Books: Uneasy Money
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P.G. Wodehouse >> Uneasy Money
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He had been holding his revolver in his hand as a protection
against nameless terrors, and as he leaped he pulled the trigger.
Then with the automatic instinct for self-preservation, he sprang
back into the bushes, and began to push his way through them until
he had reached a safe distance from the danger zone.
James, the cat, meanwhile, hurt at the manner in which his
friendly move had been received, had taken refuge on the outhouse
roof. He mewed complainingly, a puzzled note in his voice. Mr
Pickering's behaviour had been one of those things that no fellow
can understand. The whole thing seemed inexplicable to James.
18
Lord Dawlish stood in the doorway of the outhouse, holding the
body of Eustace gingerly by the tail. It was a solemn moment.
There was no room for doubt as to the completeness of the
extinction of Lady Wetherby's pet.
Dudley Pickering's bullet had done its lethal work. Eustace's
adventurous career was over. He was through.
Elizabeth's mouth was trembling, and she looked very white in the
moonlight. Being naturally soft-hearted, she deplored the tragedy
for its own sake; and she was also, though not lacking in courage,
decidedly upset by the discovery that some person unknown had been
roaming her premises with a firearm.
'Oh, Bill!' she said. Then: 'Poor little chap!' And then: 'Who
could have done it?'
Lord Dawlish did not answer. His whole mind was occupied at the
moment with the contemplation of the fact that she had called him
Bill. Then he realized that she had spoken three times and
expected a reply.
'Who could have done it?'
Bill pondered. Never a quick thinker, the question found him
unprepared.
'Some fellow, I expect,' he said at last brightly. 'Got in, don't
you know, and then his pistol went off by accident.'
'But what was he doing with a pistol?'
Bill looked a little puzzled at this.
'Why, he would have a pistol, wouldn't he? I thought everybody
had over here.'
Except for what he had been able to observe during the brief
period of his present visit, Lord Dawlish's knowledge of the
United States had been derived from the American plays which he
had seen in London, and in these chappies were producing revolvers
all the time. He had got the impression that a revolver was as
much a part of the ordinary well-dressed man's equipment in the
United States as a collar.
'I think it was a burglar,' said Elizabeth. 'There have been a lot
of burglaries down here this summer.'
'Would a burglar burgle the outhouse? Rummy idea, rather, what?
Not much sense in it. I think it must have been a tramp. I expect
tramps are always popping about and nosing into all sorts of
extraordinary places, you know.'
'He must have been standing quite close to us while we were
talking,' said Elizabeth, with a shiver.
Bill looked about him. Everywhere was peace. No sinister sounds
competed with the croaking of the tree frogs. No alien figures
infested the landscape. The only alien figure, that of Mr
Pickering, was wedged into a bush, invisible to the naked eye.
'He's gone now, at any rate,' he said. 'What are we going to do?'
Elizabeth gave another shiver as she glanced hurriedly at the
deceased. After life's fitful fever Eustace slept well, but he was
not looking his best.
'With--it?' she said.
'I say,' advised Bill, 'I shouldn't call him "it," don't you know.
It sort of rubs it in. Why not "him"? I suppose we had better bury
him. Have you a spade anywhere handy?'
'There isn't a spade on the place.'
Bill looked thoughtful.
'It takes weeks to make a hole with anything else, you know,' he
said. 'When I was a kid a friend of mine bet me I wouldn't dig my
way through to China with a pocket knife. It was an awful frost. I
tried for a couple of days, and broke the knife and didn't get
anywhere near China.' He laid the remains on the grass and
surveyed them meditatively. 'This is what fellows always run up
against in the detective novels--What to Do With the Body. They
manage the murder part of it all right, and then stub their toes
on the body problem.'
'I wish you wouldn't talk as if we had done a murder.'
'I feel as if we had, don't you?'
'Exactly.'
'I read a story once where a fellow slugged somebody and melted
the corpse down in a bath tub with sulphuric--'
'Stop! You're making me sick!'
'Only a suggestion, don't you know,' said Bill apologetically.
'Well, suggest something else, then.'
'How about leaving him on Lady Wetherby's doorstep? See what I
mean--let them take him in with the morning milk? Or, if you would
rather ring the bell and go away, and--you don't think much of
it?'
'I simply haven't the nerve to do anything so risky.'
'Oh, I would do it. There would be no need for you to come.'
'I wouldn't dream of deserting you.'
'That's awfully good of you.'
'Besides, I'm not going to be left alone to-night until I can jump
into my little white bed and pull the clothes over my head. I'm
scared, I'm just boneless with fright. And I wouldn't go anywhere
near Lady Wetherby's doorstep with it.'
'Him.'
'It's no use, I can't think of it as "him." It's no good asking me
to.'
Bill frowned thoughtfully.
'I read a story once where two chappies wanted to get rid of a
body. They put it inside a fellow's piano.'
'You do seem to have read the most horrible sort of books.'
'I rather like a bit of blood with my fiction,' said Bill. 'What
about this piano scheme I read about?'
'People only have talking machines in these parts.'
'I read a story--'
'Let's try to forget the stories you've read. Suggest something of
your own.'
'Well, could we dissect the little chap?'
'Dissect him?'
'And bury him in the cellar, you know. Fellows do it to their
wives.'
Elizabeth shuddered.
'Try again,' she said.
'Well, the only other thing I can think of is to take him into the
woods and leave him there. It's a pity we can't let Lady Wetherby
know where he is; she seems rather keen on him. But I suppose the
main point is to get rid of him.'
'I know how we can do both. That's a good idea of yours about the
woods. They are part of Lady Wetherby's property. I used to wander
about there in the spring when the house was empty. There's a sort
of shack in the middle of them. I shouldn't think anybody ever
went there--it's a deserted sort of place. We could leave him
there, and then--well, we might write Lady Wetherby a letter or
something. We could think out that part afterward.'
'It's the best thing we've thought of. You really want to come?'
'If you attempt to leave here without me I shall scream. Let's be
starting.'
Bill picked Eustace up by his convenient tail.
'I read a story once,' he said, 'where a fellow was lugging a
corpse through a wood, when suddenly--'
'Stop right there,' said Elizabeth firmly.
During the conversation just recorded Dudley Pickering had been
keeping a watchful eye on Bill and Elizabeth from the interior of
a bush. His was not the ideal position for espionage, for he was
too far off to hear what they said, and the light was too dim to
enable him to see what it was that Bill was holding. It looked to
Mr Pickering like a sack or bag of some sort. As time went by he
became convinced that it was a sack, limp and empty at present,
but destined later to receive and bulge with what he believed was
technically known as the swag. When the two objects of vigilance
concluded their lengthy consultation, and moved off in the
direction of Lady Wetherby's woods, any doubts he may have had as
to whether they were the criminals he had suspected them of being
were dispersed. The whole thing worked out logically.
The Man, having spied out the land in his two visits to Lady
Wetherby's house, was now about to break in. His accomplice would
stand by with the sack. With a beating heart Mr Pickering gripped
his revolver and moved round in the shadow of the shrubbery till
he came to the gate, when he was just in time to see the guilty
couple disappear into the woods. He followed them. He was glad to
get on the move again. While he had been wedged into the bush,
quite a lot of the bush had been wedged into him. Something sharp
had pressed against the calf of his leg, and he had been pinched
in a number of tender places. And he was convinced that one more
of God's unpleasant creatures had got down the back of his neck.
Dudley Pickering moved through the wood as snakily as he could.
Nature had shaped him more for stability than for snakiness, but
he did his best. He tingled with the excitement of the chase, and
endeavoured to creep through the undergrowth like one of those
intelligent Indians of whom he had read so many years before in
the pages of Mr Fenimore Cooper. In those days Dudley Pickering
had not thought very highly of Fenimore Cooper, holding his work
deficient in serious and scientific interest; but now it seemed to
him that there had been something in the man after all, and he
resolved to get some of his books and go over them again. He
wished he had read them more carefully at the time, for they
doubtless contained much information and many hints which would
have come in handy just now. He seemed, for example, to recall
characters in them who had the knack of going through forests
without letting a single twig crack beneath their feet. Probably
the author had told how this was done. In his unenlightened state
it was beyond Mr Pickering. The wood seemed carpeted with twigs.
Whenever he stepped he trod on one, and whenever he trod on one it
cracked beneath his feet. There were moments when he felt gloomily
that he might just as well be firing a machine-gun.
Bill, meanwhile, Elizabeth following close behind him, was
ploughing his way onward. From time to time he would turn to
administer some encouraging remark, for it had come home to him by
now that encouraging remarks were what she needed very much in the
present crisis of her affairs. She was showing him a new and
hitherto unsuspected side of her character. The Elizabeth whom he
had known--the valiant, self-reliant Elizabeth--had gone, leaving
in her stead someone softer, more appealing, more approachable. It
was this that was filling him with strange emotions as he led the
way to their destination.
He was becoming more and more conscious of a sense of being drawn
very near to Elizabeth, of a desire to soothe, comfort, and protect
her. It was as if to-night he had discovered the missing key to a
puzzle or the missing element in some chemical combination. Like
most big men, his mind was essentially a protective mind; weakness
drew out the best that was in him. And it was only to-night that
Elizabeth had given any sign of having any weakness in her
composition. That clear vision which had come to him on his long
walk came again now, that vivid conviction that she was the only
girl in the world for him.
He was debating within himself the advisability of trying to find
words to express this sentiment, when Mr Pickering, the modern
Chingachgook, trod on another twig in the background and Elizabeth
stopped abruptly with a little cry.
'What was that?' she demanded.
Bill had heard a noise too. It was impossible to be within a dozen
yards of Mr Pickering, when on the trail, and not hear a noise.
The suspicion that someone was following them did not come to him,
for he was a man rather of common sense than of imagination, and
common sense was asking him bluntly why the deuce anybody should
want to tramp after them through a wood at that time of night. He
caught the note of panic in Elizabeth's voice, and was soothing
her.
'It was just a branch breaking. You hear all sorts of rum noises
in a wood.'
'I believe it's the man with the pistol following us!'
'Nonsense. Why should he? Silly thing to do!' He spoke almost
severely.
'Look!' cried Elizabeth.
'What?'
'I saw someone dodge behind that tree.'
'You mustn't let yourself imagine things. Buck up!'
'I can't buck up. I'm scared.'
'Which tree did you think you saw someone dodge behind?'
'That big one there.'
'Well, listen: I'll go back and--'
'If you leave me for an instant I shall die in agonies.' She
gulped. 'I never knew I was such a coward before. I'm just a
worm.'
'Nonsense. This sort of thing might frighten anyone. I read a
story once--'
'Don't!'
Bill found that his heart had suddenly begun to beat with
unaccustomed rapidity. The desire to soothe, comfort, and protect
Elizabeth became the immediate ambition of his life. It was very
dark where they stood. The moonlight, which fell in little patches
round them, did not penetrate the thicket which they had entered.
He could hardly see her. He was merely aware of her as a presence.
An excellent idea occurred to him.
'Hold my hand,' he said.
It was what he would have said to a frightened child, and there was
much of the frightened child about Elizabeth then. The Eustace mystery
had given her a shock which subsequent events had done nothing to
dispel, and she had lost that jauntiness and self-confidence which was
her natural armour against the more ordinary happenings of life.
Something small and soft slid gratefully into his palm, and there
was silence for a space. Bill said nothing. Elizabeth said
nothing. And Mr Pickering had stopped treading on twigs. The
faintest of night breezes ruffled the tree-tops above them. The
moonbeams filtered through the branches. He held her hand tightly.
'Better?'
'Much.'
The breeze died away. Not a leaf stirred. The wood was very still.
Somewhere on a bough a bird moved drowsily 'All right?'
'Yes.'
And then something happened--something shattering, disintegrating.
It was only a pheasant, but it sounded like the end of the world.
It rose at their feet with a rattle that filled the universe, and
for a moment all was black confusion. And when that moment had
passed it became apparent to Bill that his arm was round
Elizabeth, that she was sobbing helplessly, and that he was
kissing her. Somebody was talking very rapidly in a low voice.
He found that it was himself.
'Elizabeth!'
There was something wonderful about the name, a sort of music.
This was odd, because the name, as a name, was far from being a
favourite of his. Until that moment childish associations had
prejudiced him against it. It had been inextricably involved in
his mind with an atmosphere of stuffy schoolrooms and general
misery, for it had been his misfortune that his budding mind was
constitutionally incapable of remembering who had been Queen of
England at the time of the Spanish Armada--a fact that had caused
a good deal of friction with a rather sharp-tempered governess.
But now it seemed the only possible name for a girl to have, the
only label that could even remotely suggest those feminine charms
which he found in this girl beside him. There was poetry in every
syllable of it. It was like one of those deep chords which fill
the hearer with vague yearnings for strange and beautiful things.
He asked for nothing better than to stand here repeating it.
'Elizabeth!'
'Bill, dear!'
That sounded good too. There was music in 'Bill' when properly
spoken. The reason why all the other Bills in the world had got
the impression that it was a prosaic sort of name was that there
was only one girl in existence capable of speaking it properly,
and she was not for them.
'Bill, are you really fond of me?'
'Fond of you!'
She gave a sigh. 'You're so splendid!'
Bill was staggered. These were strange words. He had never thought
much of himself. He had always looked on himself as rather a
chump--well-meaning, perhaps, but an awful ass. It seemed
incredible that any one--and Elizabeth of all people--could look
on him as splendid.
And yet the very fact that she had said it gave it a plausible
sort of sound. It shook his convictions. Splendid! Was he? By
Jove, perhaps he was, what? Rum idea, but it grew on a chap.
Filled with a novel feeling of exaltation, he kissed Elizabeth
eleven times in rapid succession.
He felt devilish fit. He would have liked to run a mile or two and
jump a few gates. He wished five or six starving beggars would
come along; it would be pleasant to give the poor blighters money.
It was too much to expect at that time of night, of course, but it
would be rather jolly if Jess Willard would roll up and try to
pick a quarrel. He would show him something. He felt grand and
strong and full of beans. What a ripping thing life was when you
came to think of it.
'This,' he said, 'is perfectly extraordinary!' And time stood
still.
A sense of something incongruous jarred upon Bill. Something
seemed to be interfering with the supreme romance of that golden
moment. It baffled him at first. Then he realized that he was
still holding Eustace by the tail.
Dudley Pickering had watched these proceedings--as well as the
fact that it was extremely dark and that he was endeavouring to
hide a portly form behind a slender bush would permit him--with a
sense of bewilderment. A comic artist drawing Mr Pickering at that
moment would no doubt have placed above his head one of those
large marks of interrogation which lend vigour and snap to modern
comic art. Certainly such a mark of interrogation would have
summed up his feelings exactly. Of what was taking place he had
not the remotest notion. All he knew was that for some inexplicable
reason his quarry had come to a halt and seemed to have settled down
for an indefinite stay. Voices came to him in an indistinguishable
murmur, intensely irritating to a conscientious tracker. One of
Fenimore Cooper's Indians--notably Chingachgook, if, which seemed
incredible, that was really the man's name--would have crept up
without a sound and heard what was being said and got in on the
ground floor of whatever plot was being hatched. But experience
had taught Mr Pickering that, superior as he was to Chingachgook
and his friends in many ways, as a creeper he was not in their class.
He weighed thirty or forty pounds more than a first-class creeper
should. Besides, creeping is like golf. You can't take it up in the
middle forties and expect to compete with those who have been at it
from infancy.
He had resigned himself to an all-night vigil behind the bush,
when to his great delight he perceived that things had begun to
move again. There was a rustling of feet in the undergrowth, and
he could just see two indistinct forms making their way among the
bushes. He came out of his hiding place and followed stealthily,
or as stealthily as the fact that he had not even taken a
correspondence course in creeping allowed. And profiting by
earlier mistakes, he did succeed in making far less noise than
before. In place of his former somewhat elephantine method of
progression he adopted a species of shuffle which had excellent
results, for it enabled him to brush twigs away instead of
stepping flatfootedly on them. The new method was slow, but it had
no other disadvantages.
Because it was slow, Mr Pickering was obliged to follow his prey
almost entirely by ear. It was easy at first, for they seemed to
be hurrying on regardless of noise. Then unexpectedly the sounds
of their passage ceased.
He halted. In his boyish way the first thing he thought was that
it was an ambush. He had a vision of that large man suspecting his
presence and lying in wait for him with a revolver. This was not a
comforting thought. Of course, if a man is going to fire a
revolver at you it makes little difference whether he is a giant
or a pygmy, but Mr Pickering was in no frame of mind for nice
reasoning. It was the thought of Bill's physique which kept him
standing there irresolute.
What would Chingachgook--assuming, for purposes of argument, that
any sane godfather could really have given a helpless child a name
like that--have done? He would, Mr Pickering considered, after
giving the matter his earnest attention, have made a _detour_
and outflanked the enemy. An excellent solution of the difficulty.
Mr Pickering turned to the left and began to advance circuitously,
with the result that, before he knew what he was doing, he came
out into a clearing and understood the meaning of the sudden
silence which had perplexed him. Footsteps made no sound on this
mossy turf.
He knew where he was now; the clearing was familiar. This was
where Lord Wetherby's shack-studio stood; and there it was, right
in front of him, black and clear in the moonlight. And the two
dark figures were going into it.
Mr Pickering retreated into the shelter of the bushes and mused
upon this thing. It seemed to him that for centuries he had been
doing nothing but retreat into bushes for this purpose. His
perplexity had returned. He could imagine no reason why burglars
should want to visit Lord Wetherby's studio. He had taken it for
granted, when he had tracked them to the clearing, that they were
on their way to the house, which was quite close to the shack,
separated from it only by a thin belt of trees and a lawn.
They had certainly gone in. He had seen them with his own eyes--first
the man, then very close behind him, apparently holding to his coat,
the girl. But why?
Creep up and watch them? Would Chingachgook have taken a risk like
that? Hardly, unless insured with some good company. Then what? He
was still undecided when he perceived the objects of his attention
emerging. He backed a little farther into the bushes.
They stood for an instant, listening apparently. The man no longer
carried the sack. They exchanged a few inaudible words. Then they
crossed the clearing and entered the wood a few yards to his
right. He could hear the crackling of their footsteps diminishing
in the direction of the road.
A devouring curiosity seized upon Mr Pickering. He wanted, more
than he had wanted almost anything before in his life, to find out
what the dickens they had been up to in there. He listened. The
footsteps were no longer audible. He ran across the clearing and
into the shack. It was then that he discovered that he had no
matches.
This needless infliction, coming upon him at the crisis of an
adventurous night, infuriated Mr Pickering. He swore softly. He
groped round the walls for an electric-light switch, but the shack
had no electric-light switch. When there was need to illuminate it
an oil lamp performed the duty. This occurred to Mr Pickering
after he had been round the place three times, and he ceased to
grope for a switch and began to seek for a match-box. He was still
seeking it when he was frozen in his tracks by the sound of
footsteps, muffled but by their nearness audible, just outside the
door. He pulled out his pistol, which he had replaced in his
pocket, backed against the wall, and stood there prepared to sell
his life dearly.
The door opened.
One reads of desperate experiences ageing people in a single
night. His present predicament aged Mr Pickering in a single
minute. In the brief interval of time between the opening of the
door and the moment when a voice outside began to speak he became
a full thirty years older. His boyish ardour slipped from him, and
he was once more the Dudley Pickering whom the world knew, the
staid and respectable middle-aged man of affairs, who would have
given a million dollars not to have got himself mixed up in this
deplorable business.
And then the voice spoke.
'I'll light the lamp,' it said; and with an overpowering feeling
of relief Mr Pickering recognized it as Lord Wetherby's. A moment
later the temperamental peer's dapper figure became visible in
silhouette against a background of pale light.
'Ah-hum!' said Mr Pickering.
The effect on Lord Wetherby was remarkable. To hear some one clear
his throat at the back of a dark room, where there should
rightfully be no throat to be cleared, would cause even your man
of stolid habit a passing thrill. The thing got right in among
Lord Wetherby's highly sensitive ganglions like an earthquake. He
uttered a strangled cry, then dashed out and slammed the door
behind him.
'There's someone in there!'
Lady Wetherby's tranquil voice made itself heard.
'Nonsense; who could be in there?'
'I heard him, I tell you. He growled at me!'
It seemed to Mr Pickering that the time had come to relieve the
mental distress which he was causing his host. He raised his
voice.
'It's all right!' he called.
'There!' said Lord Wetherby.
'Who's that?' asked Lady Wetherby, through the door.
'It's all right. It's me--Pickering.'
The door was opened a few inches by a cautious hand.
'Is that you, Pickering?'
'Yes. It's all right.'
'Don't keep saying it's all right,' said Lord Wetherby, irritably.
'It isn't all right. What do you mean by hiding in the dark and
popping out and barking at a man? You made me bite my tongue. I've
never had such a shock in my life.'
Mr Pickering left his lair and came out into the open. Lord
Wetherby was looking aggrieved, Lady Wetherby peacefully
inquisitive. For the first time Mr Pickering discovered that
Claire was present. She was standing behind Lady Wetherby with a
floating white something over her head, looking very beautiful.
'For the love of Mike!' said Lady Wetherby.
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