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

was standing on the front steps when I heard him clattering down the stairs.

“Corky, old man!”

“Hallo?”

“I think I’ve got it,” said Ukridge, joining me on the steps. “Came to me in a flash a second ago. How would it be if someone were to go down to Clapham and pretend to be a detective making enquiries about me? Dashed sinister and mysterious, you know. A good deal of meaning nods and shakes of the head. Give the impression that I was wanted for something or other. You get the idea? You would ask a lot of questions and take notes in a book⁠—”

“How do you mean⁠—I would?”

Ukridge looked at me in pained surprise.

“Surely, old horse, you wouldn’t object to doing a trifling service like this for an old friend?”

“I would, strongly. And in any case, what would be the use of my going? They’ve seen me.”

“Yes, but they wouldn’t recognise you. Yours,” said Ukridge, ingratiatingly, “is an ordinary, meaningless sort of face. Or one of those theatrical costumier people would fit you out with a disguise⁠—”

“No!” I said, firmly. “I’m willing to do anything in reason to help you out of this mess, but I refuse to wear false whiskers for you or anyone.”

“All right then,” said Ukridge, despondently; “in that case, there’s nothing to be⁠—”

At this moment he disappeared. It was so swiftly done that he seemed to have been snatched up to heaven. Only the searching odour of his powerful tobacco lingered to remind me that he had once been at my side, and only the slam of the front door told me where he had gone. I looked about, puzzled to account for this abrupt departure, and as I did so heard galloping footsteps and perceived a stout, bearded gentleman of middle age, clad in a frock-coat and a bowler hat. He was one of those men who, once seen, are not readily forgotten; and I recognised him at once. It was the creditor, the bloke Ukridge owed a bit of money to, the man who had tried to board our car in the Haymarket. Halting on the pavement below me, he removed the hat and dabbed at his forehead with a large coloured silk handkerchief.

“Was that Mr. Smallweed you were talking to?” he demanded, gustily. He was obviously touched in the wind.

“No,” I replied, civilly. “No. Not Mr. Smallweed.”

“You’re lying to me, young man!” cried the creditor, his voice rising in a too-familiar shout. And at the words, as if they had been some magic spell, the street seemed suddenly to wake from slumber. It seethed with human life. Maids popped out of windows, areas disgorged landladies, the very stones seemed to belch forth excited spectators. I found myself the centre of attraction⁠—and, for some reason which was beyond me, cast for the role of the villain of the drama. What I had actually done to the poor old man, nobody appeared to know; but the school of thought which held that I had picked his pocket and brutally assaulted him had the largest number of adherents, and there was a good deal of informal talk of lynching me. Fortunately a young man in a blue flannel suit, who had been one of the earliest arrivals on the scene, constituted himself a peacemaker.

“Come along, o’ man,” he said, soothingly, his arm weaving itself into that of the fermenting creditor. “You don’t want to make yourself conspicuous, do you?”

“In there!” roared the creditor, pointing at the door.

The crowd seemed to recognise that there had been an error in its diagnosis. The prevalent opinion now was that I had kidnapped the man’s daughter and was holding her prisoner behind that sinister door. The movement in favour of lynching me became almost universal.

“Now, now!” said the young man, whom I was beginning to like more every minute.

“I’ll kick the door in!”

“Now, now! You don’t want to go doing anything silly or foolish,” pleaded the peacemaker. “There’ll be a policeman along before you know where you are, and you’ll look foolish if he finds you kicking up a silly row.”

I must say that, if I had been in the bearded one’s place and had had right so indisputably on my side, this argument would not have influenced me greatly, but I suppose respectable citizens with a reputation to lose have different views on the importance of colliding with the police, however right they may be. The creditor’s violence began to ebb. He hesitated. He was plainly trying to approach the matter in the light of pure reason.

“You know where the fellow lives,” argued the young man. “See what I mean? Meantersay, you can come and find him whenever you like.”

This, too, sounded thin to me. But it appeared to convince the injured man. He allowed himself to be led away, and presently, the star having left the stage, the drama ceased to attract. The audience melted away. Windows closed, areas emptied themselves, and presently the street was given over once more to the cat lunching in the gutter and the coster hymning his Brussels sprouts.

A hoarse voice spoke through the letter-box.

“Has he gone, laddie?”

I put my mouth to the slit, and we talked together like Pyramus and Thisbe.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Certain.”

“He isn’t lurking round the corner somewhere, waiting to pop out?”

“No. He’s gone.”

The door opened and an embittered Ukridge emerged.

“It’s a little hard!” he said, querulously. “You would scarcely credit it, Corky, but all that fuss was about a measly one pound two and threepence for a rotten little clockwork man that broke the first time I wound it up. Absolutely the first time, old man! It’s not as if it had been a tandem bicycle, an enlarging camera, a Kodak, and a magic lantern.”

I could not follow him.

“Why should a clockwork man be a tandem bicycle and the rest of it?”

“It’s like this,” said Ukridge. “There was a bicycle and photograph shop down near where I lived a couple of years ago, and I happened to see a tandem bicycle there which I