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

“Didn’t you suspect what he was up to?”

“R,” agreed Mr. Billson. “I always knew ’e was a wrong ’un.”

“Then why, you poor woollen-headed fish,” bellowed Ukridge, exploding, “why on earth didn’t you stop him?”

“I never thought of that,” admitted Mr. Billson, apologetically.

Ukridge laughed a hideous laugh.

“I just pushed ’im in the face,” proceeded Mr. Billson, “and took the liddle bag away from ’im.”

He placed on the table a small weatherworn suitcase that jingled musically as he moved it; then, with the air of one who dismisses some triviality from his mind, moved to the door.

“ ’Scuse me, gents,” said Battling Billson, deprecatingly. “Can’t stop. I’ve got to go and spread the light.”

Ukridge Rounds a Nasty Corner

The late Sir Rupert Lakenheath, K.C.M.G., C.B., M.V.O., was one of those men at whom their countries point with pride. Until his retirement on a pension in the year 1906, he had been Governor of various insanitary outposts of the British Empire situated around the equator, and as such had won respect and esteem from all. A kindly editor of my acquaintance secured for me the job of assisting the widow of this great administrator to prepare his memoirs for publication; and on a certain summer afternoon I had just finished arraying myself suitably for my first call on her at her residence in Thurloe Square, South Kensington, when there was a knock at the door, and Bowles, my landlord, entered, bearing gifts.

These consisted of a bottle with a staring label and a large cardboard hatbox. I gazed at them blankly, for they held no message for me.

Bowles, in his ambassadorial manner, condescended to explain.

“Mr. Ukridge,” he said, with the ring of paternal affection in his voice which always crept into it when speaking of that menace to civilisation, “called a moment ago, sir, and desired me to hand you these.”

Having now approached the table on which he had placed the objects, I was enabled to solve the mystery of the bottle. It was one of those, fat, bulging bottles, and it bore across its diaphragm in red letters the single word “Peppo.” Beneath this, in black letters, ran the legend, “It Bucks You Up.” I had not seen Ukridge for more than two weeks, but at our last meeting, I remembered, he had spoken of some foul patent medicine of which he had somehow secured the agency. This, apparently, was it.

“But what’s in the hatbox?” I asked.

“I could not say, sir,” replied Bowles.

At this point the hatbox, which had hitherto not spoken, uttered a crisp, sailorly oath, and followed it up by singing the opening bars of “Annie Laurie.” It then relapsed into its former moody silence.

A few doses of Peppo would, no doubt, have enabled me to endure this remarkable happening with fortitude and phlegm. Not having taken that specific, the thing had a devastating effect upon my nervous centres. I bounded back and upset a chair, while Bowles, his dignity laid aside, leaped silently towards the ceiling. It was the first time I had ever seen him lay off the mask, and even in that trying moment I could not help being gratified by the spectacle. It gave me one of those thrills that come once in a lifetime.

“For Gord’s sake!” ejaculated Bowles.

“Have a nut,” observed the hatbox, hospitably. “Have a nut.”

Bowles’s panic subsided.

“It’s a bird, sir. A parrot!”

“What the deuce does Ukridge mean,” I cried, becoming the outraged householder, “by cluttering up my rooms with his beastly parrots? I’d like that man to know⁠—”

The mention of Ukridge’s name seemed to act on Bowles like a soothing draught. He recovered his poise.

“I have no doubt, sir,” he said, a touch of coldness in his voice that rebuked my outburst, “that Mr. Ukridge has good reasons for depositing the bird in our custody. I fancy he must wish you to take charge of it for him.”

“He may wish it⁠—” I was beginning, when my eye fell on the clock. If I did not want to alienate my employer by keeping her waiting, I must be on my way immediately.

“Put that hatbox in the other room, Bowles,” I said. “And I suppose you had better give the bird something to eat.”

“Very good, sir. You may leave the matter in my hands with complete confidence.”

The drawing-room into which I was shown on arriving at Thurloe Square was filled with many mementoes of the late Sir Rupert’s gubernatorial career. In addition the room contained a small and bewilderingly pretty girl in a blue dress, who smiled upon me pleasantly.

“My aunt will be down in a moment,” she said, and for a few moments we exchanged commonplaces. Then the door opened and Lady Lakenheath appeared.

The widow of the Administrator was tall, angular, and thin, with a suntanned face of a cast so determined as to make it seem a tenable theory that in the years previous to 1906 she had done at least her share of the administrating. Her whole appearance was that of a woman designed by Nature to instil law and order into the bosoms of boisterous cannibal kings. She surveyed me with an appraising glance, and then, as if reconciled to the fact that, poor specimen though I might be, I was probably as good as anything else that could be got for the money, received me into the fold by pressing the bell and ordering tea.

Tea had arrived, and I was trying to combine bright dialogue with the difficult feat of balancing my cup on the smallest saucer I had ever seen, when my hostess, happening to glance out of window into the street below, uttered something midway between a sigh and a click of the tongue.

“Oh, dear! That extraordinary man again!”

The girl in the blue dress, who had declined tea and was sewing in a distant corner, bent a little closer over her work.

“Millie!” said the administratress, plaintively, as if desiring sympathy in her trouble.

“Yes, Aunt Elizabeth?”

“That man is calling again!”

There was a short but perceptible pause. A delicate pink