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

“And smell like a secondhand clothes-store.”

“Nonsense, my dear old son, nonsense. A mere faint suggestion of some rather pleasant antiseptic. Nothing more. I like it. It’s invigorating. Honestly, old man, it’s really remarkable what an air that suit gives you. Distinguished. That’s the word I was searching for. You look distinguished. All the girls are saying so. When you came in just now to speak to me, I heard one of them whisper ‘Who is it?’ That shows you.”

“More likely ‘What is it?’ ”

“Ha, ha!” bellowed Ukridge, seeking to cajole me with sycophantic mirth. “Dashed good! Deuced good! Not ‘Who is it?’ but ‘What is it?’ It beats me how you think of these things. Golly, if I had a brain like yours⁠—But now, old son, if you don’t mind, I really must be getting back to poor little Dora. She’ll be wondering what has become of me.”

The significance of these words had the effect of making me forget my just wrath for a moment.

“Are you here with that girl you took to the theatre the other afternoon?”

“Yes. I happened to win a trifle on the Derby, so I thought it would be the decent thing to ask her out for an evening’s pleasure. Hers is a grey life.”

“It must be, seeing you so much.”

“A little personal, old horse,” said Ukridge reprovingly. “A trifle bitter. But I know you don’t mean it. Yours is a heart of gold really. If I’ve said that once, I’ve said it a hundred times. Always saying it. Rugged exterior but heart of gold. My very words. Well, goodbye for the present, laddie. I’ll look in tomorrow and return these things. I’m sorry there was any misunderstanding about them, but it makes up for everything, doesn’t it, to feel that you’ve helped brighten life for a poor little downtrodden thing who has few pleasures.”

“Just one last word,” I said. “One final remark.”

“Yes?”

“I’m sitting in that corner of the balcony over there,” I said. “I mention the fact so that you can look out for yourself. If you come dancing underneath there, I shall drop a plate on you. And if it kills you, so much the better. I’m a poor downtrodden little thing, and I have few pleasures.”

Owing to a mawkish respect for the conventions, for which I reproach myself, I did not actually perform this service to humanity. With the exception of throwing a roll at him⁠—which missed him but most fortunately hit the member of my supper-party who had sniffed with the most noticeable offensiveness at my camphorated costume⁠—I took no punitive measures against Ukridge that night. But his demeanour, when he called at my rooms next day, could not have been more crushed if I had dropped a pound of lead on him. He strode into my sitting room with the sombre tread of the man who in a conflict with Fate has received the loser’s end. I had been passing in my mind a number of good snappy things to say to him, but his appearance touched me to such an extent that I held them in. To abuse this man would have been like dancing on a tomb.

“For Heaven’s sake what’s the matter?” I asked. “You look like a toad under the harrow.”

He sat down creakingly, and lit one of my cigars.

“Poor little Dora!”

“What about her?”

“She’s got the push!”

“The push? From your aunt’s, do you mean?”

“Yes.”

“What for?”

Ukridge sighed heavily.

“Most unfortunate business, old horse, and largely my fault. I thought the whole thing was perfectly safe. You see, my aunt goes to bed at half-past ten every night, so it seemed to me that if Dora slipped out at eleven and left a window open behind her she could sneak back all right when we got home from Mario’s. But what happened? Some dashed officious ass,” said Ukridge, with honest wrath, “went and locked the damned window. I don’t know who it was. I suspect the butler. He has a nasty habit of going round the place late at night and shutting things. Upon my Sam, it’s a little hard! If only people would leave things alone and not go snooping about⁠—”

“What happened?”

“Why, it was the scullery window which we’d left open, and when we got back at four o’clock this morning the infernal thing was shut as tight as an egg. Things looked pretty rocky, but Dora remembered that her bedroom window was always open, so we bucked up again for a bit. Her room’s on the second floor, but I knew where there was a ladder, so I went and got it, and she was just hopping up as merry as dammit when somebody flashed a great beastly lantern on us, and there was a policeman, wanting to know what the game was. The whole trouble with the police force of London, laddie, the thing that makes them a hissing and a byword, is that they’re snoopers to a man. Zeal, I suppose they call it. Why they can’t attend to their own affairs is more than I can understand. Dozens of murders going on all the time, probably, all over Wimbledon, and all this bloke would do was stand and wiggle his infernal lantern and ask what the game was. Wouldn’t be satisfied with a plain statement that it was all right. Insisted on rousing the house to have us identified.”

Ukridge paused, a reminiscent look of pain on his expressive face.

“And then?” I said.

“We were,” said Ukridge, briefly.

“What?”

“Identified. By my aunt. In a dressing-gown and a revolver. And the long and the short of it is, old man, that poor little Dora has got the sack.”

I could not find it in my heart to blame his aunt for what he evidently considered a high-handed and tyrannical outrage. If I were a maiden lady of regular views, I should relieve myself of the services of any secretary-companion who returned to roost only a few short hours in advance of the milk.