Books: The Little Nugget
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P.G. Wodehouse >> The Little Nugget
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'He ain't in de odder room,' observed the newcomer. 'I been
rubberin'!'
This was friend Buck beyond question. I could have recognized his
voice anywhere!
'Well dis guy,' said the man with the pistol, indicating me, 'says
he ain't here. What's de answer?'
'Why, it's Sam!' said Buck. 'Howdy, Sam? Pleased to see us, huh?
We're in on de ground floor, too, dis time, all right, all right.'
His words had a marked effect on his colleague.
'Is dat Sam? Hell! Let me blow de head off'n him!' he said, with
simple fervour; and, advancing a step nearer, he waved his
disengaged fist truculently. In my role of Sam I had plainly made
myself very unpopular. I have never heard so much emotion packed
into a few words.
Buck, to my relief, opposed the motion. I thought this decent of
Buck.
'Cheese it,' he said curtly.
The other cheesed it. The operation took the form of lowering the
fist. The pistol he kept in position.
Mr MacGinnis resumed the conduct of affairs.
'Now den, Sam,' he said, 'come across! Where's de Nugget?'
'My name is not Sam,' I said. 'May I put my hands down?'
'Yep, if you want the top of your damn head blown off.'
Such was not my desire. I kept them up.
'Now den, you Sam,' said Mr MacGinnis again, 'we ain't got time to
burn. Out with it. Where's dat Nugget?'
Some reply was obviously required. It was useless to keep
protesting that I was not Sam.
'At this time in the evening he is generally working with Mr
Glossop.'
'Who's Glossop? Dat dough-faced dub in de room over dere?'
'Exactly. You have described him perfectly.'
'Well, he ain't dere. I bin rubberin.' Aw, quit yer foolin', Sam,
where is he?'
'I couldn't tell you just where he is at the present moment,' I
said precisely.
'Ahr chee! Let me swot him one!' begged the man with the pistol; a
most unlovable person. I could never have made a friend of him.
'Cheese it, you!' said Mr MacGinnis.
The other cheesed it once more, regretfully.
'You got him hidden away somewheres, Sam,' said Mr MacGinnis. 'You
can't fool me. I'm com' t'roo dis joint wit a fine-tooth comb till
I find him.'
'By all means,' I said. 'Don't let me stop you.'
'You? You're coming wit me.'
'If you wish it. I shall be delighted.'
'An' cut out dat dam' sissy way of talking, you rummy,' bellowed
Buck, with a sudden lapse into ferocity. 'Spiel like a regular
guy! Standin' dere, pullin' dat dude stuff on me! Cut it out!'
'Say, why _mayn't_ I hand him one?' demanded the pistol-bearer
pathetically. 'What's your kick against pushin' his face in?'
I thought the question in poor taste. Buck ignored it.
'Gimme dat canister,' he said, taking the Browning pistol from
him. 'Now den, Sam, are youse goin' to be good, and come across,
or ain't you--which?'
'I'd be delighted to do anything you wished, Mr MacGinnis,' I
said, 'but--'
'Aw, hire a hall!' said Buck disgustedly. 'Step lively, den, an'
we'll go t'roo de joint. I t'ought youse 'ud have had more sense,
Sam, dan to play dis fool game when you know you're beat. You--'
Shooting pains in my shoulders caused me to interrupt him.
'One moment,' I said. 'I'm going to put my hands down. I'm getting
cramp.'
'I'll blow a hole in you if you do!'
'Just as you please. But I'm not armed.'
'Lefty,' he said to the other man, 'feel around to see if he's
carryin' anyt'ing.'
Lefty advanced and began to tap me scientifically in the
neighbourhood of my pockets. He grunted morosely the while. I
suppose, at this close range, the temptation to 'hand me one' was
almost more than he could bear.
'He ain't got no gun,' he announced gloomily.
'Den youse can put 'em down,' said Mr MacGinnis.
'Thanks,' I said.
'Lefty, youse stay here and look after dese kids. Get a move on,
Sam.'
We left the room, a little procession of two, myself leading, Buck
in my immediate rear administering occasional cautionary prods
with the faithful 'canister'.
II
The first thing that met my eyes as we entered the hall was the
body of a man lying by the front door. The light of the lamp fell
on his face and I saw that it was White. His hands and feet were
tied. As I looked at him, he moved, as if straining against his
bonds, and I was conscious of a feeling of relief. That sound that
had reached me in the classroom, that thud of a falling body, had
become, in the light of what had happened later, very sinister. It
was good to know that he was still alive. I gathered--correctly,
as I discovered subsequently--that in his case the sand-bag had
been utilized. He had been struck down and stunned the instant he
opened the door.
There was a masked man leaning against the wall by Glossop's
classroom. He was short and sturdy. The Buck MacGinnis gang seemed
to have been turned out on a pattern. Externally, they might all
have been twins. This man, to give him a semblance of individuality,
had a ragged red moustache. He was smoking a cigar with the air of
the warrior taking his rest.
'Hello!' he said, as we appeared. He jerked a thumb towards the
classroom. 'I've locked dem in. What's doin', Buck?' he asked,
indicating me with a languid nod.
'We're going t'roo de joint,' explained Mr MacGinnis. 'De kid
ain't in dere. Hump yourself, Sam!'
His colleague's languor disappeared with magic swiftness.
'Sam! Is dat Sam? Here, let me beat de block off'n him!'
Few points in this episode struck me as more remarkable than the
similarity of taste which prevailed, as concerned myself, among
the members of Mr MacGinnis's gang. Men, doubtless of varying
opinions on other subjects, on this one point they were unanimous.
They all wanted to assault me.
Buck, however, had other uses for me. For the present, I was
necessary as a guide, and my value as such would be impaired were
the block to be beaten off me. Though feeling no friendlier
towards me than did his assistants, he declined to allow sentiment
to interfere with business. He concentrated his attention on the
upward journey with all the earnestness of the young gentleman who
carried the banner with the strange device in the poem.
Briefly requesting his ally to cheese it--which he did--he urged
me on with the nozzle of the pistol. The red-moustached man sank
back against the wall again with an air of dejection, sucking his
cigar now like one who has had disappointments in life, while we
passed on up the stairs and began to draw the rooms on the first
floor.
These consisted of Mr Abney's study and two dormitories. The study
was empty, and the only occupants of the dormitories were the
three boys who had been stricken down with colds on the occasion
of Mr MacGinnis's last visit. They squeaked with surprise at the
sight of the assistant-master in such questionable company.
Buck eyed them disappointedly. I waited with something of the
feelings of a drummer taking a buyer round the sample room.
'Get on,' said Buck.
'Won't one of those do?'
'Hump yourself, Sam.'
'Call me Sammy,' I urged. 'We're old friends now.'
'Don't get fresh,' he said austerely. And we moved on.
The top floor was even more deserted than the first. There was no
one in the dormitories. The only other room was Mr Abney's; and,
as we came opposite it, a sneeze from within told of the
sufferings of its occupant.
The sound stirred Buck to his depths. He 'pointed' at the door
like a smell-dog.
'Who's in dere?' he demanded.
'Only Mr Abney. Better not disturb him. He has a bad cold.'
He placed a wrong construction on my solicitude for my employer.
His manner became excited.
'Open dat door, you,' he cried.
'It'll give him a nasty shock.'
'G'wan! Open it!'
No one who is digging a Browning pistol into the small of my back
will ever find me disobliging. I opened the door--knocking first,
as a mild concession to the conventions--and the procession passed
in.
My stricken employer was lying on his back, staring at the
ceiling, and our entrance did not at first cause him to change
this position.
'Yes?' he said thickly, and disappeared beneath a huge
pocket-handkerchief. Muffled sounds, as of distant explosions of
dynamite, together with earthquake shudderings of the bedclothes,
told of another sneezing-fit.
'I'm sorry to disturb you,' I began, when Buck, ever the man of
action, with a scorn of palaver, strode past me, and, having
prodded with the pistol that part of the bedclothes beneath which
a rough calculation suggested that Mr Abney's lower ribs were
concealed, uttered the one word, 'Sa-a-ay!'
Mr Abney sat up like a Jack-in-the-box. One might almost say that
he shot up. And then he saw Buck.
I cannot even faintly imagine what were Mr Abney's emotions at
that moment. He was a man who, from boyhood up, had led a quiet
and regular life. Things like Buck had appeared to him hitherto,
if they appeared at all, only in dreams after injudicious suppers.
Even in the ordinary costume of the Bowery gentleman, without such
adventitious extras as masks and pistols, Buck was no beauty. With
that hideous strip of dingy white linen on his face, he was a
walking nightmare.
Mr Abney's eyebrows had risen and his jaw had fallen to their
uttermost limits. His hair, disturbed by contact with the pillow,
gave the impression of standing on end. His eyes seemed to bulge
like a snail's. He stared at Buck, fascinated.
'Say, you, quit rubberin'. Youse ain't in a dime museum. Where's
dat Ford kid, huh?'
I have set down all Mr MacGinnis's remarks as if they had been
uttered in a bell-like voice with a clear and crisp enunciation;
but, in doing so, I have flattered him. In reality, his mode of
speech suggested that he had something large and unwieldy
permanently stuck in his mouth; and it was not easy for a stranger
to follow him. Mr Abney signally failed to do so. He continued to
gape helplessly till the tension was broken by a sneeze.
One cannot interrogate a sneezing man with any satisfaction to
oneself. Buck stood by the bedside in moody silence, waiting for
the paroxysm to spend itself.
I, meanwhile, had remained where I stood, close to the door. And,
as I waited for Mr Abney to finish sneezing, for the first time
since Buck's colleague Lefty had entered the classroom the idea of
action occurred to me. Until this moment, I suppose, the
strangeness and unexpectedness of these happenings had numbed my
brain. To precede Buck meekly upstairs and to wait with equal
meekness while he interviewed Mr Abney had seemed the only course
open to me. To one whose life has lain apart from such things, the
hypnotic influence of a Browning pistol is irresistible.
But now, freed temporarily from this influence, I began to think;
and, my mind making up for its previous inaction by working with
unwonted swiftness, I formed a plan of action at once.
It was simple, but I had an idea that it would be effective. My
strength lay in my acquaintance with the geography of Sanstead
House and Buck's ignorance of it. Let me but get an adequate
start, and he might find pursuit vain. It was this start which I
saw my way to achieving.
To Buck it had not yet occurred that it was a tactical error to
leave me between the door and himself. I supposed he relied too
implicitly on the mesmeric pistol. He was not even looking at me.
The next moment my fingers were on the switch of the electric
light, and the room was in darkness.
There was a chair by the door. I seized it and swung it into the
space between us. Then, springing back, I banged the door and ran.
I did not run without a goal in view. My objective was the study.
This, as I have explained, was on the first floor. Its window
looked out on to a strip of lawn at the side of the house ending
in a shrubbery. The drop would not be pleasant, but I seemed to
remember a waterspout that ran up the wall close to the window,
and, in any case, I was not in a position to be deterred by the
prospect of a bruise or two. I had not failed to realize that my
position was one of extreme peril. When Buck, concluding the tour
of the house, found that the Little Nugget was not there--as I had
reason to know that he would--there was no room for doubt that he
would withdraw the protection which he had extended to me up to
the present in my capacity of guide. On me the disappointed fury
of the raiders would fall. No prudent consideration for their own
safety would restrain them. If ever the future was revealed to
man, I saw mine. My only chance was to get out into the grounds,
where the darkness would make pursuit an impossibility.
It was an affair which must be settled one way or the other in a
few seconds, and I calculated that it would take Buck just those
few seconds to win his way past the chair and find the door-handle.
I was right. Just as I reached the study, the door of the bedroom
flew open, and the house rang with shouts and the noise of feet on
the uncarpeted landing. From the hall below came answering shouts,
but with an interrogatory note in them. The assistants were
willing, but puzzled. They did not like to leave their posts
without specific instructions, and Buck, shouting as he clattered
over the bare boards, was unintelligible.
I was in the study, the door locked behind me, before they could
arrive at an understanding. I sprang to the window.
The handle rattled. Voices shouted. A panel splintered beneath a
kick, and the door shook on its hinges.
And then, for the first time, I think, in my life, panic gripped
me, the sheer, blind fear which destroys the reason. It swept over
me in a wave, that numbing terror which comes to one in dreams.
Indeed, the thing had become dream-like. I seemed to be standing
outside myself, looking on at myself, watching myself heave and
strain with bruised fingers at a window that would not open.
III
The arm-chair critic, reviewing a situation calmly and at his
ease, is apt to make too small allowances for the effect of hurry
and excitement on the human mind. He is cool and detached. He sees
exactly what ought to have been done, and by what simple means
catastrophe might have been averted.
He would have made short work of my present difficulty, I feel
certain. It was ridiculously simple. But I had lost my head, and
had ceased for the moment to be a reasoning creature. In the end,
indeed, it was no presence of mind but pure good luck which saved
me. Just as the door, which had held out gallantly, gave way
beneath the attack from outside, my fingers, slipping, struck
against the catch of the window, and I understood why I had failed
to raise it.
I snapped the catch back, and flung up the sash. An icy wind swept
into the room, bearing particles of snow. I scrambled on to the
window-sill, and a crash from behind me told of the falling of the
door.
The packed snow on the sill was drenching my knees as I worked my
way out and prepared to drop. There was a deafening explosion
inside the room, and simultaneously something seared my shoulder
like a hot iron. I cried out with the pain of it, and, losing my
balance, fell from the sill.
There was, fortunately for me, a laurel bush immediately below the
window, or I should have been undone. I fell into it, all arms and
legs, in a way which would have meant broken bones if I had struck
the hard turf. I was on my feet in an instant, shaken and
scratched and, incidentally, in a worse temper than ever in my
life before. The idea of flight, which had obsessed me a moment
before, to the exclusion of all other mundane affairs, had
vanished absolutely. I was full of fight, I might say overflowing
with it. I remember standing there, with the snow trickling in
chilly rivulets down my face and neck, and shaking my fist at the
window. Two of my pursuers were leaning out of it, while a third
dodged behind them, like a small man on the outskirts of a crowd.
So far from being thankful for my escape, I was conscious only of
a feeling of regret that there was no immediate way of getting at
them.
They made no move towards travelling the quick but trying route
which had commended itself to me. They seemed to be waiting for
something to happen. It was not long before I was made aware of
what this something was. From the direction of the front door came
the sound of one running. A sudden diminution of the noise of his
feet told me that he had left the gravel and was on the turf. I
drew back a pace or two and waited.
It was pitch dark, and I had no fear that I should be seen. I was
standing well outside the light from the window.
The man stopped just in front of me. A short parley followed.
'Can'tja see him?'
The voice was not Buck's. It was Buck who answered. And when I
realized that this man in front of me, within easy reach, on whose
back I was shortly about to spring, and whose neck I proposed,
under Providence, to twist into the shape of a corkscrew, was no
mere underling, but Mr MacGinnis himself, I was filled with a joy
which I found it hard to contain in silence.
Looking back, I am a little sorry for Mr MacGinnis. He was not a
good man. His mode of speech was not pleasant, and his manners
were worse than his speech. But, though he undoubtedly deserved
all that was coming to him, it was nevertheless bad luck for him
to be standing just there at just that moment. The reactions after
my panic, added to the pain of my shoulder, the scratches on my
face, and the general misery of being wet and cold, had given me a
reckless fury and a determination to do somebody, whoever happened
to come along, grievous bodily hurt, such as seldom invades the
bosoms of the normally peaceful. To put it crisply, I was fighting
mad, and I looked on Buck as something sent by Heaven.
He had got as far, in his reply, as 'Naw, I can't--' when I
sprang.
I have read of the spring of the jaguar, and I have seen some very
creditable flying-tackles made on the football field. My leap
combined the outstanding qualities of both. I connected with Mr
MacGinnis in the region of the waist, and the howl he gave as we
crashed to the ground was music to my ears.
But how true is the old Roman saying, _'Surgit amari aliquid'_.
Our pleasures are never perfect. There is always something. In the
programme which I had hastily mapped out, the upsetting of Mr
MacGinnis was but a small item, a mere preliminary. There were a
number of things which I had wished to do to him, once upset. But
it was not to be. Even as I reached for his throat I perceived that
the light of the window was undergoing an eclipse. A compact form
had wriggled out on to the sill, as I had done, and I heard the
grating of his shoes on the wall as he lowered himself for the drop.
There is a moment when the pleasantest functions must come to
an end. I was loath to part from Mr MacGinnis just when I was
beginning, as it were, to do myself justice; but it was unavoidable.
In another moment his ally would descend upon us, like some Homeric
god swooping from a cloud, and I was not prepared to continue the
battle against odds.
I disengaged myself--Mr MacGinnis strangely quiescent during the
process--and was on my feet in the safety of the darkness just as
the reinforcement touched earth. This time I did not wait. My
hunger for fight had been appeased to some extent by my brush with
Buck, and I was satisfied to have achieved safety with honour.
Making a wide detour I crossed the drive and worked my way through
the bushes to within a few yards of where the automobile stood,
filling the night with the soft purring of its engines. I was
interested to see what would be the enemy's next move. It was
improbable that they would attempt to draw the grounds in search
of me. I imagined that they would recognize failure and retire
whence they had come.
I was right. I had not been watching long, before a little group
advanced into the light of the automobile's lamps. There were four
of them. Three were walking, the fourth, cursing with the vigour
and breadth that marks the expert, lying on their arms, of which
they had made something resembling a stretcher.
The driver of the car, who had been sitting woodenly in his seat,
turned at the sound.
'Ja get him?' he inquired.
'Get nothing!' replied one of the three moodily. 'De Nugget ain't
dere, an' we was chasin' Sam to fix him, an' he laid for us, an'
what he did to Buck was plenty.'
They placed their valuable burden in the tonneau, where he lay
repeating himself, and two of them climbed in after him. The third
seated himself beside the driver.
'Buck's leg's broke,' he announced.
'Hell!' said the chauffeur.
No young actor, receiving his first round of applause, could have
felt a keener thrill of gratification than I did at those words.
Life may have nobler triumphs than the breaking of a kidnapper's
leg, but I did not think so then. It was with an effort that I
stopped myself from cheering.
'Let her go,' said the man in the front seat.
The purring rose to a roar. The car turned and began to move with
increasing speed down the drive. Its drone grew fainter, and
ceased. I brushed the snow from my coat and walked to the front
door.
My first act on entering the house, was to release White. He was
still lying where I had seen him last. He appeared to have made no
headway with the cords on his wrists and ankles. I came to his
help with a rather blunt pocket-knife, and he rose stiffly and
began to chafe the injured arms in silence.
'They've gone,' I said.
He nodded.
'Did they hit you with a sand-bag?'
He nodded again.
'I broke Buck's leg,' I said, with modest pride.
He looked up incredulously. I related my experiences as briefly
as possible, and when I came to the part where I made my flying
tackle, the gloom was swept from his face by a joyful smile. Buck's
injury may have given its recipient pain, but it was certainly the
cause of pleasure to others. White's manner was one of the utmost
enthusiasm as I described the scene.
'That'll hold Buck for a while,' was his comment. 'I guess we
shan't hear from _him_ for a week or two. That's the best cure
for the headache I've ever struck.'
He rubbed the lump that just showed beneath his hair. I did not
wonder at his emotion. Whoever had wielded the sand-bag had done
his work well, in a manner to cause hard feelings on the part of
the victim.
I had been vaguely conscious during this conversation of an
intermittent noise like distant thunder. I now perceived that it
came from Glossop's classroom, and was caused by the beating of
hands on the door-panels. I remembered that the red-moustached man
had locked Glossop and his young charges in. It seemed to me that
he had done well. There would be plenty of confusion without their
assistance.
I was turning towards my own classroom when I saw Audrey on the
stairs and went to meet her.
'It's all right,' I said. 'They've gone.'
'Who was it? What did they want?'
'It was a gentleman named MacGinnis and some friends. They came
after Ogden Ford, but they didn't get him.'
'Where is he? Where is Ogden?'
Before I could reply, babel broke loose. While we had been
talking, White had injudiciously turned the key of Glossop's
classroom which now disgorged its occupants, headed by my
colleague, in a turbulent stream. At the same moment my own
classroom began to empty itself. The hall was packed with boys,
and the din became deafening. Every one had something to say, and
they all said it at once.
Glossop was at my side, semaphoring violently.
'We must telephone,' he bellowed in my ear, 'for the police.'
Somebody tugged at my arm. It was Audrey. She was saying something
which was drowned in the uproar. I drew her towards the stairs,
and we found comparative quiet on the first landing.
'What were you saying?' I asked.
'He isn't there.'
'Who?'
'Ogden Ford. Where is he? He is not in his room. They must have
taken him.'
Glossop came up at a gallop, springing from stair to stair like
the chamois of the Alps.
'We must telephone for the police!' he cried.
'I have telephoned,' said Audrey, 'ten minutes ago. They are
sending some men at once. Mr Glossop, was Ogden Ford in your
classroom?'
'No, Mrs Sheridan. I thought he was with you, Burns.'
I shook my head.
'Those men came to kidnap him, Mr Glossop,' said Audrey.
'Undoubtedly the gang of scoundrels to which that man the other
night belonged! This is preposterous. My nerves will not stand
these repeated outrages. We must have police protection. The
villains must be brought to justice. I never heard of such a
thing! In an English school!'
Glossop's eyes gleamed agitatedly behind their spectacles.
Macbeth's deportment when confronted with Banquo's ghost was
stolid by comparison. There was no doubt that Buck's visit had
upset the smooth peace of our happy little community to quite a
considerable extent.
The noise in the hall had increased rather than subsided. A
belated sense of professional duty returned to Glossop and myself.
We descended the stairs and began to do our best, in our
respective styles, to produce order. It was not an easy task.
Small boys are always prone to make a noise, even without
provocation. When they get a genuine excuse like the incursion of
men in white masks, who prod assistant-masters in the small of the
back with Browning pistols, they tend to eclipse themselves. I
doubt whether we should ever have quieted them, had it not been
that the hour of Buck's visit had chanced to fall within a short
time of that set apart for the boys' tea, and that the kitchen had
lain outside the sphere of our visitors' operations. As in many
English country houses, the kitchen at Sanstead House was at the
end of a long corridor, shut off by doors through which even
pistol-shots penetrated but faintly. Our excellent cook had,
moreover, the misfortune to be somewhat deaf, with the result
that, throughout all the storm and stress in our part of the
house, she, like the lady in Goethe's poem, had gone on cutting
bread and butter; till now, when it seemed that nothing could
quell the uproar, there rose above it the ringing of the bell.
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