A Gentleman of Leisure - P. G. Wodehouse (best english books to read for beginners txt) 📗

was standing a girl⁠—a girl whom he recognized. Her startled look told him that she too had recognized him.

Now for the first time since he had set out from his flat that night in Spike’s company Jimmy was conscious of a sense of the unreality of things. It was all so exactly as it would have happened in a dream. He had gone to sleep thinking of this girl, and here she was. But a glance at McEachern brought him back to earth. There was nothing of the dreamworld about the police captain.

The policeman, whose back was towards the door, had not observed the addition to the company. Molly had turned the handle quietly and her slippered feet made no sound. It was the amazed expression on Jimmy’s face that caused him to look towards the door.

“Molly!”

She smiled, though her face was still white. Jimmy’s evening clothes had reassured her. She did not understand how he came to be there, but evidently there was nothing wrong. She had interrupted a conversation, not a conflict.

“I heard the noise and you going downstairs, and I sent the dogs down to help you, father,” she said. “And then, after a little while, I came down to see if you were all right.”

Mr. McEachern was perplexed. Molly’s arrival had put him in an awkward position. To denounce him as a cracksman was impossible. Jimmy knew too much about him. The only real fear of the policeman’s life was that some word of his moneymaking methods might come to his daughter’s ears.

Quite a brilliant idea came to him.

“A man broke in, my dear,” he said. “This gentleman was passing and saw him.”

“Distinctly,” said Jimmy. “An ugly-looking customer!”

“But he slipped out of the window and got away,” concluded the policeman.

“He was very quick,” said Jimmy. “I think he may have been a professional acrobat.”

“He didn’t hurt you, father?”

“No, no, my dear.”

“Perhaps I frightened him,” said Jimmy airily.

Mr. McEachern scowled furtively at him.

“We mustn’t detain you, Mr.⁠—”

“Pitt,” said Jimmy. “My name is Pitt.” He turned to Molly. “I hope you enjoyed the voyage.”

The policeman started.

“You know my daughter?”

“By sight only, I’m afraid. We were fellow passengers on the Mauretania. Unfortunately I was in the second cabin. I used to see your daughter walking the deck sometimes.”

Molly smiled.

“I remember seeing you⁠—sometimes.”

McEachern burst out:

“Then you⁠—”

He stopped and looked at Molly. Molly was bending over Rastus, tickling him under the ear.

“Let me show you the way out, Mr. Pitt,” said the policeman shortly. His manner was abrupt, but when one is speaking to a man whom one would dearly love to throw out of the window abruptness is almost unavoidable.

“Perhaps I should be going,” said Jimmy.

“Good night, Mr. Pitt,” said Molly.

“I hope we shall meet again,” said Jimmy.

“This way, Mr. Pitt,” growled McEachern, holding the door.

“Please don’t trouble,” said Jimmy. He went to the window, and, flinging his leg over the sill, dropped noiselessly to the ground.

He turned and put his head in at the window again.

“I did that rather well,” he said pleasantly. “I think I must take up this sort of thing as a profession. Good night.”

VIII At Dreever

In the days before the Welshman began to expend his surplus energy in playing rugby football he was accustomed, whenever the monotony of his everyday life began to oppress him, to collect a few friends and make raids across the border into England, to the huge discomfort of the dwellers on the other side. It was to cope with this habit that Dreever Castle, in Shropshire, came into existence. It met a long-felt want. In time of trouble it became a haven of refuge. From all sides people poured into it, emerging cautiously when the marauders had disappeared. In the whole history of the castle there is but one instance recorded of a bandit attempting to take the place by storm, and the attack was an emphatic failure. On receipt of a ladleful of molten lead, aimed to a nicety by one John, the Chaplain⁠—evidently one of those sporting parsons⁠—this warrior retired, done to a turn, to his mountain fastnesses, and is never heard of again. He would seem, however, to have passed the word round among his friends, for subsequent raiding parties studiously avoided the castle, and a peasant who had succeeded in crossing its threshold was for the future considered to be “home” and out of the game.

Such was Dreever in the olden times. Today the Welshman having calmed down considerably, it had lost its militant character. The old walls still stood, grey, menacing, and unchanged, but they were the only link with the past. The castle was now a very comfortable country house, nominally ruled over by Hildebrand Spencer Poyns de Burgh John Hannasyde Coombe-Crombie, twelfth Earl of Dreever (“Spennie” to his relatives and intimates), but in reality the possession of his uncle and aunt, Sir Thomas and Lady Julia Blunt.

Spennie’s position was one of some embarrassment. At no point in their history had the Dreevers been what one might call a parsimonious family. If a chance presented itself of losing money in a particularly wild and futile manner, the Dreever of the period had invariably sprung at it with the vim of an energetic bloodhound. The South Sea Bubble absorbed £200,000 of good Dreever money, and the remainder of the family fortune was squandered to the ultimate farthing by the sportive gentleman who had held the title in the days of the Regency, when Watier’s and the Cocoa Tree were in their prime, and fortunes had a habit of disappearing in a single evening. When Spennie became Earl of Dreever there was about eighteenpence in the old oak chest.

This is the point at which Sir Thomas Blunt breaks into Dreever history. Sir Thomas was a small, pink, fussy, obstinate man, with a genius for trade and the ambition of a Napoleon, probably one of the finest and most complete specimens of the came-over-Waterloo-Bridge-with-half-a-crown-in-my-pocket-and-now-look-at-me class of millionaire in existence. He had started almost literally with