Piccadilly Jim by P. G. Wodehouse (open ebook txt) 📗

"Not at all," said his lordship.

Jimmy watched him moving to the door. At the back of his mind there was a dull feeling that he could solve the whole trouble if only he could remember one fact which had escaped him. The effects of the blow he had received still handicapped him. He struggled to remember, but without result. Gentleman Jack reached the door and opened it: and as he did so a shrill yapping, hitherto inaudible because of the intervening oak and the raised voices within, made itself heard from the passage outside. Gentleman Jack closed the door with a hasty bang.

"I say that dog's out there!" he said plaintively.

The scratching of Aida's busy feet on the wood bore out his words. He looked about him, baffled.

"That dog's out there!" he repeated gloomily.

Something seemed to give way in Jimmy's brain. The simple fact which had eluded him till now sprang into his mind.

"Don't let that man get out!" he cried. "Good Lord! I've only just remembered. You say you found me breaking into the safe! You say you heard a noise and came down to investigate! Well, then, what's that test-tube of the explosive doing in your breast-pocket?" He swung round to Miss Trimble. "You needn't take my word or his word. There's a much simpler way of finding out who's the real crook. Search us both." He began to turn out his pockets rapidly. "Look here—and here—and here! Now ask him to do the same!"

He was pleased to observe a spasm pass across Gentleman Jack's hitherto composed countenance. Miss Trimble was eyeing the latter with sudden suspicion.

"Thasso!" she said. "Say, Bill, I've f'gott'n y'r name—'sup to you to show us! Less've a look 't what y' got inside there."

Gentleman Jack drew himself up haughtily.

"I really could not agree to—"

Mrs. Pett interrupted indignantly.

"I never heard of such a thing! Lord Wisbeach is an old friend—"

"Less'f it!" ordered Miss Trimble, whose left eye was now like the left eye of a basilisk. "Y' gotta show us, Bill, so b' quick 'bout 't!"

A tired smile played over Gentleman Jack's face. He was the bored aristocrat, mutely protesting against something that "wasn't done." He dipped his slender fingers into his pocket. Then, drawing out the test-tube, and holding it up, he spoke with a drawling calm for which even Jimmy could not help admiring him.

"All right! If I'm done, I'm done!"

The sensation caused by his action and his words was of the kind usually described as profound. Mrs. Pett uttered a strangled shriek. Willie Partridge yelped like a dog. Sharp exclamations came simultaneously from each of the geniuses.

Gentleman Jack waited for the clamour to subside. Then he resumed his gentle drawl.

"But I'm not done," he explained. "I'm going out now through that window. And if anybody tries to stop me, it will be his—or her—" he bowed politely to Miss Trimble—"last act in the world. If any one makes a move to stop me, I shall drop this test-tube and blow the whole damned place to pieces."

If his first speech had made a marked impression on his audience, his second paralysed them. A silence followed as of the tomb. Only the yapping of the dog Aida refused to be stilled.

"Y' stay where y' are!" said Miss Trimble, as the speaker moved towards the window. She held the revolver poised, but for the first time that night—possibly for the first time in her life—she spoke irresolutely. Superbly competent woman though she was, here was a situation that baffled her.

Gentleman Jack crossed the room slowly, the test-tube held aloft between fore-finger and thumb. He was level with Miss Trimble, who had lowered her revolver and had drawn to one side, plainly at a loss to know how to handle this unprecedented crisis, when the door flew open. For an instant the face of Howard Bemis, the poet, was visible.

"Mrs. Pett, I have telephoned—"

Then another voice interrupted him.

"Yipe! Yipe! Yipe!"

Through the opening the dog Aida, rejoicing in the removal of the obstacle, raced like a fur muff mysteriously endowed with legs and a tongue. She tore across the room to where Gentleman Jack's ankles waited invitingly. Ever since their first meeting she had wanted a fair chance at those ankles, but some one had always prevented her.

"Damn!" shouted Gentleman Jack.

The word was drowned in one vast cataclysm of noise. From every throat in the room there proceeded a shout, a shriek, or some other variety of cry, as the test-tube, slipping from between the victim's fingers, described a parabola through the air.

Ann flung herself into Jimmy's arms, and he held her tight. He shut his eyes. Even as he waited for the end the thought flashed through his mind that, if he must die, this was the manner of death which he would prefer.

The test-tube crashed on the writing-desk, and burst into a million pieces. . . .

Jimmy opened his eyes. Things seemed to be much about the same as before. He was still alive. The room in which he stood was solid and intact. Nobody was in fragments. There was only one respect in which the scene differed from what it had been a moment before. Then, it had contained Gentleman Jack. Now it did not.

A great sigh seemed to sweep through the room. There was a long silence. Then, from the direction of the street, came the roar of a starting automobile. And at that sound the bearded man with the spectacles who had formed part of Miss Trimble's procession uttered a wailing cry.

"Gee! He's beat it in my bubble! And it was a hired one!"

The words seemed to relieve the tension in the air. One by one the company became masters of themselves once more. Miss Trimble, that masterly woman, was the first to recover. She raised herself from the floor—for with a confused idea that she would be safer there she had flung herself down—and, having dusted her skirt with a few decisive dabs of her strong left hand, addressed herself once more to business.

"I let 'm bluff me with a fake bomb!" she commented bitterly. She brooded on this for a moment. "Say, shut th't door 'gain, some one, and t'run this mutt out. I can't think with th't yapping going on."

Mrs. Pett, pale and scared, gathered Aida into her arms. At the same time Ann removed herself from Jimmy's. She did not look at him. She was feeling oddly shy. Shyness had never been a failing of hers, but she would have given much now to have been elsewhere.

Miss Trimble again took charge of the situation. The sound of the automobile had died away. Gentleman Jack had passed out of their lives. This fact embittered Miss Trimble. She spoke with asperity.