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

of doors and in all weathers more closely around him. There was in the action something suggestive of a member of the Roman Senate about to denounce an enemy of the State. In just such a manner must Cicero have swished his toga as he took a deep breath preparatory to assailing Clodius. He toyed for a moment with the ginger-beer wire which held his pince-nez in place, and endeavoured without success to button his collar at the back. In moments of emotion Ukridge’s collar always took on a sort of temperamental jumpiness which no stud could restrain.

“And about time you were thinking about it,” he boomed, sternly.

We shifted appreciatively in our seats, all except Victor Beamish, who had declined a chair and was standing by the mantelpiece. “Upon my Sam, it’s about time you were thinking about it. Do you realise that we’ve invested an enormous sum of money in you on the distinct understanding that we could rely on you to do your duty and get immediate results? Are we to be forced to the conclusion that you are so yellow and few in the pod as to want to evade your honourable obligations? We thought better of you, Weeks. Upon my Sam, we thought better of you. We took you for a two-fisted, enterprising, big-souled, one hundred-percent he-man who would stand by his friends to the finish.”

“Yes, but⁠—”

“Any bloke with a sense of loyalty and an appreciation of what it meant to the rest of us would have rushed out and found some means of fulfilling his duty long ago. You don’t even grasp at the opportunities that come your way. Only yesterday I saw you draw back when a single step into the road would have had a truck bumping into you.”

“Well, it’s not so easy to let a truck bump into you.”

“Nonsense. It only requires a little ordinary resolution. Use your imagination, man. Try to think that a child has fallen down in the street⁠—a little golden-haired child,” said Ukridge, deeply affected. “And a dashed great cab or something comes rolling up. The kid’s mother is standing on the pavement, helpless, her hands clasped in agony. ‘Dammit,’ she cries, ‘will no one save my darling?’ ‘Yes, by George,’ you shout, ‘I will.’ And out you jump and the thing’s over in half a second. I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about.”

“Yes, but⁠—” said Teddy Weeks.

“I’m told, what’s more, it isn’t a bit painful. A sort of dull shock, that’s all.”

“Who told you that?”

“I forget. Someone.”

“Well, you can tell him from me that he’s an ass,” said Teddy Weeks, with asperity.

“All right. If you object to being run over by a truck there are lots of other ways. But, upon my Sam, it’s pretty hopeless suggesting them. You seem to have no enterprise at all. Yesterday, after I went to all the trouble to put a dog in your room, a dog which would have done all the work for you⁠—all that you had to do was stand still and let him use his own judgment⁠—what happened? You climbed on to⁠—”

Victor Beamish interrupted, speaking in a voice husky with emotion.

“Was it you who put that damned dog in the room?”

“Eh?” said Ukridge. “Why, yes. But we can have a good talk about all that later on,” he proceeded, hastily. “The point at the moment is how the dickens we’re going to persuade this poor worm to collect our insurance money for us. Why, damme, I should have thought you would have⁠—”

“All I can say⁠—” began Victor Beamish, heatedly.

“Yes, yes,” said Ukridge; “some other time. Must stick to business now, laddie. I was saying,” he resumed, “that I should have thought you would have been as keen as mustard to put the job through for your own sake. You’re always beefing that you haven’t any clothes to impress managers with. Think of all you can buy with your share of the swag once you have summoned up a little ordinary determination and seen the thing through. Think of the suits, the boots, the hats, the spats. You’re always talking about your dashed career, and how all you need to land you in a West-end production is good clothes. Well, here’s your chance to get them.”

His eloquence was not wasted. A wistful look came into Teddy Weeks’s eye, such a look as must have come into the eye of Moses on the summit of Pisgah. He breathed heavily. You could see that the man was mentally walking along Cork Street, weighing the merits of one famous tailor against another.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said, suddenly. “It’s no use asking me to put this thing through in cold blood. I simply can’t do it. I haven’t the nerve. But if you fellows will give me a dinner tonight with lots of champagne I think it will key me up to it.”

A heavy silence fell upon the room. Champagne! The word was like a knell.

“How on earth are we going to afford champagne?” said Victor Beamish.

“Well, there it is,” said Teddy Weeks. “Take it or leave it.”

“Gentlemen,” said Ukridge, “it would seem that the company requires more capital. How about it, old horses? Let’s get together in a frank, businesslike cards-on-the-table spirit, and see what can be done. I can raise ten bob.”

“What!” cried the entire assembled company, amazed. “How?”

“I’ll pawn a banjo.”

“You haven’t got a banjo.”

“No, but George Tupper has, and I know where he keeps it.”

Started in this spirited way, the subscriptions came pouring in. I contributed a cigarette-case, Bertram Fox thought his landlady would let him owe for another week, Robert Dunhill had an uncle in Kensington who, he fancied, if tactfully approached, would be good for a quid, and Victor Beamish said that if the advertisement-manager of the O-So-Eesi Piano-Player was churlish enough to refuse an advance of five shillings against future work he misjudged him sadly. Within a few minutes, in short, the Lightning Drive had produced the impressive total