklyn felt that it was odd that Sally’s father, a humble country vicar, should be in a position to scatter money about like this, he did not say so, feeling perhaps that the Reverend Fitch had won the Irish Sweep or backed a series of winners since he had last seen him. Nor did he protest, as some men would have done, that he had never been so insulted in his life. His thoughts riveted exclusively on the man with the ginger moustache and the seven stitches, he said:
‘What do you call a reasonable sum?’
‘Fifty pounds.’
‘It’s a deal.’
As Mr Trout had told Joe, this was not the first time he had had talks of this description with impecunious young men, but it was the first time an impecunious young man had reached a decision with such lightning speed, and it took his breath away. Fifty pounds had been what might be called his asking price, and he had taken it for granted that his mention of it would be the cue for the haggling to begin. Jaklyn’s instantaneous acceptance of the offer gave him the feeling he had sometimes had when going downstairs in the dark and treading on empty space where he had supposed the last step to be.
His impulse on recovering his breath was to tell Jaklyn what a good man thought of him, but he had a dinner date with the woman he loved, and though she had warned him that she might be a little late in getting away from her hospital, he did not dare to spend time rebuking young men so lost to shame that censure would be wasted on them. He paid Jaklyn fifty pounds, and left in silence. And he had not gone far before emotional breathing made itself heard and Joe emerged from the shadows.
‘Well?’ said Joe. ‘Did it go off all right?’
The anxiety in his voice amused Mr Trout. It seemed to him bizarre that his young friend should be entertaining any uncertainty as to the success of a mission entrusted to Ephraim Trout of Trout, Wapshott and Edelstein. He replied that it had gone off with the greatest smoothness. He had, as expected, swayed Jaklyn Warner like a reed, bending him to his will with eloquence which there was no withstanding. Warner could see from the firmness of his manner that argument would be futile and that no nonsense would be stood.
Joe gave him a worshipping look.
‘Trout, you’re a marvel!’
‘One does one’s best, Pickering.’
‘It’s a knack, I suppose, this ability of yours to look people in the eye and make them wilt?’
‘I would prefer to call it a gift.’
‘You’re probably right. Anyway, thanks again. I wish there was something I could do for you.’
‘There is. You can give me a word of advice.’
‘What’s your problem?’
‘I am dining tonight with Mrs Bingham, and I would like you to brief me as to the advisability of proposing marriage to her.’
Joe in his uplifted mood was feeling that the world would be a better place if everybody started proposing to everyone. He said it struck him as a splendid idea.
‘You do not think it would be too soon?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘An exhibition of masculine impetuosity might frighten her.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘I have not known her long.’
‘Incompetent, immaterial and irrelevant. Women like a dashing man.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Why, it’s only a year or two since man used to snatch women up on their saddle bows and ride off with them. And the women loved it. A pity you can’t do that.’
‘A great pity.’
‘But nowadays, of course, they expect you to propose. The great thing is not to do it over the soup. Wait for the coffee. Where are you dining?’
‘At the Dorchester.’
‘I’ll drop you there.’
‘Very good of you. Why not over the soup?’
‘Not romantic.’
‘Of course, of course, of course. I might have made a grave blunder. Thank you, Pickering.’
‘Not at all. Go to it, Trout, and heaven speed your wooing.’
It was in the spirit of the Polish gentleman in the song who sang ‘Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong I hurry along, for it is my wedding morning’ that Joe, having deposited Mr Trout at his destination, took the cab on to Fountain Court. If you wanted to be finnicky about it, it was not actually his wedding morning, but this made no difference to his euphoria. Admitted by Sally to number 3A, he folded her in a close embrace, waltzed her four times round the room and informed her that this was the maddest merriest day of all the glad new year because the dark menace of Sir Jaklyn Warner, Bart, had ceased to operate.
‘Everything is fixed up,’ he said. ‘No wedding bells for you.’
‘I know,’ said Sally. ‘He’s married already.’
Once more Joe found himself gripped by that peculiar feeling of having been struck on the bridge of the nose by a wet fish. He relaxed the folded embrace and stared incredulously.
‘He’s what? Who told you that?’
‘Daphne. She’s the one he married. She told me just after you and Mr Trout had left.’
‘Who’s Daphne?’
‘Daphne Dolby. She lives with me.’
‘Oh, the personable popsy,’ said Joe, recalling Jerry Nichols’s remarks.
‘She is personable,’ said Sally, ‘but that’s not why Jaklyn married her. I think I had better explain.’
‘If you don’t want me to have a dizzy spell.’
‘It’s quite simple really.’
‘To a brain like yours, perhaps, not to mine.’
‘Daphne was engaged to Jaklyn.’
‘One of those easy to please girls?’
‘She was all set on becoming Lady Warner.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘So when I told her I was engaged to him, it naturally made her think a bit. She decided she had to move quickly, or she would lose him, because I was a much better bet from Jaklyn’s point of view than she was. I had just been left twenty-five thousand pounds.’
‘Yes. Jerry Nichols told me about that.’
‘Great added attraction, twenty-five thousand pounds. So she took him to the registry office and made him marry her.’
‘Yes, I get the picture now. She sounds like quite a girl.’
‘She is.’
‘We must have her to dinner some night when we are in our little home.’
‘And it will be a very little home, I’m afraid.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘That’s all we shall be able to afford. Oh, Joe,’ said Sally, ‘I’ve made the most awful fool of myself. I’m the world’s worst half-wit.’
Chapter Fourteen
Joe frowned.
‘You are speaking of the woman I love,’ he said stiffly.
Sally continued in the depths.
‘But will you after you hear what I’ve done?’
‘Will I what?’
‘Love me.’
‘Certainly I will. Love conquers all, as Trout would say. Oh, by the way! Trout.’
‘What about him?’
‘We’ve got to be very careful what we say to Trout. He must never know about Jaklyn being married. He thinks his triumph over him was due entirely to his eloquence and the force of his personality. It would give his self-esteem a nasty sock on the jaw if he learned the awful truth.’
‘I don’t see why we should be fussy about Trout’s feelings. He nearly ruined our lives.’
‘But with the best intentions.’
‘As it is, he’s probably ruined mine.’
‘How do you figure that out?’
‘All through him I may have lost you.’
‘What gives you the idea that you may have lost your Pickering?’
Sally gulped. The moment had come for confession, and confession was as unpleasant to h
er as it is to most people.
‘How much does money matter to you, Joe?’
‘Very little. Dross, I sometimes call it.’
‘Would you still want me if I hadn’t any?’
‘Don’t ask foolish questions.’
‘You would?’
‘Of course I would.’
‘Well, that’s a relief. Because I haven’t.’
There are observations, popularly known as conversation-stoppers, which are calculated to cast a hushed silence on the most animated dialogue. One might have supposed that this would have been one of them, but Joe, though startled, received the news with equanimity. The truth was that in spite of Jerry Nichols’s assurances he had not been able to overcome a certain uneasiness at the thought of the wide gap between Sally’s finances and his own. Pure though his motives were in seeking to make her his bride, he had had the uncomfortable feeling that people who did not know those motives might place him in the Jaklyn Warner class. Thanks to Mr Llewellyn, that modern Santa Claus, this uneasiness had ceased to trouble him. He was able to speak with perfect calmness.
‘You haven’t any money?’
‘No.’
‘But what’s become of it all? You can’t have spent twenty-five thousand pounds on chocolates and ice cream since last Tuesday.’
Sally smiled politely, but it was a painful smile. Confession was still to come, and she hated it more than ever.
‘Did Mr Nichols tell you about my legacy?’
‘Not in any detail. I happened to mention to him that I loved you, and he said “Oh, the heiress”, adding that somebody had left you a packet.’
‘Yes, Miss Carberry. I told you about her.’
‘The anti-tobacco woman you once worked for.’
‘Yes. She left me the money on condition that I didn’t smoke. And Daphne Dolby was to live with me to see that I didn’t. If she caught me smoking, it was all to go to the Anti-Tobacco League. So I was careful not to smoke.’
‘Very prudent. Very sensible. But I feel there is more to come.’
‘There is. Tonight I did. I had a cigarette.’
‘With the Dolby prowling and prowling around like the troops of Midian!’
‘She wasn’t prowling around. That’s the whole point. She went out about five minutes after you and Mr Trout left. She forgot to take her cigarette case with her. It was lying on that little table there. It caught my eye, and suddenly I felt I would die if I didn’t have a smoke. It was all Trout’s fault.’
‘That’s the part where I don’t quite follow you. I don’t see how Trout comes into it.’
‘It was the way he talked. Don’t you remember? All that stuff about being unable to guarantee success because we must not lose sight of the fact that in the matter under advisement we should be facing difficulties. He made it sound as if he hadn’t a hope.’
‘Lawyers always talk that way. You should hear Shoesmith of Shoesmith, Shoesmith, Shoesmith, and Shoesmith. It’s their native caution. Building for the future, as you might put it. If the thing’s a flop, they can say “I warned you that this might happen.” If it’s a success, you will think how wonderful they must be to have brought it off against all the odds.’
‘Well, I didn’t know that, so he left me a quivering mass of nerves—’
‘But looking terrific.’
‘—and I was just wondering how I could pull myself together and shake off this awful feeling of depression, when my eye fell on Daphne’s cigarette case.’
‘And you reached for it?’
‘I reached for it.’
Joe nodded understandingly.
‘Just what any girl would have done in your place. And the Dolby remembered her case and came back to get it and found you blowing smoke rings?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought as much. I am a playwright, and we playwrights have a sort of sixth sense. Well, when I say I’m a playwright, Cousin Angela did have sixteen performances. Many a dramatist has to be content with opening on Friday and closing on the following Saturday. And talking of Cousin Angela…’
‘She was as hard as nails about it.’
‘Talking of Cousin Angela…’
‘You might think that as we had become friends she would have pretended not to notice, but when it has anything to do with her job she has no friends.’
‘Very praiseworthy. But I was about to speak of Cousin Angela. I have a bit of news which may bring the roses back to your cheeks. Llewellyn is going to do it as a picture.’
He was right about the roses. They returned just as predicted. Sally emitted what in any popsy less personable would have been a squeal.
‘You might have told me before,’ she said reproachfully.
‘Slipped my mind.’
‘I’ve been going through hell.’
‘Good for the adrenal glands.’
‘How much?’
‘We haven’t talked terms yet.’
‘But these studios always pay the earth, don’t they?’
‘Invariably.’
‘We shall be rich without my money.’
‘Modestly bloated.’
‘And no danger of your feelings being hurt because I paid the bills.’
‘The husband always ought to have the money. Ask any husband.’
‘Yes. Otherwise it offends his amour pro pre.’
‘My God. French and everything. I’m getting a gifted wife. You must have been on many a day excursion to Boulogne.’
‘I did go once.’
‘You didn’t happen to run into a man named Bingham, did you?’
‘Not that I remember.’
‘You would have remembered if you had. He fell overboard. You would have noticed. Well, excuse me for a moment.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Only to the telephone. I thought I ought to ring Llewellyn up and ask him how he’s getting on. He’s in hospital.’
‘Is he ill?’
‘No. Merely hiding from Vera Dalrymple. I’ll explain later.’
From her knowledge of Ivor Llewellyn, gathered at the time when she had interviewed him for her paper, Sally would have supposed that any telephone conversation in which he took part would have been of considerable duration. She had thought of him as a man always with plenty to say and not averse to the sound of his own voice. But this telephone conversation terminated almost before it had begun. Joe said ‘I.L.? Pickering,’ and that was all he said. And after listening for not more than a minute he hung up and came away from the instrument, Mr Llewellyn having apparently replaced the receiver at the other end.
It perplexed Sally. Then she saw Joe’s face, and perplexity was succeeded by dismay.
‘Joe!’ she cried. ‘What is it?’ and he smiled the ghost of a twisted smile, the smile of a man whose world has collapsed beneath him but who knows that he must show himself one of the bull-dog breed whose upper lips never unstiffen.
‘Do you want it broken gently?’
‘No!’
‘It’ll be a shock.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Well, I’m sorry to say Llewellyn has fired me and isn’t going to do the play.’
Sally did not swoon, but looking back later she wondered how she had managed to avoid doing so. The floor heaved like an ocean swell, and Joe became for a moment two Joes, both flickering. It seemed an age before she could speak, and when she did she could only say ‘But why?’
Joe replied that Mr Llewellyn had not told him why.
‘All he said was “Pickering, eh? Just the man I wanted to contact. You’re fired, Pickering, and if you think I’m going to make a picture of your damned play, you’re mistaken.”‘
‘Nothing else?’
‘Only instructions to remove my blasted belongings from 8 Enniston Gardens without delay.’
‘But what had you done to him?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘Had he seemed hostile?’
‘On the contrary, my stock was particula
rly high with him. He wanted to avoid Vera Dalrymple, who had phoned to say she was coming to call, and I suggested that he should go to hospital. His gratitude was touching.’
‘Well, I don’t understand it.’
‘I do. It’s the jinx that’s been following me around for weeks, making everything I do go wrong.’
‘Not everything. You found me.’
‘But we can’t get married.’
‘Why can’t we get married? Try to stop me.’
‘What’ll we live on?’
‘I’ve got a job.’
‘I haven’t.’
‘You’ll get one.’
‘Who says so?’
‘I say so. We’ll be all right. All it needs is prudence and economy. And now go and get your things, and then you can take me out to dinner at Barribault’s. You owe me a dinner at Barribault’s.’
Joe, as he reached journey’s end, was feeling somewhat, if only a little, better. Agony though it was to be parted from Sally even for a moment, there was something, he felt, to be said for being alone and free from interruptions. He had much on his mind, and the solitude of 8 Enniston Gardens allowed him to think.
One of his subjects for thought was of course the mystery of the sudden animosity of Ivor Llewellyn, which, as Sherlock Holmes would have said, undoubtedly presented certain features of interest. For when a man has thanked you—and in broken accents, at that—for showing him the way out of an unpleasant dilemma, you do not expect him five minutes later, or practically five minutes later, to start treating you like a leper who has tried to borrow from him.
But in these bustling times one is seldom permitted to remain uninterrupted for long. Scarcely had Joe set the little grey cells to work on the Case of the Inexplicably Annoyed Motion Picture Magnate than the telephone rang. With a sigh and wishing that he had someone, as Mr Llewellyn always had, to whom he could say ‘Answer that. If it’s for me, say I’m out’, he reached for the receiver, and a familiar voice spoke.
‘Joe?’
‘Oh, hullo, Jerry.’
‘I’m phoning to ask if everything went off all right. I must say I didn’t expect to find you at Enniston Gardens. I thought you would have been at Fountain Court.’
‘I’m going back there.’
‘Did things go according to plan? ‘