Summer Lightning

  ‘But, sir . . . It’s impossible . . . I couldn’t dream . . . If ever it was found out . . . Really, I don’t think you ought to ask me, Mr Ronald . . .’

  ‘Beach!’

  Yes, but, really, sir . . .’

  Ronnie fixed him with a compelling eye.

  ‘Think well, Beach. Who gave you Creole Queen for the Lincolnshire?’

  ‘But, Mr Ronald . . .’

  ‘Who gave you Mazzawattee for the Jubilee Stakes, Beach? What a beauty!’

  A tense silence fell upon the pantry. Even the bullfinch was hushed.

  ‘And it may interest you to know,’ said Ronnie, ‘that just before I left London I heard of something really hot for the Goodwood Cup.’

  A low gasp escaped Beach. All butlers are sportsmen, and Beach had been a butler for eighteen years. Mere gratitude for past favours might not have been enough in itself to turn the scale, but this was different. On the subject of form for the Goodwood Cup he had been quite unable to reach a satisfying decision. It had baffled him. For days he had been groping in the darkness.

  ‘Jujube, sir?’he whispered.

  ‘Not Jujube.’

  ‘Ginger George?’

  ‘Not Ginger George. It’s no use your trying to guess, for you’ll never do it. Only two touts and the stable-cat know this one. But you shall know it, Beach, the minute I give that pig back and claim my reward. And that pig needs to be fed. Beach, how about it?’

  For a long minute the butler stared before him, silent. Then, as if he felt that some simple, symbolic act of the sort was what this moment demanded, he went to the bullfinch’s cage and put a green-baize cloth over it.

  ‘Tell me just what it is you wish me to do, Mr Ronald,’ he said.

  VI

  The dawn of another day crept upon Blandings Castle. Hour by hour the light grew stronger till, piercing the curtains of Ronnie’s bedroom, it woke him from a disturbed slumber. He turned sleepily on the pillow. He was dimly conscious of having had the most extraordinary dream, all about stealing pigs. In this dream . . .

  He sat up with a jerk. Like cold water dashed in his face had come the realization that it had been no dream.

  ‘Gosh!’ said Ronnie, blinking.

  Few things have such a tonic effect on a young man accustomed to be a little heavy on waking in the morning as the discovery that he has stolen a prize pig overnight. Usually, at this hour, Ronnie was more or less of an inanimate mass till kindly hands brought him his early cup of tea: but to-day he thrilled all down his pyjama-clad form with a novel alertness. Not since he had left school had he ‘sprung out of bed’, but he did so now. Bed, generally so attractive to him, had lost its fascination. He wanted to be up and about.

  He had bathed, shaved, and was slipping into his trousers when his toilet was interrupted by the arrival of his old friend Hugo Carmody. On Hugo’s face there was an expression which it was impossible to misread. It indicated as plainly as a label that he had come bearing news, and Ronnie, guessing the nature of this news, braced himself to be suitably startled.

  ‘Ronnie!’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Heard what’s happened?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know that pig of your uncle’s?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Gone!’ said Hugo, rolling the word round his tongue. ‘I met the old boy half a minute ago, and he told me. It seems he went down to the pig-bin for a before-breakfast look at the animal, and it wasn’t there.’

  ‘Wasn’t there?’

  ‘Wasn’t there.’

  ‘How do you mean, wasn’t there?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t. Wasn’t there at all. It had gone.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Gone! Its room was empty and its bed had not been slept in.’

  ‘Well, I’m dashed!’ said Ronnie.

  He was feeling pleased with himself. He felt he had played his part well. Just the right incredulous amazement, changing just soon enough into stunned belief.

  ‘You don’t seem very surprised,’ said Hugo.

  Ronnie was stung. The charge was monstrous.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he cried. ‘I seem frightfully surprised. I am surprised. Why shouldn’t I be surprised?’

  ‘All right. Just as you say. Spring about a bit more, though, another time when I bring you these sensational items. Well, I’ll tell you one thing,’ said Hugo with satisfaction. ‘Out of evil cometh good. It’s an ill wind that has no turning. For me this startling occurrence has been a life-saver. I’ve got thirty-six hours leave out of it. The old boy is sending me up to London to get a detective.’

  ‘A what?’

  A detective.’

  A detective!’

  Ronnie was conscious of a marked spasm of uneasiness. He had not bargained for detectives.

  ‘From a place called the Argus Enquiry Agency.’

  Ronnie’s uneasiness increased. This thing was not going to be so simple after all. He had never actually met a detective, but he had read a lot about them. They nosed about and found clues. For all he knew, he might have left a hundred clues.

  ‘Naturally I shall have to stay the night in town. And, much as I like this place,’ said Hugo, ‘there’s no denying that a night in town won’t hurt. I’ve got fidgety feet, and a spot of dancing will do me all the good in the world. Bring back the roses to my cheeks.’

  ‘Whose idea was it, getting down this blighted detective?’ demanded Ronnie. He knew he was not being nonchalant, but he was disturbed.

  ‘Mine.’

  ‘Yours, eh?’

  ‘All mine. I suggested it.’

  ‘You did, did you?’ said Ronnie.

  He directed at his companion a swift glance of a kind that no one should have directed at an old friend.

  ‘Oh?’ he said morosely. ‘Well, buzz off. I want to dress.’

  VII

  A morning spent in solitary wrestling with a guilty conscience had left Ronnie Fish thoroughly unstrung. By the time the clock over the stable struck the hour of one, his mental condition had begun to resemble that of the late Eugene Aram. He paced the lower terrace with bent head, starting occasionally at the sudden chirp of a bird, and longed for Sue. Five minutes of Sue, he felt, would make him a new man.

  It was perfectly foul, mused Ronnie, this being separated from the girl he loved. There was something about Sue . . . he couldn’t describe it, but something that always seemed to act on a fellow’s whole system like a powerful pick-me-up. She was the human equivalent of those pink drinks you went and got – or, rather, which you used to go and get before a good woman’s love had made you give up all that sort of thing – at that chemist’s at the top of the Haymarket after a wild night on the moors. It must have been with a girl like Sue in mind, he felt, that the poet had written those lines ‘When something something something brow, a ministering angel thou!’

  At this point in his meditations, a voice from immediately behind him spoke his name.

  ‘I say, Ronnie.’

  It was only his cousin Millicent. He became calmer. For an instant, so deep always is a criminal’s need for a confidant, he had a sort of idea of sharing his hideous secret with this girl, between whom and himself there had long existed a pleasant friendship. Then he abandoned the notion. His secret was not one that could be lightly shared. Momentary relief of mind was not worth purchasing at the cost of endless anxiety.

  ‘Ronnie, have you seen Mr Carmody anywhere?’

  ‘Hugo? He went up to London on the ten-thirty.’

  ‘Went up to London? What for?’

  ‘He’s gone to a place called the Argus Enquiry Agency to get a detective.’

  ‘What, to investigate this business of the Empress?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Millicent laughed. The idea tickled her.

  ‘I’d like to be there to see old man Argus’s face when he finds that all he’s wanted for is to track down missing pi
gs. I should think he would beat Hugo over the head with a blood-stain.’

  Her laughter trailed away. There had come into her face the look of one suddenly visited by a displeasing thought.

  ‘Ronnie!’

  ‘Hullo?’

  ‘Do you know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This looks fishy to me.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know how it strikes you, but this Argus Enquiry Agency is presumably on the phone. Why didn’t Uncle Clarence just ring them up and ask them to send down a man?’

  ‘Probably didn’t think of it.’

  ‘Whose idea was it, anyway, getting down a man?’

  ‘Hugo’s.’

  ‘He suggested that he should run up to town?’

  Yes.’

  ‘I thought as much,’ said Millicent darkly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Millicent’s eyes narrowed. She kicked moodily at a passing worm.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ she said. ‘It’s fishy. Too much zeal. It looks very much to me as if our Mr Carmody had a special reason for wanting to get up to London for the night. And I think I know what the reason was. Did you ever hear of a girl named Sue Brown?’

  The start which Ronnie gave eclipsed in magnitude all the other starts he had given that morning. And they had been many and severe.

  ‘It isn’t true?’

  ‘What isn’t true?’

  ‘That there’s anything whatever between Hugo and Sue Brown.’

  ‘Oh? Well, I had it from an authoritative source.’

  It was not the worm’s lucky morning. It had now reached Ronnie, and he kicked at it, too. The worm had the illusion that it had begun to rain shoes.

  ‘I’ve got to go in and make a phone call,’ said Millicent, abruptly.

  Ronnie scarcely noticed her departure. He had supposed himself to have been doing some pretty tense thinking all the morning, but, compared with its activity now, his brain hitherto had been stagnant.

  It couldn’t be true, he told himself. Sue had said definitely that it wasn’t, and she couldn’t have been lying to him. Girls like Sue didn’t lie. And yet . . .

  The sound of the luncheon gong floated over the garden.

  Well, one thing was certain. It was simply impossible to remain here at Blandings Castle, getting his mind poisoned with doubts and speculations which for the life of him he could not keep out of it. If he took the two-seater and drove off in it the moment this infernal meal was over, he could be in London before eight. He could call at Sue’s flat; receive her assurance once more that Hugo Carmody, tall and lissom though he might be, expert on the saxophone though he admittedly was, meant nothing to her; take her out to dinner and, while dining, ease his mind of that which weighed upon it. Then, fortified with comfort and advice, he could pop into the car and be back at the castle by lunch-time on the following day.

  It wasn’t, of course, that he didn’t trust her implicitly. Nevertheless . . .

  Ronnie went in to lunch.

  4 NOTICEABLE BEHAVIOUR OF RONALD FISH

  I

  If you go up Beeston Street in the south-western postal division of London and follow the pavement on the right-hand side, you come to a blind alley called Hayling Court. If you enter the first building on the left of this blind alley and mount a flight of stairs, you find yourself facing a door, on the ground-glass of which is the legend:

  ARGUS

  ENQUIRY

  AGENCY

  LTD

  and below it, to one side, the smaller legend

  P. FROBISHER PILBEAM, MGR

  And if, at about the hour when Ronnie Fish had stepped into his two-seater in the garage of Blandings Castle, you had opened this door and gone in and succeeded in convincing the gentlemanly office-boy that yours was a bonafide visit, having nothing to do with the sale of life insurance, proprietary medicines or handsomely bound sets of Dumas, you would have been admitted to the august presence of the Mgr himself. P. Frobisher Pilbeam was seated at his desk, reading a telegram which had arrived during his absence at lunch.

  This is peculiarly an age of young men starting out in business for themselves; of rare, unfettered spirits chafing at the bonds of employment and refusing to spend their lives working forty-eight weeks in the year for a salary. Quite early in his career Pilbeam had seen where the big money lay, and decided to go after it.

  As editor of that celebrated weekly scandal-sheet, Society Spice, Percy Pilbeam had had exceptional opportunities of discovering in good time the true bent of his genius: with the result that, after three years of nosing out people’s discreditable secrets on behalf of the Mammoth Publishing Company, his employers, he had come to the conclusion that a man of his gifts would be doing far better for himself nosing out such secrets on his own behalf. Considerably to the indignation of Lord Tilbury, the Mammoth’s guiding spirit, he had borrowed some capital, handed in his portfolio, and was now in an extremely agreeable financial position.

  The telegram over which he sat brooding with wrinkled forehead was just the sort of telegram an Enquiry agent ought to have been delighted to receive, being thoroughly cryptic and consequently a pleasing challenge to his astuteness as a detective, but Percy Pilbeam, in his ten minutes’ acquaintance with it, had come to dislike it heartily. He preferred his telegrams easier.

  It ran as follows:

  Be sure send best man investigate big robbery.

  It was unsigned.

  What made the thing particularly annoying was that it was so tantalizing. A big robbery probably meant jewels, with a correspondingly big fee attached to their recovery. But you cannot scour England at random, asking people if they have had a big robbery in their neighbourhood.

  Reluctantly, he gave the problem up; and, producing a pocket mirror, began with the aid of a pen nib to curl his small and revolting moustache. His thoughts had drifted now to Sue. They were not altogether sunny thoughts, for the difficulty of making Sue’s acquaintance was beginning to irk Percy Pilbeam. He had written her notes. He had sent her flowers. And nothing had happened. She ignored the notes, and what she did with the flowers he did not know. She certainly never thanked him for them.

  Brooding upon these matters, he was interrupted by the opening of the door. The gentlemanly office-boy entered. Pilbeam looked up, annoyed.

  ‘How many times have I told you not to come in here without knocking?’ he asked sternly.

  The office-boy reflected.

  ‘Seven,’ he replied.

  ‘What would you have done if I had been in conference with an important client?’

  ‘Gone out again,’ said the office-boy. Working in a Private Enquiry Agency, you drop into the knack of solving problems.

  ‘Well, go out now.’

  ‘Very good, sir. I merely wished to say that, while you were absent at lunch, a gentleman called.’

  ‘Eh? Who was he?’

  The office-boy, who liked atmosphere, and hoped some day to be promoted to the company of Mr Murphy and Mr Jones, the two active assistants who had their lair on the ground floor, thought for a moment of saying that, beyond the obvious facts that the caller was a Freemason, left-handed, a vegetarian and a traveller in the East, he had made no deductions from his appearance. He perceived, however, that his employer was not in the vein for that sort of thing.

  ‘A Mr Carmody, sir. Mr Hugo Carmody.’

  ‘Ah!’ Pilbeam displayed interest. ‘Did he say he would call again?’

  ‘He mentioned the possibility, sir.’

  ‘Well, if he does, inform Mr Murphy and tell him to be ready when I ring.’

  The office-boy retired, and Pilbeam returned to his thoughts of Sue. He was quite certain now that he did not like her attitude. Her attitude wounded him. Another thing he deplored was the reluctance of stage-door keepers to reveal the private addresses of the personnel of the company. Really, there seemed to be no way of getting to know the girl at all.

  Eight respe
ctful knocks sounded on the door. The office-boy, though occasionally forgetful, was conscientious. He had restored the average.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Mr Carmody to see you, sir.’

  Pilbeam once more relegated Sue to the hinterland of his mind. Business was business.

  ‘Show him in.’

  ‘This way, sir,’ said the office-boy with a graceful courtliness which, even taking into account the fact that he suffered from adenoids, had an old-world flavour, and Hugo sauntered across the threshold.

  Hugo felt, and was looking, quietly happy. He seemed to bring the sunshine with him. Nobody could have been more wholeheartedly attached than he to Blandings Castle and the society of his Millicent, but he was finding London, revisited, singularly attractive.

  ‘And this, if I mistake not, Watson, is our client now,’ said Hugo genially.

  Such was his feeling of universal benevolence that he embraced with his good-will even the repellent-looking young man who had risen from the desk. Percy Pilbeam’s eyes were too small and too close together and he marcelled his hair in a manner distressing to right-thinking people, but to-day he had to be lumped in with the rest of the species as a man and a brother, so Hugo bestowed a dazzling smile upon him. He still thought Pilbeam should not have been wearing pimples with a red tie. One or the other if he liked. But not both. Nevertheless he smiled upon him.

  ‘Fine day,’ he said.

  ‘Quite,’ said Pilbeam.

  ‘Very jolly, the smell of the asphalt and carbonic gas.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Some people might call London a shade on the stuffy side on an afternoon like this. But not Hugo Carmody.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. H. Carmody finds it just what the doctor ordered.’ He sat down. ‘Well, sleuth,’ he said, ‘to business. I called before lunch, but you were out.’

  Yes.’

  ‘But here I am again. And I suppose you want to know what I’ve come about?’

  ‘When you’re ready to get round to it,’ said Pilbeam patiently.

  Hugo stretched his long legs comfortably.

  ‘Well, I know you detective blokes always want a fellow to begin at the beginning and omit no detail, for there is no saying how important some seemingly trivial fact may be. Omitting birth and early education then, I am at the moment private secretary to Lord Emsworth, at Blandings Castle, in Shropshire. And,’ said Hugo, ‘I maintain, a jolly good secretary. Others may think differently, but that is my view.’