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

and to whom I hoped⁠—mistakenly, as it turned out⁠—to sell a one-act play.

I say night, but it was nearly two in the morning. The streets were black and deserted, silence was everywhere, and all London slept except Ukridge and a friend of his whom I came upon standing outside Hardy’s fishing tackle shop. That is to say, Ukridge was standing outside the shop. His friend was sitting on the pavement with his back against a lamppost.

As far as I could see in the uncertain light, he was a man of middle age, rugged of aspect and grizzled about the temples. I was able to inspect his temples because⁠—doubtless from the best motives⁠—he was wearing his hat on his left foot. He was correctly clad in dress clothes, but his appearance was a little marred by a splash of mud across his shirtfront and the fact that at some point earlier in the evening he had either thrown away or been deprived of his tie. He gazed fixedly at the hat with a poached-egg-like stare. He was the only man I had ever seen who was smoking two cigars at the same time.

Ukridge greeted me with the warmth of a beleaguered garrison welcoming the relieving army.

“My dear old horse! Just the man I wanted!” he cried, as if he had picked me out of a number of competing applicants. “You can give me a hand with Hank, laddie.”

“Is this Hank!” I enquired, glancing at the recumbent sportsman, who had now closed his eyes as if the spectacle of the hat had begun to pall.

“Yes. Hank Philbrick. This is the bloke I was telling you about, the fellow who wants the house.”

“He doesn’t seem to want any house. He looks quite satisfied with the great open spaces.”

“Poor old Hank’s a bit under the weather,” explained Ukridge, regarding his stricken friend with tolerant sympathy. “It takes him this way. The fact is, old man, it’s a mistake for these blokes to come into money. They overdo things. The only thing Hank ever got to drink for the first fifty years of his life was water, with buttermilk as a treat on his birthday, and he’s trying to make up for lost time. He’s only just discovered that there are such things as liqueurs in the world, and he’s making them rather a hobby. Says they’re such a pretty colour. It wouldn’t be so bad if he stuck to one at a time, but he likes making experiments. Mixes them, laddie. Orders the whole lot and blends them in a tankard. Well, I mean to say,” said Ukridge reasonably, “you can’t take more than five or six tankards of mixed benedictine, chartreuse, kummel, crème de menthe, and old brandy without feeling the strain a bit. Especially if you stoke up on champagne and burgundy.”

A strong shudder ran through me at the thought. I gazed at the human cellar on the pavement with a feeling bordering on awe.

“Does he really?”

“Every night for the last two weeks. I’ve been with him most of the time. I’m the only pal he’s got in London, and he likes to have me round.”

“What plans have you for his future? His immediate future, I mean. Do we remove him somewhere or is he going to spend the night out here under the quiet stars?”

“I thought, if you would lend a hand, old man, we could get him to the Carlton. He’s staying there.”

“He won’t be long, if he comes in in this state.”

“Bless you, my dear old man, they don’t mind. He tipped the night-porter twenty quid yesterday and asked me if I thought it was enough. Lend a hand, laddie. Let’s go.”

I lent a hand, and we went.

The effect which that nocturnal encounter had upon me was to cement the impression that in acting as agent for Mr. Philbrick in the purchase of a house Ukridge was on to a good thing. What little I had seen of Hank had convinced me that he was not the man to be finicky about price. He would pay whatever they asked him without hesitation. Ukridge would undoubtedly make enough out of his share of the commission to pay off Dora Mason’s hundred without feeling it. Indeed, for the first time in his life he would probably be in possession of that bit of capital of which he was accustomed to speak so wistfully. I ceased, therefore, to worry about Miss Mason’s future and concentrated myself on my own troubles.

They would probably have seemed to anyone else minor troubles, but nevertheless they were big enough to depress me. Two days after my meeting with Ukridge and Mr. Philbrick in Pall Mall I had received rather a disturbing letter.

There was a Society paper for which at that time I did occasional work and wished to do more; and the editor of this paper had sent me a ticket for the forthcoming dance of the Pen and Ink Club, with instructions to let him have a column and a half of bright descriptive matter. It was only after I had digested the pleasant reflection that here was a bit of badly needed cash dropping on me out of a clear sky that I realised why the words Pen and Ink Club seemed to have a familiar ring. It was the club of which Ukridge’s aunt Julia was the popular and energetic president, and the thought of a second meeting with that uncomfortable woman filled me with a deep gloom. I had not forgotten⁠—and probably would never forget⁠—my encounter with her in her drawing-room at Wimbledon.

I was not in a financial position, however, to refuse editors their whims, so the thing had to be gone through; but the prospect damped me, and I was still brooding on it when a violent ring at the front-door bell broke in on my meditations. It was followed by the booming of Ukridge’s voice enquiring if I were in. A moment later he had burst into the room. His eyes were