Ukridge Stories - P. G. Wodehouse (e book free reading TXT) 📗

confined to himself. By the end of a fortnight, nothing having happened to Teddy Weeks worse than a slight cold which he shook off in a couple of days, the general consensus of opinion among his apprehensive colleagues in the Syndicate was that the situation had become desperate. There were no signs whatever of any return on the vast capital which we had laid out, and meanwhile meals had to be bought, landladies paid, and a reasonable supply of tobacco acquired. It was a melancholy task in these circumstances to read one’s paper of a morning.

All over the inhabited globe, so the well-informed sheet gave one to understand, every kind of accident was happening every day to practically everybody in existence except Teddy Weeks. Farmers in Minnesota were getting mixed up with reaping-machines, peasants in India were being bisected by crocodiles; iron girders from skyscrapers were falling hourly on the heads of citizens in every town from Philadelphia to San Francisco; and the only people who were not down with ptomaine poisoning were those who had walked over cliffs, driven motors into walls, tripped over manholes, or assumed on too slight evidence that the gun was not loaded. In a crippled world, it seemed, Teddy Weeks walked alone, whole and glowing with health. It was one of those grim, ironical, hopeless, grey, despairful situations which the Russian novelists love to write about, and I could not find it in me to blame Ukridge for taking direct action in this crisis. My only regret was that bad luck caused so excellent a plan to miscarry.

My first intimation that he had been trying to hurry matters on came when he and I were walking along the King’s Road one evening, and he drew me into Markham Square, a dismal backwater where he had once had rooms.

“What’s the idea?” I asked, for I disliked the place.

“Teddy Weeks lives here,” said Ukridge. “In my old rooms.” I could not see that this lent any fascination to the place. Every day and in every way I was feeling sorrier and sorrier that I had been foolish enough to put money which I could ill spare into a venture which had all the earmarks of a washout, and my sentiments towards Teddy Weeks were cold and hostile.

“I want to enquire after him.”

“Enquire after him? Why?”

“Well, the fact is, laddie, I have an idea that he has been bitten by a dog.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Ukridge, dreamily. “I’ve just got the idea. You know how one gets ideas.”

The mere contemplation of this beautiful event was so inspiring that for awhile it held me silent. In each of the ten journals in which we had invested dog-bites were specifically recommended as things which every subscriber ought to have. They came about halfway up the list of lucrative accidents, inferior to a broken rib or a fractured fibula, but better value than an ingrowing toenail. I was gloating happily over the picture conjured up by Ukridge’s words when an exclamation brought me back with a start to the realities of life. A revolting sight met my eyes. Down the street came ambling the familiar figure of Teddy Weeks, and one glance at his elegant person was enough to tell us that our hopes had been built on sand. Not even a toy Pomeranian had chewed this man.

“Hallo, you fellows!” said Teddy Weeks.

“Hallo!” we responded, dully.

“Can’t stop,” said Teddy Weeks. “I’ve got to fetch a doctor.”

“A doctor?”

“Yes. Poor Victor Beamish. He’s been bitten by a dog.”

Ukridge and I exchanged weary glances. It seemed as if Fate was going out of its way to have sport with us. What was the good of a dog biting Victor Beamish? What was the good of a hundred dogs biting Victor Beamish? A dog-bitten Victor Beamish had no market value whatever.

“You know that fierce brute that belongs to my landlady,” said Teddy Weeks. “The one that always dashes out into the area and barks at people who come to the front door.” I remembered. A large mongrel with wild eyes and flashing fangs, badly in need of a haircut. I had encountered it once in the street, when visiting Ukridge, and only the presence of the latter, who knew it well and to whom all dogs were as brothers, had saved me from the doom of Victor Beamish. “Somehow or other he got into my bedroom this evening. He was waiting there when I came home. I had brought Beamish back with me, and the animal pinned him by the leg the moment I opened the door.”

“Why didn’t he pin you?” asked Ukridge, aggrieved.

“What I can’t make out,” said Teddy Weeks, “is how on earth the brute came to be in my room. Somebody must have put him there. The whole thing is very mysterious.”

“Why didn’t he pin you?” demanded Ukridge again.

“Oh, I managed to climb on to the top of the wardrobe while he was biting Beamish,” said Teddy Weeks. “And then the landlady came and took him away. But I can’t stop here talking. I must go and get that doctor.”

We gazed after him in silence as he tripped down the street. We noted the careful manner in which he paused at the corner to eye the traffic before crossing the road, the wary way in which he drew back to allow a truck to rattle past.

“You heard that?” said Ukridge, tensely. “He climbed on to the top of the wardrobe!”

“Yes.”

“And you saw the way he dodged that excellent truck?”

“Yes.”

“Something’s got to be done,” said Ukridge, firmly.

“The man has got to be awakened to a sense of his responsibilities.”

Next day a deputation waited on Teddy Weeks.

Ukridge was our spokesman, and he came to the point with admirable directness.

“How about it?” asked Ukridge.

“How about what?” replied Teddy Weeks, nervously, avoiding his accusing eye.

“When do we get action?”

“Oh, you mean that accident business?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Teddy Weeks.

Ukridge drew the mackintosh which he wore indoors and out