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

Corky, I admit that for an instant I quailed at the sight of the hideous fury that distorted his countenance.

“Come back!” shouted the bloke.

Well, it wasn’t a time for standing and making explanations and generally exchanging idle chatter. When a man is leaning out of window in his shirt sleeves making the amount of noise that this cove was making, it doesn’t take long for a crowd to gather. And my experience has been that when a crowd gathers, it isn’t much longer before some infernal, officious policeman rolls round as well. Nothing was further from my wishes than to have this little purely private affair between the bloke and myself sifted by a policeman in front of a large crowd.

So I didn’t linger. I waved my hand as much as to say that all would come right in the future, and then I nipped at a fairly high rate of speed round the corner and hailed a taxi. It had been no part of my plans to incur the expense of a taxi, I having earmarked twopence for a ride on the Tube to Waterloo; but there are times when economy is false prudence.

Once in the cab, whizzing along and putting more distance between the bloke and myself with every revolution of the wheels, I perked up amazingly. I had been, I confess, a trifle apprehensive until now; but from this moment everything seemed splendid. I forgot to mention it before, but this final top hat which now nestled so snugly on the brow was a gray top hat; and, if there is one thing that really lends a zip and a sort of devilish fascination to a fellow’s appearance, it is one of those gray toppers. As I looked at myself in the glass and then gazed out of the window at the gay sunshine, it seemed to me that God was in his heaven and all right with the world.

The general excellence of things continued. I had a pleasant journey; and, when I got to Ascot, I planked my ten bob on a horse I had heard some fellows talking about in the train, and, by Jove, it ambled home at a crisp ten to one. So there I was, five quid ahead of the game almost, you might say, before I had got there. It was with an uplifted heart, Corky, that I strolled off to the paddock to have a look at the multitude and try to find Mabel. And I had hardly emerged from that tunnel thing that you have to walk through to get from the stand, to the paddock when I ran into old Tuppy.

My first feeling on observing the dear old chap was one of relief that I wasn’t wearing his hat. Old Tuppy is one of the best, but little things are apt to upset him and I was in no mood for a painful scene. I passed the time of day genially.

“Ah, Tuppy,” I said genially.

George Tupper is a man with a heart of gold, but he is deficient in tact.

“How the deuce did you get here?” he asked.

“In the ordinary way, laddie,” I said.

“I meant what are you doing here dressed up to the nines like this?”

“Naturally,” I replied with a touch of stiffness, “when I come to Ascot, I wear the accepted morning costume of the well-dressed Englishman.”

“You look as if you had come into a fortune.”

“Yes?” I said, rather wishing he would change the subject. In spite of what you might call the perfect alibi of the gray topper, I did not want to discuss hats and clothes with Tuppy so soon after his recent bereavement. I could see that the hat he had on was a brand new one and must have set him back at least a couple of quid.

“I suppose you’ve gone back to your aunt?” said Tuppy, jumping at a plausible solution. “Well, I’m awfully glad, old man, because I’m afraid that secretary job is off. I was going to write to you tonight.”

“Off?” I said. Having had the advantage of seeing the bloke’s face as he hung out of the window at the moment of our parting, I knew it was off, but I couldn’t see how Tuppy could know.

“He rang me up last night to tell me that he was afraid you wouldn’t do, as he had decided that he must have a secretary who knew shorthand.”

“Oh!” I said. “Oh, did he? Then I’m dashed glad,” I said warmly, “that I pinched his hat. It will be a sharp lesson to him not to raise people’s hopes and shilly-shally in this manner.”

“Pinched his hat? What do you mean?”

I perceived that there was need for caution. Tuppy was looking at me in an odd manner, and I could see that the turn the conversation had taken was once more wakening in him suspicions that he ought to have known better than to entertain of an old school friend.

“It was like this, Tuppy,” I said. “When you came to me and told me about that international spy sneaking your hat from the Foreign Office, it gave me an idea. I had been wanting to come to Ascot, but I had no topper. Of course, if I had pinched yours, as you imagined for a moment I had done, I should have had one; but, not having pinched yours, of course I hadn’t one. So when your friend Bulstrode called on me this morning I collared his. And now that you have revealed to me what a fickle, changeable character he is, I’m very glad I did.”

Tuppy gaped slightly.

“Bulstrode called on you this morning, did you say?”

“This morning at about half-past nine.”

“He couldn’t have done.”

“Then how do you account for my having his hat? Pull yourself together, Tuppy, old horse.”

“The man who came to see you couldn’t have been Bulstrode.”

“Why not?”

“He left for Paris last night.”

“What!”

“He phoned me from the station just before his train started. He had had to change his plans.”

“Then