A Pelican at Blandings Page 9

  It was with a mind darkened by nameless fears that the ninth Earl had embarked on this expedition, but it was in buoyant mood that he returned. That glimpse of the Empress, brief though it had been, had had the most invigorating effect on his morale. All, he felt, was for the best in this best of all possible worlds, and it was only when he reached the house that he was compelled to modify this view in one respect. All would have been for the best in this best of all possible worlds if somebody in his absence had not bolted the front door.

  3

  It can never be an agreeable experience for a householder to find himself locked out late at night from the house he is holding, and he cannot be censured for allowing it to disconcert him. Of course, if he is a man of determined character, there is a simple and easy way of coping with the situation, always provided that his lungs are in good order. Many years previously Lord Emsworth's father, faced by a similar dilemma on his return in the small hours from the annual dinner of the Loyal Sons of Shropshire, had solved it by shouting at the top of a voice which even in his calmer moments always resembled that of a toastmaster at a public banquet. He also banged on the door with a stout stick, and in almost no time every occupant of the castle, with the exception of those who were having hysterics, had flocked to the spot and admitted him, and with a final brief curse he had thrown the stick at the butler and proceeded bedwards.

  His son and heir, now peering dazedly at the door through his pince-nez, had not this resource to fall back on. His father, like so many Victorian fathers, had had the comfortable knowledge to support him that he was master in his home and that no reproaches were to be expected next morning from a wife who jumped six inches vertically if he spoke to her suddenly. His successor to the earldom was not so fortunately situated.

  The thought of what Connie would have to say if roused from her slumbers by shouts in the night paralysed Lord Emsworth. He stood there congealed. The impression prevailing among the gnats, moths and beetles which had accompanied him on the home stretch was that he had been turned into a pillar of salt, and it came as a great surprise to them when at the end of perhaps five minutes he moved and stirred and seemed to feel the rush of life along his keel. It had suddenly occurred to him that on a warm night like this the Duke was sure to have left the french window of the garden suite open. And while Lord Emsworth would have been the last person to claim to be an acrobat and the first person to confess his inability to do anything so agile as climbing water pipes to second storey bedrooms, he did consider himself capable of walking through an open french window. With the feeling that the happy ending was only moments away he rounded the house, and there, just as he had anticipated, was the garden suite with its window as hospitably open as any window could be.

  It drew him like a magnet.

  It had also, though of this he was not aware, exercised a similar attraction for one of the cats which lived in the stables by day and wandered hither and thither at night. Inquisitive, as is the way with cats, it had been intrigued by the open window and wanted to ascertain what lay beyond it. At the moment when Lord Emsworth tip-toed across the threshold it was investigating one of the Duke's shoes which had been left on the floor and not finding much in it to arrest the attention of a pleasure-seeker.

  Lord Emsworth's legs, arriving suddenly beside it, seemed to offer more in the way of entertainment, lending, as it were, the human touch. They had a peculiar scent, but, thought the cat, rather attractive, and being of an affectionate nature it always liked to have a man to rub itself against. Abandoning the shoe, it applied its head to Lord Emsworth's dressing gown with a quick thrusting movement, and Lord Emsworth, filled with much the same emotions as had gripped him in his boyhood when a playful schoolmate, creeping up behind him in the street, had tooted a motor horn in his immediate rear, executed one of those sideways leaps which Nijinsky used to be so good at in his prime. It was followed by the sort of crash an active bull might have produced if let loose in a china shop.

  It will be remembered that Lady Constance, having learned from the Duke that he proposed to occupy the garden suite, had hastened thither to make sure that everything in it would be just as he liked it. Among the things she had thought he would like was a piecrust table containing on its surface a clock, a bowl of roses, another bowl holding pot-pourri, a calender, an ashtray and a photograph of James Schoonmaker and herself in their wedding finery. It was with this that Lord Esmworth had collided as he made his entrechat, causing the welkin to ring as described.

  It had scarcely ceased to ring, when lights flashed on, revealing the Duke in lemon-coloured pyjamas with a purple stripe.

  The Duke of Dunstable, though pop-eyed and far too heavily moustached for most tastes, was no poltroon. Many men, made aware that their privacy had been invaded by nocturnal marauders, would have pulled the sheets over their heads and lain hoping that if they kept quiet the fellows would go away; but he was made of sterner stuff. He prided himself on being a man who stood no nonsense from anyone, and he was certainly not proposing to stand it from a lot of blasted burglars who got up informal games of football outside his bedroom door. Arming himself for want of a better weapon with a bottle which had contained mineral water, he burst upon the scene with the animation of an Assyrian coming down like a wolf on the fold, and there was Lord Emsworth.

  His militant spirit was offended by the anti-climax. He had come all keyed up to bean a bevy of burglars with his bottle, and there were no burglars to bean; only his host with a weak smile on his face. He was particularly irked by Lord Emsworth's weak smile. Taken in conjunction with the fact that the latter had wandered into his room at one in the morning, apparently with the object of dancing pas seuls in the dark, it confirmed the impression he had already formed that the man was potty.

  Lord Emsworth, though he would have been glad to let the whole thing drop, could not but feel that a word of explanation was called for and that it was for him to open the conversation. It was, he thought, for though vague he had his code, only civil. Smiling another weak smile, he said:

  'Er—good evening, Alaric.'

  The greeting was unfortunately phrased. Even a colloquial 'Hi' or 'Hullo there' would have had a better chance of mollifying the Duke. It was in no kindly spirit that he replied.

  'Good evening? What do you mean good evening? It's the middle of the blasted night. What the devil are you doing here?'

  Something had told Lord Emsworth that this interview might prove to be a difficult one, and it was plain to him that that something had known what it was talking about.

  'I was just passing through to my room. I'm afraid I disturbed you, Alaric.'

  'Of course you disturbed me.'

  'I'm sorry. I upset a table. It was quite inadvertent. I was startled by the cat.'

  'What cat? I see no cat.'

  Lord Emsworth peered about him with the vague stare which had so often exasperated his sisters Constance, Dora, Charlotte, Julia and Hermione. It took him rather longer than the Duke could have wished to discern the catlessness of the room.

  'It must have gone.'

  'If it was ever there.'

  'Oh, it was there.'

  'So you say.'

  During these exchanges the Duke, with some idea of picking up the table, the clock, the bowl, the other bowl, the ashtray, the calendar and the wedding photograph of Lady Constance and her mate, had approached nearer to his visitor, and as he did so the feeling he had had for some time that it was a little close in here became accentuated. He halted, sniffed, and made an interesting discovery.

  'Emsworth,' he said, 'you smell to heaven.'

  Lord Emsworth, too, had been conscious of an aroma. Just a suspicion of the scent of new-mown hay, he would have said.

  'You've been rolling in something.'

  Enlightenment came to Lord Emsworth.

  'Ah yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, quite. I fell in the sty, Alaric.'

  'You did what?'

  'I had gone to see the Empress, and I tripped an
d fell in the sty. It was a little muddy.'

  From the very start of this conversation the Duke had been blowing at his moustache at frequent intervals, but never with the vigour which this statement provoked. He sent it shooting up now as if his aim was to loosen it from its foundations. It has not been stated in this chronicle that he had large outstanding ears, rather like the handles of a Greek amphora. We mention them at this juncture because he was feeling that he could not believe them. It was in an almost awed voice that he said:

  'You went to see that foul pig of yours at this time of night?'

  It naturally pained Lord Emsworth to hear the three times silver medallist at the Shropshire Agricultural Show so described, but he was in no position to protest.

  'That was how I came to be in your room, Alaric. I was locked out, and your window was open.'

  The Duke was still wrestling with the facts placed before him and trying to make some sense of them.

  'Why did you go and see your foul pig at this time of night?'

  Lord Emsworth was able to answer that.

  'I had a dream about her. I dreamed she had been slimming.'

  An odd guttural sound escaped the Duke. His eyes bulged, and his moustache shot nosewards. He passed a hand over his forehead.

  'And that made you . . . at this time of night . . .' He paused, as if recognizing that it was hopeless to do justice to the occasion with mere words. 'You'd better go to bed,' he said at length.

  'Yes, indeed,' said Lord Emsworth. He did not often find himself agreeing with Alaric, but he did this time. 'Good night, Alaric. I hope you are comfortable in here.'

  'I am when people don't come barging in and upsetting all the furniture at one in the morning.'

  'Quite,' said Lord Emsworth. 'Quite, quite, quite. Yes, of course, exactly.'

  He went out and up the stairs, accompanied by a rich smell of pig, but he did not immediately go to his room. Half-way there a thought occurred to him. He would, he realized, have little chance of sleeping unless he soothed his ruffled spirit by reading awhile in some good book with a strong pig interest, and he had left an extremely well-written work on his favourite subject in the portrait gallery that morning, when he had gone to look at the picture of the young woman who reminded him so much of the Empress. It would be pleasant to take another look at her now.

  He went there, and switched on the light.

  4

  It was about time, Gally reflected as he returned all fresh and rosy from the bathroom, to be putting that picture where it belonged. Then it would be off his mind and he could divert his thoughts in other directions.

  As he made his way along the dark corridor he was feeling the agreeable glow which is a good man's reward for doing acts of kindness to his fellows. Admittedly much had still to be done before Johnny's affairs could be said to be in apple pie order, but he had removed—or was on the point of removing—one of the burdens weighing on him. No danger now of ruin overwhelming the Bender Gallery in which the poor young fish had so large a financial interest. As far as that was concerned, there was nothing more to worry about, and a few well-chosen words from one who in his time had made bookies cry would soon adjust the matter of the incandescent popsy.

  It was as he meditated with perhaps a touch of smugness on his godson's luck in having a wise elder to whom he could always turn when in difficulties that a sight he had not expected to see brought him to an abrupt halt. Under the door of the portrait gallery a streak of light was shining, indicating that others beside himself were abroad in the night.

  He drew back. It was plain that he would have to conduct this mission of his in a less nonchalant spirit than he had anticipated. It would be necessary to be devious and snaky, and with this object in mind he retreated some paces to a spot where darkness would hide him when his fellow prowler emerged.

  As to the identity of this prowler and his motives in visiting the portrait gallery at such a time he was completely fogged. The possibility that it might be the Blandings Castle ghost he rejected. Ghosts do, of course, keep late hours, but they do not switch on electric lights. The Blandings Castle ghost, moreover, if he remembered correctly the stories he had heard in childhood, went about with its head under its arm, which would be a handicap to a spectre when looking at pictures.

  He had just reached the conclusion that the mystery was insoluble, when the door flew open and Lord Emsworth shot out and started to descend the stairs at an impressive pace. Eyeing him, Gally was reminded of the night when, wishing to take his mind off the troubles on which he had for some days been brooding, he and a fellow altruist had inserted in their friend Plug Basham's bedroom after he had retired to rest a pig covered with phosphorus and had then beaten the gong. Plug, coming down the stairs three at a time, had shown much the same agitation as that now exhibited by Lord Emsworth. He wondered what had occurred to disturb his brother so deeply.

  This, however, was not the time for standing speculating on first causes. There was work to be done. The portrait gallery being unoccupied, he hastened there, hung his reclining nude and returned to his base. And he was relaxing there with a cigarette and a novel of suspense, when there came a tapping at the door and the face of Lord Emsworth appeared round it. He still seemed agitated.

  'Oh, Galahad,' he said, 'I am so glad you are awake. I was afraid you might be asleep.'

  'As early as this? Most unusual if I had been. Take a seat, Clarence. Delighted you dropped in. What's on your mind?'

  'I have had a shock, Galahad.'

  'Nothing better, they say, for the adrenal glands.'

  'And I came to ask your advice.'

  'It is at your disposal, as always. What seems to be the trouble?'

  'I was wondering if I ought to tell him tonight.'

  'Tell who?'

  'Alaric.'

  'Tell him what?'

  'That his picture has been stolen. I was in the portrait gallery just now, and it had gone.'

  'Gone? You astound me, Clarence. You mean it wasn't there?'

  'Exactly. My first impulse was to go and inform Alaric immediately.'

  'Of course.'

  'But when I reached his door, I found myself hesitating. You see, most unfortunately I had disturbed his sleep a little earlier, and he had been rather upset about it.'

  'How did that happen?'

  'I had gone to see the Empress, and while I was in the sty—'

  'In the sty?'

  'Yes, she had gone to bed, and I went in, and I fell in the sty.'

  'I thought I noticed something. You might open the window another inch or two. But you were saying?'

  'When I got back, I found that someone had bolted the front door.'

  'Now who could that have been?'

  'And Alaric's french window was open, and all would have been well, if it had not been for the cat.'

  'Cat?'

  'A cat bumped my leg with its head, and I jumped and upset a table. It made a good deal of noise, and Alaric came out of the bedroom, and he refused to believe that the cat had been there. It was all very unpleasant.'

  'Must have been.'

  'And I came to ask you if you think it is absolutely necessary to wake him again.'

  Gally pondered. It would, of course, be simple for him to set his brother's mind at rest by saying 'First, my dear Clarence, let us go to the portrait gallery and assure ourselves that you are not in error in supposing the picture to have gone. Those optical illusions are not uncommon. It may still be hanging from its hook as snug as a bug in a rug'. But he could not conceal it from himself that a good deal of wholesome fun was to be obtained from waking for a second time an already hotted-up Duke and observing his reactions. And how good it would be for his adrenal glands. Living a placid life down in Wiltshire and seeing nobody but a lot of dull neighbours, his adrenal glands did not get stimulated from one year's end to another. It was only humane to take this opportunity of giving them a prod.

  'I think so, Clarence. I feel very strongly that we
must tell him at once.'

  'We?'

  'I shall of course come with you, to lend you moral support.'

  'You will?'

  'Of course.'

  'You are very kind, Galahad.'

  'I try to be, Clarence, I try to be. I don't think we ought to leave it all to the Boy Scouts.'

  5

  It had not taken the Duke long to fall asleep again. He was one of those fortunate men who have no need to count sheep but drop off directly the head touches the pillow. Short though the interval had been since Lord Emsworth's departure, loud snores were proceeding from his bedroom as the two callers entered the garden suite. They ceased abruptly when Gally hammered on the door with the shoe which had made so small an appeal to the recent cat, accompanying the gesture with a cheery 'Bring out your dead'.

  The Duke sat up. His first impression was that the house was on fire, but he revised this view when Lord Emsworth put his lips to the keyhole and bleated 'Could you spare a moment, Alaric?' Although nothing could have been more politely phrased than the query, it brought him out of bed with a single leap, full of homicidal thoughts. That Emsworth, of whom he had been confident that he had seen the last, should be playing a return date was in his opinion more than a man could be expected to endure. And when, flinging open the door, he saw that Gally also was present, words—perhaps fortunately— failed him. It was left to Gally to set the conversational ball rolling.