'You mean, he threatened to jug you if you didn't?'
'Well, yes, there was some informal talk of it. And what made my position one of some embarrassment was that I had spent it all.'
'Tell me,' I said, 'has this story got a happy ending?' 'Oh, yes, it ended happily.' 'You did go to prison, then?’
'Prison? What do you mean? Of course I didn't go to prison. A man of my vision and resource doesn't go to prison.
Though I'm not saying the shadow of the cell didn't loom to a certain extent during the next few days. You see, for a colossal sum like ten quid, there was absolutely nobody I could touch. George Tupper, always my best prospect, is never good for more than a fiver, and to extract that one is too often compelled to use chloroform and the forceps. As for the rest, like yourself - mere half-crowners and two-bobbists. No, it seemed impossible that I could float the necessary loan. But how about my flesh and blood, my Aunt Julia, you ask/ 'No, I don't.'
'And you are quite right not to. To have tried to bite Aunt Julia's ear would have been to be obliged to reveal all, which would have resulted in the instant boot. Besides, the trouble about having a female novelist for an aunt is that her attitude on these occasions tends to be shoppy. Inform her that unless she coughs up you will be incarcerated in Wormwood Scrubs, and she merely tells you to be sure to take careful notes while doing your little bit of time, so that she can work them up into Alistair Simms, Convict, or They That Are Without Hope, or something. No sympathy, I mean. The professional outlook. Remind me to tell you some time - no, I won't go into that now. Where was I?'
'On your way to prison.'
'Not at all. I was on my way to a little pub in the Strand where I have always found I can do my best thinking. And thinking of the tensest was certainly needed now. And I had scarcely ordered my modest pint when I saw Wall-Eyed Dixon.'
'Who was he?'
'A fellow who ran a big boxing-place down in the East End. I had made his acquaintance while managing the Battler, who had frequently fought under his auspices. He asked me to come over and join him, and I went. I remember feeling that this looked very much as if my luck might be turning, because if he had come in ten minutes later I should have paid for my pint out of my own straitened means.’
' "Listen," said this Dixon, after we had exchanged the usual civilities. "Are you still managing that Billson fellow? "
'Now, as a matter of fact, I hadn't seen the old Battler for nearly a year and hadn't the remotest notion where he was, if still alive, but you know me, Corky. The quick brain. The ready intelligence. ‘
'"Yes," I said. "I am."
‘"How is he these days?"
‘ "Fine. Never better."
' "Well, listen. One-Round Peebles is fighting Teddy Banks at my place next month, and Teddy's broken his leg. So Billson can have the match, if he likes."
‘ "I'll sign the articles now," I said.
'So we called for paper and ink and drafted a rough agreement. And after a brief chat we parted - he to remain and fill himself with double whiskies, I, with ten quid in advance in my pocket, to trot round to the North Kensington Hon. Sec. and give him his money and then start combing the town for Billson.'
Well, I won't go into all the trouble and anguish I had finding the fellow (continued Ukridge), it involved incessant inquiry in pubs and places, and a dashed sight more walking than I could have wished, but eventually I ran him to earth and, what was more, found him in malleable mood.
It seemed that just what he was needing at the moment was the chance of picking up a little easy money. This barmaid of his, this Flossie, had apparently been kicking to some extent because the wedding-day didn't come along a bit quicker, and his idea was to collect his share of the winner's end of the purse and then chance his arm at the nearest registrar's. He signed up. And there I was, on velvet.
And yet not so entirely on velvet as I had supposed in the first flush of getting the man pinned down. The snag was, you see, this matter of training. If the Battler had a defect it was that he treated training in rather an airy and offhand way. Left to himself, he would have prepared for this vitally important contest by drinking mixed ale and smoking twopenny cigars And the problem was, how could I, residing at Wimbledon Common, exercise watchful and incessant care over a bloke ii a back-floor bed-sitting-room in Limehouse?
It was a matter that called for a good deal of thought. And ] was bending my mind to it when this streak of luck of mine cropped up again. It's odd about luck. You don't see a sight of it for months, and then it suddenly comes frisking after you like a friendly dog and won't leave you. At this difficult point in my affairs, what should happen but out of a blue sky the odd-job man at The Cedars handed in his portfolio for some reason or other, and my aunt told me to go to the Employment agency and enrol a successor.
It solved the whole thing. On the following morning, Battling Billson was on the premises, odd-jobbing away like the dickens, and it really did seem to me at last that all my troubles were at an end.
Because there is no getting away from it, the house of a maiden lady of studious tastes on Wimbledon Common is absolutely the ideal training-camp for a heavyweight pugilist with a big match in prospect. Nowhere is the air more fresh and bracing than that which sweeps across those great open spaces. And where, again, could you find a place more suitable than Wimbledon Common for roadwork? The vast expanse of it simply invites a fighter to pick his feet up and trot out into the sunset. Add a large garden, full of nooks where a punching bag may be suspended from a handy bough, and you will see that as far as exercise was concerned the conditions could scarcely have been bettered.
Then again, The Cedars was a quiet house. Early to bed and early to rise was our motto. None of those big dinners lasting into the small hours, with the staff waiting in the kitchen till dawn to dig into the remains. It looked to me as if everything was rosy. The only flaw was that I couldn't quite see how my man was to get any sparring.
And then, on the second night, my aunt, who had been looking thoughtful during dinner, touched on a point which had evidently been causing her perplexity.
'Stanley,' she said. 'That new odd-job man. When you engaged him at the agency, did you examine his references?'
I didn't care for the turn the conversation was taking, but I maintained a nonchalant front.
'Oh, yes,' I said. 'They were terrific. Why?'
'He seems so eccentric. I was walking on the Common yesterday, and he suddenly came past me, running. He had on an old
sweater and a cap. I stared at him, and he touched the cap and went on running.'
'Odd,' I said, swallowing a beaker of port, of which I had some need. 'Very strange.'
'And this morning I looked out of my window, and there he was, skipping with a skipping rope, like a child. And after that he suddenly began jumping about and striking out with hands at nothing, as if he were having some sort of seizure. I wonder if he can be quite right in the head.'
I could read her thought. She was debating within herself the advisability of continuing to employ a loony odd-job man. I saw that a strong effort was called for.
'I expect it's just this modern craze for exercise, Aunt Julia,' I said. 'You see it everywhere nowadays. I should have thought it was rather a good thing myself. The healthy mind in the healthy body, what? I mean, if an odd-job man prefers to fill in his hours of leisure with a skipping-rope, jacking up his liver, instead of hanging round the kitchen with a mug of beer, isn't that, from the employer's view-point, so much goose?'
'Perhaps you are right,' she said thoughtfully. Then, for her table-talk always tends to get a bit personal: 'It would be better if you took more exercise yourself, Stanley. You are getting a sort of puffy look.'
I seized the opening with the quickness of a lightning-flash. Napoleon used to do the same thing.
'You're quite right, Aunt Julia,' I said cordially. 'From now on, I'll do a bit of boxing every day with the odd-job man.'
'Perhaps he does not box.' 'I'
ll teach him.'
'And I am not sure that I quite approve of my nephew hobnobbing with the odd-job man.'
'Oh, it isn't hobnobbing, Aunt Julia. Between the act of hobnobbing and that of pasting a man on the nose there is a wide and substantial difference.'
'Very well. I dare say it will do no harm. Oakshott tells me he is a very civil and respectful young man, so perhaps there will be no objection to your boxing with him. Certainly you ought to do something without delay. You are getting positively stout.'
So that was that. A little diplomacy, Corky, a touch of the old Machiavelli method, and there I was with the major problem of the Battler's training solved.
Every morning, accordingly, at ten on the dot, I would repair to the back garden and we would put in two or three nice rounds together. And once more I felt that Providence was doing the square thing by one who deserved it. It looked to me as if my share of the winner's end of the handsome purse offered by the management of the Whitechapel Stadium was as good as in my pocket.
And so the happy days went on.
But a cloud was gathering in the blue, Corky, the skies were soon to grow dark and overcast. Little as I had suspected it, the Eden of The Cedars, Wimbledon Common, contained a serpent, and a Grade A serpent at that.
I allude to Oakshott, the butler.
It was not immediately that I discovered this. In fact, up to the middle of the second week I don't suppose I had given Oakshott a thought, except that I was relieved to hear that he approved of the Battler. I mean, a butler can do so much to mar the destinies of the humbler members of the entourage. A word from Oakshott, for instance, to the effect that in his opinion the Battler was unfitted for his odd-job-manly duties would have been enough to cause my aunt to sack him on the spot. But Oakshott thought him civil and respectful, and Oakshott was an honourable man. Or so I thought then. I little knew.
Well, as I say, Corky, the happy days wore on. But gradually there began to creep over me a sort of uneasy feeling. And I'll tell you why. It was because, as I sparred with Battler, I grew conscious of a subtle change in the man.
You have seen Battling Billson in action, Corky, and you know what he was like at his best. Of course, I wasn't expecting him to give of his best in a friendly training bout with a fellow like myself whom he could have wiped out with a single blow, but I did expect a certain something - a certain zip, as it were; shadowy modicum of the old pep. And this, beyond a question, was lacking.
I'm fairly useful with the gloves, but, after all, I'm only an amateur and, as such, I had no right to land on the man quite so often. Still less had he the right, when I landed, to gurgle like a, leaking cistern. And I didn't like the feel of that tummy of his when I hit it. Squashy. The tummy of a man who has been living a dashed sight too high. I am a pretty penetrating chap, Corky, and it didn't take me long to realize that something was going wrong with the training schedule. I decided to make inquiries.
Well, it was no good asking the fellow himself, of course. I don't know how vividly you remember this Billson, but perhaps you recall his peculiar conversational method. You would say something to him and pause for a reply, and he would stand there with his face, if you could call it a face, a perfect blank for possibly thirty seconds. Not a muscle stirring while the words gradually got themselves assembled under that concrete skull. Then a ripple - something coming to the surface. Then a sort of dull gleam in the eye. Then a twitching of the lips. And finally the 'Ah' or the 'Oh' or the 'Ur' or whatever it might be. To have got anything like the facts from him at this juncture would have taken hours.
So I forbore to question the poor dumb brick in person, and went straight to the cook, a woman with her fingers always on the pulse of life at The Cedars. Remember that, Corky. If you ever want to know anything, consult the cook. A cook's tentacles reach everywhere. Nothing in the line of gossip that doesn't come her way sooner or later. It was so in the present case. I found her well abreast of the state of affairs.
The whole trouble, she informed me, was that Mr Oakshott had made a sort of pet of this odd-job man. Kept taking him into his pantry for port and cigars. Pressed tit-bits on him at the table. Saw to it that he wallowed in beer. Pretty mordant she was about the whole thing, she being one of the old school with rather a nice sense of social values and feeling that a butler lowered his prestige by chumming with an odd-job man.
And, as for the Battler, his better self appeared to be entirely dead. Reckless of the fact that his waistline was increasing at the rate of a quarter of an inch a day, he followed Oakshott about like a dog and swilled his port without a pang.
You see what had happened, Corky? It was a contingency I ought to have taken into my calculations right from the beginning. But somehow I had overlooked it. I mean to say, the one objection to training a boxer at your aunt's house is that he must inevitably be thrown into the society of the butler, and what more likely than that the latter should lead him astray?
Have you ever stopped to consider what the impact of a butler on a boneheaded proletarian of the Billson type must be like? It can scarcely fail to be unsettling. And Oakshott was one of those stout, impressive, ecclesiastical butlers. A man with a presence. Meeting him in the street and ignoring the foul bowler hat he wore on his walks abroad, you would have put him down as a Bishop in mufti or, at the least, a plenipotentiary at one of the better courts.
Personally, having run into him one afternoon at Ally Pally just after the second race, and having found him a bloke with a distinctly sporting vein in his composition, I had never felt for him the reverence he excited in others. More one of the boys than a butler was the way I had always regarded him. But I could see that to Battling Billson, a chap brought up in the cruder surroundings of the Wapping water-front, and accustomed all his life to look upon a Silver Ring bookie as the highest thing in the social scale, he must have seemed like a being from another and more rarefied world. Anyway, be that as it may, there was no room for doubt that he had fallen under this butler's glamorous spell, and something had got to be done to switch off the other's heady influence before it was too late.
I went in search of Oakshott immediately, and found him outside my aunt's study, just closing the door.
'A visitor for Miss Ukridge, sir,' he explained.
I was not interested in my aunt's visitors.
'Oakshott,' I said, 'I want a word with you.’
"Very good, sir.'
‘In private.'
'If you would care to step into my pantry, sir.'
We headed for the pantry, and I started in. 'It's about the odd-job man, Oakshott.'
'Yes, sir?'
‘I hear you've been giving him port.'
'Yes, sir.'
'You oughtn't to do that.'
'It is not the best port, sir.'
‘I don't care what port it is. What I'm driving at...' I paused. I could see that this was going to be a bit difficult. The only thing to do seemed to be to lay the cards on the table. 'Look here, Oakshott,' I said. ‘I know you're a sportsman -'
'Thank you, sir.'
'- So I'll tell you something I wouldn't care to have generally known. This chap Billson is really a boxer. He's under my management, and I've brought him here to train for a most important fight -'
'- At the Whitechapel Stadium on the sixteenth of next month, versus One-Round Peebles, yes, sir.'
I goggled.
'You know?'
'Yes, sir. I always make a practice of attending the meetings at the Whitechapel Stadium as often as my duties permit. I have frequently seen the young fellow performing there, and I heard that this match was in prospect. Personally, I do not fancy the young man's chances.'
'Well, dash it,' I said, 'nor do I, if you lush him up with port all day long, when he's supposed to be training. How do you think he can win, if you do that?'
‘I am not anxious for him to win, sir.'
'What!'
'The fact is, I have placed a substantial wager on his antagonist.' br />
I don't know if you have ever been in a pantry, Corky, and suddenly had it start to rock about you. It's a most unpleasant experience. It happened to me now. There was a sort of singing in my ears, and through it I heard this serpentine butler proceed with his remarks.
'I have never thought highly of the pugilistic gifts of this young man, Billson. He has a nice left hook, but otherwise is almost completely lacking in science and has contrived to achieve success hitherto purely by means of physical strength and fitness. Peebles, on the other hand, is a clever boxer. Now that I am in a position to ensure that the young fellow enters the ring on the sixteenth in poor condition, I feel that the money I have wagered upon Peebles should prove a most satisfactory investment.'
Corky, old horse, I've had some stunning revelations in my time of the depths to which humanity can sink, but I tell you frankly that this topped them all. For some minutes I spoke my mind freely, and this saintly looking blighter stood listening with a courteous and indulgent inclination of the head as if he were an Archdeacon receiving the confidences of a choirboy. Eventually I tottered out to seek some quiet spot where I might brood over the matter and decide what was to be done for the best.