'How do you mean, a what-d'you-call-it?'
'I can't remember the name. One of those ob things.’
‘Obsession?'
That's right. It's a regular obsession.’ 'Curious,' mused Reggie. 'I like acting myself. Did I ever tell you -?' 'Yes.' 'When?’
'Oh, some time or other. And, anyway, we're talking about this mouse of mine.'
'Yes,' said Reggie, called to order, 'that's true. So we are. Well, if you won't become a movie actor, it seems to me that we come back to the original problem. How are you to secure the mouse?'
'Can you suggest anything?'
'Well, it crossed my mind - No, that wouldn't work.’ ‘What were you going to say?' Reggie shook his head. 'No, dismiss the idea.'
'How the devil,' demanded Monty, not without a certain show of reason, 'can I dismiss it if I don't know what it is? What crossed your mind?'
‘Well, it was just that it occurred to me that usually when anyone has something that you want to get hold of, you can buy it back, and I was wondering if this mouse binge couldn't be put on a commercial basis.'
Monty started.
‘Gosh!'
‘But in this case, I'm afraid ... what's that extraordinarily clever thing you're always saying?'
Monty was unable to help him out. His manner seemed to suggest that the field of identification was too wide.
‘I remember. Wheels within wheels. In this case, I'm afraid, there are wheels within wheels. It wouldn't be any use offering Lottie money. What she wants is to get Ambrose a job. Because his principles are so high that unless he gets one he won't marry her. She would scorn your gold.'
Monty was not to be discouraged so readily. He thought the idea good. The notion of making a cash transaction of the thing appealed to him. It had not occurred to him before.
'How much gold do you think she would scorn?' he asked anxiously. Two thousand quid?'
Reggie started. It gave him a shock to hear a sum like that mentioned in such a matter-of-fact way. He had known Monty so long and was so accustomed to him that his amazing oofi-ness had a tendency to slip from the mind.
Two thousand quid? You wouldn't give that?’
'Of course I'd give that. Still, I suppose, as you say,’ said Monty, the first gush of enthusiasm ebbing, 'there's no use talking about it, blast it.'
A strange light had come into Reginald Tennyson's eyes. His nose twitched. He borrowed a cigarette with ill-concealed excitement.
'Ah, but wait,' he said. 'Wait! This situation is beginning to develop. I see possibilities in it. Let me get this clear. You seriously assert that that Mickey Mouse is worth two thousand pounds to you?'
'Of course it is.’
'You would really hand over that colossal sum to the person who restored it to you?' 'On the nail. Why, dash it, I gave Percy Pilbeam a thousand to take me on as a skilled assistant in his Private Inquiry Agency, didn't I? This is a much more vital issue.' Reggie drew a deep breath,
'All right,' he said. 'Make out the cheque to R. Tennyson’
Monty's brain was not at its brightest.
'Have you got the mouse?'
'Of course I haven't, ass.'
'Then why did you say you had?'
'I didn't say I had. But I'm going to get it.’
Reggie leaned forward. Already, at an earlier point in the conversation, he had looked about him and ascertained that the smoking-room, as generally at this hour, was empty but for themselves; nevertheless, he lowered his voice. So much so that all Monty could hear was a confused buzzing sound in which he seemed to detect the words 'Mabel Spence'.
'Speak up,' he urged a little petulantly.
Reggie became more audible.
'It's this way, old boy. I don't mind telling you that I am at a man's cross-roads. You know Mabel Spence?' 'Of course.' 'I love her.' 'Well, get on.'
Reggie seemed a little wounded. However, he decided to continue without comment.
‘I love Mabel, and in about forty-eight hours she will be on her way to Hollywood and I shall be headed for Montreal. And what I have been asking myself is: "Shall I follow her to Hollywood or shall I carry on and go to Montreal, as planned?" The catch to the latter scheme being that I shall probably pine myself into a-decline without her: the catch to the former scheme being that I should arrive in Hollywood with about five quid in my pocket and no job in sight. And two minutes ago,' said Reggie frankly, ‘I would have laid a hundred to eight against the Golden West. Because, however much you're in love, you've got to eat, what?'
Monty said he supposed so. In his present distraught state, he could not imagine ever eating again himself, but he presumed some people liked doing it.
'But what you tell me,' said Reggie, 'alters the entire lay-out.
With a couple of thousand tucked into my stocking, I can go West without a tremor. Lottie Blossom told me once that you could get a room for eight dollars a week in Hollywood and a second-hand car for five and, if you played your cards right, live entirely on the appetizers at other people's cocktail-parties. Why, dash it, I could make two thousand pounds last about twenty years.’
Monty was interested not so much in his companion's living arrangements for the next two decades as in the method by which he was proposing to place himself in a position to undertake the visit to California. He returned to the main point at issue.
'But, Reggie, you can't really get that mouse, can you?’
‘Of course.’
'How?'
‘Easy. It must be in Lottie's state-room.’
'You mean you would go and look for it?’
'Certainly. Pie. Take me about ten minutes.’
This was not the first time that Monty Bodkin had found himself in the role of the capitalist who hires underlings to do sinister work for him. Not so many weeks had elapsed since in the smoking-room of Blandings Castle he had engaged Percy Pilbeam, that nasty little private investigator, to purloin the manuscript of the Hon. Galahad Threepwood's celebrated Memoirs. It was not, therefore, because the idea was new and strange to him that he now bit thoughtfully at his lower lip. It was because he was fond of Reggie and was experiencing much the same emotions as would have been his had the latter informed him of his intention of entering a tiger's cage.
'Suppose she catches you?' he said, quailing at the vision which the words conjured up.
'Ah!' said Reggie. 'That thought occurred to me, too. That's the thing we've got to give a little attention to. Lottie, roused, might be quite on the violent side. Yes, yes, we must not ignore that aspect of the matter. Ill tell you what, I'll just go and take a turn up and down the deck and bend the brain to it.'
There had been moments earlier that afternoon when Monty had chafed at the slowness of Albert Peasemarch's movements, but the steward, for all that he was scant of breath and handicapped by a tender corn, seemed to him to have been sheet-lightning itself in comparison with Reggie. Hours, he felt, must have elapsed before the familiar form once more appeared in the doorway of the smoking-room.
But Reggie speedily cleared himself of any suspicion of having wasted his time. It was not day-dreams or idle conversations with fellow-passengers that had delayed him.
'It's all right,’ he said. 'I've been talking; to Lottie. Everything's fixed.'
Monty was at a loss.
'What did you want to talk to her for?’
'Strategy, my dear chap,' said Reggie with modest pride. ‘‘I said I had come from you, acting as your agent. I said that you had told me all and had empowered me to offer her a hundred quid for the mouse.'
Monty became more fogged than ever. His friend's complacent manner, which seemed to suggest that he imagined himself to have accomplished a brilliant diplomatic coup, bewildered him.
'But what on earth was the good of that? I suppose she laughed herself sick?'
'She seemed amused, certainly. She explained, what I had already told you was the case, that money was no object. What she wanted, she said, and what she was jolly well goin
g to get, was a job for Ambrose. I affected to reason with the girl, and in the end - what I was working up to, of course, in my snaky way - I said: "Well, listen, will you meet Monty tonight and talk it over?" And she said she would, at ten o'clock on the dot.'
‘But, dash it-‘
'So you are to meet her then.’ ·Yes, but, dash it-' Reggie held up a hand.
'All right. I know what's on your mind. You're thinking of the risk of Gertrude seeing you chatting with Lottie. Is that it?'
Monty said that that was precisely it.
‘Don't worry. You don't suppose I forgot that, do you? I have eliminated all risk. The tryst is arranged for the second-class promenade deck. Don't forget the hour, because we shall be working to schedule. Ten o'clock to the tick.'
'Second-class promenade deck,' said Monty musing. 'Yes, that ought to be all right.'
'Of course it will be all right. How can there be any chance of Gertrude seeing you? First-class passengers don't go strolling all over the second-class. There can't be a hitch. At ten o'clock you will meet Lottie on the second-class promenade deck, she having told Ambrose that she is turning in early owing to a headache, and you will detain her there for a quarter of an hour or so, talking any sort of rot you like so long as it isn't bad enough to make your audience walk out on you. By the end of that period I shall have thoroughly scoured her state-room and got the mouse. I mean to say, we know the thing must be there, and there aren't so many spots in a state-room where a fairly sizeable Mickey Mouse could be, so there you are. See any flaws in that continuity?'
'Not a flaw.'
'Nor do I. Because there aren't any. It's money for jam. Tell me once again, for I like hearing the sound of the words, you'll really slip me -?'
Two thousand quid?'
Two thousand quid,’ murmured Reggie, rolling the syllables round his tongue. 'Yes, you shall have it.'
'Don't say "it", old boy. Keep saying "two thousand quid’’. It's like wonderful music. Do you realize that if I arrive in Hollywood with two thousand quid in my pocket there is nothing that I will not be able to accomplish?’
'No?’
'Literally nothing. I shall expect to own the place within the year. Two thousand quid I You couldn't sing it, could you? I should like to hear it sung.’
Chapter 18
With the possible exception of a certain brand of cigarette -one puff of which, one gathers from the advertisements, will make a week-old corpse spring from its bier and dance the Carioca - there is nothing that so braces a girl up as a reconciliation with the man she loves. As Gertrude Butterwick tripped to her state-room after dinner that night to fetch a forgotten handkerchief, she came as near to floating on air as was within the scope of one who, owing to years of developing her physique with hockey and other outdoor sports, weighed a hundred and thirty-three pounds in her step-ins. An afternoon of roseate dreams, topped off by a warm salt-water bath and a substantial meal, had put her in the pink. Her step was jaunty, Her eyes sparkled. She seemed full of yeast.
Markedly different was the demeanour of Albert Pease’ march, whom she found in the state-room tidying up for the night. The steward was breathing heavily, and there was on his face an anxious, careworn look, as if he had just glanced out of a port-hole and seen his mother searching for her spectacles on an iceberg.
His gloom was so pronounced that Gertrude felt compelled to inquire into it. His appearance quite shocked her. Hitherto, she had always known the steward, if not actually as a ray of sunshine, certainly as cheerful and respectfully vivacious. It was as if a new and strange Albert Peasemarch now stood before her, a Peasemarch into whose soul the iron had entered.
'Is anything the matter?' she asked.
Albert Peasemarch heaved a heavy sigh.
'Nothing that you can cure, miss,' he replied, picking up a shoe from the floor, breathing on it, and placing it in a cupboard.
'You seem to be in trouble.’
‘I am in trouble, miss.'
‘You're sure I can't do anything?’
'Nothing, miss. It's just Fate,' said Albert Peasemarch, and walked sombrely into the bathroom to fold towels.
Gertrude lingered uncertainly in the doorway. She had secured the handkerchief for which she had come, but she was feeling that to go away and leave this sufferer alone with his grief would be inhuman. It was obvious that pain and anguish were racking Albert Peasemarch's brow, and nobody who had studied the works of the poet Scott at school could fail to be aware that in such circumstances a woman's duty was clear. Always kind-hearted, Gertrude Butterwick was tonight more than ever in the mood to play the role of ministering angel.
As she stood hesitating the steward uttered a sudden loud moan. There was no mistaking the note of agony. Gertrude decided to remain and, though he had said that there was nothing that she could do, at least to offer first aid.
'What did you say?' she asked as he emerged.
‘When, miss?'
'I thought I heard you say something.’ 'In there in the bathroom?' 'Yes.’
'Merely that I was the Bandollero, miss,’ said Albert Peasemarch, still with that same inspissated gloom.
Gertrude was perplexed. The word seemed somehow vaguely familiar, but she could not identify it.
The Bandollero?’ ;
‘Yes, miss.’
‘What's a Bandollero?’
There, miss, you have me. I've an idea it's a sort of Spanish brigand or bandit.'
Enlightenment flooded upon Gertrude.
'Oh, you mean the Bandolero? You were singing that song, "The Bandolero". I didn't recognize it. It's a favourite song of Mr Bodkin's. I know it well.’
Albert Peasemarch's face twisted with uncontrollable emotion.
'I wish I did,' he said mournfully. 'I keep forgetting the second verse.'
Gertrude's perplexity returned. 'But does that worry you?' 'Yes, miss.'
'I mean, why not just hum it?’
'Humming is no good, miss. It would not satisfy the public's demands. I've got to sing it' 'In public, do you mean?'
'Yes, miss. Tonight, at the second-class concert. This very night as near ten o'clock as may be, I shall be standing up on that platform in the second-class saloon, going through with it And where am I going to get off if I can't even pronounce the word, let alone remember verse two? You say it's not Ban-dollero...'
'No, I know it's not Bandollero.’
'But how are we to know whether it's Bandol-tfro or Ban-dol-a’ro?' 'Try it both ways.'
Albert Peasemarch heaved another of his heavy sighs.
'Have you ever considered the extraordinary workings of Fate, miss? Makes you think a bit, that does. Why am I in this position, faced with singing "The Bandoll" - or rather - "lero" or "lairo" at the second-class concert tonight? Purely and simply because a gentleman named J. G. Garges took it into his head to travel on this boat'
‘I don't understand.'
'It's intricket,' agreed Albert Peasemarch with a sort of moody satisfaction. 'And yet at the same time, if you follow me, it's not intricket at all, but quite simple. If Mr J. G. Garges wasn't on board, I wouldn't be in the position what I am. And when you consider all the various things - the chain of circumstances, as you might call it - that had to happen to get him on board at this particular time ... well, it just makes you realize what helpless prawns we all are in the clutches of a remorseless -'
'Who is Mr Garges?'
'One of the second-class passengers, miss. Beyond that I know nothing, him being merely a name to me. But here he is, travelling in the second cabin of this boat, and I want you to look at how Fate has brought that about, miss. Take a simple aspect of the matter. J. G. Garges must have had croup or measles or such-like during his infancy as a child. ... You concede that, miss?' 'Yes, I suppose so.’
'Good. Well, then. Suppose he had succumbed? Would he be on board this boat now? No. Well, would he, miss?’ ‘I don't see how he could, quite.'
'Exactly. Or make it even simpler. Suppose, as
might quite well have happened, he'd of become during his lifetime a sufferer from asthma or bronchitis or some other complaint which touches you in the wind. How about it then? Would he be in a position to be singing the "Yeoman's Wedding Song" at the second-class concert tonight? No. You'll hardly dispute that, miss?'
‘No.’
'Of course he wouldn't. And why? Because he'd never of been able so much as to contemplate undertaking that line where you have to stow away all the breath you've room for and just hang on, hoping for the best. Arc you familiar with the "Yeoman's Wedding Song", miss? It goes like this.’
Fixing Gertrude with an eye that reminded her of a fish she had once seen in an aquarium, Albert Peasemarch drew in great quantities of air, inflated his chest and sang in an odd, rumbling voice, like thunder over the hills, these words:
‘Ding dong, ding dong,
Ding dong, I hurry along,
For it is my wedding morning;
And the bride so gay in bry-ut array
For the day
Is herself ador-OR-or-or-or-or-or-ning.’
He paused and seemed, as it were, to come to the surface. He gasped a little, like some strong swimmer in his agony. 'You see what I mean, miss?'
Gertrude saw. An asthmatic Garges could certainly never have managed that last line. To her inflamed fancy it had appeared to go on for about ten minutes.
'But I still don't understand,’ she said. 'Why do you object to Mr Garges singing that song?'
Albert Peasemarch's brow darkened. It was plain that he was suffering from an intolerable sense of injustice.
'Because it's my song, miss. My special particular song, rendered by me at two out of every three ship's concerts ever since I took office on this boat. It's come to be a regular item in the programme - Solo: "The Yeoman's Wedding Song" - A. E. Peasemarch. My mother looks forward to my giving her the programme at the end of each trip. She pastes them in an album. Well, when I tell you that the purser himself once said to me - in a joking spirit, no doubt, and nothing derogatory really intended - "If you'd do more hurrying along, Peasemarch, and less singing about it," he said, "I'd be better pleased," he said, well, you can see how in a manner of speaking me and my "Yeoman's Wedding Song" have sort of grown into quite a legend.'