Books: Uneasy Money
P >>
P.G. Wodehouse >> Uneasy Money
Pages:
1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15
The decision at which Bill had arrived with such dramatic
suddenness in the middle of Piccadilly was the same at which some
centuries earlier Columbus had arrived in the privacy of his home.
'Hang it!' said Bill to himself in the cab, 'I'll go to America!'
The exact words probably which Columbus had used, talking the
thing over with his wife.
Bill's knowledge of the great republic across the sea was at this
period of his life a little sketchy. He knew that there had been
unpleasantness between England and the United States in
seventeen-something and again in eighteen-something, but that
things had eventually been straightened out by Miss Edna May
and her fellow missionaries of the Belle of New York Company,
since which time there had been no more trouble. Of American
cocktails he had a fair working knowledge, and he appreciated
ragtime. But of the other great American institutions he was
completely ignorant.
He was on his way now to see Gates. Gates was a comparatively
recent addition to his list of friends, a New York newspaperman
who had come to England a few months before to act as his paper's
London correspondent. He was generally to be found at the Pen and
Ink Club, an institution affiliated with the New York Players, of
which he was a member.
Gates was in. He had just finished lunch.
'What's the trouble, Bill?' he inquired, when he had deposited his
lordship in a corner of the reading-room, which he had selected
because silence was compulsory there, thus rendering it possible
for two men to hear each other speak. 'What brings you charging in
here looking like the Soul's Awakening?'
'I've had an idea, old man.'
'Proceed. Continue.'
'Oh! Well, you remember what you were saying about America?'
'What was I saying about America?'
'The other day, don't you remember? What a lot of money there was
to be made there and so forth.'
'Well?'
'I'm going there.'
'To America?'
'Yes.'
'To make money?'
'Rather.'
Gates nodded--sadly, it seemed to Bill. He was rather a melancholy
young man, with a long face not unlike a pessimistic horse.
'Gosh!' he said.
Bill felt a little damped. By no mental juggling could he construe
'Gosh!' into an expression of enthusiastic approbation.
Gates looked at Bill curiously. 'What's the idea?' he said. 'I
could have understood it if you had told me that you were going to
New York for pleasure, instructing your man Willoughby to see that
the trunks were jolly well packed and wiring to the skipper of
your yacht to meet you at Liverpool. But you seem to have sordid
motives. You talk about making money. What do you want with more
money?'
'Why, I'm devilish hard up.'
'Tenantry a bit slack with the rent?' said Gates sympathetically.
Bill laughed.
'My dear chap, I don't know what on earth you're talking about.
How much money do you think I've got? Four hundred pounds a year,
and no prospect of ever making more unless I sweat for it.'
'What! I always thought you were rolling in money.'
'What gave you that idea?'
'You have a prosperous look. It's a funny thing about England.
I've known you four months, and I know men who know you; but I've
never heard a word about your finances. In New York we all wear
labels, stating our incomes and prospects in clear lettering.
Well, if it's like that it's different, of course. There certainly
is more money to be made in America than here. I don't quite see
what you think you're going to do when you get there, but that's
up to you.
'There's no harm in giving the city a trial. Anyway, I can give
you a letter or two that might help.'
'That's awfully good of you.'
'You won't mind my alluding to you as my friend William Smith?'
'William Smith?'
'You can't travel under your own name if you are really serious
about getting a job. Mind you, if my letters lead to anything it
will probably be a situation as an earnest bill-clerk or an
effervescent office-boy, for Rockefeller and Carnegie and that lot
have swiped all the soft jobs. But if you go over as Lord Dawlish
you won't even get that. Lords are popular socially in America,
but are not used to any great extent in the office. If you try to
break in under your right name you'll get the glad hand and be
asked to stay here and there and play a good deal of golf and
dance quite a lot, but you won't get a job. A gentle smile will
greet all your pleadings that you be allowed to come in and save
the firm.'
'I see.'
'We may look on Smith as a necessity.'
'Do you know, I'm not frightfully keen on the name Smith. Wouldn't
something else do?'
'Sure. We aim to please. How would Jones suit you?'
'The trouble is, you know, that if I took a name I wasn't used to
I might forget it.'
'If you've the sort of mind that would forget Jones I doubt if
ever you'll be a captain of industry.'
'Why not Chalmers?'
'You think it easier to memorize than Jones?'
'It used to be my name, you see, before I got the title.'
'I see. All right. Chalmers then. When do you think of starting?'
'To-morrow.'
'You aren't losing much time. By the way, as you're going to New
York you might as well use my flat.'
'It's awfully good of you.'
'Not a bit. You would be doing me a favour. I had to leave at a
moment's notice, and I want to know what's been happening to the
place. I left some Japanese prints there, and my favourite
nightmare is that someone has broken in and sneaked them. Write
down the address--Forty-blank East Twenty-seventh Street. I'll
send you the key to Brown's to-night with those letters.'
Bill walked up the Strand, glowing with energy. He made his way to
Cockspur Street to buy his ticket for New York. This done, he set
out to Brown's to arrange with the committee the details of his
departure.
He reached Brown's at twenty minutes past two and left it again at
twenty-three minutes past; for, directly he entered, the hall
porter had handed him a telephone message. The telephone
attendants at London clubs are masters of suggestive brevity. The
one in the basement of Brown's had written on Bill's slip of paper
the words: '1 p.m. Will Lord Dawlish as soon as possible call upon
Mr Gerald Nichols at his office?' To this was appended a message
consisting of two words: 'Good news.'
It was stimulating. The probability was that all Jerry Nichols
wanted to tell him was that he had received stable information
about some horse or had been given a box for the Empire, but for
all that it was stimulating.
Bill looked at his watch. He could spare half an hour. He set out
at once for the offices of the eminent law firm of Nichols,
Nichols, Nichols, and Nichols, of which aggregation of Nicholses
his friend Jerry was the last and smallest.
3
On a west-bound omnibus Claire Fenwick sat and raged silently in the
June sunshine. She was furious. What right had Lord Dawlish to look
down his nose and murmur '_Noblesse oblige_' when she asked him a
question, as if she had suggested that he should commit some crime?
It was the patronizing way he had said it that infuriated her, as if
he were a superior being of some kind, governed by codes which she
could not be expected to understand. Everybody nowadays did the sort
of things she suggested, so what was the good of looking shocked and
saying '_Noblesse oblige_'?
The omnibus rolled on towards West Kensington. Claire hated the
place with the bitter hate of one who had read society novels, and
yearned for Grosvenor Square and butlers and a general atmosphere
of soft cushions and pink-shaded lights and maids to do one's
hair. She hated the cheap furniture of the little parlour, the
penetrating contralto of the cook singing hymns in the kitchen,
and the ubiquitousness of her small brother. He was only ten, and
small for his age, yet he appeared to have the power of being in
two rooms at the same time while making a nerve-racking noise in
another.
It was Percy who greeted her to-day as she entered the flat.
'Halloa, Claire! I say, Claire, there's a letter for you. It came
by the second post. I say, Claire, it's got an American stamp on
it. Can I have it, Claire? I haven't got one in my collection.'
His sister regarded him broodingly. 'For goodness' sake don't
bellow like that!' she said. 'Of course, you can have the stamp. I
don't want it. Where is the letter?'
Claire took the envelope from him, extracted the letter, and
handed back the envelope. Percy vanished into the dining-room with
a shattering squeal of pleasure.
A voice spoke from behind a half-opened door--
'Is that you, Claire?'
'Yes, mother; I've come back to pack. They want me to go to
Southampton to-night to take up Claudia Winslow's part.'
'What train are you catching?'
'The three-fifteen.'
'You will have to hurry.'
'I'm going to hurry,' said Claire, clenching her fists as two
simultaneous bursts of song, in different keys and varying tempos,
proceeded from the dining-room and kitchen. A girl has to be in a
sunnier mood than she was to bear up without wincing under the
infliction of a duet consisting of the Rock of Ages and Waiting
for the Robert E. Lee. Assuredly Claire proposed to hurry. She
meant to get her packing done in record time and escape from this
place. She went into her bedroom and began to throw things
untidily into her trunk. She had put the letter in her pocket
against a more favourable time for perusal. A glance had told her
that it was from her friend Polly, Countess of Wetherby: that
Polly Davis of whom she had spoken to Lord Dawlish. Polly Davis,
now married for better or for worse to that curious invertebrate
person, Algie Wetherby, was the only real friend Claire had made
on the stage. A sort of shivering gentility had kept her aloof
from the rest of her fellow-workers, but it took more than a
shivering gentility to stave off Polly.
Claire had passed through the various stages of intimacy with her,
until on the occasion of Polly's marriage she had acted as her
bridesmaid.
It was a long letter, too long to be read until she was at
leisure, and written in a straggling hand that made reading
difficult. She was mildly surprised that Polly should have written
her, for she had been back in America a year or more now, and this
was her first letter. Polly had a warm heart and did not forget
her friends, but she was not a good correspondent.
The need of getting her things ready at once drove the letter from
Claire's mind. She was in the train on her way to Southampton
before she remembered its existence.
It was dated from New York.
MY DEAR OLD CLAIRE,--Is this really my first letter to you? Isn't
that awful! Gee! A lot's happened since I saw you last. I must
tell you first about my hit. Some hit! Claire, old girl, I own New
York. I daren't tell you what my salary is. You'd faint.
I'm doing barefoot dancing. You know the sort of stuff. I started
it in vaudeville, and went so big that my agent shifted me to the
restaurants, and they have to call out the police reserves to
handle the crowd. You can't get a table at Reigelheimer's, which
is my pitch, unless you tip the head waiter a small fortune and
promise to mail him your clothes when you get home. I dance during
supper with nothing on my feet and not much anywhere else, and it
takes three vans to carry my salary to the bank.
Of course, it's the title that does it: 'Lady Pauline Wetherby!'
Algie says it oughtn't to be that, because I'm not the daughter of
a duke, but I don't worry about that. It looks good, and that's
all that matters. You can't get away from the title. I was born in
Carbondale, Illinois, but that doesn't matter--I'm an English
countess, doing barefoot dancing to work off the mortgage on the
ancestral castle, and they eat me. Take it from me, Claire, I'm a
riot.
Well, that's that. What I am really writing about is to tell you
that you have got to come over here. I've taken a house at
Brookport, on Long Island, for the summer. You can stay with me
till the fall, and then I can easily get you a good job in New
York. I have some pull these days, believe me. Not that you'll
need my help. The managers have only got to see you and they'll
all want you. I showed one of them that photograph you gave me,
and he went up in the air. They pay twice as big salaries over
here, you know, as in England, so come by the next boat.
Claire, darling, you must come. I'm wretched. Algie has got my
goat the worst way. If you don't know what that means it means
that he's behaving like a perfect pig. I hardly know where to
begin. Well, it was this way: directly I made my hit my press
agent, a real bright man named Sherriff, got busy, of course.
Interviews, you know, and Advice to Young Girls in the evening
papers, and How I preserve my beauty, and all that sort of thing.
Well, one thing he made me do was to buy a snake and a monkey.
Roscoe Sherriff is crazy about animals as aids to advertisement.
He says an animal story is the thing he does best. So I bought
them.
Algie kicked from the first. I ought to tell you that since we
left England he has taken up painting footling little pictures,
and has got the artistic temperament badly. All his life he's been
starting some new fool thing. When I first met him he prided
himself on having the finest collection of photographs of
race-horses in England. Then he got a craze for model engines.
After that he used to work the piano player till I nearly went
crazy. And now it's pictures.
I don't mind his painting. It gives him something to do and keeps
him out of mischief. He has a studio down in Washington Square,
and is perfectly happy messing about there all day.
Everything would be fine if he didn't think it necessary to tack
on the artistic temperament to his painting. He's developed the
idea that he has nerves and everything upsets them.
Things came to a head this morning at breakfast. Clarence, my
snake, has the cutest way of climbing up the leg of the table and
looking at you pleadingly in the hope that you will give him
soft-boiled egg, which he adores. He did it this morning, and no
sooner had his head appeared above the table than Algie, with a kind
of sharp wail, struck him a violent blow on the nose with a teaspoon.
Then he turned to me, very pale, and said: 'Pauline, this must
end! The time has come to speak up. A nervous, highly-strung man
like myself should not, and must not, be called upon to live in a
house where he is constantly meeting snakes and monkeys without
warning. Choose between me and--'
We had got as far as this when Eustace, the monkey, who I didn't
know was in the room at all, suddenly sprang on to his back. He is
very fond of Algie.
Would you believe it? Algie walked straight out of the house, still
holding the teaspoon, and has not returned. Later in the day he
called me up on the phone and said that, though he realized that a
man's place was the home, he declined to cross the threshold again
until I had got rid of Eustace and Clarence. I tried to reason with
him. I told him that he ought to think himself lucky it wasn't
anything worse than a monkey and a snake, for the last person Roscoe
Sherriff handled, an emotional actress named Devenish, had to keep a
young puma. But he wouldn't listen, and the end of it was that he
rang off and I have not seen or heard of him since.
I am broken-hearted. I won't give in, but I am having an awful time.
So, dearest Claire, do come over and help me. If you could possibly
sail by the _Atlantic_, leaving Southampton on the twenty-fourth of
this month, you would meet a friend of mine whom I think you would
like. His name is Dudley Pickering, and he made a fortune in
automobiles. I expect you have heard of the Pickering automobiles?
Darling Claire, do come, or I know I shall weaken and yield to
Algie's outrageous demands, for, though I would like to hit him
with a brick, I love him dearly.
Your affectionate
POLLY WETHERBY
Claire sank back against the cushioned seat and her eyes filled
with tears of disappointment. Of all the things which would have
chimed in with her discontented mood at that moment a sudden
flight to America was the most alluring. Only one consideration
held her back--she had not the money for her fare.
Polly might have thought of that, she reflected, bitterly. She
took the letter up again and saw that on the last page there was a
postscript--
PS.--I don't know how you are fixed for money, old girl, but if
things are the same with you as in the old days you can't be
rolling. So I have paid for a passage for you with the liner
people this side, and they have cabled their English office, so
you can sail whenever you want to. Come right over.
An hour later the manager of the Southampton branch of the White
Star Line was dazzled by an apparition, a beautiful girl who burst
in upon him with flushed face and shining eyes, demanding a berth on
the steamship _Atlantic_ and talking about a Lady Wetherby. Ten
minutes later, her passage secured, Claire was walking to the local
theatre to inform those in charge of the destinies of The Girl and
the Artist number one company that they must look elsewhere for a
substitute for Miss Claudia Winslow. Then she went back to her hotel
to write a letter home, notifying her mother of her plans.
She looked at her watch. It was six o'clock. Back in West
Kensington a rich smell of dinner would be floating through the
flat; the cook, watching the boiling cabbage, would be singing A
Few More Years Shall Roll; her mother would be sighing; and her
little brother Percy would be employed upon some juvenile
deviltry, the exact nature of which it was not possible to
conjecture, though one could be certain that it would be something
involving a deafening noise.
Claire smiled a happy smile.
4
The offices of Messrs Nichols, Nichols, Nichols, and Nichols were
in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The first Nichols had been dead since the
reign of King William the Fourth, the second since the jubilee
year of Queen Victoria. The remaining brace were Lord Dawlish's
friend Jerry and his father, a formidable old man who knew all the
shady secrets of all the noble families in England.
Bill walked up the stairs and was shown into the room where Jerry,
when his father's eye was upon him, gave his daily imitation of a
young man labouring with diligence and enthusiasm at the law. His
father being at the moment out at lunch, the junior partner was
practising putts with an umbrella and a ball of paper.
Jerry Nichols was not the typical lawyer. At Cambridge, where Bill
had first made his acquaintance, he had been notable for an
exuberance of which Lincoln's Inn Fields had not yet cured him.
There was an airy disregard for legal formalities about him which
exasperated his father, an attorney of the old school. He came to
the point, directly Bill entered the room, with a speed and levity
that would have appalled Nichols Senior, and must have caused the
other two Nicholses to revolve in their graves.
'Halloa, Bill, old man,' he said, prodding him amiably in the
waistcoat with the ferrule of the umbrella. 'How's the boy? Fine!
So'm I. So you got my message? Wonderful invention, the
telephone.'
'I've just come from the club.'
'Take a chair.'
'What's the matter?'
Jerry Nichols thrust Bill into a chair and seated himself on the
table.
'Now look here, Bill,' he said, 'this isn't the way we usually do
this sort of thing, and if the governor were here he would spend
an hour and a half rambling on about testators and beneficiary
legatees, and parties of the first part, and all that sort of rot.
But as he isn't here I want to know, as one pal to another, what
you've been doing to an old buster of the name of Nutcombe.'
'Nutcombe?'
'Nutcombe.'
'Not Ira Nutcombe?'
'Ira J. Nutcombe, formerly of Chicago, later of London, now a
disembodied spirit.'
'Is he dead?'
'Yes. And he's left you something like a million pounds.'
Lord Dawlish looked at his watch.
'Joking apart, Jerry, old man,' he said, 'what did you ask me to
come here for? The committee expects me to spend some of my time
at the club, and if I hang about here all the afternoon I shall
lose my job. Besides, I've got to get back to ask them for--'
Jerry Nichols clutched his forehead with both hands, raised both
hands to heaven, and then, as if despairing of calming himself by
these means, picked up a paper-weight from the desk and hurled it
at a portrait of the founder of the firm, which hung over the
mantelpiece. He got down from the table and crossed the room to
inspect the ruins.
Then, having taken a pair of scissors and cut the cord, he allowed
the portrait to fall to the floor.
He rang the bell. The prematurely-aged office-boy, who was
undoubtedly destined to become a member of the firm some day,
answered the ring.
'Perkins.'
'Yes, sir?'
'Inspect yonder _soufflee_.'
'Yes, sir.'
'You have observed it?'
'Yes, sir.'
'You are wondering how it got there?'
'Yes, sir.'
'I will tell you. You and I were in here, discussing certain legal
minutiae in the interests of the firm, when it suddenly fell. We
both saw it and were very much surprised and startled. I soothed
your nervous system by giving you this half-crown. The whole
incident was very painful. Can you remember all this to tell my
father when he comes in? I shall be out lunching then.'
'Yes, sir.'
'An admirable lad that,' said Jerry Nichols as the door closed.
'He has been here two years, and I have never heard him say
anything except "Yes, sir." He will go far. Well, now that I am
calmer let us return to your little matter. Honestly, Bill, you
make me sick. When I contemplate you the iron enters my soul. You
stand there talking about your tuppenny-ha'penny job as if it
mattered a cent whether you kept it or not. Can't you understand
plain English? Can't you realize that you can buy Brown's and turn
it into a moving-picture house if you like? You're a millionaire!'
Bill's face expressed no emotion whatsoever. Outwardly he appeared
unmoved. Inwardly he was a riot of bewilderment, incapable of
speech. He stared at Jerry dumbly.
'We've got the will in the old oak chest,' went on Jerry Nichols.
'I won't show it to you, partly because the governor has got the
key and he would have a fit if he knew that I was giving you early
information like this, and partly because you wouldn't understand
it. It is full of "whereases" and "peradventures" and "heretofores"
and similar swank, and there aren't any stops in it. It takes the legal
mind, like mine, to tackle wills. What it says, when you've peeled
off a few of the long words which they put in to make it more
interesting, is that old Nutcombe leaves you the money because
you are the only man who ever did him a disinterested kindness--and
what I want to get out of you is, what was the disinterested kindness?
Because I'm going straight out to do it to every elderly, rich-looking
man I can find till I pick a winner.'
Lord Dawlish found speech.
'Jerry, is this really true?'
'Gospel.'
'You aren't pulling my leg?'
'Pulling your leg? Of course I'm not pulling your leg. What do you
take me for? I'm a dry, hard-headed lawyer. The firm of Nichols,
Nichols, Nichols, and Nichols doesn't go about pulling people's
legs!'
'Good Lord!'
'It appears from the will that you worked this disinterested gag,
whatever it was, at Marvis Bay no longer ago than last year.
Wherein you showed a lot of sense, for Ira J., having altered his
will in your favour, apparently had no time before he died to
alter it again in somebody else's, which he would most certainly
have done if he had lived long enough, for his chief recreation
seems to have been making his will. To my certain knowledge he has
made three in the last two years. I've seen them. He was one of
those confirmed will-makers. He got the habit at an early age, and
was never able to shake it off. Do you remember anything about the
man?'
'It isn't possible!'
'Anything's possible with a man cracked enough to make freak wills
and not cracked enough to have them disputed on the ground of
insanity. What did you do to him at Marvis Bay? Save him from
drowning?'
'I cured him of slicing.'
'You did what?'
'He used to slice his approach shots. I cured him.'
'The thing begins to hang together. A certain plausibility creeps
into it. The late Nutcombe was crazy about golf. The governor used
to play with him now and then at Walton Heath. It was the only
thing Nutcombe seemed to live for. That being so, if you got rid
of his slice for him it seems to me, that you earned your money.
The only point that occurs to me is, how does it affect your
amateur status? It looks to me as if you were now a pro.'
'But, Jerry, it's absurd. All I did was to give him a tip or two.
We were the only men down there, as it was out of the season, and
that drew us together. And when I spotted this slice of his I just
gave him a bit of advice. I give you my word that was all. He
can't have left me a fortune on the strength of that!'
'You don't tell the story right, Bill. I can guess what really
happened--to wit, that you gave up all your time to helping the
old fellow improve his game, regardless of the fact that it
completely ruined your holiday.'
Pages:
1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15