The effect of this philippic on Freddie was to make him feel like somebody who had been caught in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. He wilted visibly, and was shrinking still further inside his well-cut flannel suit, when something occurred that stiffened his sinews, summoned up the blood and made him feel that it was about time he sat up and did a bit of talking back. Through the door of the restaurant two lunchers had entered and taken a table near the peer of the realm. One was Oofy Prosser, the other Soapy Molloy. They had been having an aperitif in Soapy's suite, and Oofy had just written out a cheque for a further block of Silver River stock, thanking Soapy with a good deal of effusiveness for letting him have it.
The sight of Soapy had an instant effect on Freddie's morale. The spate of injurious words proceeding from his uncle's lips had completely driven from his mind the thought that in a very short time he would be a rich man, on his way to Kenya to become still richer. It now came back to him, reminding him that there was absolutely no necessity for him to sit taking lip like this from an obese relation who instead of saying offensive things to his nearest and dearest would have been better employed having Turkish baths and going easy on the bread and potatoes. He felt his calm, strong self again, and in the way he drew himself erect in his chair there was something suggestive of a worm coming out after a heavy thunderstorm. He knew himself to be more than equal to the task of telling a dozen two-hundred-and-fifty-pound uncles where they got off.
'That's all right, Uncle Rodney,' he said briskly, 'and there is possibly much in what you say, but, be that as it may, you don't know the half of it.'
It would be erroneous to say that this defiant tone from one on whom he had been looking as less than the dust beneath his chariot wheels caused Lord Blicester to swell with indignation, for he had already swollen so far that a little more would have made him come apart at the seams. He had to content himself with glaring.
'I don't understand you.'
‘I’ll make it clear to the meanest intelligence…That is…Well, you know what I mean. Let me begin by asking you something. You're all steamed up about Shoesmith taking the high road and me the low road and our relations being severed and all that, but how would you like being a sort of glorified office-boy in a solicitor's firm?'
'The question does not arise.'
'Yes, it does, because I've jolly well arisen it. The answer is that you wouldn't like it a bit. Nor do I. I want to go to Kenya and become a Coffee King.'
'That nonsense again!'
'Not nonsense at all. Sound, practical move.'
'You said you needed three thousand pounds to put into the business. You won't get it from me.'
Freddie waved an airy hand. The peer of the realm, who was now eating truite bleu, paused in admiration with the fork at his lips. He had not thought the thin feller had it in him. Something seemed to have bucked the thin feller up, and good luck to him, felt the peer of the realm. He had just recognized Lord Blicester as a member of one of his clubs whose method of eating soup he disliked, and he was all for it if the thin feller was going to put him in his place.
'Keep your gold, Uncle Rodney,' said Freddie, wishing too late that he had made it 'dross'. 'I don't want it. I'm rolling in the stuff.'
'What!'
'Literally rolling. Or shall be shortly. Turn the old loaf about ten degrees to the nor'-nor-east. See that bimbo at that table over there? Not the one with the pimples, the other one. Rich American financier.'
Lord Blicester looked behind him.
'Why, it's Molloy!'
Freddie was surprised.
'You know him?'
'Certainly. He controls a stock in which I am interested.'
'What's it called?'
'I fail to see what concern it is of yours, but its name is Silver River Oil and Refinery.'
'Good Lord! You've got some of that?'
'I have.'
'So have I.'
Lord Blicester stared.
'You?'
'In person.'
'How in the world did you obtain---‘
'The wherewithal to buy it? My godmother left me some pieces of eight. Not a frightful lot, but enough to finance the venture. So now you know why I don't give a hoot for Shoesmith. In a month or so I shall have at least ten thousand quid laid up among my souvenirs. Molloy guarantees this. Shoesmith means less than nothing to me, and that goes for Shoesmith, Shoesmith and Shoesmith. Odd,' mused Freddie, 'the labels these solicitors' firms stick on themselves. I met a chap in a pub the other day who told me he worked for Hogg, Hogg, Simpson, Bevan, Murgatroyd and Merryweather, and when I said, "Oh, yes? And how are they all?" he said they expired in the eighties, and the concern now was run by a fellow named Smith, I mean, it just shows how you never can tell, doesn't it?'
A distinct change for the better had come over Lord Blicester's demeanour. It would be too much, perhaps, to say that even now he was all sweetness and light, but he had ceased to eye Freddie as if the latter had been someone with bubonic plague whom he had caught in the act of picking his pocket. The difference between the way an uncle looks at a nephew who has lost his job and whom there is a danger of him having to support, and a nephew who has large holdings in a fabulously rich oil company is always subtle but well-marked. Some indication of his altered outlook can be gathered from the fact that, though a thrifty man who seldom failed to watch the pennies, he asked Freddie if he would like a liqueur brandy with his coffee. He winced a little when Freddie said he would, for liqueur brandies cost money, but continued amiable. The peer of the realm, who had been absorbing the proceedings with the goggle-eyed stare with which forty years ago he had watched silent motion pictures, realized that the drama was over and returned to his truite bleu.
'Well, I am bound to say this puts a different aspect on the matter,' said Lord Blicester. 'If you are a man of substance, you naturally do not wish to go on working for a small salary in Shoesmith's office, especially as you are bent on going to Kenya. You think you will like Kenya?'
'My pal Boddington speaks highly of it. The spaces are very great and open there, he tells me.'
'There is money, no doubt, in coffee-growing.'
'Pots, I imagine. I know for a fact that Boddington smokes seven-and-sixpenny cigars.'
'Yes, on the whole I think you are doing wisely. Not that I would care to go to Kenya myself.'
'I know what you mean. Always the risk, of course, of getting eaten by a lion, which would be a nuisance, but one must expect a bit of give and take. I've given the thing a lot of thought, Uncle Rodney, and I'm convinced that Kenya's the place for me, always provided…' Freddie paused, and a faint blush mantled his cheek. 'Always provided,' he went on, 'that Sally is by my side. I don't think I ever mentioned this to you, but I'm hoping to get married.'
Lord Blicester gave a horrified gasp. Both in physique and in his mental outlook he was one of London's stoutest bachelors, and never ceased to think gratefully of the guardian angel who had arranged a breaking-off of relations when years ago he had contemplated marrying Leila Yorke, nee Bessie Binns.
'Are you engaged?' he asked anxiously. He was not particularly fond of Freddie, but one has one's human instincts, and he would have experienced concern for anyone on the brink of matrimony.
'That,' said Freddie, 'we shall know more certainly when Miss Yorke returns. Strictly in confidence, there has been something in the nature of a rift between self and betrothed.'
'Ah!' said Lord Blicester, brightening, as a man will who feels that there is still hope.
'And Miss Yorke has gone to phone her and try to talk her round. The trouble was, you see, that when Sally popped in and found this woman in my pyjamas… Ah, there she is,' said Freddie, rising like a salmon in the spawning season. What, he was asking himself, would the verdict be?
Leila Yorke had the best of news.
'All set,' she said briefly, as she reached the table. 'You may
carry on, Widgeon. She's ordering the trousseau.'
'You mean?'
'All's quiet along the Potomac. I've made your path straight. You can go ahead as planned.'
Lord Blicester was trembling a little.
'Do I understand you to say that this girl, whoever she is, is resolved to marry Frederick?'
'The moment he gets the licence.'
'Good God!' said Lord Blicester, as if he had heard a well-known Harley Street physician telling him that his nephew had but a month to live. He turned to Freddie, agitated. 'Did you put anything in writing?'
'Lots.'
'Specifically mentioning marriage?'
'Every other line.'
'Waiter,' Lord Blicester cried, reckless of the fact that Barribault's Hotel charged for this beverage as if it were liquid platinum, 'bring me a brandy.'
Freddie, though dizzy with relief, did not forget the courtesy due a woman standing by a luncheon table.
'Aren't you going to sit down?’ he said.
'I haven't time.’
'The day's yet young.'
'I daresay, but I've just made a date with my hairdresser, and he can only take me if I get there in ten seconds flat. Thanks for the lunch, Rodney. Fine, seeing you again. Just like the old days.'
Lord Blicester shivered. He always did when reminded of the old days. But for the grace of God and the sterling staff-work of that guardian angel, he was thinking, he would himself have been in his nephew Frederick's frightful predicament.
Leila Yorke had started to move away, but now, as if some basilisk had laid a spell upon her, she halted, rigid, her eyes narrowing. She was looking at the table where Soapy Molloy sat, doing himself well at Oofy's expense. Oofy as a rule was chary of spending his money on others, but when a man has let you have a large slice of so rich a melon as Silver River Oil and Refinery, it is almost obligatory to entertain him to lunch.
She drew a deep breath.
'I suppose one would be put on Barribault's black list if one were to throw a roll at a fellow-customer,' she said wistfully. ‘But it’s a sore temptation. Look at the low, hornswoggling hound digging into the rich foods like a starving python. Not a thing on his conscience, you'd say. If I weren't a poor weak woman, I'd step over and push his face in what-ever it is he's gorging himself with.'
Freddie was not abreast. To what hornswoggling hound, he asked, did she allude?
'Third table down, next to the man with the eyeglass. Fellow with a high forehead.'
'You don't mean Thomas G. Molloy?'
‘I don't know what his name is. I only met him twice, and we didn't exchange cards. The first time was at Le Touquet, when he swindled me out of a thousand pounds for some shares in a dud oil stock called Silver River., the second when he came to Castlewood one morning and I took a shot-gun to him.'
Freddie's bewilderment increased. His senses told him that she had applied the adjective 'dud' to Silver River Oil and Refinery, but he could not believe that he had heard aright. Nor could Lord Blicester, who had come out of his thoughts and was staring with bulging eyes.
'What did you say?' Lord Blicester cried.
'I was speaking of this smooth confidence man and his Silver River Oil Stock, and how he talked me into buying it'
'But Silver River is enormously valuable!'
'I don't know who to, except somebody who's making a collection of waste paper. You'd be lucky if you got twopence a share for it. I know, because I tried and found there was no market. The only offer I got was from a man who had a mentally arrested child. He said he thought the colours it was printed in would entertain the little fellow. And the maddening part of it is that I can't have the bounder arrested, because I made enquiries and found that there actually is a Silver River concern. It's in Arizona somewhere, and he bought it for fifty dollars, it having been worked out to the last drop in 1926. That lets him out and leaves him free to sell shares to innocent mugs like me without getting jugged for obtaining money under false pretences. Just shows what a world this is,' said Lena Yorke, and went off to keep her appointment at her beauty parlour.
She left an uncle and a nephew who looked as if they had been carved out of stone by a sculptor commissioned by a group of friends and admirers to make statues of them. The peer of the realm, who had finished his truite bleu and was starting in on a jam omelette, got the impression, as his gaze rested on them, that they must have been eating something that had disagreed with them. Not oysters, for the month was June, and not the truite bleu, for that had been excellent. More probably something in the nature of Hungarian goulash, always a dish to be avoided unless you had had the fore-thought to have it analysed by a competent analytical chemist.
Lord Blicester was the first to move, and few who had only watched him in his club smoking-room, waddling across the floor to the table where the papers and magazines were to get the current issue of the Sketch or Taller, would have credited him with the ability to achieve such a turn of speed. In the manner in which he covered the space that separated him from Soapy there was a suggestion of a traveller by the railroad who, with his train due to leave in five minutes, dashes into the refreshment room at Victoria or Waterloo stations for a gin and tonic. Towering over Soapy, he placed a heavy hand on his shoulder and said:
'You infernal crook!'
Soapy, whom the words had interrupted at a moment when he was swallowing a mouthful of fillet steak medium rare, did not reply, for he was too fully occupied with choking. It was Oofy who undertook the role of straight man, so necessary on these occasions.
'What did you call him?'
'A crook.'
'A crook? What do you mean?'
‘I’ll tell you what I mean. That Silver River stock he sold me isn't worth the price of waste paper. The man's a deliberate swindler.'
Oofy's jaw dropped. His face paled beneath its pimples. 'Are you serious?'
It was a question to which the accepted answer would have been, 'I was never more serious in my life,' but Lord Blicester was beyond speech. His recent sprint had taken its toll. He merely nodded.
The nod was enough for Oofy. Where the other had obtained his information he did not know, but not for an instant did he question its accuracy. Solid citizens like Lord Blicester do not make scenes in public places unless they have good grounds for them, and in Soapy's empurpled face he seemed to read obvious signs of guilt. Actually, Soapy had turned purple because of the piece of fillet steak to which allusion was made earlier, but Oofy was not aware of this. The way he reasoned was that if a man is called a swindler and immediately becomes the colour of a ripe plum, the verdict is in, and remembering that in his guest's wallet was a cheque for two thousand pounds, signed 'A. Prosser', he acted promptly. Edging around the table, he flung himself on Soapy and in next to no time had begun to try to throttle him.
There are, no doubt, restaurants where behaviour of this sort would have been greeted with a sympathetic chuckle or, at worst, by a mere raising of the eyebrows, but that of Barribault's Hotel was not one of them. Waiters looked at each other in pained surprise, head waiters pursed their lips, the peer of the realm said 'Most extraordinary!' and a bus boy was sent out to summon a policeman.
And in due season there arrived not one but two members of the Force, and as each of the pair was built on the lines of Freddie's cousin George, they had no difficulty in intervening in time to save a human life, though Oofy, if asked, would have questioned the application of the adjective to the man on whose chest he was now seated. Taking Oofy into custody, they withdrew, and Barribault's restaurant settled back into its normal refined peace.
Freddie saw none of these things. He was sitting at his table with his head between his hands.
20
IT is unusual nowadays for people on receipt of good news to say 'Tra-la', though it was apparently done a good deal in earlier times, and Sally, corning away from the telephone at the conclusion of her conversation with her employer, did not actually express herself in this manner. But she was unquestionably in a frame of mind to have done so, for h
er spirits had soared and life, a short while before as black and dreary as a wet Sunday in a northern manufacturing town, had become once again a thing of joy and sunshine, fully justifying the toast Leila Yorke had drunk to its originator. The word 'Whoopee' perhaps best sums up her feelings.
But after happiness came remorse. She shuddered as she recalled the unworthy suspicions she had entertained of a Frederick Widgeon who, as it now appeared, was about as close a thing to a stainless knight, of the order of Sir Galahad or someone of that sort, as you would be likely to find in a month of Sundays. She should have realized, she told herself, that anyone with a cousin like Freddie's cousin George was practically certain sooner or later to find pyjama-clad blondes in his living-room. With George at the helm and directing the proceedings, one was surprised that there had not been more of them.
Remorse was followed by gratitude to Leila Yorke for handling the role of intermediary so capably. It was she who, as she always made a point of doing in the novels she wrote, had brought about the happy ending, and it seemed to Sally that some gesture in return was called for. The only thing she could think of was to substitute an extra special dinner for the chops and fried potatoes she had been contemplating. Putting on her hat, she went out in quest of the materials.
Valley Fields, though more flowers are grown there and more lawns rolled than in any other suburb south of the Thames, is a little short on luxury shops where the makings for a really breath-taking dinner can be produced. For these you have to go as far afield as Brixton, and it was thither that Sally made her way. It was not, accordingly, for some considerable time that she returned. When she did, she found Mr. Cornelius standing on the front steps of Castlewood.