And I was just going through the hall when the door of my aunt's study opened, and I heard her calling to me to come here for a moment in a voice which in my experience has always heralded trouble and a general quivering of hell's foundations. I feared the worst.
Nor had my instinct deceived me. Do you know what had happened, Corky? You remember that when I found Oakshott he had just been showing in a visitor. Who do you think that visitor was? The Hon. Sec, in person. No less. None other than the blighted Hon. Sec. of the North Kensington Hootchy-Kootchers. It appeared that, having failed to secure a suitable pitch for the annual orgy of his half-witted organization, he had called to see if there wasn't some hope of getting the garden of The Cedars after all. Apparently, I had boosted the glories of the place so shrewdly that the man's imagination had become inflamed and he was feeling like somebody who had been excluded from Paradise. So in he had popped, and within two minutes had spilled the entire beans.
Well, the result was a foregone conclusion. When you consider on what trivial grounds my Aunt Julia had so often hurled me out in the past, you can imagine with what swift enthusiasm she spat on her hands and hurled me out now. Five minutes later, after a most painful scene, I was in the hall again with specific instructions to get out of the house immediately and, having got out, to stay out. A maid, it seemed, was even now packing my suit-case.
So there was nothing to be done but to go round to the back premises, collect the Battler, break it to him that the good times among the fleshpots were at an end, and take him off somewhere where he could carry on till the day of battle.
Where that would be, I couldn't, at the moment, say. As far as I could figure it out, it looked as if we should have to share his bed-sitting-room in Limehouse. A fairly bleak prospect it seemed, but, by Jove, it wasn't half as bleak as the one that opened out after I had had a couple of minutes' chat with him. Corky, the man refused to move. He absolutely declined to stir. Here he was, he said, and he liked it. And nothing that I could say would shift him.
So the upshot of it was that I had to leave him there. And you can imagine that it was in sombre mood that I lugged my suit-case to the Tube station, my aunt not having had the common humanity to blow me to a taxi. It seemed to me that all was lost. My whole financial future hung upon the ability of this bloke to knock the stuffing out of a formidable antagonist on the sixteenth prox., and he would take the ring with a couple of double chins and a tummy on him like an alderman. Another two weeks of Oakshott's malign influence, and it would be as much as he would be able to do to climb into the ring at all under his own power. They would have to use derricks and pulleys. And no more chance of getting him away from that malign influence than if he had been trapped in the underground cellar of the Secret Nine.
I don't mind confessing, Corky, that for the better part of two days I was nonplussed. Resourceful though I am, I could see no way out.
But, of course, with a fellow of my extraordinary mental alertness, no impasse lasts indefinitely. The idea was bound to come, and it did so towards the evening of the second day. As I walked away from the Foreign Office after touching George Tupper - not without trouble and anxiety - for a couple of quid, my brain, exploring every avenue, suddenly got a bite. It was as if a voice from heaven had bellowed in my ear the word 'Flossie'. I realized, what I ought to have realized from the start, that what was needed to awaken Battling Billson's better self was the gentle influence of a woman. There was only one person who could reason with him, and that was his betrothed.
This Flossie's interests, I perceived, were identical with mine. To her, as to me, it was all important to get the Battler into the ring, on the sixteenth, in good shape. Already, as I have said, she had been growing a bit hot under the collar at her dream-man's supineness in letting the days slide by and no wedding-cake in sight. The difference between the winner's and the loser's end of the purse would mean to her the difference between the holy state hot off the griddle and all that weary waiting once more. Naturally, she would be heart and soul with me in my enterprise. Hailing a passing taxi - which, thanks to Tuppy's munificence, I could now afford - I shot off to the Blue Anchor in Knightsbridge, where Billson had informed me that she had recently accepted office as vice-president in charge of the beer-engine.
I have an idea you didn't like Flossie much, Corky, that time when she came for a brief moment into your life. I seem to remember hearing complaints. Well, of course, she wasn't everybody's girl. The peroxide a bit vivid, I grant you, and the manner perhaps a trifle too hearty for the fastidious. But for a partner in a crisis like this I could have wished no one better. Talk of entering into the spirit of the thing - well, when I tell you that she actually went to the trouble of selecting the heavier of her two parasols in case of anything in the nature of back-chat on the part of her affianced, you will understand that it was not merely moral support that I was getting from her. We set off for Wimbledon together, up and doing with a heart for any fate.
For of course, we both saw that a visit to The Cedars must be paid without delay. What I told her about the Battler had convinced her that the evil had gone so deep that only the promptest measures could avail. It was her purpose to call at the back door, ask for Billson, take him - when he presented himself - by the left ear, and by that ear lead him back on to the straight and narrow path.
'Him and his port!' she kept saying, and there was something about the way she spoke that thrilled me. I can't remember ever having admired a girl more. She reminded me of Boadicea.
The journey to Wimbledon ran into money, of course, but you can't stop to count the pennies when great issues are at stake. We did it in a taxi, and it will give you some idea of my state of mind when I tell you that the sight of the figures leaping up on the clock occasioned me none of the usual feeling of nausea. I was indifferent to them. I felt like that French general who brought up the reserves to the Battle of the Marne in taxi-cabs. Do you suppose he worried about the way the clock was going up? Of course not.
And presently the old familiar road hove in sight, and we stopped outside The Cedars, and I boosted Flossie out in order that she should go around to the back door and get into action. All things considered, it seemed more prudent that I should remain in the vehicle. My aunt has an unpleasant habit of doing a bit of gardening sometimes in the evenings, and to get soaked with weed-killer or chased off the premises with a trowel would have been foreign to my policy.
There was an interval of waiting, during which the driver chap and I exchanged views on the forthcoming meeting at Hurst Park, and then Flossie came back, empty-handed.
'He's gone to the pictures,' she announced. 'Him and that butler.'
'How long ago?’
'Not long.'
Then tally-ho!’
And a word to the driver, and we were off to the Wimbledon Rotunda. And the first person we saw in the entrance as we drew up was the Battler. He was standing there with his customary air of thinking hard about absolutely nothing, and Flossie made for him like a peroxided leopardess.
'Wilberforce!’ she cried.
And, as she did so, another figure suddenly manifested itself. It was the figure of the snake, Oakshott. And it dished the whole enterprise.
I have spoken of the overwhelming effect of a butler on a thick-skulled proletarian like Billson. I was now to see that such a butler can produce similar reactions in a seasoned bar maid. Before my horrified eyes, Corky, the fire faded out of Flossie as if somebody had turned a tap, and she changed almost in an instant from an avenging goddess to a mere simperer and shoe-shuffler. She had come in like a leopardess and she was not a lambkin. Her whole demeanour, as Oakshott loomed up on the horizon, was that of a schoolgirl confronted by a headmistress..
This entire question of butlers, Corky, is one that wants thoroughly thrashing our. How do they do it? Wherein consists their mystic spell? What is this magnestism in them that subdues the proudest? You would have thought that a barmaid, accustomed to mixing whisky-and-spla
shes for the highest in the land – for the clientele of the Blue Anchor is notoriously from Harrods and sergeants in the Guards – would have been proof against it. But no. One glance from those bulbous eyes had reduced Flossie to a blushing pulp.
'Good evening, sir,' said Oakshott. 'I had not expected to see you in these parts.' He cast a a gallant ete at Flossie. ‘Will you present me?’
The Battler, who had paled visibly at the sight of his bethrothed but was not looking better, jerked a thumb, which is how you do these formal introductions in Limehouse.
'My young lady.'
'Indeed?'
‘R.'
'And has the young lady a name?' asked Oakshott indulgently.
'Miss Dalrymple,' said Flossie, wriggling a shoe.
'Dalrymple? Indeed? One of the Sussex Dalrymples, may I ask?'
'Coo!' said Flossie.
'I had the honour to serve the late Sir Gregory Dalrymple some years ago,' said Oakshott suavely. ‘A most estimable gentleman. It would be interesting to find that you were some connexion. His daughter - his younger daughter, I should say married a Shropshire Pobleigh. His elder daughter, is, of course, Lady Slythe and Sayle. There had been understanding between her and His Grace the Duke of Walmer, but it never came to anything. Dalrymple. Most interesting. No doubt your family, Miss Dalrymple, would be one of the cadet branches? One knows, of course, of the Devonshire Dalrymples - one of whom, I was interested to see in the paper, recently became engaged to Lady Joyce Sproule, the daughter of the Earl of Kidderminster.'
I could hear Flossie breathing like a bull-pup choking over a chicken-bone. Every woman, Corky, has her Achilles heel. She may set out on a punitive expedition as stoutly as any man, but let her encounter a butler who talks Titles at her and speculates on her family being one of the cadet branches, and she falters, hesitates, and is lost. I could see that Flossie as a Force in this matter of leading Billson back to the light had ceased to function.
'My young friend here and myself,' proceeded Oakshott, ‘were about to witness the entertainment at this cinema. It is the first of these new Talking Pictures of which the papers have been so full of late. I should be delighted if you would join us, Miss Dalrymple. And you, sir?'
And before we knew where we were, Corky, we were all seated somewhere at the back and the picture had begun.
When you asked me just now if the title of this show was "The Jazz Singer', I replied that I was unable to tell you, being too greatly exercised in my mind at the moment about the Battler. It was the simple truth. Yes, Corky, it was a heavy-hearted and preoccupied Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge who sat sombrely in his seat and gazed at the screen with a lack-lustre eye. You will appreciate my feelings. This barmaid, this Flossie, my ace of trumps, had proved a broken reed. I had thought her a very present help in time of trouble, and she had turned blue on me.
What made it so poignant was that, even if she threw off this butler's spell on thinking things over quietly in her room that night, it would be too late for her to accomplish anything of practical value. You see, by what had seemed to me at the time the most extraordinary bit of good luck, I had happened to get in touch with her on her evening off - finding her, indeed, not ten minutes before she was about to leave. She didn't get another free evening till next week, which meant that, supposing by a miracle she got herself into fighting trim again and brought herself to defy Oakshott and battle with his dark forces, she would have to wait seven days before she could do it. For my aunt's house is not one you can stroll into any hour of the day you please. No wandering along round about midnight and expecting to be able to interview members of the staff.
And in seven days who knew to what a condition our man might have been reduced?
You will understand, therefore, that I am not a good person to come to for information about this picture. All I can tell you is that it went on and on, and then suddenly we got these sound-effects we had heard so much about. There was a sort of bronchial whirring, and somebody on the screen had begun to speak.
And he had no sooner done so than Battling Billson heaved himself to his feet and said ‘ 'Ush!'
You see what had happened. Just one of those misunderstandings which are bound to occur when a fellow of the Battler's shape of head is brought up against the marvels of Science. I have no doubt that for days past Oakshott had been preparing him for this moment; had spoken to him at length of the wonderful new invention which was to revolutionize the motion-picture industry; had told him, in a word, that the whole point of the thing was that the Screen had now become the Talking Screen.
But it just hadn't penetrated. Ideas didn't with the Battler, unless you used a steam-drill.
"Ush!' he said.
Well, you know what the effect of that is on a theatre-full of the citizenry. Eighty-seven voices shouted 'Sit down!'
'There's someone in this 'ouse spoilin' other people's pleasure by talkin',' bellowed the Battler.
'Sit down!' yelled the many-headed.
It was the worst possible policy, of course. Tell a chap of the Battler's mentality to sit down, and he at once suspects a trap and continues to stand more resolutely than ever.
'There's somebody talkin', and I won't 'ave it I'
And at this point, just when everything was so tense and it only needed a spark to precipitate the explosion, what should happen but that the laryngitis-patient on the screen suddenly burst into song.
It was the end. I could see the grim look on the Battler's face deepen. There was a little fellow sitting in the row in front, and for some mysterious reason he seemed to think that in him he had found one of the ringleaders. He leaned over and tapped him on the shoulder.
'Is that you makin' that singin' noise?' he demanded. And he scooped the chap out of his seat like a winkle from its shell and held him up. To examine his vocal chords, I suppose.
The next moment, the little man's companion, a woman of the sort that stands no nonsense, was hitting him with her umbrella. Somebody in the row behind jumped on his back. Somebody else grabbed his neck. And in about a quarter of a minute the action had become general. I could see a sort of confused blur, with the voice of the Battler proceeding from the middle of it, and then commissionaires and others began to arrive, and finally policemen in bevies, and all was over.
Next day, the Battler was hauled up before the majesty of the Law, soundly ticked off by the Bench, and sentenced to fourteen days in the coop without the option. On the morning of the fifteenth day I was waiting at the prison gates, and out he came, trained to a hair, without a superfluous ounce on him, and with but one thought in his mind - viz., to get his own back from the human race. And, most fortunately, the idea of starting with One-Round Peebles seemed to enchant him.
The rest is history. One-Round Peebles failed to justify his name by forty-five seconds, it taking the Battler exactly two minutes and a quarter to flatten him. I ran into Oakshott on the way out, and I don't think I have ever seen a sicker butler. He looked like a Bishop who has just discovered Schism and Doubt among the minor clergy. How much he was actually down, I could not say. The hoarded savings of a lifetime, I trust.
So that is what I mean, Corky, when I say I like the Talkies. Those responsible for their production may turn down the tripe you write, and for that I am, of course, sorry - especially as I had been hoping on the strength of the sale to get into your ribs for a trifling sum. But I cannot recede from my opinion. I like 'em. I can never forget that they once saved my life.’
‘It completes my case against the foul things,' I said.
Chapter Nine
The Level Business Head
'Another beaker of port, laddie?' urged Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, hospitably.
‘Thanks.'
'One more stoup of port for Mr Corcoran, Baxter. You may bring the coffee, cigars and liqueurs to us in the library in about a quarter of an hour.'
The butler filled my glass and melted away. I looked about me dizzily. We were seated in the spa
cious dining-room of Ukridge's Aunt Julia's house on Wimbledon Common. A magnificent banquet had wound its way to a fitting finish, and the whole thing seemed to be inexplicable.
‘I don't understand this,' I said. 'How do I come to be sitting here, bursting with rich food paid for by your aunt?'
'Perfectly simple, laddie. I expressed a desire for your company tonight, and she at once consented.'
'But why? She has never let you invite me here before. She can't stand me.'
Ukridge sipped his port.
'Well, the fact of the matter is, Corky,' he said, in a burst of confidence, ‘things have been occurring recently in the home which have resulted in what you might call the dawning of a new life as far as Aunt Julia and I are concerned. It is not too much to say that she now eats out of my hand and is less than the dust beneath my chariot's wheels. I will tell you the story, for it will be of help to you in your journey through the world. It is a story which shows that, be the skies never so black, nothing can harm a man provided that he has a level business head. Tempests may lour -'