'Hey!'" he cried. 'I've been looking for you for years. I would like to take up that matter of my little account, Mr. Ukridge.'
"Well, there was only one thing to do."
"Pay him?"
Of course not. Pay him, indeed! A business man can't fritter away his capital like that, Corky. Strategic retreat seemed to be indicated, and the next moment I was off like a flash, with him after me. And to cut a long story short, when I eventually shook off his challenge, the clocks were pointing to fifteen minutes past one."
"So you weren't able to back Dogsbody?"
"No. And that is what I meant when I paid that marked tribute to my guardian angel, who obviously arranged the whole thing. I was as sick as mud, of course, at the time, but later, when I saw the evening paper, I realized that this quick-thinking angel had had the situation well in hand, I was extremely grateful to him, and do you know what I'm going to do, Corky? I'm going to give a tithe of that fifteen quid to charity."
"What!"
"As a sort of thank-offering. I shall go forth into the highways and byways and seek out three deserving cases and slip them each a shilling."
"Three bob isn't a tithe of fifteen quid."
"It's as near a tithe as makes no matter."
"A tithe is a tenth. You ought to give them ten shillings each."
"Talk sense, old horse," said Ukridge.
I was late getting home that night for one reason and another, and was shocked when I woke next morning to find what the time was. I should have to move swiftly, I saw. I was supposed to be at the Senior Conservative Club at twelve to interview Horace Wanklyn, the eminent novelist, for the Sunday paper which gave me occasional jobs of that sort, and I knew that eminent novelists purse their lips and tap the floor disapprovingly if the dregs of society like myself keep them waiting.
I had just finished a hurried breakfast and was looking about for the umbrella which I kept for occasions like this—nothing makes a better impression than a tightly rolled umbrella—when Bowles, my ex-butler landlord, accosted me in his majestic way.
"Good morning, sir. Mr. Ukridge called shortly after you had left last night."
He spoke with the tender note in his voice which invariably came into it when he mentioned Ukridge's name. For some reason which I had never been able to understand, he had always had a doglike devotion for that foe of the human species.
"Oh, yes?"
"I gave him the umbrella."
"Eh?"
"Your umbrella, sir. Mr. Ukridge informed me that he wished to borrow it. He desired me to give you his cordial good wishes and to tell you that he expected it - I quote his words - just to turn the scale."
It was with a hard, set face that I rang Ukridge's front door bell some twenty minutes later. Making the detour to his lair would render me late for Horace Wanklyn, but that could not be helped.
Informed that he was out at the moment, I was turning away, when I saw him coming along the street. He was wearing the Tupper hat, tilted at a jaunty angle, the Tupper suit, socks, shoes and shirt, and was swinging my umbrella like a clouded cane. I had rarely seen anything so dressy.
He listened to my reproaches sympathetically.
"I know just how you feel, Corky. The good man loves his umbrella. But I will take the greatest care of it, and you shall have it back a thousandfold some time this afternoon. What do you want the damn thing for, anyway? It's not raining."
I explained that I needed it to offset the bagginess of my trousers and the general seediness of my appearance.
I'm interviewing a big pot at the Senior Conservative Club,"
"You are? Why, that's where I'm lunching with my bloke. Who are you interviewing?"
"Horace Wanklyn, the novelist."
He seemed stunned.
"Well, upon my Sam, old horse, this is the most amazing coincidence I ever came across in my puff. It's none other than old Pop Wanklyn who is the bird who wants a tutor for his son. My aunt got matey with him at the last Pen and Ink Club dinner. Gosh, the thing is beginning to develop. We must suck profit from this. Here's what you want to do, laddie. Having extracted his views on whatever subject you are proposing to discuss "
"The Modern Girl."
"Having heard all he has to spill about the Modern Girl, you say 'Oh, by the way, Mr. Wanklyn - '…You don't think you'll be calling him Horace by that time ?"
"No, I don't."
"Mr. Wanklyn, then. 'Oh, by the way, Mr. Wanklyn,' you say, 'my old friend Ukridge tells me he is lunching with you today, and that you are - considering engaging him to ram a bit of education into your ruddy son's ivory skull. You could place the little blister in no better hands. I have known Stanley Ukridge these many years, and I can confidently say - …And then a lot of guff which I know I can leave to you. Pitch it strong, Corky. Let the golden words come pouring out like honey. Really, this is an uncanny bit of luck. I had an idea all along that I should reap some reward for that kindly impulse of mine."
"What kindly… Oh, you mean the tithe to charity ?"
"That's right."
"When do you start scattering largesse?"
"I have already started. In fact, I've practically finished. Only one deserving case to go now."
"You've done the other two ?"
"Yes. And I don't mind telling you, Corky, that it has left me weak. I hope mine host will not spare the restoratives at lunch, for I need picking up. It was the second deserving case that shattered my aplomb. The first was a cinch. I saw a shabby man standing by a car evidently trying to touch the girl at the wheel. I just walked up, said 'Here, my good man', and slipped a bob into his hand, turning away quickly to escape his thanks. But the next one…!"
Ukridge shivered. He removed George Tupper's hat and mopped his forehead with what I assumed to be one of George Tupper's handkerchiefs.
"Not so good?"
"An ordeal, old horse, nothing less than an ordeal, from which I emerged, as I say, shaken. British Constitution, forsooth!"
"Eh?"
"And She sells sea shells by the sea shore."
"Are you tight?"
"No, but the cop thought I was."
"What cop?"
"It's a long story."
There flitted before my eyes a vision of Horace Wanklyn pacing the floor of the Senior Conservative smoking-room, looking at his watch and muttering "He cometh not," but I thrust it from me. However late I might be for the tryst, I had to probe this mystery of cops, British constitutions and sea shells.
"Get on with it," I said.
Ukridge straightened George Tupper's tie, flicked a speck of dust off the sleeve of George Tupper's coat, and prodded me impressively in the stomach with my umbrella.
Corky," he said earnestly, "the advice I would give to every young man starting out in life is this. If you are going to yield to impulse, be careful before you do so that there isn't a blighter eight feet high and broad in proportion standing behind you. This one, I think, was more like eight feet six."
"Which one?"
"I'm telling you. At the post office. After slipping the shabby man his shilling, I remembered that I was in need of stamps, so—being well able to afford the expenditure - I strolled to that post office at the corner of the Strand to purchase a few. I went in and found only one customer ahead of me at the stamp counter, a charmingly pretty girl of, I should say, the stenographer class. She was putting in a bid for a couple of twopence-halfpennies and, like all girls, was making quite a production of it. You or I, when we feel the urge for stamps, stride up, ask for them, disgorge the needful and stride away again, but girls like to linger and turn the thing into a social occasion. So as I stood there I had plenty of leisure to look about me and take in the various objects by the wayside. Among them was the girl's hand bag, which she had laid on the counter beside her.
"It touched me, laddie. It was one of those pathetic cheap handbags which speak eloquently of honest poverty. Her inexpensive frock also spoke eloquently of honest poverty. So di
d her hat."
"We can't all pinch our hats."
"My heart ached for the poor little thing. I knew exactly what a girl like that would be getting a week. Just about the three or four quid which you or I would spend on a single dinner at the Ritz."
The idea of Ukridge dining at the Ritz and paying for it took my breath away, and he was able to continue without interruption on my part.
"And I said to myself 'Here is where I do my second good deed of the day'. But this time, Corky, it was to be no matter of a mere shilling. I proposed to enrich her to the extent of a whole quid."
"Golly!"
"You may well say 'Golly!’ But that's me. That is Stanley Ukridge. Lavish, openhanded, not counting the cost where his emotions are stirred. The problem was---"
"How to give it to her ?"
"Exactly. You can't go slipping pretty girls to whom you've never been introduced quids. At least, you can, but it may quite easily give rise to misunderstandings. However, I did not have to muse long, for there was a sudden crash outside in the street and the girl legged it to see what was happening, leaving her bag on the counter. To open it and slip in a Treasury note was with me the work of a moment, and I was just stepping back, feeling that this was a far, far better thing than I had ever done, when a heavy hand fell on my shoulder and there was this eight-feet-six bird. All unknown to me he had lined up behind me in the queue, and I could see at a glance that he was one of those public-minded good citizens who cause so much trouble.
"With a curt 'Gotcher!' he led me out into the street. Resistance was hopeless. The muscles of his brawny arms were strong as iron bands.
" 'Is this your bag, madam?' he asked the girl, who was standing drinking in the wreckage of a couple of taxis. 'I caught this man pilfering its contents. Constable!' said the eight-feet-sixer, addressing the rozzer who was presiding over the scene of the accident, and the rozzer came up.
"Well, there was nothing for it now, of course, but to outline the facts. I did so, and my story was sceptically received. I could see they found it thin. Fortunately at this point the girl, who had been checking up on the bag, uttered a sharp squeal and reported that she was a quid ahead of the game, so my innocence was 'established.
"But not my sobriety. These rozzers don't understand pure altruism. When they find someone shoving quids into the handbags of perfect strangers, only one solution occurs to them. Mercifully, it being earlyish in the day and me rather saving myself up for that lunch with Horace Wanklyn, when I would be able to get it free, it happened that I had not partaken of alcoholic refreshment since the previous night, so when at his request I breathed on the constable, all he drew was the aroma of coffee and eggs and bacon, and it seemed to me that I had shaken him.
"But these cops don't give up easily. They fight to the last ditch. I was compelled to utter in a clear voice the words 'British Constitution' and 'She sells sea shells by the sea shore' and in addition to walk a chalk line obligingly drawn on the pavement by the eight-feet-sixer, who since the girl's revelation had been showing a nasty spirit like that of a tiger cheated of its prey. And it is extremely humiliating for a proud man, Corky, to have to say 'She sells sea shells by the sea shore' and walk a chalk line in front of a large crowd. When at long last I was permitted to pop off, my nervous system was in a state of hash, and the whole episode has left me with the feeling that my next good deed, the concluding one of the series, has got to be an easy one, or I give it a miss."
It proved to be quite an easy one. Even as he spoke, there came shuffling along a ragged individual badly in need of a shave. I saw his eye light up as it fell on the splendour of Ukridge's costume. He asked Ukridge if he felt inclined to save a human life, and Ukridge said yes, if it could be done for sixpence. The ragged individual assured him that sixpence would be ample, it being bread that he was in need of. He had not, he said, tasted bread for some considerable time, and sixpence-worth would set him up nicely.
The money changed hands, and I was a little surprised by the effusiveness of the recipient's gratitude. He pawed Ukridge all over like a long-lost brother. I would not have supposed myself that sixpence justified all that emotion, but if you are fond of bread, no doubt you look on these things from a different angle.
"Touching," said Ukridge, alluding to this osteopathic exhibition.
"Very touching."
"Still, that lets me out. From now on, to hell with the deserving poor! You off?"
"You bet I'm off. I'm twenty minutes late already."
And I set a course for the Senior Conservative Club in Northumberland Avenue.
It was a relief to find on arriving at journey's end that the party of the second part had not yet shown up at the tryst. I was accommodated with a seat in the hall, and after another quarter of an hour, pleasantly spent in watching Senior Conservatives flit by en route for the trough, I saw the hall porter pointing me out to a man in a glistening top hat who had just come in. From the fact that he headed in my direction I deduced that this must be the author of that series of powerful novels which plumbed the passionate heart of Woman and all that sort of thing and rendered him in consequence an ideal set-up for an interview on the Modern Girl.
"Mr. Er-Ah? From the Sunday Dispatch} How do you do? I hope you have not been waiting long? I am a little late. I – er - I had to go home for something."
Horace Wanklyn was a long, thin, stringy man in the early fifties with a long, thin, stringy neck concealed at the moment behind the highest collar I had ever seen on human shirt. It seemed to be giving him a certain amount of discomfort, for he wriggled a good deal, and I thought he seemed ill at ease in the morning coat and striped trousers w7hich completed his costume. But there was no gainsaying their effectiveness as a spectacle. Solomon in all his glory and Ukridge in George Tupper's herring-bone double-breasted grey tweed with the custom-made lapels had nothing on this superbly upholstered man of letters.
I said I would appreciate it if he told me how he felt about the Modern Girl, and his eyes lit up as if he were glad I had asked him that. He sat down and began to talk, and right from the start it became evident that he took an extremely dim view of the Modern Girl. He resented her bossiness, her determination to have her own way, her lack of proper respect for her elders and her habit of keeping on and on about a thing like - I quote his words, as Bowles would have said - a damned governess.
"Nag, nag, nag!" said Horace Wanklyn, plainly brooding on some episode in his past of which I knew nothing. "Nag, nag, nag, nag, nag!"
It was after he had spoken for perhaps ten minutes, giving me a wealth of rich material for my column and a quarter, that he paused and looked at me intently.
"You married?"
I said I was not.
"No daughters?"
"No daughters."
"Ah!" It seemed to me that he sighed a little enviously. "I see you're wearing a soft shirt."
"Yes."
"With a soft collar."
"Yes."
"And grey flannel trousers, baggy at the knees."
"Yes."
"Lucky young devil!" said Horace Wanklyn.
As he spoke, a young man came in from the street and started to cross the hall. Catching sight of my companion, he halted, spellbound.
"Golly, Uncle Horace!" he exclaimed. "You look like Great Lovers Through The Ages. What's the idea of the fancy dress? Why are you disguised as a gentleman today?"
Horace Wanklyn sighed heavily. "Patricia made me go home and put them on."
"Your child? Your daughter Patricia?"
"She and her sister have been after me for months about the way I dressed."
"And rightly."
"It isn't rightly at all," Horace Wanklyn stirred uneasily, whether from annoyance or because the corner of his collar had jabbed him in the neck I was unable to say. "Why shouldn't I dress comfortably? I'm not a Duke. I'm not an Ambassador. I'm a literary man. Look at this young fellow, who is also a literary man. Soft shirt, soft collar and baggy flannel t
rousers. Look at Balzac. He used to wear a monk's robe. Look at…"
"I can't look at anything but you. I'm fascinated. But aren't those things you're wearing comfortable?"
"Of course they're not comfortable. I'm suffering agonies. But I had to put them on. Patricia and her sister insisted," said Horace Wanklyn, and I thought what a good sentence that would have been for the constable to have used on Ukridge. "Patricia drove me here in the car, nagging the whole way, and I had just got out and she was saying that if I persisted in going about looking like one of the submerged tenth, someone was going to come up to me and say 'Here, my good man' and give me a shilling, when I'm dashed if someone didn't come up to me and say 'Here, my good man' and give me a shilling."
"Right on cue."
“Yes," said Horace Wanklyn, and brooded for a moment in silence. "Well, you can guess the sequel," he resumed, having passed a finger round the inside of his collar in the apparent hope of loosening it. "Patricia said 'There!' - you know how women say 'There!' - and the long and the short of it was that I was compelled to go home and change into these damned things.'
"You look lovely."
"I know I look lovely, but I can't breathe."
"Do you want to ?"
"Certainly I want to. And I'll tell you another thing I want" - here Horace Wanklyn gritted his, teeth and there came" into his eyes a cold, purposeful gleam - "and that is some day, somewhere, to meet that 'Here, my good man' fellow again and deal with him faithfully. The idea I have in mind is to cut him into small pieces with a rusty knife."
"Having first sprinkled him with boiling oil ?"
"Yes," said Horace Wanklyn, weighing the suggestion and evidently approving of it. "Having first sprinkled him with boiling oil, I shall then dance on his remains." He turned to me. "There is nothing more I can tell you, Mr. Er-Ah?"