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

firm on her demand for two pounds three and sixpence ha’penny and nothing I could say would shift her. I offered her double the sum at some future date, but no business was done. The curse of the landladies as a class, Corky, and the reason they never rise to ease and opulence, is that they have no vision. They do not understand high finance. They lack the big, broad, flexible outlook which wins to wealth. The deadlock continued, ad finally she went off, leaving me dished once more.

It is only when you are in a situation like that, Corky, that you really begin to be able to appreciate the true hollowness of the world. It is only then that the absolute silliness and futility of human institutions comes home to you. This Ascot business, for instance. Why in the name of Heaven, if you are going to hold a race meeting, should you make a foolish regulation about the sort of costume people must wear if they want to attend it? Why should it be necessary to wear a top hat at Ascot, when you can go to all the other races in anything you like?

Here was I, perfectly equipped for Hurst Park, Sandown, Gatwick, Ally Pally, Lingfield or any other meeting you care to name; and, simply because a ghoul of a landlady had pinched my topper, I was utterly debarred from going to Ascot, though the price of admission was bulging in my pocket. It’s just that sort of thing that makes a fellow chafe at our modern civilization and wonder if after all Man can be Nature’s last word.

Such, Corky, were my meditations as I stood at the window and gazed bleakly out at the sunshine. And then, suddenly, as I gazed, I observed a bloke approaching up the street.

I eyed him with interest. He was an elderly, prosperous bloke with a yellowish face and a white mustache, and he was looking at the numbers on the doors as if he was trying to spot a destination. And at this moment he halted outside the front door of my house, squinted up at the number, and then trotted up the steps and rang the bell. And I realized at once that this must be Tuppy’s secretary man, the fellow I was due to go and see at the club in another half hour. For a moment it seemed odd that he should have come to call on me instead of waiting for me to call on him; and then I reflected that this was just the sort of thing that the energetic, world’s-worker type of man that Tuppy chummed up with at his club would be likely to do. Time is money with these coves, and no doubt he had remembered some other appointment which he couldn’t make if he waited at his club till ten.

Anyway, here he was, and I peered down at him with a beating heart. For what sent a thrill through me, Corky, was the fact that he was much about my build and was brightly clad in correct morning costume, with top hat complete. And though it was hard to tell exactly at such a distance and elevation, the thought flashed across me like an inspiration from above that that top hat would fit me a dashed sight better than Tuppy’s had done.

In another minute there was a knock on the door, and he came in.

Seeing him at close range, I perceived that I had not misjudged this man. He was shortish, but his shoulders were just about the same size as mine, and his head was large and round. If ever, in a word, a bloke might have been designed by Providence to wear a coat and hat that would fit me, this bloke was that bloke. I gazed at him with a gleaming eye.

“Mr. Ukridge?”

“Yes,” I said. “Come in. Awfully good of you to call.”

“Not at all.”

And now, Corky, as you will no doubt have divined, I was, so to speak, at the crossroads. The finger post of prudence pointed one way, that of love another. Prudence whispered to me to conciliate this bloke, to speak him fair, to comport myself toward him as toward one who held my destinies in his hand and who could, if well disposed, give me a job which would keep the wolf from the door while I was looking round for something bigger and more attuned to my vision and abilities.

Love, on the other hand, was shouting to me to pinch his coat and hat and leg it for the open spaces.

It was the deuce of a dilemma.

“I have called⁠—” began the bloke.

I made up my mind. Love got the decision.

“I say,” I said, “I think you’ve got something on the back of your coat.”

“Eh?” said the bloke, trying to squint round and look between his shoulder blades⁠—silly ass.

“It’s a squashed tomato or something.”

“A squashed tomato?”

“Or something.”

“How would I get a squashed tomato on my coat?”

“Ah!” I said, giving him to understand with a wave of the hand that these were deep matters.

“Very curious,” said the bloke.

“Very,” I said. “Slip off your coat and let’s have a look at it.”

He slid out of the coat and I was on it like a knife. You have to move quick on these occasions, and I moved quick. I had the coat out of his hand and the top hat off the table where he had put it, and was out of the door and dashing down the stairs before he could utter a yip.

I put on the coat and it fitted like a glove. I slapped the top hat onto my head, and it might have been made for me. And then I went out into the sunshine, as natty a specimen as ever paced down Piccadilly.

I was passing down the front steps when I heard a sort of bellow from above. There was the bloke, protruding from the window; and, strong man though I am,