Indiscretions of Archie - P. G. Wodehouse (essential books to read txt) 📗

on the previous day. Now was plainly the moment for the waiter to submit his grievance, before some ebb tide caused the milk of human kindness to flow out of Daniel Brewster. With a swift “Cheerio!” in his father-in-law’s direction, Archie bounded into the grillroom. Salvatore, the hour for luncheon being imminent but not yet having arrived, was standing against the far wall in an attitude of thought.

“Laddie!” cried Archie.

“Sare?”

“A most extraordinary thing has happened. Good old Brewster has suddenly popped up through a trap and is out in the lobby now. And what’s still more weird, he’s apparently bucked.”

“Sare?”

“Braced, you know. In the pink. Pleased about something. If you go to him now with that yarn of yours, you can’t fail. He’ll kiss you on both cheeks and give you his bankroll and collar-stud. Charge along and ask the headwaiter if you can have ten minutes off.”

Salvatore vanished in search of the potentate named, and Archie returned to the lobby to bask in the unwonted sunshine.

“Well, well, well, what!” he said. “I thought you were at Brookport.”

“I came up this morning to meet a friend of mine,” replied Mr. Brewster genially. “Professor Binstead.”

“Don’t think I know him.”

“Very interesting man,” said Mr. Brewster, still with the same uncanny amiability. “He’s a dabbler in a good many things⁠—science, phrenology, antiques. I asked him to bid for me at a sale yesterday. There was a little china figure⁠—”

Archie’s jaw fell.

“China figure?” he stammered feebly.

“Yes. The companion to one you may have noticed on my mantelpiece upstairs. I have been trying to get the pair of them for years. I should never have heard of this one if it had not been for that valet of mine, Parker. Very good of him to let me know of it, considering I had fired him. Ah, here is Binstead.”⁠—He moved to greet the small, middle-aged man with the tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles who was bustling across the lobby.⁠—“Well, Binstead, so you got it?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose the price wasn’t particularly stiff?”

“Twenty-three hundred.”

“Twenty-three hundred!” Mr. Brewster seemed to reel in his tracks. “Twenty-three hundred!”

“You gave me carte blanche.”

“Yes, but twenty-three hundred!”

“I could have got it for a few dollars, but unfortunately I was a little late, and, when I arrived, some young fool had bid it up to a thousand, and he stuck to me till I finally shook him off at twenty-three hundred. Why, this is the very man! Is he a friend of yours?”

Archie coughed.

“More a relation than a friend, what? Son-in-law, don’t you know!”

Mr. Brewster’s amiability had vanished.

“What damned foolery have you been up to now?” he demanded. “Can’t I move a step without stubbing my toe on you? Why the devil did you bid?”

“We thought it would be rather a fruity scheme. We talked it over and came to the conclusion that it was an egg. Wanted to get hold of the rummy little object, don’t you know, and surprise you.”

“Who’s we?”

“Lucille and I.”

“But how did you hear of it at all?”

“Parker, the valet-chappie, you know, wrote me a letter about it.”

“Parker! Didn’t he tell you that he had told me the figure was to be sold?”

“Absolutely not!” A sudden suspicion came to Archie. He was normally a guileless young man, but even to him the extreme fishiness of the part played by Herbert Parker had become apparent. “I say, you know, it looks to me as if friend Parker had been having us all on a bit, what? I mean to say it was jolly old Herb, who tipped your son off⁠—Bill, you know⁠—to go and bid for the thing.”

“Bill! Was Bill there?”

“Absolutely in person! We were bidding against each other like the dickens till we managed to get together and get acquainted. And then this bird⁠—this gentleman⁠—sailed in and started to slip it across us.”

Professor Binstead chuckled⁠—the carefree chuckle of a man who sees all those around him smitten in the pocket, while he himself remains untouched.

“A very ingenious rogue, this Parker of yours, Brewster. His method seems to have been simple but masterly. I have no doubt that either he or a confederate obtained the figure and placed it with the auctioneer, and then he ensured a good price for it by getting us all to bid against each other. Very ingenious!”

Mr. Brewster struggled with his feelings. Then he seemed to overcome them and to force himself to look on the bright side.

“Well, anyway,” he said. “I’ve got the pair of figures, and that’s what I wanted. Is that it in that parcel?”

“This is it. I wouldn’t trust an express company to deliver it. Suppose we go up to your room and see how the two look side by side.”

They crossed the lobby to the lift. The cloud was still on Mr. Brewster’s brow as they stepped out and made their way to his suite. Like most men who have risen from poverty to wealth by their own exertions, Mr. Brewster objected to parting with his money unnecessarily, and it was plain that that twenty-three hundred dollars still rankled.

Mr. Brewster unlocked the door and crossed the room. Then, suddenly, he halted, stared, and stared again. He sprang to the bell and pressed it, then stood gurgling wordlessly.

“Anything wrong, old bean?” queried Archie, solicitously.

“Wrong! Wrong! It’s gone!”

“Gone?”

“The figure!”

The floor-waiter had manifested himself silently in answer to the bell, and was standing in the doorway.

“Simmons!” Mr. Brewster turned to him wildly. “Has anyone been in this suite since I went away?”

“No, sir.”

“Nobody?”

“Nobody except your valet, sir⁠—Parker. He said he had come to fetch some things away. I supposed he had come from you, sir, with instructions.”

“Get out!”

Professor Binstead had unwrapped his parcel, and had placed the Pongo on the table. There was a weighty silence. Archie picked up the little china figure and balanced it on the palm of his hand. It was a small thing, he reflected philosophically, but it had made quite a stir in the world.

Mr. Brewster fermented for a while without speaking.

“So,” he said, at last, in a voice trembling with self-pity, “I have been to all this trouble⁠—”

“And expense,” put